The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends,

My dear friends, it is really difficult in our time to meet with full understanding when one speaks out of the sources of what we call Spiritual Science.

I have not in mind so much the difficulty of being understood among the individuals whom we encounter in life, but much more of being comprehensible to the cultural streams, the various world-conceptions and feelings which confront us at the present time.

When we consider European life we find in the first place a great difficulty which has sprung from the following cause. European life at the moment of passing over from mere sense perceptions to thinking about percepts—and this is effected by every individual in every moment of his waking life—does not feel how intimately connected is the thought-content with what we are as human beings.

People think thoughts, they form concepts, and they have the consciousness that through these thoughts and concepts they are, as it were, learning something of the world, that the images in fact reproduce something of the world. This is the consciousness people have. Each one who walks along the street has the feeling that because he sees the trees etc. concepts come to life, and that the concepts are inner presentations of what he perceives, and that he thus in some way takes the world of external percepts into himself and then lives them over again.

In the rarest cases, one can say practically never, is it brought to consciousness in the European world-conception that the thought, the act of thinking, is an actuality in our inner self as man, that we do something by thinking, that thinking is an inner activity, an inner work.

I called your attention here once to the fact that every thought is essentially different from what people usually believe it to be. People take it to be a reproduction of something perceptible. But it is not recognised as a form-builder, a moulder. Every thought that arises in us seizes, as it were, upon our inner life and shares (above all so long as we are growing) in our whole human construction. It already takes part in our structure before we are born and belongs to the forming forces of our nature. It goes on working continually and again and again replaces what dies away in us. So it is not only the case that we perceive our concepts externally, but we are always working upon our being through our thoughts, we work the whole time anew upon our forming and fashioning through what we conceive in ideas.

Seen with the eyes of spiritual science every thought appears like a head with a sort of continuation downwards, so that with every thought we actually insert in us something like a shadowy outline, a phantom, of ourselves; not exactly like us, but as similar as a shadow-picture. This phantom of ourselves must be inserted, for we are continuously losing something, something is being destroyed, is actually crumbling away. And what the thought inserts into our human form, preserves us, generally speaking, until our death. Thought is thus at the same time a definite inner activity, a working on our own construction.

The western world-concept has practically no knowledge of this at all. People do not notice, they have no inner feeling of how the thought grips them, how it really spreads itself out in them. Now and again a man will feel in breathing—though for the most part it is no longer noticed—that the breath spreads out in him, and that breathing has something to do with his re-building and regeneration. This applies also to thoughts, but the European scarcely feels any longer that the thought is actually striving all the time to become man, or, better said, to form the human shape.

But unless we come to a feeling of such forces within us we can hardly reach a right understanding, based on inner feeling and life, of what spiritual science really desires. For spiritual science is actually not active at all in what thought yields us inasmuch as it reproduces something external; it works in the life element of thought, in this continuous shaping process of the thought.

Therefore it has been very difficult for many centuries to speak of spiritual science or to be understood when it was spoken of, because this last characterised consciousness became increasingly lost to European humanity. In the Oriental world-conception this feeling about thought which I have just expressed exists in a high degree. At least the consciousness exists in a high degree that one must seek for this feeling of an inner experience of thought. Hence comes the inclination of the Oriental for meditation; for meditation should be a familiarising oneself with the shaping forces of thought, a becoming aware of the living feeling of the thought. That the thought accomplishes something in us should become known to us during meditating. Therefore we find in the Orient such expressions as: A becoming one, in meditation, with Brahma, with the fashioning process of the world. What is sought in the Oriental world-conception is the consciousness that when one rightly lives into the thought, one not only has something in oneself, not only thinks, but one becomes at home in the fashioning forces of the world. But it is rigidified, because the Oriental world-conception has neglected to acquire an understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha. To be sure, the Oriental world-conception of which we have yet to speak—is eminently fitted to become at home in the forming forces of thought life, but nevertheless in so doing, it comes into a dying element, into a network of abstract, unliving conceptions. So that one could say: whereas the right way is to experience the life of the thought-world, the Oriental world-conception becomes at home in a reflection of the life of thought. One should become at home in the thought-world as if one were transposing oneself into a living being; but there is a difference between a living being and a reproduction of a living being, let us say a paper mache copy. The oriental world-conception, whether Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Chinese and Japanese religions, does not become at home in the living being, but in something which may be described as a copy of the thought-world, which is related to the living thought-world, as the papier-mache organism is related to the living organism.

This then is the difficulty, as well in the West as in the East. One is less understood in the West, since in general not much consciousness exists there of these living, forming forces of thought; in the East one is not understood aright, since there people have not a genuine consciousness of the living nature of thought, but only of the dead reproduction, of the stiff, abstract weaving of thoughts.

Now you must be clear whence all that I have just analysed actually comes. You will all remember the account of the Moon evolution given in my book Occult Science. Man in his own evolution has taken his proper share in all that has taken place as Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and he then further shares in what comes about as Earth evolution. When you call to mind the Moon evolution as described in my Occult Science you find that during that time the separation of the moon planet from the sun took place; that it proceeded for the first time in a distinct, definite way. Thus such a separation actually took place. We can say that whereas before there had been a kind of interconnected condition of the planetary world, at the separation of the moon from the sun there now took their course side by side the Moon evolution and the Sun evolution. This separate state was of great significance, as you can gather from Occult Science. Man as he now is could not have arisen if this separation had not taken place. But on the other hand, with every such event is intimately connected the emergence of a certain one-sidedness. It came about that certain beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, who were at the human stage during the Moon evolution, at that time rebelled against, showed themselves in antipathy to, uniting again with the Sun. Thus the Moon broke away, and at the later reunion with the Sun they refused to take this step, and be reunited with the Sun.

All Luciferic staying behind rests upon an unwillingness to take part in later phases of evolution. And hence, on the one hand, the Luciferic element originated in the fact that certain beings from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, who were human at that time, were not willing to reunite with the Sun in the last part of the Old Moon time. To be sure, they were obliged to descend again, but in their feeling, in their inner nature, they preserved a longing for the Moon existence. They were out of place, they were not at home in the existing evolution; they felt themselves to be actually Moon-beings. Their remaining behind consisted in this. The host of Luciferic beings who then in their further development descended upon our Earth naturally contained in their ranks this kind of being. They also live in us in the manner I have indicated in one of the last lectures. And it is they who will not let the consciousness arise, in our Western thinking, that thinking is inwardly alive. They want to keep it of a Moon-nature, cut off from the inner life element that is connected with the Sun, they want to keep it in the condition of separation. And their activity produces the result that man does not get a conscious feeling: thinking is connected with inner fashioning, but feels instead that thinking is only connected with the external, precisely with that which is separated. Thus in respect of thinking they evoke a feeling that it can only reproduce the external; that one cannot grasp the inner formative living element with it, but can only grasp the external. Thus they falsify our thinking.

It was in fact the karma of Western humanity to make acquaintance with these spirits, who falsify thinking in this manner, alter it, externalise it, who endeavour to give it the stamp of only being of service in reproducing outer things and not grasping the inner living element. It was apportioned to the karma of the Oriental peoples to be preserved from this kind of Luciferic element. Hence they retained more the consciousness that in thinking one must seek for the inwardly forming, shaping of the human being, for what unites him inwardly with the living thought-world of the universe. It was allotted to the Greeks to form the transition between the one and the other.

Since the Orientals have made little acquaintance with that Luciferic element I have just characterised, they have no real idea that one can also come into connection with the living element of thinking about the external. What they get hold of in this connection always seems made of paper mache they have little understanding of applying thinking to outer things. Lucifer must of course cooperate in the activity which I have just described, by which man feels the inclination to meditate on the outer world. But then it is like the swing of the pendulum to one side, man goes too far in this activity—towards the external. That is the common peculiarity of all life; it swings out sometimes to the one side, sometimes to the other. There must be the swinging out, but one must find the way back from the one to the other, from the Oriental to the Occidental. The Greeks were to find the transition from Oriental to Occidental. The Oriental would have fallen completely into rigid abstractions—has, indeed, partly done so, abstractions which are pleasing to many people—if Greece had not influenced the world. If we base our judgment simply on what we have now considered, we shall find in Greece the tendency to make thoughts inwardly formative and alive.

Now if you examine both Greek literature and Grecian art you will everywhere find how the Greek strove to produce the human form from his own inner experiencing; this is so in sculpture as well as in poetry, in fact in philosophy too. If you acquaint yourself with the manner in which Plato still sought, not to found an abstract philosophy, but to collect a group of men who talk with one another and exchange their views, so that in Plato we find no world-concept (we have only discussions) but men who converse, in whom thought works humanly, thoughts externalise, you will find this corroborated. Thus even in philosophy we do not have the thought expressing itself so abstractly, but it clothes itself as it were in the human being representing it.

When in this way one sees Socrates converse, one cannot speak of Socrates on the one hand and of a Socratic world-conception on the other. It is a unity, one complete whole. One could not imagine in ancient Greece that someone—let us say, like a modern philosopher—came forward who had founded an abstract philosophy, and who placed himself before people and said: this is not the correct philosophy. That would have been impossible—it would only be possible in the case of a modern philosopher, (for this rests secretly in the mind of them each). The Greek Plato, however, depicts Socrates as the embodied world-conception, and one must imagine that the thoughts have no desire to be expressed by Socrates merely to impart knowledge of the world, but that they go about in the figure of Socrates and are related to people in the same way as he is. And to pour, as it were, this element of making thought human into the external form and figure, constitutes the greatness in the works of Homer and Sophocles, and in all the figures of sculpture and poetry which Greece has created. The reason why the sculptured gods of Grecian statuary are so human is that what I have just expressed was poured into them. This is at the same time a proof of how humanity's evolution in a spiritual respect strove as it were to grasp the living element of man from the thought-element of the cosmos and then to give it form. Hence the Grecian works of art appear to us (to Goethe they appeared so in the most eminent sense) as something which of its kind is hardly to be enhanced, to be brought to greater perfection, because all that was left of the ancient revelation of actively working and weaving thoughts had been gathered up and poured into the form. It was like a striving to draw together into the human form all that could be found as thoughts passing from within outwards, and this became in Greece philosophy, art, sculpture. (See Diagram (a) p.8a)

A more modern age has another mission, the present time has an entirely different task. We now have the task of giving back to the universe that which there is in man. (Diagram (b)). The whole pre-Grecian evolution led to man's taking from the universe all that he could discover of the living element of the human form in order to epitomise it. That is the unending greatness of Greek art—that the whole preceding world is actually epitomised and given form in it. Now we have the task reversed—the human being, who has been immeasurably deepened through the Mystery of Golgotha, who has been inwardly seized in his cosmic significance, is now to be given back again to the universe.

You must, however, inscribe in your souls that the Greeks had not, of course, the Christian view of the Mystery of Golgotha; for them everything flowed together out of the cosmic wisdom:

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And now picture the immense, the immeasurable advance in the evolution of humanity when the Being who had formerly worked from the cosmos and who could only be known from the cosmos, and whom man could express in the earthly stage in the element of Form:—when this Being passed out of the cosmos into the earth, became man, and lives on in human evolution.

That which was sought out in the cosmos in pre-Grecian times now came into the earth, and that which had been poured out into form, was now itself in human evolution. (c) Naturally (I have therefore indicated it with dots) it is not yet rightly known—it is not yet rightly experienced, but it lives in man, and men have the task of giving it back gradually to the cosmos. We can picture this quite concretely, this giving back to the cosmos of what we have received through Christ. We must only not struggle against this giving back. One can really cling closely to the wonderful words: ‘I am with you all the days until the end of the Earth period.’

This means: what Christ has to reveal to us is not exhausted with what stands in the Gospel. He is not among us as one who is dead, who once upon a time permitted to be poured into the Gospels what he wished to bring upon earth, but he is in earthly evolution as a living Being. We can work through to him with our souls, and he then reveals himself to us as he revealed himself to the Evangelists. The gospel is therefore not something that was once there and then came to an end, the gospel is a continuous revelation. One stands as it were ever confronting the Christ, and looking up to Him, one waits again for revelation.

Assuredly he—whoever he may have been—who said: ‘I should still have much to write but all the books in the world could not contain it’—assuredly he, John, was entirely right. For if he had written all that he could write, he would have had to write all that would gradually in the course of human evolution result from the Christ event. He wished to indicate: Wait! Only wait! What all the books in the world could not contain will come to pass. We have heard the Christ, but our descendants will also hear Him, and so we continuously, perpetually, receive the Christ revelation. To receive the Christ revelation means: to acquire light upon the world from Him. And we must give back the truths to the cosmos from the centre of our heart and soul.

Hence we may understand as living Christ-revelation what we have received as Spiritual Science. He it is who tells us how the earth has originated, the nature of the human being, what conditions the earth passed through before it became earth. All that we have as cosmology, and give back to the universe, all this is revealed to us by Him. It is the continuous revelation of Christ to feel such a mood as this: that one receives the cosmos from the Christ in an inward spiritual way, drawn together as it were, and as one has received it to relate it to the world with understanding, so that one no longer looks up to the moon and stares at it as a great skittles-ball with which mechanical forces have moved skittles in the cosmos and which from these irregularities has acquired wrinkles, and so on—but recognises what the moon indicates, how it is connected with the Christ-nature and the Jahve-nature. It is a continuous revelation of the Christ to allot again to the outer world what we have received from Him. It is at first a process of knowledge. It begins with an intellectual process, later it will be other processes. Processes of inner feeling will result which arise from ourselves and pour themselves into the cosmos, such processes as these will arise.

But you gather something else from what I have just explained. When you observe this motion- (Diagram (a) p.10a) where one has gathered up out of the cosmos, as it were, the component parts of the human being, which have in the Greek world-concepts, in Greek art, then flowed together to the whole human being, then you will understand: In Greece the evolution of humanity strove towards the plastic form, sculptured-form, and what they have reached in such form, we cannot as a matter of fact succeed in copying. If we imitate it nothing true or genuine results. That is therefore a certain apex in human evolution. One can in fact say this stream of humanity strives in Greece in sculpture towards a concentration of the entire human evolution preceding Greece.

When, on the contrary, one takes what has to happen here (b) it is what could be called a distribution of the component parts of man into the cosmos. You can follow this in its details. We assign our physical body to Saturn, the etheric body to the Sun, the astral body to the Moon, our Ego-organisation to the Earth. We really distribute man into the universe, and it can be said that the whole construction of Spiritual Science is based upon a distribution, a bringing again into movement, of what is concentrated in the human being. The fundamental key of this new world-conception (diagram (b)) is a musical one; of the old world (a) is a plastic one. The fundamental key of the new age is truly musical, the world will become more and more musical. And to know how man is rightly placed in the direction towards which human evolution is striving, means to know that we must strive towards a musical element, that we dare not recapitulate the old plastic element, but must strive towards a musical one.

I have frequently mentioned that on an important site in our Building there will be set up the figure of archetypal man, which one can also speak of as the Christ, and which will have Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. What is concentrated in the Christ we take out and distribute again in Lucifer and Ahriman, in so far as it is to be distributed. What was welded together plastically in the one figure we make musical, inasmuch as we make it a kind of melody: Christus-Lucifer-Ahriman.

Our Building is really formed on this principle. Our whole Building bears the special imprint in it: to bring plastic forms into musical movement. That is its fundamental character. If you do not forget that, in mentioning something like this, one is never to be arrogant, but to remain properly humble, and if you remember that in all that concerns our work on this Building only the first most imperfect steps have been taken, you will not misunderstand what is meant when I speak about it. It is of course not meant that anything at all of what floats before us as distant ideal is also only attained in the farthest future; but a beginning can be sought in that direction,—this one can say. More shall not be said than, that a beginning is desired.

But when you compare this beginning with that which has undergone a certain completion in Greece, with the infinite perfection of the plastic principle in, for instance, the Greek you find polaric difference. In Greece everything strives for form. An Acropolis figure of Athena, or in the architecture of the Acropolis, or a Greek Temple, they stand there in order to remain eternally rigid in this form, in order to preserve for man a picture of what beauty in form can be.

Such a work as our Building, even when one day it becomes more perfect, will always stand there in such a way that one must actually say: this Building always stimulates one to overcome it as such, in order to come out through its form into the infinite. These columns and in particular the forms connected with the columns, and even what is painted and moulded, is all there in order, so to say, to break through the walls, in order to protest against the walls standing there and in order to dissolve the forms, dissolve them into a sort of etheric eye, so that they may lead one out into the far spaces of the Cosmic thought-world.

One will experience this building in the right way if one has the feeling in observing it that it dissolves, it overcomes its own boundaries; all that forms walls really wants to escape into cosmic distances. Then one has the right feeling. With a Greek temple one feels as if, one would like best to be united for ever with what is firmly enclosed by the walls and with what can only come in through the walls. Here, with our Building, one will particularly feel: If only these walls were not so tiresomely there—for wherever they stand they really want to be broken through, and lead out further into world of the cosmos. This is indeed how this Building should be formed, according to the tasks of our age, really out of the tasks of our age.

Since we have not only spoken for years, my dear friends, on the subjects of Spiritual Science, but have discussed with one another the right attitude of mind towards what is brought to expression through Spiritual Science, it can also be understood that when something in the world is criticised, one does not mean it at all as absolute depreciation, absolute blame, but that one uses phrases of apparent condemnation in order to characterise facts in the right connection.

When, therefore, one reproaches a world-historical personality, this does not imply that one would like to declare at the same time one's desire—at least in the criticism of this person—to be an executioner who cuts off his head—figuratively spoken—by expressing a judgment. This is the case with modern critics, but not with someone imbued with the attitude of mind of Spiritual Science. Please also take what I have now to say in the sense indicated through these words.

An incision had at some time to be made in mankind's evolution; it had at some time to be said: This is now the end of all that has been handed down from old times to the present: something new must being (diagram Page 109 (a)). This incision was not made all at once, it was in fact made in various stages, but it meets us in history quite clearly. Take, for instance, such an historical personality as the Roman Emperor Augustus, whose rule in Rome coincided with the birth of the current which we trace from the Mystery of Golgotha. It is very difficult today to make people fully clear wherein lay the quite essentially new element which entered Western evolution through the Emperor Augustus, as compared with what had already existed in Western civilisation till then, under the influence of the Roman Republic. One must in fact make use of concepts to which people are little accustomed today, if one wishes to analyse something of this sort. When one reads history books presenting the time of the Roman Republic as far as the Empire, one has the feeling that the historians wrote as if they imagined that the Roman Consuls and Roman Tribunes acted more or less in the manner of a President of a modern republic. Not much difference prevails whether Niebuhr or Mommsen speaks of the Roman Republic or of a modern republic, because nowadays people see everything through the spectacles of what they see directly in their own environment. People cannot imagine that what a man in earlier times felt and thought, felt too as regards public life, was something essentially different from what the present-day man feels. It was however radically different, and one does not really understand the age of the Roman Republic if one does not furnish oneself with a certain idea which was active in the conception of the old republican Roman, and which he took over into the age which is called the Roman Empire.

The ancient kings, from Romulus to Tarquinius Superbus, were to the ancient Romans actual beings, who were intimately connected with the divine, with the divinely spiritual world rulership. And the ancient Roman of the time of the kings could not grasp the significance of his kings otherwise than by thinking: In all that takes place there is something of the nature of what happened in the time of Numa Pompilius, who visited the nymph Egeria in order to know how he should act. From the gods, or from spirit-land one received the inspirations for what had to be done upon earth. That was a living consciousness. The kings were the bridges between what happened on earth and what the gods out of the spiritual world wished to come about.

Thus a feeling extended over public life which was derived from the old world conception—namely, that what a man does in the world is connected with what forms him from the cosmos, so that currents continually stream in from the cosmos. Nor was this idea confined to the government of mankind. Think of Plato: he did not chisel things out in his soul as ideas, but received them as outflow of the divine being. So too in ancient Rome they did not say to themselves: One man rules other men, but they said: The gods rule men, and he who in human form is governing, is only the vessel into which the impulses of the gods flow. This feeling lasted into the time of the Roman Republic when it was related to the Consular office. The Consular dignity in ancient times was not that genuine so-called bourgeois-element, as it were, which a state- government increasingly feels itself to be today, but the Romans really had the thought, the feeling, the living experience: Only he can be Consul whose senses are still open to receive what the gods wish to let flow into human evolution.

As the Republic went on and great discrepancies and quarrels arose, it was less and less possible to hold such sentiments, and this finally led to the end of the Roman Republic. The matter stood somewhat thus: People thought to themselves: if the Republic is said to have a significance in the world, the Consuls must be divinely inspired men, they must bring down what comes from the gods. But if one looks at the later Consuls of the Republic one can say to oneself: The gentlemen are no longer the proper instruments for the gods. And with this is linked the fact that it was no longer possible to have such a vital feeling for the significance of the Republic. The development of such a feeling lay of course behind men's ordinary consciousness. It lay very deep in the subconscious, and was only present in the consciousness of the so-called initiates. The initiates were fully cognisant of these things. Whoever therefore in the later Roman Republic was no ordinary materialistically thinking average citizen said to himself: 'Oh, this Consul, he doesn't please me—he's certainly not a divine instrument!' The initiate would never have admitted that, he would have said: He is, nevertheless, a divine instrument—Only ... with advancing evolution this divine inspiration could enter mankind less and less. Human evolution took on such a form that the divine could enter less and less, and so it came about that when an initiate, a real initiate appeared who saw through all this, he would have to say to himself: We cannot go on any further like this! We must now call upon another divine element which is more withdrawn from man. Men had developed outwardly, morally, etc., in such a way that one could no longer have confidence in those who were Consuls. One could not be sure that where the man's own development was in opposition to the divine, that the divine still entered. Hence the decision was reached to draw down, as it were, the instreaming of the divine into a sphere which was more withdrawn from men. Augustus, who was an initiate to a certain degree in these mysteries, was well aware of this. Therefore it was his endeavour to withdraw the divine world rulership from what men had hitherto, and to work in the direction of introducing the principle of heredity in the appointment to the office of Consul. He was anxious that the Consuls should no longer be chosen as they had been up to then, but that the office should be transmitted through the blood, so that what the Gods willed might be transmitted in this way. The continuance of the divine element in man was pressed down to a stage lying beneath the threshold of consciousness because men had reached a stage where they were no longer willing to accept the divine. You only arrive at a real understanding of this extraordinarily remarkable figure of Augustus, if you assume that he was fully conscious of these things, and that out of full consciousness, under the influence of the Athenian initiates in particular who came to him, he did all the things that are recorded of him. His limitation only lay in the fact that he could reach no understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, that he only saw how human beings come down into matter, but could not conceive how the divine element should take anchor in the material of the blood. He had no understanding of the fact that something entirely new had now arisen in the Mystery of Golgotha. He was in a high sense an initiate of the old Mysteries, but he had no understanding for what was then emerging in the human race as a new element.

The point is, however, that what Augustus had accomplished was an impossibility. The divine cannot anchor in the pure material of the blood in earthly evolution, unless this earthly evolution is to fall into the Luciferic. Men would never be able to evolve if they could only do so as the blood willed, that is, developing from generation to generation what was already there before. However, something infinitely significant is connected with the accomplishment of this fact. You must remember that in early times when the ancient Mysteries were in force people possessed in the Mysteries a constant and powerfully active spiritual element, although that cannot be significant to us in the same way today. They knew, nevertheless, of the spiritual worlds; they came quite substantially into the human mind. And on the other hand people ceased in the time of Augustus to know anything of the spiritual element of the world; they no longer knew of it in consequence of man's necessary evolution. The Augustus-initiation actually consisted in his knowledge that men would become less and less fitted to take in the Spiritual element in the old way. There is an immense tragedy in what was taking place round the figure of Augustus. The ancient Mysteries were still in existence at that time, but the feeling continually arose: Something is not right in these ancient Mysteries. What was received from them was of immeasurable significance, a sublime spiritual knowledge. But it was also felt that something of immeasurable significance was approaching; the Mystery of Golgotha, which cannot be grasped with the old Mystery knowledge, with which the old Mystery knowledge was not in keeping. What could, however, be known to men through the Mystery of Golgotha itself was still very little. As a matter of fact even with our spiritual science we are today only at the beginning of understanding what has flowed into humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus there was something like a breaking away from the old elements, and we can understand that more and more there were men who said: We can do nothing with what comes to us from the Mystery of Golgotha. These were men who stood at a certain spiritual eminence in the old sense, the sense of the pre-Christian, the pre-Golgotha time.

Such men said to themselves: Yes, we have been told of one, Christus, who has spread certain teachings. They did not yet feel the deeper nature of these teachings, but what they heard of them seemed to be like warmed-up ancient wisdom. It was told them that some person had been condemned, had died on the cross, had taught this and that. This generally seemed to them false and deceptive, whereas the ancient wisdom which was handed down to them seemed enormously grand and splendid. Out of this atmosphere we can understand Julian the Apostate, whose entire mood can be understood in this way. More and more, individuals came forward who said: That which is given by the old wisdom, the way it explains the cosmos, cannot be united with that which blossoms, as if from a new centre, through the Mystery of Golgotha.—One of the individuals who felt this way was the sixth century Byzantine emperor Justinian (who lived from 527–565,¹ whose actions are to be understood from exactly this viewpoint. One must understand that he felt, through the whole manner in which he grew into his time, that something new was in the world ... at the same time there came into this new world that which was handed down from the old time. We will consider just three of these things which were thus handed down.

For a long time (five or six centuries) Rome had been ruled by emperors: The rank of consul, however, had existed for only a short time, and, like a shadow of the old times, these consuls were elected. If one looked at this election of consuls with the eyes of Justinian, one saw something which no longer made any sense, which had true meaning in the time of the Roman Republic, but was now without meaning: therefore he abolished the rank of consul. That was the first thing.

The second was that the Athenian-Greek schools were still in existence; in these was taught the old mystery-wisdom, which contained a much greater store of wisdom than that which was then being received under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha. But this old mystery-wisdom contained nothing about the Mystery of Golgotha. For that reason Justinian closed the old Greek Philosophers' Schools.

Origenes, the Church Teacher, was well versed in what was connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, even though he still stood in the old wisdom, although not as strict initiate, yet as one having knowledge to a high degree. In his world-concept he had amalgamated the Christ-Event with the World-conception of the ancient, wisdom, he sought through this. to understand the Christ Event. That is just the interesting thing in the world concept of Origenes, that he was one of those who especially sought to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in the sense of the old mystery wisdom. And the tragedy is that Origenes was condemned by the Catholic Church.

Augustus was the first stage. (see the lined diagram p.10a) Justinian in this sense was the second stage. Thus the earlier age is divided from the newer age, which- as regards the West—had no longer understanding for the Mystery wisdom. This wisdom had still lived on in the Grecian schools of philosophy, and had gradually to work towards the growth and prosperity of that current in mankind which proceeded from the Mystery of Golgotha. So it came about that the newer humanity, with the condemning of Origenes, with the closing of the Greek schools of philosophy, lost an infinite amount of the old spiritual treasure of wisdom. The later centuries of the Middle Ages worked for the most part with Aristotle, who sought to encompass the ancient wisdom through human intellect. Plato still received it from the ancient mysteries, Aristotle—he is, to be sure, infinitely deeper than modern philosophers—did not regard wisdom as a treasure of the Mysteries; he wished to grasp it with the human understanding. Thus what prevailed at that time in a noted degree was a thrusting back of the old Mystery Wisdom.

All this is connected with the perfecting in the new age of the condition which I described at the beginning of today's lecture. Had not the Grecian schools of philosophy been closed we should have possessed the living Plato, not that dead Plato whom the Renaissance produced, not the Platonism of modern times, which is a ghastly misconception of ^{1missing text}

• 1. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Justinian lived from 482–565, and ruled from 527–565.

I pointed out yesterday how the child's development undergoes a radical change with the loss of his first teeth. For in truth, what we call heredity or inherited characteristics are only directly active during the first epoch of life. It is however the case that during the first seven years a second life organism is gradually built up in the physical body, which is fashioned after the model of the inherited organism. This second organism is, we may say, completed at the changing of the teeth. If the individual who comes down out of the spiritual pre-earthly world is weak, then this second life organism is similar to the inherited one. If the individual is strong, then we see how in the period between the change of teeth and puberty, from seven years till about fourteen, a kind of victory is gradually accomplished over the inherited characteristics. Children become quite different and they even change in their outward bodily form.

It is specially interesting to follow the qualities of soul which now reveal themselves in this second life epoch. In the first epoch, before the change of teeth, we may describe the child as being wholly “sense-organ.” You must take this quite literally: wholly sense-organ.

Take for example the human eye or ear. What is the characteristic of such a sense-organ? The characteristic thing is that the sense-organ is acutely sensitive to the impressions of the outer world. And if you observe the eye you can certainly see what kind of process takes place. The child during the first seven years is really completely and wholly an eye. Now consider only this thought: in the eye a picture is formed, an inverted picture, of every external object. This is what ordinary Physics teaches everyone. That which is outside in the world is to be found within the eye as a picture. Physics stops here, but this picture-forming process is really only the beginning of what one should know concerning the eye; it is the most external physical fact.

But if the physicist would look upon this picture with a finer sense of observation, then he would see that it determines the course of the circulation of the blood in the choroid. The whole choroid is conditioned in its blood circulation by the nature of this picture within the eye. The whole eye adjusts itself according to these things. These are the finer processes that are not taken into consideration by our ordinary Physics. But the child during the first seven years is really an eye. If something takes place in the child's environment, let us say, to take an extreme example, a fit of temper when someone becomes furiously angry, then the whole child will have a picture within him of this outburst of rage. The etheric body makes a picture of it. From it something passes over into the entire circulation of the blood and the metabolic system, something which is related to this outburst of anger.

This is so in the first seven years, and according to this the organism adjusts itself. Naturally these are not crude happenings, they are delicate processes. But if a child grows up in the proximity of an angry father or a hot-tempered teacher, then the vascular system, the blood vessels, will follow the line of the anger. The results of this implanted tendency in the early years will then remain through the whole of the rest of life.

These are the things that matter most for the young child. What you say to him, what you teach him, does not yet make any impression, except in so far as he imitates what you say in his own speech. But it is what you are that matters; if you are good this goodness will appear in your gestures, and if you are evil or bad-tempered this also will appear in your gestures—in short, everything that you do yourself passes over into the child and pursues its way within him. This is the essential point. The child is wholly sense-organ, and reacts to all the impressions aroused in him by the people around him. Therefore the essential thing is not to imagine that the child can learn what is good or bad, that he can learn this or that, but to know that everything that is done in his presence is transformed in his childish organism into spirit, soul and body. Health for the whole of life depends on how one conducts oneself in the presence of the child. The inclinations which he develops depend on how one behaves in his presence.

But all the things that we are usually advised to do with Kindergarten children are quite worthless. The things which are introduced as Kindergarten education are usually extraordinarily “clever.” One is, I might say, quite fascinated by the cleverness of what has been thought out for Kindergartens in the course of the nineteenth century. The children certainly learn a great deal there, they almost learn to read. They are supplied with letters of the alphabet which they have to fit into cut out letters and such like. It all looks very clever and one can easily be tempted io believe that it really is something suitable for children, but it is of no use at all. It really has no value whatsoever, and the whole soul of the child is spoilt by it. Even down into the body, right down into physical health, the child is ruined. Through such Kindergarten methods weaklings in body and soul are bred for later life.¹

On the other hand, if we were simply to have the children there in the Kindergarten and so conduct ourselves that they could imitate us, if we were to do all kinds of things that the children could copy out of their own inner impulse of soul, as they have been accustomed to do in the pre-earthly existence, then indeed the children would become like ourselves, but it is for us to see that we are worthy of this imitation. This is what you must pay attention to during the first seven years of life and not what you express outwardly in words as a moral idea.

If you make a surly face so that the child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms him for the rest of his life. This is why it is so important, especially for little children, that as a teacher one should enter very thoroughly into the observation of a human being and human life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of a person you are. In our day it is easy enough to think out a curriculum, because everyone in our age is now so clever. I am not saying this ironically; in our day people really are clever. Whenever a few people get together and decide that this or that must be done in education, something clever always comes out of it. I have never known a stupid educational programme; they are always very clever. But it is not a question of having programmes of this kind. What matters is that we should have people in the school who can work in the way I have indicated. We must develop this way of thinking, for an immense amount depends upon it, especially for that age or life epoch of the child in which he is really entirely sense-organ.

Now when the change of teeth is complete the child is no longer a sense-organ in the same degree as previously. This already diminishes between the third and fourth year, but before then the child has quite special peculiarities of which one generally knows nothing whatever. When you eat something sweet or sour you perceive it on the tongue and palate, but when the child drinks milk he feels the taste of milk through his whole body for he is also an organ of sense with regard to taste. He tastes with his whole body; there are many remarkable instances of this.

Children take their cue from the grown-ups and therefore at fifteen, sixteen or twenty they are, nowadays, already blasé and have lost their freshness, but there are still children to be found who in their early years are wholly sense-organ, though life is not easy for such. I knew for example a small boy who on being given something to eat that he knew he would enjoy, approached the delectable object not only with those organs with which one generally approaches food, but he steered towards it with his hands and feet; he was in fact wholly an organ of taste. The remarkable thing is that in his ninth or tenth year he became a splendid Eurythmist and developed a great understanding for Eurythmy. So what he began by “paddling” up to his food as a little child was developed further in his will organs at a later age.

I do not say these things jokingly but in order to give you examples of how to observe. You very rarely hear people relating such things as these, but they are happening every moment. People fail to perceive these characteristic phenomena of life and only think out how to educate the young instead of observing life itself.

Life is interesting in every detail, from morning till evening; the smallest things are interesting. Notice, for instance, how two people take a pear from a fruit bowl. No two people take the pear in the same way; it is always different. The whole character of a person is expressed in the way he takes the pear from the fruit dish and puts it on his plate, or straight into his mouth as the case may be.

If people would only cultivate more power of observation of this kind, the terrible things would not develop in schools which one unfortunately so often sees today. One scarcely sees a child now who holds his pen or pencil correctly. Most children hold them wrongly, and this is because we do not know how to observe properly. This is a very difficult thing to do, and it is not easy in the Waldorf School either. One frequently enters a class where drastic changes are needed in the way the children hold their pencils or pens. You must never forget that the human being is a whole, and as such he must acquire dexterity in all directions. Therefore what the teacher needs is observation of life down to the minutest details.

And if you are specially desirous of having formulated axioms, then take this as the first principle of a real art of education. You must be able to observe life in all its manifestations.

One can never learn enough in this direction. Look at the children from behind, for instance. Some walk by planting the whole foot on the ground, others trip along on their toes, and there can be every kind of differentiation between these two extremes. Yes indeed, to educate a child one must know quite precisely how he walks. For the child who treads on his heels shows in this one small characteristic of his physical body that he was very firmly planted in life in his former incarnation, that he was interested in everything in his former earth life. In such a case you must draw as much as possible out of the child himself, for there are many things hidden away in such children who walk strongly on their heels. On the other hand the children who trip along, who scarcely use their heels in walking, have gone through their former earth life in a superficial way. You will not be able to get much out of these children, but when you are with them you must make a point of doing a great many things yourself that they can copy.

In this kind of way you should experience the changing of the teeth through careful observation. The fact that the child was previously wholly sense-organ now enables him to develop above all the gift of fantasy and symbolism. And one muss reckon with this even in play. Our materialistic age sins terribly against it. Take for example the so-called beautiful dolls that are so often given to children nowadays. They have such beautifully formed faces, wonderfully painted cheeks, and even eyes with which they can go to sleep when laid down, real hair and goodness knows what all! But with this the fantasy of the child is killed, for it leaves nothing to his imagination and the child can take no great pleasure in it. But if you make a doll out of a serviette or a handkerchief with two ink spots for eyes, a dab of ink for a mouth, and some sort of arms, then the child can add a great deal to it with his imagination.

It is particularly good for a child when he can add as much as possible to his playthings with his own fantasy, when he can develop a symbolising activity. Children should have as few things as possible that are well finished and complete and what people call “beautiful.” For the beauty of such a doll that I have described above with real hair and so on, is only a conventional beauty. In truth it is horribly ugly because it is so inartistic.

Never forget that in the period round about the change of teeth the child passes over into the age of imagination and fantasy. It is not the intellect but fantasy which fills his life at this age. You as teachers must also be able to develop this life of fantasy, for those who bear a true knowledge of the human being in their souls are able to do this. It is indeed so that a true knowledge of man loosens and releases the inner life of soul and brings a smile to the face. Sour and grumpy faces come only from lack of knowledge. Certainly one can have a diseased organ which leaves traces of illness on the face; this does not matter, for the child takes no account of these things, but if the inner nature of a person is filled with a living knowledge of what man is, this will be expressed in his face, and this it is that can make him a really good teacher.

And so between the change of teeth and puberty you must educate out of the very essence of imagination. For the quality that makes a child under seven so wholly into a sense-organ now becomes more inward; it enters the soul life. The sense-organs do not think; they perceive pictures, or rather they form pictures from the external objects. And even when the child's sense experiences have already a quality of soul, it is not a thought that emerges but an image, albeit a soul image, an imaginative picture. Therefore in your teaching you must work in pictures, in images.

Now we can work least of all in pictures if we are teaching the child something that is really quite foreign to him. For example, the calligraphy of today is quite foreign to the child whether in the written or printed letters. He has no relation whatever to this thing which is called an “A.” Why should he have a relation to an “A”? Why should he be interested in an “L”? These are quite foreign to him, this “A,” this “L.” Nevertheless when the child comes to school we take him into the classroom and start to teach him these things. The result is that he feels no contact with what he has to do. And if we teach him this before the change of teeth and set him to stick letters into cut-out holes, for example, then we are giving him things that lie right outside his nature and to which he has not the slightest relationship.

But what he does possess is an artistic sense, a faculty for creating imaginative pictures. It is to this that we must appeal, to this we must turn. We should avoid a direct approach to the conventional letters of the alphabet which are used in the writing and printing of civilised man. Rather should we lead the children, in a vivid and imaginative way, through the various stages which man himself has passed through in the history of civilisation.

In former times there was picture writing; that is to say, people painted something on the page which reminded them of the object. We do not need to study the history of civilisation, but we can show the child the meaning and spirit of what man wanted to express in picture writing. Then he will feel at home in his lessons.

For example: Let us take the word “Mund”—English “mouth.” Get the child to draw a mouth, or rather paint it. Let him put on dabs of red colour and then tell him to pronounce the word; you can say to him: don't pronounce the whole word but begin only with M; and now we can form the M out of the upper lip (see drawing). If you follow this

process you can get your M out of the mouth which we first painted.

This is how writing really originated, only today it is difficult to recognise from the words themselves that the letters were once pictures, because the words have all been subject to change in the course of the evolution of speech. Originally each sound had its own image and each picture could have but one meaning.

You do not need to go back to these original characters, but you can invent ways and means of your own. The teacher must be inventive, he must create out of the spirit of the thing. Let us take the word “fish.” Let the child draw or paint some kind of fish. Let him say the beginning of the word: “F,” and you can gradually get the F out of the picture (see drawing).

And thus, if you are inventive, you can find in point of fact, pictures for all the consonants. They can be worked out from a kind of painting-drawing, or drawing-painting. This is more awkward to deal with than the methods of today. For it is of course essential that after the children have been doing

this painting for an hour or two you have to clear it all away. But this just has to be so, there is nothing else to be done.

From this you can see how the letters can be developed out of pictures and the pictures again directly out of life. This is the way you must do it. On no account should you teach reading first, but proceeding from your drawing-painting and painting-drawing, you allow the letters to arise out of these, and then you can pass over to reading.

If you look around you will find plenty of objects which you can use to develop the consonants in this way. All the consonants can be developed from the initial letters of the words describing these objects.

It is not so easy for the vowels. But perhaps for the vowels the following is possible. Suppose you say to the child: “Look at the beautiful sun! You must really admire it; stand like this so that you can look up and admire the glorious sun.” The child stands, looks up and then expresses its wonder thus: Ah! Then you paint this gesture and you actually have the Hebrew A, the sound Ah, the sound of wonder. Now you only need to make it smaller and gradually turn it into the letter A (see drawing).

And so if you bring before the child something of an inner soul quality and above all what is expressed in Eurythmy, letting him take up this position or that, then you can develop the vowels also in the way I have mentioned. Eurythmy will

be of very great help to you because the sounds are already formed in the Eurythmy gestures and movements. Think for instance of an O. One embraces something lovingly. Out of this one can obtain the 0 (see drawing). You can really get the vowels from the gesture, the movement.

Thus you must work out of observation and imagination, and the children will then come to know the sounds and the letters from the things themselves. You must start from the picture. The letter, as we know it today in its finished form, has a history behind it. It is something that has been simplified from a picture, but the kind of magical signs of the printed letters of the present day no longer tell us what the picture was like.

When the Europeans, these “better men,” went to America at the time when the “savages,” the Indians, were still there,—even in the middle of the nineteenth century such things happened—they showed these savages printed writing and the Indians ran away from it because they thought the letters were little devils. And they said: The Pale-faces, as the Indians called the Europeans, communicate with each other by means of little devils, little demons.

But this is just what letters are for children. They mean nothing to them. The child feels something demonic in the letters, and rightly so. They have already become a means of magic because they are merely signs.

You must begin with the picture. That is not a magic sign but something real and you must work from this.

People will object that the children then learn to read and write too late. This is only said because it is not known today how harmful it is when the children learn to read and write too soon. It is a very bad thing to be able to write early. Reading and Writing as we have them today are really not suited to the human being till a later age, in the eleventh or twelfth year, and the more one is blessed with not being able to read and write well before this age, the better it is for the later years of life. A child who cannot write properly at thirteen or fourteen (I can speak out of my own experience because I could not do it at that age) is not so hindered for later spiritual development as one who early, at seven or eight years, can already read and write perfectly. These are things which the teacher must notice.

Naturally one will not be able to proceed as one really should today because the children have to pass from your Independent School into public life. But a very great deal can be done nevertheless when one knows these things. It is a question of knowledge. And your knowledge must show you, above all, that it is quite wrong to teach reading before writing, for in writing, especially if it is developed from the painting-drawing, drawing-painting, that I have spoken of, the whole human being is active. The fingers take part, the position of the body, the whole man is engaged. In reading only the head is occupied and anything which only occupies a part of the organism and leaves the remaining parts impassive should be taught as late as possible. The most important thing is first to bring the whole being into movement, and later on the single parts.

Naturally if you want to work in this way you cannot expect to be given instructions for all the little details, but only an indication of the path to be followed. Therefore just in this method of education which arises out of Anthroposophy you can build on nothing else but absolute freedom, though this freedom must include the free creative fancy of the teacher and educator.

In the Waldorf School we have been blessed with what I might call a very questionable success. We began with one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty pupils; but these pupils came from the industrial works of Emil Molt, so they were at that time to a certain extent “compulsory” children though we had some children from anthroposophical families besides.² In the short time of its existence the Waldorf School has grown so big that we have now more than eight hundred children and between forty and fifty teachers. This is a doubtful success because gradually it becomes impossible to keep a clear view of the whole. From the arrangements of the Waldorf School which I shall describe to you, you will soon see how difficult it is to survey the whole; though I shall later indicate certain ways of making this possible. We have had to form parallel classes; in the case of the fifth and sixth there are three parallel classes: A, B and C. These classes are still overfull and have more children than the other classes in the school.

There is therefore a teacher in Class A, another in Class B. Just imagine how this would work out in a “proper” educational establishment of today. You come into Class I A, where you find a particular educational drill going on which is considered the best. Now you go into Class I B. It could equally well be called ‘A,’ only that different children are sitting there, for in both classes exactly the same thing goes on, because the “right method” is used. This is of course all most cleverly thought out: what is intellectual has but one meaning and it cannot be otherwise.

With us in the Waldorf School you find no such thing. You go into the first Class A. There you see a teacher, man or woman, who is teaching writing. The teacher lets the children make all kinds of forms, let us say with string. They then go on to painting the forms and gradually letters arise. A second teacher likes to do it differently. If you go into Class B you find that this teacher is letting the children “dance” the forms round the room, in order that they may experience the forms of the letters in their own bodies. Then she carries over these forms also into the letters themselves. You would never find uniformity of teaching in Classes A, B and C. The same things are taught but in completely different ways, for a free creative fancy holds sway in the class. There are no prescribed rules for teaching in the Waldorf School, but only one unifying spirit that pervades the whole. It is very important that you should realise this. The teacher is autonomous. Within this one unifying spirit he can do entirely what he thinks right. You will say: Yes, but if everyone can do as he likes, then the whole school will fall into a chaotic condition. For in Class V A, there could be goodness knows what kind of hocus-pocus going on, and in V B, you might find them playing chess. But that is exactly what does not happen in the Waldorf School, for though there is freedom everywhere you will find in each class the spirit which is in accordance with the age of the children.

If you read the Seminar Course, you will see that you are allowed the greatest liberty, and yet the teaching in each class is what is right for that age³ The strange thing is that no teacher has ever opposed this. They all quite voluntarily accept this principle of a unifying spirit in the work. No one opposes it or wants to have any special arrangements made for himself. On the contrary, the wish is often expressed by the teachers to have as many discussions as possible in their meetings about what should be done in the various classes.

Why does no teacher object to the curriculum? The school has been going for several years. Why do you think that all the teachers approve of the curriculum? They do not find it at all unreasonable. They find it in its very freedom excellent because it is bound up with real true human knowledge.

And just in such things as creating one's teaching matter out of fantasy it can be seen that freedom must prevail in the school. Indeed it does. Each of our teachers has the feeling that it is not only a question of what he himself thinks out and discovers out of his own fantasy, but when I sit with my Waldorf teachers in their meetings, or when I go into the classes, I get more and more the impression that when once the teachers are in their classrooms they actually forget that a plan of teaching has previously been drawn up. In the moment of teaching every teacher imagines that he himself is creating the plan of work. This is the feeling I have when I go into the classes.

Such is the result when real human knowledge lies at the basis of the work. I have to tell you these details even though you might think they were said out of vanity; indeed they are not said out of vanity but that you may know how it is and then go and do likewise; this will show you how what grows out of a true knowledge of man can really enter into the child.

It is on fantasy then, on imagination, that our teaching and education is to be built. You must be quite clear that before the ninth or tenth year the child does not know how to differentiate himself as an ego from his surroundings. Out of a certain instinct the child has long been accustomed to speak of himself as “P,” but in truth he really feels himself within the whole world. He feels that the whole world is connected with himself. But people have the most fantastic ideas about this. They say of primitive races that their feeling for the world is “animism,” that is, they treat lifeless objects as though they were “ensouled,” and that to understand a child you must imagine that he does the same as these primitive peoples. When he knocks against a hard object he hits it because he endows it with a quality of soul.

But that is not at all true. In reality, the child does not “ensoul” the object, but he does not yet distinguish between the living and the lifeless. He considers everything as a unity, and himself also as making up a unity with his surroundings. Not until the age of nine or ten does the child really learn to distinguish himself from his environment. This is something you must take into consideration in the strictest sense if you wish to give your teaching a proper basis.

Therefore it is important to speak of everything that is around the child, plants, animals and even stones, in such a way that all these things talk to each other, that they act among themselves like human beings, that they tell each other things, that they love and hate each other. You must learn to use anthropomorphism in the most inventive ways and speak of all the plants and animals as though they were human. You must not “ensoul” them out of a kind of theory but simply treat them in the way which a child can grasp when he is not yet able to distinguish between the lifeless and the living. For as yet the child has no reason to think that the stone has no soul, whereas the dog has a soul. The first difference he notices is that the dog moves. But he does not ascribe the movement to the fact that he has a soul. One can indeed treat all things that feel and live as if they were people, thinking, feeling and speaking to one another, as if they were persons with sympathy and antipathy for each other. Therefore everything that one brings to a child at this age must be given in the form of fairy tales, legends and stories in which everything is endowed with feeling. The child receives the very best foundation for his soul life when in this way we nourish his instinctive soul qualities of fancy. This must be borne in mind.

If you fill the child with all kinds of intellectual teaching during this age (and this will be the case if we do not transform into pictures everything that we teach him) then later he will have to suffer the effects in his blood vessels and in his circulation. We must consider the child in body, soul and spirit as an absolute unity. This must be said over and over again.

For this task the teacher must have an artistic feeling in his soul, he must be of an artistic disposition. For what works from teacher to child is not only what one thinks out or what one can convey in ideas, but, if I may express myself so, it is the imponderable quality in life. A very great deal passes over from teacher to child unconsciously. The teacher must be aware of this, above all when he is telling fairy tales, stories or legends full of feeling. It very often happens in our materialistic times that we notice how the teacher looks upon what he is telling as childish. He is telling something which he himself does not believe. And here Anthroposophy finds its rightful place if it is to be the guide and leader of the true knowledge of man. We become aware through Anthroposophy that we can express a thing infinitely more fully and more richly if we clothe it in pictures than if we put it into abstract ideas. A child who is naturally healthy feels the necessity to express everything in pictures and to receive everything also in picture form.

Remember how Goethe learnt to play the piano as a boy. He was shown how he had to use the first finger, the second finger, and so on; but he did not like this method, and this dry pedantic teacher of his was repugnant to him. For Father Goethe was an old Philistine, one of the old pedants of Frankfurt who naturally also engaged Philistine teachers for preference, because they are the good ones, as everyone knows. This kind of teaching was repugnant to the boy Goethe, it was too abstract. So he invented for himself the “ Deuterling” (“the little fellow who points”), not “Index finger,” that is too abstract, but “ Deuterling.”⁴

The child wants an image and he wants to think of him- self as an image too. It is just in these things that we see how the teacher needs to use his fantasy, to be artistic, for then he will meet the child with a truly “living” quality of soul. And this living quality works upon the child in an imponderable way—imponderable in the best sense.

Through Anthroposophy we ourselves learn once more to believe in the legends, fairy tales and myths, for they express a higher truth in imaginative pictures. And then our handling of these fairy tales, legends and mythical stories will once more be filled with a quality of soul. Then when we speak to the child, our very words, permeated as they will be by our own belief in the tales, will flow over to him and carry truth with them; truth will then flow from teacher to child, whereas it is so often untruth that passes between them. Untruth at once holds sway if the teacher says: the child is stupid, I am clever, the child believes in fairy tales so I have to tell them to him. It's the proper thing for him to hear them. When a teacher speaks like this then an intellectual element immediately enters into the relating of the stories.

But the child, especially in the age between the change of teeth and puberty, has a most sensitive feeling for whether the teacher is governed by his fantasy or his intellect. The intellect has a destructive and crippling effect on the child, but fantasy gives it life and impulse.

It is vital that we should make these fundamental thoughts our own. We will speak of them in greater detail during the next few days, but there is one more thing I should like to put before you in conclusion.

Something of very special importance happens to the child between his ninth and tenth year. Speaking in an abstract way we can say that he then learns to differentiate himself from his environment; he feels himself as an “I,” and the environment as something external which does not belong to this “I” of his. But this is an abstract way of expressing it. The reality is this, speaking of course in a general sense: the child of this age approaches his much-loved teacher, be he man or woman, with some problem or difficulty. In most cases he will not actually speak of what is burdening his soul, but will say something different. All the same one has to know that this really comes from the innermost depths of his soul, and the teacher must then find the right approach, the right answer. An enormous amount depends on this for the whole future life of the child concerned. For you cannot work with children of this age, as their teacher, unless you are yourself the unquestioned authority, unless, that is, the child has the feeling: this is true because you hold it to be true, this is beautiful because you find it beautiful, and therefore point it out to him, and this is good because you think it good. You must be for the child the representative of the good, the true and the beautiful. He must be drawn to truth, goodness and beauty simply because he is drawn to you yourself.

And then between the ninth and tenth year this feeling arises instinctively in his subconsciousness: I get everything from my teacher, but where does he get it from? What is behind him? The teacher need not enlarge on this because if you go into definitions and explanations it can only do harm. The important thing is to find a loving word, a word filled with warmth of heart—or rather many words, for these difficulties can go on for weeks and months—so that we can avert this danger and preserve the feeling for authority in the child. For he has now come to a crisis as regards the principle of authority. If you are equal to the situation, and can preserve your authority by the warmth of feeling with which you deal with these particular difficulties, and by meeting the child with inner warmth, sincerity and truth, then much will be gained. The child will retain his belief in the teacher's authority, and that is a good thing for his further education, but it is also essential that just at this age of life between nine and ten the child's belief in a good person should not waver. Were this to happen then the inner security which should be his guide through life will totter and sway.

This is of very great significance and must constantly be borne in mind. In the handbooks on education we find all kinds of intricate details laid down for the guidance of teachers, but it is of far greater importance to know what happens at a certain point in the child's life and how we must act with regard to it, so that through our action we may radiate light on to his whole life.

• 1. In Germany the children remain in the “Kindergarten” until their seventh year so that the above remarks apply to all school life up to this time, (including, for instance, the “Infants” Departments of State Schools in England).
• 2. In 1919 the first Rudolf Steiner School was founded by Emil Molt, Director of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory, Stuttgart. The first pupils were all children of the factory workers.
• 3. Just before the opening of the Waldorf School, in 1919, Dr. Steiner gave three simultaneous courses of lectures to the teachers two of which have been published in English under the titles ofStudy of Man and Practical Advice to Teachers.
• 4. Compare the old country names for the fingers referred to by Walter de la Mare inCome Hither p. 515, e.g. Tom Thumbkin, Bess Bumpkin, Long Linkin, Bill Wilkin and Little Dick.

I would like to start by talking about the principle of development, which I already hinted at yesterday. I said: If we follow the metamorphosis of forces within a developmental series, we first come from the simple into the complicated. So I want to draw a simple [it is drawn]; then a next more complicated one would perhaps be this; then we would come to a third, to a fourth, which would be like this (Fig. 105). Now we might have four stages of development of the same thing.

Now the next one could be somewhat more complicated than the previous form. We would then perhaps get this [fifth] form. But this would not come out, instead this other form will develop. What I have drawn with the thick line, that would then perhaps be visible on the outside. And if it were a real form in nature, one would then progress from this to this form. And yet it is only in the etheric that development continues in such a way that the more complicated forms, which I have indicated with the dots, emerge, while the physical, the externally visible, that which reveals itself again, perhaps simplifies itself again.

The next forms would then perhaps be such that the ethereal forms would be these [sixth]. But it is not this ethereal form that comes to the fore, but rather what remains visible on the outside is this [the thick line], which in turn is a simplification, an essential simplification, so that if you just consider physical development, you go from a stage of 1-2-3-4 in complication, then in simplification. This is also really the principle of development in nature.

For example, we can see how, let us say, the eyes of certain lower animal beings – considered physically and externally – are more complicated than the human eye. Certain lower animals have blood vessel-like organs, a “sword-shaped process” and a “fan” in their eyes. These are also disappearing, and the human eye is relatively simpler in its outward form, but the etheric body has a more complicated form. We can only grasp the principle of evolution correctly if we present it in this way. The principle of development is correctly captured in the evolution of the columns, capitals, architraves and bases that you were shown yesterday.

If you want to understand our building, you also have to bear in mind that the entire treatment is appropriately designed for the new architectural style in terms of character. It is the case, for example, that even the artistic treatment of the wall is different from the way walls were treated in earlier architectural styles: the wall was always conceived as the boundary of the space that one wanted to close off. Here at the Goetheanum, the wall is conceived in such a way that it actually overcomes itself. This is physically achieved in our windows. Our windows, in so far as they are the main windows of the auditorium, are etched out of single-colored glass panes. It is then the case that the artistic works are actually only created by the sunlight shining through. So the processing of the window panes is a preparation, and the whole impression is created by the interrelationship between what has been worked on the pane and the sunlight shining through. In the windows, in particular, what has otherwise been striven for in the entire building has been physically achieved, whether through the design of the columns, the carving on the walls, or the painting: the wall virtually dissolves. So that when you look at the wall, you don't have the feeling that the space is closed off, but that you have the feeling that you are being led out into the cosmos through the wall. With the windows, you must have this feeling physically, because you lead directly, I would say, to the effect of light on the outside, purely through the physical design of the panes; but with the other wall designs, this has also been attempted artistically.

This will give you an idea of how a new stylization of building forms has been striven for here, down to the last detail, how the formal language of our building is to be a new one, so to speak. It is understandable that philistinism cannot immediately comprehend this new design language, my dear friends. Now, it is important that we first show you some of what has been achieved with painting. First of all, I will show you the painting of the small dome, because I only have pictures of it here for now.

Let us look at what our revered friends actually saw. By visualizing this now in non-colored images, we must immediately point out that the essential thing about the painting of the small dome is not the motifs, but the bringing out of the motifs from the colors. There lies, I might say, the very beginning of what painting of the future will have to bring. Man will indeed have to understand more and more that in the details of nature, in essence, there is always something essential. For example, when you immerse yourself in a color, or in a color combination, it is not just this color combination that is present, but the color itself is something alive, something that works out of itself, and it is possible to educate oneself, for example, to live with the color blue. You will then get the feeling that the blue color gives you the impression of the designed, the moving, that which moves or is formed in space. So if you approach it in a creative way, you will get something that you draw out of the blue. The red or yellow gives you the impression that it wants to reveal itself, come towards you, talk to you. While the blue glides past you, the red gives you the impression that it comes towards you.

In this way, being with a color, but especially with many colors, can be invigorated. And all these things actually are in the work of nature. And only someone who educates himself in this immersion in the elements of nature can understand this. Therefore, it is somewhat striking when, let us say, in the current, indeed, in itself quite justified new striving for art, things come across that actually show that one has come out of imitating nature and, isn't it true, into something that one is actually striving for new artistic things in the inartistic. When we see that all manner of expressionist and futurist and so forth things are put together in any old way, or put together differently, what appears in nature in a certain way, then very often – not always, of course – there is something very unjustified in such a combination. For example, someone who forms a human eye cannot help but place the second eye in the right place if they do not merely see, but if they know how to live intimately with the creative forces of nature. This is because the eye is not something in itself, but only exists with the second eye. But one only comes to the inner essential creation of nature when one can live with the entities of nature, for example with colors.

And now, look, how could it not be possible to create from color itself? I just want to know when someone says: I am not interested in something created according to the model, but I am interested in applying the colors, I just want to know why then the form should not emerge from this pure application of the colors as the creature of the color. We have to get away from the model again. We have to get away from being tied to the naturalistic. Art has worked on that long enough. But we have to be able to develop an interest in seeing a light surface simply as a color spot and seeing a dark surface as a color spot. I would like to know how, when you simply have a light and a dark surface in an arrangement [it is drawn], how you could not feel a face turned in this direction, surrounded by hair growth here (Fig. 105).

Everything can be brought out of the color combination. Just as everything can be brought out of the treatment of the surface, of the treatment of the form in sculpture. In contrast to color, if painting wants to work with color, the line, the drawing, is actually an untruth. Because, you see, the horizon is not really and truly present as a line. That is not true at all. It is not a horizon line. What is real is the blue sky, and below it perhaps something shaped by nature, and that borders on each other. It is the contact of two colored surfaces. Whoever draws the line is lying. Whoever paints two colored surfaces, which of course must then have a border, is telling the truth. And it is with things like this that one begins to get used to the truth. Because we, wanting to be naturalistic, have lied so much artistically, that is why we also have the plight that so many lies are currently being told in the other world contexts.

Just think what, let us say, for example, the drama has achieved. Drama, at the end of the 19th century, in the culmination of materialism, began to be materialistic as well. There were people sitting in the auditorium watching dramatic performances of Arno Holz or Gerhart Hauptmann and so on, and now they didn't have something dramatic in the old Shakespearean, Schillerian or Goethean sense, where great series of events that are far apart are summarized, but a back house, a front house, or something like that, which was to be recreated in a very naturalistic way. The people should not talk about anything other than what is usually talked about in three hours. What kind of naturalism is that? It is the naturalism that, just like today's natural science, only takes into account the extra-human, which also, in the artistic, only takes into account the extra-human: can it be seen? If you wanted to be a model for a drama, you would have to remove the third wall so that everyone could see inside; then you could see what happens in three hours and recreate it from the stage.

These things are of course not taken into account at all in the age of naturalism, and one does not find the possibility of really placing the human being back into the whole natural and cosmic context. But this must also happen in art. It is understandable that art has long adhered to the model; but now the time has passed when art can adhere to the model. Art must grow together with the creative forces of nature and work out of the creative forces of nature. For what is the point of recreating nature in a naturalistic way? Whatever is created in a naturalistic way can never be achieved by nature. Every smallest achievement that is made out of something that is not there in the senses can be more significant than anything that appears to be so perfectly created in nature. If you want something realistic, you can say that you are sticking to nature itself. And in addition, in many areas naturalism was even somewhat extraordinarily frivolous. One thinks of Hauptmann's “Weavers”: the well-fed people sat down in the theater to overlook the whole series of scenes in Hauptmann's “Weavers”. This was called “social art”, bringing the misery of life into the theater, something frivolous, a frivolous cultural phenomenon. So we have to turn to the supersensible again. Today, people find it difficult to decide to enter the supersensible in art. But it will not become light in humanity if we do not decide on something like this in all areas.

Because the small cupola room is painted, the motifs are only the novellistic, not even the truly pictorial, artistic. But you have seen the thing itself, and so you might remember, especially in the pictures that I can show here, what you saw. It is perhaps even interesting to note how what is on the dome wall there cannot be reproduced if you only have the motif. But the motif itself, if you have it, must show that there is something incomplete about it. A motif that only appears in black and white is simply not satisfactory, because you have to be able to say what is missing. There must be something missing, because what is actually supposed to be depicted is areas of color, not black and white, and not lines, while what will appear to us is the novellistic element, the thought, which basically does not belong at all.

What you see here is what meets you from the small dome when you enter it. A child, emerging from the indeterminate material forms, flying towards the medieval figure, which has been captured by capturing a kind of Faust figure. It should be captured in a certain sense, the initiation of the Middle Ages. After humanity had gone through the most diverse forms of initiation, this initiation of the Middle Ages came about with all its tragedy.

It is indeed the case that, according to the spiritual conditions of this stage of human development, the human being cannot rise to an understanding of the living unless the realization of death stands beside it. To see through the connection between life and death is what leads, ultimately, from the Middle Ages to our own day, and through it to true knowledge.

In the next picture you see here that which lies further to the east: this medieval initiate himself, who comes to his realization out of reflection, out of turning away from the world. But precisely if we want to experience this turning away from the world, we must experience it by acquiring an understanding of the forces of death that are out there in the whole world. And these forces of death are intimately related to our powers of consciousness. The same thing that confronts us in the human skeleton, that, my dear friends, that is the external image of death, at the same time expresses in external physical form what lives in our nervous system when we experience the reflective consciousness of modern times.

The consciousness of the early Middle Ages and especially the ancient consciousness were such that they did not depend on the human being dying in every moment of their waking lives in order to think. But in return, human beings were filled with images and imaginations in their consciousness, even if they were atavistic. Intellectualism has only developed since the middle of the 15th century. It has developed because our head organs have assumed a formation that, when it takes hold of the whole person, continually leads to death. A battle between life and death is constantly taking place in the human being. The head wants to die. This is prevented by the life forces that continually surge up from the rest of the organization.

This dying of the head, to which we owe our intellectual consciousness, is what should also be expressed through all the colors and everything that has been brought out of the color in this form. This is the only place where the letter, the written word, appears within our entire structure, and rightly so, because it is only in this time that the I, the I-thought of humanity, has become so abstract that it can be pointed to with letters. The I-thought will only be able to be borne more and more by the fact that this I is indeed filled with the Christ. That is why medieval mysticism had the task of developing the Pauline word through a whole series of sermons and reflections such as those of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart. It is fixed for all eternity within the medieval language, which developed in the German-speaking areas after the modern era, that the I: written out, the initials of Christ Jesus: ICH;

For the reasons I have just explained, you see Death beneath the Faust figure; this Death comes from forces that work from the center of the Earth towards us and combine only with the Mercury forces that work from the cosmos towards the Earth. The sight of the Faust-like figure with Death below him would be unbearable if the counter-image were not created in his perception, in the child flying towards Faust and the ego.

The next picture shows us the Greek personality as she lives under the initiation, a more feminine figure, since in fact the Greek initiation spoke more to the feminine. In general, in Greek high culture, the content of the initiation had to be gained by the initiate acquiring what female figures, who to a certain extent intervened in the flow that comes to man from the cosmos, what could be gained from such female figures: The Pythian priestesses in Greece are intimately connected with the whole structure of the Greek initiation. So that then such things appear as these heads, for example, which are worked purely from form.

This already invites us not to ask in the abstract sense: What does something like this mean? This question is an unartistic one when posed in abstract form. At this point, one must look at what color is there and how, according to the principle that I have just explained here, the shapes themselves emerge from the experience of the colors. Everything that belongs to this figure has actually come about in the end through the perception of the colors.

The next picture: you have a larger area to see here, here is the flying child seen earlier; here the small dome connects to the large dome; then this figure of the medieval initiator, and here is death. And here is the figure you just saw, above it the inspiring figure, an Apollo-like figure. Unfortunately, the picture is very imperfect. And at the top there is still the higher inspirer.

In these pictures, there is always what is initiated as a personality. Above it, there is the figure that sinks the imaginations into the personality to be initiated, and above it, there is the figure of a higher hierarchical order that sinks the inspirations into it. So here you have the inspiring figure, which is above the Faust-like figure.

The next picture is unfortunately very unclear. This is the inspiring figure that is above the Greek initiator. If you imagine the one you saw earlier, with the three heads on the shoulder, then this is the figure above it, the one who lets the imaginations flow into the lower figure, and above that the inspirer of the heads of the inspirer. Here is the head of the inspirer, and below that would be this Athena-like figure, who inspires and is inspired and imagined.

And here you have the two figures. The figure at the bottom is that which sends the imaginations down into the Egyptian initiates, and the other figure is that which allows the inspirations to flow into them. And as we move forward, we come to the representation of Egyptian initiation.

So the next picture is the Egyptian initiates; above him are the two figures that have just been seen here.

And so we come to the older Persian-Germanic initiation. This Persian-Germanic initiation is still effective in our time, but it has, as it were, something enclosed within it, the medieval initiation mentioned earlier, that is, the one characterized in the first figure. The medieval initiation is, as it were, shorter, and this one encompasses the whole long period. What matters in it is that the duality in the world - the bright, Luciferic, the dark, Ahrimanic - be seen through in its entire effect on the world. Here you have on the one hand the dark, Ahrimanic: the small head is in fact Ahriman, the other is his shadow, which he carries with him. On the other side: the Lucifer figure. You can see how this is developed in the sculptural group – you have all seen the group. So you can see how the contrast between the head of Ahriman and the head of Lucifer confronts you. And in the painting, one could also clearly express this mutual relationship between Ahriman and Lucifer.

If you see, for example, how the forward thrust of Lucifer's forehead virtually takes away Ahriman's foreheads, or how Ahriman's foreheads are hardened towards the back, then you see the interplay as it is the organizing force of nature. This then goes down. You see how a kind of centaur shape corresponds to Ahriman – a kind of centaur shape also corresponds to Lucifer – that they are connected to each other, want to be apart and cannot, complement each other in the colors, and below that the Persian-Germanic initiate, who carries the child floating on his hand, pointing out how the future and the hope for the future must be taken up in man by seeing through dualism.

The next image: Ahriman is alone with his shadow. The Ahrimanic is therefore everything in man that works in one direction in man. The human being is so essentially that man constantly strives to keep the balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic in him. The Ahrimanic is everything in us that, if we take the matter spiritually, inwardly, strives in us for the sober, prosaic, materialistic, for the philistine, for the bourgeois, for the tantric. That is the Ahrimanic, that which hardens man, that which solidifies man within himself, which prevents him from opening up to the world, which makes him absorbed in his egoism. It is that which draws man to the earth, physiologically speaking, it is that which works in man and by which he would actually be continually exposed to the danger of succumbing to hardening, to sclerosis, to ossification, if it were not for the reciprocal, the Luciferic. He would be constantly in danger of becoming diabetic, for example, or of developing terrible gouty lumps. That is the Ahrimanic. Ahriman suffers greatly from constant gouty lumps, from constant rheumatism, etc. There are things that are physiologically connected with the soul-like philistinism, materialism, bourgeois conformity, and so on, as I characterized it earlier.

This is the Luciferian figure, the complete opposite image. It is the other side of man, that which continually causes man, in his soul, to stray into the mystical and the fantastic, continually causes him, as it were, to be a being that wants to get beyond the human head. All enthusiasm in man is that which is striven for by the forces that are, as such, Luciferian in man.

Now there are two ways in which these contradictions can be present in human nature: One is that man strives to achieve a kind of equilibrium, that is, to facilitate everything that strives within him towards the philistine, the bourgeois, by also developing imagination, by also being able to devote himself to the world, and by also understanding how to bring the artistic into the purely abstract. That is to say, it is possible for a person to achieve such a balance of these two opposing currents that the person becomes one through the two harmoniously blending into each other and becoming one.

But the other is also possible, that the two extremes continue to work in man, so that man does not find a balance in which they flow into one another, but that the two things are active in him. For example, you can meet mystical enthusiasts who ascend to the highest theosophical, symbolic regions, always wanting to rise above their heads, but in ordinary life they are philistines. Loving everything philistine, pedantic, materialistic, tough and so on - yes, tough! - goes quite well with mystical enthusiasm in a person. This, so to speak, obscures the balance deep within the unconscious. There, what is actually a twofold nature comes out in dualism. So in some ways, these two sides can also be present in a person, revealing themselves. One is not a philistine just because one is a dreamer. One can very well be a philistine and a dreamer at the same time. Figure 13 (Fig. 80):

There you see the one who is inspired by the insights of the interaction of the dark and the light world, who must connect what is indicated by the child's hovering.

Here you see that which is already there in a certain way as an initiation principle, but which will only have its task in the future: the way in which the secrets of the upper world can be received in Slavic countries today, a kind of Russian figure that has its own shadow beside it, as so often the Russian invisibly carries its own shadow with it, always has its shadow beside it. What is inspired from above, we will then see more clearly. A centaur figure, something that is already humanly shaped or already superhumanly shaped. There is no need to decide this question, but rather to think in terms of form. In between, as a counter-image, the angelic form. Just as we have Ahriman and Lucifer in the present culture, the Germanic-Persian one, so here, where we go a little further, we have the human form, stuck in the animal, and a superhuman form as its opposite.

You see here above the figure still reminiscent of the animal, so to speak the animal transported into the world of the stars, the animal having become ethereal, which contains within itself the forces of initiation for this future time, when these forces on the other side – these forces, which are more of an Ahrimanic nature – are held in the balance by the superhuman, by the angelic, which approaches this figure from the other side.

Here you have the angelic form together with the animal form, but it is something that is ethereally animal and ethereally superhuman. It is the interaction of the mysteries that work in one form or another that will bring about the initiation for the coming age.

The next picture: Here you have once more, so that you can see more of it, the initiating and the initiated. Thus, an attempt has been made to put together in the dome that which leads to the knowledge of the supersensible from the most diverse human conditions - Egyptian, Greek, medieval, past, future - and from the most diverse temporal conditions. And all of this is worked out of color to such an extent that one can have the impression that the wall is destroying itself, destroying itself with something that actually has no end in the soul, that enters into the spiritual; so that the wall, through its artistic design, cancels itself out.

Here you see the Luciferian figure as it is in the central figure; here is Christ. You will remember that you saw it over there in the building: it is in particular red color, worked out of red and yellow. I wanted to distinguish it from the other colors; so that the whole – if one may say so – the Luciferian experience – is a red-yellow experience, from the burning, phosphorous color, from the hot color, everything that leads people to want to rise above their own heads.

Everything that is otherwise in the dome and in the building in general is as if synthesized in this eastern group, in this Christ-like figure in the center, Lucifer above it, Ahriman below it, which is then completed in the rock group below. The whole mystery of man is there as a mystery: Christ, Lucifer, man, Ahriman, and thus there is a continuation of the building idea, which was found in its various metamorphoses from ancient Greek, Gothic times to our own. The Greek temple, as a dwelling for a god, had only one meaning in that it enclosed the god. One cannot imagine its forms of construction other than as the dwelling of the god. The medieval Gothic cathedral only has a purpose if the community is in it, otherwise it is abandoned. Its walling indicates that it only has a purpose if the community is in it. Inside, there should be that which leads man to self-knowledge, which presents man to himself, what man is: a being that has to seek the Hypomochlion between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic.

In the next picture, you can see below it the Ahrimanic, which is struck by the rays of fire emanating from the arm of the Representative of Humanity - the Christ Jesus. The Ahrimanic is also held fast by the forces of the earth. It is everything that pushes the human being towards the earth, the heaviness of the earth in the human being, just as the Luciferic is that through which the human being wants to move away from the world. The Ahrimanic: the inward brokenness, the inward heavy suffering. The Luciferic: that which leads the human being to stupefaction, to illusion, to hallucination. Here with Ahriman, everything bony, everything hardening. In Lucifer, everything feverish, pleurisy-like, etc., everything that, if developed one-sidedly by the human being, would cause the human being to burn inwardly through his joy and lust and greed and desire. The Ahrimanic: that which freezes within in pain and therefore endures infinite pain when the rays of fire come over its coldness.

The next picture: the head of the Representative of Man, as I believe it can be fully captured in spiritual science. The usual image that one has of Christ - it was actually only in the sixth century that the bearded Christ emerged - the history of Christ portraits is extremely interesting. The Christ portraits emerged from lively discussions about whether Christ was beautiful or ugly. Of course, these discussions took place at a time when there was no longer a living image of Christ. Then the urge to capture Christ in pictures arose at a time when people could no longer depict beauty in the old Greek sense. We have to try to see Christ spiritually. And as far as I believe I can advocate the matter, it is – precisely by transforming the whole into the spiritual, which can only be seen in what has been preserved in the Akasha Chronicle – the figure of the one who really walked in Palestine at the beginning of our era. But this should not be taken as if there were a portrait study, but it can be felt that the representative of humanity is also connected with history in this way. Everything must follow from the artistic intuition itself.

Now I still have a few figures in the next picture: you see the middle group here. Here the Russian initiation, above it the angel, the centaur; then this Golgotha Way, the threefold path, to Christ, to the two thieves or robbers. Here the Ahriman figure, struck by the rays of fire, then the Christ figure, above it Lucifer. Here again the other side: the angel, the centaur figure, thus the initiating one. Below that, in turn, would be the two initiators that belong together.

Here you see the five-part leaf that I mentioned yesterday. Then you see the Germanic-Persian initiation, the Luciferic-Ahrimanic one, and then the Egyptian initiation. But this is already very unclear in this picture. You can still see the Egyptian initiate. An attempt has been made to photograph the object in a variety of ways. It is of course true that photography can only give the motif in the most diverse ways, which is basically not what it is all about.

I would also like to mention that our building, the double-domed structure, is covered with Norwegian slate. Once, when I was on a lecture tour that took me from Kristiania to Bergen, I looked out of the window of the railway carriage and noticed the beautiful Voss slate from the Voss slate quarries. During that journey, I had the idea that it would be a good idea to use this Voss slate to cover our building – an idea that could then be realized. Those who look at the roofs of our building, as they shine, especially under certain effects of the sun in their grayish-blue, will see that this idea was indeed a justified one, to ship this Norwegian slate to the south just enough to cover this building. It does indeed reflect the sun's rays wonderfully, and the rays of light in turn.

Of course, I can only give a brief description of what was attempted in this building. If you combine what I have been able to discuss, because there are pictures, with what you will see in the future, along with many other things, in general and in detail, you will get an idea of how this building should become a hieroglyph, an immediate revelation in the forms and colors of that which lies in the entire anthroposophically oriented world view. It should be presented as a great hieroglyph to the present day. And something would really be done for our time and for the near future if this building could ever be completed. It has been started with a certain devotion to the cause, started at that time especially from those areas that are now confined to world life, that can no longer really contribute because they are completely impoverished in relation to the rest of the world. Events have brought it about that precisely these regions have become impoverished in the face of world events, which first gave rise to this idea of building, and it would actually be good if so much un-chauvinistic, pure humanity could arise in the world that this building could now really be completed on the part of those regions that have suffered less from the horrors of recent years. It should actually be completed.

However, if you look at everything that has been a motivating factor in the last five to six years, and if you see it continuing to have an effect on the winners and the defeated, if you see how nowhere does the realization dawn that a completely new situation must take hold, then there can be little hope that this edifice will ever be completed. But it is, my dear friends, a demand of the time, it is a demand of the future. It is something that should be understood quite differently than one has been inclined to understand it until now. And it would perhaps be the first sign of a manifestation of the will to heal the world if, let us say, an understanding were to awaken from the English, French, and American sides, precisely for the completion of this building. The first impulse came from Central Europe; the rest would have to come from those who were neutral in the last years or from those who were hostile to Central Europe, if there were real understanding.

But it really seems as if souls want to continue sleeping, as if most of them say to themselves: Oh, what's the point of getting involved in something new! Things will only turn out well if we go back to what was more or less the case until 1914. Many people long for that. My dear friends, that will never come back. And those who want that, and who are working to bring it about, those who cannot rise above the idea that something as new must come among us as the architectural styles of this building here are, they are working towards the downfall of humanity. Isn't it actually, I would say, heartbreaking in terms of the culture of humanity and its development, as Dr. Kolisko had to say here a few days ago, as he had to characterize, as it were, how at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century and well into the 19th century, the Goethe culture had emerged, and that this Goethe culture has completely dried up. It had already dried up in Germany by the 1880s.

Perhaps I may allow myself a subjective judgment in these matters, because I myself came to Weimar for the first time in 1889, then in 1890 to the Goethe-Schiller Archive. Yes, my dear friends, there we really were at the burial place of Goetheanism, at the real burial place of Goetheanism. And in that, there was no difference between the various nations of the world. There the German scholar, by cutting syllables, recalled Faust, together with Calvin Thomas, the American scholar, who cut syllables in the same way. People from all over the world worked there. Science had come to the point where it was far away, where it was concerned with Goethe. Truly, everywhere a cutting up of the living Goethean being, terrible, terrible!

In Austria, however, which already carried the seed of destruction within itself, which, through its state-political system, carried the seeds of destruction within itself, there were still a few isolated developers of Goetheanism, as Dr. Kolisko characterized it here in these days. Then, what once existed was finished, covered up! It is up to humanity itself whether the same fate that befell Goetheanism befalls all of European culture and its American offspring. It is hard to believe, but the question for humanity today is: Do you want something new and thus save the white race from barbarism, or do you want the same fate for the entire culture of the white race as for Goetheanism? And rising above this barbarism of the white race, what will the non-white races, namely the Negroes and similar races, bring about what is now the civilized world? ¹ The question today is: How many people are able to face this problem? How many people feel how serious it is today that it is a matter of the existence or non-existence of contemporary civilization?

This building was intended to be nothing less than a living expression of this. It is the continuation of what European culture has achieved, and this continuation should live, not die! But this building does not appeal to an indeterminate fate, to which one might comfortably surrender, but rather appeals to something actively alive. If people want to save European civilization without this active life, without this impulse for salvation, without this will, without this act of freedom, then this culture will not be saved, and will meet the same fate as Goetheanism in Central Europe. Then one might establish large archives and do philology in these large archives about what once was in Europe. But we should not let it come to archives alone; we should let it come to living buildings, both physical and spiritual, which already announce their liveliness through their forms. I would like that to be read from these forms. Because this name, Goetheanum, was longed for by someone, my dear friends, as the final name for this building here, which has already experienced the difference between a mausoleum of Goetheanism and what could be a living organism for the Goethean spirit, but in its further development, now for 1920, in fifty years for 1970, etc.

That is what I wanted to say to you today, following the description of the building.

• 1. See the reference on p. 159.

These lectures dealing with the nature of eurhythmy are given in response to a request from Frau Dr. Steiner, who believes it to be necessary, in order to lay the foundation of an exact eurhythmic tradition, to recapitulate in the first place all that has been given in the domain of speech-eurhythmy at different times to different people. To this repetition fresh material will be added in order to widen the field of eurhythmic expression. Such material will, however, not be set apart in separate chapters, but will be given in connection with each individual point as this comes under discussion.

I shall endeavour to deal with eurhythmy from its various aspects; not only from the artistic side which naturally calls for our first consideration here, but also from the point of view of education and healing.

The first lecture will be in the nature of an introduction and this will be followed by a lecture dealing with the first elements of speech-eurhythmy. In every branch of eurhythmic activity it is necessary above all that the personality, the whole human being of the eurhythmist should be brought into play, so that eurhythmy may become an expression of life itself. This cannot he achieved unless one enters into the spirit of eurhythmy, feeling it actually as visible speech. As in the case of all artistic appreciation, it is quite possible for anyone to enjoy eurhythmy as a spectator, without having acquired any knowledge of its essential basis, just as it is quite unnecessary to have studied harmony or counterpoint to be able to appreciate music. For it is an accepted fact of human evolution that the healthily developed human being carries within him a natural appreciation and understanding of art.

Art must work through its own inherent power. Art must explain itself. Those, however, who are studying eurhythmy, whose duty it is in some way or another to bring eurhythmy before the world, must penetrate into the actual essence and nature of eurhythmy in just the same way as, let us say, the musician, the painter or the sculptor must enter into the nature of his own particular art. If we wish to enter into the true nature of eurhythmy we must perforce enter into the true nature of the human being. For eurhythmy, to a far greater extent than any other art, makes use of what lies in the nature of man himself. Take for example various other arts, arts which need instruments or tools for their expression. You find no instrument or tool so nearly akin to the human being as the instrument made use of by the eurhythmist. The art of mime and the art of dancing do indeed to some extent make use of the human being as a means of artistic expression. With the art of mime, however, that which is expressed through the mime itself is merely subordinate to the performance as a whole, for such a performance does not depend entirely upon the artistic, plastic use of the human being. In such a case this same human being is made use of in order to imitate something or other which is already represented in man here upon the earth.

Further, in the case of the art of mime, we find as a rule that the gestures are used mainly to emphasize and render clearer something which is made use of by man in everyday life; that is to say, mime emphasizes speech. In order to bring a more intimate note into speech, gesture is added. Thus we are here concerned with something which merely adds in some small measure to the scope of that which is already present in man on the physical plane.

In the art of dancing—if we may use the word ‘art’ in such a connection—we have to do with an outpouring of the emotions, of the will, into movements of the human body, whereby are only further developed those possibilities of movement inherent in the human being and already present elsewhere on the physical plane. In eurhythmy we have to do with something which can nowhere be found in the human being in ordinary physical life, but which must be through and through a creation out of the spiritual worlds. We have to do with something which makes use of the human being, which makes use of the human form and its possibilities of movement as a means of expression.

Now the question arises:—What is really expressed in eurhythmy?—This you will only understand when you begin to realize that eurhythmy is actually a visible speech. With regard to speech itself the following must be said. When we give form to speech by means of mime, the ordinary speech itself provides us with a picture, with an image; when, however, we give form to speech itself, to sound as such, we find that the latter contains within it no such image. Speech arises as a separate, independent product from out of the human being himself. Nowhere in Nature do we find that which reveals itself in speech, that which comes into being through speech.

For this reason eurhythmy must, in its very nature, be something which represents a primeval creation. Speech—let us take this as our starting point—speech appears as a production of the human larynx and of those organs of speech which are more or less connected with it. What is the nature of the larynx? This question must eventually be brought forward, for I have often shown how in eurhythmy the whole human being must become a sort of larynx. We must therefore put to ourselves the question: Of what significance is the larynx? Now if you look upon speech merely as a production of the larynx, you will gain no conception of what is really proceeding from it, of what is being fashioned within it. Here it would perhaps be well to remind ourselves of a remarkable tradition which to-day is little understood, and of which you find some indication when you take the beginning of St. John’s Gospel: ‘In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word’. The Word.—Of course that which we to-day imagine to be the Word is something which gives not the slightest sense to the opening sentences of this Gospel. Nevertheless they are continually quoted. People believe they can make something out of them. They do not, however, succeed. For it is an undeniable fact that the conception of a word as held by the man of to-day is often truly expressed by his saying something of this kind:—What is a name but mere sound and smoke, mist and vapour?—In a certain sense he values the word itself little in comparison with its underlying concept. He feels a certain superiority in thus being able to value the word little in comparison with the thought. When, therefore, one puts oneself in the position of the man of to-day, and considers his conception of a word, the beginning of St. John’s Gospel has indeed no meaning. For consider the Word?—we have so many words, which word? It can only be a definite, concrete word. And what is the nature of this Word? That is the question.

Now behind this tradition which is indicated in the beginning of this Gospel lies the fact that man once had an instinctive knowledge of the true nature of the Word. To-day, however, this knowledge has been lost. To primeval human understanding the idea, the conception, ‘the Word’ comprised the whole human being as an etheric creation.

All of you, as Anthroposophists, know what we mean by the etheric man. We have the physical man and we have the etheric man. Physical man, as he is described to-day by modern physiology and anatomy, consists, both outwardly and inwardly, of certain forms of which one is able to make diagrams. Here, however, one naturally does not take into consideration the fact that what one draws is only the very smallest part of the physical human being, for the physical body is at the same time fluidic; it consists also of air and warmth. These constituents are naturally not included when one is speaking of the human being in physiology and anatomy. Nevertheless it is possible to gain some idea of the nature of the physical body of man.

We have, however, the second member of the human being,—the etheric body. If we were to attempt to draw the etheric body something extraordinarily complicated would come to expression. For the etheric body can just as little be represented as something static as can lightning. It is impossible to paint lightning; for lightning is in continual movement, lightning is in continual flow. In portraying lightning one must attempt to show it in continual flow and movement. And the same holds good with the etheric body. The etheric body is in continual motion, in continual activity.

Now these movements, these gestures which are continually in movement,—of which the etheric body does not indeed consist, but out of which it continually arises and again passes away,—do we find them anywhere in the world, do we come up against them anywhere? Yes, we do. This was no secret to a primeval and intuitive knowledge. We have these movements,—and here, my dear friends, I must ask you to take what I am saying quite literally,—we have these movements in the sound formations which embody the content of speech.

Now review mentally all the sounds of speech to which your larynx gives form and utterance, inasmuch as this formative principle is applied to the entire range of articulate speech. Bear in mind all the component elements which issue from the larynx for the purpose of speech. You must realize that all these elements, proceeding as they do from the larynx, really form the component parts of that which is brought to outer expression in speech. You must realize that these sound-formations consist of definite movements, the origin of which lies in the structure and form of the larynx and its neighbouring organs. They proceed from the larynx.

But these movements do not of course appear simultaneously. We cannot utter all the sounds which make up the content of speech at the same moment. How then could we utter all that makes up the content of speech? We could do so,—paradoxical us this may sound it is nevertheless a fact,—we could do so if for once we were to utter one after the other all the possible sounds from a, b, c, down to z. Try to imagine this. Imagine that someone were to say the alphabet aloud, beginning with a, b and continuing as far as z, with only the necessary pauses for breathing. Every spoken sound describes a certain form in the air, which one does not see but the existence of which must be presupposed. It is possible, indeed, to think of these forms being retained, fixed by scientific means, without actually making a physical drawing of them.

When we utter any particular word aloud,—‘tree’ for example, or ‘sun’,—we produce a quite definite form in the air. If we were to say the whole alphabet aloud from a to z, we should produce a very complicated form. Let us put this question to ourselves:—What really would be the result if someone were actually to do this? It would have to take place within a certain time,—as you will learn in the course of these lectures. It would have to take place within a certain time, so that, on reaching z, the first sound would not have completely disintegrated, that is to say the a-sound must still retain its plastic form when we have reached the sound z. If it were actually possible in this creation of air-forms to pass from a to z in such a way that the a-sound remained when the z-sound were reached, thus creating in the air an image of the whole alphabet, what would be the result? What sort of form should we have made? We should have created the form of the human etheric body. In this way we should have reproduced the human etheric body. If you were to repeat the alphabet aloud from a to z—(one would have to do this in exactly the right way; the alphabetical order of sounds in general use to-day is no longer quite correct—but I am speaking now of the underlying principle)—the human etheric body would stand before you.

What then would really have taken place? The human etheric body is always present. Every man bears it within himself. What do you do therefore when you speak, when you say the alphabet aloud? You sink into the form of your own etheric body. What happens then, when we utter a single word, which of course does not consist of all the sounds? Let us picture to ourselves the human being as he stands before us. He consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. He speaks some word. He sinks his consciousness into his etheric body. He forms some part of the etheric body in the air as an image, in much the same way as you, standing before a physical body, might for instance copy the form of a hand, so that the form of the hand were made visible in the air. Now the etheric body does not consist of the same forms as those which make up the physical body, but in this case it is the forms of the etheric body which are impressed into the air. When we learn to understand this rightly, my dear friends, we gain an insight into the most wonderful metamorphosis of the human form, an insight into the evolution of man. For what is this etheric body? It is the vehicle of the forces of growth; it contains within it all those forces bound up with the processes of nourishment, and also those forces connected with the power of memory. All this is imparted to the airy formations when we speak.

The inner being of man, in so far as this is expressed in the etheric body, is impressed into the air when we speak. When we put sounds together, words arise. When we put together the whole alphabet from beginning to end, there arises a very complicated word. This word contains every possibility of word-formation. It also contains at the same time the human being in his etheric nature. Before man appeared on the earth as a physical being he already existed as an etheric being. For the etheric man underlies the physical man. How then may the etheric man be described? The etheric man is the Word which contains within it the entire alphabet.

Thus when we are able to speak of the formation of this primeval Word, which existed from the beginning before physical man came into being, we find that that which arises in connection with speech may indeed be called a birth,—a birth of the whole etheric man when the alphabet is spoken aloud. Otherwise, in the single words, it is a partial birth, a birth of fragments, of parts of the human being. In every single word as it is uttered there lies something of the being of man. Let us take the word ‘tree’ for instance,—what does it mean when we say the word ‘tree’?

When we say the word ‘tree’ it means that we describe the tree in some such way as this. We say: That which stands there in the outer world, to which we give the name ‘tree’ is a part of ourselves, a part of our own etheric being. Everything in the world is a part of ourselves; nothing exists which cannot he expressed through the being of man. Just as the human being when he gives utterance to the whole alphabet really gives utterance to himself, and consequently to the whole universe, so, when uttering single words, which represent fragments of the Collective Word, of the alphabet, he gives expression to something which is a part of the universe. The entire universe is expressed when the whole alphabet is repeated from beginning to end. Parts of the universe are expressed in the single words.

There is one thing, however, about which we must be quite clear when we think over all that lies behind sound as such. Behind sound as such there lies everything that is comprised in the inner being of man. The activity manifested by the etheric body is representative of inner experiences of the soul in the nature of feeling. We must now find our way to these feelings themselves which are experienced in the human soul.

Let us take the sound a as a beginning.¹ To-day one learns to utter the sound a when one is in that unconscious dreamy condition in which one lives as a very small child. This experience is later submerged when the child suffers harm at school as a result of receiving wrong teaching in sound and language. When one learns to speak as a child there is really present something of the great mystery of speech. It remains, however, in a state of dreamy unconsciousness.

When we utter the sound a we feel, if our instinct is at all healthy, that this sound really proceeds from our inmost being when we are in a state of wonder and amazement.

 German English a, ah (as in father) e, a (as in say) i, ee (as in feet) ei, i (as in light) au, ow (as in how) eu, oi (as in joy 

Now this wonder is of course again only a part of the human being. Man is no abstraction. At every waking moment of his life he is something or other. One can of course allow oneself to become sluggish or stupefied, in which case one cannot be said to be anything very definite. But the human being must always be something, even when he reduces himself to a state of torpor; at every minute of the day he must be something or other. Now he is filled with wonder, now with fear, or again, let us say, with aggressive activity. The human being is no abstraction; every second he must be something definite. Thus there are times when man is a being of wonder, a being filled with amazement. The processes at work in the etheric body when man experiences wonder are imprinted into the air with the help of the larynx when he utters the sound a. When man utters the sound a he sends forth out of himself a part of his own being, namely the quality of wonder. This he imprints into the air.

We know that when a physical man appears upon the earth, he appears,—if he is born in accordance with the ordinary possibilities of development,—as a complete human being. This complete human being comes forth from the womb of the mother. He is born as physical man with a physical form. If all the sounds of the alphabet were uttered from a to z there would arise an etheric man, only this etheric man would be imprinted into the air, born from out of the human larynx and its neighbouring organs.

In the same way, when the child is brought into the world, when the child first sees the light, we must say: From out of the womb and its neighbouring organs there has arisen a physical man.

But the larynx differs from the womb of the mother in that it is in a continual state of creation. So that in a single word fragments of the human being arise; and indeed, if one were to bring together all the words of a language (which even in the case of a poet of such rich vocabulary as Shakespeare never actually occurs) the entire etheric man as an air-form would be produced by means of the creative larynx, but it would be a succession of births, a continuous becoming. It would be a birth continually taking place during the process of speech. Speech is always the bringing to birth of parts of the etheric man.

Again the physical larynx is only the external sheath of that most wonderful organ which is present in the etheric body, and which is, as it were, the womb of the Word. And here again we are confronted with a wonderful metamorphosis. Everything which is present in the human being is a metamorphosis of certain fundamental forms. The etheric larynx and its sheath, the physical larynx, are a metamorphosis of the uterus. In speech we have to do with the creation of man, with the creation of man as an etheric being.

This mystery of speech, my dear friends, is indicated by the connection which we find between the vocal and sexual functions, a connection clearly illustrated in the breaking of the male voice.

We have therefore to do with a creative activity which, welling up from the depths of cosmic life, flows outwards through the medium of speech. We see revealed in a fluctuating, ever-changing form that which otherwise withdraws itself into the mysterious depths of the human organization at the moment of physical birth. Thus we gain something which is essential for us in our artistic creative activity. We gain respect, reverence, for that creative element into which we, as artists, are placed. Theoretical discussion is useless in the realm of art. We cannot do with it; it merely leads us into abstraction. In art we need something which places us with our whole human being into the cosmic being. And how could we penetrate more deeply into the cosmic being than by becoming conscious of the relation existing between speech and the genesis of man. Every time that a man speaks he produces out of himself some part of that which existed in primeval times, when the human being was created out of cosmic depths, out of the etheric forces, and received form as a being of air before he acquired fluidic form, and, later still, his solid physical form. Every time we speak we transpose ourselves into the cosmic evolution of man as it was in primeval ages.

Let us take an example. Let us go back once more to the sound a, this sound which calls up within us the human being in a state of wonder. We must realize that every time the sound a appears in language there lies behind it the element of wonder. Let us take the word Wasser (water), or the word Pfahl (post), any word you like in which the sound a occurs. In every instance, when you lay stress on the sound a in speech, there lies in the background a feeling of wonder; the human being filled with wonder is brought to expression in this way by means of speech. There was a time when this was known. It was, for example, known to the Hebraic people. For what really lay behind the a, the Aleph, in the Hebrew language? What was the Aleph? It was wonder as manifested in the human being.

Now I should like to remind you of something which could lead you to an understanding of all that is really indicated by the sound a, all that the sound a really signifies. In ancient Greece there was a saying: Philosophy begins with wonder. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, the love of knowledge, begins with wonder.—Had one spoken absolutely organically, really in accordance with primeval understanding, with primeval instinctive—clairvoyant understanding, one might equally well have said:—Philosophy begins with a.—To a primeval humanity this would have meant exactly the same thing.—Philosophy, love of wisdom begins with a.

But what is it that one is really investigating when one studies philosophy? When all is said and done one is really investigating man. Philosophy strives after self-knowledge, and this self-observation begins with the sound a. It is, however, at the same time a most profound mystery, for it requires great effort, great activity, to attain to such knowledge of the human being. When man approaches his own being and sees how it is formed out of body, soul and spirit, when he looks upon his own being in its entirety, then he is confronted by something before which he may say a with the deepest wonder. For this reason a corresponds to man in a state of wonder, to man filled with wonder at his own true being, that is to say, man looked at from the highest, most ideal aspect.

The realization that man, as he stands before us as a physical being, is but a part of the complete human being, and that we only have the real man before us when we perceive the full measure of the divinity within him,—this realization, this wonder called up in us by a contemplation of our own being, was called by a primeval humanity: A. A corresponds to man in his highest perfection. Thus man strives towards the a, and in the sound a we are expressing something which is felt in the depths of the human soul. Let us pass over from a to b, in order to give at least some indication of that which might lead to an understanding of this primeval word, which is made up of the entire alphabet. Let us pass over to b. In b we have a so-called consonant; in a we have to do with a vowel sound. You will feel, if you pronounce a vowel sound, that you are giving expression to something coming from the inmost depths of your own being. Every vowel, as we have already seen in the case of the vowel a, is bound up with an experience of the soul. In every case where the sound a makes its appearance, we have the feeling of wonder. In every case where an e makes its appearance we have an experience which can be expressed somewhat as follows:—I become aware that something has been done to me.

Just think for a moment what creatures of abstraction we have become, how withered and lifeless our nature. Just as an apple or a plum may shrivel up, so have we become shrivelled up as regards our experience of language. Let us consider how, in speaking, when we pronounce the sound a and proceed from this sound to the sound e (which constantly happens) we have no idea that we are passing over from the feeling of wonder to the feeling: I become aware that something has been done to me.

Let us now enter into the feeling of the i-sound. With i we have, as it were, the feeling that we have been curious about something and that our curiosity has been satisfied. A wonderful and far from simple experience lies at the back of every vowel sound. When we allow the five vowel sounds to work upon us we receive the impression of man in his primeval strength and vigour. Man is, as it were, born again in his true dignity when he allows these five sounds consciously to work upon him, that is to say when he allows these sounds to proceed out of his inmost being in full consciousness. Therefore it is true to say:—We have become quite shrivelled up and think only of the meaning of a word, utterly disregarding the experience behind it. We think only of the meaning. The word ‘water’ for instance means some particular thing and so on. We have become utterly shrivelled up.

The consonants are quite different in their nature from the vowels. With the consonants we do not feel that the sounds arise from our inmost experience, but we feel that they are images of that which is outside our own being.

Let us suppose that I am filled with wonder, that I say a. I cannot make an outer image of the sound a, I must give utterance to it. If, however, I would give expression to something which is round in its form, like this table, for example, what must I do if I do not wish to express it in words? I must imitate it, I must copy its form, (corresponding gesture). If I would describe a nose without speaking, without actually saying the word ‘nose’ but still wishing to make myself understood, I can, as it were, copy its form, (corresponding gesture). And it is just the same in the forming of the consonants. In the consonants we have an imitation of that which exists in the external world. They are always an imitation of external forms. But we express these forms by constructing them in the air, producing them by means of the larynx and its neighbouring organs, the palate, for example. With the help of these organs we create a form which imitates, copies something which exists outside ourselves. This is even carried into the actual form of the letters, but of this we shall speak later.

When we form a b (it is, by the way, impossible to pronounce this sound without the addition of some vowel) when we form a b it is the imitation of something in the external world. If we were able to hold fast the air-form which is created by b (we must, of course, speak the sound aloud) we should have something in the nature of a shelter. A protecting, sheltering form would be produced. Something would be produced which might be likened to a hut or a house. B is an imitation of a house. Thus when we begin with a, b, we have, as it were, the human being in his perfection, and the human being in his house: a, b.

And so, if we were to go through the whole alphabet, we should, in the consecutive sounds, unfold the mystery of man. We should express the human being as he lives in the cosmos, the human being in his house, his physical sheath. If we were to pass from a, b to c, d, and so on, every sound would tell us something about the human being. And on reaching z we should have pictured in sound the whole of human wisdom, for this is contained in the etheric body of man.

We see from this that something of the very greatest significance takes place in speech. In speech the human being himself is fashioned. And one can indeed give a fairly complete picture of the soul life of man when one brings to expression his most fundamental feelings. I, O, A. These sounds represent practically the whole content of the human soul in its aspect of feeling: I, O, A.

Let us for a moment consider all that proceeds from the human being when he speaks. Let us suppose that somebody repeats the alphabet; when this is done the entire etheric body of man comes into being, proceeding from the larynx, as from the womb. The etheric body is brought into being. When we look at the physical body of man we know that it has come forth from the organism of the mother, it has come forth from a metamorphosis of the larynx, that is to say, from the mother’s womb.

But now let us picture to ourselves the complete human being as he comes into the world with all his different attributes; for that which is brought forth from the organism of the mother cannot remain unchanged. If the human being were to remain unchanged through his whole life, he could not be said to be a man in the true sense of the word; there must be a continual development. The human being at the age of thirty-five, let us say, has gained more from the universal, cosmic being than was his as a child. We may picture the whole human being in some such way as this. Just as speech proceeds from out of the larynx, the child from out of the womb, so the fully developed human being at about the age of thirty-five is born, as it were, from out of the cosmos in the same way in which the words which we speak are spoken out of us. Thus we have the form of man, the complete human form, as a spoken word.

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The human form stands before us,—that most wonderful of earthly forms,—the human form stands before us and we ask the divine spiritual powers which have existed from the beginning: How then did you create man? Did you create him in some such way as the spoken word is created when we speak? How did you create man? What really took place when you created man?—And if we were to receive an answer to our question from out of universal space, it would be some such answer as this: All around us there is movement, form, constantly changing and of infinite variety: such a form (a was here shown in eurhythmy), such a form (e was shown), such a form (i was shown)—all possibilities of form in movement proceed from out of the universe, every possibility of movement that we out of the nature of our being are able to conceive and to bring into connection with the human organization.

My dear friends, one can indeed say that these possibilities of movement are those which, becoming fixed, give man his physical form as it is when he reaches full maturity. What then would the gods do if they really wished to form man out of a lump of earth? The gods would make movements, and as a result of these movements, capable of giving form to the dust of the earth, the human form would eventually arise.

Now once more let us picture the eurhythmy movements for a, for b, for c, and so on. Let us imagine that the gods, out of their divine primeval activity were to make those eurhythmic movements which correspond to the sounds of the alphabet. Then, if these movements were impressed into physical matter, the human being would stand before us. This is what really lies behind eurhythmy. The human being as we see him is a completed form. But the form has been created out of movement. It has arisen from those primeval forms which were continually taking shape and again passing away. Movement does not proceed from quiescence; on the contrary, that which is in a state of rest originates in movement. In eurhythmy we are really going back to primordial movement.

What is it that my Creator, working out of primeval, cosmic being, does in me as man?

If you would give the answer to this question you must make the eurhythmic movements. God eurhythmetizes, and as the result of His eurhythmy there arises the form of man.

What I have said here about eurhythmy can indeed be said about any of the arts, for in some way or another every art springs from a divine origin. But in eurhythmy most especially, because it makes use of the human being as its instrument, one is able to penetrate most deeply into the connection existing between the human being and the cosmic being. For this reason one cannot fail to appreciate eurhythmy. For just suppose that one had no real conception of the nature of human beauty, as this is expressed in the outward human form, and then suppose that one had the opportunity of being shown how in the beginning, God created the beautiful human form out of movement, and one saw the repetition of those divine creative movements in the eurhythmic gestures, then one would receive the answer to the question: How did human beauty come into being?

Let us think of the child, the incomplete human being, who has not yet attained to his full manhood. How shall we help the gods, so that the physical form of the child shall be rightly furthered in its development? What shall we bring to the child in the way of movement? We must teach him eurythmy, for this is a continuation of divine movement, of the divine creation of man.

And when illness of some kind or another overtakes the human being, then the forms corresponding to his divine archetype receive injury; here, in the physical world, they become different. What shall we do then? We must go back to those divine movements; we must help the sick human being to make those movements for himself. This will work upon him in such a way that the harm his bodily form may have received will be remedied.

Thus we have to look upon eurhythmy as an art of healing, just as in ancient clairvoyant times it was known that certain sounds, uttered with a special intonation, reacted upon the health of man. But in those days one was shown how to affect the health by a more or less roundabout way, by means of the air, which worked back again into the etheric body. If one works more directly, if one makes the patient actually do the movements corresponding to the formation of his organs,—the point being, of course, that one knows what these movements really are,—(e.g. certain movements of the foot and leg correspond to certain formations right up in the head),—when one reproduces all this, then there arises this third aspect of eurhythmy, curative eurhythmy.

This introduction was necessary in order that all of you, as active eurhythmists, may gain a fundamental feeling and perception of what you are doing. You must not take eurhythmy as something which can be learned in the ordinary conventional way, but you must think of it as something which brings the human being nearer to the Divine than would otherwise be possible. The same applies indeed to all art. You must permeate yourselves through and through with this feeling. What then must be considered as an essential part of all eurhythmic teaching? The right atmosphere must enter into it, the feeling for the connection between man and the divine spiritual powers. This is essential if you would become eurhythmists in the true sense.

• 1. Owing to the fact that a number of German examples and quotations have had to be retained in the translation of these lectures, the German pronunciation of the vowel sounds has been consistently used throughout.

My dear friends! Today we will try to bring to a conclusion the things we have been discussing and which are part of our program.

I have given you the annual and monthly moods as a basis for a breviary, and within the annual and monthly moods we must now seek the weekly moods. These weekly moods arise, as I began to indicate yesterday, when we look at how the weekly mood is actually already indicated in the August mood, so that within this August mood we already have the first week within the monthly mood. Just as in a living organism certain limbs have a little more of the whole [organism] and of the other [limbs] than others, so it must also be with what we find out organically as our behavior in relation to the world, and so the August mood would be the mood for meditation for the first week of the month, the September mood for the second week, the October mood for the third week, the November mood for the fourth week. In this way, the weeks intertwine with the months in a corresponding way. It cannot be otherwise, and we must make sure that we go with the months in the weekly arrangements. However, sometimes shifts will have to be made so that we can get the weeks into the course of the year. Then the daily moods follow the weekly moods, and these daily moods, which must follow the weekly moods, lead into the whole context of the world in a different way from the preceding parts of the breviary. I will now read the daily moods slowly, beginning with Saturday: Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the revelation of the essence of Being
The World Spirit rules in the World Matter
The World Spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The World Spirit creates in man his image of being
The soul reveals the creative power of the spirit
The soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

Sunday:

The spirit reigns full of light
Into the darkness it shines
The darkness seems to live from the light
The spirit weaves in the darkness, essentially
Darkness is enlivened by light
Light makes darkness good
The light's glow is the good in the darkness.

Monday:

Darkness seizes the received light
It wants to shine, not be illuminated
It takes possession of what it has received
It lets its own light prevail
It should not flow towards the original light
It should be itself
Darkness deceives the light.

Tuesday:

Light-Unity fades
Darkness turns away from the light
Darkness turns against the light
And so darkness is against darkness
As light is darkness deception
As light is darkness evil
As light is darkness destruction.

Where is the light in darkness?
Where does the soul find the spirit?
On Golgotha stands the cross
Christ shines on the cross
He guides through death
He shines in the darkness
He is the light of my soul.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Urlicht is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To God's All He leads man's self.

Now, as on a higher level, Friday returns to Saturday:

Friday:

With Christ, my will is done
His cosmic goals flow into my will
Christ reigns for the future of the earth
Christ lives in the Father, shining through himself,
revealing through the healing spirit
Christ creates the spiritual goals in the soul
the soul can absorb the essence of Christ
the soul can feel: Christ in me.

The word pervades heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, to the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness. It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now comes the third week:

I look into the world with a spirit-borne feeling
The spirit feels my nature
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spirit being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Primordial Light is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To the All of God He leads the human self.

Or let us take the first Saturday in August:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
In darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the being of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

The first week repeats the same saying in this case:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
Light is born in darkness
A spirit of spirit rests in the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Now Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the ground of being's revelation of being
The world spirit reigns in the world's substance
The world spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The world spirit creates in man an image of its being
Soul reveals the spirit's creative power
Soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

So it is possible, my dear friends, to use this breviary by arranging it in the appropriate way, and if you use it correctly, you will gradually find the opportunity to learn to preach in pictures; the word can come alive in you. But do not believe that the word can somehow come to life without practice. Only the practice that is in harmony with the ruling intentions of the world, only the practice that we carry out in us in accordance with the intentions of the world of becoming, draws the power of the living word from within us. And it is important that you connect these things, which are intended for pastoral care, with the appropriate trust, with the appropriate faith. The spirit cannot be given to anyone who does not fully believe that he is living in the weaving of the spirit. I ask you to pay particular attention to this, my dear friends, when I now speak about community building and about ordination.

I am now speaking about these matters as they arise from what has been said to me by those who really want to take on the task they have spoken of in all seriousness. I would like to answer the question: How can communities be founded, how can communities be led?

Of course it is not possible to simply stand up with all the things we have now discussed as our goal and now go into church planting in abstracto, but rather the first work must be done as a beginning. Therefore, I can only imagine that it can be done in a favorable sense by first bringing to the people what we consider to be the right thing to do in our whole context. I can therefore only imagine that such participants in these endeavors appear in the most diverse places, who initially simply take up the way in which one must currently work on people, so that they begin by making known what they want, through lectures that clearly reveal the goal that one sets from the outset, in such a way as to be understood. First of all, the necessity of religious renewal must be proclaimed. It must be made clear that such a religious renewal is necessary. For this, of course, one must be truly convinced of the necessity of such a religious renewal. But for that one must also be imbued with the tremendous seriousness of the situation in which present-day humanity finds itself with regard to inner spiritual and religious matters, and in which it also finds itself with regard to external world events, which, after all, are nothing more than a consequence of the fact that humanity has lost sight of the actual spiritual content of the world. If we succeed in showing from today's overall decline the necessity of a new beginning, which must be taken into the hands of individual serious people, if we succeed in explaining the whole situation of the world and the situation of religious and moral life before humanity, then the spirit will be found that works in the sense of such an ascent, and the first members of the community will emerge from those who can hear it first. For those who look impartially at what is today – which, after all, very few people do – there can be no doubt: If you speak in this way, purely lecturing at first, to all those who want to hear it, and if, above all, you find warmth in your words so that people not only believe in your mind but believe in your heart, the number of community members who come to you will not be small in a relatively short time. For there are very many who are seeking today. There are far more today who are seeking than those who can lead, and if a group can be found that can lead, then it will certainly also find those who are seeking.

My dear friends, it is my unshakable conviction that the saga of Dr. Faustus contains a profound truth in the following: In the time when it was still attributed to Dr. Faustus that he had made a pact with the emissaries of hell, Dr. Faustus was seen as the co-inventor of the art of printing. However useful the art of printing has become for modern humanity, its use is, to a certain extent, of the devil, because the art of printing erects a wall between heart and heart in relation to humanity. We must not take such things so much to mean that we should now become radically conservative, radically reactionary, and say that we must work against the art of printing. On the contrary, we must profess a completely different attitude in this regard. We must be clear about the fact that before the art of printing existed, when a pastor had to speak to a congregation from the pulpit, the congregation was entirely dependent on him for an understanding of spiritual matters. We must realize that the power the pastor had to apply in order to speak intimately to his congregation was small in those days and could be small in relation to the power that must be applied today. And I see, my dear friends, that everywhere people would like to hold on to the fact that this power can remain so small. We must be clear: the art of printing must be there. We must realize that everything that the modern world has brought forth must be there. But our strength must increase in order to make good and overcome that which has been done by the world that Christ described as the kingdom on earth into which He had to bring the kingdoms of heaven.

We must not carelessly say: What was expected in the early days of Christianity did not come to pass, so the statement of the millennial kingdom was wrong. It is a lie to accuse the Bible of making an untrue statement. It is not so. Bit by bit, the de-divinized world has emerged, and bit by bit, what could previously be sought through the world must now be sought through the spirit. The art of printing does not prevail in a world that is standing still and becoming more even, but in a world that is perishing and whose decline must be countered by the dawn. If we cannot get used to thinking about these things in sharp images, then we cannot rise to the occasion in which we want to place ourselves, and above all, we cannot come to trust in the workings of the spirit, which we must have. How can we speak of the spirit if we have no trust that the spirit will work with us? How can we speak of the spirit if we only ever weigh up intellectually whether this or that can be right? How can we speak of the spirit if we are not able to connect with the spirit? Whatever echo the world sends back to us, we connect with the spirit to bring about what we recognize as right in its sense. And we cannot work in the spirit if we do not extend this trust to everything we can do in our community. We must stand in the community objectively and judiciously, we must stand in the community knowingly. The modern pastor has basically become a stranger to his community. He goes around in the community without realizing what tragic worlds are taking place among those who pass him by. The pastor needs knowledge of human nature, and he only gains this knowledge by taking an interest in the experiences of his community. There should be nothing that community members do not see in such a way that they have the judgment: when they come to the pastor with it, they will find an open heart, but also wise judgment. We should not let any opportunity pass us by to find out what the laws of the world's phenomena are. We should thoroughly study everything that is going on in the spiritual, legal, political and economic life of the world in order to be able to help people from these three sources of all human development. We should know how to truly be close to the souls we are responsible for. Much will be well if these souls know that we are aware of their weaknesses and concerns, and that we have a proper judgment for them, one that is accompanied by openness of heart.

My dear friends, we must be careful not to become Catholic, but we must have an open heart and goodwill for what must be regarded as human and humanly necessary within the community. Very few people today know what is going on in many people. Very few people know how the people around us are really struggling in their souls today. In recent times, the misery has become so great that those who still live a little in the abstract intellectualism have no faith at all and no insight into the magnitude of this misery. Today, many souls that cannot be opened up because intellectualism has withered away everything we can say to them, everything we can give them, are on the verge of returning to the Roman Catholic Church, which could experience an immense influx. They are therefore close to converting to the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church – albeit in its external and often disastrous way – really did know how to establish with ironclad consistency what souls need apart from intellectualism, for example through confession. ©, I got to know them, these Protestant pastors, who kept saying: What do we do with our preaching, which has become so intellectualistic, if we don't have something like the Catholic priest has in confession? — and who, as pastors, longed for confession. And I have also met brave Catholic priests who, for certain reasons that are not to be discussed here, felt a deep obligation to remain within the Catholic Church, but who were deeply aware of what they owed to their inner selves by lending an ear in confession to those who had deep emotional suffering to report.

Infinite things, my dear friends, are healed in the world by approaching souls in this way, which can be characterized as I have just done. But we will never be able to rediscover the possibility of relating to souls in this way if we are not also aware that we must become fighters for what is happening in the big wide world, that we have to fight for many of the rights of the spiritual ministry on the ground of the spiritual ministry, but that these rights have been taken away from the spiritual ministry in the materialistic world and continue to be taken away. How much, my dear friends, has been taken from the spiritual ministry by the materialism of doctors! People do not think about it, they do not even know. One of the sad phenomena is that the hearing of confessions has passed from the clergy to the psychoanalysts, who carry it out in a materialistic sense. Such phenomena of the time are usually not understood at all in all their depth and significance. As a servant of Christ, fight against the Ahrimanic effects that express themselves in this way in the world, for without doing so you will not be able to work in the individual as the effect of the community must be! Let no opportunity pass by to again furnish proof that there can be a pastoral psychology and pastoral psychiatry! Try to gain knowledge of the world and knowledge of human nature in this sense! Do not believe that the thoughts and aspirations of the pastor can be fulfilled by disputing the correctness of faith and knowledge. My dear friends, so much has happened in this regard that the salvation of millions of souls has been lost. Take these things seriously and consider the situation of the soul in view of what has happened and in view of the need for religious renewal today. Do not regard it as a digression from the task of the pastor as a religious worker to be expected to know what can affect the lungs of a person from the soul. Look at the spread of lung diseases and do not consider this as something that you can only learn from the materialistic medical world. Notice how worries work, brooding over them in solitude, without being able to hear the words of someone who seems wise and capable of judging such things. Listen, I say, hear something of what takes place in the outer illness as a result of the troubles over which one broods in solitude, and sense how much you can do by contemplating the solitude of those who brood over troubles; sense what you can do for the recovery of the outer life. For there are two kinds of lung disease: one is a disease of the lungs as an organ, the other is a disease of breathing, but this breathing cannot take place in the right way if the lungs are not otherwise healthy, and in the diseased lungs are the afflictions that have been brooded over in solitude. Do not consider it an impertinence, one that cannot be addressed to the office of pastor, when one asks what it is that eats away at the human organs that are supposed to refresh the organism. Unhealthy feelings, about which one is uninformed, make the liver sick and make everything that is to be regenerated by the liver and spleen sick. Do not consider it unnecessary to point out that there should be a pastoral physiology again. Consider it a question of your office: What eats away at the air organs? The unsocial feelings of people eat away at the air organs, those feelings that do not allow the potential for love to be expressed in the appropriate way. And by cultivating social feelings and mutual social respect within your community, you will help your community to breathe healthily, insofar as this is to come from the soul. Do not consider it to be outside your office to ask: What has a destructive effect on the blood and its circulation? Try to find out that the destructive effect on the blood and its circulation is caused by the feeling of the futility of existence, by insensitivity to the word that reveals itself from the Divine-Spiritual. If you can see into the mysterious connections between insensitivity to the word that reveals the divine-spiritual and the disturbances in circulation and heart diseases, and if you look at everything that strikes back - the pendulum not only goes there, it also goes here - of a materialistic attitude that comes from a ruined blood circulation and a ruined heart, which comes from this insensitivity to the spirit-filled word. Then you will be able to gauge what the situation of present humanity has actually become, and then you will feel in the right, serious way what religious renewal must actually mean. Then you will also sense something of how healing can be found in the sacred and how one does not need to lose healing in the abstraction of sanctification. It will depend entirely on this spirit, and above all, it will depend on you speaking the truth at every moment to those who belong to your community, for whose souls you are responsible, so that you are not merely administering an office, but speaking the truth.

My dear friends, mistrust is at an all-time high today. Among the forces that have developed most strongly in recent times is the mistrust from person to person, and also the mistrust of man towards his pastor. Only knowledge of human nature can counteract this increasing mistrust. Today, many people are particularly ill in their souls, but very few know anything about the mysterious connections between mental and physical illnesses. Most of the world's leading people are actually embarrassed to stray even a single step from the path of intellectualism. They always ask questions in an intellectual sense; they ask little with the heart. They ask a lot with the mind, but the hearts that want to hear cannot listen to the mind. And so something has happened that is one of the most terrible phenomena of our time.

You will find, my dear friends, that the members of your community who come to you first are many who will show that they do not come merely because there is strength in your words and your actions that attracts the fundamentally human. Rather, many will come who, when you really talk to them intimately, will say: I come to you because everything else I have tried has offered me nothing, but I don't know if you can offer me more than the other things that offered me nothing. — Many will come with precisely this attitude, and they have not developed any sense of the differences between what approaches them. Should it nevertheless be the case that you speak to people more out of the spirit than others have spoken out of the spirit, then you will find how dulled the souls are and how they can no longer even notice the difference today, and you will have to find ways to overcome precisely the dullness of the souls. Especially with regard to people who come to you with true feelings [of longing] for a life in the spirit, but with dull souls, you will not get by with anything other than being able to evoke a clear feeling of the inner intimate truth of what you have to say. Many will say to you: I cannot tell the difference between what I have been offered so far and what you are offering me. You will only get such questions if you want to convince people with intellectual arguments, but you can do without intellectual arguments if you want to enter into intimate contact with your parishioners; you can do without intellectual arguments. Learn to build on completely different arguments. Learn to build on those reasons that flow, for example, from saying: It is best if you believe me no more than you believed the others, if you believe me perhaps even less than you believed the others; I completely dispense to explain to you the matter that I have to discuss with you, with all kinds of reasons; but look and really observe everything with open eyes; see if you can't see that many things are different; and then don't let me judge, but judge for yourself. And if you then also give such people a sense of how you yourself feel about the reasons that may be put forward against your own pastoral care, if you evoke a feeling that you also know the other side and that you do not even have the slightest spark of fanaticism for the cause you represent, then you will be able to build something that you will never be able to achieve through intellectualism, which is the father of fanaticism. I say with full awareness: intellectualism is the father of fanaticism, because in no religious community has there ever been such great fanaticism as among the modern scientific communities. One must only be familiar with the currents that are flowing. One must realize how far removed from admitting the infallibility of the Roman Pope someone may be who invincibly believes in the infallibility of a professor or even in the abstract “modern science”. The faith in these things is so great because one is not even aware that it exists at all, because one takes the faith in it for granted. One does not even notice how one is stuck in a maximum of fanaticism in this area.

But, my dear friends, you will achieve nothing if your enthusiasm for the cause is not great enough to enable you to rise to such concepts, if you yourself still suffer from something that prevents you from see through the full power of this fanaticism and similar fanaticisms that live in the world today, and if you, so to speak, cannot decide to also confront this fanaticism with the spirit of Christ.

Your church planting can only be one that, first of all, starts from the right attitude, but secondly also from a strong attitude. The time when it was possible to believe that half-measures could achieve something is over. The time is over when it was possible to believe that intellectual discussions about world affairs make a difference. We must never forget that we live in the age in which humanity is to be irrevocably given freedom, and that the coming of freedom means that, if work is to be done in the spirit, it must be done from a source and origin; it means that something truly new must come into the world and that [really everything] must be ruthlessly seen and done in the spirit of this newness. Your work would be a passing one if you did not take into account that this attitude is indispensable for this work.

My dear friends, you must awaken in people everywhere the realization that modern man must be pointed to his deepest inner being and that he must draw from this deepest inner being the impulse for what he thinks, feels, wills and does. It is out of the question to think of carrying out this cult in such a way that it is in any way Catholicized. The cult, the fundamental features of which we have indicated, must be practised in such a way that it is felt to be something that really comes from the spiritual world today. It must be perfectly clear that the Catholic Church has been able to achieve such immense power because, in a sense, it is precisely because it is consistent that it can adapt to all manner of contemporary phenomena; and the Catholic Church does not do this in the way that certain newer currents have, which are characteristic of the intellectualism of modern times.

At the beginning of the 1890s, for example, we saw something emerging in Central Europe that was then called the effort to establish a Society for Ethical Culture. The movement started in America and also took hold in Europe. I was at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv at the time when the most important events took place to establish this society for so-called ethical culture in Europe, and I asked one of the leading personalities at the time [of the Society for Ethical Culture] at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv: What do you actually want with ethical culture? — I was told: The name itself says it all. — I could only answer: But first you have to understand the meaning of a name. If you asked people what they wanted with ethical culture, you would get a confession of immense weakness, you would get something like the answer: Yes, in relation to religious beliefs, in relation to world views, people differ so much that in the end everyone can have their own world view and everyone their own religion; religion will become more and more a private matter, but you can't live with that, you have to come to an understanding; so let's make ethics free of religious and ideological foundations and spread an ethics that is free of any religious or ideological basis. I always objected: Yes, but there have never been any other ethics than those that have emerged from the foundations of religions and worldviews and that were their consequences. — As a rule, no answer was given to this, because people were so intent on making an abstract extract from all that could be gained from the various religious beliefs, stripping away the religious character and then handing it down as a non-religious ethic, as a mere “ethical culture”. It really does not need to be directed against people when one speaks out sharply against it, and in an essay on the Society for Ethical Culture at the beginning of the nineties, I showed with all severity the impossibility of getting out of this chaos that one has finally gotten into. A fanatic of this ethical culture published a pamphlet against this essay in which he insulted with a matter of course what can actually be thoroughly substantiated. Other people also could not see that the time had come when these things had to be treated with complete seriousness. After I had written this essay, I came to Berlin, visited Herman Grimm, who said: What do you actually want with this fight against ethical culture? Are you going to this meeting? I found that they are all very nice people. — I never doubted that all the people sitting there were very nice people, but I regretted all the more that these nice people had this monstrosity implanted in their souls as if it were something self-evident. Even the leaders in spiritual life could no longer see at all what the seriousness of our situation was and is. This realization of the seriousness of the situation will actually be the most important thing with which you leave here, because everything else can only be of value if you leave here with this most important thing.

And now, so that we can discuss in the afternoon what is on your minds in relation to this, I would like to say a few words about what might be along the same lines as what is in other confessions as regards ordination. I would ask you to bring up the most important things first.

It is difficult, my dear friends, to speak about ordination today, because the times when the ceremonies that served the old ordination still had a meaning are over, and those who want to recognize these ceremonies are no longer in touch with the present day, not since the middle of the 15th century. For a new age has dawned. But those who have immersed themselves in the spirit of this new age have basically abolished the ordination of priests, and they have also abolished it within the denominations. And so today we are faced with the fact that those who have been ordained no longer live in the times, and that those who live in the times perhorrescize the ordination of priests. It cannot work in the same way today as it did in times gone by; it must be thoroughly brought into line with the spirit of our age. If you take this, so to speak, as a basic condition, I may say a few words to you about the ordination itself and its ceremony, as it is revealed to me for the present time. It is important that you really understand that I am, in a sense, communicating something revealed to me by the spirit.

It would be necessary for the transmission of the priestly ministry to take place in the presence of older priests, so that first of all older priests are gathered together, and that then the process of placing the person to be ordained in the overall context in which he is to be placed is begun. If I say that older priests should be present, it is of course extremely difficult to carry out at the beginning, but the beginning must be made in such a way that you, in the sense of what you impose on your central leadership, also order the beginning of such a matter in this sense. Then the things that need to be ordered in this way will also be available to you. Of course, there may not be older priests present at the beginning, but that must become the custom.

Then, first of all, there must be a very solemn presentation of the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John to the person who is to be ordained. I would like to emphasize that simplicity must be the supreme law in the face of such an act. If this act becomes complicated, it cannot be what it should actually be, that it should be on the mind at least once a day of the person who has gone through this act accordingly. The spiritual experience of this act should always precede the recitation of the rosary. If properly cultivated, it can be accomplished in a relatively short time, in my case in one minute. But this can only be done if the whole act is not complicated but has a unified character.

So the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, which begins with the words: Let not your heart be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the divine foundation of the world and that leads you to me. - And which concludes with the words: The world shall see how I love the foundation of the world, and how I act in the sense of the foundation of the world, as is laid upon me. Do likewise, then we can leave this place in peace. — And this should be followed by the introduction to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John, the resurrection of Lazarus, and so it should affect the person being ordained that he feels through and through from this chapter how the power to resurrect that which is dying lies in the Christ-being. I believe, however, that in order to interpret this chapter in the right way, what I have given in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” as an interpretation of this chapter can still serve.

Once this has been done – I am stating things fully, perhaps they cannot be done in this fullness at the beginning – the application of the garment that I have shown here in the illustration as the one that represents the etheric body would have to be carried out. This is the beginning of the symbolization of the effect of pastoral care.

Now one has to take oil – there is still a lot to be said about the consecration of oil and water, so that you can be quite clear about it – and apply this oil in the appropriate way to the pulses on the arms and – the person to be admitted has to wear sandals – to the corresponding places on the ends of the balls of the feet. With that, the sacramental act has been performed.

By leaving only what happens to the oil in the picture and making it as clear as possible in the picture, so that all bystanders - I say all bystanders, not just those who are to be introduced to pastoral care - can clearly perceive and remembrance of the picture that has been enacted. Only after the picture has been enacted should the words be spoken, and these words should be simple so that they can always stand before the soul in the way I have described:

In the name of Christ, you are authorized
firstly to administer Communion,
secondly to perform the sacrifice of the Mass,
thirdly to administer the sacraments.

After this has been done, the stole and chasuble are to be put on, that is, everything that leads to the astral body, and then there is something else to be done – so that the matter is simple, but it must be succinct – which must be deeply engraved in the soul of the person to be received: one consecrates the host as one does in the sacrifice of the Mass. One hands the host to the one whom one would not have handed to before the anointing with the oil, and afterwards lets him himself perform the consecration of this host and after this consecration perform one's own communion. Then one consecrates the chalice, as one otherwise does in the sacrifice of the Mass, and hands the chalice to the one who is to be received, so that he consecrates it in the same way and, by drinking from it, pronounces the words that have just been expressed as the words of the sacrifice of the Mass, and which he actually speaks for the first time with authority.

After this has been done, my dear friends, the question is asked in a lapidary way:

Do you vow to continue to work in the sense in which this authority was conferred?

And his answer should be:

I vow:

To teach in Christ's name To work in Christ's name To pray in Christ's name To sacrifice in Christ's name.

All those present say:

Yes, so be it, amen.

After this has been done, the headgear that the priest has to wear only during part of the ceremony and that is to be regarded as the thing with which he sets out to teach and with which he leaves teaching and so on, this headgear is handed over by, as it were, doing that which lies in his ego effect as the crowning of the whole ceremony.

Then it would be a matter of having the person preach a sermon on a topic that has been discussed with him at length, in front of those from whom he has received the ordination, as a trial sermon, but also as a solemn investiture into his office. Then the corresponding ceremony would be over.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to tell you this morning. I now ask you to prepare for the afternoon everything you might have to say in connection with this or with earlier events, so that we may part as befits our serious time together.

Let us consider today the second Mystery Drama, The Soul's Probation. You will have noticed that in our various stage performances, and especially in this play, an attempt was made to bring the dramatic happenings into connection with our anthroposophical world view. In this play in particular, we wanted to present on the stage in a very real way the idea of reincarnation and its effect on the human soul. I need not say that the incidents in The Soul's Probation are not simply thought out; they fully correspond with observations of esoteric study in certain ways, so that the scenes are completely realistic in a definite sense of the word. We can discuss this evening first of all the idea that a kind of transition had to be created, leading from Capesius' normal life to his plunge into a former life, into the time when he lived through his previous incarnation.

I have often asked myself since The Soul's Probation was written, what enabled Capesius to build a bridge from his life in a world where he had known—though certainly with a genial spirit—only what is given by external sense perception with a world view bound to the instrument of the brain; how it was, I say, that a bridge could be created from such a world to the one into which he then plunged, which could only be revealed through occult sense organs. I have often asked myself why the fairy tale, with the three figures at the rock spring (Scene Five) had to be the bridge for Capesius. Of course, it was not because of some clever idea or some deliberate decision that the fairy tale was placed just at this point, but simply because imagination brought it about. One could even ask afterward why such a fairy tale is necessary. In connection, then, with The Soul's Probation there came to me certain enlightening points of view about the poetry of fairy tales in general and about poetry in relation to anthroposophy.

A person could well put into practical use in his life the facts implicit in the division of the soul into sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls, but when he does, riddles of perception will loom up in a simply elemental- emotional way with regard to his place in, and relationship to, the world. These riddles do not allow themselves to be spoken out in our ordinary language, with our ordinary concepts, for the simple reason that we are living today in too intellectual a time to bring to expression in words, or through what is possible in words, the subtle distinctions between the three members of our soul.

It is better to choose a method that will allow the soul's relationship to the world to seem diversified and yet quite definite and clear. What moves through the whole of The Soul's Probation as the connecting link between the events themselves and what is significant in the three figures, Philia, Astrid, and Luna, had to be expressed in delicate outlines; yet this had to call up strong enough soul responses to bring out clearly man's relationship to the world around him. It could be presented in no other way than to show how the telling of the fairy tale about the three women awoke in Capesius' soul, as a definite preparation for his development, the strong urge to descend into those worlds that only now are beginning to be perceived again by human beings as real.

There will now be a recital of the fairy tale, so that we can reflect upon it afterward.

(Scene Five: Tale of the Rockspring Wonder)

Once upon a time there was a boy
who lived—the only child of a poor forester—
within a woodland solitude. He knew
besides his parents hardly any other people.
His build was slender,
his skin almost transparent.
One could look long into his eyes:
they treasured deepest spirit wonders.
And though indeed few people entered
the circle of his life,
he never was in need of friends.
When in the nearby mountains
the golden sunlight glowed and glimmered,
the boy's rapt, musing eye drew forth
the spirit gold into his soul
until his heart resembled
the morning brightness of the sun.—
But when through darkening clouds
the morning sunrays could not pierce
and dreariness hung over mountain heights,
the boy's eye, too, grew dull;
a mood of sadness filled his heart.—
The spirit weaving of his narrow world
took hold of him so fully
that it was no less strange to him
than were his body and his limbs.
The trees and flowers of the woods
were all his friends:
there spoke to him from crown and calyx
and from the lofty tree-tops spirit beings
and what they whispered, he could understand.—
Such wondrous things of worlds unknown
unlocked themselves before the boy
whenever his soul conversed
with what most people would regard as lifeless.
At evening his anxious parents
from time to time missed their beloved child.—
The boy was at a spot nearby
where from the rocks a spring burst forth,
and waterdrops, dispersing thousandfold,
were scattered over stones.
When moonlight's silver glance,
in sparkling colours' sorcery,
was mirrored in the water's misty spray,
the boy could sit for hours on end
beside the rock-born spring.
And figures, formed by spirit-magic,
arose before his youthful vision
in rushing water and in moonlight's glimmer.
They grew into three women's forms
who told him of those things
toward which his soul's desire was turned.—
And when upon a gentle summer night
the boy was sitting at the spring again,
one woman of the three caught up a myriad of drops
out of the glittering spray
and gave them to the second woman.
She fashioned from the tiny drops
a chalice with a silver gleam
and passed it to the third.
She filled it with the moonlight's silver rays
and gave it to the boy,
who had beheld all this
with youthful inner sight.—
Now in the night
which followed this event,
he dreamed that he was robbed
by a fierce dragon of the chalice.
After this night the boy beheld
just three times more the wonder of the spring.
Henceforth the women came no more
although the boy sat musing
beside the rock-born spring in moonlight's silver sheen.
And when three hundred sixty weeks
had run their course three times,
the boy had long become a man
and left his parents' home and forest country
to live in a strange city.
One evening, tired from the day's hard toil,
he pondered on what life had still in store for him,
and suddenly he felt himself a boy,
caught up and carried to his rock-born spring.
Again he could behold the water-women
and this time heard them speak.
The first one said to him:

Remember me at any time
you feel alone in life.
I lure man's eye of soul
to starry spaces and ethereal realms.
And whosoever wills to feel me,
I offer him the draught of hope in life
out of my wonder goblet.—

And then the second spoke:

Do not forget me at the times
when courage in your life is threatened.
I lead man's yearning heart
to depths of soul and up to spirit heights.
And whosoever seeks his strength from me,
for him I forge the steel of faith in life,
shaped by my wonder hammer.—

The third one could be heard:

To me lift up your eye of spirit
when your life's riddles overwhelm you.
I spin the threads of thought that lead
through labyrinths of life and the abyss of soul.
And whosoever harbours trust in me,
for him I weave the living rays of love
upon my wonder loom.—

Thus it befell the man,
and in the night that followed this
he dreamed a dream:
a savage dragon prowled
in circles round about him,—
and yet could not come near him.
He was protected from that dragon by
the beings he had seen beside the rock-born spring
and who with him had left his home
for this far-distant place.

It seems to me that the world of fairy tales can quite rightfully be placed between the external world and everything that in past times man, with his early clairvoyance, could see in the spiritual world; with everything, too, that he can still behold today if, by chance, either through certain abnormal propensities or through a trained clairvoyance, he can raise himself to the spiritual world. Between the world of spirit and the world of outer reality, of intelligence, of the senses, it is the world of the fairy tale that is the most fitting connecting link. It would seem necessary to find an explanation for this position of the fairy tale and the fairy tale mood between these other two worlds.

It is extraordinarily difficult to create the bridge between these spheres, but I realized that a fairy tale itself could construct it. Better than all the theoretical explanations, a simple fairy tale really seems to build this bridge, a tale that one could tell something like this:

Once upon a time there was a poor boy who owned nothing but a clever cat. The cat helped him win great riches by persuading the King that her master possessed an estate so huge, so remarkably beautiful that it would amaze even the King himself. The clever cat brought it about that the King set forth and traveled through several astonishing parts of the country. Everywhere he went, he heard—thanks to the cat's trickery—that all the great fields and strange buildings belonged to the poor boy.

Finally, the King arrived at a magnificent castle, but he came a bit late (as often happens in fairy tales), for it was just the time when the Giant Troll, who was the actual owner of this wonderful place, was returning home from his wanderings over the earth, intending to enter his castle.

The King was inside looking at all its wonders, and so the clever cat stretched herself out in front of the entrance door, for the King must not suspect that everything belonged to the Giant Troll. It was just before dawn that the Giant arrived home and the cat began to tell him a long tale, holding him there at the front door to listen to it. She rattled along about a peasant plowing his field, putting on manure, digging it in, going after the seed he wanted to use, and finally sowing the field. In short, she told him such an endless tale that dawn came and the sun began to rise. The wily cat told the Giant to turn around and look at the Golden Maid of the East whom he surely had never seen before. But when he turned to look, the Giant Troll burst into pieces, for that is what happens to giants and is a law they have to conform to: they may not look at the rising sun. Therefore, through the cat's delaying the Giant, the poor boy actually came into possession of the wonderful palace. The clever cat at first had given her master only hope, but finally, with her tricks, also the great castle and the vast estate.

One can say that this simple little tale is extremely significant for its explanation of fairy tale style today. It is really so that when we look at men and women in their earthly development, we can see what most of them are—those who have developed on earth in the various incarnations they have lived through and are now incarnated. Each one is a “poor boy.” Yes, in comparison to earlier historical epochs, today we are fundamentally “poor boys” who possess nothing but a clever cat. We do, however, it's true, have a clever cat, which is our intelligence, our intellect. Everything the human being has acquired through his senses, whatever he now possesses of the outer world through the intelligence limited to the brain, is absolute poverty in comparison to the whole cosmic world and to what man experienced in the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs. All of us are basically “poor boys,” possessing only our intelligence, something that can exert itself a little in order to promise us some imaginary property. In short, our modern situation is like the boy with the clever cat.

Actually, though, we are not altogether the “poor boy”; that is only in relation to our consciousness. Our ego is rooted in the secret depths of our soul life, and these secret depths are connected with endless worlds and endless cosmic happenings, all of which affect our lives and play into them. But each of us who today has become a “poor boy” knows nothing more of this splendor; we can at best, through the cat, through philosophy, explain the meaning and importance of what we see with our eyes or take in with our other senses. When a modern person wants somehow to speak about anything beyond the sense world, or if he wishes to create something that reaches beyond the sense world, he does it, and has been doing it for several hundred years, by means of art and poetry.

Our modern age, which in many ways is a peculiarly transitional one, points up strongly how men and women fail to escape the mood of being “poor boys,” even when they can produce poetry and art in the sense world. For in our time (1911), there is a kind of disbelief in trying to aim toward anything higher in art than naturalism, the purely external mirroring of outer reality. Who can deny that often today when we look at the glittering art and literature expressing the world of reality, we can hear a melancholy sigh, “Oh, it's only delusion; there's no truth in any of it.” Such a mood is all too common in our time. The King of the fairy tale, who lives in each one of us and has his origin in the spiritual world, definitely needs to be persuaded by the clever cat—by the intelligence given to man—that everything growing out of the imagination and awakened by art is truly a genuine human possession. Man is persuaded at first by the King within him but only for a certain length of time. At some point, and today we are living just at the beginning of such a time, it is necessary for human beings to find once more the entrance to the spiritual, divine world. It is today necessary for human beings, and everywhere we can feel an urgency in them, to rise again toward the spheres of the spiritual world.

There has first, however, to be some sort of bridge, and the easiest of all transitions would be a thoughtful activating of the fairy tale mood. The mood of the fairy tale, even in a quite superficial sense, is truly the means to prepare human souls, such as they are today, for the experience of what can shine into them from higher, supersensible worlds. The simple fairy tale, approaching modestly with no pretension of copying everyday reality but leaping grandly over all its laws, provides a preparation in human souls for once more accepting the divine, spiritual worlds. A rough faith in the divine worlds was possible in earlier times because of man's more primitive constitution, which gave him a certain kind of clairvoyance. But in the face of reality today, this kind of faith has to burst into pieces just as the Giant Troll did. Only through clever cat questions and cat tales, spun about everyday reality, can we hold him back. Certainly, we can spin those endless tales of the clever cat to show how here and there external reality is forced toward a spiritual explanation.

In broad philosophical terms, one can spin out a long- winded answer to this or that question only by referring to the spiritual world. One still keeps all this as a kind of memento from earlier times; with it one can succeed in detaining the Giant for a short time. What is with us from earlier times, however, cannot hold its own against the clear language of reality. It will burst into pieces just as the Giant Troll burst, on looking at the rising sun. But one has to recognize this mood of the bursting Giant. It is something that has a relationship to the psychology of the fairy tale. Because I find it impossible to describe such things theoretically, I can get at this psychology only through observing the nature of the human soul. Let me say the following about it.

Think for a moment how there might appear livingly, imaginatively, before someone's soul what we recently described in the lectures about pneumatosophy,¹ depicting briefly some details of the spiritual world. In these anthroposophical circles, we certainly speak a good deal about the spiritual world. Before a person's soul, it should come at first as a living imagination. There would be little explicit description, however, if you intended only to describe what urges itself forward toward the soul, even toward the clairvoyant soul. A queer sort of disharmony comes about when one mixes such truths as those about ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon conditions, as described in our last three anthroposophical meetings,² into the dismal, ghostlike thoughts of modern times. Over against those things raised up before the soul, one is aware of man's narrow limits. Those secrets of divine worlds have to be grasped, it would seem, by something in us resembling a troll. A swollen, troll-like giant is what one becomes when trying to catch hold of the pictures of the spiritual world. Before the rising sun, then, one has voluntarily to let the pictures burst in a certain way in order for them to be in accord with the mood of modern times. But you can hold something back; you can hold back just what the “poor boy” held back. For our immediate, present-day soul to be left in possession of something, you need the transformation, the matter-of-fact transformation, of the gigantic content of the world of the imagination into the subtlety of the fairy tale mood. Then the human soul will truly feel like the King who has been guided to look at what the soul, this “poor boy” soul, actually does not possess. Nevertheless, it does come into possession of riches when the gigantic Troll bursts into pieces, when one sacrifices the imaginative world in the face of external reality and draws it into the palace that one's phantasy is able to erect.

In former times, the phantasy of the “poor boy” was nourished by the world of the imagination, but in view of today's soul development this is no longer possible. If, however, we first of all give up the whole world of the imagination and press the whole thing into the subtle mood of the fairy tale, which does not rely on everyday reality, something can remain to us in the fairy tale phantasy that is deep, deep truth. In other words, the “poor boy,” who has nothing but his cat, the clever intellect, finds in the fairy tale mood just what he needs in modern times to educate his soul to enter the spiritual world in a new way.

It therefore seems to me from this point of view to be psychologically right that Capesius, educated so completely in the modern world of ideas, though certainly with quite a spiritual regard for this world, should come to the realm of the fairy tale as something new that will open for him a genuine relationship to the occult world. So there had to be something like a fairy tale written into the scene to form a bridge for Capesius between the world of external reality and the world into which he was to plunge, beholding himself in an earlier incarnation.

What has just been described as a purely personal remark about the reason I had for putting the fairy tale at this very place in the drama coincides with what we can call the history of how fairy tales arose in mankind's development. It agrees wonderfully with the way that fairy tales appeared in human lives. Looking back into earlier epochs of human development, we will find in every prehistoric folk a certain primitive kind of clairvoyance, a capacity to look into the spiritual world. Therefore, we must not only distinguish the two alternating conditions of waking and sleeping in those early times, with a chaotic transition of dream as well, but we must assume in these ancient people a transition between waking and sleeping that was not merely a dream; on the contrary, it was the possibility of looking into reality, living with a spiritual existence. A modern man, awake, is in the world with his consciousness, but only with his sentient consciousness and with his intelligence. He has become as poor as the boy who had nothing but a clever cat. He can also be in the spiritual world in the night, but then he is asleep and is not conscious of it. Between these two conditions, early man had still a third, which conjured something like magnificent pictures before his soul. He lived then in a real world, one that a clairvoyant who has attained the art of clairvoyance also experiences as a world of reality, but not dreamlike or chaotic. Still, ancient man possessed it to such a degree that he could encompass his imaginations with conscious clarity. He lived in these three different conditions. Then, when he felt his soul widening out into the spiritual cosmos, finding its connection with spiritual beings of another kind close to the hierarchies, close to the spiritual beings living in the elements, in earth, water, air, and fire, when he felt his whole being widening out from the narrow limits of his existence, it must have been for him, in these in-between conditions, like the Giant who nevertheless burst into pieces when the sun rose and he had to wake up.

These descriptions are not at all unrealistic. Because today one no longer feels the full weight of words, you might think the words “burst into pieces” are put there more or less carelessly, just as a word often is merely added to another. But the bursting into pieces actually describes a specific fact. There came to the ancient human being, after he had felt his soul growing out into the entire universe and then, with the coming of the Golden Maid of the Morning, had had to adapt his eyes to everyday reality, there came to him the everyday reality like a painful blow thrusting away what he had just seen. The words really describe the fact.

But within us there is a genuine King, which is a strong and effective part of our human nature; he would never let himself be prevented from carrying something into our world of ordinary reality out of that world in which the soul has its roots. What is thus carried into our everyday world is the projection or reflection of experience; it is the world of phantasy, a real phantasy, not the fantastic, which simply throws together a few of the rags and tatters of life, but it is true phantasy, which lives deep in the soul and which can be urged out of there into every phase of creating. Naturalistic phantasy goes in the opposite direction from genuine phantasy. Naturalistic phantasy picks up a motif here and a motif there, seeks the patterns for every kind of art from everyday reality and stitches these rags of reality together like patchwork. This is the one and only method in periods of decadent art.

With the kind of phantasy that is the reflection of true imagination, there is something at work of unspecified form, not this shape nor that, and not yet aware of what the outer forms will be that it wants to create. It feels urged on by the material itself to create from within outward. There will then appear, like a darkening of the light-process, what inclines itself in devotion to external reality as image-rich, creatively structured art. It is exactly the opposite process from the one so often observed in today's art work. From an inner center outward everything moves toward this true phantasy, which stands behind our sense reality as a spiritual fact, an imaginative fact. What comes about is phantasy-reality, something that can grow and develop lawfully out of divine, spiritual worlds into our own reality, the lawful possession, one can say, of the poor lad—modern man—limited as he is to the poverty of the outer sense world.

Of all the forms of literature the fairy tale is certainly least bound to outer reality. If we look at sagas, myths, and legends, we will find features in all of them that follow only supersensible laws, but these are actually immersed in the laws of external reality as they leave the spiritual and go into the outside world just as the source material, historical or history-related, is connected to a historical figure. Only the fairy tale does not allow itself to be manipulated around real figures; it stays quite free of them. It can use everything it finds of ordinary reality and has always used it. Therefore, it is the fairy tale that is the purest child of ancient, primitive clairvoyance; it is a sort of return payment for that early clairvoyance. Let old Sober-sides, the pedant who never gets beyond his academic point of view, fail to perceive this. It doesn't matter; he needn't perceive it. The simple fact is that for every truth he hears, he asks, “Does it agree with reality?”

A person like Capesius is searching above everything else for truth. He finds no satisfaction in the question, “Does it agree with reality?” For he tells himself, “Is a matter of truth completely explained when you can say that it accords with the external world?” Things can really be true, and true and true again, as well as correct, and correct and ever correct, and still have as little relationship to reality as the truth of the little boy sent to buy rolls from the village baker. He figured out correctly that he would get five rolls for his ten kreuzers, but his figuring did not accord with reality; he practiced the same kind of thinking as the pedant who philosophizes about reality. You see, in that village, if you bought five rolls, you got an extra one thrown in—nothing to do with philosophy or logic, just plain reality.

In the same way Capesius is not interested in the question of how this or that idea or concept accords with reality. He asks first what the human soul perceives when it forms for itself a certain concept. The human soul, for one thing, perceives in mere external, everyday reality nothing more than emptiness, dryness, the tendency in itself continually to die. That is why Capesius so often needs the refreshment of Dame Felicia's fairy tales, needs exactly what is least true to outer reality but has substance that is real and is not necessarily true in the ordinary sense of the word. This substance of the fairy tale prepares him to find his way into the occult world.

In the fairy tale, there is something left to us humans that is like a grandchild of the clairvoyant experience of ancient human beings. It is within a form that is so lawful that no one who allows it to pour into his soul demands that its details accord with external reality. In fairy tale phantasy the poor boy, who has only a clever cat, has really also a palace obtruding directly into external reality. For every age, therefore, fairy tales can be a wonderful, spiritual nourishment. When we tell a child the right fairy tale, we enliven the child's soul so that it is led toward reality without always remaining glued to concepts true to everyday logic; such a relationship to reality dries up the soul and leaves it desolate. On the other hand, the soul can stay fresh and lively and able to penetrate the whole organism if, perceiving in the lawful figures of a fairy tale what is real in the highest sense of the word, it is lifted up far above the ordinary world. Stronger in life, comprehending life more vigorously, will be the person who in childhood has had fairy tales working their way into his soul.

For Capesius, fairy tales stimulate imaginative knowledge. What works and weaves from them into his soul is not their content, not their plot, but rather how they take their course, how one motif moves into the next. A motif may induce certain powers of soul to strive upward, a second motif persuades other powers to venture downward, still others will induce the soul forces to mingle and intertwine upward and downward. It is through this that Capesius' soul comes into active movement; out of his soul will then emerge what enables him finally to see into the spiritual world. For many people, a fairy tale can be more stimulating than anything else. We will find in those that originated in earlier times motifs that show elements of ancient clairvoyance. The first tales did not begin by someone thinking them out; only the theories of modern professors of folklore explaining fairy tales begin like that. Fairy tales are never thought out; they are the final remains of ancient clairvoyance, experienced in dreams by human beings who still had that power. What was seen in a dream was told as a story—for instance, “Puss in Boots,” one version of which I have just related. All the fairy tales in existence are thus the last remnants of that original clairvoyance. For this reason, a genuine fairy tale can be created only when—consciously or unconsciously—an imagination is present in the soul of the teller, an imagination that projects itself into the soul. Otherwise, it is not a true fairy tale. Any sort of thought-out tale can never be genuine. Here and there today, when a real fairy tale is created, it arises only because an ardent longing has awakened in the writer toward those ancient times mankind lived through so long ago. The longing exists, although sometimes it creeps into such secret soul crevices that the writer fails to recognize in what he can create consciously how much is rising out of these hidden soul depths, and also how much is disfigured by what he creates out of his modern consciousness.

Here I should like to point out the following. Nothing put into poetic form can actually ever be grounded in truth unless it turns essentially to such a longing—a longing that has to be satisfied and that longs for the ancient clairvoyant penetration into the world, or unless it can use a new, genuine clairvoyance that does not need to reveal itself completely but can flash up in the hidden depths of the soul, casting only a many-hued shadow. This relationship still exists. How many people today still feel the necessity of rhyme? Where there is rhyme, how many people feel how necessary it is? Today there is that dreadful method of reciting poetry that suppresses the rhyme as far as possible and emphasizes the meaning, that is, whatever accords with external reality. But this element of poetry—rhyme—belongs to the stage of the development of language that existed at the time when the aftereffects of the ancient clairvoyance still prevailed.

Indeed, the end-rhyme belongs to the peculiar condition of soul expressing itself since man entered upon his modern development through the culture of the intellectual or feeling soul (Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele). Actually, the time in which the intellectual or feeling soul arose in men in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch (747 B.C. to 1413 A.D.) is just the time when in poetry the memory dawned of earlier times that reach back into the ancient imaginative world. This dawning memory found its expression in the regular formation of the end- rhyme for what was lighting up in the intellectual or feeling soul; it was cultivated primarily by what developed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

On the other hand, wherever the culture of the fourth epoch had penetrated, there was an incomparable refreshment through the effects of Christianity and the Mystery of Golgotha. It was this that poured into the European sentient soul. In the northern reaches of Europe, the culture of the sentient soul had remained in a backward state, waiting for a higher stage, the intellectual soul culture that advanced from the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. This took place over the whole period of the fourth epoch and beyond, in order that what had developed in Central and Southern Europe, and in the Near East, could enter into the ancient sentient soul culture of Central Europe. There it could absorb the strength of will, the energy of will that comes to expression chiefly in the sentient soul culture. Thus, we see the end-rhyme regularly at home in the poetry of the South, and for the culture of the will that has already taken up Christianity, the other kind of rhyme—alliteration—as the appropriate mode of expression. In the alliterations of Northern and Central Europe we can feel the rolling, circling will pouring into the culture of the fourth epoch at its height, the culture of the intellectual or feeling soul.

It is astonishing that poets who want to bring to life, out of primeval soul forces in themselves, the memory of some primeval force in a particular sphere sometimes point back to the past in a quite haphazard fashion. This is the case with Wilhelm Jordan.³ In his Nibelungen he wished to renew the ancient alliterations, and he achieved a remarkable effect as he wandered about like a bard, trying to resurrect the old mode of expression. People did not quite know what to make of it, because nowadays, in this intellectual time of ours, they think of speech as an expression only of meaning. People listen for the content of speech, not the effect that the sentient soul wants to obtain with alliteration, or that the intellectual soul wants to achieve with the end-rhyme. The consciousness soul really can no longer use any kind of rhyme; a poet today must find other devices.

Fräulein von Sivers [Marie Steiner] will now let us hear a short example of alliteration that will characterize how the artist, Wilhelm Jordan, wished to bring about the renewal of ancient modes.

Und es nahten die Nomen, von niemand gesehen,
Zu geräuschlosem Reigen und machten die Runde
Um diese Verlobten. Ein leiser Lufthauch,
Das war die Meinung der Minneberauschten,
Winde sich murmelnd herein zum Kamine;
Doch hinunter zur Nachtwelt, zu Nibelheims Tiefen,
Und hinauf zu den Wolken zu Walhalls Bewohnern
Erklang nun für andere als irdische Ohren
Vernehmlich wie Seesturm der Nomen Gesang:

Dein eigen ist alles,
Dein Heil wie dein Unheil,
Dein Wollen und Wähnen,
Dein Sinnen und Sein.
Wohl kommen, gekettet
In ewige Ordnung
Die Larven des Lebens,
Die Scharen des Scheins.
Sie ziehen die Zirkel,
Sie zeigen die Ziele,
Sie impfen den Abscheu,
Sie wecken den Wunsch;
Doch dein ist das Dünken,
Und wie du geworden,
So wirst du dich wenden,
Wir wissen die Wahl.

Rough English Translation

And the Norns then came nearer but no one could see them;
In soft silent steps they circled and swayed
Around the Betrothed—who, burning with love,
Thought a breath of sweet air was blowing about them;
While down to the night-world, in Nibelheim's nethermost,
And high in the heav'ns to the hosts of Valhalla
The Norns sang their song, for other than earth-ears
As clear as the clamorous raging of sea storms:

All is thine own:
Thy healing or hating,
Desires or delusions,
Thy thought and thy life.
Chained will come, cheerless,
In order eternal,
The hosts of the hidden,
The Larva of Life.
They mark out their measures,
They forecast fulfillment,
They implant raging passion,
Awaken the will.
Yet thine is the thinking,
The fashioning, forming,
The testing and turning:
We challenge thy choice.

Wilhelm Jordan really did bring the alliteration to life when he recited his poetry, but it is something that a modern person no longer can relate to completely. In order to agree sympathetically with what Jordan proposed as a kind of platform for his intentions,⁴ one has to experience those ancient times imaginatively in those of the present. It is much like bringing to mind all the happenings of these last few days in our auditorium in the Architektenhaus during the Annual Meeting,⁵ and perceiving them shrouded in astral currents that make visible what was spoken there. Then one can also discover that what in these days repeatedly played into our efforts for knowledge and understanding is the pictorial expression of a Jordan idea; that is, one could rightly understand what he set up as a kind of program to revive a mood that had held sway in the old Germanic world:

... der Sprache Springquell ...
Bedarf nur der Leitung, um lauter und lieblich
Mit rauschendem Redestrom bis zum Rande
Der Vorzeit Gefäße wieder zu füllen
Und new zu verjüngen nach tausend Jahren
Die wundergewaltige uralte Weise
Der deutschen Dichtkunst.

(The source of speech requires only guidance to fill again to the brim the ancient vessels with rushing streams of verse, sonorous and beautiful; and after a thousand years to bring anew to life the wonder and the power of the ancient German art of poetry.)

But to attain this goal, an ear is needed that can perceive the sounds of speech. This belongs intrinsically to the imaginations of the ancient clairvoyant epoch, for it was then that the feeling for sounds originated. But what is a speech sound? It is itself an imagination, an imaginative idea.

As long as you say Licht (light) and Luft (air) and can think only of the brightness of the one and the wafting movement of the other, you have not yet an imagination. But the words themselves are imaginations. As soon as you can feel their imaginative power, you will perceive in a word like Licht, with the vowel sound “ee” predominating, a radiant, unbounded brightness; in Luft, with its vowel sound “oo,” a wholeness, an abundance. Because a ray of light is a thin fullness and the air an abundant fullness, the alliterating “I” expresses the family relationship of fullness. It is not unimportant whether you put together words that alliterate, such as Licht and Luft, or do not alliterate; it is not unimportant whether you string together the names of brothers or whether you put them together in such a way that the hearer or reader feels that cosmic will has brought them together, as in Gunther, Gemot, Giselher. Such an ancient imagination the sentient soul could perceive in the alliteration.

In the end-rhyme the intellectual soul could recognize itself as part of the ancient imagination. When language is made alive, its effects can be felt in the soul even into our dreams, where it can secrete certain imaginations for a person to become aware of in dream. These imaginations appear also to clairvoyance, correctly characterizing, for instance, the four elements. It does not always hold good, but if someone truly feels what, for example, Licht and Luft are, and lets this enter into a dream, there often blossoms out of the dream-fantasy something that can lead to a characterization of those elements, light and air. Human beings will not become aware of the secrets of language until it is led back to its origin, led back, in fact, to imaginative perception. Language actually originated in the time when man was not yet a “poor boy” but also when man had not yet a clever cat. In a way, he still lived attached to the Giant, imagination, and out of the Giant's limbs he was aware of the audible imagination imbuing each sound. When a tone is laid hold of by the imagination, then the sound originates, the actual sound of speech.

These are the things I wanted to bring to you today, in a rather unpretentious and disconnected way, in order to show how we must bring to life again what mankind once lost but that has been rescued for our time. Just as Capesius wins his way to it, we must win it back, so that human beings can grow rightly into the era just ahead of us and find their way into higher worlds, thus truly to participate in them.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, The Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit, Anthroposophic Press, Inc., Spring Valley, NY, 1971.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Inner Realities of Evolution, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1953.
• 3. Wilhelm Jordan (1819-1904), Nibelungen, Canto One, Sigfridsage.
• 4. In the 1925 German edition of this lecture there is the following footnote: “Translated into the language of spiritual science, one could say that Jordan wished instinctively to revive for the consciousness soul as poetry what the sentient soul had earlier developed quite naturally.”
• 5. December 10, 1911. Discussions took place on December 12, 14, 15.

In recent years it has been possible to speak in Swiss places about a highly significant topic in spiritual science, a topic that is fundamentally the highest for spiritual science: the Christ-problem. And if many people of the present time, who are quite outside the spiritual science movement, believe that this is basically the simplest topic that can be discussed, then from their point of view these people of the present time are right. What is greatest for the development of the earth and of humanity, the power of Christ, the Christ impulse, has certainly worked in such a way that the simplest, most naive mind can somehow understand it. But on the other hand, this impulse has worked in such a way that no earthly wisdom is sufficient to truly understand what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era, what happened for humanity and, in fact, for the whole world.

Now, in recent years, the Christ problem has been discussed, and perhaps I may point out in a few words that the German Section has just completed its first seven-year cycle. It was founded seven years ago; at that time there were few branches, hardly ten. Now the number has grown to over forty. The number seven is so often mentioned when we speak of anthroposophical wisdom and world view, and a certain lawfulness is also expressed in it, so that this development is taking place in seven successive cycles of time. We need only recall what we have already touched on here, the development of our earth; it is passing through seven planetary states. The law of seven also applies on a smaller scale, to every single fact of world evolution as well as to a movement such as the development of spiritual science. Those who look more deeply into our movement can see that in a certain respect this seven-year cycle has unfolded quite regularly, and that we are at a decisive point where what was laid seven years ago is repeated at a higher level and at the same time returns to itself in a cycle; but this could only happen because we really worked in a spiritual sense, that we did not work arbitrarily and randomly, but according to the law.

Then you remember that we distinguish seven aspects to the human being: first the physical body, then the etheric body, the astral body and the I; then, when the I reworks the astral body, the spirit self or manas arises; when it reworks the etheric body, the life spirit or buddhi arises; when it finally reworks the physical body, the highest link, the spirit man or atma, arises, so that we first distinguish four links and then three more, which arise as a transformation from the first three.

If you now want to implement something in the world so that a spiritual law is embodied in it, then this great law must be followed everywhere. If you, as a young branch, so to speak, want to enter into spiritual life in the appropriate way, it is good to see how the organization of the whole work has progressed. For the young branch will recognize that it is necessary to catch up on this process of development on its part, to follow it. We have followed this process exactly in the German movement: in the first four years we gathered together everything necessary to gain a concept of the world from which spiritual science begins. First of all, we presented the sevenfold nature of the human being, the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, the great cosmic laws, the evolution of Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the laws of the individual course of life, so that this is available in our literature and in various branch works. This was done in the first four years.

In the last three years, we have basically gained nothing new in any systematic way, but have instead planted the higher wisdoms in what has been achieved in the first four years, and have then ascended to the comprehension of the highest individuality that has walked our earth, the individuality of Christ Jesus - which we would not have been able to do if it had to be done with nothing but unknown ideas. We could only speak about Christ after we had spoken about the nature of man in general. We could only comprehend how this Christ event occurred if we understood human nature and its entire sequence of stages. Those who heard the lectures on the Gospel of Luke in Basel, and also the others who heard something here and there, know that very complicated processes took place. But how could it have been understood that, for example, something significant happened to one of the Jesus-boys in the twelfth year of his life if we had not known what actually takes place between the ages of twelve and fifteen? We prepared systematically and then, in deep reverence for the greatest truths of our earthly cycle, we tried to grasp what is associated with the name of Christ Jesus. It was like ascending to ever greater heights. Thus it came about that one could contemplate the Christ Jesus in connection with the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke. Even then in Basel it was emphasized that no one should believe that, having heard all the truths in connection with these two Gospels, he then knew what the nature and essence of that high spiritual entity is. He has learned this only from one side. One should not believe that it is unnecessary, or only like a renewal, to hear the truth from another side as well. The gospels are images of this great event, each evangelist presenting from a certain point of view what happened in Palestine.

Now, the day before yesterday in Bern, I demonstrated what is now happening in various branches. For very specific reasons, I tried to sketch out a reference to Christ in connection with the Gospel of Matthew. There are very specific reasons for this. Spiritual science should be a way of looking at life, not a theory or a doctrine; it should transform our innermost soul life. We are to learn to look at the world in a new way. And there is a quality that we must acquire, that man acquires more and more, learns more and more, precisely through the wisdom of anthroposophy. There is no single word in any language that properly describes this quality, but spiritual science will still find the word for this new feeling of the heart. And until then we can only use the word that is there for this quality: humble modesty is what is to take ever deeper root in our soul, especially with regard to those documents that, as gospels, bring us tidings of that most significant event in the evolution of the earth. For there we learn that basically we can only approach very slowly the truths and wisdoms that are necessary to fathom the Christ-problem. We learn to develop a completely different feeling in us than that which today's people have, who are so quickly finished with their judgment of the event. We learn to be careful in presenting the truth, and we know that when we have considered it from any one side, we only perceive one side, never the whole at once.

This is connected with the fact – and only gradually will we gain an understanding of it – why there are four Gospels at all. Today, the fact of the matter is that even theology is intellectual, materialistic, and that the intellect, when applied merely to the four documents, will compare them externally. And that is when contradictions are perceived. First of all, the Gospel of John was examined. What it presents to the intellect, they say, is so contrary to the other three Gospels that the best way to understand this Gospel is to say that the writer did not want to describe real events, but wanted to present a kind of hymn, a kind of confession, a rendering of his feelings. In the Gospel of John, one sees a great, comprehensive poem, and thus it is dismissed as having no documentary value. But only the external, materialistic mind does this. Then the other three Gospels are considered. Certain contradictions are also found there; but these are explained by the fact that the Gospels were written at different times. In short, people today are well on the way to picking these documents about the great event apart, so that they no longer mean anything to humanity. But spiritual science is called upon to show why we have four different documents about the event in Palestine and to reconquer these documents for spiritual science. Why are there four documents?

People have not always thought as they do today. There were times when the Gospels were not in the hands of everyone, but only of very few people, precisely those who were in charge of spiritual life in the first centuries of Christianity. Why do people today not ask themselves: Were these people not complete fools that they did not see that the Gospels contradict each other? Or were they so benighted that they did not see these contradictions? The best of their age accepted these documents in such a way that they looked up humbly and were glad that we have four gospels, of which today's people say they cannot be documents because they contradict each other!

Now, without dwelling on this any longer, we want to draw attention to how the Gospels were received in the first centuries of Christianity, and how they must be received. They were received in those times in such a way that one can compare it to this: If we take a photograph of the bouquet of flowers standing here from four sides, we get four photographs. If we look at them individually, they differ from each other, but if you look at a photograph like this, you can get an idea of the bouquet. Now someone comes along and takes a photograph from a different side. You compare the two pictures and find: Yes, these are two completely different pictures ; they cannot represent the same thing. And yet, one will then have a more complete picture of it; and only when one has taken pictures of the bouquet from four sides and compares all four pictures with each other, will one obtain a complete picture of the real bouquet. — So one has to take the four Gospels as characterizing the same fact from four different sides.

Why is the same fact now characterized from four different sides? Because it was known that each of the writers of these Gospels was imbued with a great, modest humility, a humility that told him: This is the greatest event of earthly evolution; you dare not fully describe it, but you may only describe the side that you, according to your knowledge, are able to describe. In humble modesty, the writer of the Gospel of Luke refrained from describing any other side than the one that was close to him because of his special spiritual education, which told him that Christ Jesus was the one individuality in whom the greatest development of love lived, a love to the point of sacrifice. How does this love reveal itself? The writer of the Gospel of Luke describes it, saying to himself: I am unable to describe the whole event; therefore I will limit myself to describing only this aspect, this love.

We can only understand this limitation of the Gospel writers to a particular area if we gain a little insight into the initiation process of the ancient mystery service. Only from this point of view can we understand the attitude of the Evangelists. They know that initiation is the leading of human beings to the higher, supersensible worlds, the living into the higher, supersensible worlds, the awakening of the soul powers, the awakening of those powers and abilities that otherwise remain hidden and slumber in the soul. Such initiations have always existed. In pre-Christian times, the ancient mysteries of the Egyptians and Chaldeans existed, in which people who were ready were led up into the higher worlds. Only there the work was done in a very special way, in a way that can no longer be fully carried out today. Today, as you know, human beings have three soul powers: thinking, feeling and willing. In everyday life, the human being applies these three soul forces in such a way that they are all three active, so to speak, in his dealings with the outside world.

An example will make clear how these three soul powers are active. You are walking across a meadow. You see a flower. You form an idea about it: you think. You like the flower: you feel that the flower is beautiful; feeling has joined with thinking. And then you desire to pick the flower: you thus activate the will. Thus thinking, feeling and willing were active in your soul. And now survey the whole life of man: insofar as it is soul life, it is a confusion of thinking, feeling and willing. And man gets through life by these three forces interacting. The soul lives in thinking, feeling and willing.

When a person is led up into the higher worlds, this is an expression of these three powers as they are in ordinary life. One can develop thinking higher, so that it becomes vision. And in this way one can also raise feeling and willing into the spiritual world. This is what initiation consists of.

Those who have looked around a bit in “How to Know Higher Worlds” will have read about what happens when a person develops thinking, feeling and willing up into the spiritual worlds. What is called “splitting of the personality” occurs. The three forces are usually organically connected: a person thinks, feels and wills in one personality. But in the process of evolution upward into the higher worlds, these three powers are torn apart. While they are otherwise powers, they now become independent entities when man evolves upward into the higher worlds. Three independent entities arise: a thinking, a feeling and a willing entity. This is what is meant by the danger that man's soul life could be torn apart. If a person does not proceed in the right way when treading the path of higher knowledge, it may happen that he raises his thinking to the higher regions. Then he may indeed see into the higher worlds, but he stops there; he can kill the will, or it can take quite different paths. Today it happens that the I rises above itself, that the I can become a ruler, that it can reign as king over the three soul powers, namely over thinking, feeling and willing.

In ancient times this was not the case. In the pre-Christian mystery schools, the principle of division of labor prevailed. For example, a person was accepted into the initiation sites and it was said: This person is particularly suited to develop the power of thinking. - Then his thinking was developed, raised to a higher level; he was made a sage who sees through the spiritual connections that lie behind all sensual events. That was one category of initiates from the ancient mystery sites: the sages.

Other people were trained in the mystery schools in such a way that the forces of feeling slumbering in them were developed higher, while thinking and willing were left at their original level. Feeling was thus elevated. When a person's feeling is particularly developed, he acquires special qualities. There is an essential difference between a person whose feeling had been developed in an ancient mystery center and a person of today. The influence of such a developed person, the soul-psychic influence, was much stronger than it is today. This development of the powers of feeling meant that the soul of such a person could exert a powerful influence on the souls of those around him. Thus those who had particularly developed the sphere of feeling became the healers of their fellow human beings. By developing their feeling through the sacrificial service, they were called upon to have a healing effect on other people.

The third level of initiates were those in whom the will had been developed. These were the magicians. Thus there were three types of initiates: the magicians, the healers and the wise. These were people who received their training in the mystery schools of antiquity. Today it would no longer be possible to develop one of these qualities in a one-sided way because today it is no longer possible to achieve such a high degree of harmony between individuals as was possible in the mystery schools of antiquity. Those who were wise in the ancient mystery schools, so to speak, renounced it. That is how it is. Those who were healers carried out the instructions of the wise with the greatest obedience, renounced higher wisdom, and used their powers of feeling as directed by the wise.

Besides these, there was still a fourth category of people in the mystery temples. These were necessary. There were cases in these temples where it was not possible for the three categories of initiates to have the right effect in the outside world. Some things could not be done by the initiate of one of these three categories, but only by the presence of a fourth category of people. This consisted in admitting certain individuals who were suitable for it into the mystery centres and saying to themselves: those high degrees of initiation that can be developed in the wise men, healers and magicians cannot be developed in the people of this fourth category. But one could go so far with them that one could raise each individual ability of the other three categories to a certain degree. No ability was as strongly developed as in the one-sidedly developed initiates who were sages, healers or magicians; but in return, a certain harmony of all three qualities was present in this fourth. Such an initiate represents in himself the harmony of the other three initiates. And now it is necessary for certain tasks to abandon all sense of one's own individuality and to rely entirely on the word of someone who is in a certain respect inferior to oneself. So there were cases in the ancient mystery schools where neither the wise nor the healers nor the magicians made the decisions, but they simply placed their powers at the service of those who were not as advanced as they were. Nevertheless, they placed their powers at the service of this fourth initiate. It always turned out that world evolution progressed better when the higher one obeyed the lower one in such cases.

This was the case in the Oriental mystery centers, where those of higher station applied their powers as the fourth one directed, whom they obeyed blindly. In the mystery centers of Europe there were colleges of twelve who were initiated, and at the head of them was a thirteenth who was not initiated; they obeyed him. Whatever should happen, he should indicate. He relied on his instinctive will and the others, who were higher than he, carried out what he indicated. You can only understand this if you look back to those times when there was still great trust in a being in the world that was not bound to human thinking and willing. Today man considers himself to be the cleverest being in the world. But it was not always so. There were times when man said to himself: Yes, it is actually true that I can develop to a high level. I have the ability to do so, but I must not assume that just now I am already the creature in the world that has progressed furthest in its development.

We can see from a simple example that this is a truth. Let us remember that it was only in the course of historical development that people gradually invented paper, namely, that activity by which certain substances are formed into paper. The wasp has been able to do this for a long time! Now man would have to say to himself: I had to acquire my knowledge only at a relatively late time. The wasp could not have learned its art from man; divine art rules in its ability. In what the wasp does, it is interwoven with divine wisdom.

Similar feelings inspired such initiates, who came together in groups of twelve in pre-Christian times. They said to themselves: “We have certainly developed great powers within us, but with all our powers and abilities we achieve only that which is prescribed at a lower level in less developed individualities by higher divine beings.” They look to a thirteenth, who, in comparison to them, had remained at a childlike, naive level. They said: He does not have human wisdom within him as we do, but he is still imbued with divine wisdom. The oriental wise men, healers and magicians also said: We follow the one who is not as far along as we are, but who is at a stage where he still has divine wisdom within him. This renunciation spread like a magic breath over the ancient mysteries that had known this. And now you will remember Goethe's poem “The Mysteries”, where a thirteenth member is introduced into the circle of important men, Brother Mark. Here we have an apparition that is deeply rooted in human nature, even if it is far removed from today's man, consisting in the fact that an initiate of the fourth category, who does not reach such a high level through the development of his own powers as the others do, is nevertheless so respected that he leads the other twelve.

We therefore have four types of initiates: healers, sages, magicians and the fourth type, which was called “human being” in a special sense. Four such initiates set out to describe the greatest event in the evolution of the earth: a sage, a healer, a magician and a human being in the sense of the initiates of the fourth category. One described it from the standpoint of the ordinary man, one is the magician who had a special understanding of the willpower of the Christ and enshrined it in his Gospel, and one is the healer who wrote the Gospel of Luke. That is why you find the tradition in which Luke is seen as a physician, and that also corresponds to the facts that Luke stands by his fellow human beings in sacrificial love. Then there is a wise man who has written what constitutes the wisdom of the nature of Christ.

These are the four initiates who, renouncing to describe the whole, said to themselves: We can only describe what is close to our soul. Indeed, the humble modesty of these four people, who refrained from giving the whole picture of Christ, but only what they could see, could perceive according to their particular individuality, appears as something lofty and powerful compared to the consciousness of today's man, who does not doubt that he can grasp even the highest things with his intellect in every respect.

Having already examined two sides of this momentous event in Basel in the lectures on the Gospels of Luke and John, today I would like to say a few words about the Gospel of Matthew. We could just as easily link to the Gospel of Mark. But there are certain reasons why I have chosen to describe this great event from a spiritual point of view after taking over, and why I have now chosen the Gospel of Matthew after the Gospels of Luke and John. The reason for this is that one should develop a feeling for how to approach the understanding of this world event in humble modesty. We learn great truths in the Gospel of Luke and in the Gospel of John. But what we encounter in the Gospel of Mark is so harrowing in part that if one has not yet heard the various things that tie in with the Gospel of Matthew, one would, so to speak, believe that there are profound contradictions between the Gospel of Mark and the other Gospels. One would not be able to cope with the Gospel of Mark, because it is in this gospel that the greatest, the most harrowing truths of the world are communicated; not the highest, these are contained in the Gospel of John. Therefore, today I will speak about the Gospel of Matthew.

In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we saw that the most diverse spiritual currents in the world merged to form a common stream at the time of the Christ event. It has been shown how, on the one hand, the teaching of compassion and love from the Buddha flows into Christianity; and on the other hand, it has been shown how the teaching of Zarathustra has flowed into Christianity. But all pre-Christian spiritual currents have also flowed into this significant event. And the Gospel of Matthew shows particularly how the ancient Hebrew spiritual current, the spiritual current of ancient Judaism, has flowed into it, so that in order to understand the Gospel of Matthew, one must speak of the actual mission of the ancient Jewish people.

As you know, spiritual research draws not only from the Gospels, but also from the spiritual world, from the imperishable Akasha Chronicle. If all the Gospels had been lost due to some cataclysm on earth, what spiritual research has to say about the events in Palestine could still be said from the pure sources available to spiritual research. When we have this from the pure sources available to spiritual research, we compare it with the great records, the Gospels, and then that wonderful agreement appears, which instills in us a great reverence for the Gospels, to which we look, and from which it becomes clear to us what high source they must come from. For the writers of the Gospels tell us what we can only understand if we are schooled in the way spiritual science gives us to look.

What is the mission of the Hebrew people? To understand this, we must look back a little on the course of human development. You know that human abilities have developed. Only materialistic science, which sees no further than the tip of its nose, believes that these human abilities have developed by themselves. At the most, it still believes that humanity has developed from animality, but it is not able to go back to real soul abilities. Spiritual science, however, knows that the soul abilities thousands of years ago were different from today. Thus, in ancient times, people had what is called a dull, dim clairvoyance. It was only in later times that today's consciousness gradually emerged from this clairvoyance; and this development began at a very specific point in time, when this kind of imagination began to affect humanity.

If we look back to ancient Indian culture, we find a kind of clairvoyance there. Today's man must look at the things around him if he wants to get to know them. The ancient Indian did not get to know things in the way he looks at them now. There was no science like the one taught to children today. A wise man in ancient India received his knowledge through inner inspiration when he turned his inner self completely away from the outer world, when he rested in himself or in his higher being. He called this his union with Brahma. He thus received the knowledge through inner inspiration. It was knowledge based entirely on clairvoyant inspiration. External knowledge, on the other hand, was maya for him.

But this clairvoyance increasingly receded. Even in the ancient Persian culture there was a strong admixture of external observation, even if inner knowledge still prevailed. Similarly, in the third cultural epoch, inner inspiration was still present, even though people had already progressed in grasping external things. In ancient Chaldea, there was what is called astrology today; it was a kind of star science. Today, in the outer sciences, no one knows anything about the essence of astrology. Today, no matter how closely you examine the stone records, you know nothing about the actual essence of astrology. No one today can evoke the feeling that astrology evoked for the ancient Chaldeans. It was not knowledge born of observation of the starry heavens. The Chaldean did not study the physical planet Mars by turning his gaze up to it, but what was known of it by inwardly allowing the clairvoyantly inspired knowledge to shine forth. This is not an external process of combining, and there is no full awareness of what this knowledge reveals about the outer space of the heavens. In the ancient places of initiation, only the first concepts of knowledge of the world of the stars arose. In what is communicated there about the evolution of the Earth and the connections between the Earth and Mars, and so on, we still have knowledge born out of the inner being. Similarly, Egyptian geometry was knowledge born out of the inner being and applied only to the measurement of the outer field. It was only through the development of other powers that the ancient Chaldeans were able to arrive at external knowledge. This mission of bringing humanity to an external, combining knowledge was assigned by the spiritual leaders of world evolution to the Hebrew people. All the knowledge of the Indians, the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, however significant it was, did not require a physical brain. This knowledge was stored in the etheric body, which is not bound to the physical brain and functions freely. When man works freely in the etheric body, the picture arises that constitutes the knowledge of those ancient peoples; just as even today all clairvoyant knowledge arises when man is able to lift the etheric body out of the physical body, not to use his physical brain.

Mankind should acquire the ability to perceive through its brain. For this purpose, the personality had to be chosen that had the most suitable brain, that was least predisposed to clairvoyant inspiration, but that could use the brain. Here we have another point where reading the Akasha Chronicle confirms the facts of the Bible. What is written in the Bible is correct to the letter. Indeed, a personality had been chosen who, by virtue of her physical organization, had the most suitable brain to establish what made spiritual work possible through the brain. This personality was Abraham. He was chosen to fulfill that mission which was to enable people to perceive the outside world through their physical brain. It was a personality that was least likely to have any kind of inspiration, but who logically explored the external phenomena in terms of measure, number and weight. An older tradition regards Abraham as the inventor of mathematics, and it has more right than today's outer world-sense.

Now it is important that this mission be properly introduced into the world. Let us consider how a mission was transmitted in the past. How was it propagated in humanity? It was transmitted from teacher to pupil. He who had an inspiration transmitted it to his successor. But that which was transmitted to the ancient Hebrew people was bound to a physical tool that could not simply be passed on to descendants if they did not have the appropriate brain. Therefore, it had to be bound to physical inheritance, had to be inherited through generations. It was not a group of disciples that followed Abraham, but a people to whom this brain could be inherited through generations. Therefore, Abraham became the progenitor of his people.

It is wonderful to see from the Bible how the leading spiritual powers entrusted this mission to Abraham. What was to be given to humanity through the mission of Abraham? What had been known earlier through inspiration was to be rediscovered; it was now to be achieved again through mere combination on a different level. Through this, what had been found through combination had to be modeled according to the law. Therefore, Yahweh said: This mission should be an image of the highest lawfulness that we know. He said: Your descendants shall be organized as the number of stars in the sky. It is a complete misunderstanding to translate this passage from the Bible as if Yahweh had said that Abraham's descendants should be as numerous as the stars in the sky, but that they should reproduce in a lawful manner, so that the lawfulness is expressed as the lawfulness of the firmament.

Abraham had a son Isaac and a grandson Jacob. We see how the twelve tribes of the Jewish people descended from him. These twelve tribes are a reproduction of the lawfulness of the twelve signs of the zodiac. A new organization of the people was to be ordered in Abraham like the stars in the sky. So we see how spiritual science extracts the real meaning from the documents of the Bible, and there we get a correct idea of this deepest document of humanity. What is old clairvoyance should be renounced. No longer should existence take place in such a way that one keeps one's gaze averted from the outer world, but man's gaze should penetrate and search the outer world. But this mission was a gift that was to come to mankind from outside. Abraham had the mission to pass on the ability of the brain to his descendants. It was to be a gift, and so we see that Abraham receives all the Jewish people as a gift. What could a spiritual power have given to Zarathustra? A teaching, something one-sidedly spiritual; but to Abraham there had to be a gift of his people, a real gift based on the reproduction of the physical brain. How were these people given to him? By his willingness to sacrifice his son. If he had done that, there would have been no Jewish people. By receiving his son back, he received the entire Jewish people as a gift from outside. In the moment when Abraham receives back Isaac, whom he was supposed to sacrifice, he receives the entire Jewish people, his descendants, back as a gift. This is a gift from Yahweh to Abraham. And so the last of the gifts of clairvoyance was also given. The individual gifts of clairvoyance are divided into twelve, and they are represented by the twelve constellations, for they are gifts of heaven. The last of these gifts of clairvoyance was sacrificed by Abraham in order to receive the people of Israel. The ram that Abraham sacrificed in place of his son is the image of the last of the gifts of clairvoyance. Thus the Jewish people received the mission to develop the ability to combine, to get to know world phenomena through their own abilities, which are contained in the brain, to a certain unity, which is presented as Jahve. And this mission is so exacting that everything inherited from the earlier form of perception is eliminated from the Jewish people, namely, the old form of clairvoyance. Joseph still had dreams of the old clairvoyant kind. He still used the old form of clairvoyance; but he was cast out of the community because the Jewish people had the mission to eliminate this old ability of clairvoyance from its development. And so Joseph is sent away. But this makes him the mediator between the Jewish people and that which they must accept in order to fulfill their cultural mission. Abraham's sons had renounced the inspiration that comes from within; so they had to receive from without what would otherwise have come to them as inspiration, as a message from within. When they are led to Egypt, they receive it through Moses, they who are now the missionaries of external physical thinking. What the other peoples have received through inspiration, they now receive from outside as law. It is indeed the case that what we call the Ten Commandments is the same as what other people have received through inner inspiration. From Egypt, through Moses, the Jews received from outside as commandments what should actually have been heavenly inspirations.

After receiving the inspirations from Egypt, this people settled in Palestine. This nation was destined to give birth to the one bearer of the Christ out of its own ranks. These qualities, handed down from generation to generation, were to produce the physical body of Jesus; therefore all the abilities that were present in Abraham in the first instance must add up. The entire Jewish nation had to mature and develop to such an extent that what was present in Abraham as an inclination was brought to its highest peak in one descendant. To understand this, we must draw a comparison with the development of an individual human being. During the first seven years, it is mainly the physical body that develops. From the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year, i.e. in the second cycle of life, it is the etheric body that develops, then the astral body; only then does the I emerge. What is present first as a predisposition only comes out when these three bodies have developed. This also applies to an entire nation. The Abraham predisposition first had to be incorporated into the physical, etheric and astral bodies before it could be taken up by the ego. We have to divide the development of the Jewish people into three epochs. What takes seven years in the development of an individual human being is spread over seven generations in the development of a nation. Or, as you know, in inherited traits a son does not resemble his father so much as his grandfather. Therefore, two times seven, or fourteen generations, are actually necessary to allow a people to mature, which unfolds in an individual human being between birth and the change of teeth. Fourteen generations developed the qualities that were present in Abraham in his physical body; fourteen more generations in the etheric body and fourteen more in the astral body. Only then was it possible to allow such a human being to mature as was needed by the Christ-being.

This is described by Matthew in the first chapter of his Gospel, where he says that from Abraham to David fourteen generations passed, from David to the Babylonian captivity fourteen more generations, and from there to Jesus fourteen further generations, thus three times fourteen or six times seven generations had to pass. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew based his book on this profound wisdom. That which was Abraham's specific mission was also to flow into the body of Christ Jesus; but this could only happen through the succession of generations in a lawful manner. Then this child Jesus, who derived from Abraham through forty-two generations, was able to complete the mission of the patriarch. Matthew describes to us the wonderful lawfulness with which this happened.

When a cycle of development is complete, a brief repetition of the earlier facts at a higher level must take place, and indeed we find this repetition wonderfully described in the Gospel of Matthew. Abraham comes from Ur in Chaldea, migrates to Canaan, then goes to Egypt and back to Canaan again. That is his journey. The reborn Zarathustra was incarnated six centuries before our era as a great teacher of the Chaldean mystery schools under the name Zarathos. That was his last incarnation before he was reborn in Jesus. Now he walks the same path that Abraham came by. He starts from roughly the same place that Abraham began his journey. And in the spiritual world he also follows the route that Abraham took, all the way to Bethlehem. So the path that Abraham covered physically is taken spiritually by Zarathustra. And the successors of those who were his students six hundred years ago follow him again in the star that shows them the way to Bethlehem. They retrace the steps of Zarathustra as he takes incarnation. Then he arrives there and is reborn in Canaan.

In the Old Testament, we see Joseph being led to Egypt as a result of a dream; now we see another Joseph being led to Egypt physically as a result of a dream. And so the boy is physically led back to where the Jewish people await the Redeemer. The ancient Jewish people also received food from Joseph during the famine in Egypt. If you draw on a map the same route taken by the Magi, and further compare the route that Joseph, the son of Jacob, was led to Egypt with that traveled by the Solomonic Christ Child, you will find that the corresponding routes are almost exactly the same. There are some slight deviations, but these are due to different circumstances. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew describes the route so precisely.

It is precisely from such facts, which we can know even if all the written Gospels were to be lost, that we get the great reverence for the Gospels. Mankind could come to ever higher truths and achieve ever greater wisdom, of which perhaps very little is suspected even today; and when, after millions of years, we know much, much more about the mighty event, we can also draw this wisdom from the Gospels. This, again, is a piece that can lead us further to an understanding of the Christ event. Just as the teaching of Buddha and of Zarathustra, so also the nature of the Hebrew people has been incorporated into the nature of Christ Jesus. All that had appeared on earth before was reborn in a higher form through Christianity. All that was previously on earth in the way of spiritual culture came to earth through the great leader of earthly development, 'Christ, who sent to earth those to whom he had first given the mission of preparing on earth what he had to do. He was still in the heights of heaven and sent the messengers down. And they, the great founders of religions, had to prepare people for his coming. The last of these messengers was the Buddha, who brought the teaching of compassion and love. But there were other Bodhisattvas before, and after Christ there will be other Bodhisattvas who will have to expand what came to earth through Christ Jesus.

It will be good if people listen to the Bodhisattvas who come afterwards, because they are his servants. Every time a Bodhisattva appears in the future, for example after three thousand years, people will understand the Christ, who outshines everything, a little better. Christ is the one who is the deepest essence, and the others are there so that Christ may be better understood. Therefore, we say that Christ has sent the bodhisattvas before to prepare humanity for him; and he sends them after so that the greatest act of earth evolution can be better and better understood. We are only at the beginning of our comprehension of this Entity, and the more Sages and Bodhisattvas come to earth, the better we shall understand the Christ. Through all this wisdom that is pouring down upon the earth, we shall be able to recognize the Christ more fully.

So we stand on earth as seeking human beings. We have begun to struggle to understand the Christ. We have applied what we have recognized about him and will apply everything the bodhisattvas teach in the future to better understand the Master of all bodhisattvas, the center of our system. In this way, humanity will become ever wiser and will come to know the Christ ever better. However, it will only understand him fully when the last of the Bodhisattvas has done his duty and brought the teaching that is necessary to enable us to grasp the deepest essence of earthly existence, the Christ Jesus.

In the preceding lecture we studied the principles and powers in the being of man belonging specifically to Earth-existence. Certain forces operating in human nature are, in reality, “heritages” from the earlier embodiments of the Earth: from the Old Saturn period, the Old Sun period and the Old Moon period. These heritages from primeval epochs of evolution are contained in the physical body, the ether-body and the astral body of the earthly human being; but it is the Earth, the forces deriving actually from the Earth, that have made the physical body into the instrument of man's present form of consciousness. The ether-body has received, specifically from the Earth, the qualities whereby it becomes the bearer of the memory, the instrument of remembrance. The astral body itself developed during the Old Moon period of evolution—the planetary predecessor of the Earth—and the Earth adds the forces which provide for the operation of human karma. But something else exists as an activity, an expression of the human personality, something specifically connected with the “ I ” in man which has been acquired only during Earth-evolution. Waking consciousness, memory and remembrance, the operation of karma—these were the active principles added to the physical-, ether- and astral-bodies in that man was endowed with the “ I.” We said that the forces of the “ I ” are sent outwards, towards the outer spiritual world, and that these forces, unlike those inhering in karma, or in memory, do not remain inexorably bound up with the human being. A man's memories and remembrances remain part of him; his consciousness, obviously, has significance only for him, for other beings have quite different forms of consciousness; and karma is bound up with the human being in so far as it has to operate during the earthly incarnations to adjust and make compensation for his deeds. But “forms” or “forces” begotten of thoughts or feelings—these detach themselves from the real “ I ” of man, and in a certain respect acquire independent existence, independent reality. Unlike the other forces, they do not remain connected with him.

Now in respect of the forms or forces deriving from the “ I ” of man, a sharp distinction must be made. The human “ I ” or Ego can unfold either selfishness or selflessness in the inner life. According to whether selfishness, or selfless love and compassion are unfolded, these “forces” or “forms” operate quite differently. The forces of selfish thoughts become forces of disturbance, even of destruction; they pass into the spiritual world actually as destructive forces. On the other hand, all forces of selfless thoughts enter into the spiritual life of Earth-evolution, not as destructive but as upbuilding, constructive forces. In that these forces of selfless thought detach themselves as it were from the “ I ” of man, they leave behind certain traces in him. Especially is it true of forces begotten of selfless thoughts and feelings, that as they go forth from the “ I,” they leave traces behind in the human being—traces which are quite perceptible. The more the “ I ” sends out forces born of selfless thoughts and feelings, the more does a man develop individuality of form, of gesture, facial expression, and so on—in short, the power inherent in his own being. The forces of selfish, self-seeking thoughts and feelings, however, operate in him in such a way that he has little power to give expression to his own individuality. We must therefore ask: What is the principle underlying the distinction to be made among the individual forms of men in the course of the evolution of humanity?

Everything that is “form” on the Earth derives from the Spirits of Form. The name “Spirits of Form” is actually given to these Beings of the Higher Hierarchies because everything that has form, shape, life—everything that takes on shape inwardly and evolves an outer form, has received the essential impetus for this form from the “Spirits of Form.” Now all these Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are involved in a constant process of evolution. Not only man, but in a certain sense all the Beings of the different Hierarchies are involved in a constant process of evolution. In our present age, the Spirits of Form are moving to the higher rank of “Spirits of Movement”; the “Spirits of Personality” to that of “Spirits of Form; the “Archangeloi” to that of “Spirits of Personality” or “Archai.” As the Spirits of Form move upwards in rank they no longer function, in the primary sense, as “Spirits of Form,” but the succeeding Spirits of Personality do not, at once, assume the functions of Spirits of Form. This will help you to understand that something quite definite will come about during the second half of the period of Earth-evolution into which we have now passed. At the beginning of Earth-evolution, the Spirits of Form stamped the principle of form into man; this comes to expression in the different human forms. Just as the various races have developed their characteristic qualities, and individual human beings take on the traits of the several races, so have the various groups of humanity as a whole all over the Earth received their stamp from the Spirits of Form. What the Spirits of Form stamped into human beings has long since passed into the processes of heredity; it has long since become a heritage, handed down from generation to generation. In a sense, the Spirits of Form leave man greater freedom as they themselves move into a higher category and withdraw from the form-creating function devolving upon them at the beginning of Earth-evolution. So far as the Beings of the Hierarchies are concerned, man is drawing nearer and nearer to his “coming of age.” But of this we must be clear—The Spiritual Beings, moving up as they do to higher ranks, have themselves to evolve, and prepare for the next planetary condition of the Earth, in order that during the Jupiter-existence they may endow the beings who once belonged to the Earth with forms which will then be appropriate. Towards the end of a planetary age it is always the case that the being of central importance—and on the Earth this is man—is left free, so that the qualities with which he was originally endowed may pass more freely into his own hands. In the course of Earth-evolution in the future, therefore, the forces of form, the forms begotten by thoughts and feelings, will assume greater and greater importance. And in so far as they are selfless, in so far as they are the offspring of selfless wisdom, selfless love, these forces will work formatively upon man. For the design or pattern of the evolutionary process may be indicated in the following way. The further we go back into the past, the more do we find that the outer form of the child resembles that of its forefathers; but the further we go into the future, the more will the human being, in his outward appearance, become an expression of the individuality who passes on from one incarnation to another. This means that in one and the same family (even now it is very frequently the case and nobody with an eye for such things will deny it) there will be less and less likeness between the faces of the children and between the faces of the children and between the other parts of the human figure, for the reason that the forms will no longer be the expression of family or race, but more and more the expression of the individuality. Anyone with a knowledge of Spiritual Science, if he really observes human beings living all over the Earth, can perceive, even today, side by side with the inherited characteristics of race or family, more and more strongly individual lineaments of face, head, and other bodily forms; he can perceive the striking differences in form and figure among members of one and the same family. In this respect, of course, we are in a period of transition; but the Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch is in preparation, together with its paramount characteristic, namely, that unlike the conditions obtaining in earlier periods of culture, outer marks of race will be much less of a criterion. In the Sixth epoch the criterion all over the Earth will be the extent to which the individuality has impressed upon his countenance and upon the whole of his being, the forces left behind by the forms begotten of selfless thoughts and feelings—especially those deriving from wisdom.

It is contrary to every principle of true Spiritual Science to say that just as there was one leading race in each of the culture-epochs in the past, so in the future, too, there will be another such race, distinguished by physical attributes. The ancient Indian culture was borne and sustained by a leading race; so, too, was the culture of ancient Persia, of the Egypto-Chaldean and Graeco-Latin epochs. But already today it is apparent that culture, instead of being borne by one specific leading race, spreads over all races. And it is by Spiritual Science that culture—a spiritual culture—must be carried over the whole Earth, without distinction of race or blood. It is already apparent that our epoch will be succeeded by another of quite a different character, an epoch when, all over the Earth, the extent to which a man expresses his innermost being in his outer form, will be made manifest. It would be sheer contradiction of every principle of Spiritual Science to speak today of continental limits, or the limits of any particular territory, in connection with human beings belonging to the Sixth epoch of culture—for they, in the future, will be spread over the whole Earth. Only one whose vantage-point is not that of Spiritual Science, who has some queer bee in his bonnet that a kind of wheel revolving in spiritual evolution causes everything to repeat itself just as spring, summer, autumn and winter repeat themselves when a year has run its course—only such a one could make the statement that what was necessary for the creation of races in earlier times will simply be repeated for the Sixth epoch. Such a statement would be entirely at variance with true Spiritual Science, and would cut across all knowledge of the actual and real progress of humanity. The inner power of the soul becomes more and more manifest as evolution goes forward. The old is not repeated merely in slightly different form, but actual progress takes place in the evolution of humanity. If Theosophy is to keep faith with its good old principles—the first of which is to promote culture without distinction of race, colour, and so forth, it will not cherish groundless hopes of a future culture emanating from one particular race. The deeper connection of Theosophy with the actual course of evolution consists precisely in this:—that the processes operating in world-evolution are understood, that thinking and feeling are brought into harmony with theosophical knowledge, and the necessary impulses of will made effective in the world. In order to understand how the power of the soul will more and more be made manifest in humanity, it is only necessary to bring out one point clearly, and then we shall realise how the human being evolves as an individual. (The point that has been developed today has been dealt with repeatedly, for many years.¹).

At the beginning of Earth-evolution, the human being was part of a group-soul—as expressed in race, blood, family and so on—to a far greater extent than was the case later on. As evolution continues he becomes more and more of an individual, develops his individuality. We have heard what an important part certain forces play in the development of the individuality during Earth-evolution: consciousness that is dependent on the physical body; memory and remembrance which are dependent upon the ether-body; and karma, whereby a man can make real progress, in that his imperfections and faults do not remain but can be overcome by him as he passes through one incarnation after another. But the “forms” or “forces” created by thoughts and feelings, although they detach themselves from the human being and lead an independent existence, are nevertheless closely united with him, in that they leave vestiges behind; these vestiges, as they are sent out by the “ I ”, contribute to the definition of the individuality and man gradually divests himself of the qualities belonging to the group-soul. The trend which will become more and more general over the globe and will form the essential, fundamental character of the Sixth epoch of culture, is no kind of approach to a new group-soul, but far rather the laying aside of the attributes of the group-soul. Intimately connected with this is the fact that the spiritual guidance of human beings will become more and more a matter individual to each one; they will have greater inner freedom in this respect.

Anyone who has understood the trend of the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind will realise that a movement in this direction is in very truth taking place in the human race. It is a fact that in ancient times men lived under external leaders and teachers, but even in those days, leadership was gradually becoming an inner concern. Just as the outer form becomes an expression of the Individuality, so does the path to the spiritual worlds taken by human beings become more and more their individual concern. It is the duty of those who have insight into the signs of the times to insist that human beings have not remained stationary at an earlier stage of development, that the forces once employed, cannot be repeated in the same form, simply because men have gone forward in their evolution. In the age that is coming, the souls of men will become more and more mature, able to discern and perceive those things of which Spiritual Science teaches today.

The “Mystery of Golgotha,” as the essential Christ Event, was an outer happening, striking into the physical world; a future Christ Event will be an inner concern, inasmuch as the soul of man has been so quickened by the first Christ Event that in days to come, the way to Christ will be found in the Spirit, out of the life of soul.

Wherever you look in Spiritual Science as it is presented here, you will always find—even in the case of very specialised details—that it is consistent with your own powers of reason and free judgment, provided only that you make a real effort to apply this free power of judgment. In that the individual human being is all the time becoming more accessible to influences from the spiritual world, the authority of external leadership will gradually lose its weight. It is very important to realise that the ancient wisdom exists and must be understood, that understanding of it can constantly increase if men's souls are open to the spiritual worlds and if they strive to grasp this wisdom with their powers of reason. This is the very essence of progressive evolution. However specialised the subjects may be, appeal to individual reason and judgment must never be excluded. It is a very different thing to bring forward some young man and announce that he has this and that incarnation behind him! If I were to tell you such things I should beg you at the outset not to believe them simply on my word—but I should never dream of making such assertions authoritatively, for the simple reason that you could not possibly convince yourselves objectively of their truth. When, however, it is said that the same Individuality was present in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis—all long since dead—you can yourselves discover by studying their lives, whether there are reasonable and sound grounds for such a statement. And no other kind of appeal must ever be made: the respect due to each individual soul demands that such a test should be within the realm of possibility. There are, of course, lazy-minded people who say: “We have to “believe” you when you speak of the same Individuality having lived in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis.” ... No! they are not obliged to believe it ... but they can try, at least, to find evidence in the different lives of what, admittedly, can only be actually discovered by occult research. This evidence can be found, and it is pure laziness when people say that if someone speaks of the incarnations of human beings long since dead, this must be taken on authority just as is the case when the incarnations of some young person living today are announced. That is a very different matter! In this respect a deep appeal must be made to Theosophists to put everything to the test of reason and not to rest content with the cheap excuse that things cannot be proved. They can be proved, if there is willingness to do so. This must be constantly emphasised.

A kind of counterbalancing process operates in the world and while, on the one hand, the development of the individuality is progressing, on the other, something else will become more and more universal, namely, the objective knowledge which must be acquired by man. Objectivity of knowledge, uniformity of knowledge does not gainsay the principle of individuality. Mathematics in itself is an illustration of this fact. And so it is the task of occultism—if one may speak of occultism having such a task at the present time—to provide objective wisdom and knowledge of the universe. Even although, in the nature of things, the ideal is not immediately in sight because not every individual has sufficient time and opportunity to put specific details to the test, it is true, nevertheless, that although things can actually be discovered only through occult research, they can be examined and endorsed by every individual; it is not necessary to take them on faith. All that is required is to reflect about things, with reason and sound judgment. Let us take a definite case, remembering that what will be said about it is applicable everywhere.

Suppose someone says: “Mankind has evolved. Progress is a reality in evolution. This progress reveals itself in the fact that man is becoming more strongly individual in his nature and being. It follows that whereas in olden times, leadership was vested more in persons, in times to come this kind of leadership will be superseded by objective wisdom, objective knowledge; personal leadership will recede and become merely an instrument and means for bringing objective wisdom to the human being. The ideal vantage-point is that the occult teacher is no different from a teacher of mathematics, who quite obviously has his function. But mathematics are not accepted merely on the authority of the teacher of mathematics; every individual accepts mathematics because he gradually acquires knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals. Hence the element of wisdom and of knowledge will more and more supersede the element of personality” ... Suppose that such a statement were confronted by another, to the effect that “the world rolls onwards like a wheel; in olden days there were great Teachers of humanity, and new ones are about to come ...” When faced with a statement like that, it is not possible to adopt the easy-going principle that either the one or the other may be believed; it is a matter, then, for deciding: which of the two is acceptable to reason? There is the choice between deciding whether no progress is to be ascribed to humanity and everything thought of as eternal repetition, or whether humanity does really progress and that evolution has meaning and purpose. Those who refuse to recognise any meaning in evolution can speak, if they like, of the eternal repetition of epochs of time; but those who see meaning and purpose in Earth-existence as brought to light by occult research, will not speak of eternal repetition of the same things—which does not, in fact, take place.

It is all-important to realise that the faculties of man have developed and that in this development—to take one example—the following is involved. In the ancient Mysteries each human being was obliged to submit to certain enactments and procedures directed to his own person; thereby he became an “Initiate.” He passed through the “different grades of Initiation.” In and through the Mystery of Golgotha these grades of Initiation became a world-historical Event, made manifest for all humanity. What had in olden times been an affair of one or another particular centre of Initiation, became a world-historical event, passed into the common estate of humanity, and was thereafter accessible to every advancing individuality. In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, therefore, the Mystery of Golgotha is described as the culmination and, in a sense, the close of the ancient Mysteries, because it brought all the ancient religions into one great unity. Occultism reveals still more clearly how the several streams of culture are gradually converging into one; but as they converge, they must be recognised and identified. The very operations of occult research reveal how the fruits of this research harmonise with what everyone can accept for himself, from his own observation of happenings on the physical plane.

Let us take a very far-reaching example, of which you may well say, to begin with: “There he is telling us something that really cannot be put to the test of reason, nor even approached by reason.” You may well say this, when it is first put before you.

My book An Outline of Occult Science describes how, at one time, Sun, Moon and Earth were united in a single planetary existence; the Sun then separated off and, at a later stage, Mercury and Venus; still later, Mars separated off from the Sun. The further we go back in time, the more does such a process become a spiritual process and the question it is essential to understand is really this:—Who were the Beings who thus separated? Of primary importance as regards the Earth, was the Christ Being, the great Sun Being Who through the Mystery of Golgotha subsequently united again with the Earth. Thereby all the antecedents of Christianity were brought to a kind of climax and culmination in Christianity itself. With the Mystery of Golgotha, a mighty Cosmic Power streamed into Earth-evolution. It might conceivably be argued that if the Christ came once and once only, this would imply injustice to the souls who lived before His coming. If a materialist were to bring forward such an argument, it might be understandable, but it would certainly not be understandable if it came from a Theosophist. For he knows that the souls living today also lived in earlier times, before the Mystery of Golgotha; the coming of Christ, therefore, is of equal significance for the souls of the pre-Christian ages, because they all incarnate again in the times following the Mystery of Golgotha. There is, however, this point to be made and it must be understood by Theosophists, namely, that in a certain sense the Buddha forms an exception. We must reach the vantage-point of the true Buddhist who says that the Individuality in the Buddha was that of a “Bodhisattva” who was born as the son of King Suddhodana, rose in his twenty-ninth year to the rank of Buddha, thereby attaining a height whence he need no longer return to a body of flesh. That, therefore, was the final incarnation of the Bodhisattva Individuality who does not reincarnate in the era following the founding of Christianity. The lectures in Christiania² drew attention to the fact that a very special mission in the universe devolves upon an Individuality as sublime as the Buddha. The Individuality who became the Buddha had been sent from the hosts of Christ on the Sun to the “Venus men” before they came to the Earth (see also the description in Occult Science); the Individuality of the Buddha, therefore, had been sent forth by Christ from the Sun to Venus, as His emissary. This Individuality came to the Earth with the “Venus men” and had thus reached such an advanced stage of development that through the Atlantean, on into the Post-Atlantean era, he was able to attain to the rank of Buddhahood before the coming of Christ. He was in very truth a “Christian” before the time of Christ. We know, too, that later on he revealed himself in the astral body of the Jesus-Child of St. Luke's Gospel—since he need no longer return in a body of flesh. United as he is with the Christ Stream, a different task devolves upon him for the times to come. (This task was described in greater detail in the Christiania lectures.) The Buddha need not incarnate again in a body of flesh. It fell to him to fulfil a certain Deed on Mars—a Deed not identical with the Mystery of Golgotha but to be thought of as a parallel—namely, the Redemption of the people of Mars. There is, of course, no question here of a Crucifixion as in the Mystery of Golgotha, for as may be read in Occult Science, the people of Mars are quite differently constituted from human beings on Earth. These things, of course, are the results of occult observation and can only be discovered through clairvoyant investigation.

Now let us think of this fact—that the Buddha was an emissary of the Christ and had lived on Venus. Then think of the uniqueness of the Buddha-life, of its fundamental character, and proceed as I did myself. First, there came to me the occult knowledge: Buddha goes from Venus to Mars in order there to accomplish a Deed of Redemption for the beings of Mars. And now take the life of Buddha, and observe how strikingly it differs from the lives of all the other founders of religion in that period. The teachings of all the others tend in the direction of concealing the doctrine of reincarnation; Buddha teaches reincarnation and founds a community based essentially upon piety, upon a kind of remoteness from the world. Ask yourselves whether there are beings for whom this quality would be of fundamental significance—beings whose redemption could be wrought by all that the Buddha had lived through and made his own? If it were possible, now, to say more about the constitution of the Mars beings, you would see that the Buddha-life was a kind of preparation for a higher mission; that it occurred in Earth-existence as a kind of culmination and can have no direct continuation. You may compare much in the Buddha-life with the indications given by occultism and then you will be able to form some real judgment of matters with such far-reaching cosmic connections. To discover them—that will still be beyond you; but you will be able to examine and study them with the help of all the material at your disposal, and you will find agreement and conformity among the indications given. That Buddha is connected with Venus was known, also, to H. P. Blavatsky. In her Secret Doctrine, she writes: “Buddha=Mercury”—“Mercury,” because in earlier times the names for Venus and Mercury were confused and reversed. “Buddha = Venus” would be the proper form. A knowledge possessed by occultists today is already hinted at in H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine—but it must be understood correctly.

These things are connected with the whole process of advancing evolution. The evolution of man must be studied in connection with the whole universe; man must be thought of as a microcosm within the macrocosm. The fact that Beings do actually mediate between the several planets is entirely in line with these concatenations of cosmic existence, so that a being like the Buddha can actually be regarded as a mediator between planets. A good principle on which judgment of all these things may be based, is recognition of human progress as a reality, recognition of “evolution,” not as a catchword, but as a truth.

How can we fail to realise that evolution is a reality? Goethe has shown with such beauty that in each plant, green leaf, petal, calyx, stamen and pistil are a unity and yet progress is clearly to be observed—from the green leaf to the petal and the fruit. Progress in the spiritual life is still more clearly perceptible. It would be pure abstraction to say that the path of the Mystic has everywhere been the same, among all peoples and in all ages. If one were content with cheap persuasion it would be quite easy to tell people that the mystical experience of a Yogi has never differed from that of a Christian Saint. But such a statement would not be based upon knowledge of the facts—not even of the external facts. The experiences of a Yogi and those of a Christian Mystic like St. Theresa, for example, differ fundamentally and essentially! Is it not casting all sense of truth to the winds to compare the experience of an Indian Yogi with experiences that are permeated through and through with the Christ Principle—or with the Jesus Principle in the case of St. Theresa? As true as there is a difference between the red petal of the rose and the green leaf on its stalk, so is it true that there is a difference between experiences arising in the practice of Yoga and those of a later age. There is a fundamental difference and a progression as well. Even if many lapses occur, it can be perceived, nevertheless, and the progress outruns and overcomes the lapses.

It is possible for everyone to put these principles to the test of reason—and that is essential. For Theosophy must be given under the assumption that it speaks to the innermost soul, the innermost heart, but is also grasped and assimilated. It would imply that human beings could never come of age, if in the future they were obliged to wait, in the same way as was necessary in olden times, for the coming of World-Teachers—and this quite apart from the fact that no true occultism will ever speak of such an abstract principle of repetition, because it is a direct contradiction of what actually happens. As world-evolution progresses, the factor of independent judgment and examination will assume greater and greater importance. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult in the present age to speak truly of an Individuality who is so misunderstood, even among occultists—I mean the Individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. Those who have a real link with him will never disobey the principle here described. But recognition of the principle of evolution—which reveals itself most clearly in the intrinsic worth of a human being—is difficult and gradual. Christian Rosenkreutz whom we recognise as the one by whom the true occult movement will be led on into the future and who will assuredly never add weight to his authority by means of any outer cult, will be misunderstood—he more than all. Those who have any knowledge of this Individuality know, too, that Christian Rosenkreutz will be the greatest of martyrs among men—apart from the Christ Who suffered as a God. The martyrdom of Christian Rosenkreutz will be caused by the fact that so few make the resolve to look into their own souls, in order there to seek for the evolving individuality, or to submit to the uncomfortable fact that truth will not be presented ready-made but has to be acquired by intense struggle and effort; requirements of a different character will never be brought forward in the name of the Individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. These requirements are in line with the character of the present age and with what is felt by men of the present age, even if in many respects they misinterpret it. The present age feels quite distinctly that the principle of individuality will assume greater and greater prominence. Even if here and there this truth is expressed grotesquely and sometimes far too radically, the very fact that it is expressed is indication of a sound instinct in humanity. Many a time one is amazed that in spite of the materialism and the many absurdities current in modern civilisation, an absolutely true instinct, although it is often pushed to extremes and caricatured, prevails in regard to many things. An example occurs in a book recently published: Zur Kritik der Zeit, by Walter Rathenau. It contains a passage to the effect that the time for the founding of sects, for belief in authority, has gone forever as a possible ideal for mankind ... As, however it is a fact that every sound development in our time calls forth its opposite, belief in authority and mania for dogma are rampant in certain circles. And yet: anyone who knows the world today will realise that nothing can so deeply undermine peace and harmony among men as non-recognition of the principle here outlined. The ideal of man must be to fathom and recognise objective truth, to be led through objective truth itself into the spiritual worlds. Hindrances would be laid in his path by attempts to base some truth upon narrow, personal authority—a mode of procedure that is, furthermore, quite impermissible so far as the future is concerned. This must be clearly understood. Many years of work in the field of Spiritual Science have shown how very difficult things are. Not only here, but wherever theosophical work is possible, it is always difficult to make this principle of theosophical striving the root-nerve of theosophical activity. The reason of the difficulty is that there are always people who will not bestir themselves to grasp what must be the fundamental impulse of our age. Objections that may crop up here and there would die a natural death if people would only give a little thought to the fundamental requirements of the times and realise that humanity is ever and everywhere going forward. To lay hold of the whole essence and spirit of Theosophy—that is what matters! But it would run counter to the very essence of Theosophy if a certain teaching that is being broadcast today were to find any widespread acceptance, namely, that culture which should be the common property of all mankind without distinction of race and colour, is conditioned by some particular continental factor. Is it really possible to take back with one sentence what has been proclaimed in another? Is it difficult to see the contradiction when it is said on the one hand that universal wisdom must be spread as a possession of all men without distinction of race and other differences, while on the other it is said that the civilisation of the future rests with a race localised within geographical boundaries? It is high time to reflect on these things and get to the root of them. Is it possible to speak of the progress of humanity when it is constantly reiterated that the same need—in this case, the authority of a personal teacher—exists in the world as of yore? Is it possible to say that man's own spiritual forces must grow stronger, that he must by his own efforts find the way to the spiritual world, if this is made dependent upon the authority of a single individual on the physical Earth? It is extremely easy to say that all opinions have equal weight in the Theosophical Movement. This remains a catchword when it is not taken really in earnest. Above all it remains a catchword when the opinions of others are misrepresented. Once before I have been obliged to say that “equal right of opinion” is no more than a phrase if our work here—which has nothing whatever to do with any specific territory or race on the Earth—is presented by the other side as though it were suitable only for the German mind. It is an affair of humanity, like mathematics—not the affair of any particular nation. To speak of our work here as being an affair of one particular nation, of a strictly limited territory, is an untruth. To quote a catchword does not justify the spreading of untruths in the world. In such circumstances, moreover, the other side may well become the victim of injustice. A semblance of intolerance may easily be created, simply because a stand has to be taken for the truth. The hour shows signs of becoming very serious in this connection. What I am saying here will be understood only by those who take Theosophy in real earnest and will not countenance things that run counter to the fundamental principles of theosophical work. Suppose one were obliged to ward off certain untruths from those who cannot put everything to the test for themselves, can the other person say: “That is intolerance”? He can, of course, say so if, under the guise of truth, he is merely seeking domination and authority! In the future, spiritual truth will work by reason of its own inherent strength, its own power, independently of physical circumstances. And it will be a great and splendid achievement if Theosophy can promote unity of culture over the whole Earth. Not for personal reasons, not for national reasons, nor for any “human” reasons whatever, but for purely theosophical reasons it makes one's heart bleed that in England today the President of the Theosophical Society should be making speeches which really cannot be described as “theosophical” but are eminently political. Thinking of the good old traditions of Theosophy, the heart bleeds to hear it said in a theosophical address that the day will come for proclaiming: “England together with India, at the centre; America and Germany, right and left. One World Policy under the banner of Theosophy!” ... And then we are accused of “intolerance” when it is necessary to protest against the introduction of the personal element into the leadership—where it should never be. It makes an occultist's heart ache that the label “theosophical” should be tacked on to this kind of statement. Once again I repeat: the heartache is not caused by personal or human considerations but for purely theosophical and occult reasons. It is grievous that the root-principle of theosophical teaching should be tainted—either consciously or unconsciously—with national and imperialistic aspirations! It is grievous to me not because I have anything whatever against any country or any aspirations on the Earth, but because the placing of such aspirations in the foreground shows at the very outset that the most intensely personal element is insinuating itself into the true ideal of Theosophy.

Many times I have spoken earnest words of the tasks and aims of Theosophy. The occultist does not speak without reflection. He knows very well when he must use such words! What I have said to you is entirely remote from any emotion, any desire, any sympathy or antipathy; it is demanded by something you may perhaps yourselves realise, namely, the seriousness of the hour—I mean, for Theosophy, for Occultism. As I have so often said, Theosophy must draw from the well-springs of human wisdom the message that is needful for mankind in the present age. If Theosophy is to move towards this ideal, it must stand on its own feet, set up its own rules of conduct—not only for what it has to say, but for how it has to confront the world—in order that standards prevailing in the outside world shall not play into our theosophical Movement. For there they become an evil, a great evil. As often as certain usages current in the outside world are introduced into the theosophical Movement, just so often is the Movement handed over to the forces of destruction. To outside eyes, these usages, when introduced into Theosophy, sometimes assume so grotesque a form that the world will certainly take good care not to copy things that may grow from the rich and fertile soil of occultism. Every kind of league exists in the world today—for the promotion of Peace, Vegetarianism, Anti-Alcoholism and what not—all of which are perfectly justifiable goals. But when the basic principles of a society are stretched in order to include the foundation of Unions or even Orders connected with the coming of figure-heads, founders of religion, future World-Saviours³ ... then the outside world will certainly not follow suit! I cannot imagine that a Statesman would found a league to await the coming of a new Statesman, or a General to await the coming of a great General in the future!

These things are so simple that only a little reflection is necessary. For to found an Order to await the coming of a World-Saviour is just as grotesque as it would be to found a league to await the coming of a new Statesman or a great General. A certain person who is striving today to found a branch of such an Order, used the following argument to me: “Yes, but after all, in the year 1848 a league was founded for the purpose of uniting the German States—and then there was Bismarck too ... he certainly helped to bring the German Reich to birth.” I could only reply: “Really I am not aware that a league was ever founded to await the coming of a “Bismarck”!

Do you think I am saying this jokingly? I say it because occultism has also this side to it, that if it is not cultivated in the right way, it can actually undermine instead of developing the powers of judgment, and I say it because I am in deep earnest about these things. Many occult teachings have been gathered together here; in fifty years, possibly, one point or another may have been investigated still more closely, may have to be differently expressed.

But even if no fragment remains of the knowledge that has brought forward—I do desire that one thing shall have survived, namely, this: that here there was inaugurated and sustained a theosophical-occult movement taking its stand solely and entirely upon integrity and truth. Even if in fifty years it is already said; Everything must be corrected; but at least they were out to be true, to let nothing happen except what is true ... even then my ideal would have been attained. That integrity and truth can prevail in an occult movement, whatever storms may rise up against us in the world—I am not so arrogant as to say that this has been “achieved,” but rather that this is the goal towards which we have striven.

• 1. The reference here is to certain prejudiced and faulty views contained in the teachings emanating from the Theosophical Society.
• 2. Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy
• 3. For those who have only lately become acquainted with the Anthroposophical conception of the world, let it here be mentioned that these words were spoken at the time when Mrs. Besant had founded the “Order of the Star in the East,” with objects similar to those indicated here, and rejected by me. Mrs. Besant's subsequent malicious agitation against Germany is, moreover, a direct result of the errors into which she was falling at that time.

We have seen that in the Apocalypse of John we have a description of what takes place in Initiation, or rather, the experience of a Christian during Initiation. In the concluding lectures, when we have briefly considered the whole of the Apocalypse, we shall still have to answer the question: What, really, is this document from an historical point of view? Why does such a document exist? But now, as we have reached the important point revealed in our last lecture, when our earth passes into a spiritual condition, though first of all into an astral condition, when certain remarkable beings appear in what has condensed in matter and split away from the normal progress of our earth evolution, it will be useful before we proceed further to make a general survey of certain things contained in the outline of our anthroposophical world conception. For you have seen that in all we have had to consider, certain conceptions as to numbers play a role, and now we are about to form a conception of what the seven-headed and ten-horned beast is, and what the two-horned beast is.

To begin with, we must find our bearings with regard to the outline of the evolution of the world. This runs its course in absolute conformity with certain numerical relations. The layman will be tempted to say—when he hears that the number seven and other numbers play such a great rôle in our studies—“Oh yes, these Anthroposophists are dishing up those old superstitions connected with the number seven, twelve and so on.” And when our contemporaries hear of something which develops regularly according to the number seven, they then begin to speak of superstition, although they themselves are really living in exactly the same superstition with respect to something of which they have a little knowledge; for they say, for example, that the rainbow consists of seven colours, the scale of seven tones, since the eighth is only a repetition of the first. And in many other realms one speaks of the number seven—and rightly so. In our study of the great cosmic relationships we speak of the number seven in no other sense than the physicist does when he speaks of the seven colours, and, in acoustics, of seven tones. For us the number seven is simply the result of occult experience, just as the scientist observes and counts the seven colours, so does the spiritual investigator count seven consecutive conditions in the world's evolution. And because the initiates in the Mysteries always knew about these things and expressed them, they passed over into the common consciousness; and the number seven was found to be of a particular significance. Exactly because the number seven was founded on cosmic relationships, it passed over into common belief, and of course, also into superstition. If we remember what has been said concerning the secret of the seven trumpets, the seven seals, the seven Letters, and what has been said concerning the seven consecutive ages of the Atlantean epoch, we see that in the evolution of the world there are really consecutive periods which are repeated in conformity with the number seven. We shall now give an outline of cosmic evolution, showing that this number governs all its parts.

We have heard that the Earth before it was Earth was Moon, before it was Moon it was Sun planet, and before it was Sun it was Saturn. After the Earth-condition it will pass over into the Jupiter-condition, and then into the Venus-condition, and lastly into the Vulcan-condition, so that we have seven consecutive planetary embodiments of our earth; Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. Now these are the greatest divisions in our whole evolution which with spiritual vision we are able to survey to a certain extent. We have described the three preceding conditions of the Earth. We shall now try to understand the purpose of this evolution and why the Earth passes through these seven conditions. These seven conditions coincide with the development of human consciousness. Each of these conditions: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, characterizes a definite condition of human consciousness. Let us turn our attention back to the ancient Saturn period. We know that the various parts of which man is now constituted, did not exist at that time, but only the very first beginnings of his physical body. Obviously these first rudiments could not develop such a consciousness as man has to-day. Other beings had a human consciousness, but at that time the present man had a consciousness such as the minerals now have on the physical plane. We call this a deep trance-consciousness. The first germ of man had this consciousness upon Saturn. This Saturn evolution was gone through in order that man night gradually rise to higher states of consciousness. That was the first stage of consciousness, the deep trance-consciousness. Of course it must not be imagined that the degree of consciousness remained the same throughout the whole of the Saturn period, but on the whole the consciousness of man upon Saturn may be characterized as a deep trance-consciousness. It is dimmer even than the consciousness which man has to-day in dreamless sleep, for that was then the consciousness he passed through at the second stage, during the Sun evolution. This is the consciousness now possessed by the plants around us in the physical world.

Then came the Moon stage of evolution. Man then possessed a consciousness which can be understood more easily because in dream-consciousness man has at least a last remnant of the Moon-consciousness. To-day this dream-consciousness is an intermediate condition between dreamless sleep and the ordinary, waking, clear day-consciousness. Thus the third stage of consciousness was reached on the Moon, and it may be compared to the present dream-filled sleep, but it was much more vivid and real. Dream-filled sleep yields a consciousness which consists of odds and ends of ideas and pictures and is but slightly related to the real external world. The Moon-consciousness, which was a consciousness of dream-pictures, had very significant relations with the outer world. It corresponded exactly to what was present in the soul-spiritual environment. There was a repetition of this during the Atlantean epoch. We call it the dream-picture-consciousness; it might also be called the somnambulic-consciousness. The fourth state of consciousness is reached and passed through on our Earth; it is what we call the clear day-consciousness or objective-consciousness.

During the Jupiter period man will rise to a still higher degree of consciousness of which most people to-day have no inkling, when all that we have described has taken place and all that is yet to be added from the Apocalypse of John which is still to be described. Then, when man is saved, so to speak, when he has risen from the abyss or escaped from decadence, when he has risen into the astralized and spiritual earth, this will be the foundation for his attainment upon Jupiter of the consciousness which we may call the “conscious picture-consciousness.” If this is to be described it can only be done from the experiences of the Initiates. For initiation is indeed nothing but the acquisition of the capacity to attain at an earlier stage of evolution what normal humanity will gain at a later stage. In the conscious picture-consciousness man is just as self-conscious as he is to-day from morning to evening, but he perceives not only the external objects, but in his soul's field of vision he has pictures; indeed, they are pictures which are by no means dim, but rather are incorporated in the clear consciousness of day. Thus the clear day-consciousness plus the Moon-consciousness gives the Jupiter-consciousness. Man keeps what he now has and in addition gains the capacity of perceiving the element of soul and spirit. To-day the Initiate not only sees man as he is physically, but shining around him he perceives all kinds of spiritual forms which are the expression of his desires, instincts and thoughts; in a word, his aura. It glows and sparkles around the human form like delicate flames, partly like a cloud of light. All this can be seen in the human astral body by the Initiate, just as the outline of the physical body is seen by the ordinary physical eyes; all this is a picture of what takes place in the soul. The Initiate experiences a consciousness which may be described as Moon-consciousness plus Earth-consciousness.

Then upon Venus comes a sixth state of consciousness which may be described as the inspired-consciousness, the consciousness of inspiration. It is called the consciousness of inspiration because at this stage of consciousness the Initiate perceives not only the feelings, desires, impulses, etc., of the soul, but also its whole inner character as a uniform sound. He begins to perceive that which pervades the world of—shall we say—colour and form-structures as the music of the spheres, so that each single being stems like a musical form within that which had previously been perceived as an astral picture.

The seventh stage of consciousness which will exist on Vulcan we may call the Intuitive-consciousness. Intuition is not the triviality ordinarily understood by the word to-day when one imagines one is able to divine something through a vague feeling—that is a misuse of the word. In the schools of the Initiates, Intuition is applied to the highest stage of consciousness we can imagine, when the soul identifies itself with the spiritual beings and lives within them. Although the soul remains quite individual, it rests within all the objects and beings of its field of vision.

The seven stages of the earth's whole evolution thus present to its seven consecutive states of consciousness. Now each of these must in its turn also be attained in seven stages, and we call these seven stages, which must be passed through every time, Stages of Life. So that we distinguish seven stages of consciousness, and in each of these, seven stages of life. It is difficult in our language to find words to express these seven stages of life. If we merely take our earth into account, we may describe the stages of life by speaking of the seven kingdoms, for the stages of life on earth coincide with the kingdoms. Here we may describe the first stage of life as the first elementary kingdom, the second as the second, the third as the third elementary kingdom, the fourth as the mineral kingdom, the fifth as the vegetable kingdom, the sixth as the animal kingdom and the seventh as the human kingdom. Now we might say that at each of these stages of consciousness seven such stages of life, or kingdoms, are passed through. But if we were similarly to describe the seven stages of life on Saturn as the first, second and third elementary kingdoms, as mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, this would only give rise to false conceptions, for the expressions for these kingdoms are coined in accordance with our earthly experiences. And in those primeval times the kingdoms were formed quite differently from what they now are on the earth. We can only say that analogous to these kingdoms there were seven kingdoms on Saturn and seven on the Sun. The seven kingdoms of the Moon were more like the present kingdoms; and as far as the seven stages of life on the earth are concerned, these have become the seven kingdoms of the earth. And on the earth we can, indeed, describe these more easily, although it is extremely difficult to give an idea of the three elementary kingdoms. People think they have a true conception of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, though this is not really the case. Perhaps you will succeed in forming some kind of idea of the three elementary kingdoms if you consider the following. Imagine parts of the mineral kingdom, stones, metals, etc., becoming finer and finer, so that you see less and less of them; they dissolve, so to speak, into finer and finer substance. Suppose it all volatilizes into an extremely delicate, transparent, invisible substance. If you continually refined these substances you would at length produce something which is no longer mineral kingdom but the third elementary kingdom. Then we should rise to a second and a first elementary kingdom. It is difficult for our present qualities of perception to form ideas about these kingdoms which are secreted in and condensed into our world. It is as if these elementary kingdoms had condensed and disappeared, so to speak, into our world. They precede our mineral kingdom. We have seen when this mineral kingdom itself was formed. In earlier periods of the earth's evolution the mineral kingdom existed in the condition of the elementary kingdoms.

Now the other four kingdoms. We see the mineral kingdom around us, also the vegetable, animal and human kingdoms. But we must clearly understand that these designations are really not quite correct in the spiritual scientific sense. The layman describes the present minerals as belonging to the mineral kingdom, the plants as belonging to the vegetable kingdom, the animals as belonging to the animal kingdom and man to the human kingdom. From the lay point of view this is correct, and for all the trivial things of life it suffices, but in the occult sense it is incorrect. For at the present time man is perfected alone in the mineral kingdom. Only in future periods of evolution will he rise to the plant, animal and. human kingdoms. As man has an “I”-consciousness at the present time we may certainly call him man, but we must not yet say that he is incarnated in the human kingdom in the sense of Spiritual Science. To this end something else is necessary of which we must now speak.

What can man comprehend to-day? That is the point. He can to-day understand only the mineral kingdom. As soon as the comes to the vegetable kingdom he no longer understands it, the mineral kingdom he can understand. From the forces of the mineral kingdom he can construct houses, machines, etc. When he comes to learn in the same way to observe what the forces are in a plant which makes it grow tall, only this will lift him with his consciousness into the vegetable kingdom. And by learning to comprehend how an animal can feel—at the present time he has only an external view of it—he becomes a member of the animal kingdom. And when he understands not only his own “I” but that of another, when he fully understands a man inwardly, then only does he belong to the human kingdom.

You will best understand that man can now comprehend only the mineral kingdom if you make the following observation. Imagine that a great number of learned men say that plants and animals are nothing more than complicated minerals. And these learned men are expecting a time when they will so combine material substances that these will become plants and animals. They are under the illusion that one can understand the plants as mineral beings, because they have no idea that there is any-thing else besides the mineral kingdom. Indeed, many say, “You Anthroposophists dream that there is an etheric body, something which extends beyond the merely mineral; but you will dream no more when we succeed in making a living being in our laboratory just as we now produce sulphuric acid from the separate substances, from carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.” It is believed that a living being can be constructed in the same way in which sulphuric acid can be produced; it is believed that purely materialistic science will one day be able to do this. It is believed that Anthroposophists are foolish enough to doubt that the time will come when plants will actually be produced in the retort. This time will come. But students of Spiritual Science have always known that this time will come; they know that the time will come when man will take the plant nature into his own being, just as he now has the mineral nature within him. And just as he builds houses of minerals, just as he now uses the forces of the mineral kingdom, so will he in the future, out of the familiar forces of the plant kingdom, produce plant forms and still higher things in the laboratory, without resorting to seeds, without having to call to his aid forces of nature unfamiliar to him. But if this possibility of producing a living organism in the laboratory were to come prematurely, from the point of view of true Spiritual Science this is what would be called black magic. Man must first become ripe for each succeeding step of evolution. There is a saying well known in Spiritual Science, which runs: Man will only produce living organisms in the experimental laboratory, as he now produces mineral products, when the laboratory-table has become the altar and the mixing of the chemical substances a sacramental act. This is a saying which has always been found in occult circles. Truly, as long as a person enters the laboratory in the belief that he can work with unholy feelings the same as with holy ones, so long will he never be able, with the will of those who guide evolution in the right way, to produce anything living in the laboratory. This will only be possible when it is realized that a mineral product may indeed be produced, even if a scoundrel is standing at the laboratory table, but that a living thing can never be produced under these circumstances. For into the living being flows—when it is put together—something which is M. the man himself. If the man were a villain, what was villainous would flow over, and the being produced would be an expression of villainy. Only when it is realized that man as a whole being works with his whole inner being in what he produces, will the world be ready to produce something that is alive, plants, animals and human beings, in free activity. Man will then have risen into the plant kingdom when he understands the plant nature as he now understands the mineral. He will have risen to the animal kingdom when he understands feelings in such a way that he can make a sensitive being through his own spirit-power, just as he now makes as external object. And he will have ascended to the human kingdom when he can form man anew in free activity.

Thus man is now living in the mineral kingdom; and he is fundamentally the only being which has developed fully in the mineral kingdom, whilst the beings in the other kingdoms stand in many respects at much lower stages than the one designated in Spiritual Science as the mineral kingdom. Thus the plants show as a kind of preparatory stage what man will experience when he himself shall one day be in the plant kingdom. But the plants arc not really in the plant kingdom; they are, at the most prototypes; not archetypes, but pointers to a future kingdom in which man will be, when he inwardly passes through the plant nature, just as he is now passing through the mineral nature. This plant kingdom in which man will be, will be distinguished by other things, its nature may be characterized by a moral statement which is, indeed, often repeated intellectually but by no means comprehended. To-day man lives in such a way that the individual, even if he does not acknowledge it, is convinced that it is possible for a person to be happy although his neighbour may be unhappy. It is certainly quite possible for one person to feel happy in spite of others being unhappy. Even if it be acknowledged, speaking intellectually, that the highest moral principle is that which makes all men happy, in practice, people are convinced that the happiness of one is quite possible without others being just as happy as he. When man is in the plant kingdom he will have reached a stage of evolution morally, at which it will be impossible to feel happy as an individual if others of his kind are unhappy. “The happiness of the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of all.” This statement will rule when man is taken up into the plant kingdom. No man could then feel happy in any way if his happiness were obtained at the expense of others.

Thus you see that there are very few who are capable of perceiving such subtle ideas as we must have in Spiritual Science if we wish to understand everything. But you also see that man still has long vistas of evolution in front of him. All this he must attain, and very little of it exists as yet.

Thus we speak of seven kingdoms through which man himself passes. Upon Jupiter there will be again seven kingdoms which will still be somewhat similar to the seven earth kingdoms, but they will nevertheless be quite different from these. Upon Venus there will again be seven, and again upon Vulcan. Here we can by no means call them kingdoms any longer, the idea “kingdom” is no longer suitable. If we bear all this in mind we must say that we have (primarily) seven stages of development of consciousness, the Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan stages, and at each stage of consciousness seven stages of life, through which every single being which gods through the degree of consciousness must pass. Each stage of life must again pass through seven stages of form, and, indeed, in such a way that you have to consider your present physical stage of farm to be in the very middle. Before anything becomes physical it is astral; before it is astral, it is at a certain spiritual stage which is called lower devachan; and before anything descends to this stage it is in a higher stage of devachan. Here we have three stages of form. The first may be designated as formless. The next stage of form we designate as the stage of lower devachan. Then we come to the astral stage. When the astral condenses it becomes physical. Then the physical dissolves again and returns to a more perfect astral; this passes to a more perfect lower devachanic, and this to a higher devachanic. The physical condition of form is in the middle.

Each kingdom (each stage of life) passes through seven conditions of form. You must distinguish between physical and mineral, for they are not the same. As to-day the physical coincides with the mineral in appearance, the two may easily be confused. The mineral kingdom or stage of life passes through all the stages of form; it can be laid down as mineral kingdom above in the higher region of devachan. It then descends into the lower spiritual region (lower devachan) and is still the mineral kingdom, then into the astral—here it is astrally prepared—and then it condenses to the physical. Thus in each kingdom we have seven conditions of form.

Each condition of consciousness can only run its course in seven conditions of life; each condition of life in seven conditions of form. That is 7 x 7 x 7 conditions. In fact, an entire evolution such as that of the earth passes through 7 x 7 x 7 conditions of form. Our earth was once Saturn; this went through seven conditions of life and each condition of life through seven conditions of form, Therefore you have forty-nine conditions of form upon Saturn, forty-nine upon the Sun, forty-nine upon the Moon, etc.; 7 x 49 == 343 conditions of form. Man passes through 343 conditions of form in the course of his evolution. When Saturn was at the very outset of its evolution it began in the highest spiritual to which we can attain, as a structure in the highest part of devachan. That was the first condition of form, and it was entirely mineral. As such it descended to the physical kingdom, and reascended to higher devachan. And here begins the great difficulty, for you must now say, if you wish to use the expressions named: Man passes into the next kingdom. But these expressions do not apply to Saturn. Upon Saturn man passes in this way through forty-nine conditions. The curious thing is that you may now ask: “Man had to pass through conditions of life on Saturn, but he only acquired an etheric body on the Sun. How, then, can one say that he goes through conditions of life?” They were not yet as they were later when he had a life body, they were vicarious. This is brought about through the activity of higher beings. Man has no independent life upon Saturn, but higher beings permeate him with their etheric body, with their astral body, “I,” etc. In any case you must understand that upon Saturn man has passed through forty-nine conditions, upon the Sun forty-nine, and forty-nine upon the Moon. Upon the earth of these forty-nine conditions he has only passed through the first three conditions of life and is now in the fourth—in the mineral kingdom. In the first condition of life he was in the first elementary kingdom and there passed through seven conditions of form; in the second condition of life he was

in the second elementary kingdom and passed through seven conditions of form; he was in the third elementary kingdom and passed through the seven conditions of form. He is now in the fourth elementary kingdom, which is the same as the mineral kingdom, and he is approximately in the middle of this, somewhat beyond the middle.

From all that we have outlined you will have seen that the whole earth passes through 343 conditions. I beg you to picture it in this way: Saturn originates and passes through forty-nine conditions; it is primarily a fiery mass, a body of heat, and goes through various conditions, but it is always the same globe that passes through these forty-nine conditions. In the same way, the Sun is always one and the same globe which passes through the forty-nine conditions. But there are intermediate conditions. It is as if between the several embodiments of the earth there were a kind of spiritual interval. It is the same with the planets as with man, the planets also pass through spiritual intervals, which lie between the periods of manifestation.

If you clearly understand that in the course of our evolution we have seven conditions of consciousness, you will also perceive how this is connected with what is described in our various books. They are cosmic systems. You will there read that our Earth developed out of an ancient planetary system which is described as Moon. We then went further back from the Moon to the Sun, and from the Sun to Saturn. Each of these conditions is divided into the seven conditions of life—formerly called Rounds; Rounds are the same as conditions of life. And those now called conditions of form were formerly called globes. The latter expression was extremely misleading, for it led to the idea that these seven globes were side by side.

These conditions, from the most remote form, which was almost formless, down through the physical and up again to the formless, are not seven globes existing side by side, but seven successive conditions. The same globe that is now physical was first of all spiritual, then it became denser and denser. It is the same globe simply condensed. Then a portion of it became astral, then a portion physical; it is always the same globe. It dissolves again like salt in warm water, it again becomes astral. We have ascended to this astral where, in the Apocalypse, the vials of wrath are described; there the earth becomes astral again.

Thus you see how the number seven governs the whole of evolution. In the last few days we have given a skeleton outline of this, as it were, in the form of pictures, sometimes truly grotesque pictures, and in any case, such as deviate very much from what can be seen to-day in the physical world. If you conceive of it in this way it is approximately as if you were to erect the scaffolding for a house, the most external part that is intended to be used by the masons. That has, however, nothing to do with the subject; these are only thoughts about the subject, so to speak. We must rise from this purely intellectual scheme, which assists us indeed to understand, to the living structure, by using the pictures which are to be seen in the astral for the various conditions; then only have we what is called occult wisdom. As long as you build up a scaffolding you remain in the thought customary to you in the physical world. The whole scheme we have sketched is only physical thought. This is related to the full reality not at all like the inner framework of a house to the complete building, but only like the outer scaffolding upon which the builders stand. This has to be taken down again when the building is completed. In the same way the scaffolding of thought has to be taken down again if one wishes to have the truth before one as it really is. If one considers this abstraction as the reality, then one is not by any means speaking of true Spiritual Science but only of the concept which the man of the present day can form regarding the spiritual facts. The way in which spiritual facts are presented abstractly at the present time may be seen in such a diagram as I have made, but this in itself is unfruitful. I had to put it before you because we also need such a diagram, but fundamentally it is of no use to one who wishes to progress upon the truly spiritual path. If you describe the whole world, up to the highest spiritual facts, by means of such diagrams, this only has meaning for your present incarnation. In the next you must learn another diagram. This can only be thought by using the brain; it is only adapted for the brain. But as the brain disintegrates at death, the whole schematic presentation then falls to pieces. On the other hand, if you comprehend—at first in pictures of fantasy—that which really happens, what we have described as the consecutive pictures of the seals seen by spiritual vision, that is something which is not bound up with your physical brain, and which you retain because it does not originate from physical thinking, but from facts seen clairvoyantly. Therefore one must take care not to mistake for spiritual wisdom that which is striven for after the pattern of physical comprehension, which would also schematize the higher worlds. This is a description by means of the ordinary physical intellect. Of course, the physical intellect must play a part; on this account it is even useful to present such a diagram, and we may now carry it a step further.

We have seen that we pass through 343 conditions of form. Now, the subject grows more complicated when we learn that the matter does not end here, but that man must also pass through various conditions with each condition of form. In our mineral condition of life during the Earth period three conditions of form have preceded the present physical condition of form and three others will follow it. But now the physical again passes through seven conditions, and these are the seven of which we have spoken in previous lectures; the first when the sun is still united with the earth, the second when it separates, the third when the moon withdraws, the fourth that of the Atlantean humanity. The Atlantean humanity lives in the fourth epoch of the development of the physical condition of form. Thus within each condition of form you have again seven epochs or so-called root-races, although the expression “race” applies only to the middle condition. We are now living in the fifth epoch, the post-Atlantean epoch, between the great Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All. The sixth will follow this and then the seventh. The sixth epoch is indicated in the Apocalypse of John by the seven seals, and the seventh by the seven trumpets. Then the earth passes over into the astral. That is a new condition of form which again will have its seven epochs.

And still our diagram is not at an end. Each epoch as it runs its course between such events as the great Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All must again be divided into seven ages. As regards the fifth epoch there are the Indian age of civilization, the Persian age of civilization, the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish age, the Graeco-Latin age, our own age, then the sixth, which is indicated in the Apocalypse by the community of Philadelphia, and the seventh age of civilization which will follow that.

Thus if we imagine the whole of evolution consisting of nothing but short ages such as these—which, however, are long enough—we have 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 stages of development such as the ancient Indian or the ancient Persian. The number of different conditions of this nature which man passes through between Saturn and Vulcan is 16807:

7 x 7 x 7 == 343.
7 x 343 == 2401.
7 x 2401 == 16807.

Thus you see how the number 7 governs development in the successive periods throughout the whole of evolution. Just as the tones in music progress from octave to octave, so does the whole of evolution take place in octaves of development.

Let us now recall that we have seven of these conditions out of the 16807 in our epoch between the great Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All, and that previously we had seven more in the Atlantean epoch. But we also remember that man went through four of these seven ages of the Atlanteans epoch under quite different conditions from the last three. You know the kind of conditions we have to enumerate. Four of the conditions out of the total number, man went through during the Atlantean epoch in such a way that he felt himself as a group-soul, as we have described, as eagle, lion, bull and man. He gradually developed these four group-souls during these four root-races of the Atlantean epoch. Now because races always continue, just as, for instance, the Indian has continued, although later ones have developed (they pass into one another), for this reason the four heads indicating the group-souls also remained at the beginning of the fifth age of Atlantean civilization and we have this four-headed beast. Now when man began to harden himself from the etheric into the physical, he developed four different parts of the body in accordance with his fourfold group-soul. And through the former group-soul consciousness changing into the individual-consciousness, man had within him a con-junction of the earlier four-foldness at the beginning of the fifth age of Atlantis. He bears within him the four heads which are summed up in his head which gradually arises. It is composed of the four group-heads as it developed in the course of the fifth period. Man has four parts of the physical body corresponding to the four heads. These are the four horns. So that you may imagine that because man was etheric, he had four heads, four animal heads, only the last is already human-animal, for that is what is meant. He was four-headed, and each force-system corresponding to one of these heads formed physical organs. We saw in our last lecture that there was a force-system which formed the heart, namely, that which is connected with the lion head. The various organs of man are like condensations of the corresponding parts of the etheric body. This is the view of the writer of the Apocalypse. He says: That which is physical is a densification of the etheric. Just as you would think: “This skin thickens and forms a callosity,” so the Apocalyptist thinks: “man exists etherically and this condenses and becomes physical.” And because man is fourfold, consisting of four group-souls, four condensations are formed. These constitute his physical body. This is the reason why one described as “horn” that which in the physical body corresponds to the etheric body. Horn is a callous thickening. Man is described, as far as he had developed in the fourth age of the Atlantean epoch, as an animal with four heads and four horns. He then evolves further towards an individual human being. This begins in the neighbourhood of the present Ireland. Man passes through the last three ages in such a way that he possesses the germ of the ego-being. He no longer develops an animal body outwardly, but has risen to the human stage. He matures his human nature more and more until he absorbs the Christ-principle. If we regard present-day man, we see that he was not always as he appears to-day. In order for him to become what he now is, he had to pass through four animal group-souls, he had to be incarnated in bodies corresponding to the present lion form, the bull form, the eagle form and the human form. He then pressed forward and became more and more human, and the form of the earlier group-soul disappeared. It is no longer there, man has assumed human shape.

We must now understand an important event which then took place when man assumed human form, for without this under-standing one cannot comprehend the Apocalypse of John; it was an event of the greatest importance. Up to this event when man passed into the human soul-nature, something was totally hidden from his vision which later was revealed. Man had a kind of dim, hazy consciousness. When he wakened in the morning he saw everything surrounded by misty formations, so to speak; and when he went to sleep he was in the spiritual world. This appeared to him in pictures; for such is the nature of the spiritual world. I shall now describe something which took place before man passed over physically into the human condition, before he passed from the group-soul nature to full “I”-consciousness.

That which he lived through here upon the earth consisted only of a number of experiences. He then went to sleep and during his sleep was in a dim consciousness in a spiritual world where he lived among gods and spirits, of which an echo remains in the myths and legends. He then experienced mighty pictures; for example, the picture in which he encountered two other beings who threw stones behind them, and out of these stones other beings like themselves grew out of the earth. These were experiences which man had throughout the fourth age of the Atlantean epoch. To express it plainly, we must say that reproduction took place in sleeping-consciousness, not in the waking-consciousness. When man was outside his physical body and in the spiritual world, he accomplished in this condition of picture-consciousness deeds which had to be brought about. The whole act of reproduction was veiled in a spiritual element and appeared to him in the picture of throwing stones behind him. The act of reproduction was enveloped in spiritual consciousness; it lay behind the day-consciousness. Man had no knowledge of sex. In the day-consciousness he did not see himself as existing in two sexes, his soul was untouched by any thought of sex. Not that it did not exist; it did exist, but it rested in the obscurity of a spiritual consciousness; during the day-consciousness he knew nothing of it. With the acquisition of the first germ of the “I”-consciousness man first became aware of sex. That is the moment presented to us in the Bible when Adam and Eve become aware that there is such a thing as sex. This important event took place at this stage in the earth's evolution.

If with spiritual vision you look back to the time which preceded that time, you see only that part of man which is the instrument of the spirit. The other part was invisible, Only the upper part of man could be seen. From the point of time we have mentioned the whole man began to be seen. It is now comprehensible why men began to cover themselves up. Previously they saw nothing which required covering. In this way man gradually emerged into the external world.

If we consider the outer human form as the condensed part of the etheric, we have in the fourth Atlantean age the four horns in addition to the four group-soul heads. Now, however, in the last three ages of Atlantis something twofold begins to develop physically. At each stage where a group-soul head was to develop, a double physical, male and female, was formed. In the first four stages you find man formed with four heads, the condensed etheric with four horns. We now have three more heads which are invisible because the external human form absorbs then. These three are only perceptible to spiritual vision, three etheric heads, a principal human head between two others which are like shadows beside it, like a double shadow. Thus when the Atlantean flood burst, we have seven group-soul heads, of which the last three always appear in such a way that they have their physical part in a double form, as male and female. From this you see that at the end of the Atlantean epoch the entire group-soul nature of man—although the later portion remains invisible—has seven heads and ten horns. The horns of the first four heads are not separated into male and female, but only the last three. Man has the seven heads and ten horns within him. He must now work upon these through the reception of the Christ-principle so that they shall be destroyed, so to speak. For each time a man dies the sevens-headed and ten-horned nature can clearly be seen in his astral body. This is merely held together like a piece of india-rubber which has been correspondingly formed. Now suppose a person hardened himself during our epoch against the Christ-principle and were to come to the time of the great War of All against All without having had the Christ-experience, suppose he were to come to this time and had thrust the Christ away from him, then when the earth passes over into the astral, that which was there and which he ought to have changed, would spring forth, it would spring forth in its old form. The beast with the seven heads and ten horns would appear, whereas in those who have received the Christ-principle, sex will again be overcome. The hardened ones will keep the six-horned sexuality and will appear in their totality as the beast with the seven heads and ten horns of which the rudiments were laid down in the Atlantean epoch. They will be transformed through the reception of the Christ-impulse, but if Christ is rejected they will remain and will reappear in the epoch indicated by the falling of the vials of wrath and the earth splitting, as it were, into two parts, one in which the Christ-men appear with white garments as the elect, even in the epoch of the seals; and the other part in which men appear in the form of the beast with seven heads and ten horns. Then appears another beast with two horns, symbolized by the number 666.

Today I should like first of all to call your attention to and place before your mind's eye two pictures drawn from the evolution of man during the last few thousand years. I shall first direct your attention to something that occurred about the middle and toward the end of the fifth century B.C. It is well known to all of you, but, as I said, we shall look back at it with the eyes of our soul.

We see how the Buddha had gathered a number of disciples and pupils around him in the land of India, and how, from what took place then between the Buddha and his disciples and pupils, there arose the great and mighty movement that began and flowed on for centuries in the East, throwing up mighty waves and bringing to countless people inner salvation, inner freedom of soul, and an uplifting of human consciousness. If we wish to characterize what happened at that time we need only envisage the main content of Buddha's teachings and actions.

Life as it is lived by man in his earthly incarnations is suffering because through the sequence of his incarnations he is always subject to the urge for ever new incarnations. To free oneself from this yearning for reincarnation is a goal worth striving for. This goal is to blot out of the soul everything that can call forth the desire for physical incarnation, with the aim of at last ascending to an existence in which the soul no longer feels the desire to be connected with life through the physical senses and physical organs, but to ascend and take part in what is called Nirvana. This is the great teaching that flowed from the lips of the Buddha, that life means suffering and that man must find a means to free himself from suffering so as to be able to share in Nirvana. If we wish to picture to ourselves in precise but familiar concepts the impulse contained in the wonderful teaching of Buddha, we could perhaps say that the Buddha directed the minds of his pupils through the strength and power of his individuality to earth existence; while at the same time through the infinite fullness of his compassion he tried also to give them the means to raise their souls and all that was within them from the earthly to the heavenly, to raise human thinking and human philosophy from the human to the divine.

We might picture this as a formula if we wish to characterize clearly and correctly the impulse that went out from the great sermon of the Buddha at Benares. We see the Buddha gathering around him his faithful pupils. What do we perceive in the souls of these disciples? What will they eventually come to believe? That all the striving of the human soul must be directed toward becoming free from the yearning for rebirth, free from the inclination toward sense existence, free to seek the perfecting of the self by freeing it from everything that binds it to sense existence, and connecting it with all that links it to its divine spiritual origin. Such were the feelings that lived in the disciples of the Buddha. They sought to free themselves from all the temptations of life and let their only link with the world be the perception of the soul shining into the spiritual that is experienced in compassion; to become absorbed in striving for spiritual perfection, free from all earthly wants, with the aim of having as little as possible to do with what binds the external man to earthly existence. In this mood the pupils of the Buddha wandered through the world, and it was in this manner that they glimpsed the aims and objectives of Buddhist discipleship.

And if we follow up the centuries during which Buddhism was spreading and ask ourselves what lived in the hearts and souls of the Buddha's adherents and what it was that lived in the dissemination of Buddhism, we receive the answer that these men were devoted to lofty aims, but in the midst of all their thinking, feeling, and perception the great figure of the Buddha was living, together with everything that he had said in such thrilling, significant words about the deliverance from the sorrow of life. In the midst of all their thinking and perception, the comprehensive, all-encompassing, mighty authority of the Buddha lived in the hearts of his pupils and successors down the centuries. Everything the Buddha had said was looked upon by these pupils and successors as holy writ.

Why was it that the words of the Buddha sounded like a message from heaven to his pupils and successors? It was because these pupils and successors lived in the faith and belief that during the event of the Bodhi-tree the true knowledge of cosmic existence had flashed up in the soul of the Buddha, and the light and sun of the universe shone into it, with the consequence that everything that flowed from his lips had to be thought of as if it was the utterance of the spirits of the universe. It was this mood as it lived in the hearts of the pupils and successors of the Buddha, the holiness and uniqueness of this mood that was all-important. We wish to place all this before our spiritual eye so that we may learn to understand what happened there half a millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha.

Now we turn our gaze to another picture from world history. For in the long ages of human evolution what is separated by about a century may really be considered contemporary. In the thousands and thousands of years of human evolution a single century is of little importance. Therefore we can say that if the picture we wish to place before our souls is historically to be put a century later, as far as human evolution is concerned it was almost contemporary with the event of Buddha that we have just described.

In the fifth century B.C. we see another individuality gradually gathering pupils and adherents around himself in ancient Greece. Again this fact is well known. But if we are to come to an understanding of the last centuries it is a good thing to picture this individuality in our minds. We see Socrates in ancient Greece gathering pupils around himself, and indeed we need to mention Socrates in this connection even if we only consider the picture drawn of Socrates by the great philosopher Plato, a picture which in its essentials seems to be confirmed by the great philosopher Aristotle.¹ If we consider the striking picture of Socrates as presented by Plato, then we can also say that a movement began with Socrates that then spread into the West. Anyone who visualizes the whole character of Western cultural development is bound to conclude that the Socratic element was a determining factor for everything in the West. Although the Socratic element in the West spreads through the waves of world history more subtly than the Buddhistic element in the East, we are still entitled to draw a parallel between Socrates and the Buddha.² But we must certainly make a clear differentiation between the pupils and disciples of Socrates and the pupils and disciples of the Buddha. When we consider the fundamental difference between the Buddha and Socrates we may indeed say that we are confronted with everything that differentiates the East from the West.

Socrates gathers his pupils around himself, but how does he feel in relation to them? His manner of treating these pupils has been called the art of a spiritual midwife because he wished to draw out from the souls of his pupils what they themselves knew, and what they were to learn. He put his questions in such a manner that the fundamental inner mood of the souls of his pupils was stirred to movement. He transmitted nothing from himself to his pupils, but elicited everything from them. The somewhat dry and prosaic aspect of Socrates' view of the world and the way he presented it comes from the fact that Socrates actually appealed to the independence and to the innate reasoning power of every pupil. Though he wandered through the streets of Athens in a rather different way from the way the Buddha walked with his pupils, there is nevertheless a similarity. On the one hand the Buddha revealed to his pupils what he had received through his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, and by allowing what he had thus received from the spiritual world to stream down to his pupils he enabled what had lived in him to live on in his pupils and remain active for centuries. On the other hand, Socrates did not make the slightest claim to go on living as Socrates in the hearts of his pupils. When he was talking with his pupils Socrates did not wish to transmit anything at all of himself into their souls. He wished to leave it to them to draw out from themselves what they already possessed. Nothing of Socrates was to pass over into his pupils' souls, nothing at all.

We can think of no greater contrast than that between the Buddha and Socrates. The Buddha was to live on in the souls of his pupils, whereas in the souls of the pupils of Socrates nothing more was to live on than what the midwife has given to the child who comes into the world. Thus the spiritual element in the pupils of Socrates was to be drawn forth by the spiritual midwifery of Socrates when he left each person on his own, drawing forth from each one of them what was already there within him. That was the intention of Socrates. So we could characterize the difference between Socrates and the Buddha in the following way. If a voice from heaven had wished to state clearly what the disciples of Buddha were to receive through the Buddha, it might well have said, “Kindle within yourselves what lived in the Buddha, so that through him you can find the path to existence in the spirit.” If we wish to characterize in the same way what Socrates wanted we should have to say, “Become what you are!”

If we bring these two pictures before our souls, ought we not to say to ourselves that we are here confronted with two different streams of development in human evolution, and that they are polar opposites? They do meet again in a certain way, but only in the farthest distance. We should not mix these things together but rather characterize them in their differentiation, and only then indicate that there is at the same time a higher unity. If we think of the Buddha face to face with one of his pupils we could say that he is trying to kindle in the souls of his disciples what is necessary to lead them upward to the spiritual worlds through what he himself had experienced under the Bodhi tree. This may be recognized in the form of his discourses, with their sublime words and their endless repetitions, repetitions that should not be omitted in translation. The words are chosen in such a way that they sound like a heavenly proclamation from the heavenly world coming from beyond the earth, spoken through his lips out of the direct experience of what had happened during his enlightenment, words which he wished to pass on to his followers.

How then can we picture Socrates with his pupils? They confront each other in such a way that when Socrates is trying to make clear to his pupils the relation of man to the divine using the simplest rational considerations of everyday life, he shows them the logical connection between these considerations. The pupil is always directed to the most prosaic everyday matters, and his task is then to apply ordinary logic to what he has grasped as knowledge. Only once is Socrates shown as having risen to the height at which he could, as we might say, speak as Buddha spoke to his pupils. Only once does he appear like this, and that is at the moment when he was approaching death. When just before his death he spoke about the immortality of the soul he was surely speaking then like one of the highest of the enlightened ones. Yet at the same time what he said could only be understood if one takes into account his entire life experience. It is for this reason that what he said then touches our heart and soul when we listen to his Platonic discourse on immortality in which he speaks somewhat as follows, “Have I not striven all my life to attain through philosophy all that a man can in order to become free from the world of sense? Now when my soul is soon to be released from everything material, ought it not to penetrate joyfully into the world of spirit? Should I not be ready to penetrate with joy into that for which I have inwardly striven through philosophy?”

Anyone who can grasp the whole mood of this dialogue of Socrates in the Phaedo finds himself experiencing a feeling similar to that experienced by the pupils of the Buddha when they listened to his sublime teachings, so that it is possible to say that in spite of the difference, the polar difference between these two individualities, at a particular moment they are so sublime that even in this polar difference a certain unity appears. If we direct our vision to the Buddha we shall find that the discourses of Buddha as a whole are such that they arouse a feeling which one has with Socrates only in the case of the discourse on the immortality of the soul. I am referring to the soul-mood, the spiritual tension of this dialogue. But what is poured forth in the other discourses of Socrates which are always directed to a man's own reason is not often met with in the Buddha, although it is occasionally to be found. It sometimes sounds through. One can actually experience it as a kind of metamorphosed Socratic dialogue when on one occasion the Buddha wishes to make clear to his pupil Sona that it is not good to stay only in the realm of the material and enmeshed in sense-existence, nor yet to mortify the flesh and live like the old aescetics. It is good to pursue a middle path. Here the Buddha confronts his pupil Sona and speaks to him somewhat in the following manner, “See here, Sona, would you be able to play well on a lute whose strings are too loose?” “No,” Sona is forced to reply, “I shall not be able to play well on a lute whose strings are too loose.” “Well, then, will you be able to play well on a lute whose strings are too tight?” “No,” Sona must answer, “I shall not be able to play well on a lute whose strings are drawn too tight.” “When will you be able to play well on the lute?” Buddha then asks him. “When the strings are drawn neither too loosely nor too tightly.” “So it is also with man,” rejoined the Buddha. “If he is too much attached to the life of the senses he cannot wholly listen to the voice of reason. Nor will he truly listen to reason if he spends his life mortifying himself and withdrawing from earthly life. The middle path which must be taken also when stringing the lute must likewise be followed in relation to the mood of the human soul.”

This is just the way Socrates talks to his pupils, making an appeal to their reason, so that this dialogue of the Buddha with his pupil could equally well have been devised by Socrates. What I have given you is a “Socratic dialogue” carried on by the Buddha with his pupil Sona. But in just the same way that the discourse of Socrates to his pupils just before his death, a discourse that I have called Buddhistic, was unusual for Socrates, so is a dialogue of this kind rare in the case of the Buddha. We must never fail to emphasize the fact that we can reach the truth only by making characterizations of this kind. It would be easier to make a characterization if we were to say something along these lines, “It is through great leaders that humanity moves forward. What these leaders say is essentially the same thing though it takes different forms. All the individual leaders of mankind proclaim in their teachings different aspects of the same truth.” Such a statement is of course quite true, but it could scarcely be more trivial. What is important is that we should take the trouble to recognize things in such a way that we look for both the differentiations and the underlying unity; that we should characterize things according to their differences, and only afterward look for the higher unity to be perceived in these differences.

I felt that this remark about method was one that I had to make because in spiritual studies it usually is in accord with reality. It would be so easy to say that all religions contain the same thing and then concentrate on this one thing and then characterize it by saying, “All the various religious founders have presented only the same one thing in different forms.” But if we do make this characterization, it will remain infinitely trivial, however beautiful the words in which we express it. It would be just as unproductive as if we wished from the beginning to characterize two such figures as the Buddha and Socrates in the light of some abstract unity without seeking to perceive the polar difference between them. But if we trace them back to their forms of thought the matter will quickly be understood. Pepper and salt, sugar and paprika, are all put on the table to add to the food—they are all one, that is to say they are condiments. But because this can be said of them it does not mean that we must say all these condiments are the same and sugar our coffee by adding salt or pepper to it. What is unacceptable in life should not be accepted in spiritual matters. It would be unacceptable to say that Krishna and Zarathustra, Orpheus and Hermes are fundamentally only variations of the “one thing.” It is no more useful to make a characterization like this than it would be to say that pepper and salt, sugar and paprika are all different variations of one essence, since they are all equally condiments for food. It is important that we should grasp this point about method, and that we should not accept what is comfortable in preference to the truth.

If we visualize these two figures, the Buddha and Socrates, they will seem to us like two different, polar opposite configurations of the evolutionary streams of mankind. And when we now link these two within a higher unity as we have done, we may add to them a third in whom we also have to do with a great individuality around whom gather pupils and disciples—Christ Jesus. If among those pupils and disciples who gather around Him we fix our attention first on the Twelve, then we find that the Gospel of Mark in particular tells us with the utmost clarity something about the relation of the master to his pupils, in the same way as we characterized the relation with the greatest clarity we could between Buddha and Socrates in a different domain. And what was the clearest, the most striking and concise expression of this relationship? It is when the Christ—and this is indicated on several occasions—faced the crowd that wished to hear Him. He speaks to this crowd in parables and imagery. And the Gospel of Mark pictures this in a simple and grandiose manner when it describes how certain profound and significant facts about world events and human evolution are indicated to the crowd through parables and imagery. Then it is said that when He was alone with his disciples He interpreted this imagery to them. In the Gospel of Mark we are on one occasion given a specific example of how the Christ spoke to the crowd in imagery and then interpreted it to His pupils.

And He taught them many things in parables, and said to them in His teaching, “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened as he sowed that one part fell by the path and the birds came and devoured it. And another part fell on stony ground, where there was not much soil, and it immediately shot up because it did not lie deep in the soil. And when the sun rose it was scorched and withered because it had no root.

“And another part fell in thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.

“And another part fell in the good ground and brought forth fruit, which sprang up and grew and yielded thirty-fold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And when he was alone, his company together with the Twelve asked him about the parables. (Mark 4:2-10.)

And to his more intimate pupils he spoke as follows, “The sower sows the word.

“But in the case of those who heard the word that was sown by the path, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that had been sown among them.

“Those who hear the word that was sown on stony ground receive it immediately with joy. These have no root in themselves but are children of the moment. Then when they are afflicted or persecuted because of the word they immediately are confused and stumble.

“When by contrast it is sown among thorns some hear it, but then worldly cares, the temptation of riches, and other kinds of desires enter and choke the word, and it remains without fruit.

“Where it is sown on good ground there are people who hear and receive the word, and it yields fruit, thirty, sixty and a hundredfold.” (Mark 4:14-20.)

Here we have a perfect example of how Christ Jesus taught. We are told how Buddha taught, and how Socrates taught. Of the Buddha we can say in our Western language that he carried earthly experience up into the heavenly realm. It has often been said of Socrates that the tendency of his teaching can best be characterized by saying that he brought philosophy down from the heavens to earth in appealing directly to human earthly reason. In this way we can picture clearly the relation of these two individualities to their pupils.

Now how did Christ Jesus stand in relation to His pupils? His relationship to the crowd was different from that toward His own pupils. He taught the crowd in parable whereas for His intimate pupils He interpreted the parables, telling them what they were capable of understanding, of grasping clearly through human reason. So if we want to characterize the way Christ Jesus taught, we must speak of this in a more complex manner. One characteristic feature is common to all the Buddha's teaching; so the personal pupils of the Buddha are all of one kind. Similarly the entire world can become pupils of Socrates since Socrates wished only to elicit what lies hidden in the human soul. His disciples are therefore all of the same kind and Socrates has the same relationship to all. Christ Jesus, however, has two different kinds of relationships, one kind to His intimate pupils and another to the crowd. How may this be understood?

If we wish to understand the reason for this we must recognize clearly in our souls that the whole turning point of evolution had been reached at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. The end of the period during which clairvoyance was the common possession of humanity was approaching. The further we go back in human evolution the more was the ancient clairvoyance that enabled men to see into the spiritual worlds the common possession of all mankind. How did they see into these worlds? Their vision took the form of perceiving the secrets of the cosmos in pictures, which were either conscious or unconscious imaginations. It was a dreamlike clairvoyance in the form of dreamlike imaginations, not in the rational concepts that people today make use of in the pursuit of knowledge. Both science and popular thinking which today make use of prosaic reasoning power and judgment were absent in those ancient times. In confronting the external world men did indeed see it, but they did not analyze it conceptually. They possessed no logic, nor did they make deductions in their thinking. Actually it is difficult for a man of today to imagine this because today one thinks about everything. But ancient man did not think in this way. He passed by objects and formed mental images of them; and in the intermediate state between sleeping and waking when he looked into his dreamlike imaginative world and saw pictures he was able to understand his mental images.

Let us envisage the matter more concretely. Picture to yourselves how, many thousands of years ago, ancient man would have observed his environment. He would have been struck by the fact that a teacher was present who explained something to his pupils. A man of former times would have stood there and listened to the words the teacher was saying to his pupils. And if there had been several pupils present he would have heard how one receives the word with fervor, another takes it up but soon lets it fall, while a third is so absorbed in his own egoism that he does not listen. A man of former times would not have been able, for example, to have compared these three pupils in a rational manner. But when he was in the intermediate state between waking and sleeping, then the whole scene would have appeared again before his soul in the form of a picture. And he would have seen something, for example, like this: how a sower walks scattering seed; and this he would have really seen as a clairvoyant picture. He would have seen how one seed is thrown in good soil where it comes up well, a second seed he throws on poorer soil, and the third on stony soil. A smaller crop comes up from what was sown on the poor soil and nothing at all from the stony soil. Such a man of earlier times would not have said, as the man of today would, “One pupil takes up the words, another does not take them up at all,” and so on. But in the intermediate state between sleeping and waking he saw the imaginative picture, and with it the explanation. He would never have spoken of it in any other way. If he had been asked to explain the relation of the teacher to his pupils he would have told about his clairvoyant vision. For him that was the reality, and also the explanation. And that is the way he would have talked.

Now the crowd facing Christ Jesus possessed indeed only the last remnant of ancient clairvoyance. But their souls were still well versed at listening to what was told to them in the form of pictures about the coming into being and the evolution of mankind. When Christ Jesus spoke to the crowd He spoke as if He were speaking to people who still retained the last heritage of ancient clairvoyance and took it with them in their ordinary life of soul.

Who, then, were His intimate disciples? We have heard how the Twelve consisted of the seven sons of the Maccabean mother and the five sons of Mattathias. We have heard how throughout the whole history of the Hebrew people they had advanced to the point where they could vigorously assert their immortal ego. They were indeed the first whom Christ Jesus could choose Himself, appealing to that which lives in every human soul, living in it in such a way that it can become the new starting point for human development. To the crowd he spoke on the assumption that they would understand what they had preserved as a heritage from ancient clairvoyance. To His disciples He spoke on the assumption that they were the first who would be able to understand a little of what we today can say to human beings about higher worlds. It was thus a necessity for Christ Jesus during the whole of the turning point of time to speak in a different way when He was addressing the crowd from when He was speaking to His intimate pupils. The Twelve whom He drew to Himself He placed in the middle of the crowd. It was the task of Christ Jesus' closer circle of pupils to acquire that understanding, that rational understanding of things that belonged to the higher worlds and of the secrets of human evolution that in later times would become the common property of mankind. If we take what He said as a whole when He interpreted the parables for His pupils, we can say that He spoke also in a Socratic manner. For He drew forth what He said from the souls of each one of them, with the difference that Christ Jesus spoke of spiritual matters while Socrates spoke rather about the circumstances of earthly life and made use of ordinary logic. When Christ spoke to His intimate pupils about spiritual matters He did so in a Socratic manner. When the Buddha spoke to his disciples and expounded spiritual matters he showed how this was possible through illumination and through the sojourn of the human soul in the spiritual world. When Christ spoke to the crowd He spoke of the higher worlds in the way in which they formerly were experienced by ordinary human souls. He spoke to the crowd, as one might say, like a popular Buddha; to His intimate disciples He spoke like a higher Socrates, a spiritualized Socrates. Socrates drew forth from the souls of his pupils the individual earthly reason, whereas Christ drew forth heavenly reason from the souls of His disciples. The Buddha gave heavenly enlightenment to his pupils; Christ in His parables gave earthly enlightenment to the crowd.

I would ask you to give thought to these three pictures: Over there in the land of the Ganges there is the Buddha with his pupils—the antithesis of Socrates; over there in Greece is Socrates with his pupils—the antithesis of the Buddha. And then four or five centuries later there is this remarkable synthesis, this remarkable combination. Here you have before your souls one of the greatest examples of the regular, lawful development of human evolution. Human evolution proceeds step by step. Many of the things taught in years past in the early stages of spiritual science may have been thought by some people to be a kind of theory, a mere doctrine as, for example, when it was explained that the human soul should be thought of as the combined action of the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul. Some people certainly make their judgments too quickly, indeed, a good deal more quickly even than those who take something that is merely a first draft and regard it as the finished product, a draft that was still awaiting further development. Such different judgments which we have actually experienced are all right as long as it is drawn to the attention of anthroposophists how they ought not to think. Sometimes we are confronted with blatant examples of how not to think, although many people believe we should indeed think like that. For example, this morning someone gave me a fine example of an odd kind of thinking which I am quoting here only as an example, though it is one that we should very much take to heart for the reason that we as anthroposophists should not only take notice of the world's shortcomings but should actually do something towards the consistent perfecting of the soul. So if I take what was told me this morning as an example, I do this not for a personal but for a spiritual reason that has wide application.

I was told that in a certain area of Europe a gentleman is living who at one time a long time ago had printed some pointless statements about the teachings that appear in Steiner's Theosophy as well as about his general relationship to the spiritual movement. Now it happened today that an acquaintance of this gentleman was criticized because his acquaintance, that is this particular gentleman, had published something like this. To which the acquaintance replied, “Why, my friend has just begun to study the writings of Dr. Steiner in an intensive manner.” Yet this friend years before had passed judgment on these writings, and it is offered as an excuse that he is just beginning now to study them! This is a way of thinking that ought to be impossible within our movement. When some time in the future people write historically about our movement the question will certainly be asked, “Could it possibly be true that it occurred to someone to propose as an excuse that a man is only now beginning to acquaint himself with something on which he passed judgment years ago?” Such things are an integral part of anthroposophical education, and we shall make no progress unless it becomes generally accepted that such things must be unthinkable, absolutely unthinkable in our anthroposophical movement. For it is a necessary part of our inner honesty that we must be simply unable to think in this way. We can make no step forward in our search for truth if it is possible for us to pass such a judgment. And it is a duty for anthroposophists to take note of these things and not pass them by in an unloving manner while at the same time talking about the “universal love of mankind.” In a higher sense it is indeed unloving toward a man if we forgive him something of this kind because we thereby condemn him to karmic meaninglessness and lack of existence after death. By drawing his attention to the impossible nature of such judgments we make easier his existence after death. This is the deeper meaning of the matter.

So we should not take it lightly when the truth is put forward in the first place in a simple manner, namely, that the human soul is composed of three members, the sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul. Already in the course of the years it was emphasized how this fact has a much deeper significance than a mere dividing of the soul into three parts. It was pointed out how the various postAtlantean cultures gradually developed: the ancient Indian, the primeval Persian and the Egypto-Babylonian-Chaldean cultures, the Greco-Latin culture and then ours. And it was shown how the essential characteristic of the EgyptianBabylonian-Chaldean cultural epoch is the specific development of the true sentient soul of man. Similarly in the Greco-Latin era there was the specific culture of the intellectual soul, and in our era of the consciousness soul. So we are confronted with these three cultural epochs, which have their influence on the education and evolution of the human soul itself. These three soul members are not something that have been theoretically thought out, but are living realities developing progressively through successive epochs of time.

But everything must be linked. The earlier must always be carried over into the later, and in the same way the later must be foreshadowed in the earlier. In what cultural epoch do Socrates and the Buddha live? They live in the epoch of the intellectual soul; both have their task and their mission in that epoch.

The Buddha has the task of preserving the culture of the sentient soul from the previous, the third epoch, into the fourth. What the Buddha announces and his pupils take up into their hearts, is something destined to shine over from the third post-Atlantean period—the period of the sentient soul—into the era of the intellectual soul. In this way the era of the intellectual soul, the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, could be warmed through by the glow and the light of the teachings of Buddha, by what was brought forth by the sentient soul, permeated as it was by clairvoyance. The Buddha was the great preserver of the sentient soul culture, bringing it forward right into the culture of the intellectual soul. What then was the mission of Socrates, who appeared somewhat later in time?

Socrates in the same way stands in the midst of the era of the intellectual soul. His appeal is made to the single human individuality, to something that can truly emerge only in our fifth cultural age. It was his task to foreshadow, though in a still abstract form, the era of the consciousness soul in the era of the intellectual soul. The Buddha preserves what came from the past, so that his message appears like a warming, shining light. Socrates anticipates what in his own time lies in the future, the characteristics of the consciousness soul era. So in his age it seemed to be somewhat prosaic, merely rational, even arid. Thus the third, fourth and fifth cultural epochs are telescoped in the fourth. The third is preserved by the Buddha, the fifth is anticipated by Socrates. West and East have the task of pointing up these two different missions—the East preserving the greatness of the past, while the West in an earlier era is anticipating what is to appear in a later one.

From the very ancient times in human evolution when the Buddha appeared time and again as the Boddhisattva, there is a straight path until the time when the Bodhisattva ascended to Buddhahood. There is a great and continuous development that comes to an end with the Buddha, and this really is an end because the Buddha undergoes his last incarnation on earth and never again descends to it. It was a great age that came to an end then, since it brought over from very ancient epochs what constituted the culture of the sentient soul of the third post-Atlantean cultural era and let it shine out again. If you will read the discourses of the Buddha from this point of view you will gain the right mood of soul and as a result the era of the intellectual soul will be valued by you in a different way. You will then return to the discourses of Buddha and say, “Everything here is of such a nature that it speaks directly to the human mind, but in the background is something that escapes from this mind and belongs to a higher world.” This is the reason for that special rhythmic movement that ordinary rational men find objectionable which we find in the repetition of Buddha's discourses. This we can begin to understand only when we leave the physical for the etheric, entering in this way the first super-sensible element behind the material. Anyone here who understands how much is active in the etheric body which stands behind the physical will also understand why so much in Buddha's discourses is repeated again and again. The repetitions must not be deleted from the discourses since such deletion takes away that special mood of soul that lives in them. Abstract-minded persons have done this in the belief that it is doing something helpful if they eliminate the repetitions and stick to the content. But it is important that they should be left just as the Buddha gave them.

If now we consider Socrates as he was, without all the wealth of material provided by the discoveries of natural science and the humanities since his day, and observe how he approaches the things of everyday life, we shall see how a man of the present time, when fortified by all the material of natural science, will find everywhere the Socratic method active in it. We expect it and need it. So we have a clear line beginning with Socrates and continuing into our own era, and this will grow ever more perfect in the future.

Thus there is one stream of human development that goes as far as the Buddha and ends with him; and there is another stream that begins with Socrates and goes on into the distant future. Socrates and the Buddha stand next to one another like the nuclei of two comets, if I may be allowed such an image. In the case of the Buddha, the light-filled comet's tail encircles the nucleus and points far back into the indeterminate perspectives of the past; in the case of Socrates the comet's tail of light encircles the nucleus in the same way but points far, far into the indeterminate distances of the future. Two diverging comets going in succession in opposite directions whose nuclei shine at the same time, this is the image I should like to use to illustrate how Socrates and the Buddha stand side by side.

Half a millennium passes, and something like a uniting of these two streams comes into being through Christ Jesus. We have already characterized this by putting a number of facts before our souls. Tomorrow we shall continue with this characterization so that we can answer the question, “How can we best characterize the mission of Christ Jesus in relation to the human soul?”

• 1. Socrates, Athenian philosopher, 470–399 B.C. Our information about him comes mainly from the works of Plato and Xenophon, the more sympathetic and much better known picture being drawn from Plato. Socrates is not known ever to have written a word, his instruction having been all given orally, in the form of dialogues.
  
  Plato's picture of Socrates is contained mostly in his Protagoras, Meno, Symposium, Gorgias, and the three dialogues recounting the death of Socrates: The Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo. Plato, 427–347 B.C.
  
  Aristotle, 384–322 B.C. A pupil of Plato, he never knew Socrates personally, but credits him with many philosophical innovations, especially the use of logic and dialectic.
• 2. Gautama Buddha, c. 563–483 B.C. His dialogue with his pupil Sona is recorded in Vinayapitaka I, page 182 in the edition of H. Oldenberg (in German).