The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we look at the world around us as our senses and intellect perceive it, we have something we may call, metaphorically speaking, a great cosmic edifice. We form concepts, ideas, and images of what it is like and what goes on in it. What happens in this cosmic edifice, even down to the details, affects us so that we develop certain sympathies or antipathies for this or that, and these then are expressed in our feeling life. Prompted by our will we do this or that, and thus intervene in the processes going on in this cosmic edifice.

At first, people think that this building of the cosmos consists of separate parts, and so they study these parts and find them made up of still smaller parts, which they then examine, and so on. Finally, scientists arrive at what they call the smallest parts, the molecules and atoms. As I told you, nobody has ever seen these molecules and atoms; they are hypothetical—in a certain sense the hypothesis of their existence is justified, as long as we keep in mind that it is only a hypothesis. In short, we are to some extent justified in thinking that the cosmic building consists of parts or members, and there is nothing wrong with trying to get a clear picture of these. However, the people who give rein to their fantasy in thinking about the atom and who perhaps even talk about the life of the atom, or have still wilder notions about it—well, they are simply speaking about the nothing of a nothing, for the atom itself is merely hypothetical. To build a hypothesis upon other hypotheses is nothing else but building a house of cards; not even that, for in a house of cards we have at least the cards, but in speculations about the atom, we have nothing.

Based on the insights to be gained from spiritual science, people should admit that if they want to see more of the cosmic edifice than our senses perceive, they must arrive at a different perspective. They must come to a way of thinking that is as different from our thinking in everyday life (which is also that of ordinary science) as our usual, everyday way of thinking is from dreams. We dream in pictures, and we can have a whole world in these pictures of ours. Then we wake up and are no longer confronted with the pictures of our dreams but with realities that impinge upon us, that push and tug at us, demanding attention. We know this from life itself, not on the basis of a theory, for no theory can enable us to distinguish between dreams and so-called everyday reality. Only our direct experience of life can teach us this.

Now, it is also true that we can wake up from everyday life experiences, which we may call by analogy “a dream life,” to a higher reality, the reality of the spirit. And again, it is only on the basis of life itself that we can distinguish between this higher spiritual reality and that of everyday life.

Now, what we see when we enter this world can be described with the following image—of course, one could use many different analogies to show the relationship between spiritual reality and ordinary reality, but I want to use a special image for this today. Let's imagine we are looking at a house built out of bricks. At first glance, the house appears to be composed of individual bricks. Of course, in the case of a house we can't go beyond the individual brick. However, let's assume the house doesn't consist of just ordinary bricks but of ones that are in turn extraordinarily artful constructions. Nevertheless, on first seeing the house we would only see the bricks, without having any idea that each brick in turn is a small work of art, so to speak. That is what happens in the case of the cosmic edifice.

We need only take one part of this cosmic edifice, the most complete one, let's say, the human being. Just think, as a part of this cosmic edifice, the human being seems to us to consist of parts: head, limbs, sense organs, and so on. We have tried over time to understand each part in its relation to the spiritual world. Remember, just recently I told you that the shape of our head can be traced to our previous earthly incarnation. The rest of our body, on the other hand, belongs to this incarnation and bears within it the rudiments of the head for the next life on earth.

I also spoke about the twelve senses and connected them with the twelve forces corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac. We said that microcosmically we bear within us the macrocosm with its forces working into us primarily from the twelve signs of the zodiac. Each of these forces is different: the forces of Aries differ from those of Taurus, which in turn differ from those of Gemini, and so on. Similarly, our eyes perceive different things than our ears. The twelve senses thus correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac, but there is more to it than that.

We know that the rudiments of our sense organs were developed already on old Saturn, then evolved further during the old Sun and the old Moon periods up to the time of our earth. During our earth period, we have become self-enclosed beings with completely developed sense organs. In the Moon, Sun, and Saturn periods, human beings were much more open to the great cosmos, and the forces of the twelve signs of the zodiac affected the essential core of the human being. While the rudiments of our sense organs were being formed, they were affected by the forces of the zodiac. Thus, when we speak of the connection between the senses and the signs of the zodiac, we mean more than a mere correspondence. We seek those forces that have built our sense organs into us. We do not speak superficially of some vague kind of correspondence between the ego-sense and Aries or between the other senses and this or that sign of the zodiac.

We speak about this correspondence because during the earlier periods of our earthly planet the senses of the human being were not yet developed to the point of being enclosed in the organism. It was only through the twelve forces that the sense organs were built into our organism. We are built up out of the macrocosm, and when we study our sense organs, we are actually studying world-embracing forces that have worked in us over millions and millions of years, and have produced such wonderful parts of the human organism as the eyes and the ears. It is indeed true that we study these parts for their spiritual content, just as we would have to study each brick in order to examine the artistic structure of a house.

I could explain this with yet another image. Suppose we had some kind of structure artistically built up out of layers of paper rolls, some of them standing upright, others at an angle—all of these arranged artistically into some kind of a structure. Now imagine we had not just rolls of plain paper, but inside each roll a beautiful picture had been painted. Of course, just looking at the rolled up paper, we wouldn't see the paintings on the inside of the rolls. And yet, the paintings are there! And they must have been painted before the paper rolls were arranged in the artistic structure.

Now suppose it is not we who build up this artful structure of paper rolls, but the paper rolls have to form it by themselves. Of course, you can't imagine they could do this by themselves; nobody can imagine it. But let's suppose because the pictures are painted on all the paper rolls, the latter now have the power to arrange themselves in layers. And that gives you a picture of our true cosmic edifice. We can compare the paintings on the rolls with all that happened during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, and is woven into every individual part of our cosmic building. These are not dead pictures, but living forces that build up everything meant to exist on earth. And we draw out what is artfully hidden in the structure made up of the individual rolls of the cosmic edifice—which science describes. This is what confronts us in our outer life. I have given much thought to finding an analogy corresponding as closely as possible to the facts of the matter and have come up with this image of the paper rolls with their living, active pictures. When you think this analogy through, you will find that when we first look at this structure, we cannot know anything about the paintings inside the rolls. If the structure is rather artful and ingenious, we can get an artful and ingenious description of it; however, it will not contain a word about the paintings inside the rolls.

You see, that's how it is with the conventional sciences. They describe this artistic structure, while ignoring completely the paintings on the inside of each roll. Now, you may wonder if a description of the elaborate structure of the rolls allows us to get an idea and to really know what is inside each roll as long as the rolls are rolled up and part of the whole structure? No, it does not! Conventional science is completely unable to arrive at the idea that the spiritual underlies our cosmic edifice. Therefore, simply continuing along the lines of conventional science will not lead to an understanding of spiritual science; something else must be added, something that has nothing to do with ordinary science.

Now picture all these layers of rolls; we can easily describe them and find them interesting and beautiful. Maybe some rolls are more slanted than others; maybe some are curved, and so on; all this can be nicely described. But in order to find out that there is a picture inside each roll, we will have to take out one of the paper rolls and unroll it. In other words, something special must be added to the human soul if we are to advance from the ordinary scientific outlook to that of the science of the spirit. The soul must be taken hold of by something of a special nature. This is what is so difficult to understand for our materialist culture. Yet, this must be understood again as it was in earlier cultural epochs when a spiritual world view permeated the physical one. In ancient times, people were always aware that everything they had to know about the spiritual content of the world was based on the spiritual taking hold of the soul. That is why people back then spoke not only about science, but also about initiation and the like.

Another analogy, one taken from the ancient traditions of spiritual science, will make the matter completely clear to you if you think it through. In spiritual science we speak of an “occult reading of the world,” and rightly so. What conventional science is doing cannot be called “reading the world.” If you look at what is written on a page of some book or other publication and you can't read at all, then what is written there will of course remain completely in comprehensible to you. Still, you could describe the handwriting; you could describe the lines, loops, and crossbars; you could tell what the individual letters look like and how they are combined. It will be a nice description, not unlike the one contemporary science gives of outer physical reality or the one contemporary history provides. However, this is not the same as reading.

Obviously, people do not learn to read by taking a page from a book, without having any idea what it means to read, and trying to figure out the meaning of the text from the shape of the letters. Reading is taught in childhood. We learn to read not by describing the shape of the letters, but because something spiritual is conveyed to us, and we are mentally and spiritually stimulated to read. It is the same with everything we call the higher and lower degrees of initiation. Initiation was not based on teaching souls to describe what was outside them, but on teaching them to read it, to decipher, so to speak, the meaning of the world. Thus, it was with good reason that what is spiritual in the world was called “The Word,” for the world has to be read if it is to be understood spiritually. And we do not learn to read by memorizing the shape of the letters but by receiving spiritual impulses.

That is what I want to make clear through the presentations in our circles. As you remember the themes running through our lectures, you will see I have always tried to use images. Today I am also using them, for it is only through images that one can lead the way into the spiritual. As soon as images are crammed into concepts applying only to the physical plane, they no longer contain what they should. This confuses people because they cannot grasp what is given in images in such a way that it is a true reality for them. Right away, they think of the images themselves in completely materialistic terms. When we look at more primitive cultures, we see that people then did not have our modern concepts but thought in images and expressed their reality in them. Even in Asian cultures, which are somewhat atavistic because they have kept features from earlier times, you find that to meaningfully express something profound, people always speak in images, images that definitely have the significance of a reality.

Let us take an example where the image really has the significance of an immediate reality, of a coarse and rough reality, so to speak. Europeans frequently find it very hard to understand Asians who have preserved older, atavistic ideas of reality; they often have only a very rough understanding of Asians. There is a very beautiful Asian novella telling the following story.

Once upon a time there was a couple, and they had a daughter. The daughter grew up and was sent to school in the capital because she showed special talents. On leaving school, she married a merchant, an acquaintance of her father. She had a son and died when the boy was four years old. The day after the mother's funeral, the child suddenly said: “Mother has gone upstairs to the top floor, and she must be there now!” And the whole family went upstairs.

Now we must put ourselves into the Asian soul in order to understand what follows. I am telling you something bordering closely on reality. Yet if a European were told by a four-year-old that his mother, who had been buried the day before, was upstairs and if he were then to go up with a candle to look around, he would of course find nothing there. The whole thing would be denied. In other words, we have to try to put ourselves into the Asian mind.

Well, the family went up there with a light and found the mother actually standing there before a dresser and staring at it. All the drawers were closed, and the people felt that there had to be something in the dresser that was troubling her. They emptied the drawers and took the items that had been in them to the temple to store them there. In that way those things would be removed from the world. They believed that now the soul would not return anymore; they knew it would return only if something was still binding it to this world.

However, the soul returned anyway! Every evening when the family looked upstairs, she was there. Finally, the family went to a wise guardian of the temple; he came, said he must be left undisturbed, and recited his sutras. And, when the “hour of the rat” struck—in the Orient, the time between midnight and two in the morning is called the hour of the rat—there was the woman again, staring at a certain spot on the dresser. He asked her if anything was there, and she gave him to understand by a gesture that there was indeed something. He opened the first drawer but nothing was in it, the second, nothing, the third, nothing, the fourth and still nothing. Then it occurred to him to lift up the paper lining of the drawers, and there between the last layer of paper and the bottom of the drawer he found a letter. He promised to tell nobody about this letter and to burn it in the temple. He did so, and the soul never returned again.

Now this oriental story actually agrees with reality; it expresses reality. It would be very difficult to present this matter in European concepts. Besides, the conceptions of modern Europeans are still too coarse. They think when something is real, then everybody must be able to see it. Europeans generally allow only for two things; either everyone sees something, and then it is a reality, or not everyone sees it, and then it is subjective and not objective. Now this distinction between subjective and objective applies only to the physical world but has no meaning in the spiritual world. There we cannot call anything others do not see subjective but not objective.

Now you may say that such things as told in that story also exist in Europe. Indeed, they do, but Europeans are generally glad to say it is only fiction and is not necessarily true. That is why it is so much easier to speak about the spiritual world in fiction. Fiction does not lay any claim to truth. People are content when they do not have to believe what is said in stories and the like. However, the objection that this is after all only a novella does not count. Europeans obviously have little understanding of Asians or they would not say such things. What Europeans call novellas, or art, is a most superfluous and useless game to Asians and means nothing to them. They even make fun of our telling stories about things that do not exist. Asians do not understand this. In what they call works of art, they tell only about what really exists, albeit in the spiritual world. That is the profound difference between the European and the Asian world views.

That Europeans write novellas about things that do not exist is, according to the Oriental view, a highly superfluous activity. In their view, all our art is only a rather superfluous and useless occupation. Clearly, we have to understand the Asian art works we possess as Imaginations of spiritual reality; otherwise we will never understand them at all. We Europeans in turn judge Asian stories not by Asian standards but by our own and call them fanciful and beautiful fiction, products of the fertile, unbridled Oriental imagination.

People will gradually have to realize that we have to speak more and more in images. Of course, if we were to speak in pictures only, we would be going against modern European culture, so we can't do that. But we can gradually allow ordinary thinking, applicable only on the physical plane, to turn into thinking about the spiritual world, and then into pictorial thinking, which develops under the influence of the spiritual world. Natural scientists also develop a view of the world, but if they think their view is clear and comprehensible, they make the same mistake as we would if we claimed we could paint a portrait, and the subject would then step out of the canvas and walk around the room.

In my latest book, Vom Menschenrätsel, I move from the usual logical presentation to a pictorial one.¹ This has to become our general style of presentation if spiritual science is really to become a part of Western civilization. A philosophical treatise about the same matters would cite innumerable logical arguments, would turn the most elaborate and artificial phrases; yet it would be virtually dead. It would aim only at understanding the outer layering of the rolls, not what lives as paintings on the inside of each roll. These things become meaningful only when we apply them in our lives, for that is how we learn to understand life. So-called logical proofs have to be imbued with life before we can understand spiritual science in a living way.

As you know, some people are musical and others are not, and there is a very great difference between those who are musical and those who are not. In terms of the soul a musical person is quite different from an unmusical one. I do not mean this as a criticism of unmusical people; it is simply a statement of fact. Those who look more closely at life may perhaps not go so far as to agree with Shakespeare's statement, “The man that hath no music in himself ... Is fit for such treasons, stratagems and spoils ... Let no such man be trusted.”²

Though we may not arrive right away at that conclusion, there is a certain difference in the souls of musical and unmusical persons.

Now, you may want to know why there are musical and unmusical people. If you look for an answer in psychology, which follows along the lines of the natural sciences, I do not think you will find much that could cast a light on this question. If psychology were to explain why one person is musical and another is not, if it were to deal with such subtleties, then it would finally do some good.

However, there is yet another difference between human beings. We find people who go through life and are, in a sense, hardly touched by what goes on around them. Others go through life with so open a soul that they are deeply affected by what is going on around them. They feel deep joy over some things and suffer over others; they feel happiness about some things and sadness about others. There are those who are dulled to impressions and those who are sensitive and empathize with all the world. There are people who shortly after entering a room that is not too crowded have a certain rapport with the others, because they can feel very quickly what the others feel by way of so-called imponderables. On the other hand, there are individuals who come into contact with many people but do not really get to know a single one of them because they do not have the gift I have just described. They judge others by what they themselves are, and when these others are different from them, they really consider them more or less bad people.

Still, there are those who give their time and attention to others, sharing their experiences. As a rule these are people who can also empathize with animals, with beetles and sparrows, who can feel joy with some events and sorrow with others. Notice how often this happens in life, especially at a certain age; young people are happy about all kinds of things. They are up one minute and down the next, while other people call them stupid because, to their minds, nothing really matters much anyway. So, there exist these two types of people. Of course, the two qualities are sometimes more and sometimes less developed; they are not necessarily very pronounced but are still clearly noticeable.

Now, the spiritual scientist, trying to understand the world from his point of view, comes to the conclusion that those people are musical in this life who empathized with everything and moved easily from joy to sorrow and from sorrow to joy in their previous life. This was internalized, and that is how the rhythmical flexibility of the musical soul developed. On the other hand, people who were dulled in their sensitivity to outer events in the preceding incarnation do not become musical. Nevertheless, they may have other excellent qualities, may even have been great world reformers and have influenced world history.

Imagine a person living in Rome at the time when Michelangelo and Raphael produced their great works and not seeing anything but immorality in the Rome of that time. Now Rome was indeed immoral and decadent. But this individual ignored everything that was not immoral, for instance, the art of Michelangelo and Raphael. Perhaps he became a very important personality, a reformer who accomplished great things. What I am telling you is not meant as malicious criticism. Still, people are unmusical because in the previous incarnation they did not receive vivid impressions of things that do deeply impress other souls.

Think how transparent life would become and how well we would be able to understand others if we approached them with such knowledge. And when we keep in mind that spiritual science imbues our souls with a longing to perceive in pictures, then all this should seem to us something desirable.

Of course, if everything were limited to concepts and if spiritual science were to dissect everyone and investigate what the person was like in previous incarnations, then people would do well to be on their guard against spiritual science. No one would venture forth among people anymore if they would analyze like this. However, this would happen only if we worked with crude concepts. If we stay with pictures, the latter lay hold of our feelings, and we arrive at an emotional understanding of others, which we do not need to transform into concepts. We turn it into concepts only when we express it as a general truth. It is quite all right to talk about the flexibility of the soul in a preceding incarnation and musicality in a later one, as I have done, but it would be in poor taste if I were to approach a person who is musical and describe what he or she was like in the previous incarnation based on this talent. These truths are derived from individual details, but the point is not to apply them to details. This must be understood in the deepest sense.

Most people may understand truths like these, but when we go a bit further, then what is meant to enlighten humanity can easily lead to nonsense. For example, we often speak about reincarnation in general terms, and at one time, I talked to one of our branch groups about the relationship between reincarnation and self-knowledge, a theme that deserves some attention. I said it would be good to try to apply certain concepts we acquire from spiritual science to our efforts to understand ourselves. I explained that at the beginning of our life karma often brings us into contact with people who were connected with us at about the middle of our previous life, when we were in our thirties. In other words, we are not right away with the people we were with at the corresponding time in our earlier incarnation. This is how I have explained various rules of reincarnation; you can also find in my lectures how reincarnation can be applied to self-knowledge. Well, what did all this lead to in those days? It turned out that shortly thereafter a number of people founded a sort of “Club of the Reincarnated.” Yes, indeed, there was a clique that explained who each member had been in the preceding incarnation or even in all previous lives. Of course they had all been exceedingly eminent figures in human history, that goes without saying, and they had all been connected in their earlier lives.

That was a nuisance for a long time. Naturally this is all terrible because it violates what I have emphasized, namely, that if you are to know anything about your previous incarnation, in our era you will not understand it from within yourself. Rather, your attention will be drawn to it through some outer event or through another person. In our time it is generally false when somebody looks within and then claims to have been this or that person. If we are to know anything, it will be told to us from outside.

Those who founded the “Club of the Reincarnated” would have had to wait a long time before being told about their previous incarnations. Yet they had all been important personalities, the most important in human history! When the thing became known, and those people were asked why they had done all this, they answered that they did it because I had said in a lecture one should cultivate self-knowledge in the light of reincarnation. Since then they had all been busy thinking about who they had been in previous lives and how they had been connected with each other.

In such a case we sin against the reverence we should have for the great spiritual truths. This reverence consists in staying appropriately with the image, with the metaphor; only when it is really necessary should the picture be left behind, and should we go beyond the metaphor. In spiritual science we have to develop reverence and to realize that this sophistry, this putting things into the concept, is always a bad thing. It is always bad to think about spiritual matters in the same way we think about things on the physical plane. Indeed, when we acquire this reverence, we also develop certain moral qualities, which cannot unfold if we don't carry all this in our soul in the right way. Accordingly, spiritual science will also lead to a moral uplifting of our modern culture.

Now we Europeans say—and rightly so—that because we can see the Christ Mystery in our spiritual life, we have an advantage over other cultures, for example, over the Asian or oriental ones. What those cultures know about the spiritual does not include the Christ Being. The Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, Persians, do not include the Christ Being in their thinking about the spiritual interrelationships in the world. We are therefore right in calling the Asian world view atavistic, a relic of an earlier age. Though those people may have an exceedingly lofty understanding of the world, as, for instance, in the Vedanta philosophy, their inability to understand the Christ Mystery makes their world view an atavistic one. To be able to penetrate deeply into certain connections is not necessarily a sign of great spiritual heights.

For example, I used to know a man who was among us for a long time and even belonged to the “Club of the Reincarnated,” and he propounded excellent theories about certain conditions of life on Atlantis. Continuing along the lines of my book on Atlantis, this person came to very interesting conclusions that were true. Yet, he was so loosely connected to our movement that he left it when external reasons made it convenient for him to do so. Under certain conditions, it takes only a particular formation of the etheric body to see into supersensible regions. However, if spiritual science is to flow in a living way into our culture, it has to take hold of the whole person so that he or she can grow close to its deepest impulses. And then spiritual science will create what our culture, which is developing more and more into a materialistic one, is lacking.

Thus, we are right in saying we have the advantage of the Christ Mystery over the Asian cultures. But what do Asians say about this? Now, I am not telling you something I just made up; I am telling you what the more reasonable Asians really say. They agree we have the advantage of the Christ Mystery over them. They say, “That is something we do not have, and that's why you Europeans think you are on a higher stage of cultural development. However, you also say, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ and your religion tells you to love one another. But when we look at how you live, it does not seem as though you are doing that. You send missionaries to us in Asia who tell us all kinds of great things; however, when we come to Europe, we find people do not at all live as they should if all we've been told were true.” Well, that's what the Asians say.

Now just think whether they are so entirely wrong. At a religious convention where people from all religions were to speak, this case was discussed, and the Asian representatives said what I have just told you. They said, “You send us missionaries, which is very nice. However, you have had Christianity for two thousand years now, and we cannot see that it has advanced your moral development so much beyond ours.”

There are good reasons for this, my dear friends. You see, Asians live much more in the group-soul and much less as individuals. Morals are in a sense innate to them, inborn through the group-soul. Europeans, precisely because they are developing their I, must leave the group-soul behind and must be left to their own resources. That is why egoism inevitably had to appear. It goes hand in hand with individualism. People will only gradually be able to come together again by understanding Christianity in a higher sense.

Much has prevented those who have thought about Christianity, even the best of them, from truly understanding the consequences of the Mystery of Golgotha. Granted, it is certainly very “profound” to say we must experience the Christ in our own inner being. You see, there is what I would like to call a symbolical theosophy. As you know, I have always spoken out against this theosophy that wants to explain everything as symbols. It explains even the resurrection of Christ as merely an inner experience even though in reality it is a historical event. Christ really did rise again in the world, but many a theosophist finds it easier to deal with the matter by claiming it is merely an inner process. As you know, this was the special skill of the late Franz Hartmann; in every lecture he repeatedly explained theosophy to his audience by saying that one has to understand oneself inwardly, to comprehend God in oneself, and so on.³

Now if you understand the Gospels properly, you will not find any grounds for the idea that the Gospels advocate people should experience the Christ only inwardly. There are theosophical symbolists who reinterpret various passages, but in reality everything in the Gospels confirms the truth of the great word, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” The Christ is a social phenomenon. The Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha as a reality, and He is here as a reality, belonging not to the individual but to the common life of all people. What He does is what is important. These things can often be better understood in pictures than in abstract concepts.

Just recently we went to see a friend on leave from the front lines of the battlefield, where he has since returned. This friend was kind enough to get us a taxicab, and when he returned with it and pulled up, he told us he had had a conversation with the driver. This driver was an altogether peculiar man, for when we had arrived and were about to get out, he opened the door and after he had been paid, he gave us two little pamphlets called “Peace Messenger.” He was making propaganda for the spiritual world while working his job! Then our friend told us that this driver had told him the essential thing is for people to find the Christ, everything depends on the Christ. In other words, our friend had picked out a cab at the taxi-stand and gotten into a conversation with the driver, who told him the world will advance only when people find the Christ, whom they have not yet found.

Well, the cab driver added a few other things and said, “You see, with Christ it's like this. Just think, I am a very respectable man, an exemplary man, and I have children who are all good for nothing. But am I any less respectable and exemplary a man because I have children who are no good? They all know me, or think they know me, but they are still good-for-nothings. That's how I think of the Christ. He belongs to us all, He is the person we all look to but that does not mean everybody necessarily really understands Him.”

This cab driver has created a marvelous picture of the special life of Christ, of His isolated life! He has discovered that Christ is living among us, living with us, belonging to us all and not to any one individual. He saw his sons who were all no good as the individuals, who were good for nothing and would have to struggle before reaching an understanding. If this cab driver had wanted to express this extraordinarily significant idea in philosophical terms, nothing would have come of it. But his picture reflects wonderfully what we are trying to understand. Of course, such a picture is not quite sufficient; an individual may understand it, but you will not influence our culture with it. I just wanted to show you that even the simplest soul can light on a true picture. This is how things should really flow into pictures. I have tried to achieve this particularly in the style of my latest book, which deals with non-theosophical matters. However, in its presentation this book is “theosophical,” if we want to use that expression.

It is important to understand our teachings more and more between the lines, so to speak, if we want to grasp correctly that they have to become life, the life of each one of us. And what weighs so heavily upon one's soul is just this awful difficulty of integrating these things into life.

You see, if these things are important to you, and particularly if you really know our rationalist culture, you will realize that what pulsates through spiritual science has to live in all branches of culture. It must influence thinking, feeling, and willing, only then will it fulfill its mission. To feel connected with our cause really takes quite some inner strength. It is a pity that it takes such an infinitely long time for people to feel thoroughly connected with the impulses of spiritual science. In the meantime, we can see people passing by and ignoring precisely what they should be focusing on.

Now let me tell you about another case. There was a very learned gentleman who used to be a member of our Society; in fact, he was tremendously learned, but his erudition did not satisfy him. He was profoundly unhappy in spite of all his learning, which included a knowledge of oriental languages and the culture of the Near East. Now this man came and asked for advice. In such a case my advice will necessarily have to show that through an understanding of spiritual science the spirit can enter into a science such as oriental philosophy. So I indicated that he should permeate all this scholarly material with what he had received from spiritual science. However, for him the two things merely continued to exist side by side. On the one hand, he pursued his oriental studies as this is done in the universities; on the other hand, he pursued spiritual science. The two never came together for him; he could not permeate the one with the other.

Now just think how fruitful it would be if someone who knows so much—and this man did indeed know a tremendous amount—were to take his science and learning and imbue it with theosophy! He wouldn't even have to let it be known that he thinks theosophically if he feared people might look askance at him for that. Still, he could then present all this in his university lectures. That man could very well have penetrated the culture on the Euphrates and the Tigris and the one a bit further west—he was particularly at home in Egyptology—with spiritual science and could have accomplished something remarkable. In any case, he could have achieved something more fruitful than the popularizing stuff produced by our common writers. Recently a piece by such a popular writer appeared in a widely read daily paper. The fellow had written an article on the discovery of a sphinx-like figure during construction for the Baghdad railway—well, even if his name is Arthur Bonus, he is still definitely not a “good one!”⁴ This article is absolutely terrible!

The ideal we have in mind, my dear friends, is to let our thinking be carried by what spiritual science gives us. And it should be the same in life too, in our everyday life with each other. Spiritual science can be carried into everything. If we did not intend this, did not have this ideal, then spiritual science would not be able to bear fruit. The challenge to make it fruitful meets us everywhere.

Just think, there are excellent historians who write about the history of England at the time of James I, let's say.⁵ Then there are excellent historians who write books about the life of Francisco Suarez, the Jesuit.⁶ As you know, I have to be careful what I say when I speak about Jesuitism. That is, I must not say too much that is positive—or at least what can be misunderstood as positive. Nevertheless, it is true that most people know about this Suarez only that in one of his writings he is supposed to have explicitly preached regicide. But this is not true. In general, people often know things that are untrue but don't as often and as thoroughly know things that are true.

Now, excellent books about this Suarez are available nowadays; most of them are written by Jesuits. You can read these books about Suarez, the successor of Ignatius of Loyola, and understand them.⁷ That does not mean that you will become, or have been, a Jesuit, nor that you have to put up with people drawing such conclusions. The facts are clear, and when we connect them, we can answer one of biggest questions of modern history. These two individuals, James I and Francisco Suarez, the Jesuit philosopher, are complete opposites. At the time of James I, a very ahrimanic new development was inaugurated. Another development began with Suarez that was very luciferic. Their combined influence, and particularly their fights against each other, shaped much of what lives and weaves in the present age.

Here we come to mysterious connections. I don't want to blame anyone with what I am going to say now. For example, we find that a great deal of what these days is called historical materialism or Marxism, the Social Democratic outlook, can be traced directly to Suarez. Now please do not take this to mean that I am saying the Social Democrats are Jesuits. Nevertheless, there are in a certain sense good reasons for connecting the Social Democrats with the Jesuits. By the same token, many members of the opposing party, that is, those who oppose social democracy, can be traced back directly to what was inaugurated by James I.

With this, I have indicated something that lives in many people's thoughts. Particularly in occult communities you find two main streams, and from these flows something that is not occult. These two main streams produce two typical, contrasting figures: James I of England, in whom an extraordinary initiate-soul lived, and Suarez.

Now, if you read the biography of Suarez, you will not understand it at all if you have not really grasped spiritual science. Suarez was one of those people who are at first bad students and don't learn anything. According to the contemporary materialist view, such people are hopeless cases and not good for anything. However, one can easily prove that many great geniuses did not learn anything when they were in school. Well, Suarez was also one of the bad students, and even in college he was not yet what one might call a bright man. Then all of a sudden he changed, and every biography of him describes this sudden awakening. The gift of brilliance suddenly awakened in him, and he wrote extraordinarily interesting books, which are, unfortunately, not widely known. This happened all of a sudden, kindled by some of the things I told you about in my lectures on the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits, which Suarez also practiced. Through these he awakened something in himself that enabled him to develop special mental and spiritual forces.

Thus, the biography of Suarez proves—as it can also be proved in the case of James I—that he turned around, so to speak, and came from the unspiritual into the spiritual. This soul, which later achieved outstanding accomplishments, was born at a certain moment. Its development did not proceed in a straight line, but took place in a sudden jolt, produced either by karma or by an influence on the person in question that can be compared to how we learn to read in elementary school: not by describing the shape of the letters, but by receiving an impulse through which we learn to understand the letters.

Here, you see again how spiritual science can guide us in understanding these historical connections, and then we can see life quite differently. If you take in spiritual science in a living way, then your attitude to life really changes, an you can think of other things to do than what you have been doing. It is hard to imagine that a person who takes in spiritual science in a living way could come up with the strange idea, for example, that he or she is Mary Magdalene reincarnated. This would not occur to such a person; instead he or she would focus on other contents of the soul.

It is hard to have to watch how slowly the development in the direction I indicated proceeds. People really take Spiritual science far too much as merely a theory or as simply something to be enjoyed. However, it must be studied in a living way. Now that we are together before parting or some time at the beginning of summer, when we will have to return to Dornach, I would like to discuss briefly a few important points we must consider in this regard.

You see, my dear friends, if things had turned out as many people adhering to older traditions had expected at the time when we first established spiritual science here fourteen years ago, we would have become a sect. For all the ideas brought over from England were headed toward the formation of a sect. And many people felt very comfortable being completely secluded in their small circles. Then they could call the other people outside their circles fools. There was very little control over this. However, this kind of thing had to stop.

Spiritual science has to reckon with our whole culture. We have always considered this culture, and we have emphasized particularly in public lectures what one can get into European heads these days—regardless of how many objections were raised. Now I don't want to criticize—that would be silly—but still, we have to understand that our movement really must not become a sect and must not even have any characteristics of a sectarian movement if it is to fulfill its task. We can accomplish much if we take the general culture into account. People outside our movement for the most part write nonsense about it—if they write about it at all. You may say this does not matter in a deeper sense. On the contrary, it matters very much! That is why we have to defend ourselves and do what we can to stop it. We have to do everything possible so that eventually people will not write nonsense but something better.

However, in a spiritual sense it is even more harmful when what was intended only for members of our immediate circle is brought in the wrong way before the public so that our lecture cycles are now sold in second-hand bookshops. Granted, we may not be able to prevent this. Still it happens again and again, not only that our lecture cycles can be bought in second-hand bookshops but other equally detrimental things as well. For instance, somebody just recently told me about a person he had worked with for a long time. He said that person did not write anything on his own initiative but belongs to a somewhat dubious clique, which has complete control over him. He himself only sits down and goes ahead with his writing. Now this person has written many brochures about our spiritual science and even big books. In those you find not only quotations from my printed and published works, but also long passages from the cycles. In other words, it is not just that one can buy these cycles in second-hand bookshops, but, in fact, anyone wanting to write a stupid book these days is able to get hold of them. Such people then buy two or three cycles and copy passages that sound completely absurd when taken out of context, and then they can make a book out of all that.

These are the problems that result from our having to face the public while at the same time being a Society. However, we have to understand this problem if we want to overcome it. As I said, I do not want to criticize, for that would be totally useless; instead, I want to describe the problem. I want to show you where the difficulties lie, and we just have to watch for them. In the immediate future even more abominable things will be done against our Society than we have had to endure up to now. We won't be able to change that in the twinkling of an eye. Still, we must not ignore both the encouraging, pleasant elements and the annoying ones in the way the world judges our movement as though we were trying to become totally unmusical in the next incarnation.

You see, those who think purely egoistically—as I said, this is not meant as criticism, but merely as description think that spiritual science has more to say about certain relationships in nature than ordinary science. Thus, people turn to me for medical advice even though I have emphasized repeatedly that I am only a teacher or cultivator of spiritual science, and not a physician. Of course, people may want some friendly advice and to refuse that would be absurd. If people come for friendly advice, why should it be denied them even if it concerns matters of natural science? However, after everything that has happened, I have to request that nobody seeks my advice on medical matters who is not in the care of a physician. People who think selfishly do not consider that such things are not permissible nowadays and that they bring us into conflict with the world around us, and that is detrimental to our spiritual science. We have to make an effort to improve things; we have to advocate everywhere that there should be more than just the officially authorized medicine, which is based on pure materialism. We can certainly do this, but we must not just selfishly think of what is good for us individually if this could interfere with what our movement must be.

Spiritual science can give advice, and it would be absurd if it didn't. It would be pathetic indeed if one could not give some advice to a person suffering from this or that ailment. However, it is a great risk to give advice when the following happens—and I am telling you a true story here. Someone was ill in a town where I had just previously said that I definitely do not want people to turn to me in case of illness. I had said so publicly and officially. Now, someone became ill and was admitted into a sanitarium, where he remained for some time. A long-standing member of ours who had always been connected with the most intimate aspects of our cause wrote to this sanitarium, explaining that the patient in question could now be discharged because Dr. Steiner gave such and such advice. The member wrote this to the physician, who replied that this just goes to show we don't mean it when we claim theosophy wants to be nothing but theosophy and does not want to meddle in other people's business.

Yes, indeed, my dear friends, we have to pay attention to such things. If we ignore them, it will not be for the good of the movement. Of course, this is only one case, but variations of this are happening again and again. This leads to a peculiar feature of our movement, about which I have to speak now. What I am referring to is that the new good side of our movement comes to light less rapidly than other new developments that have also never before been there. They prove that our movement is indeed something new; however, these are peculiar novelties.

For example, let us suppose this or that were written in my published books. If no cycles were getting into the wrong hands, people outside our movement would refute what is in my books. Well, let them do it, but then they would present their opinion. It would never occur to people out there who do not belong to our Society to copy sentences from my books to prove I am a “bad guy.” No one would do this; instead people out there would present their own opinions. What happens in our Society, however, is that someone accepts our teaching—swallows it hook, line, and sinker, as the saying goes—but then refutes me with my own teaching. You can see an example of this in an as yet unpublished exposition.

As you may remember, in an earlier edition of Riddles of Philosophy—the book then was called Views of Life and World in the Nineteenth Century—I explained that Leverrier discovered the planet Neptune merely on the basis of his calculations about Uranus, before Neptune had been seen.⁸ Neptune was first seen at the Berlin observatory, but its existence was already known earlier simply because of calculations. I referred to this example to show that something may follow from calculations, that we can know of a fact merely on the basis of our thinking.

Well, just recently someone wrote that he has applied this very obvious and convincing idea, but in a different field. He claims to have found that something is wrong in our movement, that there are disruptions and interferences like the ones Leverrier found in observing the planet Uranus. If Uranus does not move the way it should according to calculations based on the general laws of gravity, then obviously something is interfering. Similarly, according to this individual, something supposedly interferes with our movement. So he propounds the hypothesis that there is something disruptive here, interfering with everything. And then, in the same way Leverrier discovered Neptune, this individual discovered that the evil interferences in our movement are in me. As the astronomers in the observatory here turned their telescope to the place where Neptune was said to be, so this person focused his spiritual telescope on me and found the evil there.

This is a special case; the methods I have given are all applied to my character and I am refuted with myself. In this man's circle a letter was written recently—not by him but by others from his circle—saying that I have no right to complain about this refutation because I myself had always said spiritual science was the common property of everyone and that it would be wrong to think spiritual science originated with the spiritual investigator. Well now, when things get this confused, there can be no simple, clear explanation for them. This, indeed, is something new arising in our Society. Outside, where the old still holds good, others are refuted by means of what the critics themselves think. But within our Society people do not take their own thoughts, but what they read in the lecture cycles and use it against me.

For example, in the letter I mentioned you can find many quotations from my book An Outline Of Occult Science and others.⁹ Everywhere you'll find exhortations to read this or that for yourself so you'll see I am actually an evil, bad guy. Now, the letter does not claim what I say is bad. On the contrary, because it is good, it can be used as evidence. This is something entirely new arising in our midst, a novelty based on the theory that our teaching can be accepted and then used to slander the one who is trying to popularize it. That is indeed something new!

This may be a particularly blatant case; still, on a smaller scale such things occur very frequently. If we so much as say anything about such things, then we get threats! Recently a letter informed us that articles and pamphlets, whose titles constitute a direct threat, would soon appear in shop windows and newspapers. As I said, if we dare make a sound, this is what happens. This is a novelty, something new in our movement, and we must pay attention to it.

We can see difficulties cropping up before they have fully emerged, so to speak, for we can predict what will happen. Tell me, should we really never talk about such a case as the one I have mentioned; should we always keep quiet about it? That is certainly possible. However, since the members themselves are not trying to discover such things, nobody in our circles would ever find out. Therefore, we must speak about it. But what happens when we speak about it? Pretty soon you will probably read in another letter—of course, this is just a hypothesis for now that I have been speaking about a private letter before a large number of members. And this is simply because there are certainly people here who will immediately report somewhere or other what I have said tonight. That is happening all the time. Not talking about these things is no good, but talking about them only encourages what is repeatedly being done. We can predict the outcome.

I do not want to criticize; I only want to point out that in a movement where spiritual science lives, that is, where occult things pulsate, difficulties do indeed arise, and we must pay attention to them. If we ignore them, they will continue and get worse. Yes, we have to be prepared for the attacks to get more and more trenchant. If we were a small sect, this would not be the case. But our movement had to become just what it has become, and so that's the way it is.

Much of what comes from outside is understandable although many attacks ostensibly from the outside actually can be proven to have originated within our circles. Just today we have learned that in Dornach we practice eurythmy, which supposedly consists in dancing to the point of reaching a trance, as the dervishes do, and so on. We were told this news was reported by members. Members have reported that we dance until we reach a state of trance! In reality this was told to one of our members by people totally unconnected with us, but these people said they had heard it from members whose names they mentioned.

These difficulties come up because we have united spiritual science and the Society, and we must examine them carefully. If we ignore them, we cannot progress properly and we risk the dissolution of our Society and its total annihilation. True, all this does not harm spiritual science as such, but it does harm what spiritual science is also trying to be. It is harmful when people come and tell me that much of what they read about spiritual science interested them, but then they sat at a table in a boarding house and heard a lady prattle on about theosophy and say all kinds of things, and, of course, they feel they cannot join a Society where such a lot of rubbish is talked that's supposed to be theosophy. Now, this is not an isolated case; this happens again and again in one way or another.

Speaking about these things at the end of a serious talk may be misunderstood. However, it is absolutely necessary, my dear friends, that you know about them and pay attention to them. Our Society must be the carrier and helper of spiritual science; however, it can easily develop in such a way that it works against what spiritual science is to bring to world evolution. Naturally, in the individual case it is easy to understand that much of this damage could not be prevented. Yet we can be sure that the damage will look quite different if we pay attention to it and if we ourselves try to keep to a certain line, a certain direction, so to speak. Sometimes it is indeed extremely difficult, but also necessary, to take a hard line in a certain direction. Then novelties like the ones I just described will be rightly judged. It does not happen anywhere else that a person is refuted with his own works, for the idea of accepting a person's teaching in order to refute him with them is in itself absurd and foolish. Of course, if someone talks nonsense, you can use his nonsense against him, but that is not the point here. Rather, the new twist here is that the teaching is accepted and the person is refuted on the basis of his teaching.

On a smaller scale, things like that are very widespread. And they are not far removed from another evil I will also speak about before coming to a close. Indeed, it happens nowhere else as often as in our movement that somebody does something one can condemn, in fact, has to condemn. Then people take sides. For example, somebody may say something against the leading personalities in our Society, or against long-standing members, or against the Vorstand, as we unfortunately have to call it. Yet, even if the allegations are completely unfounded and perhaps only made up, clearly revealing the accuser's underlying motivation, you will rarely find that people try to discover whether the unfortunate Vorstand is right. Instead, people immediately take sides with the person who is wrong.

In fact, that is the rule here: people take sides with those who are wrong, and write letters asking the victims of the attack to do something to preserve the friendship, to straighten things out again—after all, one must show love. When somebody commits an unkind deed against another, people do not write to the one who did the deed. Instead, they write to the one who suffered it that he should show some kindness and that it would be very unloving not to do something to set things right again. It never occurs to them to ask this of the one who is wrong. Such peculiar things happen in our circle.

Of certain other things we will not even speak; nevertheless, there may of course come a time when we have to speak about them too. Today, we wanted to talk about a serious topic since we are living in a serious time and our movement is to influence it in a serious way. Still, we absolutely had to point out these peculiar things. You must pay attention to them, for things are indeed happening that you will find hard to believe if you hear about them. Nevertheless, we constantly have to deal with such things, and nobody should misunderstand that I had to speak about them; instead you should all reflect on them a bit.

It is our intention not to have as long a break between lectures as we had in the past. We may be able to meet again in fall; however, it is better not to promise anything specific in this time of uncertainties and obstacles. And so I ask you to use the picture I have tried to paint in this winter of our souls and to let your souls dwell on it during this summer. Bring to life in your souls, in a kind of meditation, what we have talked about and reflect on the basic requirements for the integration of our spiritual science into the general culture.¹⁰

And so let us now part, my dear friends, in the realization that we can do much to help integrate what we take seriously into our times if we are all really committed to it. People now sacrifice much more than ever before in such numbers and in so short a time. We are living in a hard time, a time of suffering. May the hardships and sufferings also be a summons to us. No matter how difficult it may be to incorporate the spiritual into human evolution, it has to happen. However much or however little we can do as individuals, let us do it! Let us try to understand the right way to do our part so that what cannot come about of itself but has to be done through people will result. Of course, there will also be help from the spiritual world. Thus, let us remain united in thoughts like this even when we will be apart for a while. People who are united in spirit are always together. Neither space nor time can separate them, and particularly not a more or less short span of time. Let us remain united in thoughts that try again to penetrate a little bit what I have said here in these days to your souls.

We must take in the full weight of the significance of the truths connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us realize that in order to understand this or that we have to be in the solitude of our souls and return there again and again. But let us also understand that we belong to humanity and that the One Who went through the Mystery of Golgotha brought something from spiritual heights to the earth for all human beings, for the working together of all people. And let us remember that He said: “When two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in their midst.”

Through all we experience in solitude we can prepare ourselves for what the Christ is destined to be to the world through us. But Christ is in our midst only if we try to carry into the world what we strive for in solitude, and we can do that only if we understand the conditions for carrying it into the world. Let us look at these conditions! Let us open our eyes, and, above all, let us have the courage to admit that things are as they are and must be dealt with accordingly.

When I speak here about Christ, I do so knowing that He is helping because He is an actively living being. We can feel His presence among us; He will help us! But we have to learn His language, and His language today is that of spiritual science. That is the way it is for the present. And we have to find the courage to represent and support this spiritual science as much as we can among ourselves and before others.

This summer, let us reflect upon this and let us meditate on it until we meet again.

• 1. See Lecture Two, note 4.
• 2. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1.
• 3. Franz Hartmann, 1838–1912, doctor and theosophist. Founded his own movement within theosophy.
• 4. Translator's note: The Latin word bonus means “good.”
• 5. James I, 1566–1625, King of Scotland as James VI and of Great Britain as James I. Son of Mary, Queen of Scots. Succeeded to English throne at death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. During his reign group of scholars prepared new version of the Bible in English, called in his honor King James Bible (1611).
• 6. Francisco Suarez, 1548—1617, Spanish theologian and scholastic philosopher. Joined Society of Jesus (1564), considered foremost Jesuit theologian.
• 7. Ignatius of Loyola, 1491–1556, Spanish religious. Founded Society of Jesus in 1539. Began composition of his Spiritual Exercises in 1523.
• 8. Rudolf Steiner, The Riddles of Philosophy, (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1973).
  
  Urbaine-Jean-Joseph Leverrier, 1811–1877, French astronomer. Investigated disturbance in the motion of Uranus (1845), making calculations indicating the presence of an unknown planet, which was discovered in 1846 and named Neptune.
• 9. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, 3rd ed., repr., (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989).
• 10. After these words, Rudolf Steiner spoke about the day care nursery the members of the Anthroposophical Society in Berlin had organized:
  
  “I would like to add here that our dear friends who organized and cared so devotedly for our day care nursery are concerned that it might be forgotten—not completely of course, but perhaps almost forgotten. Naturally, we will have a kind of vacation, but after that the nursery will have to open again. Then we will need some money and, above all, some dear friends who will help with the day care—of course, only those who can help. Maybe there are women here who could help with the cooking or something like that. All this is needed. Those who have worked in the nursery and know something about such matters can tell you that its results are very good. The children gained something from having come here,- something has been made of them. Therefore, I would like to ask that the women who could take on this task again do so as a labor of love. Of course, if you take on such a task, you have to stay with it. If you cannot make a certain commitment to it, it is better not to take it on. For example, we cannot have somebody promising to be in the nursery at 5 o'clock and then send a note in the afternoon to cancel; we will not be able to find somebody else to fill in on such short notice. We have to know about cancellations at least one day in advance. Thus, I now ask those friends who can work in the nursery to contact Frau Dannenberg, who, together with others, has done so much for the nursery, so that the nursery can open again in winter.”

Yesterday I told you the story of Gerhard the Good—which most of you probably know—so that today we can illustrate various points in our endeavour to increase our understanding of the matters we are discussing. But before I interpret parts of this story for you, in so far as this is necessary, we must also recall a number of other things we have touched on at various times during these lectures. From what has been said over the past few weeks you will have seen that the painful events of today are connected with impulses living in the more recent karma of mankind, namely, the karma of the whole fifth post-Atlantean period. For those who want to go more deeply into these matters it is necessary to link external events with what is happening more inwardly, which can only be understood against the background of human evolution as seen by spiritual science.

To begin with, take at face value certain facts which I have pointed out a number of times. I have frequently said that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, an endeavour was made to draw the attention of modern mankind to the fact that there exist in the universe not only those forces and powers recognized by natural science but also others of a spiritual kind. The endeavour was to show that just as we take in with our eyes—or, indeed, with all our senses—what is visible around us, so are there also spiritual impulses around us, which people who know about such things can bring to bear on social life—impulses which cannot be seen with the eye but are known to a more spiritual science.

We know what path this more spiritual science took, so I need not go over it again. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, then, it was the concern of a certain centre to draw people's attention to the existence, as it were, of a spiritual environment. This had been forgotten during the age of materialism. You also know that such things have to be tackled with caution because a certain degree of maturity is necessary in people who take in such knowledge. Of course, not all those can be mature who come across, or are affected by, this knowledge in accordance with the laws of our time, which underlie public life. But part of what must be done at such a time can be the requirement to test whether the knowledge may yet be revealed publicly.

Now in the middle of the nineteenth century two paths were possible. One, even then, would have been what we could describe by mentioning our anthroposophical spiritual science, namely, to make comprehensible to human thinking what spiritual knowledge reveals about our spiritual environment. It is a fact that this could have been attempted at that time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but this path was not chosen. The reason was, in part, that those who possessed this esoteric knowledge were prejudiced, because of traditions that have come down from ancient times, against making such things public. They felt that certain knowledge guarded by the secret brotherhoods—for it was still guarded at that time—should be kept within the circle of these brotherhoods. We have since seen that, so long as matters are conducted in the proper way, it is perfectly acceptable today to reveal certain things. Of course it is unavoidable that some malicious opponents should appear, and always will appear, in circles in which such knowledge is made known—people who are adherents for a time because it suits their passions and their egoism, but who then become opponents under all sorts of guises and make trouble. Also when spiritual knowledge is made known in a community, this can easily lead to arguments, quarrelling and disputes, of which, however, not too much notice can be taken, since otherwise no spiritual knowledge would ever be made known. But, apart from these things, no harm is done if the matter is handled in the right way.

But at that time this was not believed. So ancient prejudice won the day and it was agreed to take another path. But, as I have often said, this failed. It was decided to use the path of mediumistic revelation to make people recognize the spiritual world in the same way as they recognize the physical world. Suitable individuals were trained to be mediums. What they then revealed through their lowered consciousness was supposed to make people recognize the existence of certain spiritual impulses in their environment. This was a materialistic way of revealing the spiritual world to people. It corresponded to some extent to the conditions of the fifth post-Atlantean period, in so far as this is materialistic in character.

This way of handling things began, as you know, in America in the middle of the nineteenth century. But it soon became obvious that the whole thing was a mistake. It had been expected that the mediums would reveal the existence of certain elemental and nature spirits in the environment. Instead, they all started to refer to revelations from the kingdom of the dead. So the goal which had been set was not reached. I have often explained that the living can only reach the dead with an attitude which does not depend on lowering the consciousness. You all know these things. At that time this was also known and that is why, when the mediums began to speak of revelations of the dead, it was realized that the whole thing was a mistake. This had not been expected. It had been hoped that the mediums would reveal how the nature spirits work, how one human being affects another, what forces are at play in the social organism, and so on. It had been hoped that people would start to recognize what forces might be used by those who understand such things, so that people would no longer be dependent solely on one another in the way they are when only their sense perceptions come into play, but would be able to work through the total human personality. This was one thing that went wrong.

The other was that, in keeping with man's materialistic inclinations, it soon became obvious what would have begun to happen if the mediumistic movement had spread in the way it threatened to do. Use would have been made of the mediums to accomplish aims which ought only to be accomplished under the influence of natural, sense-bound reasoning. For some individuals it would have been highly desirable to employ a medium who could impart the means of discovering the knowledge which such people covet. I have told you how many letters I get from people who write: I have a lottery ticket; or, I want to buy a lottery ticket; I need the money for an entirely selfless purpose; could you not tell me which number will be drawn? Obviously, if mediums had been fully trained in the techniques of mediumship, the resulting mischief with this kind of thing would have been infinite, quite apart from everything else. People would have started to go to mediums to find a suitable bride or bridegroom, and so on.

Thus it came about that, in the very quarter that had launched the movement in order to test whether people were ready to take in spiritual knowledge, efforts were now made to suppress the whole affair. What had been feared in bygone times, when the abilities of the fourth post-Atlantean period still worked in people, had indeed now come to pass. In those days witches were burnt, simply because those people called witches were really no more than mediums, and because their connections with the spiritual world—though of a materialistic nature—might cause knowledge to be revealed which would have been very awkward for certain people. Thus, for instance it might have been very awkward for certain brotherhoods if, before being burnt at the stake, a witch had revealed what lay behind them. For it is true that when consciousness is lowered there can be a kind of telephone connection with the spiritual world, and that by this route all sorts of secrets can come out. Those who burnt the witches did so for a very good reason: It could have been very awkward for them if the witches had revealed anything to the world, whether in a good or a bad sense, but especially in a bad sense.

So the attempt to test the cultural maturity of mankind by means of mediums had gone awry. This was realized even by those who, led astray by the old rules of silence and by the materialistic tendencies of the nineteenth century, had set this attempt in train. You know, of course, that the activities of mediums have not been entirely curtailed, and that they still exist, even today. But the art of training mediums to a level at which their revelations could become significant has, so to speak, been withdrawn. By this withdrawal the capabilities of mediums have been made more or less harmless. In recent decades, as you know, the pronouncements of mediums have come to amount to not much more than sentimental twaddle. The only surprising thing is that people set so much store by them. But the door to the spiritual world had been opened to some degree and, moreover, this had been done in a manner which was untimely and a mistake.

In this period came the birth and work of Blavatsky. You might think that the birth of a person is insignificant, but this would be a judgement based on maya. Now the important thing is that this whole undertaking had to be discussed among the brotherhoods, so that much was said and brought into the open within the brotherhoods. But the nineteenth century was no longer like earlier centuries in which many methods had existed for keeping secret those things which had to be kept secret. Thus it happened that, at a certain moment, a member of one of the secret brotherhoods, who intended to make use in a one-sided way of what he learnt within these brotherhoods, approached Blavatsky. Apart from her other capacities Blavatsky was an extremely gifted medium, and this person induced her to act as a connecting link for machinations which were no longer as honest as the earlier ones. The first, as we have seen, were honest but mistaken. Up to this point the attempt to test people's receptivity had been perfectly honest, though mistaken. Now, however, came the treachery of a member of an American secret brotherhood. His purpose was to make one-sided use of what he knew, with the help of someone with psychic gifts, such as Blavatsky. Let us first look at what actually took place. When Blavatsky heard what the member of the brotherhood had to say, she, of course, reacted inwardly to his words because she was psychic. She understood a great deal more about the matter than the one who was giving her the information. The ancient knowledge formulated in the traditional way lit up in her soul a significant understanding which she could hardly have achieved solely with her own resources. Inner experiences were stimulated in her soul by the ancient formulations which stemmed from the days of atavistic clairvoyance and which were preserved in the secret brotherhoods, often without much understanding for their meaning on the part of the members. These inner experiences led in her to the birth of a large body of knowledge. She knew, of course, that this knowledge must be significant for the present evolution of mankind, and also that by taking the appropriate path this knowledge could be utilized in a particular way.

But Blavatsky, being the person she was, could not be expected to make use of such lofty spiritual knowledge solely for the good of mankind as a whole. She hit upon the idea of pursuing certain aims which were within her understanding, having come to this point in the manner I have described. So now she demanded to be admitted to a certain occult brotherhood in Paris. Through this brotherhood she would start to work. Ordinarily she would have been accepted in the normal way, apart from the fact that it was not normal to admit a woman; but this rule would have been waived in this case because it was known that she was an important individuality. However, it would not have served her purpose to be admitted merely as an ordinary member, and so she laid down certain conditions. If these conditions had been accepted, many subsequent events would have been very different but, at the same time, this secret brotherhood would have pronounced its own death sentence—that is, it would have condemned itself to total ineffectiveness. So it refused to admit Blavatsky. She then turned to America, where she was indeed admitted to a secret brotherhood. In consequence, she of course acquired extremely significant insights into the intentions of such secret brotherhoods; not those which strive for the good of mankind as a whole, disregarding any conflicting wishes, but those whose purposes are one-sided and serve certain groups only. But it was not in Blavatsky's nature to work in the way these brotherhoods wished. So it came about that, under the influence of what was termed an attack on the Constitution of North America, she was excluded from this brotherhood.

So now she was excluded. But of course she was not a person who would be likely to take this lying down. Instead, she began to threaten the American brotherhood with the consequences of excluding her in this way, now that she knew so much. The American brotherhood now found itself sitting under the sword of Damocles, for if, as a result of having been a member, Blavatsky had told the world what she knew, this would have spelt its death sentence. The consequence was that American and European occultists joined forces in order to inflict on Blavatsky a condition known as occult imprisonment. Through certain machinations a sphere of Imaginations is called forth in a soul which brings about a dimming of what that soul previously knew, thus making it virtually ineffective. It is a procedure which honest occultists never apply, and even dishonest ones only very rarely, but it was applied on that occasion in order to save the life—that is the effectiveness, of that secret brotherhood.

For years Blavatsky existed in this occult imprisonment, until certain Indian occultists started to take an interest in her because they wanted to work against that American brotherhood. As you see, we keep coming up against occult streams which want to work one-sidedly. Thus Blavatsky entered this Indian current, with which you are familiar. The Indian brotherhood was very interested indeed in proceeding against the American brotherhood, not because they saw that they were not serving mankind as a whole, but because they in turn had their own one-sided patriotically Indian viewpoint. By means of various machinations the Indian and the American occultists reached a kind of agreement. The Americans promised not to interfere in what the Indians wanted to do with Blavatsky, and the Indians engaged to remain silent on what had gone before.

You can see just how complicated these things really are when you add to all this the fact, which I have also told you about, that a hidden individual, a mahatma behind a mask, had been instituted in place of Blavatsky's original teacher and guide. This figure stood in the service of a European power and had the task of utilizing whatever Blavatsky could do in the service of this particular European power. One way of discovering what all this is really about might be to ask what would have happened if one or other of these projects had been realized.

Time is too short to tell you everything today, but let us pick out a few aspects. We can always come back to these things again soon.

Supposing Blavatsky had succeeded in gaining admission to the occult lodge in Paris. If this had happened, she would not have come under the influence of that individual who was honoured as a mahatma in the Theosophical Society—although he was no such thing—and the life of the occult lodge in Paris would have been extinguished. A great deal behind which this same Paris lodge may be seen to stand would not have happened, or perhaps it would have happened in the service of a different, one-sided influence. Many things would have taken a different course. For there was also the intention of exterminating this Paris lodge with the help of the psychic personality of Blavatsky. If it had been exterminated, there would have been nothing behind all those people who have contributed to history, more or less like marionettes. People like Silvagni, Durante, Sergi, Cecconi, Lombroso and all his relations, and many others would have had no occult backers behind them. Many a door, many a kind of sliding door, would have remained locked.

You will understand that this is meant symbolically. In certain countries editorial offices—I mean this as a picture!—have a respectable door and a sliding door. Through the respectable door you enter the office and through the sliding door you enter some secret brotherhood or other working, as I have variously indicated over the last few days, to achieve results of the kind about which we have spoken. So the intention was to abolish something from the world which would have done away with, at least, one stream which we have seen working in our present time. Signor d'Annunzio would not have given the speech we quoted.

Perhaps another would have been given instead, pushing things in a different direction. But you see that the moment things are not fully under control, the moment people are pushed about through a dimming of their consciousness, and when occultism is being used, not for the general good of mankind—and above all, in our time, not with true knowledge—but for the purpose of achieving one-sided aims, then matters can come to look very grave indeed.

Anyway, the members of this lodge were, from the standpoint of the lodge, astute enough not to enter into a discussion of these things. Later on, certain matters were hushed up, obscured, by the fact that Blavatsky was prevented by her occult imprisonment from publicizing the impulses of that American lodge and giving them her own slant, which she would doubtless otherwise have done. Once all these things had run their course, the only one to benefit from Blavatsky was the Indian brotherhood. There is considerable significance for the present time in the fact that a certain sum of occult knowledge has entered the world one-sidedly, with an Indian colouring. This knowledge has entered the world; it now exists. But the world has remained more or less unconscious of it because of the paralysis I have described.

Those who reckon with such things always count on long stretches of time. They prepare things and leave them to develop. These are not individuals, but brotherhoods in which the successor takes over from the predecessor and carries on in a similar direction with what has been started.

On the basis of the two examples I have given you, of occult lodges, you can see that much depended on the actual impulses not being made public. I do not wish to be misunderstood and I therefore stated expressly that the first attempt I described to you was founded on a certain degree of honesty. But it is extremely difficult for people to be entirely objective as regards mankind as a whole. There is little inclination for this nowadays. People are so easily led astray by the group instinct that they are not objective as regards mankind as a whole but pay homage to one group or another, enjoying the feeling of ‘belonging.’ But this is something that is no longer really relevant to the point we have reached in human evolution. The requirement of the present moment is that we should, at least to some degree, feel ourselves to be individuals and extricate ourselves, at least inwardly, from group things, so that we belong to mankind as human individuals. Even though, at present, we are shown so grotesquely how impossible this is for some people, it is nevertheless a requirement of our time.

For example, let me refer to what I said here a few days ago. A nation as a whole is an individuality of a kind which cannot be compared with human individualities, who live here on the physical plane and then go through their development between death and a new birth. Nations are individualities of quite a different kind. As you can see from everything we find in our anthroposophical spiritual science, a folk spirit, a folk soul, is something different from the soul of an individual human being. It is nonsense to speak in a materialistic sense, as is done today, of the soul of a nation while at the back of one's mind thinking of something resembling the soul of an individual—even though one, of course, does not admit this to oneself. Thus you hear people speak of ‘the French soul’; this has been repeatedly said in recent years. It is nonsense, plain nonsense, because it is an analogy taken from the individual human soul and applied to the folk soul. You can only speak of the folk soul if you take into account the complex totality described in the lecture cycle on the different folk spirits. But to speak in any other sense about the folk soul is utter nonsense, even though many, including journalists, do so—and they may be forgiven, for they do not know what they are talking about. It is mere verbosity to speak—as has been done—for instance of the ‘Celtic soul and the Latin spirit’. Maybe such a thing is just about acceptable as an analogy, but there is no reality in. We must be clear about the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. So often have we said that the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished in such a way that what has been united with earth evolution ever since is there for all mankind, but that if an individual speaks of a mystical Christ within him, this is no more than idle talk. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective reality, as you know from much that has been said here. It took place for mankind as a whole, which means for every individual human being. Christ died for all human beings, as a human being for human beings, not for any other kind of being. It is possible to speak about a Christian, about one whose attitude of mind is Christian, but it is complete nonsense to talk of a Christian nation. There is no reality in this. Christ did not die for nations, nations are not the individualities for whom He died. An individual who is close to the Being of the Mystery of Golgotha can be a Christian, but it is not possible to speak of a Christian nation. The true soul of a nation, its folk soul, belongs to planes on which the Mystery of Golgotha did not take place. So any dealings and actions between nations can never be interpreted or commented upon in a Christian sense.

I am pointing out these things simply because it is necessary that you in particular, my dear friends, should understand just how important it is today to arrive at clear-cut concepts. This can only be done by applying spiritual science, and yet mankind as a whole strives to fish in muddy waters with concepts that are utterly nonsensical and obscure. So the important thing is, above all, to arrive at clear-cut concepts, to see everything in relation to clear-cut concepts, and also to understand that in our time certain occult, spiritual impulses have been working, chiefly through human beings. This is fitting for the fifth post-Atlantean period.

Now if Blavatsky had been able to speak out at that time, certain secrets would have been revealed, secrets I have mentioned as belonging to certain secret brotherhoods and connected with the striving of a widespread network of groups. I said to you earlier that definite laws underlie the rise and evolution of peoples, of nations. These laws are usually unknown in the external, physical world. This is right and proper, for in the first place they ought to be recognized solely by those who desire to receive them with clean hands. What now underlies the terrible trials mankind is undergoing at present and will undergo in the future is the interference in a one-sided way, by certain modern brotherhoods, with the spiritual forces that pulse through human evolution in the region in which, for instance, nations, peoples, come into being. Evolution progresses in accordance with definite laws; it is regular and comes about through certain forces. But human beings interfere, in some part unconsciously, though if they are members of secret brotherhoods, then they do so consciously.

To be able to judge these things you need what yesterday I called a wider horizon; you need the acquisition of a wider horizon. I showed you the forces of which Blavatsky became the plaything, in order to point out how such a plaything can be tossed about, from West to East, from America to India. This is because forces are at work which are being managed by human beings for certain ends, by means of utilizing the passions and feelings of nationality, which have, however, in their turn first been manufactured. This is most important. It is important to develop an eye for the way in which a person who, because of the type of passions in her—in her blood—can be put in a certain position and be brought under the sway of certain influences. Equally, those who do this must know that certain things can be achieved, depending on the position in which the person is placed. Many attempts fail. But account is taken of long periods of time and of many possibilities. Above all, account is taken of how little inclination people have to pay attention to the wider—the widest, contexts.

Let us stop here and turn to yesterday's story. It tells us about the time around the tenth century, when the constitution of souls was still that of the fourth post-Atlantean period. We saw how the spiritual world intervened in the life of Emperor Otto of the Red Beard. His whole life is transformed because the spiritual world makes him aware of Gerhard the Good. From Gerhard the Good he is to learn the fear of God, true piety, and that one must not expect—for largely egoistic reasons—a blessing from heaven for one's earthly deeds. So he is told by the spiritual world to seek out Gerhard the Good. This is the one side: what plays in from the spiritual world.

Those who know that age—not as it is described by external history, but as it really was—are aware that the spiritual world did indeed play in through real visions such as that described in connection with Emperor Otto the Red, and that spiritual impulses definitely played a meaningful part. The one who wrote down this story says expressly that in his youth he had also written many other stories, as had other contemporaries of his. The man who wrote down the story of Gerhard the Good was Rudolf von Ems, an approximate contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach. He said he had written other stories as well but that he had destroyed them because they had been fairy tales. Yet he does not consider this story to be a fairy tale but strictly historical, even though externally it is not historical—that is it would not be included in today's history books which only take physical maya into account. In the way he tells it, it cannot be compared with external, purely physical history; and yet his telling is more true than purely physical history can be for, on the whole, that is only maya. He tells the story for the fourth post-Atlantean period.

You know, for I have repeatedly said this, that I am not taking sides in any way but simply reporting facts which are to provide a basis on which judgements may be formed. Only those who do not wish to be objective will maintain that what I shall attempt to say is not objective. Someone who does not wish to be objective cannot, of course, be expected to find objectivity in what is, in fact, objective. The fact that the spiritual world plays into human affairs is not the only important aspect of the story of Gerhard the Good. It is also significant that a leading personality receives from the spiritual world the impulse to turn to a member of the commercial world, the world of the merchant. It is indeed a historical fact that, in Central Europe, at that time the members of the ruling dynasty to which Otto the Red belonged did start to patronize the merchant classes in the towns. In Europe this was the time of the growth of commerce.

We should further take into account that at that time there were as yet no ocean routes between Orient and Occident. Trade routes were definitely still overland routes. Merchants such as Gerhard the Good who, as you know, lived in Cologne, carried their trade overland from Cologne to the Orient and back again. Any use of ships was quite insignificant. The trade routes were land routes. Shipping connections were not much more than attempts to achieve with the primitive ships of those days what was being done much more efficiently by land. So in the main the trade routes were overland, while shipping was only just beginning. That is what is characteristic of this time, for comprehensive shipping operations only came much later.

We have here a contrast arising out of the very nature of things. So long as Orient and Occident were connected by land routes, it was perfectly natural that the countries of Central Europe should take the lead. Life in these Central European countries was shaped accordingly. Much spiritual culture also travelled along these routes. It was quite different from what came later. As the centuries proceeded, the land routes were supplanted by ocean routes. As you know, England gradually took control of all the ocean connections which others had opened up. Spain, Holland and France were all conquered as far as their sea-faring capacities were concerned, so that in the end everything was held under the mighty dominance which encompassed a quarter of the earth's dry land, and gradually also all the earth's oceans.

You can see how systematic is this conquering, this almost exterminating, of other seafaring powers when you remember how I told you some time ago that in the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race—as they put it—will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean period. You will see how systematic the historical process has been when you consider what I have also mentioned and what was also taught: that this fifth post-Atlantean race of the English-speaking peoples will have to overcome the peoples of the Latin race.

To start with, the main thing is the interrelation between the English-speaking peoples and those whose languages are Latin in origin. Recent history cannot be understood without the realization that the important aim—which is also what is being striven for—is for world affairs to be arranged in such a way that the English-speaking peoples are favoured, while the influence of any peoples whose language is based on Latin fades out. Under certain circumstances something can be made to fade out by treating it favourably for a while, thus gaining power over it. This can then make it easy to engulf it.

In those secret brotherhoods, about which I have spoken so often, little significance is attached to Central Europe, for they are clever enough to realize that Germany, for instance, owns only one thirty-third of the earth's land surface. This is very little indeed, compared with a whole quarter of the land surface plus dominance over the high seas. So not much importance is attached to Central Europe. A great deal of importance was attached, however—especially during the period when present events were being prepared—to the overcoming of all those impulses connected with the Latin races.

It is remarkable how short-sighted the modern historical view is and how little inclination there is to go more deeply into matters which are quite characteristic of situations. I have already pointed out that what has so long been practised as a pragmatic view of history is not important, reporting as it does on one event, followed by another, and another, and yet another. What is important is to recognize the facts characterized by the many interrelationships in the events which follow one another. What matters is to point out what is characteristic about the facts, namely, what reveals the forces lying behind maya. Pragmatic history must today give way to a history of symptoms.

Those who see through things in this way will be in a position to form judgements about certain events which differ considerably from those of people who reel off the events of world history—this fable convenue—one after the other, as is done in historical science today. Consider some of the things you know well in connection with some others about which I shall tell you. First of all, a simple fact: In 1618 the Thirty Years War began because certain ideas of a reformative kind developed within the Czech Slav element. Then certain aristocrats belonging to these Slav circles took up the movement and rebelled against what might be called the Counter-Reformation, namely, the Catholicism from Spain which was favoured by the Habsburgs. The first thing usually told about the Thirty Years War is the story of the rebels going to the town hall in Prague and throwing the councillors Martinitz and Slavata and the secretary Fabrizius out of the window. Yet this is quite insignificant. The only interesting point is perhaps that the three gentlemen did not hurt themselves because they fell onto a dunghill. These are not things which can bring the Thirty Years' War to life for us or show us its real causes.

The reformative party elected Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619. Then followed, as you know, the battle of the White Mountain. Up to the election of the Elector Palatine, all the events were caused by the passionate feelings of these people for a reform movement, by a rebellion against arbitrary acts of power such as the closure or destruction of Protestant churches at Braunau and Kloster Grab. There is not enough time for me to tell you the whole story. But now think: Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, is elected King. Up to this point the events are based on human passions, human enthusiasm, it is even justified to say human idealism—I am quite happy to concede this.

But why, of all people, was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine chosen as King of Bohemia? It was because he was the son-in-law of James I, who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods! Here, then, we may discern an important finger in the pie if we are trying to look at history symptomatically. Attempts were being made to steer events in a particular direction. They failed. But you see that there is a finger in the pie. The most significant sign of what kind of impulses were to be brought to bear in this situation is that the son-in-law of one of the most important occultists, James I, was thrown into this position.

You see, the fact is that the whole of recent history has to do with the contrast between the ancient Roman-Latin element and that element, not of the English people—for they would get on perfectly happily with the world—but that element which, as I have described sufficiently, is to be made out of the English people if they fail to put up any resistance. It is the conflict between these two elements that is at work.

Meanwhile something else is manipulated, for a great deal can be achieved in one place by bringing about events in another.

Let us look at a later date. You might pick up a history book and read the history of the Seven Years War. Of course the history of this war is read just as thoughtlessly as any other. For to understand what is really going on and investigate what forces of history are playing a part, you have to look properly at the various links between the different circumstances. You have to consider, for instance, that at that time the southern part of Central Europe, namely Austria, was linked with every aspect of the Latin element and even had a proper alliance with France, whereas the northern part of Middle Europe—not at first, but later on—was drawn to what was to be made, by certain quarters, into the English-speaking, fifth post-Atlantean race.

When you look closely at the alliances and everything else that went on at that time—those things which were not maya, of course—you discover a war that is in reality being waged about North America and India between England and France. What went on in Europe was really only a weak mirror image of this. For if you compare everything that took place on the larger scale—do extend your horizons!—then you will see that the conflict was between England and France and that North America and India were already starting to have their effect. It was a matter of which of these two powers was cleverer and more able to direct events in such a way that dominion over North America or India could be snatched away from the other. At work in this were long-term future plans and the control of important impulses. It is true: The influence snatched by England from France in North America was won on the battle fields of Silesia during the Seven Years' War!

Watch how the alliances shift when the situation becomes a little awkward and difficult; watch the alliances from this point of view!

Now, another story. It is necessary to look at these things, and once one is not misunderstood, once it is assumed that one's genuine purpose is to gain a clear picture of what is going on in the world, once one strives to be objective, it will not be taken amiss when such stories are told; instead it will be understood that our concern is for comprehension and not for taking sides. In fact, it is precisely those people who feel they are affected by a particular matter who ought to be particularly glad to learn more about it. For then they are lifted above their blindness and given sight, and nothing is better for a person than real insight into how things work in the world. So let us now take an example which can show you a different side of how things work.

Through circumstances which you can look up in a history book, the kingdoms of Hanover and England were once linked. The laws of succession in the two countries were different—we need not go into this in detail—and as a result of this, when Victoria came to the throne of England, Hanover had to become separate. Another member of the English royal house had to take the throne of Hanover. The person elected, or rather the person jostled onto the throne of Hanover was Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, who had previously been connected with the throne of England. So this Ernst August came to the throne of Hanover at the age of sixty-six. His character was such that, after his departure to become the king of Hanover, the English newspapers said: Thank goodness he's gone; let's hope he doesn't come back! He was considered a dreadful person because of the whole way he behaved. When you look at the impression he made on his contemporaries and those who had dealings with him, a certain type of character emerges which is striking for one who understands characters of this kind. The Hanoverians could not understand him. They found him coarse. He was indeed coarse, so coarse that the poet Thomas Moore said: He surely belonged to the dynasty of Beelzebub. But you know the saying: The German lies if he is polite. So they had a certain understanding for coarseness, but they did presuppose that someone who is coarse is at least honest. Ernst August, however, was always a liar as well as being coarse, and this the Hanoverians could not understand. He had other similar traits as well.

First, Ernst August repealed the Hanoverian constitution. Then he dismissed the famous ‘seven professors’ of Göttingen University. He had them sent straight out of the country, so that it was not until they reached Witzenhausen, which lay beyond his majesty's borders, that their students were permitted to take leave of them. I need not tell you the whole story. But what is the explanation? Those who seek no further for an explanation of this extraordinary mask merely find Ernst August coarse and dishonest. He even cheated Metternich, which is saying much indeed, and so on. But there is something remarkably systematic in all this. And the systematic aspect is not changed by the fact that he lived most of his life up to the age of sixty-six in England, where he was an officer of the Dragoons.

An explanation may be found in the fact that in his whole manner he was manifesting the impulses one has when one is a member of the so-called ‘Orange Lodge’. His whole manner was an expression of the impulses of the Orange Lodge, of which he was a member.

What we must do is learn to understand history symptomatically and widen our horizons. We need to develop a sense for what is important and what really gives insight. So I told you the tale of Gerhard the Good in order to demonstrate how, through such phenomena as the Orange Lodge, and so on, what had been Central Europe was quite systematically drawn over to the West. I am not uttering any reproach, for it was a historical necessity. But one ought to know it and not apply moral judgements to such things. What is essential is to develop the will to see things, to see how human beings are manipulated, to see where there might be impulses by which people are manipulated. This is the same as striving for the sense for truth. I have often stressed that this is not something that enables one to say: But I really believed it, it was my honest and sincere opinion! No indeed. One who possesses the sense for truth is one who unremittingly strives to find the truth of the matter, one who never ceases to seek the truth and who takes responsibility for himself even when he says something untrue out of ignorance. For, objectively, it is irrelevant whether something wrong is said knowingly or unknowingly. Similarly it is irrelevant whether you hold your finger in the candle flame through ignorance or on purpose; either way you burn it.

At this point we must understand what happened at the transition from the fourth post-Atlantean period-when commerce was still just under the influence of the spiritual world, as is indicated in the story of Gerhard the Good—to the fifth period, when everything commercial was drawn over into the occult sphere which is guided by the so-called ‘Brothers of the Shadow’. These brotherhoods guard certain principles. From their point of view it would be extremely dangerous if these principles should be betrayed. That is why they were so careful to prevent Blavatsky from making them public or causing them to pass over into other hands. They were, in fact, to be passed over from the West to the East; not to India but to the East of Russia.

Someone with a sense for what lies behind maya can understand that external institutions and external measures can have differing values, differing degrees of importance in the total context. Consider an incident in recent history. I have told you so many occult, spiritual things that I have, in a way, ‘done my time’ and am now free to go on and give you some indications out of more recent history. No one should say that I am taking this time away from that devoted to occult matters; these things are also important.

So let us take an example from more recent history. In 1909 a meeting was arranged between the King of Italy and the Tsar of Russia. So far there had not been much love lost between these two representatives, but from then on it was considered a good thing to manoeuvre them into each other's company. So the meeting at Racconigi took place. It was not easy to arrange. In the description of all the measures he had to take to prevent ‘incidents of an assassinatory nature’ you can read how difficult it was for poor Giolitti, who was Prime Minister at the time.

Then there was the question of finding a suitable personage who would pay Rome's homage to the Tsar. This had to be a personage of a particular kind. Such things have to be prepared well in advance so that when the right moment arrives they can be set in train on the spot. For a really ‘juicy’ effect to be achieved, not just any personage would do for the purpose of paying Rome's homage to the Tsar—the homage of the Latin West to the self-styled Slav East. It would have to be a special personage, even one who might not easily be persuaded to undertake this task. Now ‘by chance’, as the materialists would say, but ‘not by chance’, as those who are not materialists would say, a certain Signor Nathan—what a very Italian name!—was at that time the mayor of Rome. For many reasons his attitude was rather democratic and not at all one that would make him inclined to pay homage to the Tsar, of all people. He had only taken Italian citizenship shortly before becoming mayor of Rome. Before that he had been an English citizen. The fact that he was of mixed blood should be taken into account; he was the son of a German mother and had assumed the name of Nathan because his father was the famous Italian revolutionary Mazzini. This is a fact.

So persuading him to pay homage to the Tsar made it possible to say: See how thoroughly democracy has been converted. Here was someone who was not an ordinary person but one who had been anointed with all the oils of democracy, but—also someone who had been well prepared. From that moment onwards certain things start to become embarrassing. Today it is known, for example, that from that moment onwards all the correspondence within the Triple Alliance was promptly reported to St Petersburg! Human passions also played some part in the matter, since a special role was carried out in this reporting by a lady who had found a ‘sisterly’ route between Rome and St Petersburg. Such things can obviously be ascribed to coincidence. But those who want to see beyond maya will not ascribe them to coincidence but will seek the deeper connections between them. Then, when one seeks these deeper connections, one is no longer capable of lying as much, is no longer capable of deceiving people in order to distract them from the truth, which is what matters.

For instance—I am saying this in order to describe the truth—it would obviously have been most embarrassing for the widest circles if people's attention had been drawn to the fact that the whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place if that sentence I have already mentioned, which could have been spoken by Lord Grey—Sir Edward Grey has now become a lord—if that sentence had really been spoken. The whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place. It would have been a non-event, it would not have happened. But instead of speaking about the real cause, in so far as this is the cause because it could have prevented the invasion, it was obviously more comfortable to waste people's time by telling them about the ‘Belgian atrocities’. Yet these, too, would not have happened if Sir Edward Grey had taken this one, brief measure. In order to hide the simple truth something different is needed, something that arouses justified human passions and moral indignation. I am not saying anything against this. Something different is needed. It is a characteristic of our time, even today when it is particularly painful, to make every effort to obscure the truth, to blind people to the truth.

This, too, had to be prepared carefully. Any gap in the calculation would have made it impossible. The whole of the periphery, which had prudently been created for this very purpose, was needed.

But these things were very carefully prepared, both politically and culturally. Every possibility was reckoned with; and this was certainly necessary, since the most unbelievable carelessness sometimes prevailed, even in places where such a thing would be least expected. Let me give you an example, an objective fact, which will allow us to study this carelessness.

At one time Bismarck had a connection with a certain Usedom in Florence and Turin. I have told you before: Modern Italy came into being by roundabout means and actually owes her existence to Germany; but this is connected with all sorts of other things. What I am saying has profound foundations, and in politics all sorts of threads interweave. Thus at one time threads were woven which were to win over the Italian republicans. In short, at a certain time one such link existed between Bismarck and Usedom in Florence and Turin. Usedom was a friend of Mazzini and of others who enjoyed a certain prominence in nationalistic circles. Usedom was a man who posed very much as a wise person. He employed as his personal secretary somebody who was supposed to be a follower of Mazzini. Later it turned out that this personal secretary, of whom it had been said that he was initiated into Mazzini's secret societies, was nothing but an ordinary spy. Bismarck tells this tale quite naively and then adds, as an excuse for having been so mistaken: But Usedom was a high-grade Freemason. Many things could be told in this way and often it would turn out that those involved are totally innocent because the ones who pull the strings remain in the background.

You cannot maintain that there is no point in asking why such things are permitted to happen by the wise guides of world evolution—why human beings are, to a large degree, abandoned to such machinations, by making the excuse that there is no way of getting to the bottom of these things. For, indeed, if one only seeks them honestly, there are many ways of finding out what is going on. But we see, even in our own Society, how much resistance is put up by individuals when there is a question of following the simple path of truth. We see how many things which should be taken objectively in pursuit of knowledge, when they would best serve the good of mankind, are instead taken subjectively and personally. There are—are there not?—within our Society groups who have studied very attentively an essay of, I believe, 287 pages which they have taken utterly seriously and about which they are still puzzling, as to whether the writer—who is well enough known to us—might be right. In short, within our own circles we may sometimes discover why it is so difficult to see through things. Yet it is, in fact, not at all difficult to see through things if only one strives honestly for the truth. For years so much has been said within our Society. If you were to bring together all that has been said since 1902 you would see that it contains much that could help us to see through a great deal that is going on in the world. Yet our anthroposophical spiritual science has never been presented as belonging to a secret society. Indeed the most important things have always been dealt with in public lectures open to anybody. This is a contrast which should be noted.

I might as well say now: If certain streams within our Anthroposophical Society continue to exist and if, for the sake of human vanity, they continue to interpret to their own advantage certain things which have been said behind closed doors—for no more reason than one would exclude first-year students in a university from what is told to those in their second year—then, eventually there will be nothing esoteric left. If things are not taken perfectly naturally, if people continue to stand up and say: This is secret, that is very esoteric, this is occult, and I am not allowed to speak about this!—if this policy continues to be followed by certain streams in our Society, if they continually fail to understand that any degree of vanity must stop, then everything mankind must be told about today will have to be discussed in public. Whether it is possible to make known certain things, the needs of the moment will tell. But the Anthroposophical Society is only meaningful if it is a ‘society’, that is, if each individual is concerned to make a stand against vanity, against folly and vanity and everything else which clothes things in false veils of mysticism, serving only to puzzle other people and make them spiteful. The mysteriousness of certain secret brotherhoods has nothing to do with our Society, for we must be concerned solely with bringing about what is needed for the good of mankind. As I have often said, our enemies will become more and more numerous. Perhaps we shall discover what our enemies are made of by the manner in which they quarrel with us. So far we have had no honest opponents worth mentioning. They would, in effect, only be to our advantage! The kind of opposition we have met hitherto is perfectly obvious through their ways and means of operation. We might as well wait patiently to discover whether further opponents will be from within our circle, as is frequently the case, or from elsewhere! I have just had news of opposition from one quarter which will empty itself over us like a cold shower. A forthcoming book has been announced during some lectures. The author, a conceited fellow, has never belonged to our Society but has been entertaining the world with all sorts of double egos and such like. He has now used the opportunity of the various national hatreds and passions to mount an attack on our Anthroposophy of a kind which shows that his hands are not clean.

So we must not lose sight of these things and we must realize that it is up to us to hold fast to the direction which will lead to truth and knowledge. Even when we speak about current issues it must only be in pursuit of knowledge and truth. We must look things straight in the eye and then each individual may take up his own position in accordance with his feelings. Every position will be understandable, but it must be based on a foundation of truth.

This is a word which must occupy a special place in our soul today. So much has taken place in our time which has puzzled people and which should have shown them that it is necessary to strive for a healthy judgement based on the truth. We have experienced how the yearning for peace only had to make itself felt in the world for it to be shouted down. And we still see how people actually get angry if peace is mentioned in one quarter or another. They are angry, not only if one of the combatants mentions peace, but even if it is mentioned in a neutral quarter.

It remains to be seen whether the world will be capable of sufficient astonishment about these things. Experience so far has been telling, to say the least. In April and May 1915 a large territory was to have been voluntarily ceded, but the offer was rejected so that war could be waged. Since world opinion failed to form an even partially adequate judgement about this event, there seems to be really nothing for it but to expect the worst. We might as well expect the worst, because people seem bent on telling, not the truth, but what suits their purposes. Their thinking is strange and peculiar to a degree. Yet to tackle things properly the right points have to be found.

Let me read you a short passage written by an Italian before the outbreak of the present war, at a time when the Italians were jubilant about the Tripoli conflict—which I am not criticizing. I shall never say anything against the annexation of Tripoli by Italy, for these things are judged differently by those who know what is necessary and possible in the relationships between states and nations. They do not form judgements based on lies and express opinions steeped in all kinds of moralistic virtues. But here we have a man, Prezzolini, who writes about an Italy which pleases him, which has evolved out of an Italy which did not please him. He starts by describing what this Italy had come to, how it had gone down in the world, and he then continues—directly under the impression of the Tripoli conflict:

‘And yet, totally unaware of this economic risorgimento, Italy underwent at the same time the period of depression described above. Foreigners were the first to notice the reawakening. Some Italians had also expressed it, but they were windbags carrying on about the famous and infamous “primacy of Italy”. The book by Fischer, a German, was written in 1899, and that by Bolton-King, an Englishman, in 1901. To date no Italian has published a work comparable to these, even to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of “unification”. The exceptional good sense of these foreigners is notable for, truly, outsiders have neither wanted, nor do they now want, to know anything about modern Italy. Then, as now, people's judgement, or rather prejudgement of Italy amounted to saying: Italy is a land of the past, not the present; she should “rest on her past glory” and not enter into the present. They long for an Italy of archives, museums, hotels for honeymooners and for the amusement of spleen and lung patients—an Italy of organ-grinders, serenades, gondolas—full of ciceroni, shoe-shiners, polyglots and pulcinelli. Though they are delighted to travel nowadays in sleeping cars instead of diligences, they nevertheless regret a little the absence of Calabrese highwaymen with pistol and pointed velvet hat. Oh, the glorious Italian sky, defaced by factory chimneys. Oh, la bella Napoli, defamed by steamships and the unloading thereof; Rome filled with Italian soldiers; such regret for the wonderful days of Papal, Bourbon and Leopoldine Rome! These philanthropic feelings still provide the basis for every Anglo-Saxon and German opinion about us. To show how deeply they run, remember that they are expressed by people of high standing in other directions, such as Gregorovius and Bourget. The Italy who reformed herself and grew fat, the Italy who is seen to carry large banknotes in her purse—this is the Italy who has at last gained a proper self-confidence. We should forgive and understand her if she now reacts by going a little further than she ought in her enthusiasm. Ten years have hardly sufficed for the idea of the future and strength of Italy to pass from those who first saw it, to the populace at large who are now filled and convinced by it. It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’

This is the attitude, my dear friends! ‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’ All this would be worthless, he thinks, to raise up a people. This modern man has no faith in the worth and working of culture and spiritual values!

‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art; neither the people nor the foreigners would ever have been convinced, at least not before the passage of very many years.’

So this man has no confidence in creating spiritual culture in this way.

‘A great and brutal force was needed to smash the illusion and give every last and miserable village square a sense of national solidarity and upward progress.’

To what does he attribute the capacity to achieve what no spiritual culture could produce? He says:

‘It is the war which has served to do this.’

There you have it! This is what people believed. Tripoli was there and it had to be there. Moreover, they also said: War is needed to bring the nation to a point which it was not found necessary to reach by means of spiritual culture.

Indeed, my dear friends, such things speak to us when we place them side by side with another voice which says: We did not want this war; we are innocent lambs who have been taken by surprise. Even from this side comes the cry: To save freedom, to save the small nations, we are forced to go to war. This man continues:

‘We young people born around the year 1880 entered life in the world with the new century. Our land had lost courage. Its intellectual life was at a low ebb.’

These were the people born around the year 1880.

‘Philosophy: positivism. History: sociology. Criticism: historical method, if not even psychiatry.’

This may indeed be said in the land of Lombroso!

‘Hot on the heels of Italy's deliverers came Italy's parasites; not only their sons, our fathers, but also their grandsons, our elder brothers. The heroic tradition of risorgimento was lost; there was no idea to fire the new generation. Among the best, religion had sunk in estimation but had left a vacuum. For the rest it was a habit. Art was reeling in a sensuous and aesthetic frenzy and lacked any basis or faith. From Carducci, whom papa read to the accompaniment of a glass of Tuscan wine and a cheap cigar, they turned to d'Annunzio, the bible of our elder brothers, dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart.’

Yet this marionette—of whom it is said here that he was ‘dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart’—this marionette had made clear to the people at Whitsuntide in 1915 that they needed what no work of the spirit could give them!

When times are grave it is most necessary to make the effort to look straight at the truth, to join forces with the truth. If we do not want to recognize the truth we deviate from what may be good for mankind. Therefore it is necessary to understand that precisely in these times serious words need to be spoken. For we are in a position today in which even one who is seven-eighths blind should see what is happening when the call for peace is shouted down. Someone who believes that you can fight for permanent peace while shouting down the call for peace might, conceivably, hold worthwhile opinions in some other fields; but he cannot be taken seriously with regard to what is going on. If, now that we are faced with this, we cannot commit ourselves to truth, then the prospects for the world are very, very bad indeed.

It is for me truly not a pleasant task to draw attention to much that is going on at present. But when you hear what is said on all sides, you realize the necessity. We must not lose courage, so long as the worst has not yet happened. But the spark of hope is tiny. Much will depend on this tiny spark of hope over the next few days. Much also depends on whether there are still people willing to cry out to the world the utter absurdity of such goings on—as has been done just now, even in the great cities of the world.

The world needs peace and will suffer great privation if peace is not achieved. And it will suffer great privation if credence continues to be given to those who say: We are forced to fight for permanent peace; and if these same people continue to meet every possibility for peace with scorn, however disguised in clever words. But we have reached a point, my dear friends, when even a Lloyd George can be taken for a great man by the widest circles! We may well say: Things have come a very long way indeed!

Yet these things are also only trials to test mankind. They would even be trials if what I permitted myself to express at the end of the Christmas lecture were to happen, namely, if it were to be recorded for all time that, in the Christmas season of the nineteen hundred and sixteenth year after the Mystery of Golgotha, the call for ‘peace on earth among men and women who are of good will’ was shouted down on the most empty pretexts. If the pretexts are not entirely empty, then they are indeed more sinister still. If this is the case, then it will be necessary to recognize what is really at work in this shouting down of every thought of peace: that it is not even a question of what is said in the periphery, but of quite other things. Then it will be understood that it is justified to say that what happens now is crucial for the fortune or misfortune of Europe.

I cannot go further tonight because of the lateness of the hour. But I did want to impress these words on your heart!

The decision to construct the first Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland was made in May, 1913, when Rudolf Steiner visited the future building site. Construction began within a few weeks and the exterior of the building was completed in April, 1914. Work on the interior proceeded at a slower pace and lasted through World War I (1914-1918). In 1914, Rudolf Steiner had begun a scaled-down model of the Christ sculpture that was later to be installed in the Goetheanum.. As the work on the sculpture itself began, he frequently explained its significance in his lectures.

One of Rudolf Steiner's lecture tours, May 6 through May 18, 1915, took him to Vienna, Prague and Linz. In all three cities he stressed that the Christ figure in the sculptured group would have to be portrayed as a being in equipoise between the polar forces of Lucifer and Ahriman and that this being was symbol of, and model for, man's own existence here on earth. The Linz lecture, which is here translated, presents the group in a world-historical context and relates the significance of the Lucifer-Christ-Ahriman configuration to the events surrounding World War I. Steiner sees a parallel between Christ's central, but equalizing position and Central Europe's mission in World War I. He implies that Germany's and Austria's militarism and political intransigence alone did not lead to war against the world powers in the East (Russia) and the West (France, England and, since 1917, the United States). According to Steiner, World War I was the earthly expression of a struggle between luciferic forces in the East and ahrimanic forces in the West, and it was Central Europe's destiny to mediate between these forces.

The fundamental polarization of East and West that Rudolf Steiner saw emerging more than six decades ago is now a political reality. While most historians today concede that World War II was in part caused by the circumstances surrounding World War I, few would accept Rudolf Steiner's statement from his Linz lecture that World War I was “destined by the European karma” or, to state it more concretely, that it was unavoidable. If the war could not have been avoided, then the question of who was to blame or who caused it is, as Steiner says, irrelevant. Based on this position, Steiner suggests that only one question has relevancy: “Who could have prevented the war?<” This question seems to contradict Steiner's statement that World War I was destined by the European karma. A quick glance at the historical record may help to clarify what Steiner meant.

In suggesting that the Russian government and possibly England, could have prevented the war, Steiner simply deals with possibilities outside the realm of what had to happen according to European karma. Russia's instigation of the two Peace Conferences in the Hague (1899 and 1907) was indeed self-serving and hypocritical, for it was Russia that, in 1914, mobilized its armed forces without considering British proposals for peace negotiations. Under these circumstances and considering the political immaturity of the German leadership, it was not surprising that the German Kaiser and his generals over-reacted to the Russian mobilization and interpreted it as a declaration of war. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II, who were cousins, frantically exchanged telegrams in which one beseeched the other to preserve the peace, but to no avail. The war machinery was already overheated by the forces of chauvinism and materialism so that even from this vantage point Steiner was correct in maintaining that war was unavoidable.

Regarding the possibility of preventing the war, a glance at the major Western powers involved in the controversy, and at Germany, reveals the following historical facts. France, for thirty years an ally of Russia, did nothing to prevent the war because she did not attempt to delay the hasty Russian mobilization. Her representatives said later that France regretted the Russian action, but there seems little doubt that France was more interested in presenting herself as the innocent victim of an attack. On the other hand, England's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, could have prevented the war if he had taken earlier measures to discourage Germany's militarists from asserting themselves in their country, but in view of the English tradition and the English Constitution, this was probably not possible. Finally, the confusion in Germany itself was caused by a lack of understanding of who had legitimate authority to make decisions. Eventually, the political decisions were made by generals who managed to spread the belief that the fatherland was in peril and that Germany herself was not the attacker, but the attacked. Thus, theoretically, any one of these three powers could have prevented the war but that, as Rudolf Steiner points out in the lecture, is not the real issue.

Furthermore, the war did not emerge out of a French or Russian moral conviction that was responsive to German militarism. Rather, the goal of crushing German militarism emerged well after the war had begun. The war could be interpreted, in this sense, to be inevitable because it was not generated from a goal, but exploded and then developed its goals. In this war of attrition, materialism camouflaged itself with nationalistic sentiment and strove for absolute expression and triumph.

It is against such a background of perplexity and misguided fervor that Rudolf Steiner's message to Central Europeans must be read. In rejecting the question of who had caused the war, Steiner dismissed as equally irrelevant the question of who was to blame for materialism. Materialism was there, as was Ahriman. Steiner admonished the Central Europeans to counterbalance materialism by adopting a spiritual perception of life and by striving for an encounter with the Christ.

This profound spiritual responsibility that Steiner put on the Germans in 1915 was disregarded and the challenge passed by. After World War I it was not the Christ, but Adolf Hitler who, under the guise of “savior,” emerged as Germany's Nemesis and was thus catapulted into a central position. When Hitler was finally destroyed, Central Europe broke up into two parts, one of which disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, while the other aligned with the West.

As it stands today, Rudolf Steiner's call to instate the Christ in His central position has yet to be fully received and responded to not only by the people living in what is left of Central Europe, but also in the rest of the world.

Some day when the building in Dornach that is dedicated to the spiritual sciences is completed, it will contain, in a significant spot, a sculpture dominated by three figures. In the center of this group a figure will tower as if it were the manifestation of what I would call the most sublime human principle ever to unfold on earth. Hence, one will be able to experience this representation of the highest human principle in the evolution of the earth-the Christ, who in the course of this evolution lived three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. A special task in the portrayal of this Christ figure will be to make two ideas visible. Firstly, it will be important to show how the being that we are concerned with dwells in a human body. Secondly, it must also become apparent how this human body, in every facial expression and in every gesture reflects a magnificent degree of spiritual refinement, which descended with the Christ from cosmic and spiritual heights into this body in its thirtieth year. Then there will be the remaining two figures of the group, one to the left and the other to the right of the Christ figure, if that is the proper name for the figure that I have just sketched. This Christ figure is placed in such a way that it seems to be standing in front of a rock that towers noticeably at His left side, with its peak extending over His head. On top of the rock there will be another figure, winged but with his wings broken, who for this reason begins to fall into the abyss. One feature in the Christ figure that must be worked out with special artistic care is the manner in which he raises his left arm, for it is precisely this gesture that precipitates the breaking of the wings. It must not appear, however, as if the Christ Himself were breaking the wings of this being. Rather, the interaction of the two figures must be portrayed artistically to show how the Christ, by the very motion of raising his hand, is expressing his infinite compassion for this being. Yet this being cannot bear the energy flowing upward through arm and hand, an energy that is evidenced by indentations that the fingers of the extended hand seem to leave in the rock itself. When this being comes into proximity with the Christ being, he feels something that may be expressed in the words: I cannot bear the radiation of such purity upon me.

This feeling dominates so essentially as to break this upper beings wings and cause his imminent plunge into the abyss. To make this visible will be a particularly important artistic task and you will see how the meaning of this interaction could easily be misunderstood. Imagine, for example, an artistic portrayal of the Christ suggesting that merely by raising His hand He would radiate such power onto the being that his wings would be broken, forcing the plunge into the abyss. In that case it would be the Christ Himself who irradiated this being, as it were, with hatred, and thereby caused his descent. Such an impression must under no circumstances be conveyed. Rather, the being must be portrayed as having caused his own fall, for what is to be shown plunging downward, with broken wings, is Lucifer.

Now let us consider the other side of the group, toward the right of the Christ figure. There, the rock will have a ledge and, therefore, will be concave underneath. In this depression there will be another winged figure, who with his arm-like organs turns toward the ledge above. You have to visualize this as follows. To the right is the depression in the rock and in it stands this winged figure with wings entirely different from the figure on top of the rock. The wings of the figure on top of the rock resemble those of an eagle, whereas the figure in the depression has bat-like wings. This figure virtually buries himself in the cave, working in shackles, ever busy undermining the earthly realm.

The Christ figure in the middle has his right hand directed downward and the left one upward. Again, it will be an important artistic task not to show the Christ as wanting to shackle this figure; rather, he has infinite compassion for this being, which is Ahriman. Ahriman cannot bear this compassion and he writhes with pain from what the hand of the Christ exudes. This radiance from Christ's hand causes the golden veins down in the rock depression to wind around Ahriman's body like strong cords and shackle him. What is happening to Lucifer is his own doing; the same is true with Ahriman. This concept is going to take form as a sculpture that will be set up in a significant place in the new building. Above the sculptured group we will attempt to express the same motif through the medium of painting, but then the concept must be expressed differently. To summarize, the group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman will stand at the bottom as a sculpture, and above, the same motif will appear as a painting.

We are injecting this configuration of a relationship between Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman into our Dornach building because the science of the spirit reveals to us in a certain way that the next task regarding the comprehension of the Christ impulse will be to make man finally understand how the three forces of Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman are related in this world. To this day there has been much talk about Christianity and the Christ impulse, but man has not yet gained a clear understanding of what the Christ impulse has brought into the world as the result of the Mystery of Golgotha. Certainly, it is generally admitted that there is a Lucifer or an Ahriman, but in so doing, it is made to appear that from these two one must flee, as if one wished to say, “I want nothing to do with Lucifer and Ahriman!”—In yesterday's public lecture <¹ I described the way in which the divine-spiritual forces can be found. If these forces did not want to have anything to do with Lucifer and Ahriman, either, the world could not exist. One does not gain the proper relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman by saying, “Lucifer, I flee from you! Ahriman, I flee from you!” Rather, everything that man has to strive for as a result of the Christ impulse must be seen as similar to the equilibrious state of a pendulum. In the center, the pendulum is in perfect balance, but it must oscillate to one side or the other. The same applies to man's development here on earth. Man must oscillate to the one side according to the luciferic principle and to the other according to the principle of Ahriman, but he must maintain his equilibrium through the cultivation of Paul's declaration, “Not I, but Christ in me.”

To understand the Christ in His quintessential activity we must conceive of Him as a reality, as a working force. That is to say, we must realize that what wove itself into our evolution here on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha was present as a fact. It is not important how well or how inadequately this fact has been understood by mankind up to this time; what is important is that it has been present, influencing human development on earth. Much could be said to explain exactly what man has not understood about the Christ impulse up to this time; the science of the spirit will have to contribute its share to bring about a full comprehension of how the Christ impulse has come from spiritual heights and influenced man's development on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. In order to realize how the Christ has become a working force, let us visualize—as has been done elsewhere—two events in the annals of man's evolution that have influenced the development of the entire Western world.

You will remember an important event from history when Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius and thus introduced Christianity externally into the mainstream of Western civilization. Constantine had to fight that important battle against Maxentius so that he could establish Christianity in his western empire as the official religion. Had this battle not taken place as it did, the entire map of Europe would have been different. But this battle really was not decided by military skill, that is, not by the intellectual prowess available to people in those days, but by something entirely different. Maxentius consulted the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic oracles of Rome, which guided him into leading his army out of the assured safety of Rome's walls into the open field, in order to confront Constantine's army. Constantine, on the other hand, had a dream before the battle in which he was told, “If you approach Maxentius under the banner of the Mystery of Golgotha you will reach a great objective!” Indeed, Constantine carried the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha—the cross—when he led his forces into battle, even though his army was three-fourths smaller than that of Maxentius. Enthused by the power emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that historical battle resulting in the external introduction of Christianity to Europe. When we realize the extent to which people in those days understood the Christ impulse purely by intellectual means, it is not surprising to find that there ensued an endless theological quarrel. People argued whether or not Christ was consubstantial with the Lord in all eternity, and so on. Let us say this, that the degree of knowledge of the Christ impulse available to human beings in those days is not important, but rather the fact that the Christ impulse was present and that through his dream it guided Constantine to bring about what had to happen. What is important is the actuality of the Christ and His real and visibly active power. Only in the science of the spirit do we begin to understand what the Christ impulse is.

Another historical event was the struggle between France and England. It changed the map of Europe in such a way that we can say that if France had not been victorious over England, all conditions and relationships would have become different. But how did this victory happen? It happened because the Christ impulse has worked itself into the subconscious of the soul up to the present time, when it is increasingly becoming a conscious force. So we can see in the evolution of the Western spirit how the Christ impulse seeks out in the souls of men those conditions by which it can become effective in some individuals. Legends have preserved for us the manner in which the Christ impulse can assert itself within the Western spiritual tradition. In part, these legends refer generally to ancient pagan ages, but they take us back to those heathen times in which an understanding of Christianity was beginning to germinate.

If the soul does not consciously seek initiation as delineated in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, but becomes saturated with the Christ impulse as if by way of natural initiation, then the most favorable period for this process is from December 25 to January 6. We can understand this clearly by realizing that for occult knowledge it is evident that the earth is not only what geologists describe. Geologists conceive the earth's components as being similar to the skeleton of man. Yet the spiritual also belongs to our earth whose aura has been permeated by Christ. During the day's twenty-four hours, this earth sleeps and is awake just as we are. We must familiarize ourselves with the fact that the state of wakefulness on earth occurs during the winter, and the state of sleep during the summer. The earth spirit is most awake in these twelve or thirteen days from Christmas to the Epiphany. In ancient ages when, as you know from the various presentations in my lecture series, human beings elevated themselves to a sort of dreamlike clairvoyance to reach a spiritual understanding of the world, in those ages the most favorable time for this process was summer. Thus, it is quite natural that whoever wants to elevate himself to spiritual heights by means of a more dreamlike clairvoyance will have an easier time of it during the summer, when the earth is asleep. Therefore, St. John's midsummer-day was in ancient ages the most propitious time to raise the soul to the spiritual level. The old way of spiritual interaction with the earth has been replaced by a more conscious elevation that can best be reached during the earth's wakefulness.

For this reason, legends inform us that unusually endowed people, who are particularly suited by their karmas, pass into an extraordinary state of consciousness that resembles sleep, but only on the surface. its inner quality is such that it can be inspired by those forces that elevate human beings to the domain we call the spirit world. A beautiful Norwegian legend² tells us that Olaf &Åsteson, in church on Christmas Eve, falls into a sleeplike state and when he awakens on January 6 is able to relate the experiences he had in this condition. This Norwegian legend does in fact describe the experiences that one perceives first as the soul world—and then as something that feels like the spirit world, but with everything being expressed as images, as imaginative forms.

This time of year has been most favorable in those epochs when human beings were not as advanced as they are in our time. Now it is no longer possible for the Christ impulse to penetrate the souls of men in this way, as if by natural initiation. Nowadays man must make a conscious effort and climb to initiation in a way similar to that achieved through the instructions given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. We are living in an age when natural initiations are becoming increasingly rare and will eventually disappear. Yet one initiation that could still essentially be called a natural initiation took place when the Christ impulse worked itself into the soul of the simple country girl, The Maid of Orleans. It was she who caused the victory of the French over the English. Again, not the human mind nor the talents of military leaders were decisive factors in changing the map of Europe so magnificently, but rather the Christ impulse working itself into the subconscious of the Maid of Orleans and inspiring her to radiate its presence in all of history.

We would now have to examine whether something similar could have occurred in the Maid of Orleans by way of natural initiation and ask whether her soul was inspired in the nights from the 25th day of December to the 6th of January. From her biography it seems difficult to demonstrate that she was even once in a sleep-like state during the twelve or thirteen special days when the Christ impulse could have entered her soul, inspiring her to act as its human shell on the battle grounds of France. Yet, that is precisely what happened. There is a time when the karma of a particular individual can facilitate such a sleep-like state in a human being. During the last few days prior to a person's birth he lives in the mother's womb in a dreaming, sleep-like state. He has not yet perceived with his senses what is happening in the world outside. If by virtue of his karma a person were especially suited to receive the Christ impulse during these last few days in the womb, then these days could also be days of natural initiation. Strengthened by and saturated with the Christ impulse, such a person would have to be born on the sixth day of January. Joan of Arc was born on that day. It is her special mystery that she was born on the 6th day of January and had spent the time from Christmas to the day of Epiphany in a peculiar sleep-like state in the womb of her mother where she received her natural initiation. Now consider the profound connections beyond the external developments that we are accustomed to call history. As a rule, the external events that are reconstructed from historical documents are of the least significance. What is of decisive historical significance is the plain date in our calendar indicating that Joan of Arc was sent into this world on the 6th day of January. Thus, supernatural forces become active in the sentient world and we must read the occult signs that present this fact to us. They tell us that the Christ impulse had already streamed into the Maid of Orleans before her physical birth, as if by way of natural initiation.

I want to explain these facts in order to instill in your souls a feeling for the fact that the external preception must take into account unknown forces and connections beyond what we ordinarily call history. European history has been guided by the Christ impulse since the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas Asia retained a world view that is not vet fully sensitive to the Christ impulse. To be sure, Europeans have been led into considering the wisdom of India as something especially profound. Not only is it characteristic of Hindu thought, if not of all Asian religious perception, however, that its entire attention is directed to the time preceding the appearance of the Christ impulse, but also that the state of religious perception is preserved as it was in those days. If something remains behind in the evolutionary process it can be interpreted to have absorbed something luciferic, and for this reason Asian religious evolution is the carrier of a luciferic element. A glance at the religious development of Asia will inform us that it contains much of what mankind as a whole once possessed but was later forced to abandon. We must in part cleanse Western culture of the luciferic remnants and in part we must elevate them in such a way that the Christ impulse can enter.

Moving from Asia to the East of Europe, we notice how Russian orthodox Christianity has remained stationary at an earlier stage of Christian development, refusing to advance and thereby keeping something of the luciferic element. In short, we can detect a luciferic remnant in the East, which, I would say, a wise guiding force left behind for the evolution of mankind in general.

Looking to the West and especially to American culture, a different characteristic quality stands out. The characteristic feature of American culture is to explain everything from external appearance. This kind of perception can certainly lead to great and significant achievements, but still, externals are usually expected to provide answers to all questions. Suppose we in Europe, and especially in Central Europe, notice a person who earlier in his life did not yet have an opportunity to dedicate himself to Christ and to the spiritual cosmic forces. If some event in this person's life brought about his conversion, we want to know what had gone on in his soul. We are not interested in learning that there was a leap forward in his development because such a phenomenon could certainly be found everywhere. The most incorrect pronouncement made by the empirical sciences is that nature does not make any leaps.³ Yet there is a tremendous leap from a green plant leaf to the red petal of a flower, and there is another significant leap from petal to the calyx. This pronouncement is therefore patently false; the truth of all development rests precisely on the fact that leaps occur everywhere. Hence, when a person who for some time was leading an external existence is suddenly induced by something to turn to spiritual things, we are not interested in the fact that it happened. What does interest us is the inner force and power that can bring about such a conversion. We will want to look into the soul of such a person and ascertain what has caused such a reversal. The inner workings of the soul will interest us.

How would the American proceed? He would do something quite peculiar. In America, conversions of this sort have been observed frequently. Well, the American would ask the people who have experienced conversions to write letters. He would then gather all these letters into a bundle and say, “I have received these letters from some two hundred people. Fourteen percent of all these souls experienced a conversion out of sudden fear of death or hell: five percent claimed altruistic motives; seventeen percent because they aspired to ethical ideals; fifteen percent had experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent acted in obedience to what they were taught; thirteen percent because they saw that others were converted and imitated them; nineteen percent because they were forced by a good whipping at the appropriate age, and so on.” In this fashion the most extreme souls are isolated, sorted and tallied and the result is claimed to be founded on “scientific data.” The findings are then compiled in books that are sent out and billed as “soul science.” For these people all other evidence is unsound, or as they claim, rests on subjective notions. There you have an example of the externalization of the innermost phenomena, and so it goes with many, many things in America. At a time that cries out for special spiritual deepening, the most external brand of spiritism is rampant in America! Everything there has to be tangible.

That is a materialistic interpretation of spiritual life. We could mention many other instances from which it would be possible to see how the culture of the West is seized by the ahrimanic principle, and what principle causes the pendulum to swing to the other side. In the East we are confronted by the luciferic and in the West by the ahrimanic principle. In Central Europe we have been assigned the immensely important task of finding the equilibrium between East and West. Therefore, the plastic group in our building in Dornach must represent what we consider the most significant spiritual task of our age, that is, finding the equilibrant relationship between Lucifer and Ahriman. Only then will it be recognized how the Christ impulse was meant to influence evolution on earth, when the Christ is not simply brought to preeminence, but is known in the proper way as exemplary force in balance with Lucifer and Ahriman.

The following may illustrate that no clear understanding has yet been reached concerning the relationship of man and of Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman. In a period, even the greatest phenomena are not always free from a one-sided attitude that may characterize the age. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Michelangelo's magnificent painting The Last Judgment, which can be found in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Christ is portrayed in triumph, directing the good people to the one side and the wicked to the other. Let us look at this Christ figure. It does not possess the features we would like to emphasize in the Christ of our building in Dornach. Even though Lucifer towers above, it must be shown that the Christ raises His hand in compassion. Lucifer is not supposed to be toppled by the power of Christ, but plunges down by his own power because he is unable to bear the radiance of the Christ nearby, and the Christ looks up and raises his brow toward Lucifer. Similarly, Ahriman is not conquered by any hatred from Christ, but because he feels he cannot stand the forces emanating from Him. The Christ, however, towers in the middle as the One who is carrying the Parcival principle into the new age and who, not through His power but through His very being, induces others to overcome themselves, rather than being overcome by Him. In Michelangelo's painting, we see a Christ who uses His very power to send some to heaven and others to hell. In future, such an image will no longer be seen as the genuine Christ, but rather as a Christ having luciferic qualities. Of course, this observation does not detract from the greatness of the painting, in fact, we acknowledge it. We simply must admit, however, that Michelangelo was not yet capable of painting the genuine Christ because the development of the world had not yet advanced to such a point when this could be done. There has to be a clear understanding that we cannot turn our attention just to the Christ, but must set our sight on the threefold configuration: Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman. I can only hint at this, but spiritual science will eventually bring to light the full content of the mystery, Christ in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

Now consider the following. Looking eastward we can make out luciferic forces even in the eastern regions nearest to us, while in the West we see ahrimanic forces. As a matter of fact, in spiritual scientific consideration we must adopt a mode of perception by which neither objects nor nations, nor the spirit of nations, are observed with sympathy or antipathy, but rather in accordance with their characteristics. What is called the national mentality of a person steeped in the heritage of his people depends to a large degree on the activity of the physical body and the ether body. From the time of our falling asleep to the moment of our awakening we live with our spiritual-intellectual being as astral body and ego, and during this period we also live outside our habitual national identity. Only during the time from our awakening to the time when we fall asleep do we partake in our nationality, because then we are immersed in our physical body. For this reason man overcomes his sense of national identity little by little during his stay in kamaloka. There he strives toward a union with humanity as a whole in order to live most of the time between death and rebirth in the sphere of humanity as such. Among the characteristics discarded in kamaloka is one that specializes us as members of a nationality.

In this connection the various nationalities differ considerably from one another. Let us, for instance, compare a Frenchman with a Russian. It is a Frenchman's particular trait that he is especially persistent in holding onto, and dwelling in, what the collective soul of his people carries into his physical body and ether body during his life between birth and death. This can be seen in his definitive idea—not as an individual but as a Frenchman—of what it is to be French. Above all, he stresses the importance of being French and what that means to him. But this notion held by Frenchmen or by anyone else from a Romance culture about their nationality affects the ether body by clearly imprinting the idea of nationality on it. A few days after the Frenchman has passed through the gate of death he loses his ether body; it is then a closed entity that has a prolonged existence in the etheric world. The ether body is unable to dissolve for a long time because it is impregnated with, and held together by, the Frenchman's idea of nationality. Thus, if we look to the West we see the field of death filled with firmly defined ether bodies.

Now, if we take a closer look to the East, at Russian man, we recognize his peculiar trait; his soul, upon passing through the gate of death, carries an ether body that dissolves in a relatively short period of time. That is the difference between the West and the East. When the ether bodies of Western Europeans are separated after death, they tend to maintain a certain rigidity. What the Frenchman calls “Gloire” is impregnated in his ether body as a national Gloire. He is condemned for a long time after his death to turn his spiritual sight onto this ether body, and to look at himself (The Russian, however, looks little at himself after his death.) Through all this, Western European man is exposed to the ahrimanic influence because his ether body has been infected by materialistic thinking.

The speedy separation and the diffusion of the ether body is accompanied by a feeling of sensual pleasure, which is also present as a most peculiar ingredient of national sentiment. How is this expressed in the East (Central Europeans do not understand this just as they do not empathize with the East.) Consider Dostoevsky and even Tolstoy or those leading writers who are constantly speaking of “Russian man”; their jargon is an expression of an undefined sensual pleasure surging from their national sentiment. Even in Solowjow's philosophy, we find a vague and stifling quality that the Central European man cannot reconcile with the clarity and purity he seeks. This search for clarity and purity is related to what is active in Europe as spiritual power.

In Central Europe there exists another condition, an intermediate state and something I can now dwell on in greater detail than was possible in yesterday's lecture. I mentioned that something exists in Central Europe that could be called the inner disposition toward striving. As a Central European, Goethe could have written his Faust no differently in the eighteen-forties: he was always striving! This striving is innermost nature. It was in Central Europe where the mystics made their appearance—those mystics who were not satisfied with the mere knowledge of the divine-spiritual principle but wanted to experience it in their own souls. To experience the Christ event internally was their very endeavor. Now take Solowjow who proceeds above all from a historical premise that the Christ died for mankind. That is correct, but Solowjow is a soul who, similar to a cloud, perceives spiritual life as something outside himself. Somehow he thinks that everything is viewed as a completed event, while Central European man demands that everyone experience the Christ event again in himself. Solowjow stresses time and again that Christ has to die so that man can be human. Meister Eckhart, in contrast, would have responded like this: “You are seeing Christ in the same way in which one looks at something external.” The point is that we should not look only at historical events, but that we should experience the Christ within ourselves. We must discover something within ourselves that passes through stages similar to those experienced by Christ, at least spiritually, so that we can rediscover the Christ event within ourselves.

Now it will certainly seem strange and fantastic when mankind nowadays is told that in Central Europe the close association of the “I” with the Christ principle had put a stamp on the entire development of the area, to the effect that even the linguistic spirit of a people took up this association and equated “I” (Ich) and “CH” (Christ): I-CH conjoined became “Ich.” In pronouncing “Ich” in Central Europe one utters the name of Jesus Christ. That is how close the “I” wants to be to the Christ, longing for the most intimate closeness with Him. This living together, as one, with the spiritual world, which we in Central Europe must strive to attain in all intellectual fields, is not known in the West or in the East. Therefore, something in the twentieth century is necessary so that the Christ principle can gradually spread over the entire European continent. I have frequently emphasized in several lecture series⁴ that in November 1879 the spiritual being we call the Archangel Michael had reached a special stage of development. Michael had become, so to speak, the leading spirit who is now preparing the event that has to take place in the twentieth century. This is alluded to in my first mystery play⁵ as the appearance of the etheric Christ on earth. It will come to pass that at first a few, and gradually more and more souls will know that the Christ is really here, is again on this earth, but as an ether body and not as a physical body.

Certain preparations are necessary. When some souls in the course of the twentieth century become clairvoyant to life in the etheric world—and that will happen—they would be disturbed by those ether bodies that are residual from Western Europe. The spiritual eye would perceive them first of all and would have a distorted vision of the Christ figure. For this reason Michael has to fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something to the diffusion of these rigid ether bodies from Western Europe. To accomplish this task, he must take the ether bodies from the East, which strive for diffusion, and join with them in a struggle against the West. The result of this is that since 1879 a violent struggle has been in preparation between Russian and Western European ether bodies and is now raging in the entire astral world. This furious battle between Russia and France is indeed going on in the astral world and is led by Michael; it corresponds to the war that is now being waged in Europe. We are often shaken by the knowledge that the events in the physical world take place as exact opposites to those occurring in the spiritual world, and that is precisely what is happening in this case. The alliance between France and Russia⁶ can be blamed on the seductive powers of Ahriman or, if you will, on the ahrimanic element, the twenty billion francs that France gave to Russia. This alliance is the physical expression of a struggle raging between French and Russian souls, a struggle that has an impact on Central Europe as it strives in its innermost soul for an encounter with the Christ. It is the karma of Europe that we in Central Europe must experience in an especially tragic way what the West and East must settle between themselves. The only possible interpretation of the external struggle between German and French elements is that the German element lies in the middle and serves as an anvil for both East and West. Germany, which is hammered by both sides in the conflict, is in reality the subject of their own controversy. That is the spiritual truth and quite different from what is happening in the physical world. Consider how different the spiritual truth is from what is happening in the physical world! This must strike contemporary man as grotesque, but it nevertheless is the truth, which must have a shocking effect on us.

There is yet another extraordinarily important matter worth mentioning. Surely history seems to be contradicted when we see that England, even though she has in the past always been allied with Turkey against Russia, now has to fight with Russia against Turkey. We can understand this contradiction only through occult observation. On the physical plane England and Russia are allies in the fight against the Turkish element, yet occult vision, perceiving this struggle from below through the physical plane and then onto the astral plane, sees that in the North it is Russia and in the Southeast it is Turkey that appear to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between England and Russia is only of significance on the physical plane, but has no corresponding value in the spiritual world since it rests entirely on material interests. From below one sees that England and Russia are allied in the North only on the physical plane. In the Southeast, looking through the physical plane, one perceives on the astral plane a spiritual alliance between the English and the Turks while they are both fighting the Russians. Thus, on the physical plane, England is an ally to Russia and on the astral plane Russia is attacked by England. This is how we must see the events as they unfold in external reality inasmuch as they reveal themselves as external history. What is behind this history is something entirely different.

There will be a time when people will speak about the present events differently than they are doing now. You will have to admit, the entire war literature contains something rather unpleasant. True, some valid statements are made, but there are also many disagreeable ones. Above all, there is one thing that is disagreeable. There is much talk about how it is still too early to discuss the question of who has caused the war and so on. People delude themselves about the facts when they say that at a later date the documents in our archives will surely bring to light who is to blame for the war! In reference to the external events, however, the matter can be resolved fairly easily, provided one judges dispassionately. Chamberlain, in his War Essays⁷ is correct (even though he is in error about the details) when he says that it is possible to know the key issues of this war. All that is without a doubt accurate, but it leaves the proper question unasked. For example, there is but one question that can be answered unequivocally, if only it is properly posed, and this question is: Who could have prevented the war?—The constantly recurring question: Who is to blame for this war? and many other questions just are not appropriate. Who could have prevented the war? The answer to this question can be no other than that the Russian government could have prevented the war! Only in this fashion will it be possible to find the appropriate definition for the impulses that are at work in each situation. Of course, war had been desired by the East for decades, but had it not been for a certain relationship between England, Russia and France, it could not have broken out. Therefore, one might ascribe the greater blame to England. Yet all these conjectures do not take into consideration the underlying causes that made this World War a necessity. It is naive to believe that war could have been avoided. People these days talk as if it did not have to come about when it was, of course, destined by the European karma.

I wanted to allude to some of this by sketching the spiritual differences between East and West. It is not important that we look for external causes. All we have to know is that this war was a historic necessity. When that is understood the individual causes do not matter.

What is important is the proper attitude toward the various effects, for one effect can impress our souls in an especially significant way. It is remarkable and a characteristic phenomenon that a war like this one produces many unexpended ether bodies. Since this is the biggest war in man's conscious history, this phenomenon is present to a corresponding large degree. Ether bodies are produced that are not worn out. You see, the ether body that man carries with him can support him for a long period of time, until he reaches seventy, eighty or ninety years of age. But in a war human beings are sacrificed in the prime of their lives. You know that man, when he passes through the gate of death loses his ether body after a short period of time. A person dying in a war, however, loses his ether body when normally it could have supported his physical body for a long time, in many cases for decades. Those ether bodies entering the etheric world prematurely are preserved with all their powers. Consider now the countless number of unexpended ether bodies of those going through the gate of death at an early age. There is something distinctive about these ether bodies. I would like to illustrate this fact with an example that concerns our Movement, and after that I wish to explain how the ether bodies of the young soldiers who have gone through the gate of death will emerge in the etheric world in the near future.

This fall we witnessed in Dornach the death of little seven-year-old Theodor Faiss; his family belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and was employed not far from our building project. The father used to live in Stuttgart before moving to Dornach. He worked as a gardener in the vicinity of the building and lived there with his family. He himself had been drafted soon after the beginning of the war and at the time of the event I would like to relate, he was staying in a military hospital. Little seven-year-old Theodor was really a sunny child—a wonderful, lovely boy. Now, one day the following happened. We just had a lecture that I delivered in Dornach about the work that goes on in the building. After the lecture someone appeared and reported that little Theodor's mother had not seen him since late in the afternoon. It was ten o'clock at night and we could not help thinking that a terrible accident had happened. This afternoon a horse-driven furniture van had been in the vicinity of the so-called canteen; it was seen on a narrow street where it was forced to turn. To my knowledge, no van as huge had reached that spot in decades. Little Theodor had been in the canteen before the van had turned. He had been delayed there, otherwise he would have gone home earlier with the food that he had fetched from the canteen for supper. It so happened that he covered the short distance to his home in such a way that he reached the very spot where at that moment the van turned over and fell on him. Nobody had noticed the accident, not even the coachman because he was tending to his horses when the van turned over and did not know that the child was buried under it. When we were informed that the child was missing we tried to heave the vehicle up again. Friends fetched tools and alerted Swiss soldiers to help us with the task. Naturally the child had been dead since five-thirty in the afternoon. The van had crushed him immediately and he had died of suffocation.

This case can be used as an example of what I have often tried to explain by means of a comparison: causes are mistaken for effects, and vice versa. I have frequently used the following example. A person falls into the river and people hurry to the spot where it happened. When they find a rock, they conjecture that the victim had stumbled over it and this caused him to fall into the river and drown. Thus, they are sure that the man had died because he fell into the river. If one were to conduct an autopsy, however, it might turn out that he had suffered a heart attack and as a result, was already dead when he fell into the water, but he fell into the water because he had died. You will frequently encounter a similar confusion of cause and effect when life situations are assessed, and even more frequently in the general sciences.

The situation with little Theodor was that his karma had expired, so that it is actually possible to say, “He himself ordered the van to the place of the accident.” I have told you this externally tragic case in detail because we are here concerned with a child's ether body, which could have supported his life for decades. This ether body has passed into the spiritual world with all of its unexpended powers, but where is it? What is it doing? Since that day, anyone attuned to occult perception who is working artistically on the building in Dornach or is there simply to pursue his thoughts will know that the entire ether body of the child, with all its powers, is enlarged in the aura of the Dornach building. We must distinguish that the individuality is elsewhere; it goes its own way, but the ether body was separated after a few days and is now present in the building. I will never hesitate to assert that the powers needed for intuition are those of this ether body that was sacrificed for the building. The relationships behind ordinary life are often quite different from what we are able to suspect. This ether body has become one of the protective forces of the building. Something tremendously stupendous lies in such a relationship.

Now let us consider the vast amount of power that ascends to the spiritual world from the unexpended ether bodies of these who are now walling through the gate of death as a result of military events.

The way in which events are connected is different from what people can imagine; the karma in the world takes its course in a different way. It is the task of spiritual science to replace fantastic notions with spiritually true ideas. For example, we can hardly imagine something more fantastic and untrue, from a spiritual perspective, than what has taken place in the last few decades. Let us ask what has been accomplished by the (Hague) Peace Conference⁸ which aimed at replacing war with law, or international law, as it was called. Since the Peace Conferences were held, wars have never been more terrible. During the last few decades this Peace Movement counted among its special patrons the very monarch who has waged the bloodiest and most cruel wars ever known in history. The launching of the Peace Conferences by the Russian Czar must therefore be considered the biggest farce in world history; it is also the most abominable. This must be labeled a luciferic seduction of the East; the details can be easily traced. No matter how one may view the situation, the human soul is shocked by the fact that in the beginning, when the war impulses made their way into Central Europe, the people there made few comments about the situation, even in places where they gathered for the purpose of discussion, such as the German Parliament in Berlin. Little was said, but the events spoke for themselves. In contrast, there was much talk in the East and West. The most shocking impressions come from the debates among various political parties in the St. Petersburg Duma. Representatives of these parties uttered, with great fervor, endless variations of absolutely meaningless phrases. It was terrifying to see the luciferic seduction at work. The fires raging in this war, however, are intended to warn and admonish the human race to be on guard.

From what is now happening, a few souls must come to a realization that we cannot go on like this; human evolution must take up the spiritual! Materialism is confronting its karma in this, the most terrible of all wars. In a certain sense, this war is the karma of materialism. The more this fact is realized by human beings, the more they will abandon their arguments about who is to blame for the war, and then they will have to realize that this war has been sent into world history to admonish man to turn to a spiritual perception of human life in its entirety.

Not only does materialism cause human souls to embrace materialism, it also perverts man's logic and dulls his feelings. We in Central Europe are still lacking a full understanding of what I have stated before. We in Central Europe must be most intimately engaged in the continued development of the Christ impulse. To do this we must, among other things, try to understand the minds that have already sown the seeds. Just one example. Goethe wrote a theory of color, which physicists regard as something—well—something that deserves no more than an indulgent smile, as if they wanted to say, “What did the poet know about colors? He was nothing but a dilettante.” Since the 1880's I have tried to gain acceptance for Goethe's theory of color in spite of the findings of modern physics.⁹ Why does nobody understand that? The answer is that Central Europe has been imbued with the materialistic principle that has come to us from the British folk soul. Newton, whom Goethe had to oppose, has been victorious over everything emanating from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also established a theory of evolution that demonstrates how human beings, simply by grasping spiritual laws, can progress from the state of greatest imperfection to one of greatest perfection. People found this too difficult to understand. When Darwin published his theory of evolution in a more comprehensible fashion, it was readily accepted. Darwin, a materialistic thinker who was inspired by the British folk soul has conquered Goethe, a man whose perceptions resulted from a most intimate dialogue with the German folk soul.

Ernst Haeckel's experiences were tragic. During his entire life he nourished himself intellectually by leaning on the ideas of Huxley and Darwin; his materialism is basically an English product¹⁰ Yet when the war broke out, Haeckel was enraged about what emerged from the British Isles. He was one of the first to return British medals, diplomas and honors; instead, he should have returned his brand of Darwinism and physics, which is tinged with English thought. This is what we have to realize if we are to understand how Central Europe can strive for an intimate harmony with the laws of the world.

The greatest damage is done when what is poured into a child's soul induces the child to develop merely materialistically later in life. This trend has been on the increase for several centuries. Ahriman has even inspired one of the great British writers to compose a work that is calculated to impress the child's soul materialistically. The intent is hardly noticeable because ordinarily, one does not see all this as preparatory to a materialistic orientation. The work I am talking about is Robinson Crusoe. The description of Robinson is so shrewd that once the mind has accepted the ideas in the Robinson tale, it cannot avoid thinking materialistically thereafter. Mankind has not yet recovered from the ill effects perpetrated by the inventors of Robinson tales; they existed before and exist now. Much more could be said. These statements are not made to say something derogatory about the people of the West who have to be what they are. Rather, I wish to point out how the people in Central Europe must discover the connections to great values that are just now germinating but will grow to determine future developments. In this regard, the significance of Austria is especially noteworthy. During the past few decades several men there aspired to profound accomplishments, for example, Hamerling¹¹ in the area of literature, Carneri¹² who set out to deepen Darwinism, by extending it to the moral realm, as well as Bruckner¹³ and other artists from a variety of disciplines. What matters here is the concern of a people for these things.

Now let us consider the unexpended ether bodies that are still in existence. They were cast off by human beings who had learned, through a great event, how to sacrifice themselves for their people's spiritual commonalty, a commonalty no longer present for them, at least on the surface. If a spiritual scientist today asserts that there is a collective soul of people and that it exists as archangel and so forth, he will be ridiculed. What is called a people's collective soul by the materialists is nothing but the abstract sum of attributes that the people of a nation possess. The materialist considers the people as nothing but the sum of human beings who co-exist in the same geographic area and share a sense of commonalty with each other. We, on the other hand, speak of a people's spiritual commonalty in such a way that we know that the spirit of a people is present as a real being of the rank of an archangel. Even though somebody who sacrifices his life for his people is not fully conscious of the real spirit of his people, he nevertheless confirms by the manner in which he goes through death that he believes in a continuity of life alter this death. He believes that there is more to a people's spiritual commonalty than meets the eye, that is, it is related to, and co-exists with, the super-sensible world. All those going through death confirm in a more or less conscious way that there is a super-sensible world, and that realization is imprinted on their ether bodies. In a future time of peace, the unexpended ether bodies will be among people living on earth and will continually send the following sounds into the music of the spheres: there is more in the world than what mere physical eyes can perceive! This spiritual truth will ring forth as part of the music of the spheres through ether bodies that the dead have left behind. These are aside from what they are taking along as their individuality, which they retain during their lives between death and rebirth. We must listen to what lives and echoes from these ether bodies, because they were discarded by people who went through death and in so doing, affirmed the truth of the spiritual world. Mankind's greatest sin will be to ignore what the dead call out to us when their ether bodies speak. One's glance at the spiritual world will be infinitely enriched if one considers that those who have lost loved ones—fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters—may tell themselves that those who were sacrificed continue to live for humanity, as a reminder of what is yet to come!

If one were to rely only on what is taking place in the physical world, there would be little hope for the successful continuation of the spiritual movement through which a spiritual scientific world view is to be cultivated. Recently, a good and faithful colleague aged thirty or so died. My words to this soul that had gone through the gate of death requested that it should continue to work in our spiritual scientific field as faithfully and as courageously as it had done here on earth, utilizing all of its acquired knowledge. This colleague had worked diligently with us here on the physical plane; my message to him for his life between death and rebirth was that he should continue to work with us after death as he had done in life, for we are counting on these so-called dead as we are counting on the living. Our spiritual-scientific world view must be alive to such a degree that the gap between the so-called dead and the living can be overcome: we must feel the dead among us as if they were alive. We want not only theory, but life. Thus we wish to point out that when there is peace, there will be a living tie between those on earth and those who have gone through the gate of death. Man will be able to learn, and must learn, from the dead how they contribute to the great spiritual progress that must take hold on earth.

Sometimes life offers us an opportunity to see how human logic alone does not suffice. I would like to mention an example—not for personal reasons but because I want to characterize the way our Movement is viewed by the public. A few years ago an article was printed in a respected South German journal¹⁴ by a famous contemporary philosopher about our spiritual science. This treatment of spiritual science was intended to impress the public purely because the essay was authored by a famous philosopher. The editor took great pride in the fact that he was able to present an article about spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was skewed and the facts about spiritual science were distorted. But what did it take for the editor to realize that the account about spiritual science that he had sponsored in his monthly journal was distorted? The war broke out and the author of the article sent several letters to the editor. These letters contained some of the most disgusting remarks about Central European culture that one could imagine. The professor had railed and sneered at it. The editor then printed these letters in his journal as examples of the stupidity of this kind of thinking, commenting that anyone who writes this way belongs in an insane asylum. We are confronted by a curious fact. A good editor needed such an experience in order to see that the author, whose article on spiritual science had severely damaged the public image of the Movement, belonged in an insane asylum. If the man belongs in an insane asylum now, however, then the same was true before, when he wrote the article on spiritual science!

So it goes in the world! To be a judge of what is going on, man must garner other supports than those ordinarily available to him. The spiritual scientist who can clearly demonstrate that truth finds its own way, is on firm ground. Spiritual science, however, must be active in the evolution of mankind so that what is necessary, happens. Early in history Emperor Constantine had to accomplish his mission so that the Christ impulse could bear on the subconscious from the spiritual world. Later, the Christ impulse became active in the Maid of Orleans; what had to happen did indeed take place. Today, the Christ impulse must continue to bear on man, but more on his consciousness. In the future, there must be souls who will know that up there in the spiritual world there are those who sacrificed themselves as individuals and who admonish us to emulate their own belief in the active force of the spiritual, which they attained in death. The forces in the unexpended ether bodies beckon to the future, as well: to understand their message is to admit it into one's soul. Below, however, there must be souls who will perceive this truth and prepare for it through the proper and active understanding of our spiritual science. Our spiritual science must cultivate souls on this earth who will be capable of sensing what the ether bodies of the dead up there will say to us in the future. These souls will know that in the beyond there are forces to admonish human beings who had to be left on earth. When spirit-conscious souls down here harken to the hidden sounds of the spiritual world, then all bloodshed, all sacrifices and all suffering, past and future, will bear fruit. I do hope that quite a few souls come together through spiritual science and perceive the voices from the spiritual world that are resounding especially because of this war. Summarizing the final words of today's reflection, I wish to say a few words to you that are merely an expression of my feeling for what I want to instill in your souls.

From the warrior's valor,
From the blood of battles,
From the pain of the bereaved.
From a people's sacrifice
Will the spirit fruit arise—
Will the souls embrace the spirit
Consciously, with inner eyes.

With such feelings in our hearts we forever want to imbue ourselves with the meaning of the rose cross so that we can perceive it in the proper way as the motto for our doing, weaving and feeling. Not the black cross alone. He who tears the roses from the black cross and has nothing left but the black cross, would fall into the clutches of Ahriman. The black cross in itself represents life when it strives to embrace inanimate matter. Also, if one were to separate the cross from the roses, keeping only the latter, one would nor find the proper thing. For the roses, separate from the cross, tend to elevate us to a life of selfish striving toward the spiritual, but not to a life in which we reveal the spirit in a material world. Not the cross alone, not the roses alone, but the roses on the cross, the cross carrying the roses: That is our proper symbol.

• 1 . “Die übersinnliche Erkenntnis und ihre stärkende Seelenkraft in unserer schicksalstragenden Zeit” (“Supersensible Perception and Its Strengthening Soul-force in Our Time of Destiny”). Corresponding remarks can be found in the Berlin lectures of April 16 and 23, 1915, published as: “Aus schicksalstragenden Zeit”, (“From a Time of Destiny”) Bibl.-No. 64 in the Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works [of Rudolf Steiner]), Dornach, 1959.
• 2 . “Welten-Neujahr. Das Traumlied von Olaf &Åsteson” (“Cosmic New Year. The Legend of Olaf &Åsteson's Dream”), Hanover lecture of January 1, 1912. Published as a separate edition in Dornach, 1958; Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 158.
• 3 . In this form the pronouncement was first made by Karl von Linné in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm, 1751, no. 77.
• 4 . Cf. especially “Die spirituellen Hintergründe der äusseren Welt—Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis” (“The Spiritual Background of the External World—The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness”), 14 lectures, Dornach, September 29 to October 28, 1917. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No. 177, Dornach, 1965.
• 5 . “Die Pforte der Einweihung” (“The Portal of Initiation”), first scene. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 14, Dornach, 1962.
• 6 . The alliance was negotiated in 1897 by President Faure of France and Czar Nicolas II of Russia.
• 7 . Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Neue Kriegsaufsatze (New War Essays), Munich, 1915, p.36.
• 8 . “The reference is to the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 and 1907, which were both initiated by Czar Nicholas II.
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner was asked in 1882 to edit Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur. Volume I was published in 1883; it contained writings on the formation and transformation of organisms. Rudolf Steiner's introductions and critical commentaries to the four volumes were published as a special edition, entitled: Rudolf Steiner, , Dornach, 1926. A German edition was published in Freiburg, 1949. Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Bibl.-No. 1. Cf. the correspondence between Karl Julius Schröer, Joseph Kürschner and Rudolf Steiner in Blätter für Anthroposophie,. 13 Jg. No. 2, February 1961.
• 10. Ernst Haeckel: “I have always readily acknowledged the magnificent contributions of the small insular British empire to the enrichment of human civilization. These were possible because of its advantageous insular position and its geographic alliances. In addition I worked on Darwinism for the past fifty years and had many personal dealings with Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, John Murray and many other famous natural scientists in England and Scotland; these were pleasant and fruitful personal relationships.” Haeckel, Ewigkeit. Weltkriegsgedanken über Leben und Tod, Religion und Entwicklungslehre (Eternity, World War Reflections on Life and Death, Religion, and the Theory of Evolution), Berlin, 1915, p.65 and 114.
• 11. Robert Hamerling, 1830-1889. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur 1886-1902 (Collected Essays on Literature, 1886-1902), Bibl.No. 20, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1957; Mein Lebensgang (The Course of My Life), Bibl.-No. 28, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1962; “Robert Hamerling, ein Dichter und ein Denker und ein Mensch” (“Robert Hamerling, the Poet, the Thinker and the Man”), Dornach, 1939.
• 12. Bartholomäus Ritter von Carneri, 1821-1909. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, “Carneri, der Ethiker des Darwinismus” in Methodische Grundlagen der Anthroposophie 1884-1901 (“Carneri, the Moral Philosopher of Darwinism” in Methodological Foundations of Anthroposophy, 1884-1901), Bibl.-No. 30, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1961: also “Vom Menschenrätsel” (“On the Riddle of Man”) and Mein Lebensgang (The Course of My Life).
• 13. Anton Bruckner, 1824-1896.
• 14. Wincenty Lutoslawski, “Rudolf Steiner's sogenannte ‘Geheimwissenschaft’” in Hochland, 8.Jg., 1.Heft Oktober 1910, S.45-58. (“Rudolf Steiner's so-called ‘Occult Science’” in Hochland, VIII, 1, October 1910, p.45-58). Professor Karl Muth, editor of the journal, writes an editorial comment in No. 7 of the same year, in which he describes Lutoslawski as an “author who is eminent as a man and as a thinker.” Later, in Krisgshefte der Suddeutschen Monatshefte, Munich, February 1915, p.623-631, Muth refers to his correspondence with Lutoslawski and writes, among other things: “in addition to making several small contributions to Hochland, Lutoslawski also published in this journal three lead articles which aroused considerable attention among the readers: one article on the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner, another one on exercises to strengthen the will, and the third one on his conversion to the Catholic faith. His published notes contain peculiar biographical clues ... Where in Germany—except in an inane asylum—would there be a human being like this lector of philosophy from the University Geneva—a man who seems to be completely disoriented as he confronts the magnitude of our contemporary world-historical situation with complete blindness and a paucity of ideas! The relief which his overwrought brain received through his epistolary outpouring did not satisfy him; he now insists that his latest letter should come to the attention of the public as well.”

In connection with many painful events that have recently happened we have been considering the Problem of Death.

I should like to call your attention today first to something of a more general character which is connected with the problem and which can be discovered through the means given us by Initiation Science. One must picture to oneself that when the human being passes through the gate of death he comes into a world which is quite different for him from what is often imagined. It is a tendency in human nature which may very well be understood, to picture the realm on the other side of death, the spiritual kingdom into which we enter through the Gate of Death, as being similar to the kingdom of the mind and senses in which we live between birth and death. I say it is an understandable tendency to picture this kingdom on the other side of death somewhat as a kind of continuation of the kingdom here. But one is then in error. For it is difficult to find words from the treasures of our speech which make it possible to characterise the experiences between death and a new birth, words which are even in a slight degree adequate. I have, as you know, often mentioned that our speech is calculated for the physical world and we must, as it were, adjust our relation inwardly to the words if we wish to make them words capable of expressing that which lies on the other side of death.

Moreover the mode in which these words come forth from the soul when the soul must characterise something which lies on the other side of death is quite different from the mode in which words come forth from us in the world of the mind and senses. This mode of expressing oneself about the spiritual world, its beings and its phenomena is much more a self-surrender to this spiritual world and a letting oneself be bestowed upon the words.

Such words as I have communicated to you in respect of persons who have died were not formed as one forms words when one wants to bring something to expression in the outer physical world, but they were so formed as if they poured into one's soul from the being in question. So that the being gives them, pours them in, and we now have the feeling that—we are expressing something or other that we see through these words, but we have throughout the feeling: through us something is expressing itself, something that uses us to a certain extent, as its organ, in order to express itself, in order to objectify itself in spiritual speech. So it is quite a different proceeding, it is a self-surrender with one's soul to the being with whom one is concerned, and such a self-surrender that the being finds the possibility of expressing with our instruments its own inner nature and its own inner experiences. When one frames the word it is not like the adapting of oneself to something external, but like a surrender of the word to the being in question, like a placing of the word at this being's disposal, so that the being can then itself make use of our words.

Thus it is quite a different method of placing oneself in objectiveness, from the method here in the world of the mind and senses. One of the very first conditions, therefore, of gaining a right relation to the spiritual world, is a certain mobility of the inner nature, a certain adaptability to the most varied individuals, a continuous possibility of going out from oneself and betaking oneself into other individuals. If one really wants to express with a certain surety of aim—if I may put it thus—that which is in the supersensible world and lives therein, as is the case with one who has gone through the gate of death, one must first and foremost be healed of what can be called the earthly ego-delusion. One must have succeeded in thinking of oneself as little as possible, in setting oneself as little as possible in the central point of the universe. One must, if one has a strong predilection for speaking a good deal about oneself, for brooding a good deal over oneself, conquer this tendency; since this much speaking of oneself, much brooding over oneself, is actually the very worst path to self-knowledge. If one has the tendency to speak much of oneself, to judge everything so that first of all one is mindful of how one is oneself placed in the world, and what one signifies to the world, if one has this tendency, then one is badly fitted for finding oneself rightly in the spiritual world or for bringing anything at all of the spiritual to expression.

One is most occupied with oneself in the spiritual sense when in the earthly sense one is least so occupied, thinks about oneself least, for what in the earthly sense is the most interesting of all to us, the connection of the world with our own person, is for the spiritual world the most devoid of importance. So we shall always find that the way into the true spiritual reality becomes very difficult when at every opportunity we must find occasions, according to our inner nature, to speak of ourselves, to speak of what we could be worth to the world, if need be, and so forth—less or more.

If we employ these methods in ordinary life, which is also ruled inwardly by spiritual forces and impulses, we do not get on well. Here one can find the most remarkable connections. I have met with people who for instance greatly lamented that they found it extraordinarily difficult to get up, that the decision to lift themselves up was very difficult. I have even made the acquaintance of people who have calmly acknowledged that if there were no external circumstance compelling them to rise, on the whole they would prefer not to get up at all. One can always find an inner connection between the whole being of man and such a predilection. These people as a rule would be those who tell one much, very much about themselves, who have a great deal to say about what is sympathetic or antipathetic to them, what they have come across in this or that place, to their benefit or detriment ... and similar things. One who desires to prepare himself properly for a really objective grasp of the spiritual world must pay attention to such connections. For we must observe life if we wish to enter into reality. And you may be quite sure of this: as human beings, through our natural predisposition, there is nothing as a rule to which we are less disposed, than to take life objectively. We are to nothing so much inclined as to take ourselves in too much earnest and to observe outer life with too little earnestness. One only struggles through quite gradually to words which can then become really true guiding lines of life, and with great geniuses one can often see how they go through a great deal, in order then to impress their whole life-wisdom into a single word. Then this signifies something quite different from what it would when spoken by just anyone in the ordinary daily course.

I once drew attention—it was in connection with the lectures which I held in Norrköping—to how easily one can utter the great, the impressive words of the aged John: “Children, love one another.” But it means something quite different if a foolish person, some youngster says it, or if John says it at the end of a full life in which much, very much had been undergone here upon earth.

It is not only a matter of whether the saying is true, but also from what background of the soul it is spoken, from what background it arises. Goethe, too, from a rich, full life, wrestled through to a beautiful saying, the deep meaning of which one must fathom, though it cannot be understood as people imagine, using it in every situation of life. To understand it thus is—I should like to use the paradoxical term—far too simple, for to understand it thus is possible for every child. But as it must be understood, as Goethe understood it upon the foundation of a rich, and over rich life-experience—I refer to the words, “Know thyself and live in peace with the world”—is not possible to every child. But the linking together of these two sentences shows us that there is no self-knowledge which does not really lead to the sentence “Live in peace with the world.”

I really wanted to review all these things as much as possible in detail since they are far more important than you at first believe. But I must indicate them and leave much to your own meditation. I should like only to point out that, according to the statements of many persons there is a lack of material for meditation. put there is really no lack of it, if one only has the goodwill to let the meditation material be found in life, offer itself as such from life.

Now he who passes through the portal of death is directly, through this fact, removed from all the illusory relationships in which he lives, in which he is ensnared here, so long as he dwells in the physical body. He is removed from them for they were forced upon him as we know through the fact of his being incorporated in the physical body. He is above all removed from many functions which had become sympathetic to him in the life between birth and death, and which naturally, since he lacks the physical body, he can no longer carry out after death. The whole mode of living, of the relation to the universe, becomes a completely different one, and you can get an idea when you meditate upon the Vienna cycle “Life between Death and a New Birth”, of the quite different manner in which one must place oneself to the world if one desires to make concepts about this life between death and a new birth. One must only try, falteringly to coin the words which were sought for there, to experience them quite intimately. In such matters this is imperatively necessary.

I have already pointed out recently that the moment of death is really not to be compared with the moment of birth into physical human life except superficially. In the ordinary course of life, if one is not supported by clairvoyant knowledge, one does not remember back to the physical birth in the physical body. Through the capacities given us by the earth we remember no further back than the fact of being born—not even so far. If there are people today who believe that they know everything through the senses, they do not reflect that they cannot know the very origin of their earth-life through sense-impressions. They can only know it by being informed about their birth or by being told on the foundation of an often not consciously but in fact unconsciously accepted inference. There are only these two methods of knowing that one has been born if one has not the aid of clairvoyant forces;—to have it related to one, or to make a deduction, an inference—other men were born, I am similar to other men, therefore at some time I too was born. A correct deduction.

And any other method of arriving at the fact of one's own birth with earthly forces, except to be told about it, or to make this inference by analogy, any other method than these two does not exist for the faculties of earth, so already by the effort to come to a knowledge of our own birth we discover that it is not possible to find a foundation for the truth of it in mere experience of the senses. The moment of death is utterly dissimilar from the moment of birth, for one can always behold the moment of death, whereas one cannot with ordinary earthly faculties in the physical body behold the moment of birth. In the spiritual world in the time between death and new birth one can always behold the moment of death from the instant when one has brought it for the first time to one's consciousness. There it stands although not perhaps as we see it with its terror, from this side of life, but it stands there a wonderfully beautiful event of life, as a coming forth of the soul and spirit nature of the human being from the physical-sensible sheath, it stands there as the liberation of the Willing and Feeling impulses from the fleeting, the objective fleeting Thought-being.

That directly after death a person is not in a position to behold this moment of death immediately, is connected with the fact that we have, not too little consciousness, after death, after the entrance of death, but on the contrary, that we have too much consciousness. Only remember what is said in the Vienna lectures, that we find ourselves not in too little wisdom but in too much wisdom, in an unending, overflowing wisdom pressing upon us from all sides. To be without wisdom is impossible to us after death. This comes over us like a light, flooding us from every direction, and we must first succeed in circumscribing ourselves, in orientating ourselves, where to begin with if we are not orientated. Thus through this circumscribing of the whole highly-pitched consciousness down to the degree of self-consciousness which we can bear in accordance with our earthly preparation for death, we come to that which we call “the awakening” after death.

We awake directly after death too vividly, and we must first diminish this awakening to the degree corresponding to the faculties which we have prepared for ourselves through our experiences in our various earth-incarnations. So it is a struggle to stand our ground in the consciousness breaking in upon us from all sides.

And now comes something in which we must all—both after death and also if we would rightly enter Initiation—first cure ourselves, as it were, of the habits of the physical-sensible life. In order to be thoroughly understood I should like to link this on to something. When we began in Berlin to carry on our movement of Spiritual Science in quite a small circle, we were at first joined by various people. We were at that time a very small circle. One day not long after we had begun to work, a member of this circle came and explained that he must withdraw again. He had seen that we were not on the right path, for it was not a matter of seeking all the things that we sought, but of seeking Unity. That was an idee fixe with this person. In a long conversation he developed the fixed idea of Unity and then left us in order to seek unity. He thought to arrive at the supersensible just through this seeking for Unity, through this idee fixe of Unity. But the idea of oneness or unity is something only resulting from the last abstractions of the outer physical life. This striving after oneness is in fact the most material towards which one can strive. It is precisely of this oneness-striving that one must be cured if one wishes to stand correctly in the spiritual world. Here in the sense world it is so easy to say: we must seek oneness everywhere, we must seek unity in the plurality, in the multiplicity. But that is something which only has significance for the physical sense world here. For when we pass through the gate of death then we do not have multiplicity, but something which comes before our soul as an overwhelming consciousness. When we have passed through the portal of death we have nothing but oneness around us, continuous oneness. It is then a matter of rightly finding plurality, multiplicity. We must strive there for nothing else than to come out of oneness into multiplicity.

Now I should like to give you a correctly formed idea of how a person comes into multiplicity out of oneness. Let us suppose that one passes through the portal of death, enters into this world of surging spiritual life of wisdom. One enters first into this world, which to begin with stupefies us when we awaken there. We do not distinguish ourselves within it at all. So much is it oneness that we do not distinguish ourselves in it, we do not make a differentiation between ourselves and the universe, but rather we belong completely to the universe; all is one.

But now let us answer the question, and I pray you to ponder not a little but very much upon the answer that I will give. Now we reply to a question: What actually is this oneness into which we are there received? Remember all the beings of the higher hierarchies of which nine are known to you, or ten if we count mankind. In each hierarchy is a whole host of beings. These all think. It is not man alone who thinks. All the beings of these higher hierarchies think. Consider therefore this whole host of beings in whom we are received when we have stepped through the portal of death. They are around us, for in stepping through the portal of death we are received by the complete fullness of being. At first we do not perceive them. We are within them, but we do not perceive them. That which surges around us at first is just this oneness. But what is this oneness? It is the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another. What all the hierarchies think together; this thought-world of the hierarchies indistinguished as to what one hierarch, what the other hierarch thinks;—this is the Light-Being of Thought that surges round us, this oneness.

Therefore we live in the thoughts of the hierarchies flowing together to a oneness. Therein we live.

And now what is the further course of our life after death? Our concern is to gain a relation to the separate beings, to lift ourselves out of the ocean of thought where all the thoughts of the hierarchies flow together, and to gain a relation to the single beings, to the multiplicity. After death we must not only gain a relation to the commingled unity of the surging Thought-essence of the hierarchies—for that is given to us, but we must work through so that we gain a relationship to the single beings of the hierarchies. How do we gain this?

Now at first we are flooded with this ocean of the thoughts of the hierarchies merging and flowing together. Through what we have acquired for ourselves in our physical body there condenses at the gate of death to which we look back, our own inner being lifting itself out of the material coverings. That gives us strength of will. That gives a will-impulse of a feeling nature, and a feeling-impulse of a will-nature. These we inwardly become aware of in beholding the being which ascends from the body which we are after death. Through this we are in the position to some extent of attracting our “will-rays.” And when we place such a will-ray somewhere, which we create out of the force of death, which is born with death, then we obliterate at another place, and at a third place, etc. at various places through the strength of our will-impulse we obliterate the thought-world surging around us. And inasmuch as we obliterate it there comes to meet us in the hollow space of the surging ocean of thought, if I may say so, the thought of a hierarch, the being that lives within it in the spiritual world.

Whereas here in the physical world we exert ourselves to find a thought for the thing which we see, in the spiritual world, where, as I have pointed out, thought stands in profusion at one's beck and call, we must obliterate the thought, drive it away. Then the beings approach us. We must be master of the thoughts, then the beings approach us. And the strength to become master of the thought, to cast the thought out of our field of sight, as it were, whereby the being approaches us in the sea of the surging thought-world, this strength we receive through the fact that as a beautiful beginning of our spiritual life after death the vision of dying, of death itself, comes to meet us, and becomes our teacher in the obliterating. For death becomes to us after death the teacher of obliterating, the stimulator of that will force wherewith we must obliterate the thoughts in the surging sea of light.

Herewith is indicated the entirely different manner in which the human being stands to his surroundings after death and before; how he must proceed in the world of the senses by establishing himself there, having the atmosphere around him and then being obliged to wait until something comes into the atmosphere. On the other hand, after death he must so proceed that he has the Light-sphere of Thought around him and within it he must then himself obliterate the thoughts that lie before him in his field of vision, in which the beings concerned then appear to him. For here one has to do with beings, as I have indicated in my book, “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.” Thus one comes out of unity into multiplicity. Monism in the sense understood by many people is only a world-concept for the Gate of Death. For there in the most marked degree an urgent necessity arises for seeking multiplicity. To seek oneness is a last fetter, a theoretical fetter of life as understood by the senses.

But what is it then that we actually accomplish there? Well, it is an activity by which we make room for the hierarchies to approach us. Our being, as you know, is then spread over the whole universe (I have repeatedly spoken of this,) and we make room by creating these hollow places, as it were, so that what is objective to us after death, can appear. Never can what is objective in the spiritual world appear to us if we take our own being into the spiritual world; we can only discern the other in the spiritual world if on the spot where the other is to appear we obliterate our own being; and that happens in this way.

This is an inner characterization of the process which is also necessary if we wish to reach the dead in the manner I described to you at the beginning of the lecture, where one has to acquire the power of letting the dead speak, of letting the dead express themselves. One must then try to drive away one's thinking and feeling from where the dead is, to drive away oneself, and where one has driven that away, impulses come forth from the depth of being which, without our will, place the words in our mouth which must come to us if we wish to express the objective being of one who is not incorporated in the physical body.

You see, that which here in the physical world is in a way the weakest in man, willing and feeling, (they are the weakest parts of the human soul and the most unclear), over which we are least master, gains a special significance if we are to perceive in the spiritual world. On the other hand, that which here in the physical world is the strongest of all, thought-concepts—we prefer to live, as you know, in illusion and concepts, since there we can be most dominant—is the weakest in the spiritual world. One cannot make much beginning there with illusions, for illusions still disguise for us this overflowing oneness of thought-essence. Our concern is not an exercising of the life of thought, but a development of our life of will and feeling, and this too is the essential in meditation. In meditation it does not matter so much what we picture, but, as I have emphasised repeatedly, to picture with inner strength. it is a matter of inner energy, of feeling and sensation while we meditate, that is, of a will element which we develop in meditation, and which we develop more strongly if we have so to exert ourselves as in meditation we ought to exert ourselves, spiritually exert ourselves. What is most opposed of all to real progress in the spiritual world is the longing to dream, the longing to form illusions about outer reality, because in this way we make our will continually weaker and weaker. One makes the will weakest of all if one cultivates the parasites of the life of idea, if one makes illusions for oneself over all sorts of external things. Above all, the way into the spiritual world does not draw near to us by our holding life at a distance, but by understanding that not an impoverishment of the outer life, but only an enrichment, can lead into the spiritual world. People would like so much to grow into the spiritual world through weakness and not through strength. One grows into the spiritual world by weakness if the outer world, the world of life, does not interest one, when one cannot fulfill the Goethe maxim “Know thyself, and live in peace with the world.”

I should like to point out before I go further in these studies of death, that in all human activity of an artistic nature there must lie as foundation a “playing in” of that activity of the human soul which is necessary for this human soul after death. As regards artistic activity it is precisely the will-element which must be impregnated into the artist from the spiritual world, not so much the element of observation. In our age of the decay of art and especially of artistic labour, the opposite is taking place. In our age of degeneration that element is being elaborated even in the artistic world, which makes the conceptual life more sophisticated. Therefore in our age, artists are becoming more and more dependent on models and copies. They can do extremely little if they have no models or copies. Hence in our age it will come about more and more that the artist will isolate himself in his art. But it can never reach real art if one isolates oneself in art. That is the opposite of what ought to be.

What happens, then, if someone is creating a human being through art, in painting or sculpture, and he does not occupy himself with the inner forces which build up this human being, with the dynamic forces, but merely goes out and gets a model and uses the model as one uses things in looking at them? He is then departing from the real principle of artistic creation. Artistic creation begins when one creates an inwardly willed picture of how the nose stands out here, of how the forehead is vaulted there; one does not see the things outwardly, but can penetrate into them inwardly. That is what matters.

And so in a special way it is also the case with nature. In nature it is a matter of really living within the activities of nature. And here I will call your attention to something which the human being immediately experiences when he has passed through the portal of death, which here, in the physical world, however, remains more or less unknown to him.

When we paint, we paint preferably that which is spread, one might say, over the surface of things. We paint light and shade. We paint colours. Now outer nature is furnished with light and colour from the fact that she does not accept them, but throws them back. Over there is the object and it throws us back light and colour. That is between us and the object. Mineral things are, for instance, minerals, because they cannot receive light and colour, within, because they reflect them externally. There within the colour, man lives with his soul. After death he withdraws into it at once; there he knows himself in light and colour, but here he does not know himself within them. When he comes before the landscape as landscape painter, he must have something of what is between him and the landscape, he must be able to rise into it, he must, as it were, bring something into the physical world which only actually becomes reality when the human being has passed through the gate of death. This gives the similarity between artistic creation and the standing within the spiritual world, although the artist is for the most part unaware that the spiritual world pulsates and flows through him, nor is he conscious of the necessity of being pulsated through by the spiritual world. Precisely on this account the design of our building has been made as it has been made, because we must pay attention as I have often said, just to what is not there, not to what is there. Just the hollow forms which have been left free have to be considered, not what is actually there. In so far, through carrying our stream of Spiritual Science into the practical domain, a beginning has been made which had to be made in our present epoch of culture.

You see, such inter-penetrations of the spiritual world into human life as through, let us say, the Death Spectrum, were by no means so unusual in times lying not so very far behind us. Today it is something unusual, and as a natural gift it will become more and more unusual. It will occur less and less as a natural gift. But the less the human being here in the physical world can form some kind of connection with the spiritual manifoldness, the more he will be fettered when he has passed through the gate of death. The possibility of creating those hollow forms would entirely cease if mankind should quite lose connection with the spiritual world, as must necessarily happen in the mere external progress of world events. We know that the old clairvoyance must become entirely lost. but if that inner relation to the spiritual world were not to be re-established through Spiritual Science, a man would gradually lose the possibility, after death, of actually living in the spiritual world, of having a real, actual existence. Through the backward-survey of his life, which always remains for him, where the beholding of death is something quite actual, he would be spell-bound, almost as if confined in a prison.

Therefore in the case of those who, if I may say so, go through the gate of death strengthened by Spiritual Science, it is to be seen that comparatively quickly after death they gain freedom, free activity in the spiritual world. Hence the point is for a man to replace by the strengthening of Spiritual Science what was earlier given to him by natural aptitude—the gaining of a relation to the super-sensible, to spiritual phenomena.

If from a natural aptitude one can see something like a Death Spectrum (and people in earlier times which do not lie so far behind us used always to see the death-spectrum—only it is a lost faculty)—one sees this death-spectrum through the separation from the body. This enables one to see the single, individual phenomena. These single phenomena are carved out of the oneness ... and that is the important thing ... this carving out of the oneness ... to learn how to do this. But the possibility of learning how to do it is entirely lost with the loss of the natural, atavistic clairvoyance, and it must be replaced by growing into Spiritual science. It will be this strengthening given by Spiritual Science, through which the necessary faculty for artistic creation in every sphere will be called forth in the future. The sculptor, the painter, the poet, will not be able to create if they do not strengthen themselves through Spiritual Science. Today people are still afraid of this. But the fear which comes to expression when a musician, a painter, a poet, says: ‘Since I have to engage in and struggle with all manner of things this kills the original artistic creative power in me’—can be heard everywhere. This is only a fear of the strength that is necessary if the domain of human art is really to last into the future. Men are still afraid today of what in their inner being must come forth precisely as the strongest force. Times will come in human evolution where artistic faculties must ripen through the strengthening acquired through Spiritual Science.

Then, at all events, there will be less of the scandalous thing that is prevalent today, namely, that in very early youth and out of nothingness, people vaunt themselves artists and are, in their own opinions, artists.

When this kind of art does not succeed, they think it is entirely due to lack of appreciation on the part of the world. This nonsensical state of things will gradually cease. The art of the future will be an art of maturity and it will not be until a comparatively late age in life that a man will feel inwardly mature enough to engage in art. it will no longer be believed that in later life it is impossible for a man to have the forces requisite for artistic creation—forces of youth as they are often called; far rather will it be found that only by the deepening and strengthening acquired through Spiritual Science can the forces that will lead to artistic creation in the future be liberated from the inner being. But people are still afraid of these forces today. They are afraid of what has to be attained. Many artists have a holy terror of this emergence of the inner depths of their being, and when they hear that it is not the external, earthly man, but the higher man within them who should be the creative artist, they are thrown into the most utter confusion. It is difficult to imagine more complete confusion than that of a certain modern artist when he realised that it is the Genius in the inner man, the being who belongs to the spiritual world, who is really the creator in the artist. An artist of modern times expressed his holy terror of the spiritual world in approximately the following words:

“Genius is a terrible disease. In the heart of every writer there is a monster who devours his feelings directly they have been born. Who will be victorious—the disease over the man or the man over the disease? A man must be great indeed if he is to hold the balance between his character and his genius. If a poet is not a giant, if he does not possess the strength of a Hercules, he must either forfeit his heart or his talent.”

The very flesh of one's soul, so to speak, creeps when such words are uttered. For they are simply an expression of the holy terror which exists in the human being in regard to things that are connected with the spiritual world. Moreover the last sentence is quite consistent, although the author is unaware of how consistent it is ... The fact that he speaks of giants, of Hercules, is very characteristic. It is very significant that precisely these words come into his mouth—or rather into his pen.

So the view may actually be held that the human being must be victorious by virtue of what he is in earthly life ... for this is contained in the words, whereas true knowledge will reveal that the healthy genius within a man will penetrate and take hold of him, will make him into its instrument.

Another modern writer refers and adds to the sentences I have just read, in strange, extremely strange words. He says: “Let us picture the tragic destruction of Laocoön as described in the Aenead. With natural horror and repugnance the citizens of Troy witness the gigantic snakes strangling Laocoön and his sons. The spectators feel fear, compassion and certainly wish to save the victims; however different their conditions of soul may be, nevertheless the moment of will undoubtedly plays a very important part ... but just imagine a sculptor in the midst of this shocked and excited crowd, a sculptor who sees the terrible catastrophe taking place before his eyes as the subject of a future work of art. Amid the general excitement of these shouting, frenzied, praying people, he remains the unruffled observer. All moral instincts in him are at this moment suppressed by the desire for aesthetic experience.”

This, forsooth, is supposed to be necessary for the creation of a work of art: A crowd of people who are not artists stand there with deep compassion, unable to help, and together with them, a simpleton, a dunderhead, who has no inkling of the pain caused by it all. And this dunderhead is supposed to be the true artist who is capable of portraying the scene; he stands there in his stupidity merely as an observer: Things have come to such a pass at the present time that people dare to demand of the artist that he shall be a dunderhead when faced with life's phenomena, in order that he may be “objective.” He must tear compassion and sympathy out of his heart; he must become a dull-headed simpleton and only then, according to what is said here, will he be able to depict something capable of interesting other human beings.

When people have it in them to evolve such a view of art, they cannot help being seized by the most terrible of all Ahrimanic forces. Such a view denotes the decadence of art that is produced by the fear and dread of spiritual reality. People do not know that if a man wants to be an artist he must feel events with still deeper sympathy, still deeper compassion and must be able, at a later moment to look at the same events objectively out of this deep sympathy, making us love them as we may love a being who is strange to us. Out of this still deeper quality of sympathy we must be capable of art that is creative. The perversion of outlook has reached such a point today that the opposite of truth is trumpeted forth to the world as consummate wisdom. And I am convinced that there are infinite numbers of people who consider this dullness very clever and who regard this laudation of insensitive stupidity in the artist as the final discovery of what art really is. Such is the present day and it is for us to seek in Spiritual Science that support and strengthening which enable us to realise that we ourselves are living in the world into which the human being also enters, in the natural course of events, when he passes through the Gate of Death.

For us, art is related to death; it is related to the higher life: to be related to death means to be related to higher life.

In order to enter the spiritual world we must in many respects be capable of ideas and mental pictures quite different from those which must fill us for the purpose of understanding the world we experience between birth and death. We must pierce through Maya not only in such a way that we take this Maya to be the same everywhere, thinking that when we have broken through it at one point we are already in the spiritual world. The density of Maya is different at different places in life. This we shall find when we confront diverse spheres of life.—Maya is woven out of different materials. Although it is Maya, it is woven out of different materials at different places in life.

Suppose we get to know a child in its physical existence; we form ideas about the being of the child, ideas built up from our experiences of meeting the child in the physical body. There could be no greater error than to carry this picture into the spiritual world for the purpose of really getting to know this being when it has passed through the Gate of Death.

In the death of Theo Faiss, a terribly touching karmic event has happened among us recently. It would be a false picture of him if we were merely to enlarge the idea we formed of this child as we met him in the physical world, if we were simply to project this picture into the spiritual world. In just such a being the very greatest maturity can be observed soon after death. We can find the forces which brought the child into the physical world through birth—and which have not been allowed by karma to live themselves out in the physical world—we can find these forces interwoven in the cosmic forces and we gradually realise that a mature soul has struggles through death to cosmic existence, is growing little by little towards the heavenly spheres. And when such a soul was a child in the last incarnation we can perceive that this soul is able, comparatively quickly, to develop to the point where it directs the forces that are now merging into the cosmos. Then we learn to know the human being as he is after death; it is as though with his own being he were directing the forces which were contained in his death spectrum and are now weaving themselves into the cosmos. Thus the human being grows into that creative activity which we may call the heavenly creative activity. Then his feeling that is coloured by will, and the element of will that is coloured by feeling, grow together with the universe outside him. Just as when we, as children in the physical body, gradually adapt ourselves with our sense-organs to the external world, just as we then grow into the faculty of vision, so do we grow, after death, into the essential realities we grow into the unfolding of will.

If we allowed these things to work upon us in the sense of Spiritual Science, we should observe, little by little, how the Maya of external life is woven with different strengths at different places. Maya is difficult to pierce in cases like the death of a little child, because most of the external manifestations disturb what must replace them if we are to have a true picture of what the human being is after death.

But there are also human beings with whom it is comparatively easy to pierce through the warp and woof of Maya; it is easy because the truth of their being has been able to connect itself deeply even with the Maya existing in them in the physical world between birth and death. There are such men, men who bring down treasures of inner, spiritual richness at their birth into the physical world and who are able to weave into their being and life what they have brought down from the spiritual world. They are those human beings whom we needs must love because of what the Creators in their love have made of them; often we do not ask why we love them; love for them is a matter of course. Such human beings are like living witnesses to the spiritual world, because even here in the physical world they are extraordinarily like their own spiritual being, and because the web of Maya only through the existence of love, of course, but through this very love—can very soon be dispersed, enabling us to gaze into the depths of the soul.

Our attitude to such human beings must have a certain delicacy, a certain intimate delicacy because they have brought down a very, very great deal from the spiritual world into physical existence and because then, after death, they stand like living witnesses to the profound truth that the impulses of the spiritual world live on in all the manifestations of this physical world. If we behold such human beings after their death, it is as though they were wanting to say to us: Thus were we before and the fact that we lived in such deep, and inward truth is now confirmed when we have passed through the Gate of Death.—Thus do they stand as apostles of faith after death too, as apostles of the faith which allows us to have belief in the life we spend here in the physical world.

Since the death of our friend Sybil Colaxxa, she too stands there like an apostle of the faith that the world in which we live is permeated with spirituality. And here it is necessary to explain why the strange thing happened in her case that the sight of her spiritual being confirmed what she revealed through the sheaths of external life in the physical world to everyone who knew and learned to love her. Hence the different tone in the words that had to be spoken out of her soul; it was because her essential quality as an individual was precisely that quality of which I have just spoken:

Mark well that the presentation of the past, the use of the imperfect tense, passes over into the present, the present tense, because observation of the life in the body harmonised with the vision of the life after death. This is expressed in the words themselves. Words that are coined out of the spiritual world contain their own necessity. Thus the words had to be: This Being filled with soul they voice, a voice which, eloquent more through the quality of the words than the words themselves, revealed what lay hidden within that soul, and is working on, existing. “... Existing” therefore, not “existed.”

(verkundet—the present tense—can also be used. Here the two periods of time flow together.)

Now let us think of a soul like Fritz Mitscher, a friend who, to our great pain, has died so recently. The nature of this soul can best be described by those who knew him in words which may sound abstract and dry, but which really do express it: he was an objective human being. Fritz Mitscher was an absolutely objective human being. There can hardly have been any occasion when he spoke about himself. Even if he ever did, it only seemed that he was speaking of himself in describing his relations to something or other in the external world. His “I” was practically never even on the horizon ... let alone at the centre of what he said. It is natural for an elder person when he is speaking with a younger one about all kinds of things in life to bring the conversation back to himself, but it was characteristic of Fritz Mitscher that when opportunity was there for him to speak of himself, he avoided it, and diverted the conversation from himself to what he had experienced round about him, describing it with the art he had acquired from Spiritual Science. In the true sense of the word he was an objective human being. He did not think about what he signified to the world, about the position of his own “I” in the world. His interests were all purely objective, interests which express themselves so characteristically when a man is little concerned about the position he gains in the world. Fritz Mitscher was one of those men who, from the very beginning, was passionately eager, even in passing conversation, to convey to others with absolute objectivity the truths he held most sacred; this eagerness was always present because he was one of those who are interested in the cause itself and not in the person and the position of the individual personality in the world. And when he spoke before an audience he entered into the subject with the greatest purity, never losing his way in the psychical impurity of speaking about himself. It was this that was so characteristic of him. And it was this that made him so eminently capable of grasping the world in such a way that through the medium of the idea, the thought, the mental picture, he really entered into the world; he did not become remote from the world but really entered into it. And so through thought, through idea, he lived right into world-connections, lived together with the world, lived in his “I”—because he spoke so little of himself—and not only in his skin, but right into the heart of things. it is really only human beings of this kind who truly understand ideals in the world, life in ideas and in morals. To live in ideas and ideals is not merely to have ideas and ideals; ideas and ideals are easily come by, they can be picked as easily as blackberries. What matters is not that a man has ideas and ideals, but that he has them in the purity of the life of thought, and human beings without number shirk this purity. They flee from thought in hosts. My dear friends, we need only call up the Imagination, the real imagination of pure thinking, of the life in pure thought, in sense-free thoughts and ideas; we need only picture this pure wellspring of soul-existence and then try to place the specters of human beings around it, and we shall find that in whole hosts they flee from this pure spring of the sense-free world of thought. They say: “But this is barren, dry, it is something that tears love out of one's heart, it is cold, icy.” And they flee in hosts; only a few stand steadfast in purity of soul. These few are the true philosopher-souls, the men who are really gifted for philosophy. And such men as Fritz Mitscher belong to them.

That is why it is almost a matter of course for such souls to grow into their connections in the most natural possible way—or, better said, for their karma to bring them into these connections. In the case of Fritz Mitscher this was so in a high degree. It could never be noticed in him that he sought any position out of an intention formed in physical life. He always allowed himself to be led to his tasks by the flow of karma. Here again you have those truly philosophical natures who will always have to be led to their tasks rather than that they will press forward to some task out of egotistical will. For these truly philosophical natures know all too well in their deep feelings and in their impulses too, that a man is, in reality, never ripe for a task, that only immeasurable vanity can give rise to the belief that he is mature, and he always anticipates in advance something that can only be achieved later on. when a man has only a little of this attitude, he feels in his life something of an inner calling. And the life then will be filled, as it were, with the: “Know thyself!” Knowledge of the self is best attained when a man speaks and thinks little of his “I”. his work and labours in life will then be permeated by the: “Know thyself, live with the world in peace!”

Such was Fritz Mitscher's motto. A life like this continues in the spiritual world and remains what it was, save that in the spiritual world the fruit grows from the seed. In such cases we must abandon the point of view—for it would be unreal—which would make us ask: “What would have come out of such a being if he had been able to stay longer in the physical world?” This is an unreal point of view. The real point of view leads us to the greatness, the wonder of such a soul being taken up into the spiritual worlds. What this soul is now called upon to achieve in the spiritual worlds is related to the experiences between birth and death as the fruit of the plant to the seed, so that the life here is actually revealed as a seed for the spiritual life after death. And so when a being who has lived in objectivity is seen after death, words which characterise this objectivity of outlook in life inevitably sink into the soul, but they are words which also characterise the relationship to the surrounding world, how the whole being stood right within the world. It was necessary to speak of Fritz Mitscher in this way. The characteristic element in these words was precisely this difference between the seed here and the plant which develops in yonder world. This is how I explain to myself the words being as they were

Fritz Mitscher was an individuality who became, in an outstanding degree, what many of our dead friends have actually become since they entered into the spiritual world. They become our most effective co-workers in the field of the spiritual life we have to cultivate; they become those to whom we look upwards with special gratitude when we have to think of the tasks of the present and future spiritual evolution, tasks that can be fulfilled only slowly and with difficulty within earth-existence with the forces that are incarnated in physical bodies. In thinking of friends who have passed through the Gate of Death, including our friend Morgenstern, it always seems to me to be right to ask that they will remain among us in order that through their forces much will be able to be done in our spiritual movement that it is impossible to do with earthly forces alone.

It is this that must be sent as a last greeting from the Earth to such individualities, and it must be expressed clearly and emphatically in connection with Fritz Mitscher, a dear friend who with his youthful forces will be our strong helper, a true consolation when consolation is needed. And it is often needed.

Especially during the most recent period of our work, creative activities and striving, so many things have made us realise how great are the hindrances of the physical plane—truly they are not imagined hindrances—how stubbornly the prejudices of human beings oppose what must be achieved among us, and how violent the opposition often is.

We need only take one such example.—People outside our stream of Spiritual Science write pamphlets ... Truly I am not saying these things for personal reasons, because I feel myself to be only a feeble instrument of the spiritual movement that has to bear us ... Pamphlet after pamphlet is written with the object of declaring that our adherents accept everything without putting it to the test, accept it in faith and belief and confidence; it is suggested that nothing exists among us except blind faith. Our movement is described by the outside world as if all our adherents were credulous simpletons, simply running after the confidence they feel. So it is in the outside world.

But within the precincts, this confidence—if we mean a confidence that exists in the deep foundations of souls and does not merely lie in words—this confidence is often by no means so conspicuous. There is a great contradiction between what we are accused of in pamphlets and what ought to exist in such rich abundance within the precincts of our society. There is yawning contradiction! I say what I have to say here without criticism and above all without bitterness, without in the least wanting to hit at any single personality—but concerning many things I said here in the autumn, it has been stated in writings that Dr. Steiner hawks about his occult researches into such matters—meaning matters about which I have spoken ... he hawks about his occult powers in connection with the things that were spoken about. If it has been possible for such a thing to have been written, then it is a clear proof of the fact that the element of which we are accused in the world is by no means so firmly rooted in the deeper forces of the souls among us, although in many ways it may exist in the upper maya of consciousness. Let it be said once and for always that the teaching presented here is based upon no principle of authority whatever, and belief in it as dogma is never demanded. It is given in order that it may be tested in all details. But for anyone to set himself up as a kind of judge as to what I myself should include in my occult investigations and exclude from them—this is a spiritual tyranny which most certainly is not born of the element that must be present in the Society, although up to a certain point it need not be present for the purpose of taking in spiritual Science; this is a spiritual tyranny emanating from unconscious lack of confidence. Confidence is not needed for the purpose of receiving teachings; but confidence is needed for the realization that it is not for the spiritual investigator to be told what he has to bring from the spiritual world but that it must be Presumed that the representative of Spiritual Science knows himself what he has to do; he has himself to decide what falls within the field of his investigations. Confidence is needed here; this kind of confidence can never be unprofitable to the movement, because it does not transcend the limits of the personal and does not touch the teaching. But a fact like this denotes—as many similar facts denote—that great obstacles and hindrances do exist and that within our spiritual movement we must carry out as a duty—far removed from anything that looks like desire in our work—what leads from insight into inner necessity. This duty will always be done, however sourly, it is done (‘sourly’ according to the ordinary meaning of the word.) But precisely when we realise that we may give to our dear Dead a kind of personal charge to be together with our forces, then there arises for our movement a feeling of security which the physical world could never afford.

And so, in thinking of our beloved Dead, there flows into our movement and into its impulses, something that is supersensible, not springing from what we have here, something that could never, in the physical world itself, give wings to our work. It is possible for supersensible impulses to flow into the Maya of our society-activities, for us to feel secure—because what we do, contains not merely the forces of the physical plane but supersensible forces too. Our beloved Dead have remained with us, although not in physical existence, and we therefore feel security in work which feels itself to be within the flow of spiritual evolution:

So do we speak with reality of our beloved Dead as companions, co-workers, as those who are invisibly among us. Thus concretely do we seize the invisible being, giving the hand physically for the last time to the friend in the visible world and then receiving this hand spiritually, after death from the supersensible world. In this exchange of hand-clasps we have the symbol for work within a Society that is not intended to be a mouthpiece for the physical world but is to call the supersensible worlds too, into its activities. For such work, for such activities, we want to build a centre on this hill. May there be a home here for this work!

In September and October of this year, we held courses at the Goetheanum in Dornach that attempted to apply the anthroposophical perspective to a wide range of academic subjects and to various areas of practical life. The aim of these college courses was not merely to discuss anthroposophy as such, but rather to bring together experts from a wide range of scientific fields, artists and also practitioners of commercial, industrial and other practical life. was precisely that they should show how the anthroposophical point of view, the anthroposophical way of examining life and the world, can be used to fertilize the most diverse scientific and practical areas of life.

You are aware that today, despite the great triumphs fully recognized by spiritual science, in particular in the field of natural science, the scientist everywhere comes up against certain limits wherever questions arise that cannot be answered at all with the methods and means of observation recognized by official science today. Then one is inclined to say: Well, there we have insurmountable limits to human knowledge, to human cognitive power, and man simply cannot transcend these limits. Anthroposophical spiritual science is intended to show precisely how the research methods, the way of thinking and looking at things, which the more materialistically oriented scientific and life attitude of modern times has brought about, can be fertilized when one moves on to a completely different way of knowing, to a completely different way of looking at things.

And here I touch upon the point that still earns anthroposophy the most opponents and even enemies in the present day. Opposition to anthroposophy does not arise so much from certain logical foundations or from scientifically well-tested objections, but this opposition comes from a quarter that recently - whole books are now appearing, almost every week one, to refute anthroposophy - a licentiate in theology described it in the following way: He said that anthroposophy makes one angry, that it is unpleasant and unsettling. So it is not from logical grounds that a certain antagonism arises, but, one might say, from feeling. And this stems from the fact that anthroposophy does not simply accept the knowledge that has been developed by mankind to date, which is simply structured in such a way that one says: Man has inherited certain abilities for his cognition; he gradually brings these to light through his natural development; through ordinary education he is then further trained to become a useful member of human society - and so on, and so on. With what one acquires on one side, one now also approaches knowledge itself, scientific life. One then tries to develop different methods: methods of observation, methods of experimentation, logical methods, and so on. But if one looks at the whole methodology of today's science, it is based on the assumption that one has once achieved something in the normal in terms of cognitive power, and that is not exceeded. No matter how much one is armed with the microscope, the telescope, the X-ray apparatus and so on, one does not go beyond a certain level of cognitive ability, which is regarded today as the average human being. Scientific progress is made by developing this ordinary method of knowledge in a complicated way or in exact detail, but above all, it is not thought of in the way that anthroposophy does. It starts from what I would call 'intellectual modesty'. And that is precisely where it becomes provocative for people of the present day, who, to a certain extent, do not want to hear anything like that from the outset. But one cannot help but present the facts in an unembellished way.

You see, if a five-year-old child is given a volume of Goethe's poetry, all they might know how to do with it is tear it up. When the child is ten years older, they will do something completely different with the volume of Goethe's poetry. They will delve into what is written on the individual pages. Something has grown with the child. The child has matured. The child has brought forth from its depths something that was not there ten years ago. A real, not merely a logical process has taken place. The child has, as it were, become a different being.

Intellectual modesty, I said, must be shown by anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense. At a certain moment in their lives, they must be able to say to themselves: just as a real process takes place with the child between the ages of five and fifteen, and just as soul forces that have not revealed themselves before actually do so after ten years, so can one further develop what the cognitive faculty and the soul forces are in ordinary life. One can move away from the scientific point of view that one once accepts as the normal one; one can undergo a real process in one's knowledge. One can also develop further that which most people today already regard as the end of the cognitive faculty and at most further develop in science logically or through experimental arrangements - one can develop this further by bringing forth further powers from within the soul. And the anthroposophical method is based on this bringing forth of the forces slumbering in the soul. It is based on the fact - I will characterize it quite concretely right away - that one completely subordinates to the will that which otherwise exists as thinking merely in reference to the external world.

So how do we actually think in everyday life? How do we think in science? We think in science in such a way that we abandon ourselves to the external world or to our experiences. We think, so to speak, along the thread of our experiences or of appearances. To a certain extent we apply our will to our thinking, in judgment and in drawing conclusions; but something entirely different arises when that which otherwise lives only instinctively as a thought in man, when that, if I may use the comparison, is taken up by man inwardly in self-education into his hand.

When a person has practised for years the art of placing easily comprehended ideas in his consciousness, when he has brought certain ideas (and I emphasize the term “easily comprehended”) into the centre of his consciousness entirely through his own will and not through stimuli from the outside world, and when he has then, again with the application of his full will, on such inner visualization, inwardly resting, diverting attention from everything else and inwardly resting on a complex of ideas that he himself has placed at the center of his consciousness, he can exercise the powers of the soul in a different way than one does in ordinary life and also in science. And just as a muscle acquires a certain strength when it is exercised, so the soul powers acquire a definite power through exercise. They are trained in a very definite direction when one applies these inner methods, these intimate soul methods that I have described, to oneself as a spiritual researcher. I have described these methods in detail in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', in my 'Occult Science' and in other books; there one can read in full detail what I now only want to characterize in principle. I have called meditation and concentration that which the soul undertakes with itself, which is an inward, intimate spiritual-scientific method. But I would like to make it very clear that these things cannot be mastered in a short time. It is rather the case that spiritual scientific research takes no less time than research in clinics, in chemical laboratories or at the observatory. Just as in these fields one must acquire methods through years of practice, so too must one, and with a strong inner power of concentration, greater conscientiousness, still bring the soul faculties out of the soul itself.

And then, when such methods are applied to the soul, the capacity for knowledge expands. Then one certainly comes to see how man can recognize quite different things than he can perceive through his sensory eyes and through the combination of appearances presented by the sensory eyes or the senses in general.

That is one way. It goes through concentration, through the power of imagination, and through this one arrives at inner beholding, at what I have called in my book 'Mysteries of the Soul', the human being's power of beholding, of beholding cognition.

One can also develop the soul powers in another way, indeed one must do so if one really wants to achieve something. We must also train that faculty, which you all know well in its simplest manifestation: attention. We do not relate to external life and internal phenomena merely by surrendering to them passively, but we direct our power of observation, our attention, to something in particular, which I might call, we carve out of our surroundings. Even when we are doing scientific research, we have to focus on something in particular and link the other things to it. Then, when you train this attentiveness through inner will, through the application of the most active soul powers, when you do exercises that make you aware of the power you use when you pay attention to something, when one practices this power of focusing, this ability to concentrate one's soul life on something isolated from life, over and over again, then one makes a remarkable discovery. Then one makes the discovery that one gradually develops more and more the soul power that otherwise only comes to us in what we call interest in the world around us. We pay more or less interest to the one object and less to the other. This reveals a gradation in our soul's behavior towards the inner world. This interest is accompanied by an enormous liveliness; it becomes such a liveliness that one can truly say: it becomes something quite different from what it is in ordinary life and in science. It becomes what one can call: one feels at one with things. The soul's powers gradually permeate the essence of things. And this experience of an increased power of interest goes even further. It now goes so far as to develop a special power that is otherwise only brought to bear in another area of life, but which, through anthroposophical spiritual science, becomes a power of knowledge.

We have arrived at a point where, if we express the realities that are within Anthroposophy and reveal themselves as such, we are quite understandably considered to be amateurs or fantasists when compared to the views of today. What at first is attention in itself is transformed into the power of interest with which one experiences so clearly how the whole human being can be drawn out of the world; how one does not first have to prove and hypothesize whether this or that wave vibration underlies red or blue, but rather one grows with red and blue; where that is further developed, which Goethe so ingeniously developed in the chapter “Sensual-moral effect of color” in his theory of colors, where man really feels his soul life flowing out into the world, so that his cognitive faculty becomes like a flowing out of his soul life into the world phenomena. And his power of knowledge is transformed into that which we otherwise call love in life. Love, through which we become one with another being, is present in ordinary life, I would say only in its beginning; through the soul exercises I have indicated, it becomes such a soul power that recognizes itself in the whole environment.

And so one can say – I can only hint at all this, in my books it is presented in more detail – by developing the imagination on the one hand, and on the other hand the power of attention, the power of interest, the power of love, which underlie the life of the will, new powers of knowledge develop, and the human being experiences an expansion of his knowledge. What is otherwise called the limit of knowledge and what is often described as insurmountable, especially by contemporary researchers, can only be transcended through the development of the soul's inner powers - not by arming the eye with the microscope and telescope or with the X-ray apparatus, but only by training the human soul itself, by developing that power of knowledge that takes us beyond the sensual and the combination of the sensual through the mind. What now reveals itself to the human being is not a second edition of the sensory world, but the real spiritual world. And by awakening in this way what works in him supernaturally as spiritual life – for that is awakened by these two powers that I have mentioned – by awakening this in himself and bringing it to real exactness, in a way that otherwise only mathematics can achieve, he is led beyond the world of the senses, not through speculation about atoms and molecules, but through direct experience and observation of what the senses present. And man comes to recognize that which underlies him as a supersensible world just as his physical body underlies him as a physical thing. Man comes to know the spiritual world.

The anthroposophical spiritual science that emanates from the Goetheanum in Dornach is not to be confused with the many attempts today to study the mind by imitating the methods that are otherwise used in laboratories. There are certain people — just think of spiritualism — who believe that today, through external actions, through external experiments, they can penetrate deeper into the essence of things; they would like to recognize the supersensible through sensory research. That is precisely the essential point: that the supersensible can only be recognized with supersensible powers. And since these supersensible powers are slumbering in man at first - because, as he is once constituted between birth and death, he must first become proficient in the sensory world - he must get to know through the development of supersensible powers that which goes beyond death and birth, that which belonged to him even before he entered into this existence through birth, that which he retains when he passes through the gate of death.

I will just briefly mention how, in fact, when man penetrates to this supersensible faculty of knowledge, regions are opened up that cannot be opened up in any other way, namely, precisely that which is beyond birth and beyond death. Today it is almost entirely left to the faith of the creeds to teach people anything about what is beyond death. But even our language testifies to the fact that we are actually proceeding in a fundamentally one-sided way in this respect. We have the word 'immortality'. Admittedly, it does not come from knowledge, but from faith. But this immortality only wants to speak of the life that is beyond death. Spiritual science shows, by opening up the supersensible worlds, that man was also present in the spiritual world before birth, or let us say before conception. And the fact that we do not have the word “unborn” testifies that we have not recognized a real spiritual science in the present. As soon as man penetrates into the supersensible world through knowledge, not merely through faith, not only the prospect of the immortality of his being opens up to him, but also of the unborn of his being.

I can only briefly touch on all this, because my task today is to show how this anthroposophical spiritual science – which is intended to be modelled on a very exact science, but which is also taken entirely from the human soul: mathematics – can actually lead to cognitive insights into spiritual and supersensible life. We draw mathematics from the inner being, and if one person is familiar with the Pythagorean theorem, thousands or millions of people could come and deny it, he would know the truth of the mathematical field simply by having this content in his consciousness. It is the same with the inner experiences of the supersensible, as they come to light through spiritual science. This spiritual science is already developed in many details today, and, as I indicated in my introduction, it can have a fruitful effect on individual sciences as well as on practical life. Although this spiritual science is already being actively researched in the field of medical therapy, for example, I myself held a course for doctors and medical students in Dornach this spring, in which I tried to show how spiritual scientific observations can lead to a much more rational therapy than the one we have today.

We have also founded institutions for practical life, such as the Futurum in Dornach, which is intended to be a purely practical undertaking and to found an association in which various branches of industry are united in order to make further progress in rational administration than time has brought us, which has led us so much into an economic catastrophe. Everything in practical life today testifies that humanity is at a boundary that must be crossed.

Now, I do not have to spread out today over the other areas in which spiritual science is already proving its fertility through the practice of life itself; I have to speak primarily about the fertilization that education, the pedagogical art, can experience through this spiritual science.

First of all, it should be noted that the knowledge and understanding that is gained in the way I have just described is not the kind that has been brought to humanity in particular in the last three to four centuries. This knowledge of the last three to four centuries, although based on experiment and observation, is essentially knowledge that is developed by the intellect and speaks only to the intellect. It is essentially head knowledge. The knowledge and insight that is gained through anthroposophical spiritual science speaks to the whole person. It not only engages the intellect, but it spreads out in such a way that what can be recognized there also permeates our emotional life. We do not draw a conclusion from our feelings — that would be an ambiguity, a nebulous mysticism. Knowledge is attained through vision. But what is attained in this way then has an effect on the human emotional life, it stimulates the human will, it leads the human being to develop this knowledge, this insight, into their daily life, so that it permeates them like a soul blood, which in turn communicates itself to the physical body's functions, impulses and practical life. And so we can say that the whole human being is affected.

And it is precisely for this reason that this anthroposophical spiritual science, when it permeates the individual, is a foundation for what the educator, the teacher, has as a task in relation to the developing human being. As you know, it is always emphasized today that the art of education must be based on psychology, on the study of the soul. But if we look around at what is considered psychology by our contemporaries, we have to say that the many judgments and discussions that take place show how much it is all just empty words, how little this contemporary science, which has achieved such great triumphs in its research into the external world, can penetrate into the actual knowledge of the human being. This is the peculiarity of anthroposophical spiritual science: it does not acquire this knowledge through external experimental psychology – although nothing should be said against this, because its results only become truly fruitful when they are also fertilized by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. What one must penetrate in the science of the soul, if one wants to become an educator, a teacher, one acquires by allowing oneself to be seized by anthroposophical spiritual science. One learns to recognize what actually lives in the human being as body, soul and spirit when one approaches the anthroposophical methods and through them inwardly grasps the human being.

I have already described how anthroposophical spiritual science strives to inwardly grasp what lives in our environment by means of its special methods of knowledge. But we must penetrate to the core of the human being, especially if we want to treat him pedagogically. And here it is a matter of the fact that our time cannot at all build a bridge between the soul-spiritual on the one hand and the physical-bodily on the other. All manner of psychological hypotheses have been put forward, ranging from the interaction of body and soul to 'psychophysical parallelism', in order to explain the mystery that lies before us in the relationship between body and soul or the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily. But our psychology, because it does not use spiritual scientific methods for research, is not at all so far advanced that it could provide any basis for real pedagogy, for the real art of teaching. And I must point out something here that I only hinted at in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' ('On Soul Mysteries'), but which is the result of thirty years of research by me. I would not have allowed myself to express it earlier, what I now have to say and what I hinted at in that book after thirty years of research. It is that today it is commonly believed that mental life is mediated only by the nervous system. The nervous system is regarded as the sole physical basis of human mental life. It is not! It can be shown in detail – and I have also hinted at such details in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' – that only what we call the life of thinking has the nerve sense system as its physical basis and that the actual organ of the life of feeling in man is not the nerve sense system, but directly the rhythmic system, the respiratory system, the blood circulation system. Just as the nervous system underlies the life of thinking, so the rhythmic system underlies the life of feeling in the human being, and the life of will is based on the metabolic system.

These three systems, however, comprise all the inner processes that a person undergoes. The human being is a threefold creature. But we must not imagine that these three parts of the human being - the nervous-sensory system, the rhythmic system and the metabolic system - are juxtaposed. No, they are interwoven, and we have to separate them from each other in a spiritual-soul-like way if we want to see through the essence of the human being at all; because, of course, the nerves also need to be nourished. The metabolic system also plays a role in the nervous system, and also in the organs of the rhythmic system; but the organs of the rhythmic system serve only the will insofar as the metabolism plays a role in them; whereas insofar as they represent actual rhythmic movements, they serve the emotional life. And again, when our rhythmic being encounters something, when our breathing rhythm, for example, encounters our nervous system indirectly through the cerebral fluid, the interaction between the life of feeling and of imagination arises. In short, the human being is a more complex creature than is usually believed. Even that which one can ultimately have as the correct physical view of a person cannot be achieved with today's scientific methods, but only through inner vision, through growing together with the person himself in such an insight as I have described.

When one grows together with the being of a person in this way, when one sees the soul's activity in the physical body, then the growing person also presents himself in a new light. For someone who does not grasp things with a sober, dry intellect, but who can recognize the world through feeling, the growing child is a wonderful mystery as it reveals more and more of its inner life from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year. That which we cannot observe merely with the abstract faculty of knowledge, that which we can only observe if we ourselves can inwardly immerse ourselves in what is revealed on the face, what is revealed in the movements, what is revealed in the development of speech and so on, that can only be truly grasped with a knowledge that inwardly penetrates the outer world.

And such knowledge reaches us not only by grasping our intellect – with this intellect we then want to recognize externally the tasks that we should apply to educate and teach the child – no, anthroposophical spiritual science encompasses the whole human being. And in that it reveals the developing child to the whole human being in the interaction of body, soul and spirit, anthroposophical knowledge permeates our minds and our will — I would say in a way that is as natural as the blood, enlivened by the breath, permeates the human body. We are not only inwardly connected with the child through our intellect, we are also connected through our soul. We are connected through our will, in that we know directly: when we recognize how the child develops, we know what we have to do in this or that year of the child's development. Just as the air sets our blood in motion, just as the organism comes into its functions through what the outside world invigorates in it, just as it is seized by what the outside world accomplishes in it, so our soul and spirit are seized by such a living knowledge as we receive through anthroposophical spiritual science. And then, that which is developing within the human being as his individuality reveals itself to us, and we learn in an inward way to treat this individuality in an educational and teaching way.

Do not expect anthroposophical spiritual science to establish new educational principles. Educational principles, beautiful ones – I am completely serious when I say this – deeply penetrating pedagogical rules: the great educators have found them, and no spiritual science would dare to object to the genius of the great educators of the 18th and 19th centuries. But there is something here that needs to be pointed out very clearly.

You see, people say today, and have been saying for decades, that education should not be about just introducing something to the child; rather, one should develop what is in the child, his or her inner individuality. One should draw everything out of the child. In an abstract form, spiritual science must also say this. But precisely for this reason, spiritual science is misunderstood. If I want to make myself understood, I would like to recall something that I am using for comparison. It was in 1858 when the socialist Proudhon was accused of disrupting society. After the judges had reproached him with various things, he said that it was not at all his aim to disrupt human society, but rather to lead human society towards better conditions. The judges then said: Yes, that is what we all want, we want exactly the same as you. So spiritual science says: We want to develop human individuality. It has also been said in a certain abstract form for a long time that human individuality should be developed. But the point at issue is not to express such a principle in abstract forms; the point at issue is to really see this human individuality developing in a living contemplation, to really grasp the human being inwardly.

And now I would like to illustrate how the developing human being presents himself to spiritual science. First of all, we have clearly definable stages of life in a human being. We have a stage of life that begins at birth and lasts until about the age of seven, when the teeth change. Then, if one is able to observe correctly, a very intense change takes place in the human being – physically, mentally and spiritually. Then the development continues again until about sexual maturity, when a new change takes place. Within these individual stages of life, there are smaller stages. I would like to say that in each of these stages, we can distinguish three smaller stages that can only be properly obtained through observation that penetrates into the inner being of the human being. That is what it is about. Because what we want to know about the human being is at the same time the driving force for pedagogy, in that pedagogy should become art.

First of all, the first phase of life up to the age of seven shows us, above all, how the human being, as a spiritual, soulful and bodily creature, is entirely inclined to be an imitative being. If you study the human being in this phase of life and see how strongly he is predisposed to devote himself entirely to his surroundings, to carry out within himself what is presented to him in his surroundings, then you understand the human being. But one must be able to observe this concretely. One must then see how, for example, in the first two and a quarter years of life - these are, of course, all approximate figures - what occurs in the human being does not yet show itself as a real imitation, how organizing forces prevail inwardly, but But then, as the human being progresses in the third year of life, they show themselves in such a way that the human being becomes more attentive to his fellow human beings with these forces, so to speak directing these forces to what emanates from his fellow human beings. And then, around the fifth year, the time begins when the human being actually becomes an imitative being. And now one must be able to observe in the right intimate way what the relationship is like from person to person, and thus also between educator and child. One must know that this is profound for the whole human development, that this phase of life tends towards imitation.

For those who work with such things, I would say professionally, some of the complaints of a mother or father, for example, are on a par with that. They come and say: my child has stolen! - Well, one asks: Yes, what has the child actually done? He opened the drawer in the cupboard, took out some money, and - I am telling you a specific case - didn't even use this money to buy something for himself, but even distributed what he had bought among his fellow pupils! You have to say: Yes, my dear woman, at this age it cannot be called theft at all, because the child has clearly seen how you go to the cupboard every day and open the drawer; the child has done nothing other than try to do the same. It imitates that. In the first seven years, there is no other way to approach the child than to set an example for the child and let it imitate intimately what is to be brought to the child through education. Therefore, it is of such great importance for the first seven years of life that the educator, the parents, not only act as role models for the child in their outer actions, so that everything can be imitated, but that they also think and feel only what the child can think and feel. There is no boundary between the person with the child in his or her environment and the child itself. Through mysterious powers, our innermost thoughts are also transferred to the child. A person who is moral, who is truthful, makes different movements, has a different expression, walks differently than a person who is untruthful. This is something in the outer appearance, which is completely blurred in later life – but it is there for the child. The child does not merely see the morality of those around it through its ideas, but the child sees, through its movements, not with intellectual knowledge but through a subconscious knowledge that rests deep within, if I may use the paradoxical word, from mysterious hints in the way the person expresses themselves, what it should imitate. There are imponderables not only in nature, but also in human life.

Then, when the child has passed the age of imitation, what the child brings to school comes into play, and here it is particularly important to ensure that teaching and education really do help the developing human being to grow in terms of his or her individuality, humanity and human dignity. We have already made a practical attempt in this direction. The Waldorf School has existed for more than a year in Stuttgart, and there the lessons are taught entirely according to the principles that arise from this anthroposophical worldview and scientific method.

The Waldorf School in Stuttgart is not a school of any particular worldview. We are not interested in introducing anthroposophy to children in the same way that we would a religion. Oh no, that is not what we consider to be the main focus. We leave the parents and the children themselves entirely free, because it could not be otherwise in the present situation. Those who wish to be taught in the Protestant faith are taught by the Protestant pastor, those who wish to be taught in the Catholic faith are taught by the Catholic pastor; those who wish to have free religious education in line with their parents' beliefs or their own will receive such education from us. We cannot help the fact that the number of the latter - but not by our will, but in accordance with the current circumstances - is overwhelmingly large, especially in the Waldorf School. We have no interest in making the Waldorf school a school of direct world view, but we want to let what the anthroposophical knowledge gives flow into the art of education, into the practice of this educational art. How we do it with the child, not what we bring to the child, that is what matters to us.

And so we see that, as the child passes the change of teeth and crosses a significant point in life, the power of imitation continues to have an effect into the seventh or eighth year. The power of imitation continues to have an effect until about the age of eight. It is particularly strong in the child during this time, which is an element of will in the human being.

When a child starts school, we should not focus on the intellectual side of things, but rather take the whole person into account. I would like to explain this in relation to something specific. We take this into account in Waldorf schools. We don't start by teaching children to write by teaching them the letters of the alphabet. These letters, as they are written today, actually only speak to the intellect. They have become conventional signs. The head has to be strained on one side. We therefore teach writing by starting from drawing or even from painting visible forms. We first introduce the child to something that is artistic and then develop the forms of the letters from the artistic, from drawing, from painting. It is not so important to go back to the study of primitive peoples and their writing, which has developed in a similar way. Rather, one can trace the individual letters back to what one can make of them in terms of painting and drawing. But the essential thing is that one methodically starts from that which takes hold of the whole person, which is not just to be thought about, but where the will comes to expression. In what the child accomplishes through painting, the whole human being lives, so to speak, the whole human being becomes one with what the child can create. Then, on the one hand, what should interest the head can also be developed from what engages the whole person.

So we start from that which initially affects the child's will. And even what is expressed in an intellectualistic way in writing lessons, we first develop out of the will. Then the soul is particularly involved. The child feels something by first developing the form, and then letting the forms merge into the existing signs. Only then do we develop reading more out of what writing has become. So that, as I said, we appeal to the whole person, not just to the head. And it becomes clear when we carry out something like this, what a difference it makes whether you simply teach people from the point of view of the current external social life in that to which they have no reference, or bring them to that which you extract from their inner whole person, which is inherent in them.

During this time from the age of seven to sexual maturity, we see how the child's inner development is not focused on imitation – which continues to play a role until after the age of eight with the particular application of the will – but we now gradually see a completely different force entering the child's life. This is what I would call the natural sense of authority. This is something that is perhaps more or less mentioned today, but it is not properly considered. Just as a plant must have its growth forces if it is to develop flowers at a certain time and in a certain way, so the child must develop an elementary sense of authority within itself from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, because this belongs to its physical, mental and spiritual growth forces. It must rely on the teacher and educator, and it must accept the things that it then believes, that then approach it, that become the content of its feeling, its will, it must accept them, just as it in imitation, now it must accept them on the basis that it sees them in the behavior of the teacher, that it hears them expressed by the educator, and that the child looks up to its educator in such a way that what lives in the educator is a guiding force for it. This is not something that one can hope for through anything else, let us say in a more free-spirited time than today, which one is supposed to long for. No, one cannot replace what simply grows up with us through this elementary sense of authority, through devotion to the educator or instructor, with anything else. And throughout one's entire life, it has an enormous significance whether, between the ages of seven and fourteen, one has been at the side of teachers or educators in relation to whom one has developed a natural sense of authority.

This touches on a point where the materialistic view goes too far astray, for example when it says: after all, what does the individuality of the teacher do in its effect on the child! We should teach the child primarily through observation; we should lead it to think and feel for itself. I need hardly say that in some methods this has been reduced to the absurdity that we should only bring to the child what it already understands, so that it can analyze it in its own observations. I would like to draw attention to the following: In this phase of life, which I am now talking about, it is of particular importance what we accept on authority, what we take in out of a sense of authority, even if we do not immediately understand it, and that we do not just acquire what is tangible. For just as willpower underlies the imitation instinct in the first seven years of life, so between the seventh year and the year of sexual maturity everything that is memorized underlies the child's expressions. The child wants to memorize things under the influence of the sense of authority. And precisely what is said against the memory-based appropriation shows that, basically, all possible life practices are built on theories today, without taking the whole of human life into account.

Those who want to trace everything back to intuition fail to take two things into account: firstly, there are very broad areas of the world that cannot be made vivid. These are the realms of the beautiful; but above all, they are the moral and religious realms. Those who want to base everything on intuition do not take into account the fact that the most valuable thing, without which man cannot be, the moral and religious and its impulses, cannot be brought to man intuitively - especially not in these years of life - but that it must take hold of man supersensibly. In these years of life, when it is time, it can only do so through a sense of authority. That is one thing.

The other thing, however, is this. If you look at the whole of human life, not just a period of life in theory, then you know what it means when you are thirty-five or forty years old and look back on something you experienced in childhood, assuming it without understanding it at the time, because you said to yourself: the person who lives next to you as a teacher knows, it must be so. You accept it. You are in much older decades – it comes up again. Now you are mature enough to understand it. It has become a force of life. It is a wonderful thing in human life when you see something emerging from the depths of the human soul, for which you are ripe in later human life, but which has already been implanted in youth. It is a remedy against growing old; it is a life force. One has an enormous amount of what one has absorbed in childhood.

It is not a matter of demanding something out of some prejudice, of taking something on the authority of someone else, or of accepting something literally on mere authority, but it is a matter of demanding this for the sake of human salvation. Why do people today grow old so quickly? Because they have no life forces within them. We must know in detail what forces we must implant in the child if we want to see these forces emerge in a rejuvenating way in the later decades of life.

I will now give another example. Anyone who has a good understanding of how children play in the first years of life, up to around the age of five, and who pleasantly arranges their play according to the child's individuality, prepares something in the child that will in turn be expressed in much later life. To do this, one must understand human life in its totality. The botanist looks at the plant in its totality. What today wants to be “psychology” only ever looks at the moment. Anyone who observes a person at around the ages of twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight – or a little earlier – when they are supposed to find their way into life experience, find a relationship with life practice, become a skillful person, a purposeful person, anyone who can be properly and accurately observed, it can be seen how, in childhood play — between birth and about five years of age — the nature of the playing has announced the way in which, in one's twenties, the person finds their way into life as a practical person, as a skillful, purposeful person. In earliest childhood we bring forth what later comes as a flower, I might say at the root of development. But this must be understood from such an inner knowledge as anthroposophy offers, which delves into human nature. This must be recognized by observing the whole human being. We must, so to speak, if we want to be teachers and educators, feel the whole burden of the human being on us. We must feel what we can learn from each individual, what we can find in the child.

And so we know that up to the age of nine, a child cannot yet distinguish between subject and object in the right way. The outer world merges with the inner. Therefore, in these years, only that which lives, I would say, more in the form of fantasy, in images, should be brought to the child – so [should] everything [be designed] that one wants to bring as teaching in these years. Observation of plants, simple natural science, history can only be taught to the child from the ninth year onwards. Physical or historical facts that are not biographical but concern the context of historical epochs can only be taught to children after the age of twelve because only then can they be built upon something related in the child's nature. And again, one should not stick to the abstract principle of developing individuality, but one must really be able to observe this individuality from week to week.

This has proved to be a fruitful method in Waldorf schools and must be so by its very nature. When the teacher is imbued and enkindled by all that can be awakened in his soul and will, he enters into a quite different relationship with his pupils. I will again make this clear by means of an example. It is not only the rough line that extends from the educator to the child or from the teacher to the child, which is the result of the external materialistic way of observing, but there are always imponderables at play. Let us assume that the child is to be taught the idea of immortality at a suitable age. Now this idea of immortality can be very easily conveyed in pictures, and up to the age of nine one should actually teach quite pictorially. Everything should be transformed into pictures. But if you first develop the picture with your mind, if you proceed abstractly in developing the picture, then you do not stand in the picture. For example, you can say to a child: Look at a butterfly chrysalis; the butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis. Just as the butterfly visibly crawls out of the butterfly chrysalis here, so the human being's immortal soul escapes from the body. But if I have first created this image from my inner abstraction, if I am not present myself, if I am only adjusting everything for the child, I am not teaching the child anything. It is a peculiar secret that when one regards the whole of nature as spiritualized, as is natural in spiritual science, one does not merely adjust the image, but knows: What higher level than immortality is not conceived by my intellect but is modeled on things themselves; for example, the butterfly struggling out of its chrysalis is an image presented by nature itself. I believe in what I tell the child. I am of the same faith and conviction that I wish to instill in the child. Anyone who is observant can see that it makes a completely different impression on the child if I teach it a belief that I can believe in myself, that I do not merely present to the child intellectually and have stated because I am so clever and the child is still so stupid.

This shows what imponderables are at play. And I would like to mention one more thing. During the time at primary school, the situation is such that, initially, up to about the age of nine, what remains is the tendency to imitate what the predominant will is. But then something occurs for the child that teaches it to distinguish itself from its environment. Anyone who is really able to observe children knows that it is only between the ages of nine and ten that the child really begins to distinguish between subject and object, between itself and its environment. Everything must be organized with this in mind. But one would look at many things in life differently than one does, and in particular shape them differently than one does, if one were to see that in the same phase of life in which the child between the ages of nine and ten really learns to distinguish between its surroundings, in this phase of life it is indispensable for the whole moral life of the human being in the future that he can attach himself with the highest respect and with the highest sense of authority to someone who is his teacher or educator.

If a child crosses this Rubicon between the ages of nine and ten without this feeling, it will have a deficiency in its whole life and can later, at best with great effort, conquer from life itself what should be transmitted to the child in a natural way at this point in life. Therefore, we should organize our education and teaching in such a way that, especially in the class where the child crosses the Rubicon between the ninth and tenth year, we stand before the child in such a way that we really have something to offer the child through our own inner morality, through what we have in the way of inner truthfulness, of inner soul content, we can really be something for the child, that we do not just act as a model for it, that everything we say to it is felt by it as the truth. And one must establish in it the feeling that must exist in social life between the maturing child and the adult and the old person. The fact that this child goes through its reverence at this point in life between the ages of nine and ten is also the basis of what moral religious education is. Developing intellectuality too early, not taking into account the fact that the will must be influenced by images – especially from primary school onwards – and that one must not immediately penetrate into the abstract of writing and reading , nor does such an understanding of the human being provide those feelings and sensations that become useful when we want to teach the child moral maxims, ethical principles, when we want to instill religious feelings in it. They do not take effect later, nor do they work through a sense of authority, if we are not able to use the individual predisposition of the whole human being from the age of seven, for example, from the age of seven.

And so we can follow the development of the child in a very real way. Teachers and educators become pedagogical artists when they allow the knowledge they can gain about the human being through anthroposophical spiritual science to take effect in them. We do not want to create new, abstract educational principles, but we do believe that the human being's entire personality is stimulated by what anthroposophy can give as a spiritual-soul breath of life. Just as blood invigorates the organism as a matter of course, so spiritual science should invigorate those whose profession it is to educate and teach in such a way that they truly become one with the child and education and teaching become a matter of course. We would like those who enter the gates of their class to do so with such an attitude before the children in the Waldorf school.

Not because we want to add our two cents in every possible field, we also talk about pedagogical art, we also cultivate pedagogical art, but because we have to believe from our insights that a new fertilization is actually also necessary there. The phenomena of life have led to such terrible times that they demand a new fertilization. Not out of some foolish attitude or ideology, or because it wants to agitate for something, but out of the realization of the true needs of our time, anthroposophy also wants to have a fertilizing effect on the art of education. It wants to understand and feel correctly that which must underlie all real education and all real teaching. A true sense of this can be summarized in the words with which I want to conclude today, because I believe that if anthroposophy shows that it has an understanding for these words, the most inner, truest understanding, one will also not deny it its calling to speak into the pedagogical art, into the science of education. She does not want this out of some revolutionary sentiment, she wants this out of the needs of the time, and she wants this out of the great truths of humanity, which lie in the fact that one says: Oh, in the hand of the educator, in the hand of the teacher, the future of humanity, the near future, the future of the next generation, is given. The way in which education is provided, the way in which the human being is introduced to life as a becoming, depends, firstly, on the inner harmonious strength with which he can lead his life to his inner satisfaction as an individual. And this determines how he will become a useful and beneficial member of human society. A human being can only fulfill his destiny if, first, he has inner harmony and strength, so that he cannot be complacent about himself, but can always draw from this harmony the strength to work, the strength to be active and to feelings for his surroundings, and if, on the other hand, through his diligence, through his growing together with the needs of the time and the humanity surrounding him, he is a useful, a salutarily effective member of the whole of society. Anthroposophical spiritual science would like to contribute to making him such, for the reason that it believes that one can find a very special understanding of the human being in its way and thereby also a very special art of treating people.

Answering Questions

Rudolf Steiner: First of all, a written question has been received:

In what way should the individuality of the child be influenced by play?

The spiritual science referred to here should be completely realistic and never work as an abstraction and from theories; therefore, those questions that one is otherwise accustomed to answering, I might say, briefly, in a nutshell, cannot be answered briefly for spiritual science. But one can always point to the direction in which spiritual science sees. One will indeed come across it in the play of the youngest children. Play is most characteristic up to about the age of five. Of course children play afterwards too, but then all kinds of other things get mixed into the game, and the game loses the character, completely, I would like to say, of flowing out of the arbitrariness of the inner being. Now, if you want to guide the game appropriately, you will, above all, have to keep an eye out for what is called the child's temperament and other things that are related to temperament. The usual approach is to think that a child who, for example, shows a phlegmatic character should be guided towards the right path by something particularly lively that will excite them; or a child who shows a tendency towards a more introverted nature, such as a melancholic temperament – even if this does not yet appear in the child as such, but it may be there in the disposition – one would like to bring it, in turn, onto the right path by means of something uplifting. This is basically, especially as far as play is concerned, not very well thought out, but on the contrary, it is a matter of trying to study the child's basic character – let us say whether he is a slow or a quick child – and then one should also try to adapt the game to this. So, for a child who is slow, one should try to maintain a slow pace in the game, too, and for a child who is quick, maintain a quick pace in the game and only seek a gradual transition. One should give the child just what flows from his inner being. The worst educational mistakes are made precisely because one thinks that the same should not be treated the same, but the opposite should be treated by the opposite. There is one thing that is always particularly missed.

There are excited children. Of course, you want to calm these excited children down, and you think that if you buy them toys in darker colors, i.e., the less exciting colors, blue and the like, or if you buy them clothes in blue, it would be good for the child. In my little booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science', I pointed out that this is not the case, that one should make the toys reddish for the excited child, and blue and violet for the careless child, the child who is not lively. Through all these things one will find out what is suitable for the child according to his or her particular individual disposition. There is an extraordinary amount to be considered. You see, it is commonly believed – as I said – that if you have a lively child, too lively a child, you should approach him with dark colors, with blue or violet; but you can see for yourself that if you look at red, at a red surface, and then look away at a white one, you have the tendency to see the so-called complementary color as a subjective form. So it is the complementary color that is inwardly stimulated. The dark colors are inwardly experienced by the light ones. Therefore, when a child is excited, it is good to keep its toys and clothes in light colors so that it is inwardly stimulated. So these things, too, may only be considered in such a way that one penetrates, as it were, into the inner nature of human nature and being.

Then I would like to point out that, as a rule, one does not meet the individuality of a child, or any individuality at all, if one listens too intently to the combinative aspects of the games. Therefore, from his point of view, the humanities scholar must actually consider everything that is a game of combinations, building blocks and the like, to be of lesser value because it is too much like an intellectual exercise for children; on the other hand, anything that brings more life to the child – appropriately varied according to their individuality – will make a particularly good toy. I have long endeavored to somehow bring about a movement for this - but it is so difficult in the present day to inspire people for such little things, seemingly little things - that more would be reintroduced the movable picture books for children. There used to be such picture books, which had pictures and you could pull on strings at the bottom; the pictures moved, whole stories were told by the pictures. This is something that can have a particularly favorable effect on children when it is varied in different ways. On the other hand, anything that remains static and requires a particular combination, such as a building-block story, is not really suitable for children's play, and building blocks are just one manifestation of our materialistic age.

Then I would also like to point out that when it comes to games, it is important to consider how much the child's imagination is involved. You can kill the most beautiful powers in a person by giving them, the developing human, a “beautiful” clown as a boy or a very “beautiful” doll as a girl - after all, they are always hideous from an artistic point of view, but people strive for “beautiful dolls”. The child is best served when the imagination itself is given the greatest possible leeway when it comes to such toys. The child is happiest when it can make a doll or a clown out of a handkerchief that is tied at the top to form a little head. This is something that should be encouraged. The activity of the soul should be able to be set in motion. If we have an eye for temperament, we will get it right, for example, by giving a particularly excited child the most complicated toys possible and a slow child the simplest toys possible, and then, when it comes to handling, proceeding in the same way. What the child does with himself is also of particular importance in later years. You can also tell by letting a child run fast or slow: you let an excited child run fast, and you force a casual child, a child who is lazy in thinking, to run slowly in games and the like. So it is a matter of treating like with like when adapting the game to the individuality, and not with the opposite. This will go a long way for those who really strive in this direction to treat children accordingly.

Question: What about introducing fairy tales to children? If we bring, for example, the image of the butterfly pupa and the butterfly, then we ourselves can believe in it; but if we tell stories such as about the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, stories that we ourselves do not believe in but that make children so happy, does that have a damaging effect on the child, or is it harmless simply as an image?

Rudolf Steiner: It is only a matter of approaching these things in the right way. Of course, there are some things that you have to tell the child in his childlike way, and that will be the case with such things because the image is somewhat far removed from what it is about. But I certainly can't say, for example, that I don't believe in the Easter Bunny! So it's just a matter of finding the way to this belief. You'll forgive me for making such a frank confession. But I don't know of anything, especially in this area, that I couldn't believe if only I could find the way to it. The point is that where things are not as simple as with the butterfly, but more complicated, one must then also undergo a certain more complicated mental process in order to have within oneself the frame of mind that brings this to the child in the right, credible way. There is a meaning to the legend that lives on in certain parts of the Orient that when the Buddha died he was transported to the moon and there he looks down on us in the form of a hare. These things, which are originally contained in the deeper legends, point to the fact that deep natural secrets underlie things.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that today such things are extremely difficult to judge. There is a very famous philosopher of nature, Ernst Mach. Most of you will know the name. Mach claims that it is no longer appropriate to teach children fairy tales or the like; this is not appropriate for such an enlightened time as ours. He assures us that he raised his children without fairy tales and the like. Now Mach has also given us a remarkable example of his inability to get to the human ego at all. Mach once said – I don't want to say anything against his importance in a limited area, where he has it; but we live in a time in which even a person like that can say something like this – he said: self-knowledge is actually something that is very far from a person, because he was once he was quite tired – he was a university professor – walking along, a bus had just come along, so he jumped in and saw a strange man getting in on the other side – as if the bus could have been boarded from the other side as well. He was amazed at that, but he just saw a man approaching, and he thought to himself: What kind of a neglected schoolmaster gets on there! Only then did he realize that there was a mirror on the other side and that he knew so little about his own outward appearance that he had not recognized his reflection. Another time, the same thing happened to him: he was walking along the sidewalk on the street and there was a mirror that was slightly askew, so that he also saw himself there, without immediately recognizing himself.

In this instance, he offers this as a kind of explanation of how little a person actually penetrates to his or her true self. He also regards this self-knowledge only from an entirely external point of view. He rejects fairy tales out of the same impulse. Now, of course, the fact is that, as the fairy tales are widely available today, it seems that one cannot cling to the fairy tales as an adult with inner involvement and a certain inner conviction; but that is something deceptive. If you go back to what is actually experienced, then you come to something completely different.

In this respect, it is truly regrettable that certain beginnings, which, according to spiritual science, have been pending for a long time, have not been developed at all. My old friend Ludwig Laistner had written his two-volume work “The Riddle of the Sphinx” in the 1880s. x», in which he proves what a foolish idea it is to believe that myths, sagas and legends came about because people made up something about clouds, something about the sun, earth and the like; that spring myths came about because the popular imagination invented them. Ludwig Laistner – in this respect his book is, of course, imperfect because he knows nothing of the actual state of mind of earlier people, which was more directed towards the real observation of reality – attributes everything to dreams, but at least he goes so far as to ascribe an experience, even if a dream experience, to every mythical construct.

Now, let us look at the dream. It certainly does not correspond to the kind of knowledge we have during the day, when we approach things through our senses; but anyone who studies the dream life intimately – of course, there is no need to stray to the side of the dream books – will see that the dream life is also an expression of a reality. You dream of a tiled stove, feel the heat radiating on you – and wake up with a pounding heart. The dream has symbolized an inner process for you. You dream – I am telling you real things – of snakes that represent all kinds of things to you; you wake up and have some kind of pain in your intestines; the pain in the intestines is symbolized by the snakes. Every dream is basically indicative of a person's inner processes, and a person's inner processes are in turn an expression of the great soul processes. Truly, the world is much deeper than we think in our so-called enlightened times. And anyone who actually studies fairy tales will find such significant psychology in them, for example, that there is already a way to believe in fairy tales, so that the degree of inner soul mood that I use to teach the child something from “Snow White” or “The Easter Bunny” or “St. Nicholas” is such that it can give rise to the very feeling that has a belief in me. I just have to be inwardly imbued with a relationship to the thing. Take 'St. Nicholas': St. Nicholas is definitely what leads back to the old Germanic Wotan, is actually the same as the old Germanic Wotan, and then we come to the World Tree, and we have a clue in the branch that St. Nicholas carries. It is this branch – the Christmas tree is hardly a hundred and fifty years old, it is still quite young – that gradually grows into the Christmas tree. You can see that there are inner connections everywhere. It is only necessary to find one's way into these inner connections, but it is already possible. And then there are quite different imponderables that extend from the mind of the teacher and educator to that of the child. I am not sure whether my answer quite meets the point of your question; it is something like this.

Question (not recorded verbatim): What is the relationship between psychoanalysis and spiritual science?

Rudolf Steiner: You see, in relation to many things, anthroposophical spiritual science is in a position where it has to speak. There are small circles and it forms a large circle; the small circle lies within the large one, but the large one does not lie within the small one, and mostly those people who have the small circles are the most fanatical. Anthroposophy is absolutely the opposite of any fanaticism. Isn't it true that there is a quarter or half truth in psychoanalysis? They try to extract the soul provinces and so on from within, the isolated soul provinces and so on. There is a truth in this, but you have to dig deeper if you want to find the actual basis. So that one can say, as we find with very many views, “Yes, but the other person does not return the same love for us, he finds that because one has to present it more comprehensively, one contradicts him.

I will remind you only of the shining example that is almost always given in most books of psychoanalysis. You will remember it if you have studied the material: a lady is invited to an evening party. The lady of the house – not the invited guest – is supposed to leave for a spa that very evening, leaving the master of the house at home alone. Now the evening party is taking place; the lady of the house is sent off to the spa, the master is back again, the evening party breaks up. The people are walking on the street. Around the corner rushes a droshky – not a car, a droshky. The evening party moves aside to the left and right, but one lady runs in front of the horses, always away, running, running, running, as the others also try and the coachman curses and swears, but she runs until she comes to a stream. She knows very well that you can't drown in the stream – she throws herself into it and is of course now saved. The people don't know what else to do: she is taken back to the house where she just came from, where the master of the house is, in which the lady of the house has just been sent to the bathroom.

Now, a real Freudian – I followed this from the beginning, was very well acquainted with Dr. Breuer, who together with Freud founded psychoanalysis – yes, a real Freudian looks for some hidden complex of the soul: In her seventh or eighth year, when the lady was still a child, she was followed by a horse; this is now a suppressed complex of the soul, and it is coming out. But things are not that simple. I must now apologize, but things are such that the subconscious can sometimes be quite sophisticated. This subconscious has been working in the lady the whole time: if only she could be with the man after the other one has been sent to the bathroom! And now she is getting everything ready – in her conscious mind, of course, the lady would be terribly ashamed to do this, she would not be trusted to do this in her conscious mind, but the deeper, the subconscious mind is much more sophisticated, much worse – she knows how to arrange everything, knows very well in advance: If she runs ahead of the horse and throws herself into the water, she will be carried back into the house because the others know nothing of her real intention.

Sometimes you have to look at completely different things. There is far too much artifice in the method of psychoanalysis today, although it basically points to part of the truth. It is simply an experiment with inadequate means, which is understandable from the materialistic spirit of the age, where one also seeks the spiritual first with materialistic methods.

I took the liberty of pointing out yesterday that there is some antipathy on the part of the ordinary scientific outlook toward the nature and the entire method of the science of spirit which can and must be placed alongside ordinary science. I pointed out further that there is a certain subjective prejudice at the present time which makes it difficult for people really to go into and acquire an understanding of the science of spirit, that is, for people who think they stand on the sure foundation of science—on which, of course, the science of spirit also stands—but who are of the opinion that it is not possible to bridge the gap from this kind of foundation to a real science of spirit. However, a fact about the soul-life of present day humanity emerged from my exposition yesterday, the fact that it is joist in immersing ourselves in the scientific knowledge of the present time that we are bound to long, and indeed, do long to acquire knowledge about the human being that goes beyond the ordinary everyday life of the soul, which, of course, of necessity is tied to the observation and experience of the physical sense world.

Now it is naturally possible to say that the views of the world generally held, that have arisen through the influence of scientific ideas, are proving to be increasingly incapable of dealing with methods of research other than those which are concerned with what is physically present in the world. And so now it is intended to investigate what lies beyond normal consciousness with the same kind of sense perception—providing we really do want to investigate it, and not just drop it—as science uses to investigate nature. For this reason the existence of one border area at least in human experience has found recognition recently among people who want their work to remain on a scientific basis but who, on the other hand, desire to penetrate the mysteries of human soul life, inasmuch as this lies within the conscious sphere that is, as I have said, more or less tied to the world of the senses. People have gradually become convinced that it is not possible to investigate the mysteries of soul life, that there is much that rises up into the soul life of the human being out of unknown depths, or one could also say, out of unknown heights, that is well suited to provide information about what the core of man's being really is, rather than what is to be found within our ordinary consciousness. But because, generally speaking, the science of spirit is regarded as something not sufficiently tangible, as something that leads one away from the real world—so many would say—an attempt is made to investigate a kind of border area by ordinary scientific means.

The science of spirit has therefore every reason from its point of view, to refer to this border area and to deal with it. It is the region that we have more recently become accustomed to call the unconscious. There is also another reason why it is especially important for the science of spirit to offer some thoughts about this area of the unconscious, and that is because some of the things that are said in this connection are misunderstood, so that the science of spirit is confused with what is said about this border area, more or less justifiably, by those representing other approaches to the problem. By “unconscious” one usually means what rises up from unknown regions and flows into one's conscious life. It would of course take a very long time if I were even to give an outline of all that science over the whole world has had to say about this region of the unconscious. In the cultural life of Central Europe the expression “the unconscious” has of course become well known since the 1860's through the popular philosophy of Eduard von Hartmann, who sought the reasons for all that the human being experiences consciously in a spiritual unconscious, whether it be below or above the conscious.

If I may be allowed, by way of introduction, to make a personal remark—the way in which Eduard von Hartmann approaches spiritual life, which is supposed to remain unconscious for ordinary consciousness (although he is dealing with something spiritual and although he sees a revelation of the unconscious, of the spiritual unconscious, in the physical sense world), his approach and outlook are in a way diametrically opposed to the view which I am putting forward. And through being personally acquainted with Eduard von Hartmann I tried already in the 1880's to thrash these things out with him personally and in correspondence. I tried to show the difference between the anthroposophically orientated science of spirit and an outlook founded on the unconscious like, for instance, that of Eduard von Hartmann. I discussed this difference recently in a rather personal way in the February number of the second year of the magazine Das Reich. I shall now indicate in a few words what is discussed more fully there:

Eduard von Hartmann points out that everything the human being is able to reveal in his ordinary life rests on something spiritual and unconscious. He maintains the view that this unconscious can be reached only by means of the power of logical thinking; it deduces something unknown that abides, that can be reached only conceptually and grasped in hypotheses from what is perceptible in the sense world. And he points out that this unconscious is not in itself conscious in the same way that the human being, for instance, is conscious.—In these two respects the science of spirit is radically different from this view of Eduard von Hartmann: firstly the science of spirit is founded on the fact that—I described this more fully yesterday and named the books which provide the necessary basis—it not only seeks to penetrate the spiritual spheres by means of hypotheses and logical deductions, but by bringing out of the soul certain forces that slumber in it which remain unconscious for our ordinary consciousness, forces that are raised into our consciousness by means of a strengthening and intensification of our soul life. These unconscious forces in the soul are able to enter into the consciousness of the human being, so that he can tread the path from the sense world to the super-sensible world in full consciousness by means of spiritual observation, so that he can observe this super-sensible world in a spiritual way, just as he can observe the sense world. The science of spirit, therefore, does not describe a hypothetical path from the sense world into the super-sensible, but a real path that can be experienced. And on the other hand, the science of spirit has to emphasize that something spiritual that is unconscious, in which no consciousness can be found, is really of no more value than the great unconscious sphere of purely material atoms and their processes, the purely physical foundation of existence. What would be the point of something spiritual that is supposed to underlie the sense world, if it is unconscious? For then the human being would be the only conscious being to raise himself out of a world, which, as far as consciousness is concerned, would have no more value than the unconscious world of purely material phenomena?—The science of spirit, therefore, does not deal with this unconscious, which in itself is devoid of consciousness, but is concerned with spiritual beings existing behind the physical world and which are just as conscious as human beings, and in some respects even have a higher consciousness than the latter.

This is what differentiates the view of the anthroposophically orientated science of spirit about the unconscious from such a view as Eduard von Hartmann's, which is actually held by many people today in the same sense as he held it, even if they do not intend getting away from the scientific viewpoint.

Today we shall have opportunity to show in what way the science of spirit can really penetrate into the sphere of spiritual life, and we shall do this by taking into consideration the unconscious phenomena in human soul life which enter into our consciousness in a less complete way than does the science of spirit.

But I must take certain things for granted, which were described yesterday—that by means of inner processes in the soul (if we wish to be particular, we should call them “exercises”) our ordinary soul life, even if it is only a mystical soul life, can be treated in such a way that the human being can rise from this soul life to the spiritual, just as from another aspect he can descend from soul life to the physical by means of scientific observation. Having acquired this perception of the spiritual or—to use Goethe's expression once more—the eyes of the spirit and the ears of the spirit, we are then in a position to view what normally appears in our conscious soul life from unknown depths or heights from our newly-won viewpoint in a quite different way.

Now of course the border areas with which we are concerned cover a wide field. Today I shall select only a few of them, but they will shed light on everything else in our unconscious soul life and its manifestations. I shall take something which is well known to everyone, but which remains an enigma in human existence: our world of dreams. I shall then deal with a subject that more recently has become the child of all those who seek to penetrate into the spiritual super-sensible world, but who shy away from practicing the real science of spirit; and that child is what is called “somnambulism” and also “medium-ship,” which is related to it. I shall then proceed to another aspect where it is certainly sufficiently well known that it arises out of the unconscious depths of soul life, and this is the whole sphere of artistic enjoyment and creation, which I shall deal with briefly. Then I shall come to a subject which perhaps many people do not consider belongs to the unconscious and its manifestation, but which at least can be seen—by those who are reasonable about it—to be something that plays into our semiconscious life, and this is the sphere of human destiny, which will be considered from the viewpoint of the science of spirit, the real and true clairvoyance. I am not fond of the word clairvoyance because it is mixed up with all sorts of amateurish and other nonsense, but the way I use it today will perhaps be justified, and should be self- explanatory. I shall indicate what is the sphere of the science of spirit itself, for this science feels itself called upon to raise what is spiritually unconscious into consciousness.

I would like first of all to describe one or two characteristic properties of the real experience the scientist of the spirit has of the super-sensible, spiritual world. This will then form the basis for what I have to say about the other phenomena of the unconscious, which I have so far only just mentioned and which I shall describe later from the viewpoint of the science of spirit. As we have not much time, I shall not be able to go into the ordinary scientific view of these things as well.

When the human soul has reached the point with the scientist of spirit of being able to approach a spiritual world in the same way that we approach the physical sense world with our physical eyes and ears and the other sense organs, then the human being perceives the spiritual world and can grasp its connection with the physical sense world.

I pointed out yesterday that it is quite unjustified to object that what the science of spirit describes is really only put together out of the physical sense world and then transferred to the spiritual world. And I also pointed out that anyone who has conscientiously used the methods of the science of spirit for several years knows that he often finds himself in the position that what he experiences in the spiritual world looks quite different from anything that can be experienced in the transitory physical sense world. Even in the experience of the spiritual world, the whole mood and constitution of the soul is radically different from normal soul life. And so I would like first of all to describe one or two characteristic properties of this experience in the spirit.

If one has only a superficial understanding of what we mean by the science of spirit it is easy enough to say that the scientist of spirit lives in a kind of self-deception:—he puts things together in his mind and thinks that the resulting idea is the revelation of a spiritual world, having overlooked or forgotten how he really gained the idea through sense perception in the first place.—Of course, it is true that if the scientist of spirit were to experience spiritual perception in the same way he gains ideas from the sense world, then he would naturally become suspicious of the science of spirit. But this is not the case. One of the most fundamental characteristics of what we are able to perceive in our thoughts of the sense world appears quite different when compared with real spiritual experiences. The ideas and images we form through contact with the sense world are impressed upon the soul, and we are able to recall them after a while; they can be raised up out of the treasure of our memory. The spiritual experiences which the scientist of spirit has are different, for it is not possible to recall them in this way. What the soul experiences when it approaches spiritual perception is not just an idea. For an idea can be incorporated into the memory, but a spiritual experience of this sort cannot be directly incorporated into the soul. A spiritual experience or perception disappears, just as our view of a tree that we have looked at for a time disappears when we turn away from it. When the perception comes to an end, it can no longer be experienced by the soul—we have to approach it again in order to see it as it really is. The image or idea we keep in our memory, but to see the actual tree we have to go to where it is. Just as we no longer see the tree when we have gone away from it, so the spiritual perception is no longer experienced by the soul when the perception itself has ceased. From this it follows that with experience of a spiritual nature we are not dealing with a mere combination of ideas, thoughts and images, for they can be remembered.

But then one could object that if this is in fact the case, it would never be possible to report such spiritual experience if it could not be remembered—nothing could be said about it, for it would disappear from our soul life as soon as it had been experienced.—But actually it is not like this at all. The scientist of spirit can formulate ideas about what he has experienced spiritually, just as we are able to formulate ideas about things, beings and processes in the sense world, and these ideas can be retained. It depends on the scientist of spirit being able to differentiate actual experience from the images and ideas which arise out of it, just as in ordinary life we distinguish our sense perception from the idea which arises from it. We can look at this in another way. If we wish to have a spiritual experience in the same way a second or third time, it is not sufficient just to recall the image or idea of it. For in this case it is clear that we do not then have the full experience, but only a pale image of it.

If we want to have the experience again, we have to reawaken the slumbering forces of the soul and to enter into the experience afresh. With certain characteristic phenomena of the spiritual world we can only remember the way we approached the experience—this can be recalled, and the experience attained a second, third or fourth time. But then it is certainly not a case of the experience following the same laws that underlie the normal way of imagining and thinking.—This is the one aspect. You can see from this that the scientist of spirit is no dreamer, but that his own inner self- perception enables him to be absolutely clear about what leads him to real experiences.

The second aspect is that an experience attained through the science of spirit has a relationship to our soul life quite different from an experience that takes place in our normal consciousness in the physical sense world. What would be the use of our physical life if we were not able to acquire certain skills, certain habits, if we were not in a position of being able to try and do something better a second time, when the repetition of an action would serve no purpose? The repetition of an action is incorporated into our normal experience as a habit. But spiritual experiences cannot be incorporated into our soul life in the same way. Many—those who are beginners in spiritual experience—find this out, to their surprise. It is comparatively easy—I say comparatively easy—to achieve certain initial experiences of the spiritual world if one carries out the exercises described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds, and beginners are always overjoyed when they have their first experiences of a spiritual nature. But then they are all the more surprised when these experiences cannot easily be repeated, or when they cannot be repeated at all. And one can feel very miserable because an experience which one has had cannot be recalled; one does not seem to get any better at it. It is not possible to turn what has been experienced in the spirit into a habit. On the contrary, with repetition it becomes increasingly more difficult to do the repetition. Thus, as a matter of fact, a large part of the exercises that have to be done if we wish to bring about a repetition of certain experiences, consists of doing quite different things the second or third time. Experience of a spiritual nature has therefore a quite different relationship to the physical, since it works against habit.

There is a third aspect of what is characteristic in spiritual experience, and that is, however odd it may sound, that real spiritual experience—which has absolutely nothing to do with anything concerned with the body—is something that is over in a split second. In fact, this is even a reason why so few people today attain spiritual experience. In ordinary life people are accustomed to take a certain time to assimilate something that appears on their horizon. If the experience is a spiritual one, it is over before the person has been able to notice it. What is therefore necessary above all in order to have real spiritual experience, is what one could call presence of mind. If we want to have spiritual experience we have to get used to situations in ordinary life which demand quick decisions, where the situation must be summed up immediately, and where there is no time to delay by changing our minds. People who have no wish to make any progress in this kind of self-education, to make quick decisions in certain situations, to see quickly what has to be done, are not suited to gaining the necessary control over their own souls in order to achieve spiritual experience easily. The kind of person who can tackle a situation, not by looking at it from every possible angle and fussing about, but by making a decision immediately upon being confronted with the situation and then also sticking to it, has a good foundation for spiritual experience. For spiritual experiences within us have to be gone through just as quickly as we have to grasp some situations in life and make decisions, which if they were not made quickly would perhaps lead to misfortune and ruin.—I am not saying that spiritual experience can lead to ruin, for in this case it will not have existed. This attitude toward it is necessary.

And now there is a fourth characteristic—that spiritual experiences are always individual. In the physical world we are accustomed to dividing everything into particular classes or categories, in fact we divide the whole of life in this way. We speak of the famous—if not notorious—“Scheme F.” Everything has to belong to a certain category, to be put in its particular place. People believe that law is to be found in the world of phenomena only when everything is fitted into various categories. We should imagine for once how we should deal with nature, which we quite rightly divide into categories, if everything were individual. And we should imagine what human life would be like if it were not, for instance, possible in every single instance to turn to a book of laws, if it were not possible to fit a particular case neatly into a ready-made compartment, but if we had to face it with individual judgment. People are accustomed from experience in the physical world to making everything fit into patterns. All this putting things into categories, classes, determining a particular order with particular laws, all this has to be given up, though not in connection with the physical world, for this would make one unfit for the latter, but for the sphere of spiritual experiences. What is experienced in the spiritual world is always portrayed as something individual. This is why people so often take a stand against the science of spirit. If we speak about what has been discovered by the science of spirit—and having given lectures for so many years now, I do not hesitate to present concrete examples about this science of spirit—let us say, for example, that I describe how the sudden death of a person has the effect in the spiritual world of his experiencing spiritually in the single moment when his physical body is destroyed through an accident, as much as he would have been able to experience in twenty or thirty years in life. If such a thing as this is described, then it can be related only to a particular case. Of course, someone else comes along and says,—Sudden deaths have this and that effect. He would like to make a law of it. Such laws, if I may put it this way, are the enemy of the true way of knowledge of the science of spirit, because in spiritual experience each single case represents something individual and unique, and because one always has to be surprised how something can always appear—and in life people like so much to stick to the old. One can write down the most subtle experiences of the physical world in a notebook and can put it in one's coat pocket. Such a procedure is impossible with knowledge derived from the science of spirit. This is why there are so many different kinds of descriptions that the scientist of spirit must give. Those of you who are here now and who have often been present at the lectures which have been given here for many years, will have heard me deal with similar subjects, never in the same way, but always varied in one way or the other, individualized. Last winter, for instance, I spoke on the same theme in many German cities, sometimes for several days in succession, but each time in a different way, describing the same things differently. Knowledge derived through the science of spirit makes a claim upon the spirit which we can describe as the mobility of this spirit. We conclude therefore that the important thing is not the content, the actual content of the words, but that this content is drawn and spoken out of the spirit itself.

You will see from this that it is always necessary to become accustomed to a quite different kind of mood and disposition of soul when we rise from the transitory to the intransitory, when we approach the part of man that belongs to the intransitory world, the eternal core of his being. It is therefore understandable that the science of spirit is not only considered to be difficult to understand, but is attacked, misunderstood and confused with all sorts of other things. As someone said recently (someone who prefers to hear only what he has heard before)—it is irritating. Of course it is irritating to someone who only wants all his old dogmas warmed up once again.

Thus it is not only that what the science of spirit has to say about the eternal, the spiritual, is different from what is to be found to be real in the physical sense world, but also that the attitude of the soul toward the spirit is different from its attitude toward the physical sense world. With the kind of attitude of soul I have just described in its characteristic properties, it is possible to approach the part of man that goes through births and deaths, the eternal core of the human being, which as a spiritual entity belongs to the spiritual world just as man as a physical, bodily creature belongs to physical nature and its kingdoms.

What the science of spirit finds in this way is at first something unconscious for our normal consciousness, but it can be drawn into our normal consciousness. This is the essential thing about the method of the science of spirit—that it sets out to reveal what in normal life is generally hidden in the unconscious of the human soul. For the science of spirit brings nothing new to light and does not invent it, but the eternal core of the human being goes through—to use yesterday's expression—a spiritual digestion, just as the physical body has a material digestion—this exists in every human being. The scientist of spirit only brings to light what functions and weaves within every human being. It is his task to bring to consciousness what otherwise remains unconscious. All he talks about is nothing other than the foundation out of which everyone speaks and thinks and acts. Only it so happens that the sphere of the spirit is either subconscious or superconscious—i.e. unconscious—for our normal consciousness.

Now, seen from the viewpoint of our normal soul life, something iridescent and vacillating enters into the sphere of this soul life. What is meant here belongs to the border areas which I have spoken about. Everyone is familiar with this border area which appears so ordinary and which yet is so mysterious: the remarkable sphere of our dream life. This dream life with its pictures that enters into our ordinary soul life, gives the investigator quite different problems from the person who just lets it pass him by, or at the most approaches it with a few superstitious ideas.

A lot could be said just to describe some of the more outward characteristics of our dream life, but here I only want to give a sketch of this dream life as seen by the science of spirit by calling special attention to a few of its characteristic properties—those properties which will serve to enable us to come to know the nature of it.

Presumably everyone knows—and many philosophical approaches to dreams have recognized this—that many of our dreams are stimulated by a sense impression. The world of dreams that we experience is very much connected with the world of our unconscious sleep. When a person is deep in unconscious sleep he is completely cut off from his environment, both by his senses and his limbs. If we are really in unconscious sleep there is nothing in the room, whatever may be there, that can affect our senses. We cannot think about anything that is around us, and in really dreamless sleep we are not able to do anything either. We can establish no relationship at all to our environment—in a sense we are isolated from what surrounds us.—What is characteristic of our dreams is that we really remain in a dreaming state in this isolation and even if the isolation appears to be broken by a sense impression, it is really only in appearance. What are such dreams? Everyone knows them. Someone dreams, for instance, about horses trotting by; he wakes up, and after waking knows exactly where the sound has come from—the ticking of a watch that he had put down nearby. He had heard this ticking because of a particularly sensitive functioning of his ears which must have started at that moment. But now what goes through the mind, the perception, does not work in the normal way as it would in the outer world, but in a dramatized form. Therefore we do not establish a relationship with our environment through our senses, but remain in an isolation which sleep has brought about, and what affects the senses is transformed in the soul. We dream, for example, of a red hot stove, we hear it roaring.—The beat of our heart has become stronger, and becomes the symbol in us of the roaring hot stove. We even have the same relationship to our body as we have in dreamless sleep; the soul simply transforms the impression that comes from the body. Thus we maintain the same relationship with our body when dreaming which we have in dreamless sleep—isolated even from our own body.

We all know that we go on whole journeys in dreams, journeys we could never undertake in real life, journeys where we fly with wings. But at the same time we know that all this does not change our relationship to the outer world, as it would do in real life. Even regarding what we experience as a relationship of our being to an environment in our dreams, nothing changes our relationship to the outer world.

So we can say that what is characteristic of dreams is that in an important respect they do not alter the relationship the human being has to his environment and to himself by virtue of his spirit-soul-body constitution operating through his senses, movements and his own physical body. This also distinguishes dreams from all the other unconscious regions I shall characterize today. It also distinguishes them from everything based on a change in the relationship of the human being to his environment. Even ordinary observation bears out the fact that dreams may not be confused with anything abnormal in soul experience, that they are quite normal and healthy, and are not abnormal in the way they appear in normal human soul life.

A peculiarity of dream life that is particularly important for what I am going to say is that the course of our dreams shows that we cease to join the sequence of dream images in a logical way. We are no longer connected to normal logic. We cannot be logical in dreams. There is one objection to this, however.—The scientist of spirit always knows the objections that can be made. Of course, the unfold-ment of some dreams is such that we can say that the pictures are joined together in a logical sequence. But, in fact, it is different, for exact observation reveals that as long as a dream appears logical, it consists only of reminiscences of life, which had a logical sequence before. Whatever has a logical sequence in life can be dreamed again, but it does not become logical in the dream. The logic that is normally present in our soul life is therefore not present in the action of our dreams. Moral feelings and attitudes concerning human actions are also missing. We all know the many things we are capable of doing in dreams. We all know that in dreams we achieve things and ascribe them to ourselves, that we would condemn in ordinary life. Not only does logic come to an end in dreams, but our moral outlook as well.—These are two important characteristics that we must hold on to if we are to investigate the nature of dreams.

It is of course true that much can be said about dream life from the ordinary physical viewpoint, but we do not want to touch upon this today, for a merely outward scientific method of observation cannot get at the real nature of dreams—for the simple reason that there is nothing with which our normal consciousness can compare dream life. Dreams enter into our normal conscious experience as phenomena that cannot be compared with anything else. And if something cannot be compared with anything else, if it is not possible to incorporate it into a particular scheme, if it portrays something individual through its own particular nature, it cannot be studied by an external scientific method of observation. Only from the point of view of the science of spirit is it possible to gain a true picture of dreams and their nature, for the simple reason that by means of the development of the soul, which I have outlined today, the scientist of spirit attains a pictorial or other kind of spiritual experience which, while radically different from dreams, nevertheless in its form, experience, its intensity of experience, is somewhat similar to dreams. We can leave aside for the moment the question of how dreams are related to reality. We do not wish to go into this now. But the scientist of spirit knows that in what he experiences, which at first is pictorial, he stands before a real spiritual world, he experiences a spiritual world. He can therefore look at the world of dreams and describe it from the world he experiences. This is the one thing. By means of this he acquires a view given to him by his actual observation of what dreams really are in the human soul. Seen from the viewpoint of ordinary consciousness, it is not possible to know what dreams are. Dreams rise up in our soul life, surge up like unknown waves out of the depths, but we do not know what it is that is active, that is dreaming in our souls. But now the scientist of spirit, in practicing the activity necessary for spiritual investigation (as described yesterday), experiences another self, the same self, but in another form, the true ego—he experiences the spirit-soul nature of man independently of the bodily nature. However great a horror it may be for many people, it is nevertheless true that spiritual experiences are achieved outside the body. The scientist of spirit therefore knows what it means to be outside the body, and he can now compare this with the world of dreams. In seeing the world of dreams on the one hand, and knowing spiritual experiences on the other, he knows that the same thing that normally dreams in the soul is experienced spiritually when practicing the science of spirit. It is one and the same thing: what dreams and what is active in the science of spirit, only in investigating the spirit we stand before the real region of the spirit, and in dreams—and this is what is important:—What is it that we stand before in dreams? The difference between standing before the reality of the spirit with our own self in the investigation of the spirit, and in our dreams, is that the scientist of spirit has prepared his soul beforehand to enter into the spiritual world, in which he then perceives in the same way that we normally perceive with our eyes and ears in the physical world, and through his investigation he discovers that in sleep the human being leaves the body. But because he lacks the necessary organs to perceive there, his consciousness remains dull and unconscious from the moment of going to sleep to waking up. Now when a human being has fallen asleep, his spirit-soul nature lives. The scientist of spirit can compare what he perceives in the spiritual world with what the unconscious spirit-soul nature experiences from the moment of going to sleep to waking. He experiences the spirit-soul nature unconsciously in the spiritual world, draws himself again into the physical body on waking, and then makes use of the physical body in order to establish a relationship to his environment.

Now it is not sufficient simply to describe what happens to the body between going to sleep and waking, and what sort of organic physical processes take place in it. For significant things also happen to the spirit-soul nature at the same time. The soul is quite different when it awakens and returns to the body from when it leaves the body. And in entering the body once more it can happen—as in ordinary life—that the spirit-soul nature simply submerges into the body and makes use of the body, and having penetrated it like a fast moving arrow it becomes active and uses the body as a means of perception. But it can also happen that the forces, the content that the spirit-soul nature has acquired from the moment of sleeping to awaking, are—if I may use the expression—for a moment too intense to enter into the body. What the soul upon waking has acquired since the moment of going to sleep, does not fit into the configuration of the picture that the body has of the soul, and so what then happens appears to be a reflection of what the soul has experienced unconsciously during sleep. Something like a mirror picture is reflected back upon waking, because upon waking the soul cannot at first be adapted to the body. In this way the soul clothes these quite different kinds of experiences of the spiritual world, which it has gone through during sleep, in pictures borrowed from our memory, from ordinary life, or which are transformed sense or bodily impressions. It is the eternal that dreams in the human being, just as it is the eternal in the human being that investigates the spirit, but it is clothed with the events of everyday life.

Thus we can say that in dreams the eternal in man perceives the temporal. It is the eternal in man that perceives what takes place in time. And in this respect dreams, despite the fact that the content of their pictures, which is taken from temporal life, is nothing special, even for the scientist of spirit, if it is a normal dream, are a real revelation of the unconscious eternal-spirit nature living in man, of the super-sensible. The scientist of spirit is in the position to be able to distinguish between what dreams present in pictures, and what they are really based upon.

I have recently spoken about the various phenomena of human soul life from a different viewpoint in another city—a city where a great deal of work has been done on Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis deals among other things with the world of dreams. There were some gentlemen present who, as so often happens with the science of spirit, completely misunderstood what I said. In relation to what I said about dreams they thought they were very much more clever. They said: This person and his science of spirit, he speaks about dreams. We psychoanalysts know that dreams only have a symbolical meaning. We know that dreams should only be handled as a matter of symbolism, but he takes dreams to be something real! He is on quite the wrong path.—As I said, they thought they were very clever. But the matter in which they thought themselves clever, in fact, arose only out of their own lack of understanding. For the scientist of spirit does not take the content of dreams to be symbolical or anything else. The scientist of spirit who is accustomed to observing such things knows that what really happens in the soul during sleep can be the same with ten people, but when these ten people relate their dreams, all ten are different. The scientist of spirit knows that although the ten people have dreams, all with a different content, the same or at least very similar spiritual and unconscious experience is the basis for all of them. Moreover, the scientist of spirit would never simply take the content of the dream by itself, whether symbolically or not symbolically, for he knows that the same dream can be clothed in ten, a hundred or a thousand different ways, because the eternal regards the temporal in such a way as to clothe itself with it. The scientist of spirit therefore studies the course of the dream, the way in which tension is released, whether a rise or a fall follows. It is the inner drama, the type of rhythmical sequence, I would even say, the musical nature, that comes to expression in the most varied ways in the pictures of a dream. That is what he studies. Dreams are the witness of real spiritual experience; their content is a garment which clothes the experience. But when one is experienced in such things it is possible to see through the content to what can be experienced. This is the one aspect of the nature of dreams that the science of spirit points to.

The other aspect is the following. When the scientist of spirit progresses and comes to have experiences in the spiritual world, he notices that his dream life changes. Among the many who have already had practical experience with ways of the science of spirit are some who acquire a convincing idea of the science of spirit and feel that it means a lot to them by seeing how their dream life is transformed. They see that what normally happens in dreams is that there is a succession of quite arbitrary images, but then they see how it becomes increasingly full of meaning, and that finally they are able to direct the dream in certain respects. In short, the most varied people entering into the science of spirit notice that the changes which take place in dreams take dreams in the same direction as the first stages of real spiritual knowledge. In fact, it is by means of this transformation of the world of dreams that the scientist of spirit is able to get at the actual nature of dreams. He raises his dreams out of their temporality through what he has become as a scientist of spirit. Dreams then no longer have the tendency to clothe themselves with temporal things.

It is a great moment when the scientist of spirit has progressed sufficiently to dream not only the outer pictures that have symbolical value, but in his dreams to enter into the sphere which normally he would only enter arbitrarily.—It is a great moment when he learns how the spiritual world sends him experiences in his dreams that penetrate like an act of grace into his normal experience, and which really are no longer dreams, although in certain respects they may appear like dreams. Thus the science of spirit shows that dreams flow out of the eternal spirit-soul sphere, but that the human being who has not managed to be conscious of this eternal spirit-soul sphere clothes the events which happen between going to sleep and waking up with his memories, with his impressions of everyday life.

Whether dreams are subconscious or unconscious events, or whether they are grasped by the scientist of spirit, they can be regarded as something healthy and normal. This is more than can be said of the other border areas. It is remarkable that there are philosophers, Eduard von Hartmann among them, who compare dream pictures, the origin of which we have just recognized, with hallucinations and visions. Whereas dream pictures originate in the spirit-soul sphere, and only come into being in coming into contact with the bodily nature, visions and hallucinations are very much connected in their origin with the bodily nature. And whereas dreams in their essential experience flow out of the spirit- soul sphere and the bodily nature only provides the cause of their appearance, the bodily constitution is the cause of everything in the way of hallucinations, visions, somnambulism, mediumism and everything abnormal of this sort that enters human soul life. You can see a characteristic of human experience purely from the viewpoint of the science of spirit, to which the scientific viewpoint can easily be added, when you understand that it all depends upon looking at man as a being with body, soul and spirit, that he has a relationship of the spirit to the body only indirectly through the soul. The soul takes its place in the center. Even when dreaming, a human being cannot simply establish a relationship of his spirit to the body, but only indirectly with the help of the soul. In normal life the soul is an intermediary between the spirit and the body. What happens in the human organism when certain abnormal phenomena in spirit-soul life are produced, is that the normal relationship of the spirit to the body through the soul, where the spirit first works upon the soul and then the soul upon the body, is broken because of temporary or permanent illnesses in the organism, which then blot out the proper functioning of the soul. This elimination is not occasioned by the outer sense organs, but rather by the inner organs. If certain organs are diseased, then the spirit-soul nature cannot get hold of the whole body by means of which it establishes a relationship to the outer world, but it often has to make use of the body without the diseased organs. Then instead of using the soul, the spirit enters into a direct relationship with the body. In a sense, the soul is by-passed. This brings irregularities into the consciousness; the consciousness is broken through. If something spiritual is experienced without being mediated by the soul because a particular organ of the brain or the nervous system or the circulation is diseased, if a spiritual experience is not received so that the soul can use the body in the right way for the experience to be digested properly in the soul, then the spirit has an immediate effect upon the body, and does not work through the mediation of the soul. The immediate experience of the spirit—for it is an experience of the spirit, even if it is such that it penetrates the human constitution in an abnormal and unhealthy way—turns into hallucinations and visions. The science of spirit has nothing to do with this sort of thing.

The aim of the science of spirit is not to break down the relationship existing in normal life between body, soul and spirit, but to make the life of the soul richer, so that the relationship of the spirit to the body is brought about by a rich soul life. A poverty-stricken soul life can come about, however, when by illness a human being is prevented from using his whole body to establish a relationship with his environment. These kinds of experiences—visions and hallucinations—that do not have the same relationship to spiritual life that dreams have, must be regarded from the viewpoint of the science of spirit as being spiritual experiences, but not such as have more value than our ordinary sense perception; in fact, they have less value. For in this kind of irregular spiritual experience like hallucinations, visions, somnambulistic speech and action, mediumism, (which is an artificial kind of somnambulism) the human being is less connected with his environment than he is in his sense perception. This is the important thing. This is what must be realized.

In order not only to perceive his environment but also to arrive at a reasonable and logical understanding of it, a human being needs what one calls an ability to make judgments about the world, and for this he needs the use of the whole body. If the body is formed abnormally, he cannot form a sensible judgment about what is presented to him spiritually. Whereas the human being, when awake, can grasp with reason what he experiences in dreams, he is not in a position to transform what he experiences in hallucinations and visions into the normal experience of his waking condition, and to understand it.

Now the significant thing is that when the body, viewed outwardly, reveals such abnormalities, there are apparently spiritual experiences—this the scientist of spirit admits—only they should not be induced. If they appear naturally, they are the evidence of disease; if they are induced artificially, they lead to disease. Even good and important scientists go astray in these things which are, after all, phenomena of life itself, when they investigate them in an external way in the laboratory, and seek to explain them according to formulas of the scientific method. I would like to cite an instance, which I have mentioned before, because it is a typical example of how much scientists long to penetrate into what they call the super-sensible sphere but at the same time do not want to approach the science of spirit, preferring to stick to their own normal scientific methods. I am not discussing this case because I wish to take a stand on its truth or untruth, but only to show how an irreproachable and outstanding scientist of the present time acts in relation to the sphere of the spirit and super-sensible.

It is the case which Sir Oliver Lodge describes at considerable length in a long book, and which has aroused so much attention for such things do not often reach us from the front-line of battle. The events are as follows. The son of the famous scientist was at the battle-front in France. The father received a letter in London written from America, informing him that a medium has said that something important and decisive was about to happen to his son, but that the soul of a deceased friend of Oliver Lodge would take the son under his wing at this decisive moment.—Naturally this is a message that can be taken in various ways. All sorts of things could have happened and, outwardly at least, the message could have been true. The son could have been in danger of his life and have been saved and the writer could have said—Of course, Myers, the soul of the friend, stood by the son and so he was not killed. But now the son was killed. So the argument then was that the soul of the son had passed over and that his soul was helped on the other side by the friend who had already been there for many years. Whatever had happened it would have been possible to interpret it in the light of the message, because the latter was so vague.—Sir Oliver Lodge, however, is a person who describes the events from a conscientious and strictly scientific viewpoint, so that the case can be understood by anyone on the one hand working conscientiously according to scientific method, and on the other knowing what conclusions can be drawn. It is therefore quite possible to glean information from the book about what really happened.

Now after Sir Oliver Lodge had lost his son, various mediums were sent to him.—In the case of a famous person there are always ways and means of sending mediums and somnambulists to him. Sir Oliver Lodge only wanted to go into this conscientiously, observing the utmost care imaginable. He then describes how the mediums bring messages, either in speech or writing, which purport to originate from the son. There is a lot in this that makes no particular impression upon the reader, as is so often the case with spiritualists, but one thing did make a deep impression on Sir Oliver Lodge. Even the skeptical journalists in the widest circles were impressed. And this is the crucial experiment that Sir Oliver Lodge carried out. It is the following: The medium said: A message is now coming from the deceased son; Myers soul is also present. Both make themselves known. But the son indicates that there is a photograph which was taken at the battle-front in France, shortly before he was killed. He is in the photograph with a number of his friends. The picture was taken several times. In one picture the son rests his hand upon the shoulder of a friend, in another his position is different, and so on. Good! The pictures were described exactly. But they were not there. No one knew about them, no one could know about them, neither the medium nor anyone else. It appeared at first to be nothing but a fraud. But the important thing is that after, I believe, two weeks a letter arrived with the photographs, which had still been in France when the medium had spoken. The letter arrived two weeks later in London and it was possible to convince oneself that the pictures tallied exactly with the description. The photographs were there—a crucial experiment.

Of course this was sufficient to convince Sir Oliver Lodge's and many other people's scientific conscientiousness. One can understand it. But as a scientist of spirit one approaches the matter from quite different viewpoints. Just because Sir Oliver Lodge has described it all so exactly, we can discover the true facts of the case. If we are only a little familiar with the relevant literature we can only be surprised that such a person as Sir Oliver Lodge does not compare such a case, which, however odd it may be, can always be convincing if obvious points are not always rejected, with the countless cases which are known with somnambulists as—if I may use the expression—an infection of the sense organs with judgments of the understanding.

Who has not heard of a case, if he is familiar with literature, of someone who has a vision having the impression—in three weeks' time when I am riding I shall fall from my horse. He sees the visionary picture exactly before him. He even tries to avoid it, but this only helps it on. Such things can be found frequently in literature. They are called up by disturbances due to disease, when the body is not fully under control, so that what remains unconscious in a normal organism rises up in a refined form into the consciousness enabling a person to have long-distance view into space or time of things that belong to human culture.

Now upon reading through Sir Oliver Lodge's book it is clear that what the somnambulistic medium saw was nothing other than such a long-distance view in time. The photographs arrived two weeks later. The medium foresaw the photographs just as the other person foresaw his falling off a horse. This has absolutely nothing to do with a revelation from the super-sensible world, but is only a refined perception of what is already present in the sense world.

In such matters we must be sure of distinguishing where the spirit has an immediate effect on the body. This is not something that leads us into the super-sensible. It is just because the science of spirit sets out to lead the human being into the true super-sensible world that it has to stress the necessity of understanding the nature of abnormal cases, in which a refined life of the senses experiences something which is only a message from the ordinary physical world, only that it is experienced in an abnormal way. I could say much about what comes to light by means of this kind of intensification of the senses, and which is based upon something diseased in the human being. What characterizes this second sphere of the unconscious is a predominance of the animal functions over the soul functions. The spiritual, it is true, is involved, but what Sir Oliver Lodge wanted,—insight into the super-sensible world,—could never come to pass in this way.

If we wish to form a bridge between someone who is here and someone in the super-sensible world as a so-called dead person, we have to do it with the methods of the science of spirit. We have to develop our own souls to find the way and not do it by allowing a dead person to speak through a somnambulistic medium. It is just such things as these that must be observed. Because the science of spirit keeps its feet firmly on the ground—one can enter the spiritual world not only in a general but also in a concrete way—it has to reject everything that is gained without the development of the soul, that is gained by means of hallucinations, visions and a refined life of the senses, which does not lead beyond the sense world and which says nothing about the eternal. Although the spiritual reaches into the human body, nothing can be found out about the super-sensible except by raising the spirit-soul nature of the human being into the super-sensible world.

For the science of spirit, therefore, the visionary world, the somnambulistic world, the world of artificial somnambulism, the mediumistic world is a subsensible world, not a super-sensible world.

The time is pressing, and I cannot go into this any further, for I must turn to another aspect which can be discussed briefly, and this is the way the super-sensible world appears in human life when we consider real art and artistic enjoyment. The science of spirit can follow the soul of the real artist or the soul of a person receptive to real art. What the soul experiences and later fashions into poetry or other kinds of art is just as much experienced in the spiritual world as what always remains unconscious in sleep or at the most becomes conscious for our ordinary consciousness in the temporal pictures of our dreams. But the poet, or artist generally, is able to bring what he experiences unconsciously in its immediate form while in the spiritual world, into the physical sense world, though still unconsciously, and to clothe it in pictures.

It has been quite rightly pointed out that it is not in its content but in its cause, its origin, its source, that real and genuine art has its roots in what the artistic soul experiences in the super-sensible. Therefore true art, and not naturalism, has been rightly regarded by humanity at all times as a message brought into the sense world from a super-sensible world. The difference between the poet and the seer, the person who perceives the super-sensible consciously, is only that the seer raises his consciousness into the super-sensible world for the time he has experiences in the super-sensible world, and transforms with complete presence of mind what he has experienced there into images and ideas, so that the whole process is conscious. With the poet, the artist, the process remains unconscious.—He certainly lives in the super-sensible, but because it does not come into his consciousness he cannot compare it with the spiritual world. After he has experienced it, he brings it down and clothes it in pictures which then became messages of the super-sensible. The whole process which is conscious in the seer is, in its origin, partly unconscious in the poet and artist. What reaches into the world as revelation of the unconscious is what graces human life with beauty, and we shall appreciate its real value when we are convinced that true art is a messenger from the world of the eternal, that true artistic enjoyment brings the human being near to the super-sensible world, even if unconsciously.

We experience our destiny semi-unconsciously. How do we normally understand our destiny, which accompanies our lives from birth to death? Most people—quite rightly as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned—regard the individual acts of destiny as something that comes to them from outside; they just come. This may be quite right and is right from the normal viewpoint. But there is another way of looking at it.

Let us assume that as a forty year old person or younger, as one who has a tendency to reflect, we consider what we really are in our souls and compare this with our destiny. And then we ask what we would have been if we had had a different destiny, if different things had happened to us. We would then make a remarkable discovery. We would discover that if we speak of what we really bear in our inner nature, of what we really are, and not about an abstract self, that we are nothing more than the result of our destiny.—If destiny were only a series of things that happen to us, a series of chances or coincidences we should only be the sum total of these chances. What we have suffered, the things that have given us joy, what has come to us in life that we have assimilated and has become part of our ability, wisdom and habits in life, this is what we are—but it arises out of our destiny; we are this destiny ourselves.

The science of spirit also tries to study destiny, and tries to do it in such a way that its observation of it follows the same course as our normal conceptual life, without the human being doing anything about it. I say this to make clear the significant factor I wish to express. Imagine that you remember something that happened a long time ago, that you experienced when you were ten or seventeen. The memory has a particular characteristic. When the experience took place you were present with your whole mind, you did not only experience what you recall as an image, but you were wholly present. Consider how very different it is to remember how you felt and to remember the image of the experience. The feeling, the condition of soul, cannot be brought back. The memory-image can recall a kind of feeling, but pain that you experienced twenty years ago cannot be recalled. The image or idea can be recalled, but not the condition of soul, the pain. And it is just the same with joy.

In our normal memory of life our experiences are incorporated into the memory, but the feelings are not taken in and the image alone remains. We can therefore experience again later in images what we have experienced earlier. But now, what the human being does of his own volition in life in separating the feelings off from what is incorporated into the memory, can also be carried out in relation to the experiences of our destiny. In describing it, it appears easy, almost trivial. Should it be undertaken, then it belongs to the kind of preparation of the soul that I have been describing yesterday and today, and it consists in stripping of feelings all the things that come to us as acts of destiny. What is so characteristic of ordinary life is that we find some things in our destiny sympathetic, others not; that we willingly take to some things, but wish to reject others. Imagine that we would succeed in getting rid of this so that we could look at our own destinies as if they had not affected us, as if we were describing the destiny of someone else, or as if we could feel someone else's destiny as our own.

Let us get rid of it all for the moment—and only for this one moment, or we would become unfit to live properly—and consider our destiny! We have to look at destiny in such a way that everything connected with the feelings plays no part, as if we stood outside our destiny. Then, like a thought rising up, giving back to us in our individual personal lives an experience out of the past, our destiny, when looked at in the right way, stripped of its personal, subjective character, will of necessity and with the utmost conviction be seen as the expression of earlier experiences in life, which we have gone through and which are connected with the whole life of the human being and are the expression of the fact that we live through repeated lives on earth and lives which are spent between death and a new birth.

By means of this true view of destiny and of several other things, we can perceive how what we experience over the years as entering into our real and personal experience of our destiny, what is derived as a germinal force from earlier lives on earth and becomes a seed for future lives,—how all this has an effect upon our lives. What the science of spirit has to say about repeated lives on earth is not something made up by a fanatical mind, but is a result of conscientious observation of life itself, a different observation of life from what is usual, because it raises what enters semi- unconsciously into our lives and is revealed as our destiny—thus also a revelation of the unconscious, the unconscious raised into the consciousness.

Unfortunately I have only been able to describe to you a few aspects of the world which remains unconscious to our normal consciousness, and to show how the science of spirit approaches such things. I have only been able to give an outline. But it is just a consideration of the border areas that shows how the science of spirit is in a position to point out the region of the eternal, in showing how the spiritual is revealed in ordinary life in dreams in both a normal and abnormal way, and in showing just from its particular viewpoint how the unconscious is revealed in human experience. In studying the border areas in this way it becomes clear for the science of spirit that the human being is certainly able to reach into the sphere of the super-sensible when he goes beyond the normal limits of his senses, that he can penetrate from the transitory to the intransitory, that he can establish a relationship to the eternal spiritual world through his own spiritual nature so that his spirit-soul nature, his eternal nature, can feel in harmony with the spirit of the whole world.

In describing such things as these one notices that the science of spirit can only be taken in the way I mentioned yesterday—that whereas it can appear in the world today because of the particular configuration of present day spiritual and cultural life, its content is true for all times—just as the Copernican outlook had to appear out of a particular configuration at a certain time. But there is, nevertheless, a difference between the nature of what appears in ordinary science and what appears in the science of spirit. Today for the first time the science of spirit is expressed in clear and well-defined concepts and ideas. But it has always been divined and desired in both universal and quite definite forms by those who have undertaken a serious study of the great mysteries of existence. One feels as a scientist of spirit, therefore, at one with those who throughout the history of humanity have been able and have wanted to give something to humanity.

Of all the great number of personalities who could be mentioned here, I will choose only one. I do not do this to prove what I have said, for I know quite well that in citing Goethe the objection can be rightly made that it is always possible to quote the opposite from his writings, to cite passages where the opposite view is proved. But this is not the point. A person like myself who has devoted more than thirty years not only to the content of Goethe's outlook, but also to the way in which Goethe approached the world, can only sum up what he wanted to say in such a discourse as today's in a few words which express a kind of intellectual joy in finding again what has only now been revealed by conscientious investigation in a tremendous presentiment of a human being, a presentiment which must have appeared before him when he wrote:

“If the healthy nature of the human being functions as a complete whole, if he feels his existence in the world as belonging to a great, beautiful, worthy and valuable whole, if this feeling of harmony gives him a pure and true joy, then the universe, if it could feel itself, would shout for joy because it would feel it had reached its goal, and it would be amazed at the culmination of its own evolution and being.”

I believe that in expressing the harmonious accord between the inner being of man and the universe, Goethe wanted to say what the science of spirit sets out to formulate in clear, well-defined scientific terms—that man can experience in his inner being in various ways how his spirit-eternal nature exists in relation to the spirit-eternal nature of the outer world, and that the great harmony between the human individuality and the universe is actually present in the human soul.—For what makes the science of spirit into an absolute certainty? It is that the human being can take hold of his eternal nature by approaching the spirit of the world in all sincerity and truth as a spiritual being, the eternal spirit of the human being can take hold of the eternal spirit of the world.

The flower that is cut from the stem withers. Had it been left on the stem, it would have turned the forces within it to seed formation; and the life of the plant to which it belongs would have been renewed in another. - What has the cut done to the stem? — Has it not transformed one way of being into a completely different one? Has it not robbed certain forces of the possibility of forming that to which they were called according to the order of nature? — Even after it has been cut off, forces still act on the flower. But these are different from those that previously called it into existence and that would have led it to fruit formation afterwards. They are forces under whose influence it gradually decays. The flower has passed into a different realm of forces. Into the realm that can produce no growth and no reproduction, but only chemical and physical effects. With the cut in the stem, a stream of life has been interrupted. And the flower has been taken up by another stream of existence. This current destroys what the flower is destined to become. The flower belongs to one realm of existence. And only in this realm can it become what it is meant to become. It becomes something else when it is snatched from this realm and transferred to another. And then a current that is only at home in its realm is destroyed. The flower must give up its plant character. The aims of the world into which it now enters do not lie in the formation of seeds and fruits. They have nothing to do with growth and reproduction. They impose a direction on the substances of the flower that is not in the nature of the flower.

In nature, therefore, a thing can be snatched from the ends towards which it tends, and its existence can be directed in another direction, one which is not in its nature.

What can happen to a plant can happen to every being, including humans. And it can happen with all the forces that are active in a person. Only with humans is everything less simple, less clear than with the other realms of nature. And everything becomes all the more complicated the more one ascends to the spiritual powers of man. But if we are able to see simplicity in complexity, we can see that the same thing can happen to the human spirit that happens to a blossom when it loses its connection to the stem.

What lives in the spirit of man can be compared to the current that, passing through the plant, constitutes its particular essence. And man experiences this current as the content of his soul. In this soul content he finds the direction and goal of his being. It is his inner life. If he lacked this inner life, he would be like the flower cut off from the stem. He would have to succumb to currents of power that are not his in the truest sense. But the essence of man is not as clearly defined as that of a flower. It has countless gradations. And it acquires its special character from the fact that man himself works on shaping this inner life. It becomes all the more meaningful the more man works on himself.

A person who does not work on themselves lacks inner life. They become entirely what their outer nature makes of them. The impressions of the outer world shape their soul. Yes, that is precisely the breaking away of man from his spiritual roots when he abandons himself to these impressions. The inner life only begins where man really adds something of his own to what he receives from the outside.

How many speak of their inner life and mean nothing but the reflection of the outside world within them. People live busy with what everyday life brings. They learn from the demands of everyday life what they themselves do. They suffer from the events of daily life, or rejoice in them. Depending on whether one or the other is the case, they act in their actions. Yes, their whole character is probably only a reflection of the outside world. One need only recall the differences between the inhabitants of the mountains and the plains, between those of the cities and the countryside, and one will admit that man bears the imprint of the outside world. And yet this imprint arises only when his inner self cooperates. A firm boundary between what the external nature imprints on man and what he forms from within cannot be drawn. But the character traits of the human being that are formed from the inner nature of his soul stand out clearly from those that are impressed on him from outside. Just as the essence of the flower consists in its progression towards the fruit and the seed in its growth, so the essence of the human being lies in the internalization of his life. This inwardness is the ideal towards which he strives to advance. There are many stages of development on the way to this ideal. From the savage to Goethe there are many such stages. The savage can set only a small inner strength against the influences of the outer world. He is torn this way and that by the forces that affect him. Goethe, on the other hand, forms a soul content from a few external impressions that creates a higher world. One need only seriously compare the lives of the two. One will find that the savage's inner life directly reflects the effects of the external world; while Goethe draws from the depths of his soul something that fills the reflection with a content that makes it richer and more exalted than the external object it reflects. Just as plants take substances from the chemical and physical world and imprint their own essence on them, so humans take in impressions from the external world and, through the power of their soul, channel them towards higher developmental goals. Thus, the relationship between the physical and chemical realms and the plant realm can be compared to a similar relationship in the human being: between the realm of external impressions and that in which the inner power of the soul unfolds its effects. And just as the plant part can lose itself in the chemical and physical realm, so the human being can lose himself in outer life.

What is brought about by an artificial intervention in the example of the plant exists in man as the essence of his character. At earlier stages of his development, he is cut off from his inner life; at later stages, he reaches it. In this way, he gradually moves upwards into higher realms. His nature strives for these higher realms. Through this striving, he must find the goal that is inherent in his soul. The lower the stages of his development, the more alien they are to the nature of his soul. The more the goals of the corresponding realms lie in different directions than his own. Man thus finds himself more and more by developing into the higher realms.

Two realms are most clearly distinguished from each other. The realm of external nature, which forms man according to itself; and the inner, spiritual realm, which gives the formation of external nature a character that could never come from it itself. — Nature and spirit: man belongs to both. If he were all nature, he would be only the outer imprint of a human being, not a human being himself. If he were entirely spirit, he would have to have already reached the goal of his development. He stands between the two.

The individual spirit of man, his soul, is rooted in the All-Spirit. It is, in a sense, an illusion when the individual spirit sees itself as an absolutely independent being. However, this delusion is part of the nature of man on the stages of his imperfection. For the delusion would be no less great if the individual spirit, in its isolation, simply wanted to explain its essence as the All-Spirit. It would be as incorrect as if one wanted to mistake the image of the sun reflected by a concave mirror for the sun itself. The All-Spirit lives in every soul; but He lives in it in a special way. It is present in each soul in accordance with its nature. Therefore, one cannot directly recognize the All-Spirit as such. One can only live it within oneself, allow it to flow unimpeded within oneself. “I am the All-Spirit” is just as correct as it is wrong. For “I am the All-Spirit in a special way.” Only this special way in which the All-Spirit comes into being in me can I recognize. I should open my gates as widely as possible to the All-Spirit; I should prepare the places in my journey so that he may find his dwelling place in them in the freest possible way. He flows into me as widely and as universally as I offer him a dwelling place. He does not hold back; only I myself can erect obstacles for him. Man's development consists in removing these obstacles. He lives in veils; and he gradually imbues these veils with the light that he receives from the Universal Spirit. How this is to happen is determined by man's original disposition. The veils in which his soul is clothed are not at his discretion. He finds himself in them. The All-Spirit is in them. But it is not in them as man is meant to place it. First of all, there is the outer physical covering. It is subject to the laws in which the chemical and physical forces operate. This covering, taken by itself, is, in its way, absolutely perfect. There is a harmony in it as in the realm of the stars and of physical nature in general. Security and calm progress are the hallmarks of this realm. And if these formations only exist for themselves, only isolated in their realm, they only strive for the goals that are peculiar to this realm, then they live a perfect life. When we gaze up at the starry sky, we perceive the mood of the soul that streams forth from this realm when it is left to its own devices, when it is not a shell but an entity in its own right. From this primal source of world existence, the realm of the living, the organic, stands out. Beings with growth and reproduction arise within it. The laws originally active in it take on a different direction and assume different forms. Thus the structures of this realm become a shell. Their nature is determined by what they now contain within them. Their laws, which are complete within themselves, become servants of a higher lawfulness. They must adapt to this lawfulness. And this lawfulness itself can only work in such a way that it takes into account the nature of the chemical and physical. The chemical and physical is a substance with which the living works. It must achieve what it is meant to achieve according to its nature; but it can only do so if it finds the way in which the chemical and physical forces can correspond to this nature. An interaction occurs between what is called upon to arise as life forms and the chemical and physical laws. This interaction provides the basis for imperfection in world development. Imperfection could not arise in a realm unto itself. It can arise where the laws of one realm interact with those of another. For it is a matter here of a continual finding of the right way for this interaction. The variety of life forms arises from the fact that this interaction can be effected in the most diverse ways. From mushrooms to oak trees, we have different types of this interaction. And in one case more, in the other less, the outer form is dominated by the inner life formation, and is its true imprint. Where there is no harmony between the form required from within and that which the external physical laws allow, imperfection arises. It is not due to the physical and chemical laws as such that a plant malformation arises, but to the fact that the demands of the inner life do not do justice to these laws in their specificity. What constitutes the “lower nature” of a being is never imperfect in itself; imperfection arises when the “higher nature” pushes the lower nature in the wrong direction. It is not the shell that is imperfect, but the way it is used.

Just as life arises within the chemical and physical, so too does desire and repulsion arise within life, or the world of desire. And the living becomes the shell of desire just as the physical becomes the shell of the living. The laws of life become expressions of what a being finds desirable or what it wants to reject. The interaction that now comes to light will consist in pushing life in the direction of desire. The being in question will no longer merely live; rather, it will live in a way that befits its desires. A new source of imperfection arises.

The human soul is enclosed in three shells. It is in them that man is born as a thinking being. For it is only in his world of thoughts that his true inner being lies. These three shells are illuminated and permeated by this being. Each shell has its own laws; and each shell, in its own way, belongs to a particular realm.

The human being as a being of thought lives in the world of thought; this world of thought is first clothed in the shell of desire, which belongs to a special realm with its own laws; this shell of desire rests in the same way in the shell of life, and this in the physical shell. Man is not simple, but composed of a soul-core and three soul-covers: and his three soul-covers belong to three different worlds, into which he thus extends through his outer garments. And the core of the soul stands in the middle and gives meaning and character to the garments. The imperfection of man will consist in the fact that his soul cannot reconcile the demands of its essence with the laws of the shells, which are also the laws of the realms to which these shells belong. And the soul, what determines it, where do its laws come from? They are none other than the laws of the All-Spirit, only in a different form from that in which they find expression in the outer shells. The soul itself is a shell. Just as it is the core for the three outer shells, so it is itself a shell for the All-Spirit in other forms. And these forms correspond step by step to what has moved into the outer shells of the All-Spirit. Just as the master builder remains an independent person even after he has embodied his skill in the outer structure of the house, so the All-Spirit remains an independent spirit even after he has placed his essence in the three shells of the physical, the animate, and the desiring. Each of the three outer forms of the All-Spirit corresponds to an independent inner form of spirit: in order that the shell of the desiring nature might be laid around the beings, the Primordial Spirit had to develop within itself the form of the renouncing one. Desiring and renouncing belong together like warmth and cold. When warmth arises in one place, it must flow out at another, which thereby becomes colder. If beings arise that desire, their desire can only arise from a primal ground that forms renunciation in itself as its opposite. Likewise, life in the shell must correspond to its opposite in the spiritual primal ground. Life now consists of growth and reproduction, that is, in that which has life moves beyond itself. The opposite is complete inner stillness; beatitude. This is the second spiritual form of the primal ground corresponding to life. The third spiritual form corresponds to the cosmic, chemical and physical laws of the universe. These laws are spread out over space and time in an infinite variety of things. If we contrast this diversity with the unity that dominates it and finds expression in each of its forms, we are led to the unified spirit itself, which lives in the physical diversity. Spirit, bliss, and renunciation are the three forms of the primal source of things, which live externally in the three sheaths, the physical, the animate, and the desiring. The individual human soul is connected to these three basic forms of the primal spirit as if to its tribe. And just as the outer shells enclose them, so they in turn form the shell for renunciation, bliss and spirit. Thus, if the outer man extends into three outer realms, the soul extends into three spiritual realms. Man's own realm is in the middle between these six realms and together with them forms a seventh. Man's being is therefore sevenfold. And the seven realms give their laws to the fundamental parts that make up man: the physical, the living, the desiring, the thinking, the renouncing, the blissful, and the spiritual. Each of the seven realms has its own laws, through which it brings about what takes place in it. Take man's very own realm, that of thought. Thoughts combine within us according to laws that live within the world of thought. If that were not the case, the regularity of our [thought life] would have to be exactly the same as that of external things. But that is by no means the case. Otherwise, one could not speak of logical thinking. I understand a process or a thing only if I associate certain thoughts with them that make them understandable to me. If I left it to the thoughts that arise quite by chance in connection with the thing or the process, I could never arrive at a real understanding. It is an important proposition, originating in the Pythagorean school, that man differs from the animal in that he can count. By counting things, he arranges them according to aspects that are taken from the realm of thought. Things do not count themselves; and as they appear to us in mere perception, there is no immediate reason to count them. We count them because we want to summarize them according to the purposes of thought. And so it is with all the other forms in which thought deals with things. Man attributes the circular form to certain things. He cannot do so until he has explained to himself, by purely logical thinking, what a circle is. He could never gain a pure conception of the circle from the sense world. What one can learn about circles in the world of the senses are only approximate circles, imperfect circles. We recognize them as such because we have an idea of the circle from a purely ideal point of view. And so it is with all real thinking. Those who do real science always move on to ideas that are not present in their purity in the external world of the senses. They idealize. He develops something within himself that none of the senses can provide. He receives the laws for this from a world that is not the sensual one. The thoughts that we relate to external objects still point to another world. They are, to be sure, images of external things; but at the same time they are images of the laws of the spirit of these external things, which the senses cannot gain from them. In addition to the gates of the senses, we must also open the inner gates of the soul if we want to understand the essence of things. This could not be if what is called to us through the gates of the soul did not belong to the essence of things themselves. The thing that I perceive through the sense of sight is only one side of the thing; the other side is apparently absent when I merely open the eye; it hides itself from this organ. It becomes apparent when I open the inner organ of the soul. Then a thought-image enters through this. And this belongs to the external thing. It is the other side of the same thing. The thing is only complete when I familiarize myself with both sides of it. Thus, the essence of a thing is actually in the unknown source of things. And it reveals itself to me from two sides: externally through the senses, internally in the life of thought. A thing is only complete for those who, in addition to perceiving it with their senses, also reflect on it. People misunderstand the facts of the matter here if they believe that they already have the whole thing in what the senses provide and only want to allow themselves to repeat the external thing in thought. They do this because they consider everything that goes beyond external reality to be unreal, a mere figment of the imagination. They do not know that thought is an image that receives its content from two sides: from the external world, in which the external forms of things are, and from the higher spiritual world, in which the deeper meaning, the actual essence of things, lies. The world of thought lives in the middle between the three lower and the three upper realms. Things are both above and below. Everything that is below and tends more or less towards the physical, corresponds to something above that represents the actual spiritual essence of the lower. The two sides of things cast their rays; and these rays meet in the human soul, which thus gives images of things in its thoughts, which receive their luminosity and color from two sides.

Just as it is true that thought reflects the truth because the truth of things illuminates it from two sides, it is also true that, in order to be fruitful, in order to have content, thought must be truly illuminated from two sides. We cannot recognize a plant through mere thought: we need sensory perception for that. Likewise, mere thinking is of little help if one wants to get to the essence of things, which lies in the spiritual. Thought must be illuminated from within, as it is illuminated from without, through the sensory properties of things. People who are up to these things have called this inner illumination enlightenment, inspiration or intuition. It is spiritual perception and the exact opposite of sensory perception. It is only through this that the true inner life of the human being in the higher sense begins. Through it, the soul sees into the spiritual world. And the sensual then appears to it as an external form of this spiritual one, not much more than the figure of a human being recreated in papier-mâché as compared to the real human being. The nature of illumination only becomes noticeable, however, in people who have particularly essential perceptions from the higher spiritual world; and only in them does one hear talk of illumination or inspiration. But it is not only present in them. A certain degree of it can be found in every human being. Something from the spiritual world dawns in every brain. It is just so weak in many cases that, compared to the vivid impressions of the outer world, it appears to many as nothing, as an illusion that only serves to make man understand in thought what the senses perceive.

The realm of life flows directly from the spirit. It carries within itself the germ of becoming separate. Individual life can arise within the All-life. One does not comprehend life if one does not grasp it in its universality and all-livingness. All wishing and desiring is still far from life. The living thing only becomes a separate current in the system of forces of the All. It does not force the other living things into its service. It does not desire or abhor. It takes only to give. It forms itself to give existence to other forms. It lives in transformation (metamorphosis). And it retains nothing, accumulates nothing in the intermediate stages of metamorphosis. Whatever is to be accumulated must arise from desire. Desires must form themselves around a center. Life does not challenge other living things. Desire creates a form that must be dissolved again. The realm of desires is the realm where the forms that gather around centers in this way influence each other. Where they interact. - In the realm of life, we only deal with individuals in a suggestive way; in the realm of desire, the individuals are distinct. Through his desires, man gives the realm of desires a touch that bears the character of his separate existence. Through his life, he gives only life, that is, he forms beings that bear nothing of his separate being, but only correspond to the general nature of life. The living person says only: man is there; and he also only produces men. The desiring human being says: “I, this individual, am here.” The realm into which this sound penetrates thus acquires the special coloration of this individual being. The individual is now here forever. Something has come into being that continues to have an effect. Even if I myself could be completely absent, annihilated, for a moment: I will encounter this effect of mine when I am back again. My new effect belongs to my old one. Both must influence each other.

It is now nature itself that has brought man so far that he animates the three lower realms from that of the thinking soul. Within the thinking soul slumber the parts, the inner cores of the soul, which man awakens in himself by working on himself, going beyond mere nature. Through this awakening, he continues the work of nature. He develops; and with this development, the processes of the three lower realms are brought into the corresponding connections with the higher ones. Into those that are predisposed in them by the fact that the life forms of the higher realms have assumed an external existence in the lower ones. Immediately below the realm of thoughts lies that of desire. An interplay between these two realms first takes place in man. Thoughts first serve desires. Desire can work as a blind force. The sensation arises that something gives pleasure, something else gives displeasure. Desire works according to pleasure.

Thus man can never be in the world without his own being, as he has created it for himself, staring at him. The individual cannot begin at one point of development. He must tie in with what he has previously brought into the world, starting from himself. Here we are looking at the ledger of life. We not only live our personal life within ourselves, within our personality, but we also live it outside of our personality. We can do this consciously or unconsciously. And we can do it more or less consciously. The intellectual person can only come to the general awareness that it is so: the intuitive person recognizes the items of his life book in detail. And they recognize them, looking both forward and back. Intuitive people speak of their calling, of their special mission. This is the result of looking forward. It is the realization of the special task that the All-Soul has assigned to them. As such realization opens up to them, the realization of the past also follows. They get to know the items that they entered earlier in their life account book. For they must bring both into harmony with each other. In another sense, what is later in development relates to what is earlier like the spirit to the forms in which it first lived itself out, revealed itself. What was earlier is the result of a confrontation between forces in different realms. These results are stored as effects. And what happens again can only be a new confrontation with these effects. Now two things can happen. The forces of desire aroused by the personality can have their center of gravity in this world of desire itself, and by giving the personality its character, not the other way around: the personality to them, this center of gravity can remain in the realm of desire. Or the personality can place the forces of desire in the service of the soul's inner life. They lose their center of gravity in the realm of desire and gain another in the superordinate realm. But in doing so, they also lose the character of separateness that prevails in their realm. They no longer collide like strangers; they resonate together, because each individual, separate desire is given such a direction that it does not conflict with the others, but rather delivers a harmonious result with them. Diversity is generated in the realm of desire. Thus this realm acquires full content in itself. The next higher realm, the realm of thought, of the soul, would remain without content if it did not fill itself with the content that it draws from the lower realm. The desires are released from the bonds of their own realm by the forces of the higher realm. This is the course of evolution: the forces of a particular realm are given full expression. In doing so, they take on forms that are an external expression of the original forces. In this way, the first realm withdraws some of its forces. It releases them from itself, externalizes them. The remaining part becomes even more inward, even more spiritual than the original was. This inward part now spiritualizes, as a soul, the form that it previously separated from itself, as a center. Thus what was previously a unity becomes a duality, and the two members of the duality work together. They produce a third. The third is a repetition of the first, only the two members, which were still undivided in the first, are divided and their unity now consists in their harmonious interaction. There are two kinds of unity: one in which the members are not yet separated and therefore work from a common center, and the other in which the members are separated and the unity therefore consists in the harmonious interaction of the separated.

The external experience that man has through the application of his senses and his mind is a school for the higher development of man. He learns the regular use of thought from it. External events constantly correct our thoughts when they take the wrong direction. The upheavals in the world of thought are as much proof of this as everyday experiences. If I see a black object in the distance and mistake it for a cat, then coming closer can teach me that I am only dealing with a balled-up piece of cloth. This is a common example of how the outside world regulates thought. The correction that Copernicus made to the thinking of his predecessors regarding the course of the stars is an example of the same in the great historical life of thought. The things of the inner life do not seem so compelling on the thought. The thought must already be completely clear with itself if it is to absorb the spiritual content in the same way as it absorbs the content of external perception. He must not make any mistakes, because it depends on his self-established correctness whether he can see the spiritual in the right context. The spiritual content needs consciousness as its mature vehicle. Consciousness must therefore work correctly if the spiritual content is not to be distorted. Even though the sensual is transitory and changing, it teaches man the forms of thought. And with these thought-forms he can then comprehend the eternal. These same thoughts belong both to the temporal and the eternal. But as a personal being, man himself belongs to the temporal. He is related to the temporal. He can rise to the Eternal only by taking his starting-point from the temporal. He must learn to think in terms of the temporal. When he has thus acquired the laws of the temporal in the right way, they will be his guide on the soil from which the fruits of the Eternal grow. Man must first think surely, clearly and aright, then he can unlock his thoughts to higher illumination. If he tries to do so earlier, he is like a child who wants to climb a mountain before he has learned to walk. First one learns to read and to calculate, and then one applies reading and calculating in order to comprehend the truths of the sciences. Likewise, one first learns to think in the temporal; then one applies this thinking to the processes in the eternal. One will only make uncertain steps if one ventures into the field of the eternal before one has acquired the prerequisites for doing so. The most important of these prerequisites is to develop, through careful observation of reality, a thinking that flows in a proper way; and with this, an uninhibited, free opening up of oneself to the higher contents of the world with this thinking.

Thoughts take physical form in the human being. Its existence is conditioned by the physical laws that govern the brain and nervous system. But it also comes into its own in different ways in its own realm. Just as it can be applied to external things and also to the individual processes of the inner spiritual life, it is not original. Take the thought of a tree, for example, an oak tree. In the moment when we stand in front of the oak tree, it is a very specific thought image of this very oak tree. In the realm of thought itself, we rise from this particular image to a much more general one. We arrive at a mental image of an oak tree that does not really exist anywhere in detail, and yet it is a lawful thought form. This thought form is in turn connected with others. And when we survey our field of thought, we see that everything in it is connected in a lawful, inner way. This life of thought is the shadow image of the true higher life, in which everything is unity, inner harmony of being. Thought is the image of the super-thought. The super-thought is the creative essence. We merge with it when we transcend thought. From it comes our enlightenment, our inspiration. In it we live and move and have our being. When we rise to this region, we experience what we otherwise merely think. We move in entities that have life as in the human world the physical entities. Only then are these entities not governed by the limiting laws to which physical entities are subject. And the formless thoughts, the exalted images, which do not yet bear the reflection of the lower spheres, are the language that these entities speak to man. These entities themselves, and with them the human souls, are hidden as if behind a wall. We perceive the language - the exalted thoughts; the entities themselves and we with them move and we behind this wall. But it is their power that speaks to us, and it is our power that listens to the speaking. When this happens to us, then our ear listens to the divine message that tells us about the essence of things; then our heart clings to the heart of the world and, while the ear listens, perceives the pulse of the eternal. Space and time cease to have meaning in such moments: What the human being hears applies to many times and many spaces. These are the defining moments of life, in which the human being thus feels at the heart of the eternal; and it is a high stage of development of the human being when he makes such hearing and feeling his whole being. Then the impressions of the lower worlds cease to have any significance for him; they are only small nuances of color and tone in the eternal picture that unfolds before his mind's eye. The small lines of life intertwine as insignificant tendrils with the eternal lines that entwine across time and space and express the laws of the cosmos in eternal harmony.

Every event in the physical world is simultaneously an event in other spheres of the world. When I stretch out my hand, not only the physical process that I see with my eyes takes place, but at the same time a process takes place in the world of desires and another in the world of thoughts; not to mention the other worlds in which the corresponding processes also occur. The human soul dwelling in the physical body perceives only the physical process in its immediate form: of the other processes, it perceives only a kind of silhouette, a reflection that falls on this physical one from the other worlds. Only beings who spend their existence in the corresponding worlds can perceive the processes in these worlds as directly and in their original form as the physical person perceives physical existence. Our physical eyes see physical things; eyes that are made only of desire substance could perceive desires as physical eyes perceive flowers. And before a pure eye of thought, thoughts pass by as they do before human eyes, tables and cupboards. Those who cannot awaken a true feeling for these hidden worlds within themselves will not come to an understanding of what real human development means. Above the physical world lies the life world; and above that, the realm of desire: the place of wishes. Compared to physical matter, everything in this sphere is more subtle and fleeting. Of course, the laws of physics do not apply to this realm. Two beings of the same kind can be in one place, and distant things do not appear foreshortened as they do in the physical world. Colors are not opaque, as they are in the physical realm. They are opaque only because they appear on the opaque physical substance as its boundary. When this realm begins to reveal itself to man, he begins to realize how little he knows about the things of the world without knowledge of the same. How little he knows, above all, about himself and his fellow human beings. What man is otherwise able to keep locked in his bosom, his desires and feelings, his passions and temperament, in short, the whole world of his desires, reveals itself as a second organism in which the physical one is embedded, and which does not appear to the physical eye as color appears to the color-blind eye. The physical body alone can hide the world of feeling from the physical eye; it cannot do so from the eye that sees the organic cloud of desire in which the physical nature is embedded. Man's emotional life becomes an open book to this eye. Just as man spreads out his hands in the lower realm and thereby changes his form, so he sends out mobile rays when he has a desire. And just as his hand grasps a physical object, so the rays of his desires intertwine with the worlds that meet them in the realm of desires. Not hard as in physical space, desires collide in the space of desires; but they flow into each other, mix and mingle, and create complicated desire-forms, somewhat similar to how composite substances arise from simple ones in the physical world. Two people sit together. Their desire-rays flow into each other continuously. And when they leave the place, they have given existence to a being that now has an independent existence in the world of desire. No one can enter a place without leaving behind traces of their desires and feelings. And for our own being of desire, it matters who has entered the place before we do. We always, so to speak, lie down in the bed that our predecessor has prepared for us. People who have developed their sensitivity in this direction know this. And those who have not developed such sensitivity have no idea what others sometimes go through due to influences that are completely unknown to them. But such influences do not only emanate from people. In the world of desire, the receptive person encounters currents that were not previously at home in the physical world and that can only become so through him. He encounters the actual beings of desire that have no physical form. Almost all people are exposed to such encounters, but many are not aware of them. One must realize that much of what lives in the physical has its origin in the sphere of desire, and we just do not see the intrusion of their entities. For those who can perceive in this direction, much becomes evident in terms of its origins, of which the ordinary person sees only the effects. Man is almost always surrounded by extra-physical influences. The joker who tickles the funny bones of those around him is surrounded by a host of beings of desire and covetousness, who point his stories in the right direction. One sees the effect, but not the origin. Only pure intellectual beings lack this fleeting environment. A colorless cloud hovers around them, keeping out any influence from outside.

Man, realizing that he lives in such a world, cannot remain without an expansion of his outlook on life. His sense of duty and responsibility must undergo a significant broadening. Without such realization, he may believe that his “inner world” belongs to him alone, and that he is only responsible to physical realities. This will change when the third eye awakens. An ethic of desire will be added to his ethic of action. Just as he will deny himself actions that cause harm to the environment, so he will also deny himself desires and longings that must have an unfavorable effect on their realm. He will recognize duties in his heart just as he recognizes duties in the outside world and allows himself to be guided by the rules that can serve the prosperous coexistence of people.

The emotional life of a person who recognizes no higher duties is chaotic and disorderly. It is increasingly seized by noble harmony in those who grasp such a world of duties. Man then fits into the world quite differently. The chaotically surging feelings and passions are something fleeting and insubstantial, because they mutually cancel and destroy each other. Those who waste their feelings today in any direction, on any event, and tomorrow on something else, repeatedly destroy the results of their existence. Those who keep their feelings in strict harmony with each other shape their lives into a whole, which can therefore also be integrated as a whole into the world of desires. A chaotic life flows into the general world of desires like a dirty stream into the sea; one can still see the direction in which the dirt is moving, polluting the sea. A pure river flows into the sea and is absorbed into it without affecting its purity. And just as the sea must gradually overcome the dirt of the stream, so the world of desires must overcome the emotionally impure effects of life. A higher degree of human development brings consciousness to the way a person acts on the world of desires. What otherwise happens unconsciously and therefore completely randomly and arbitrarily, is then brought up into consciousness. Those who are able to do this will no longer desire unconsciously, just as the consciously aware human being acts consciously and not like an automaton in the physical world. Just as we commit harmful acts during our physical lives if we do not know the rules of action that lead to good, so too can we produce harmful effects in the realm of desire; and those who are completely unconscious of this realm become its playthings. The great religious founders of all times endeavored to give people rules for their inner life, so that their feelings and perceptions could become a harmonious link in the realm of desire: so that they would not work as troublemakers in this realm, but as members of its great whole. It is therefore only natural and understandable that such religious founders gave rules not only for external action, but also for the emotional life. How pleasure and pain should affect the heart, how renunciation and love are to be esteemed: these are the things that religious founders speak about, and those teachers of religion and wisdom who know something of the higher worlds. In the great, glorious song of human perfection, in the “Bhagavad-Gita,” one reads: “Respect pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory or defeat equally. Gird yourself for battle, and you will not fall into sin.” Or in another place: ‘It is the desire, the will, the strength that springs from passion. Get to know this all-consuming and devastating enemy.’ Such ethical principles do not refer to external action; they refer to the behavior of man in the world, where desires, longings, and cravings live. And the more a person delves into the depths of the soul, the more he is able to develop the ethics of the world of desires. The mystics of all times have worked on these ethics.

The human soul belongs to an even broader realm than that of desires. It is the realm of thoughts. It is through this that man can truly snatch himself from the temporal and attach himself to the eternal. Thought is the most comprehensive element in man's being. But it also depends on man himself what he makes of the thought with which he lives. He can make it a servant of his desires and cravings; or he can use it to rise to the eternal laws or essences of things. While the beings of the desire realm surround the human being as if arbitrarily, as if they were only loosely connected, forming a unified realm, the world of thought appears as a well-planned, strictly regulated whole. Each link serves the other in a precisely defined way. The desire beings therefore place us in a small circle, the thoughts in a large one. And what lives in us from the world of thoughts forms a far more enduring core of our being than our desire organism. Just as our physical organism is embedded in the desire organism, so are both, the physical and the desire organism, embedded in our thought organism. And when the eye of thought opens, the thought organism can be recognized. It presents itself differently from the desire organism. This is something fluid and flowing, and only becomes more stable at higher levels of human development. The thought organism has a characteristic basic structure. Although the thought rays emanating from a person are variable, usually changing from moment to moment, a certain skeletal structure is always re-established, and this retains certain basic features from birth to death. It is, as it were, the keynote of the personality. This keynote also forms the center from which thought-effects of a certain nature always go out into the thought-environment, and upon which they impinge from without. Through this world of his thoughts man is a participant in a realm in which the effects go far beyond what is possible in the physical world and also in the world of desire. Through his thoughts the beings of this kingdom speak to him. They speak to him more definitely, more gravely, more inwardly than the beings of the desires. The effects that extend from the thought part of man into the thought environment are also accordingly. Now man can let his thoughts be influenced by his desires. He can use his thoughts to best satisfy these desires. Instead of freeing himself from the fetters of desires and passions through the elevating power of thought, he can make thought the servant of those lower forces. The result is an enrichment and intensification of the world of desire through thought. The world of desires is peopled with beings from the Thought Kingdom, whereas, on the contrary, the beings living in him should be liberated. Thus the world of separate existence is fostered. The beings that arise in this way retard the true progress of cosmic evolution. Conversely, he furthers this evolution when the creatures of the world of desire are seized by the power of thought and led to higher goals. Wishes and desires do not cease to be what they are, But they acquire a character that strives towards the goals of the world of thought. People who ennoble their desires in this way, through an idealistic direction of their being, present themselves to the seer in such a way that their desire organism is in beautiful harmony with their own thoughts and these in turn are in harmony with the cosmic world thoughts. Such a person lives harmoniously in the universe of the cosmic system to which he belongs. His wishes advance this system and his thoughts become helpers for the beings of thought that govern this system. A person has reached a higher level of development when nothing more of subordinate wishes and desires disturbs this harmony. A personality in whom this is the case can be the carrier of a being of thought, whose work is in complete harmony with the cosmic powers of will. In this case it is no longer the world of thoughts of the individual personality that speaks, but an all-embracing, superior entity. It then bears the body, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the beings to whom it has to communicate. For in what it has to think and will, nothing flows in of what the personality as such has to desire, to long for and to will. Everything their will is directed towards remains within the sphere of thought. Such beings have reached a summit of humanity. They have ascended to a level that those of a lower standing can perhaps attain through special efforts for a few supreme moments of stability in life. And when they have such moments, they encounter the traces of those highly developed beings whose power comes to meet them for their own further development. It must be man's highest aspiration to meet such traces of beings who have completely withdrawn from the physical and also the desire spheres, and who only embody themselves in human bodies because they are to be teachers of others; and because these others can only understand them when they speak to them with human lips, with a human tongue. For themselves, these beings represent a higher state of incarnation, which hovers over man like an ideal to which he should aspire. But only those who have matured to hear the language of thought, which speaks not of temporal but of lasting processes, can hear the voice of such personalities. To such a person they then impart the higher teaching in wisdom and make him acquainted with the far-reaching purposes of the Cosmos, in which he then learns to cooperate. The higher mystical teaching takes place entirely in this region. And all lower teaching is a preparation for this higher teaching.

The human soul has its own definite place in this realm. Through this place, it is a citizen of its cosmos. And its task is to gather from the lower realms that which is to be carried up from them into this higher realm. But all this must first be purified before it can fulfill its task here. As the blacksmith works the raw iron from nature into the appropriate forms, so the soul takes the raw passions and desires and forms them, purifying them, so that they can be integrated into the element of the world of thought. The human soul has descended from this higher realm to gather the honey of the spirit from the lower realms and return laden with it to its original home. In a state of innocence it was when it began its descent. In a state of purification it will be when it returns. It is an egg before its descent, which carries the germ of its later being within itself. This egg reveals itself gradually, the being with all its organic limbs reveals itself. And these limbs are related to the realms into which the being will be placed on its journey of development. It uses these limbs where their corresponding realm is; and it leaves the characteristics of these realms where they have their element. But it takes with it the results, the experiences. The task of man consists in filling his thought-germ with the honey that can be gathered in the three lower realms. Every train of thought can be such a gathering of honey. Thus, in man, the upper world argues with the lower world. This argument is threefold. The first takes place in the realm of desire. The desire is ensouled. The passions and desires take on an upward tendency. One can observe this tendency in people who have a leaning towards ideals. Their passions turn from passing, changing goals to lasting ideals. What takes place in them is only a shadow of a process that takes place in the purely spiritual, mental realm. Every time an ideal passion develops in a human being, their cosmos has received a jolt forward; an innocent thought-being has taken shape and body, has become in the true sense of the word. It has now become a link in the progressive development in the cosmos, whose power cannot disappear again. It can be taken up again by even higher realms; but its power does not fade in them. When the human being has gained the ability to carry the honey of the realm of desire upwards, he can descend to the actual realm of life. He now purifies the growth forces of his nature. In doing so, he reaches beyond himself as a personality. In a much more general sense than before, he now becomes a co-worker with the cosmos. Just as the plant, unlike the animal, does not desire or abhor anything for itself, but absorbs the substances of its environment in calm serenity in order to pass them on selflessly in growth and reproduction, so at this stage the human being makes himself a transitional being and a helper of the spiritual-cosmic forces of growth. A high level of human development has thus been reached. Man gives more than his body to higher powers than his desire could give. If he previously only hewed the stones to build the cosmic building, he is now working on the building plan itself. He has become a disciple (chela) of cosmic beings. He not only knows what is to be carried from the lower realms into the higher ones: he also knows how the details are to be fitted together. At this stage of development everything becomes clear, transparent and plastic. Space and time have not yet entirely lost their significance, but they have become mobile and their limiting and inhibiting power has dissolved. Now there is only one step left to be taken in the realm of thought. This step leads the various lines of force of the cosmos back to their centers. Man no longer learns only the plan; he learns the intentions of the whole structure. The basis, the framework of his cosmos is revealed to him. He now knows what holds and carries this cosmos of his. The level of mastery has been reached. A master being wills and acts out of the intentions of the cosmic system to which he belongs. These intentions are a great mystery to beings at lower levels of evolution; they are even a great mystery to disciples: the cosmic mysteries. Until now, all those who know something of such a world have often hinted at such degrees of development in isolated passages of their writings. These indications are subtle, but comprehensible to him who has an inkling of higher worlds. Read in Goethe: “In nature, not only the events, but above all the intentions are worthy of attention.”

Through his development, the human being increasingly shapes his will in the direction of the cosmic plan. As long as he only integrates the building blocks of the body of desire into this plan, it will not be able to depend on him for what he accomplishes. The plan of the whole hovers over him, and how he and his actions fit into this plan: he feels this as a commandment given from outside. He must submit to this law. This is how the idealistically minded person feels. To integrate his actions into the harmony of the whole is a sacred commandment for him: an ideal. What he accomplishes, he accomplishes out of duty. If he reaches the next higher level and thus becomes acquainted with the plan, then it becomes self-evident to him that he should proceed in a certain way in each individual case and not otherwise. He not only feels a commandment, a duty; he regards it as senseless to act differently. For it would awaken his disgust, which would arise if he did not act in the sense and direction of this plan. So with increasing knowledge, certainty grows in the behavior of the human being: He does what he is supposed to do out of inclination for the deed: He acts out of love. This is the way the disciple relates to his actions. However, this level must first be acquired. Anyone who believes that they are allowed to act out of love without the necessary level of knowledge will only act in the sense of their particular existence instead of in the sense and direction of their cosmos. And the interests of this particular existence do not necessarily have to coincide with the direction of the will of their cosmos. The right to act out of love must first be acquired through insight and wisdom. The Master reaches an even higher level in this respect as well. He fulfills the intentions of his Cosmos. He does not stand outside of these intentions, but within them. They are his. The idealist is driven by duty, the chela by love; he is driven by nothing, he only realizes his own nature in reality. The Master has arrived at acting out of freedom. It is quite erroneous to argue whether man is free or not. He is neither free nor unfree at any stage of development prior to the highest realm of thought; he is on the path of development toward freedom. Only the Master is completely free. Thus are the stages of man: that of the purification of the passions or that of the intuitive idealist, who forms the building blocks of the world of thought; that of recognizing the plan, working on this plan out of knowledge of it, or the stage of the disciple (Chelas); and finally, the realization of the intentions of the cosmos, the becoming one with the plan of this cosmos, or the stage of mastery. The idealist acts out of duty: he obeys a should. The disciple acts out of love, he realizes his will; the master acts in freedom, he lives out his essence.

Man rises to the Cosmos in insight and wisdom. This wisdom was originally in the Cosmos. Through knowledge, man comes to know the Cosmos, because the Cosmos is formed through knowledge. The knowledge laid in the Cosmos draws the human soul towards itself and becomes one with it. Therefore, everything the human soul does in this direction is a cosmic process. Man, at the lower and middle levels of his development, does not see it as cosmic because he does not see the process itself, but its shadow image, projection, as it can only be given by the brain consciousness. What appears to be taking place within the walls of the skull is not the real process. It is to this as the silhouettes on the wall are to the real people. In reality, the action that takes place there goes through the entire sphere of the world of thought and shakes the whole cosmos. When I move my hand, the eye sees a process of the physical realm in the hand movement. It appears directly in its true form. Even an emotion or passion no longer appears to a physical being in its true form, but in its effect, in its shadow image in the physical world. And this is even less the case with a process in which thought is involved. — Thus, what a person recognizes is limited by his or her respective stage of development, and accordingly, his or her will must also be determined in the same direction. In reality, the human being is always fully present. The original egg contains the whole human being, as formed within the sphere of thought. But this whole human being is only gradually revealed to himself. And he is basically only real to himself to the extent that he reveals himself. He acts out of the essence of his nature only to the extent that he has brought this essence into existence in the lower realms. This essence itself is as a force behind what is obvious to him. From the unknown, it shapes his activities. A being with senses for the higher forms of existence would be able to see what man can only recognize in his shadowy effects in the physical realm. Man thinks, but he does not see his thoughts; he feels, but he does not see his feelings. His consciousness encompasses only a part of his sphere of activity, which is the content of his being. Development proceeds in such a way that ever higher parts of this sphere of activity enter the field of consciousness. And with that, more and more is also done with consciousness; this changes the whole character of the activity. What a person accomplishes consciously is different from what goes on within him without him knowing how it is accomplished. His development thus consists in transforming the unconscious parts of his being into conscious ones. By attaining the higher degrees of consciousness, man also automatically attains the higher degrees in relation to his actions. Only those who unconsciously follow their desires are carried away by them to the wrong things: Those whose minds are awakened in the sphere of desire see what a feeling they harbor in this sphere can accomplish. It is only natural that they then shape their feelings accordingly. And to an even greater degree, this is the case with those who have become enlightened in the realm of thought. His cosmos becomes different for him than it is for the mere thinking person. Just as when someone steps out of a dark room, in which he constantly bumps into chairs and tables, into one brightly lit with intense light, so the life of the mere thinking person is transformed into that of the seeing-thinking person.

And with the awakening of the power of vision in the world of thought, all the essential influences that constantly surround man and of which he knows nothing without this power of vision, become manifest at the same time. To the uninitiated, the effects that flow to him from this sphere remain inexplicable because the causes are not apparent to him. The seer therefore speaks of the gods of the sphere of thought, of such entities that can only be perceived by him because they do not embody themselves down to the physical plane of existence; the outer shell they wear is a garment of thought, and this is related to them as man's physical body is related to man himself. Thus the seer understands the reason for what is often called the sudden appearance of a thought, an instantaneous enlightenment. At that moment a being from the sphere of thought whispers a truth to a person who is receptive to it. The person does not need to know more than that a certain thought has suddenly occurred: the seer sees behind the scenes of the cosmic stage and it is clear to him that a being floating in the sphere of thought is hovering around the person. The one who gains the ability to see into the world of thought enters a richly populated realm, a realm in which all physical experience is initially poor. However, it gains a new richness for the one who sees. For what he experiences in the higher sphere is woven into the physical one and infinitely elevates, beautifies and ennobles its existence. And contact with the beings of thought also reveals much about the physical and the world of desire, which must remain hidden within these themselves. Those who only know physical contact will naturally consider what is being spoken of here to be a figment of the imagination. From their point of view, they are right. He is only wrong in regarding his point of view as the only correct one and making no effort to reach a higher one. He will then also consider dealing with the thought beings to be a highly superfluous activity and talk about this contact to be something harmful that only distracts people from pursuing their real, practical goals.

Just as man's original egg derives its character from the realm of thought, so it also brings up the results of the three lower realms as their lasting legacy in the realm of thought. In this respect, everything that happens through man in the realm of thought is the cause of effects; and man has, so to speak, buried the fruits of his activity in the three realms in the realm of thought, his home. Only that which remains for the individual egg body as the fruit of its pilgrimage through the spheres of physical, life and desire can truly be the result of human development. This egg body is the permanent element in the changing phenomena that pass by the human being: but it is also the keeper of the lasting results: the carrier of all fruits. But only that which can really take on a lasting character is imprinted on this body. That which has only a temporary value dissipates as a wave in the physical or desire realm without leaving a trace in the lasting. For example, consider the development of a person at a fairly subordinate level. Such a person follows his desires and passions according to the strengths and characteristics they have. Only after a long period of time do thoughts arise from these desires and passions that are worth keeping. Thus, the thought core slowly forms within the various shells. When a person has reached the end of a lifetime, he will find himself in the following situation. The physical body is no longer able to maintain the cohesion of its parts through its own powers. It decays. This means nothing other than He steps out of the current in which he was absorbed by the human being and passes into the general physical realm. The parts of life and desire are equally temporary. They too must find the transition to the spheres to which they belong. Ultimately, however, something of the human being remains: the experiences, fruits, and results from the three realms during life, embedded in his original individual egg body. The cohesion of these results can no longer be destroyed. It is a link in the realm of thought of the cosmos to which the human being belonged. Is his task now exhausted and will he now have his entire continued existence in this realm of thought? One could believe this if the contemplation of the cosmos did not immediately reveal this further task. Within this cosmos, we see the permanent body continuing to evolve and descending again and again into the lower realms. The results of a previous life are increased, enriched and strengthened in subsequent lives. Human personalities with the most diverse degrees of development live on earth. This could not be the case if a single original, individual egg of a similar nature were embodied in each personality. But such would have to embody itself if the embodied one came directly from the pure realm of thought. The original thought-germ does not release from itself different perfections, but only equally perfect, i.e. innocent, original individuals. All diversity stems from the diversity of experiences during the passage through the three realms. If one wants to search for the reasons why a person has this or that disposition, one must not look for these reasons in the lofty realms of the realm of thought, but in life within the lower three realms. One personality becomes different from another because the individual bodies descending into the lower realms belong to different degrees of development, i.e., because they already have different life experiences. A life is therefore not explainable from itself. It only becomes comprehensible when it is understood as a repetition of other lives belonging to it. This law of repetition is found throughout nature. And just as it is found in the human kingdom, it is only a repetition of a law also present in the plant and animal kingdoms at a higher level.

Man advances further on his path of development by increasingly determining the goal and direction of his being himself. In the early stages, nature guides man according to its principles. The more the element of thought develops, the more man's self-activity also grows. For his original being is taken from the realm of thought. The more this moves in the realm from which it itself originates, the freer and more unveiled it becomes itself. Now, progress on this path to freedom involves working on certain qualities in the human being. The human being who reaches the stage where he develops his element of thinking more and more as a permanent element has certain qualities that must undergo a complete transformation if he is to achieve higher development. —

The first quality to be developed is determined by the very nature of higher development. This is a continuous ascent of life from the changing and the fleeting to the abiding and the lasting. The cognitive faculty must thereby acquire, to an ever-higher degree, the ability to recognize the lasting in the changing, to draw the fruits from the fleeting in order to carry them forward into the realm of the spirit. Every moment of life and every random thing can be used to develop this quality. For there are exactly two things to be distinguished in every thing: something fleeting and something lasting. We do not need to distinguish between the two as if there were a fixed boundary between them. That is not the case. Rather, they merge into one another without such a fixed boundary. The fleeting is more or less fleeting; the lasting is more or less lasting. Nor can one speak of the lasting as of something “eternal”. Eternal is the last thing to which one can arrive; what is below this “eternal” lasts longer than many a changing thing in the stream of time. But in the end, even the stream of time falls under such permanence and allows only its fruits to enter as links into a still higher, still more enduring realm. By developing this sense for the permanent, man's whole character is changed. And consequently, he seeks to overcome the changing, the temporary, everywhere. His striving takes the direction of the conceptual. What previously seemed particularly full of life and desirable becomes worthless to him, and what previously seemed empty and abstract gains meaningful life. If he previously only wanted the thought in order to get to know an external thing through it, now the external thing is nothing more than the cause of this or that thought. He seeks the thoughts for their own sake, and everything else for the sake of the thoughts. Whoever attains this perfection in his cognitive faculty will, as a result, change his emotional world all by himself. He can no longer attach his feelings to the transitory, since the lasting opens up to him everywhere. The change that takes place in a person as this second character trait develops in him can be seen in a transition of his entire being from small to large lines. He will give his actions a typical character, a certain lawful imprint. There will be constant currents of his will running through the small tasks of the day. More and more, a person who acquires these two basic traits, the ability to distinguish and character type, will distance himself from the passing interests that hold others captive. Something significant, weighty and fruitful takes possession of his thoughts and actions. Through the content of his thoughts and the motives of his actions, he himself becomes a significant link in the realm of thoughts. Once there, in order to develop further, man must cultivate certain further qualities. The realm of thoughts does not bear the one-sided, rigid, immovable basic trait that the physical and the realm of desires also have. Everything in the realm of thoughts is all-encompassing. A tree is by itself a single entity. In this sense, a thought is not by itself. It is connected with other thoughts and ultimately forms a link in the whole world of thoughts in such a way that it can only be fully understood if one understands the whole world of thoughts. The life in thoughts requires that one is aware that a thought must be illuminated by the other. “I am free” is a thought. In a certain sense, it applies to the ego. But the sentence “I am unfree” also applies. Only if one grasps both sentences and illuminates them with each other does one obtain the life that they determine in the world of thought. It should [manuscript breaks off]

On the development of the German world view in the present day

As one of the greatest tragedies of the soul, Nietzsche's intellectual life presents itself in the development of humanity in terms of intellectual culture in the last third of the nineteenth century and shines not only through the nature of its course, but above all through its very special relation to much that lives spiritually in the present, shining over into the immediate present.

In the lectures I had the honor of giving during the winter, I tried to characterize German intellectual life from various points of view in the period that can be called the great age of German idealism, the period in which a Fichte, a Schelling, and a Hegel, among others, emerged from the depths of the human soul, and perhaps one can say, even more from the depths of the soul's strong forces, to world picture that is really a kind of background to that tremendous flowering of modern intellectual life that is revealed in Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller and the others who belong to them. In one of the last lectures, I then tried to show how the tone of German intellectual life, struck by these great minds, has lived on to our days, but one can say: it has lived on more under the surface of the popularized intellectual life, so that in many ways it has appeared to us as a sound that has faded away, as a forgotten striving within the German intellectual development of the nineteenth century and into the present.

And indeed, anyone who looks at the huge break that occurred around the middle of the nineteenth century in Central European cultural life can easily understand why the character of the time more or less just faded away unnoticed. It was out of an intellectual and intellectually related power of mind that German intellectual life at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the first third of the nineteenth century, sought to penetrate into the depths of the secrets of the world through the aforementioned minds. And we shall not be doing Hegel an injustice if we take a little time to consider what was in his consciousness: that he had succeeded in driving the development of human thought so far that a supreme goal had been achieved within this development of human thought. And the turning point just mentioned shows us how, after the first third of the nineteenth century, thinking, the intellectual life in particular, was brought to the point where, one might say, a kind of rest, a kind of breathing space, became necessary. Only minds that could approach their intellectual work with the same energy as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel could occupy themselves with the innermost and, if the word is not misunderstood, one can say, most abstract powers of the soul so intensely and powerfully. And one could not sustain the long breath that was necessary for that breadth of an idealistic worldview. The consequence of this was that a paralysis set in which, with regard to all that these very minds sought in the highest, testifies to a certain lack of understanding, one might say, to a certain paralysis, even today. As high as thinking, feeling and the purely spiritual will, which is directed not towards the external but towards the life of the soul itself, rose with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, it was not possible to rise in the culture as a whole. The reality value in this striving could not be felt consistently. But it was felt that reality should be sought through this striving. And, as a continuation of this striving, a thirst arose for reality, a thirst for that on which man can stand firmly. This was expressed in the fact that one initially entered into a sharp opposition to all that the above-mentioned spirits had created. In their abstract trains of thought one could not find the reality for which one thirsted. And so it came about that the thirst for reality wanted above all to be satisfied by what the outer senses offered, that the human spirit wanted to penetrate first into all that the strict, safe natural science could establish, which was limited to the senses and the mind bound to the human brain, as a world view.

The leading spirit, by whose contemplation one can almost see what was at stake in this turning-point in modern spiritual life, is Feuerbach. One need only characterize a few thoughts of his world-view to see what is at stake. Feuerbach started precisely from Hegel. He started from the idealistic conception of the world which the German mind has created. But the living soul of Feuerbach was confronted with the question: What is all that a Hegel has been striving for? What can be found on the path that runs in such abstracted thought movements? There is nothing to be found that leads to the spirit itself. Everything that can be found on this path about the spiritual world is nothing more than what the soul creates out of itself, what the human soul finds within itself on the basis of the reality of the body, what it penetrates to. All that it has created, it projects out into the world, so to speak; that becomes its spiritual world. And so, out of the thirst for reality, a placing of the human being in the world-view picture arises, just as he is directly in the sense world. One wanted to take the human being as a whole human being, but precisely for that reason one had to omit from what one saw as reality what arose on the path of this spiritual life. And so man's attention was directed to how he presents himself within the realm that could now be called reality, the realm of the senses and what the brain-bound mind could make of this realm of the senses.

How did man stand before himself with such a world view? Man stood before himself in such a way that he could know: A spiritual world is opening up in you, a world is opening up in you that you must not miss if you want to partake of true human dignity. Something lives in you that must go far, far beyond nature. But how could man come to terms with what he had to bring forth within himself, to create within himself, and what could not appear to him as reality in the sense of the natural existence? This question, translated into the realm of feeling, forms, one might say, a crucial nerve of the entire world-view striving in the second half of the nineteenth century, indeed, into our own days. The human being who cannot justify himself to himself with what he produces spiritually: that became the great question, that became the anxious riddle of life, not so much in this formulation in which I express it, but in the sensations and feelings in which it pushed its way up from the depths of precisely the most striving souls.

And the spirits that emerged in the nineteenth century, which had to raise questions of world view and could not bring themselves to that faded tone in German intellectual life, as mentioned a few weeks ago, initially faced this very characterization of the life-question, world-view question in this way. It is as if for a time the strong forces could not be found among the leading exponents of the world view, in order to find anything at all that could provide an answer to the questions that have just been described. A remarkable fact presents itself here. Those who are philosophers, leading philosophers, who attempt to construct a Weltanschhauung out of natural science, all of them feel, as it were, this powerlessness just described. And this powerlessness fundamentally permeates nineteenth-century philosophy.

In a strange way, the Feuerbach worldview, and with it everything that now set the tone, was confronted by a musician, a personality in whom abstract thinking did not live so much, who initially did not want to follow the usual path of abstract thinking in matters of worldview, in order to arrive at the solution of the world's riddles. A personality was confronted with Feuerbach's question who, in his deepest inner being, lived and worked musically and wanted to work in this way: Richard Wagner. It was in the forties when Richard Wagner grappled with Feuerbach's world view in his soul. Before Richard Wagner's soul, in which everything was alive musically, not in concepts, ideas and thoughts, stood the man whom one had placed at the center of the world view and who, for the reasons characterized earlier, was first and foremost a mere sensual man. But this man was confronted by a soul that was musically active. The musical element lives and moves in the sensual realm. But it cannot live and weave only in the sensual, unless it is grasped as in the soul of Richard Wagner. Here in the musical, the sensual itself works as a spiritual, it must work as a spiritual. For if we turn our senses to nature, wherever we want, what is in the truest sense of the word musical content cannot come to us directly from nature. Goethe says: Music is the purest form and content, for it has no actual model in nature, as the other arts do. And yet, it makes a complete impression on the mind; and everything that makes an impression on the mind is spiritual. Thus in music there is an element that cannot be attained by following the paths of mere observation of nature, that cannot be seen by the human being that Feuerbach placed in the image of nature. And yet, in the realm of music, there is an element that, to an extraordinary degree, accommodated the urge of the time for sensory perception and sensory comprehension. And since Richard Wagner's soul lived in the remarkable (one cannot say discord, but rather consonance), being entirely musical, but not as a philosopher's soul, but rather as a musical soul, a soul seeking knowledge, it could not be otherwise than that in Wagner's musical ideas, in Wagner's musical feelings, the questions mentioned played a role in a completely different way than they could have done in a philosopher's soul.

And another element was added. It would be fascinating to characterize in detail how this second element came to be in Richard Wagner's soul. But there is no time for that. I will only hint at what this second element is and how it was added to the first. A second element is added: the contemplation of what had been created out of the Germanic spirit and soul within Central Europe in the way of myths and of the permeation of life with the mythical. Gradually, a wonderful contrast emerged in Wagner's soul, which, as it appeared in Central Europe, is nowhere else present in the spiritual development of mankind. And recently it appeared in Richard Wagner's soul like a renewal of Germanic myth. There we have an intimate coexistence and interweaving of the human soul with all that is elemental in nature, a loving engagement precisely with the sensually alive. It is to the Teutonic view of nature that we are appealing in these words, to that view of nature which can only live in souls that feel no direct discord between the soul and the physical in human life, because they sense the soul in such a way that this soul not only lives within the human being, but is one with that which blows in the wind, works in the storm, in everything that lives and pulsates in nature as soul and, I would say, the human being himself, who can be experienced inwardly, experienced again outwardly. And in addition to this feeling, this recognizing feeling and feeling-recognizing of nature, which is contained as a basic drive in all the abilities of the Germanic people, there is also a looking up to a world of gods that is well known, that can of course be interpreted in a naturalistic way, but this interpretation is at least one-sided. This upward gaze to Wotan, this upward gaze to Donar, this upward gaze to Baldur, to the other Germanic gods and to all that is connected with these Germanic gods in Germanic myth, this upward is really what the spiritual man finds when he does not merely direct himself towards nature, but when he abandons himself to his own productivity, his creative power. This world of Germanic gods and heroes and heroic geniuses is full of life. But it is not exhausted if it is seen as mere symbolism of nature.

Now Richard Wagner had taken up the view that the human being initially appears to be an end of nature's creation. What the human being forms in terms of ideas about a higher world arises in the human being. According to the newer world view, as it has just emerged, no such reality can be ascribed to it as to sensory things. The anxious question arose in him: How can one even come to a creative process in human life? Nature creates. It creates through its various stages of being up to and including the human being. The human being becomes aware of himself. The human being experiences what he produces. It appears merely as something created by the human being, which has no value in terms of reality. How can we have confidence in what the human being creates within himself? How can one trust it so that it forms a basis for man not merely to place himself in nature as it has created him, but so that he can place himself in the creation with something valid?

A figure, a central figure, had to arise in Wagner's soul, who would place himself in nature in this way, but also, with all the powers that nature itself has given him, give himself strength, security, and the ability to develop beyond the natural existence. But Richard Wagner had to assume that when man creates from his inner being, he is in fact only projecting the images that his imagination has produced, adding a non-real realm to the real realm. What right does the human soul have to create something beyond nature? This question of feeling and emotion arose. What right is there, already in the existence of nature itself, in the blowing wind, in lightning and thunder, to sense spirituality and even more: to create a spiritual being above all of nature, as in Germanic mythology? How can one find a link between the two? Philosophy could not do it in those days, insofar as it was the prevailing philosophy. Richard Wagner's musical soul undertook it. It actually undertook it out of an urge that was at the same time a deeply characteristic trait of the newer Central European essence in general. How so? Yes, if you compare what Germanic myth, the Germanic way of penetrating into the natural world, is with what Greek myth, Greek penetration into natural life, was, then only an external observer can believe that the two are in the same field. Because that is not the case. Here too it would be interesting to probe into the deeper psychological underpinnings, but again, one can only characterize them with a few sketchy strokes.

The whole of Greek intellectual life is geared towards looking outwards and creating myths from the plastic forms that the soul undertakes with what is presented by the outside world, bringing the myth to life in forms, in plastic forms. The way the Greek feels and senses is how his feeling and sensing passes from his own being into the external world, flows fully into external existence. And so the wonderfully rounded plastic forms come into being, which live within Greek myth and then out of Greek myth in Greek art.

The same is not true of Germanic myth. Only with great difficulty can one dream such complete forms, such as the forms that live in Greek myth, the figures of gods and heroes of Greek myth, into Germanic myth. If one does this, then fundamentally Germanic myth becomes something quite different. If one wants to understand Germanic myth, one must be able to let that sense of humanity lovingly enter into the nature of things without bringing it to plastic form; one must let this essence rise up to the figures of the gods Wotan, Donar, Baldur and so on. And one must also refrain from creating fixed, rounded figures up there. If one really wants to live oneself into this myth, then everything must remain mobile, so only mobile sculpture can express plastic movement, which was actually alive in the Germanic souls. But how can one, then, when one enters into the essence of the matter itself, find a bond between what is felt in nature, what directly confronts one in the sensory world, and what is seen above as the world of the gods? One can only do it – and one only knows that one can do it when one has absorbed the basic nerve of Germanic myth in the right way – one can only do it through musical feeling. There is no way to find those currents that the soul must follow from Wotan down into the existence of nature, and again up from the existence of nature into the life and weaving of the gods in Valhalla – there is no other possibility than musical intuition, that musical intuition which in what it has before it has immediately an inwardness, has a spiritual element that is completely sensually realized.

And that is the fundamental difference between that great epoch of human development that we feel as Greek and that which we feel as Germanic. In Greek intellectual life, the I was not yet so alive, human self-awareness was not yet so developed as it was to develop within Germanic intellectual life and up into German intellectual life. The Greek lived with his entire soul life more outwardly. What is significant in the progress of humanity is that in addition to this Greek life outwardly, there is the inner grasping, the inner strengthening. But the inner life cannot be grasped in a formative way. If it is to be felt artistically, it must be felt in music, just as the Greek life must be felt in sculpture. And just as there is a transition from the more self-free way of the Greek world view to the ego-permeated way of the newer world view, there is a transition from sculptural creation to musical feeling in the progress of humanity.

That is the tremendously significant thing, that Richard Wagner was the personality who, not out of the arbitrariness of the soul, but out of the experience of what pulsated in time itself, could have as his personal experience precisely that which was the experience of time. The musical element, which therefore had to be in the world view, was felt by the thoroughly musical soul of Richard Wagner. And so it came about that Richard Wagner, entirely out of the need of the time, out of the deepest nerve of the spiritual life of the time, was able to connect the myth with the musical element. And what the ongoing philosophy could not be, could not express in words, concepts and ideas, was expressed in the musical element. There it is. And when we have to experience the philosophical, when we have to experience the purely intellectual like a fading sound, one is tempted to say: the musical enters through Richard Wagner in the second half of the nineteenth century, and this musical becomes a substitute for the path of knowledge, which is otherwise sought in a completely different way.

And now, as events of this kind are bound to occur in the life of man as an inner destiny, something else occurred for Richard Wagner. His acquaintance with Feuerbach remained somewhat unsatisfactory for Richard Wagner. On the one hand, his passion for music was strong enough to enable him to find what could not be found by pure reasoning, but on the other hand, as is inevitable in our modern times, he was also driven to consciously absorb what he was doing, to consciously create enlightenment for himself about the relationship between his artistic work, which he perceived as completely new, and the deepest world secrets of existence. And here Schopenhauer's philosophy came to his aid. It is not so important to consider this philosophy as it must be taken objectively, but rather to consider it as it affected Richard Wagner. This Schopenhauerian philosophy showed him that man, when he clings to his intellectuality, to his mere imagination, can never penetrate the secrets of existence. He must draw much deeper forces from the depths of his being if he wants to live together with the secrets of the world. Therefore, for Schopenhauer, everything that was merely intellectual, everything that lived only in thoughts, in concepts, in ideas, was something that not only produced mere images of existence, but that had to produce such mere images that actually only give a dream of existence. But if the soul really wants to grow together with reality, it must not merely think, it must draw deeper forces from its depths. And Schopenhauer found that if man really wants to recognize the forces of existence, he cannot grasp them in thought, in imagination, but that he must grasp them in the living will, in the weaving of the will, not in intellectuality. And further, Schopenhauer was able to show how all that is valuable in the individual human being comes out of this element of will: all that is ingenious, all that is devotion and willingness to sacrifice for the world, yes, even compassion itself, which permeates everything moral. All this is connected with deeper forces than mere intellectuality. In short, man must go beyond the merely pictorial, the life of imagination, and connect himself with that in which the thirst for reality, of which we have spoken, can be more fully satisfied than in mere intellectuality, which is bound up with the physical life of the brain. But in what the will experiences, Schopenhauer not only found the center of the human personality, but in it he also found the center of all real art. All other arts, Schopenhauer imagines, must take the representations out of the will, must shape the images. There is only one art that does not become an image, but that is able to reveal the will directly to the outside world, as it reveals itself within man, and that is music. For Schopenhauer, musical art thus takes center stage in the whole of modern artistic life, and through this, one can also say that Schopenhauer senses something of the primal musical character of all true world-view striving. And even if one does not want to or perhaps cannot accept Schopenhauer's ideas, one must recognize in what Schopenhauer unconsciously felt about human will and its connection with the musical, something that in turn is most intimately connected with the lifeblood of intellectual life in modern times.

How must Richard Wagner, with his profoundly musical soul, have felt about a world view like Schopenhauer's, which showed him what music actually means in the overall world life? Did he not basically have before him in music that of which he had to say: however the scientific world view may shape itself, the fact of music will never be made clear or explainable in human nature by the scientific world view. Where man becomes musical, the spirit reigns in man, and yet there is no need to go into an abstract intellectuality, into abstract concepts, into a mere world of ideas, but one remains within the realm of the obvious. And the urge arose in Richard Wagner to now shape the music itself in such a way that he could feel it to be fulfilling, so to speak, such an ideal, which Schopenhauer tried to achieve in relation to his view of music. A performing, productive artist like Richard Wagner was in a different position from Schopenhauer, the philosopher, when it came to such truth. Schopenhauer, the philosopher, could only look at music as it presented itself to him. It appeared to him as an object, so to speak, and in it he sensed the rule and pulsation of the will. In Richard Wagner, the productive man, something different arose. He now really felt the urge to develop the musical element to such an extent that something would take effect in the musical element that he expressed, which would show exactly how the spiritual and the sensual can, one might say, consciously merge in music.

And from this point of view, “Tristan”, “Tristan and Isolde”, does indeed appear as the one work of art by Richard Wagner – after all, it was composed only after “Tannhäuser”, “Lohengrin” and so on – in which he consciously wanted to reshape the musical element in such a way that everything that was musically given as a means of expressing the weaving and working of the most sensual element was at the same time a metaphysical, a supersensible working in the most sensual element. Thus, in Richard Wagner, his ideal of the further development of the musical was truly something like an ideal of knowledge of modern times. And again, this ideal of knowledge of modern times is most consciously striven for by Richard Wagner in Tristan.

Tristan is the work that first kindled Friedrich Nietzsche's enthusiasm for Richard Wagner. The young Nietzsche sought to penetrate the music of Tristan. And this penetration into an element that was only sensual to the extent that a spiritual element pulsates everywhere in everything merely sensual — this penetration into Tristan became the occasion for Nietzsche's experience with Richard Wagner, with Richard Wagner's art, with Richard Wagner's philosophy; it was the occasion of the experience that Nietzsche had with Schopenhauer and with all that can now be linked to the interaction of the three souls, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Wagner. And for Nietzsche, who actually started out in philology but, with his ingeniously comprehensive mind, absorbed everything he could from philology, something special now begins, something with which, I would say, the introduction, the exposition is given to his life tragedy, which now actually unfolds with a wonderful inner necessity, despite its apparent contradictions. These apparent contradictions in Nietzsche's mental life are nothing other than the contradictions within a deeply moving, harrowing life drama, a life tragedy; they are the way contradictions in a tragedy must be, because life itself, when it flows in its depths, cannot exist without contradictions. What then is this deepest peculiarity of Nietzsche's soul life? Other minds that have striven in modern times, when they feel the need, form a certain world and life view, a sum of concepts and ideas, perhaps also another element of the soul that is supposed to lead into the secret depths of existence. when such minds, such souls, can come to find a certain lack of contradictions in the individual parts of the world view, they take up this world view, reject other things that contradict their world view, and thus live with their world view developed within them.

Nietzsche's soul was not at all suited to live like that. There is a fundamental difference between Nietzsche and all other people of world views. Nietzsche is not a productive spirit when compared to other people of conviction. Nietzsche would never allow himself to be compared, if one does not want to proceed externally, with productive minds or philosophers like Fichte, like Schelling, like Hegel, even with Feuerbach, even with Schopenhauer himself. Nietzsche is not a soul in whom thoughts arise directly, which seem credible to him, which are the basis for a certain opinion about the world. In this sense, Nietzsche's soul is not creative at all, even if it does not appear so at first glance to those who look at it superficially. Nietzsche's soul seems to be called to something else. While other men of world-views develop world-views, so to speak, strive to grasp the logical side of these world-views, it becomes necessary for Nietzsche to let what the most important world-views in the second half of the nineteenth century offer him affect his soul in such a way that the question of feeling arises in the soul: How can one live with these world-views? What do they give to the soul? How can the soul progress by allowing these world views to affect it? The world views of others become the vital questions, the world views that emerge as the most important world views in the second half of the nineteenth century. Can the soul become happily aware of its own value? Can it develop healthily under the influence of these or those world views? For Nietzsche, this is not the formulated question, but it is the question of his feelings, the inner urge that comes to life in his soul. Therefore, one can say: it was Nietzsche's destiny to experience the most important and prevailing worldviews of the second half of the nineteenth century in his own soul, to experience them inwardly, in terms of their value and fruitfulness.

And so it ignited, which had come to him from philology while he was still in his full youth – he even became a professor at the University of Basel before he had completed his doctorate, at the age of only twenty-four – so it ignited in him, first of all, what actually had to ignite in a mind that kept pace with its time. We have already characterized what lived and breathed and presented itself particularly in a spirit like Feuerbach, and in a spirit like Schopenhauer. And now it approached Nietzsche through the personality of Richard Wagner. What did Wagner become for Nietzsche in the 1860s? As strange as it may sound, Wagner basically became a problem of knowledge for Nietzsche. How can one live with what had become of the musician Richard Wagner in the sense of the newer development of the spirit, of the newer world-view, how can one live with that in a human soul that wants to experience the fertilizing forces of life within itself? That becomes the fundamental question for Nietzsche. And he must relate this fundamental question, which becomes a way of experiencing life for him, to his philology, to that which had come to life for him from the Greek, which was, after all, the most important subject of his studies. At first, the musical element in Tristan made such an overwhelming impression on Nietzsche that he felt: something truly new is entering into the development of the modern spirit, there is life that must bear fruit. But what are the more intimate connections through which this life can bear fruit for humanity as a whole?

In seeking an answer to this question, Nietzsche looked back to the Greeks. And through his perception of Richard Wagner's music and art, Greek culture presented itself to Nietzsche in a completely different light from the one that had been presented to him earlier. Nietzsche, at least, viewed what had been said about Greek culture before him as something one-sided. After all, Nietzsche believed that people had repeatedly and repeatedly wanted to draw attention to the cheerful element of the Greeks, to the element of the Greeks that was directly full of the joy of life, as if the Greeks were basically only the playing children of humanity. Nietzsche could not admit this from his view of Greek culture. Rather, it came to his mind how the best minds of ancient Greece felt the inner tragedy, the sorrowful nature of all physical-sensual existence, how they felt that a person who lives only within physical-sensual existence, when he has higher needs in his soul, must nevertheless remain completely unsatisfied. Only the soul can be satisfied within physical-sensual existence. And according to Friedrich Nietzsche, the Greeks were not dull and obtuse. On the contrary, as he saw it from a closer examination of this Greek character, the Greeks sensed the tragic, the sorrowful in their immediate existence, and they created art for themselves, in Nietzsche's opinion, everything they could produce from their spirit, precisely in order to overcome the disharmonies of sensual existence. They created art in their minds as an element that would lift them above the ambiguity of external sensual existence. For Nietzsche, Greek art became the harmonization of sensual existence. And it was clear to him that this striving for a spiritual content that transcends sensual content was intimately connected with the fact that the Greeks, even in their best period, had something within them that Schopenhauer directly called the will and that worked in man in the depths of the soul, which in the intellect, in understanding, in imagination only leads to images.

And in particular, Nietzsche liked to look back to the oldest Greek thought. Yes, in the oldest Greek philosophers, in Thales, Anaxagoras, in Heraclitus in particular, in Anaximenes and so on, Nietzsche found everywhere that they did not create as newer philosophers do through thinking, thinking and but by the fact that deep in their souls they still carried something of what worked in the subconscious element of the will, which could not be resolved in mere conception and which they incorporated into their world view. Nietzsche endeavored to present all the great lines in the beautiful treatises he wrote on philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks. But in Socrates he recognized the man who, through mere intellectuality, had to some extent rejected the originally healthy, deeper forces of the will. Therefore, for Nietzsche, Socrates was the actual bringer of the intellectual element, but also the slayer of all original great potentialities for the spiritual development of mankind. And by introducing the Socratic era, which lasted until modern times and found its expression in world views, humanity replaced the mere dream of intellectuality with an elementary standing within that which is more than mere image, which is inner reality. Nietzsche now saw this in effect in Schopenhauer's assertion: that the idea is a mere image, but that the reality for which one thirsted lives in the depths, below the surface of mere idea, in the human element of will. In this Schopenhauerian assertion, Nietzsche found something that in turn went back to the age that had been replaced by the age of intellectuality. And Richard Wagner's art seemed to Nietzsche to be a renewal of the original art of humanity itself, something truly new compared to what humanity had cultivated as art before and what could not completely become art because it did not go down to the very elements of the human soul.

Thus, for Friedrich Nietzsche — from his view of Greek culture and from his view of the decline of the deeper human element in later Greek culture — Richard Wagner became a completely new phenomenon in the course of human development, a recovery of deeper artistic elements than had been present since the Socratic age. For that which can become a truly human world view and way of life must arise from these deeper foundations. In what art can it then live? In the musical alone can it live in the sense of Nietzsche. Therefore, that which otherwise appears as art must, in the sense of Nietzsche, be born out of the musical, out of a primal musicality. For him, Richard Wagner really became the figure Nietzsche was looking for, and who, I would like to say, solved the great doubts of his world view for him. For Richard Wagner was the one for him who did not philosophize about the deepest secrets of the world, but made music. And in the musical element lives the will element. But if one wants to find in the development of mankind itself that from which all art must have sprung, including poetry, one must go back to an age in which the musical element lived, albeit in a naive, more primitive way than in Richard Wagner, but still as music.

From such sentiments, Nietzsche's idea for his first work emerged: “The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.” For that which otherwise lived artistically had to have emerged from the element of musicality. And so Nietzsche's first work, I would like to say, was transferred to art the world view of Schopenhauer from the effect of will as a real element compared to mere imagination. And Richard Wagner was the fulfillment of what was necessary for Nietzsche. One must imagine these things as they must have lived as the inner experience of a soul as thirsty for knowledge as Nietzsche's was. All the happiness that Nietzsche could experience, all the fulfillment of longings and hopes that could come to him, were given to him by the fact that he could say to himself: What has been destroyed by Socratism, by intellectualism, in the development of mankind, can be revived. For all art will arise from the musical element, as Greek tragedy arose from the musical element. And Richard Wagner is already showing the dawn. So it will arise.

Nietzsche's relationship with Richard Wagner is both a very personal matter and a question of insight. What is significant about Nietzsche's own spiritual life is that he does not present what he strives for as his ideals, that he does not say: this or that must happen. Thus, what he considers necessary to realize does not initially arise from his own soul, but he always looks to Richard Wagner's soul, and in the way Richard Wagner lives as an artist, he also finds the answers to the questions he must ask as his own insights. That is the significant thing in Nietzsche's life.

And now Nietzsche becomes a critic of his time, a critic, I might say, above all of what presents itself to him in German intellectual life in the last third of the nineteenth century. And as such a critic, Nietzsche writes his four “Untimely Reflections.” There should have been many more. But for reasons that will become apparent in our reflections, there remained only four. In the living experience of Richard Wagner's work, in grasping what was at work in Wagner's music, Nietzsche saw the effect of man and his soul reaching out beyond mere nature, the possibility of finding something, even if one stops at the sensual element, of finding something that carries man beyond mere nature. And now Nietzsche faced the world with this conviction that man, if he understands himself deeply enough below the mere intellectual element, can truly come to the spiritual. In this conviction, Nietzsche turned to what the time had now produced. One must ask: What did Nietzsche find first? He found that the age had been overwhelmed by Feuerbachianism, by this focus on the mere sensual and on the intellect bound to the brain, in the strict sense, if not in the broader sense, by all that had now developed into the prevailing world view.

Of course, I know very well that there may be all kinds of philosophers who say: Oh, philosophy has long since gone beyond materialism. — But even if one supposes that in the whole way of thinking, in the habits of thinking, one is still deeply immersed in it even today. And Nietzsche saw around him how deeply his time was steeped in it. And he now chose a characteristic personality: David Friedrich Strauß — Strauß, who had also started out from Hegelianism, who had come from Hegelianism to a world view that he then expressed in his “Old and New Belief”, who had gone completely from Hegelianism to the materialistic coloring of Darwinism , who saw nothing in the external world, including now also the world of man, but only natural development, who believed that man, if he stood firmly on the ground of newer knowledge, could basically no longer be a Christian, because he should not accept the spiritual ideas that Christianity demands of one. Nietzsche took on this David Friedrich Strauß, so to speak. But Nietzsche did not proceed as a philosopher usually does, but differently. For Nietzsche, it was not the image of nature that was there first, not some scientific habit of thought, but for Nietzsche there was the feeling: if the development of world view continues in direct spiritual life, then it will continue as it begins with what emerges from the music and from the whole art of Richard Wagner.

What then is the position with regard to the world-view of David Friedrich Strauss, which is regarded by many as the only valid modern philosophical system, in the light of the spiritual development that may be achieved through the permeation of spiritual evolution by the art of Richard Wagner? This is the question Nietzsche had to ask himself. He did not ask himself: Is this or that in Strauss's system false? Can this or that be refuted? That was not the issue for Nietzsche at all; rather, the issue for Nietzsche was to show what kind of soul and spiritual element of humanity lives in a worldview like Strauss's, what kind of person is needed to produce such a worldview, a worldview that clings only to the gross material and the sensual. What sort of person must one be who produces such materialism, what sort of person must one be who is a mere Philistine, in contrast to the spiritual man, in contrast to the man who allows the spirit to work in everything that lives and moves in him, in contrast to Richard Wagner? He must be a Philistine! That the world-view of modern times has become so materialistic because the Philistine element has poured itself out in it, that is what Friedrich Nietzsche wanted to show in his untimely consideration “David Friedrich Strauß, the Philistine and Writer”. Later he changed the title to “... Confessor and Writer”.

And so he shows everywhere how a certain trivial way of thinking, how trivial habits of thought, how philistine a nature prevent David Friedrich Strauß from seeing the spiritual in the sensual. And Friedrich Nietzsche continued to compare what he experienced as a living sensation in the personality of Richard Wagner with what is present in the current education under the influence of the materialistic way of thinking. And further, he asks himself: What is the relationship between a productive person like Richard Wagner, who brings the inner forces of the human soul to the surface of his work, and what lives in the ongoing highly respected and admired time formation? And there Nietzsche finds: This time formation has become such that it now gasps and breathes heavily under its abundance of external knowledge, under its abundance of history. To a certain extent, one knows everything or at least seeks to know everything, seeks to relate everything to history. One can give a historical answer to any question. But to bring to life in oneself what one knows, to give birth to something human out of the soul, is paralyzed by the abundance of the historical. And so man gnaws at what he absorbs historically – whether he absorbs it historically from history or from science is no longer important – man gnaws and suffocates on the historical. And by gobbling up the historical, what should come out of him, what man should freely bring out of himself as spirit, gets stuck in the depths of his being. “The Use and Abuse of History for Life” is the second ‘Untimely Reflection’.

And then Nietzsche turns his gaze to Schopenhauer himself, to a mind — as Schopenhauer was in Nietzsche's sense — who had managed to see everything that lives externally as mere ‘dream’, to regard everything that lives externally as mere 'dream', so far as to regard history itself as nothing more than a sum of repetitive life sequences that only acquire value if one is able to take into account that which lives itself out in them and behind them. Nietzsche regards a mind like Schopenhauer's, which must see the greatness of man entirely in terms of productivity, as the ideal of a human being. Again, he compares the time with what such an ideal of humanity represents. It becomes clear to him: if we look at this or that person, if we look at the third or fourth person – what are they all, compared to what could appear from Schopenhauer's philosophy as the full human being? As I said, one may have whatever opinions one likes, be a follower or an opponent, it does not matter, but what does matter is how Schopenhauer influenced Nietzsche. What are individual people, even the most learned and knowledgeable, compared to such a human personality, who sought to shape from the soul that which lived humanly in its universality? They are the patchwork of life, and therefore the whole of culture is patchwork. That a renewal, a revitalization of the whole of culture can take place under the influence of that which now lives in Schopenhauer's philosophy of complete humanity, and that this is urgently necessary, is shown by Nietzsche in the third of his “Untimely Meditations”: “Schopenhauer as Educator”.

But then, as the Bayreuth festival approached, he wanted to describe the positive side first. Like the other two “Untimely Meditations,” “Schopenhauer as Educator” is also dedicated to the critique of the time. But what can be given by the productive man of the time, how the time is to be renewed, how out of what lives in the depths of man's soul, something new must flow into the time, that appeared to Nietzsche in the art of Richard Wagner. It now really understood how to grasp the sensual directly so that it presented itself as a supersensual. “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth” - the fourth ‘Untimely Consideration’, 1876, was intended to show what Wagner could become for the world.

Now, for Nietzsche's soul life, this writing ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’ was at the same time, in a certain respect, a farewell to his friendship with Richard Wagner. From then on, the friendship quickly began to cool and basically soon ceased.

And now let us again take the whole inwardness of Nietzsche's soul, the whole weight that weighed on it from questions of world view, and let us add to this that Richard Wagner has become something like the content of Nietzsche's soul, like that towards which he has focused all his thinking and feeling and perceiving. And he must separate from Richard Wagner! And the separation becomes complete when Richard Wagner writes his “Parsifal”. We have a number of things in the Nietzsche publications that are intended to point to the real reason why Nietzsche separated from Wagner. Not even the words that Nietzsche himself communicates about his separation from Richard Wagner seem to me to be convincing. For a personality as artistic as Friedrich Nietzsche was, a personality that must also have felt all of the life of the world view permeated by the artistic, such a personality cannot possibly view “Parsifal” as an entirely unappealing because he believed that Richard Wagner had previously depicted the pagan world of the gods, Siegfried and the others, and now, as a kind of counter-reformer, had swung back to Christianity. What Nietzsche describes as falling down before the cross, and what he is said to have found distasteful, does not appear convincing when one looks at the full range of both Wagner's and Nietzsche's intellectual lives. For ultimately it would come down to the trivial view that Friedrich Nietzsche could not have walked with the work of art that is Parsifal because of the content of Parsifal; he would have fallen away because of a disagreement with the theory. It would be a terrible thing if we had to think in these terms about Friedrich Nietzsche's falling away from Richard Wagner. There was something quite different here, something that, I believe, can only be found if we attempt to use a more profound psychology to uncover the actual underlying reasons. In this short lecture, however, we can only sketch out these ideas.

What did Richard Wagner actually achieve? We have seen that in his basic soul feeling, he started from Feuerbachian materialism, passed over to a feeling of the Schopenhauerian world view, but was actually always imbued with the life element of musicality. Everything he has written, even in theory, is only parallel to this musicality. And in music – if I may express myself trivially – he pointed out the way in which the transcendental, the spiritual, can be found by penetrating into the sensual. But he also started from the assumption that one cannot find the real, the thing for which the sense of reality thirsts, by the path of the intellectual, I might say in that rarefied human spiritual life that was played out in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. One had to put the whole, full human being into it, and basically only the sensual man emerged. We have seen how only music gave the sensual and the supersensual at the same time. For Richard Wagner, then, man was at the center of his world view. But one had to penetrate into all depths of man, and according to the whole nature of Richard Wagner's soul, Wagner could only penetrate into these depths of man musically. Musically he sought to penetrate – I say intentionally: musically he sought to penetrate – the depths of the human soul in Parsifal. In the music of Parsifal, we have before us a musical work that shows how man can be conceived, felt and sensed at the center of an anthroposophically effective world view, so that the sensual, the musical, becomes so spiritual that it seizes the finest, most intimate sides of the human soul. For that is what happens in the resolution of the Grail problem in Parsifal.

Richard Wagner could only achieve this because in his life of feeling, which was completely permeated by the musical element, he had progressed from Feuerbach through Schopenhauer to the direct grasp of that which lives in humanity that exists beneath the purely intellectual and abstract soul element. Richard Wagner, in his own way and principally as a musician, had reached the spiritual man in his “Parsifal”.

Richard Wagner was Nietzsche's object of study. Up until 1876, Nietzsche actually lived much more in Richard Wagner than in himself. He saw in Richard Wagner what he hoped for and strove for in the development of the modern spirit. He did not draw it from his own soul as an ideal. Nietzsche was young and enthusiastic, young and ingenious when he encountered Richard Wagner. In Richard Wagner, a world-view and philosophy of life that was already fully developed in a later stage of development confronted him. What Wagner had gone through to bring his soul into such a feeling, which could come to 'Parsifal' through 'Siegfried', what Richard Wagner experienced in his soul, the harrowing thing that had to be lived through, it had already been lived through when Nietzsche approached Wagner. What was already balanced, already filled with harmony, already promising the future, was what Friedrich Nietzsche encountered when he met Richard Wagner and, I would like to say, made him his object of knowledge. Nietzsche was able to fully absorb what Richard Wagner had gone through in the 1850s, for example, when he wrote down words like the one he wrote to Röckel in 1854 about his deeply suffering feeling about the essence of the world. This deeply suffering feeling about the essence of the world had to be transformed into inner soul strength, into activity. And when Nietzsche came closer to Richard Wagner in the 1860s, he was able to experience in Wagner what the suffering of the soul had become. He, Nietzsche, was able to experience it already in the radiance of a light that shone with hope. Words such as those written to Uhlig in 1852 also show how Richard Wagner knew suffering, which Nietzsche sensed in the Greeks, but which Nietzsche only looked at and observed in its balance in Richard Wagner. Words such as those Wagner wrote to Uhlig show how Richard Wagner came to know this suffering. Before he had come to sense the power in the human soul that can lead to the Temple of the Grail, that can lead to the Siegfried energy, he had come to know doubt of all that is small and human, doubt that is the very foundation on which the great and human must build. Thus Richard Wagner writes: “In general, my views on the human race are growing ever darker, my dear friend; more often than not I feel I must express the conviction that this species is bound to perish completely.”

You only have to take this context to hear the most intimate strings of the human soul resonate: before the hero who “through compassion, knowing” penetrates to the temple of the Grail, lies all that one can experience in human doubt and human suffering when one looks at what is around one, especially in a materialistic time. Richard Wagner has gone through the ascent from suffering to the exercise of creativity. And he basically stood radiant as a victor before Nietzsche when he first met him. But Nietzsche, as a young man, knew how to look sympathetically, sensitively at this victorious nature.

But for Nietzsche it was the case that the youthful power living in him was able to rise to meet that which confronted him in Richard Wagner, but not later the matured power, which had cast off youthful enthusiasm and the breadth of feeling and now wanted to shape out of itself. Richard Wagner had gone through Feuerbachianism. Nietzsche did not go through it, Nietzsche did not suffer from Feuerbachianism, Nietzsche did not first get to know the all-too-human before he allowed the high and ideal and spiritual-human in Richard Wagner to have an effect on him. And that seems to me to be the psychological reason why the soul of Friedrich Nietzsche now fell back into Feuerbachianism, if we take it in the broader sense, was overwhelmed.

Now, when Friedrich Nietzsche could no longer keep up, everything that stemmed only from enthusiasm and should have come from the power of deeper understanding fell away from him. He had to let go and undergo for himself what Richard Wagner had already mastered. Then the second period in Nietzsche's life began, which begins with the publication of the collection of aphorisms “Human-All Too Human,” which then continues with “The Wanderer and His Shadow” to “Dawn” and “The Gay Science , where Nietzsche attempts to come to terms with the scientific worldview, with everything within the scientific worldview that, in the modern era, must be the basis for any higher philosophical worldview.

And that is the tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche's soul, the terrible tragedy, that he had previously experienced the greatest thing in youthful enthusiasm and now, when he came to himself, he had to descend, so to speak, consciously descend, in order to recognize the all-too-human in its connections with natural facts, after the highest human. But Nietzsche had the courage within him to go through this difficult path of knowledge. He had the courage to ask himself: What does this soul life look like when we look at it in the light of science? When we look at it in the light of science, man has passions. They seem to arise from the depths of his will, but if we look more closely, we find all sorts of purely physiological reasons, reasons of this bodily life. We find that man lives out concepts and ideas. But we find the mechanical causes for these ideas and concepts everywhere. Finally, we find ideals in human life. Man says to himself that these ideals are something divine. But when we investigate what man actually is, we see how he gives birth to his ideals out of his physiological element, out of his bodily element, and how he only dreams them into something that is said to have been given to him by the gods. What man perceives in everyday life as his longings born out of the body, what is born out of the flesh, out of the blood, what presents itself to him as ideals, but what does not come from higher spiritual worlds, but is just like the foam that rises from the bodily life, is not the highest human – humanly all-too-human. |

Nietzsche, after having lived through all that the nineteenth century in its second half could give him through Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, had to form his own view of his soul, which science could give him, and he had to undergo, in particular, — his writing, with which he begins this period of his life was dedicated to Voltaire. He had to undergo what one might call a plunge into that dead science, the science of mechanism, of the dead in contrast to the living, which Fichte claimed was the truly German world view. In the second period of his life, Nietzsche was overwhelmed by a Western world view. He completely immersed himself in this Western world view. But it did not become for him a mere sensation of thought; he could not absorb it like a Western mind. He absorbed it after having stood for so long in the primeval Germanic, German world-view. It became for him, for example, that all the perspectives which the soul-materialists later drove out of these world-views lay within it. With a keen mind, Nietzsche was able to show how everything that was called an ideal and that which one believes to have received as a gift from God could arise out of the needs of human nature, which are connected with flesh and blood. Nietzsche himself expressed it thus: all his ideals seemed to him to have been frozen, to have become cold, because they appeared to him to have arisen out of the humanly-all-too-human. Indeed, what small minds and dull minds have produced by developing this process of Nietzsche's world view development to excess is already present in Nietzsche, but in such a way that, while it is ingenious in Nietzsche, in those who then built on it it is the opposite of ingenious. One could even say that the whole dullness of modern psychoanalysis is already contained in Nietzsche's second period of development, with all that was tried to be derived from human nature in a materialistic-spiritualistic way. Small minds say to themselves: Well, we can investigate that, and the truth must be accepted. — So small minds can even accept, for example, deriving from Schopenhauer that all striving for a worldview, all striving for spiritual connection with the world, that goes beyond mere factual science — yes, it is not a fairy tale that I am telling — is a consequence of human sexuality. So that all philosophy for certain minds of the present has its basis in human sexuality, for all spiritual striving is rooted in human sexuality. Of course, Nietzsche, who saw the original basis, the justified original basis for the soul in the physiological, in the purely natural, was too ingenious and, I might say, too tactful to go beyond the cognitive. But he did not merely have to develop a world view. Smaller minds simply say to themselves: This is truth, one must accept it. So one must also accept as truth that philosophy is only a consequence of sexuality. But Nietzsche had to experience above all to look at the fruitful in human nature, which can be influenced by a truth. Knowledge as destiny of life, that is the characteristic in Nietzsche's psychological tragedy. And so something began to live in Nietzsche's soul in this second epoch of his psychological life. Nietzsche was too great to let it go far, but it continued to work as a background of disgust for a merely naturalistic psychology, for a merely naturalistic explanation of everything moral, as he had attempted it, the disgust for what can arise when one continues in this field, which seems so justified, which seems so justified, in a materialistic psychology, — the disgust. Now imagine the tragedy in such a development of the soul, which first experiences all of humanity's fruitful happiness in Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner and then, through the necessary development and the connection with this necessary development of time, as Nietzsche himself had , to develop a world view in which the experience begins to be met with disgust at the point of the soul life, and the necessity to save himself from the disgust of life.

We are now close to and in the eighties of the nineteenth century with regard to Friedrich Nietzsche's soul life. From the natural scientific world view, he had gained something for his soul life that showed him the beginning of disgust with all the bitterness with which disgust can thus prevail in the soul, deep within. And what Nietzsche tried to express in The Gay Science is basically nothing other than an intoxicated way of leading us away from the disgust that does not come to consciousness. For of course, one suffers from this disgust, but such things remain in the subconscious. It is not expressed. Something is expressed in the soul that veils the disgust, that covers it up: “Happy Science” – in the sentences, in the expressed content. That which I had to characterize as lying in the depths of the soul then forms the transition to another kind of world view, which Nietzsche now had to experience further from a certain deepening of the natural scientific life of the nineteenth century, as he also carried it into the understanding of the soul life.

And now something developed in Nietzsche's soul – of which one can say: it absorbed, like a continuous drive, this primeval Germanic that lived in Richard Wagner, in Schopenhauer – now something strange lived itself out in Nietzsche. Now comes the last period of his life, which then leads to the catastrophe. And in this catastrophe, without one realizing it if one does not go deeper into the foundations of his soul life, what he had taken from Western philosophy, namely from French moral philosophy, , from Guyau, from Stendhal, but also from others in whom he had completely immersed himself, and what he had gained from these in connection with a deeper understanding of Darwinism, that worked together with the Eastern European element. One cannot understand the last period in Friedrich Nietzsche without considering how, in all his feelings, in everything he felt and thought, the same element was shining forth that, for example, permeates Dostoyevsky's art as a psychological element in Dostoyevsky. This peculiarity of the Russian East, that in the directly natural the whole human being is grasped, but in such a way that this directly natural is also seen and felt as the living out of the spiritual, that the instincts are felt spiritually at the same time, that what is not felt physiologically, as in the West and in Central Europe, but is felt spiritually — that now pushed its way into Nietzsche, into the soul on which that which I have just characterized had settled in a shattering way. Into this soul flowed all the riddles of worldviews from the West and the East. In mere scientific and physiological soul-contemplation, he could see the all-too-human. But it would have become repulsive if he had pursued it further. Now he drew a deepening from the contemplation of human life itself. Only now did he actually approach human life, where this contemplation was stimulated in him, namely through the influence of Dostoyevsky.

And now an urge arose in him, a longing for a spiritual deepening of what is merely presented in the sensual world. And this urge, this longing, could only be expressed lyrically in this last period of his life, because of his talents. And that is connected with the uncreative in Nietzsche. He needed what had an effect on him; that he could experience. For him, creative spirits could become objects, like Richard Wagner. Whatever created the world view of his time could become an object for him. What flashed and lit up in the second period of his life, the period of Human-All-Too-Human and so on, as a future soul-creation, now entered the sphere of Nietzsche's third period. Man became for him such that Nietzsche said to himself: This man must be placed at the center of the world view — but not in the sense in which anthroposophy appears in Troxler in the sense of the lecture that I was able to give here a few weeks ago. He would have been able to find him had Nietzsche been what one might call an epic-dramatic nature. If someone is of an epic-dramatic nature, they can go out of themselves to the contemplation of the spirit, then they develop the spiritual world, then they create it. Nietzsche was not like that; Nietzsche was of a lyrical nature. In order for that which was yearning in him, that which was urge and drive in him, to come to life, Nietzsche needed something to meet him in the outside world. A spiritual world did not arise from his soul. And so, when he sought the higher man in man, this man could only arise, I would say, in his lyricism, because lyricism, the lyrical element, is the basic element of the work Also sprach Zarathustra , where Nietzsche wanted to show how nature emerges from its merely natural state to become human, but also how man can go beyond nature to become a superhuman, how man can become a superhuman by continuing the development of nature. But because Nietzsche was only lyrical in his entire soul, this superhuman arose in him as a longing. And basically, in all that confronts you in the lyrically so great, so powerful work “Also sprach Zarathustra”, nowhere can you grasp the superhuman. Where does he live then? Where do we encounter him in some form? Where do we encounter something that could live as a higher human being in man and lead man beyond nature? Where do we find something that would describe him? Everywhere we encounter lyrically shaped longings, everywhere we encounter great, powerful lyricism, but nowhere do we find anything that can be grasped intellectually, so to speak. Nietzsche could now encounter as much as an indefinite, foggy image of a superhuman in the third period of his life.

And another nebulous one. Nietzsche could say to himself: When I look at this human life, it presents itself to me in such a way that I have to experience it as formed out of certain preconditions. But it must carry within itself preconditions that correspond to all real forms of nature and spirit. And the thought was already alive in Nietzsche: the plant develops from the root to the flower and fruit, and in the fruit the germ; and the germ is again the starting point for the root, and from the root the plant comes again. A cycle, a becoming that takes place rhythmically, that returns to itself: eternal return of human existence is the idea that arises in Nietzsche. But where is that contained – which again could arise from an epic-dramatic nature – that in present human life really shows the spiritual-soul as a core or germ, as something that would repeat itself in a later life on earth? Abstract eternal return occurs in Nietzsche, but not a concrete grasp of the real spiritual-soul in man. Longing for that which can take shape beyond the sensual human being, longing for the rhythm of life that occurs in recurring earthly lives, but an inability to see into these great mysteries of existence: the third period of Nietzsche's work.

The first period gives him a person for his longings and hopes, for his thirst for knowledge, whom he can put before him. This person ultimately becomes, I would say, like the mysteries of nature can become for the observer. One penetrates as far as one oneself has the predispositions of what one wants to seek within oneself. One cannot go further. Thus Nietzsche was able to penetrate Richard Wagner as far as Nietzsche himself carried the potential for Richard Wagner's world and life view. A person in the first period of their life, the science of the present in the second period of their life, which is now supposed to fulfill their hopes and desires. What is ready for the future in the present as spiritual germs, in a spiritual science as we are thinking of it today, must develop out of the general realization that the higher spiritual man lies in the sensual man, that in one earth life lies the sequence of earlier earth lives and the starting point of later earth lives, of that which is not yet there, which can therefore only work as something indeterminate, as nebulous. Nietzsche must also live through this: a man of the present who confronts him as a complete human being; natural science, which satisfies the thirst for reality of modern times; the indeterminate longings of the times themselves, which he is not yet able to shape.

These are the successive external facts that confronted, that had to confront, Friedrich Nietzsche in an age that, so to speak, wanted to draw breath within the development of German thought after the intellectual development had reached a climax, a point where thoughts really mystically enter the spiritual world. For it is a Schopenhauerian delusion, it is a Nietzschean delusion, it is a delusion of all those who in the second half of the nineteenth century surrendered to the delusion that Hegel's thoughts were only intellectualistic. But this belief had to arise because people did not have the breadth of breathing to carry themselves up to the height and energy of Hegel's world view. But this breathing had to arise for the simple reason that Hegel and the other minds that belong to him had indeed ascended to supersensible concepts, but in these supersensible concepts there is nothing supersensible in them. Look at the whole of Hegel's philosophy: it is decidedly based on supersensible concepts. It consists of three parts: a logic that consists of supersensible concepts, a natural philosophy, and a philosophy of spirit that only encompasses the human soul between birth and death, that which is realized in the material world and so on. In short, spiritual knowledge is only applied to what is around us in the material world. Supersensible knowledge is there. But supersensible knowledge does not recognize anything supersensible. Therefore, in the second half of the nineteenth century, this supersensible knowledge, which does not recognize anything supersensible, had to lead to it being described as completely unsatisfactory, so to speak, and to people turning to the material world itself. the musical element could enter, could create the bridge over to the time when people tried to grasp the path directly from the spiritual, through spiritual knowledge itself, which we will talk about in more detail tomorrow. This is what was significant for spiritual life in the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the present day. Nietzsche's harrowing psychological experiences arose from the perishing of supersensible knowledge and the overwhelming of the human soul by mere sensory knowledge, from clinging to that which now entered as a substitute from a completely different world.

How a deep soul had to suffer tragically in an age that had no depth in the prevailing currents of thought can be seen in Nietzsche's soul, and that is basically the tragedy that took place in Nietzsche's soul : the striving for depth, for an experience in the depths, which should have been there if Nietzsche was to have come to satisfaction, which was not there and which finally plunged Nietzsche's spirit into utter despair. I need not go into the physiological and medical background of his illness, but what took place in his soul is at least characterized in its main lines in what I have tried to characterize. And so we see how this life of world-view, which is so overwhelmed by the current of materialism, affects a soul that, by its very nature, strives beyond materialism; how, when the human soul has a deeper need, mere materialism or mere positivism, or in general what the second half of the nineteenth century was able to bring such a soul, must have a tragic effect. That is why it seems so tragic when we see how Nietzsche, at the beginning of his literary career, when he wrote his Birth of Tragedy, tying in with the great personality of Richard Wagner, entered in the copy that he sent to Richard Wagner himself: “Create the day's work of my hands, great spirit, that I may complete it!” In the intimate dedication that he addresses to Richard Wagner, Nietzsche implores the great spirit of the world to deliver to him a day's work in which he can experience what his soul wants to experience, and through which he can describe to humanity how one experiences the spirit in sensual earthly life, how man leads his soul beyond the merely natural, so that he too can find the way into the spiritual. The tragedy was bound to be fulfilled because the nineteenth century could not give Nietzsche what he had implored of the great spirit. The spirit could not supply the daily bread of his hands. The spirit of the nineteenth century could not supply it, and so it could not be completed by it either.

So it is that in what Nietzsche later created, especially at the end of his conscious life on earth, before his life passed into derangement, we have scraps, individual statements, aphorisms, drafts, notes from and about questions of world view. But basically, we have everywhere rudiments, questions, riddles that peer like the sphinx into the spiritual future of mankind. This may be said in the face of the fact that Nietzsche is also among those minds that are now so denounced by the enemies of Central Europe: In Friedrich Nietzsche's soul there lived questions, there lived world-view riddles in an immediately personal way, which will shine forth—whether in connection with the personality of Friedrich Nietzsche or separated from it, because Friedrich Nietzsche, after all, also only took them from the faithfully co-experienced world-view life of the nineteenth , but in the entire spiritual development of mankind, in a perhaps still distant future, and which will find satisfactory answers, but only when one—which Nietzsche could not yet fully do—will fully understand, with feeling, the deepest meaning of what Goethe meant when he quoted the saying of an old spiritual researcher, in which it is pointed out that man can indeed penetrate into the depths of the world, but that he must first find this depth within himself through self-knowledge, yes, must create it within himself. Nietzsche was on this path in his consideration of Richard Wagner, but could not go this path to the end. This path will prove again and again the truth of this saying attributed by Goethe to an ancient spiritual researcher, by which Goethe wants to express that we can find every depth, every infinite depth in the things of the world, if we have first gained the deepening in our own self-knowledge. Goethe expresses it in the words with which we want to conclude this reflection today:

If the eye were not sunlike,
How could we behold the light?
If the divine power of God were not within us,

Yes, a person only sees as much light in the world as they are able to ignite within themselves. A person only finds as much divinity in the world as they are able to shape within themselves through self-knowledge.

A public lecture at the Stuttgart Art Building

When the spiritual science, the aims and nature of which I have been honored to present in lectures in Stuttgart every year for almost two decades, gained greater currency, namely when artistic work was created from this spiritual science, the intention arose to create a central building for this spiritual science that would be particularly appropriate for it, somewhere where it would be fitting. This idea has become a reality in that we performed the Mystery Dramas in an ordinary theater in Munich from 1909 to 1913. These plays were intended to be born out of the spirit of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in their entire structure and attitude.

What the supporters of this spiritual science had in mind, on the one hand, as the actual meaning of their world view, and, on the other hand, as the artistic expression of this world view, was initially brought about by the intention, just mentioned, to stage their own play, which was to be the representative, the outward representative of this spiritual science. In Munich, this did not succeed due to the lack of cooperation on the part of the relevant artists. Since I have set myself a different task today, I do not want to talk about everything that led to the construction of this building on a hill in a remote location in northwestern Switzerland, in the canton of Solothurn, where, at the time we began building, there were no restrictive building laws and one could build as one wished. As I said, all this has led to the fact that I do not want to go into it today. But I would like to talk about the sense in which the intention should be understood, especially for the spiritual science meant here.

When one speaks of world views, world view directions or world view currents, then one usually has in mind a sum of ideas that often have a more or less theoretical or popular character, but which mostly exhaust themselves in the fact that they simply want to express themselves through communication, through the mere word, and then at most expect from the world that the word, which is formulated in a certain way programmatically, is actually carried out in reality. From the outset, what is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is not predisposed in the same way as other world views. It is, if I may express it this way, imbued from beginning to end with a sense of reality. That is why it had to lead, even in difficult times in this present age, to direct penetration into what the attempt at a social reconstruction of modern civilization is. If a world view that is more in the realm of ideas needs a structure of its own for its cultivation, then, depending on one's means, one usually contacts someone whom one assumes to be professionally capable of constructing a structure from the relevant styles. One contacts such a personality or a series of such personalities in order to then create, as it were, a house, a framework for the cultivation of such a worldview. However, this could not have corresponded to the whole structure of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, for the simple reason that this spiritual science is not something that expresses itself only in ideas, but because it wants to express itself in all forms of life.

Now I would like to use a simple comparison to suggest how this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science had to express itself in its own framework, both in terms of trees and in artistic terms. Take any fruit, let us say a nut. Inside the nut is the fruit, and around it is the shell. Let us first look at the hard shell inside the green shell. If you study the whole configuration, the shape of the nut shell, you will say to yourself: it could not be any different than it is, because the nut is as it is. You cannot help but think to yourself: the nut creates its shell, and everything about it that is visible through the shell must be an expression of what the nut itself is. Thus, a frame is quite appropriate in nature, in all creation, for what it frames.

If you do not think abstractly, if you do not think theoretically, if you do not think from a world view that moves only in ideas, but that wants to be in all reality and in all life, then you feel compelled to do everything you do in a certain way, as the creative forces in the universe do. And so, if we had built with some alien architectural style, with something that had grown out of those building methods that are common today, a framework for an anthroposophically oriented worldview and its cultivation, there would have been two things: on the one hand, a building that expresses itself entirely from within, that says something for itself, that stands in its own artistic formal language. And then one would have entered and represented something inside, cultivated something that could only relate to the building in a very superficial way. One would hear words spoken in such a building, one would see plays performed on the stage (since these are intended) and other artistic performances; one would have heard and seen and beheld something that wants to present itself as something new in modern civilization. One would have turned one's eye away from what one might have seen on the stage; one would have turned one's ear away from what one might have heard, and one would have looked at the building forms — these would have become two essentially different things. The spiritual science meant here could not aspire to this. It had to strive in harmony with all world-building. It had to trust itself to express itself in artistic forms as well as in building forms. It had to claim that what forms itself into words, what forms itself into drama or into another form of artistic expression, is also capable of directly shaping itself into all the details of what is now the shell. Just as the nut fruit creates its shell out of its own essence, so too did a spiritual science such as this, whose essence is not understood in the broadest circles today because it breathes precisely this spirit of reality, had to create its own framework. Everything that the eye sees in this framework must be a direct expression of what is present as living life in this world view, as must the formed word.

And there were some pitfalls to avoid. For those who have a certain inclination to make a building appropriate to a worldview are often, let us say, somewhat mystical or otherwise inclined, and they then have the urge to express what is expressed in the worldview in external symbols, in some mystical formations. But this merely leads to such a framing becoming something in the most eminent sense inartistic. And if one had performed a building bearing symbols, one would have wanted to express in allegorical or symbolic form what underlies anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, so nothing would have emerged but something in the most eminent sense inartistic.

Indeed, I must even admit that some people who have come to what is referred to here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science with their views and currents of life, as contributors or advisors, in the early days of our work in Dornach, were quite inclined to express everything that spiritual science contains in old symbolic or similar forms. I might also mention that those people, who are so numerous, who either out of a certain lack of understanding or out of malicious intent talk about the Dornach building, keep coming to the world with the idea that one can find symbols for this or that, allegorical expressions for this or that.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it must be admitted that even in what I have to show you this evening, anyone who does not look closely and with a lively sense of perception can find something to use as an expression: There are many allegorical or symbolic elements. In reality, there is not a single symbol or allegory in the Dornach building, but everything that is there is there entirely so that the inner experience of the spirit, which on the one hand is to be grasped in ideas that are expressed in lectures or the like, is experience is to be completely dissolved into artistic forms, that nothing else is asked for in artistic creation in Dornach than: what the line is like, what the form is like, what that is which can be shaped as an artistic form of expression in sculpture, in architecture, in painting, and so on. And many a person who comes to Dornach and asks what this or that means is always given the same answer by me: I ask them to look at the things; basically, they all mean nothing other than what flows into the eye. People often say that this or that means this or that. But then I am obliged to talk to them about the distribution of colors and the like.

I have now tried to show how the building, as a shell, very much in the spirit of nature's own creation, forms the framework for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But for that very reason the whole idea of the building had to strive for something new. Now, in all that I am going to say today, I ask you to bear in mind that, of course, much criticism can be made of the Dornach building, that many objections can be raised. And I give you the assurance: the person who perhaps objects most of all is myself. For I am fully aware that the Dornach building is a beginning; that the Dornach building stands as a first attempt to create a certain stylistic form that cannot even be characterized in words today, because its details are not formed from abstract thoughts, but from what is experienced in a living way in that beholding of the spirit that is meant by our spiritual science.

I may mention just one difference at the outset: if we compare the various architectural styles, which, in a certain development of form, still find expression today wherever buildings are constructed, it is apparent everywhere that, basically, the mathematical, the geometrical, the symmetrical, that which perhaps follows in the rhythm of the line, the mechanical, the dynamic, etc., all flow into architecture. From the basic feeling – I am not saying from the basic idea, I am saying from the basic feeling – of our spiritual science, the daring attempt was once made, I know it, to create an organic building idea, not a mechanical-dynamic, but to create an organic building idea, and this under the influence of that which Goethe incorporated into his great, powerful view of nature under the influence of the idea of metamorphosis. The Dornach building, as far as this can be realized in architecture, should not merely represent the symmetrical, the dynamic, the mechanical, the geometrical; it should represent something that can be looked at, I do not say grasped, but looked at as a building organism, as the form for something living.

In this case, however, it is a matter of every detail in an organism being exactly as it should be in its place. You cannot imagine the ear lobe in a human organism being formed any differently than it is. So we tried to make our building in Dornach a completely organic, internally organic unit by placing each individual part in the whole in such a way that it appears as a necessary structure in its place; that every detail is an expression of the whole, just as a fingertip or an earlobe is an expression of the whole human organism.

That is one thing that has been attempted. As I said, it is a beginning, an attempt, and I know how many imperfections it has and how much can be objected to from the point of view of architecture and sculpture and so on. The other thing is what I would like to say in advance, namely that our world view itself demands that the whole idea of building be formulated differently from the way in which the idea of building is usually formulated. If we consider ordinary buildings – I will mention just one – we find that they are closed off from the outside by walls to a certain degree. Even the Greek buildings were closed off to a certain degree. What is required by the Dornach building is that the wall itself be treated in a completely different way than it is usually treated. The person who enters the Dornach building should not have the feeling that, having a wall around him, he is closed off in an inner space. Rather, everything should be artistically designed so that, to a certain extent, the wall itself is suspended; that the wall itself - please do not misunderstand me - the wall itself becomes artistically transparent, so that one gets the feeling - transparent is of course only spoken in comparison - you are not closed off, but everything that is wall, everything that is dome, opens up a feeling that it is broken through, that it cancels itself out, that you are in a feeling connection with the whole great universe. Far out into infinity, the soul is meant to feel connected to this through what the forms evoke; the forms of the columns, the walls, the forms of the dome paintings, etc.

The building in Dornach is a double-domed structure, consisting of a small and a large domed space that do not stand side by side but interlock. The small domed room, that is, the circular room covered by a smaller dome, will be used for presenting mystery dramas, for dramatic performances in general, for other artistic performances, such as eurythmy. But there are also other things planned. Then there is the large domed room, which is connected to the smaller one in the segment of the dome. It is intended as an auditorium; so that those who approach this building must immediately be imbued with a certain feeling by this outer form.

We will begin by looking at our building as it presents itself to someone approaching it from the northeast.

So, as you can see, we have a double-domed structure. This is the auditorium, and here is the stage. The two domes are inserted into each other by, if I may say so, a special technical feat, because this insertion was difficult. The person who approaches this building – which, I believe, is particularly appropriate in its artistic expression of the special mountain formation of the Jura region in which it is built – should have the feeling that something is present that reveals itself in a duality. The person who enters the building finds themselves in the large domed room. Inside, he may have the feeling: here something is seen, something heard. And this something, which is experienced in a sense in the heights of spiritual life, which is to reveal itself to an inclined audience, should already express itself as a feeling to those who approach the building.

But initially, every single detail of the outer forms is attuned in such a way that one has an impression from the outside, so to speak – I could not express it in terms of ideas or thoughts – but through the forms, through the artistic language forms, one has an impression from the outside of what is actually being proclaimed inside as spiritual science. I would now like to show you another approach to the building, which presents itself when approaching it from the north:

Here is the building, here the main entrance, here a nearby building that has experienced very special challenges. I would just like to mention in this picture: the lower part of the building is a concrete structure. It has a walkway here. The entire building stands on the concrete rotunda. The entire double-domed structure is a wooden construction.

I note that the task was not only to create a shell for spiritual science in this building, but also to find a style for this very special institution that could be derived from concrete. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what is not really understood today, that we have to create out of the material everywhere. Today we see how sculptors create things that they shape, I would say, by having some kind of novelistic idea or a novelistic harmony of ideas, which are then shaped in any material, in bronze or the like. But we have to come back to having such an intense feeling for the material that we ourselves, even with this brittle, I mean artistically brittle, this abstract concrete material, gain the ability to create forms of design out of the material.

It is certainly the case that today people will not understand you if you say to them: I am going to paint a picture; in the middle I have this or that figure, on the sides this or that figure, I now want to do that, can you do something like that? And one answers: Yes, you can do anything, but it is a matter of what becomes of the colors. You cannot talk about a picture differently than from within the colors. Even in many artistic circles today, there is little understanding when one tries to think that which lives artistically as something quite separate from everything that is not direct contemplation, direct experience of feeling.

As the third picture, I would like to show you another aspect of the building. You can see the small dome, the large dome. Here, seen from the outside, the auditorium. The whole thing sits on the concrete substructure here. Here are the side wings, which fit into the building at the point where the two domes merge.

This is a slightly closer view of the structure. You will be entering from down here. The cloakrooms are located in the concrete substructure. There is a stairwell at the front of the interior. You can come up to this level through the wooden structure, but you can also come up here, where there is a walkway. You can walk around a large part of the structure here during the intervals between performances.

This is the main entrance from the terrace. You can already see that all the forms from the dynamic geometry have been transposed into the organic, into the living. There is nothing in this building that has not been created in the spirit in which I meant the design of the earlobe on the human body earlier. So everything, every detail and the whole, is designed in such a way that not geometric forms, but organic forms are present; but not, I would like to point out, organic forms that are modeled on this or that organic limb. That was not the intention at all. When I had first designed this structure in the wax model, from which the building then emerged, it was not a matter of reproducing anything naturalistically in organic forms, but rather of immersing myself in the creative essence of nature itself, of making what Goethe calls the truth, so to speak, of how nature lives in its creation.

Now, of course, nature does not create such structures. Therefore, one does not find those organic forms in nature that can occur in such a structure, but by having the whole structure like an organic being in its intuition, in its imagination, the inner creation is formed in such detail that detail that, without imitating anything in nature, one is compelled to shape a structure like the one above the main entrance in the same way that a plant leaf is shaped out of the essence of the plant organism. So without imitating anything naturalistically, natural creation should reveal itself everywhere without symbolism and allegory, purely by proceeding in the design of the building forms as one can imagine that nature itself lives in its creation.

Once again, closer to the building. We are in front of the main entrance. This is where people will enter first. These are the cloakrooms. Then you come up through the stairwell and enter a vestibule, which I will also show later. This is the north side. Behind here are the storage rooms, the rooms for the equipment and the cloakrooms for the stage plays.

Another view of the main entrance. Here, the smaller dome is completely covered by the large dome. The two side wings were intended as dressing rooms for the performers.

This is a piece of the side wall. Next to it is the house that the man who was able to give us the land for this building had built. This house was built for him in a style that is certainly, since it is all a beginning, completely thought out in all its individual forms using the concrete material. That is what I would like to say about this house.

Here you can see one of the side wings, which, as I said, are intended to provide dressing rooms for those performing in the stage festival. If you walk around here, you will come to the main entrance. Here is a piece of the facade of such a side wing. It has been attempted to follow Goethe's idea of metamorphosis – not in a pedantic way, but in the spirit of transforming the ever-identical, of transforming the ever-uniform, to form everything as an organic unity, so that the motif above the main entrance is repeated here, but in a different form. As you will see in Dornach in general, what Goethe calls changeability in organic structures has been tried to be expressed in the building idea everywhere.

Here is the floor plan, here is the entrance, and there is the auditorium, which will hold about nine hundred to a thousand people. When you come out of the main entrance here, you walk through the space that is vaulted by the organ room above. You then come in here. The line that goes in this direction is the only symmetrical one in this building. Nothing else is oriented in a symmetrical way except for what lies to the left and right of this axis of symmetry. Therefore, as you enter the room, you see a row of columns. These columns are formed in such a way that only the symmetrical pairs always have the same pedestals, the same capitals and the same decoration in general. The formation of the capital progresses as one moves from the entrance towards the stage, so that each successive capital is formed in such a way from the previous one that the space of the architrave above a column is formed from the spatial design of the architrave above the previous column, so that the metamorphosis view is expressed in the right sense.

It is, I dare say, a great thing to attempt such a thing: here you have a first capital with very definite forms that arise inwardly for you as you shape them. And as you say to yourself, now it is so that it must remain in the place where it is, then the feeling comes: That is also to be transformed, just as in a plant growing out of the ground, a subsequent leaf is something metamorphosed in relation to the preceding leaf. There you shape the next form out of the previous one. There the next form presents itself as something absolutely necessary. People often come to Dornach and ask: What does this or that chapter mean? My task is simply to say: look! It is not a matter of someone finding an abstract, complicated meaning, but of sensing how the following chapter always grows out of the previous one in organic necessity.

The smaller dome, framed by twelve columns, and the fourteen columns here, will provide space for the presentation of stage plays. Often, people also count when they come: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven columns! Then they say: They are mystics, they bring in the superstitious number seven. I can only say: Then nature is also superstitious. The rainbow has seven color shades, we have seven tones in music, the octave is the repetition of the prime. What is so self-evidently expressed in nature is repeated in the direct experience of creating something metamorphic. And I may well say: it was far from my mind to pursue some mystical number seven, but it was obvious to me to think of one capital out of the other. And then a wonderful thing happened – if I may call it a miracle – that just as there are seven colors in the rainbow, without any mysticism, simply by shaping the form, when you are finished with the seventh form, you can't think of anything more. That's how you get the seven forms. With the seventh, you can't think of a single small artistic idea, so you just know you've finished.

This is a section through the original model. It is cut through the axis of symmetry, so that you can see the formation of the columns in progress, the architraves on top, the bases. So this is the model on which the construction was based.

Another section, a kind of drawing section through the building. Here is the concrete substructure. Here we have to show how the two domes are joined together. But here too, two domes are joined together, leaving the space between them free.

I originally had a specific idea in mind when arranging the double dome. When building such a thing, the most important thing is the acoustics, and I had the idea that if you connect two such domes with a connection that is as light as possible, a kind of soundboard must be created.

Furthermore, not for mystical reasons but for very real ones, I had the seven columns made out of different types of wood. All of this, of course, yields a great deal when one tries to think and feel it all together. But many people know how difficult it is to get the acoustics right in a hall. Basically, everything was thought out, down to the choice of materials – as I said, the columns are made of different types of wood – and into this soundboard, so that both the sound that develops in the musical sense and the sound of the spoken word are accentuated in a beautiful acoustic way throughout the entire room.

Just as the whole thing is an experiment, and one could not think that the most perfect thing could be created in the very first attempt, so I could not indulge in the illusion that the perfect acoustics had been created. But we were able to experience how the intuitions revealed something in the very last few days. The organ was installed as the first musical instrument. It was completed, and it became apparent to us that the entire structure, in terms of music, reveals itself acoustically in a very unique way. And I dare to hope – things are not yet ready, that can prove this – but when everything is there, including the curtain, that then the acoustics, including those for the spoken word, will also reveal themselves. But in any case, the one rehearsal for the intuitive design of a space with regard to the acoustics, the one rehearsal in terms of the music, seems to me – and as it seems to everyone who has heard the organ there in the last few days – to have actually been successful.

A little way into that staircase, which you enter when you come through the main entrance into the interior. You see here a capital above a column. You see this capital formed in a very special way. Every single form, every single surface, every single curve is conceived with the space in which it is located in mind. The line and surface run this way because this is where you come out, because there is little to bear. Here the column braces itself against the building. Here the individual forms must be shaped differently. Just as nature creates differently when it creates a muscle, depending on what it has to bear, so we must experience how the forms must be when each individual link in its place is to be thought of as it can only be in this place through the nature and essence of the whole.

This is the staircase itself. The staircase goes up here. What I showed before is the vestibule above the concrete room. This is where I am standing, and this is where you would stand when you enter the building. Here is the banister for the staircase that leads up from the lower concrete substructure to the building, which is then made of wood, to the actual auditorium. I have tried here to transform a support from the merely geometrically mechanical to the organic.

Let me reiterate: I am, of course, aware of all the objections from the point of view of conventional architecture, but it has at least been attempted, and I have the feeling, however imperfect everything is, however many objections there may be, that a start has been made that paves the way for a new architectural style that will be further developed. Perhaps it will lead to something quite different from what has been built in Dornach, but if you don't even start with something, nothing new will come of it. Therefore, even if it goes completely wrong, something new should be attempted here: the development of the mechanical-dynamic form into organic forms. The concrete is worked in such a way that the beam expresses in its own form what it bears; on the other hand, it is shown here how it only forms outwards, bearing nothing.

Here you can see a radiator screen. The individual radiators are covered at the bottom with concrete screens and at the top with wooden screens. These screens are designed in such a way that their plastic forms reflect something that, in its formation, is, so to speak, in between animal and plant forms. It comes from the earth, as if organically grown, but not symbolically, but artistically designed. In creating this, one has the feeling of something coming into being if the earth itself allowed something like this to grow out of its principle of growth. If you take this staircase, you will come to the room that was shown before, and through that you then enter the actual auditorium.

So this is where you come in, enter the auditorium. Here on the left and right are the first two columns. You can see how the simplest capital structure, the simplest architrave structure, is used here. And now you will see how each subsequent capital structure attempts to create something that necessarily grows out of what has gone before, just as a subsequent plant leaf, which is more complicated and more dissipated in form, always grows out of the one that went before.

Here is the first column individually. It is always important to me that one sees that the essential is not: what does the individual column mean? Some people have done a terrible disservice by always talking about the meanings of the Dornach columns; it is important to me that the artistic form must be questioned. Therefore, I will always show the one column and the next one, so that it becomes clear how simply, artistically, the next form was attempted to be derived from the preceding one.

So here, continuing from the simple column – that is the left aspect – we have the second column. It is designed in such a way that what goes down here goes up there. Just as a plant leaf develops from another, this capital form is derived from the preceding one through artistic experience, and this architrave form from the preceding one.

The second column by itself. Now the following two columns, always to illustrate how the next column is to be artistically designed from the previous one. There now follow several column pictures, initially single ones, then in twos.

Everything that one experiences artistically is actually formed in one's imagination as a matter of course. One cannot help it, it just happens. One can hardly say anything else about it either. But the strange thing is: when one simply transfers one's own experience into the forms, then one gradually feels how one creates in harmony with nature's own creative process. One feels the life that lies in the shaping of one metamorphosis out of another, in intimate harmony with natural creation. And so I believe that those who experience – not intellectually, but with lively feeling – what develops there as one capital out of the other actually get a more vivid sense of development than can be given by anything in modern science. For when we speak of development, we usually mean that each successive structure is more complicated than the one that precedes it. This is not true. When one inwardly experiences a development such as this evolution of columns and architraves, then at first the simple develops into the complicated. But then one reaches a height, and then the structures become simpler again. You are amazed when you see the results of artistic necessity, how you create in harmony with nature. Because that is how it is in nature too. An example: the most perfect eye is the human eye, but it is not the most complicated eye. The animal eye is much more complicated than the human eye; in certain animals there are fans and xiphoid processes; in humans this has been absorbed again. The shape is simplified. You don't follow that when you create something like this from abstract ideas, but it presents itself to you as something self-evident in the form.

The next two columns. Here we come to something that the abstract mystic or mystical abstractor might say: “He formed the caduceus here.” I did not form the caduceus, I let the preceding forms grow. It formed by itself. It emerges organically, by itself, from the preceding form. I had to say to myself: “If the preceding column grows just like that, it will come out like that, one from the other.”

Two consecutive columns showing how the forms become simpler as development progresses.

Here we are already approaching the gap where the auditorium borders on the stage.

Here the first column of the stage area; here the last of the auditorium, here the gap for the curtain.

Here you can see into the small domed room. If you stand in the auditorium and look that way, you get a view similar to this. The top of the dome, initially carved and then painted. We won't look at the painting here, we'll come to that later.

Here I would like to show the order of the individual columns, so that one can get an overview of how the matter progresses from the simplest. All the individual columns are formed individually for each column, and symmetry is only found in relation to the main axis of symmetry of the building.

Here are the figures on the pedestals. I also tried to give the pedestals a metamorphic appearance.

I would like to ask you to take a look at something that is not quite finished yet: the room in which the organ is built. The idea was to avoid making the organ look as if it had simply been placed in the room, and instead to make the whole structure appear to grow out of the room. That is why the architecture around the organ is designed to match the way the organ pipes have to be constructed. It is not finished, as I said. There are still things to be added here.

This is what you see when you enter the small domed room from the auditorium. The end of the small domed room. A number of forms have been carved out of the wood. All of them have been carved out of the rounded surface of the wood, a number of forms that are a summary of the forms found on the capitals and architraves. So that, standing in the auditorium, one has the forms of capitals and architraves, and when one looks up into the small domed space, as a conclusion to all this on a spherical surface, which is like the formal synthesis, the formal synthesis of what can be seen on the individual forms of the architraves and capitals. And now I have to move on to something about which I will have to say a few words.

This is what the small domed room looks like when it is painted. Both domed rooms are painted with motifs that actually only arise when you live very inwardly with what we call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. When you live very inwardly with this, then, I would like to say again, picturesqueness also emerges all by itself. Just as the word is formed by wanting to express the inner spiritual experience through the word, so this inner spiritual experience, which is truly not so poor that it could only express itself in abstract thoughts and ideas, but can express itself in everything that is a form of life and the purpose of life, is transformed. And motifs that are just as much alive in the one who lives in the inner contemplation of the spiritual world, as it is conveyed through spiritual science, are also painted in the large and small dome in such a way that one does not have the feeling of being closed off by the dome, but rather that one has the feeling, through what is painted on the wall, that the domes form themselves far out into infinity. I want to discuss, because I can't explain everything, only what is painted here in the small domed room, so that you can see it immediately when you look from the auditorium into the small domed room.

There is a central figure. It represents to me, as it were, the representative of humanity as such. At the same time, it is the artistic expression of that which lives in the human form. So that even in its natural human form, the human being must constantly seek balance between two extremes. What the human being actually is is something that should be expressed by the content of all anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. This cannot truly be said in one or even many lectures, but comes to expression in the fullness of all spiritual science. But one can say the following, which is still somewhat abstract but already points to what is experienced as human essence in the human being. One can express it in soul terms as follows:

In fact, human beings are always engaged in an inner battle between something that works in him in such a way that he wants to rise above his station. All that is fanciful, enthusiastic, mystical, theosophical, that seeks to lift man in the wrong way above himself, so that he no longer remains on the firm ground of reality, all that is one extreme. This is what some people tend towards, what every human nature secretly tends towards, and what every human nature must overcome through its health. Enthusiasm, fantasy, one-sided mysticism, one-sided theosophy, in short: everything that makes man want to rise above himself, is one thing in the soul. The other thing that is in the human soul and must be overcome through inner struggle is what constantly pulls him down to earth; expressed in spiritual terms: the philistine, the bourgeois, the materialist, the merely intellectual, the abstract, the calculating. And that is the essence of man, that he seeks to find harmony between the two opposite poles.

In physiological terms: the same thing that appears physically when a person wants to go beyond themselves is also expressed physiologically in the fact that a person can become feverish, develop pleurisy, that human nature is led into dissolution. The other extreme, that which develops in the soul as mere intellect, as narrow-mindedness, as philistinism and materialism, is what causes the ossification of human nature and leads to one-sided calcification, to ossification. Between these two physiological extremes, human nature fluctuates and seeks balance.

The intention is not to present an idea, but rather – both pictorially up there and sculpturally in the group of figures down here – to show how the representative of humanity lives in the middle between the two extremes that I have depicted. And so, above the central figure, which expresses the representative of humanity, there appears, at the top, a luciferic figure that expresses everything that is enthusiastic, fanciful, feverish, and pleurisy-ridden, etc., that wants to lead people beyond their heads. And at the bottom, protruding out of the cave, is the representative of everything ossified, everything philistine, everything that leads to sclerosis in its one-sidedness.

This central figure is designed in such a way that there is nothing aggressive about it. The left arm points upwards, the right downwards. Every effort has been made to represent love embodied in this representative of humanity, right down to the fingertips. And just as I am convinced that the trivial figure of Christ, as we usually see it, bearded, only came into being in the fifth or sixth century, so I am convinced, from spiritual scientific sources, which I can't talk about, but only because of lack of time, I am convinced that the figure that is depicted here is a real image of the one who walked in Palestine at the beginning of our era as the Christ-Jesus figure. And there should be nothing aggressive about it, even if the figure of Lucifer is painted, poetically shaped, falling and even breaking into pieces, not through an attack on the part of Christ Jesus, but because in his Luciferic nature he cannot bear the proximity of embodied love.

And if Ahriman, down there, the representative of the ossifying principle, the being that carries within itself everything that seeks to bind human beings to the earth, everything that does not want to let them go, suffers torment, ground. This is not because the figure of Christ hurls lightning bolts, but because this ahrimanic entity, through its own soul condition, so to speak, out of embodied love, casts lightning bolts for its own torment.

Here I really tried to depict love both plastically and pictorially in this central figure. And in a similar way, the inner experiences of spiritual science are given in the pictures on either side of this central group. But I can only show you the content of what is painted here. But that is not the main thing. In the first of my Mystery Dramas it is stated that in truth only that corresponds to modern ideas about painting in which the form of the color is the work. And here in this small dome an attempt was once made to create everything that was to be created out of color. If someone asks about the meanings, they are at most what one has tried to attach to the color scheme. I have to keep saying: one sees the color spot there or there, and what is in its vicinity as color spots, that is more important to me than what is meant there in a novelistic way.

An attempt has been made to realize this – I know all the counter-arguments – but it has been made, to realize what appears to me to be the case: I actually perceive every line in nature, when it is reproduced by drawing or painting, as a lie. The truth in nature is color. One is not concerned with the horizon line, but above with the blue firmament, below with the green sea, and where the two colors meet, the line and the form arise by themselves. This is how I have tried to paint here: everything from the color. The line should be the creature of the color.

Here you can see a section of the painting more clearly.

Here is a kind of rule of thumb. Here is the only word written out with letters that can be seen as a word in the whole structure. Nowhere is there anything symbolic that could be expressed in words; only here at this point, where an attempt has been made to convey the sensation as an experience through color, which occurred around the 16th century, when humanity developed more and more towards an individualistic soul life; there, knowledge took on very special forms. Those who speak of knowledge in such abstract terms, as many epistemologists do, really know nothing of the inner experience of knowledge. Today, knowledge is only known by those who can see before their soul how, in the process of limiting human life, childhood emerges from the spiritual world.

Here the child and on the other side, death. In the middle, the realization, the realization that brings it to the individualism of the ego-grasping. That which humanity has felt as actual cultural thoughts, for example in the 16th century, is attempted here to be expressed through color. I can only show you the content, which is not the main thing. But I think that precisely because this content is imperfectly depicted here, it evokes the feeling that something is still missing here, without which this thing cannot truly be what it should be. Anyone who sees this should feel that there should be color: here the child in its particularity, here the self, there a kind of fist-like figure, and below that death.

Here a little further. With the first figure we were still touching the auditorium. Here we come to the middle of the small domed room. There we have a figure that is supposed to represent how the spiritual was experienced by a cognizant human being in ancient Greece. The sensations, as they pass through human spiritual culture, should be seen in colors on the wall.

Here is the figure, which is, as it were, the inspiring figure above the Faust figure. You always see the inspired below, with a kind of genius above. Here is the genius of Faust, who appears as a kind of inspirer of Faust.

Here is the figure that can be seen above the Greek figure as an inspiring figure. It was a natural development that the genius of the sentient and cognizant entity was depicted as Apollo with the lyre. This is a higher inspiring entity that is always above the one who is down below, who is sitting down below, as it were, on the column. The inspiring figures are painted in the dome space.

Here below is an Egyptian figure, leading the Egyptian soul-life. The two figures shown before (Fig. 75) stand above her and represent the inspirers; the entities that are meant to pour the soul-life into them. Fig. 44 (Fig. 77):

Here I have tried to show how the civilization that I would describe as that of the Persian Zarathustra culture, which dates back to primeval times and has a view of the world as dual, ambivalent, as a world in which light and darkness cast their effects, how this view of the world has spread from Asia through Central Europe, and how it is still expressed in Goetheanism, where man experiences it. That is the essence of our Germanic-German culture: we always experience this contrast between light and darkness, which is already expressed in the old Zarathustra culture, this contrast that cuts so deeply into our souls when, on the one hand, we feel something that wants to grow beyond us like light; on the other hand, something that, like heaviness, wants to pull us into the earth. This is how the dualism that is felt should be expressed.

Above them you can see two figures. Sometimes you get fed up when you have been working on something like this for months. I got fed up while forming these two figures, in these figures, in which the inadequate and the ugly come to life, to recreate something like Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. That was something like a bugbear. But the other thing is that, basically, something lives in the Germanic-German soul when it experiences the thought of realization, which can only be endured if one recognizes full life in harmony with where life innocently enters physical existence from spiritual worlds.

Here you have, so to speak, an inspiring summary of everything that appears as duality: the being of light, the Luciferic, that which tempts people to fall into raptures; the other is the pedantic, the philistine, the Ahrimanic, which would like to drag people down. No civilization experiences this dualism as deeply and dramatically as the one within which there is a transitional context for contexts that go back to ancient times to the Zarathustra culture and find their expression in all that has become Goetheanism, which we still feel by spiritual science itself compels us to present the representative of humanity as he must seek the balance between the Luciferic, the mystical, the enthusiastic, the theosophical, and the Ahrimanic, the pedantic, ossified, philistine, sclerotic, and so on.

Here is the one figure, the ahrimanic, philistine, pedantic one, with the forehead set far back; the whole built as man would become if he were pure intellect. Only by the heart working its way up into the head do we avoid one extreme, how we would become if we only developed the things that form the skull, but which cannot form themselves according to their own inner forces because this is counteracted by the heart and the whole of the rest of the human being.

Here the other aspect, counteracting the Ahrimanic aspect. Between these two aspects, man must always seek his equilibrium. Christ is the great Master who leads us on the path to find this balance.

Here we come up against the central group. This is what will arise when dualism has developed to the point where the human being feels himself to be twofold, as a higher and a lower human being; that he has his shadow within himself, but as a shadow that he digests spiritually and mentally.

As a kindly genius that is above him.

Here a centaur, inspiring him what needs to be overcome in us as animality. Up here the centaur form, inspiring a future culture, next to the genius, the angelic, what approaches man on the other side.

Here is the central figure, Christ, not by attaching a vignette to him, but by placing him as the central figure. One should feel artistically: this is the figure in which the divine has appeared on earth. One should feel it from the form, from the line, from the surfaces and here from the color.

Figure 53 (illustration unclear): Here, at this point, it has, so to speak, been completely successful, even if it is only an attempt, to create everything out of color, without line.

Here is the head of the Representative of Man. Above it, Luciferic; below, Ahrimanic. This is the head that appears to me, from the spiritual vision – as far as one can form it – as the true form of the one who lived in Palestine at the starting point of Christianity as the Christ.

Here is the figure of Lucifer, collapsing into himself. It is painted in red and worked out of red. Picture 56 (Fig. 86): Below, the figure of Ahriman.

Here is the head, as the human head would be if it were not softened by the rest of the human being.

Here is the lightning bolt that must be drawn from the Christ principle.

Here I then move on to showing an illustration of a group of people. This group of people now also represents the representative of humanity. Above them are two figures, one again representing the rapturous, the mystical and so on. And as paradoxical as it may sound, this is designed in its forms as it presents itself in an inner spiritual vision if one wants to represent what man would be like if he formed himself according to the feverish, the pleuritic, the enthusiastic-fantastic.

Here the head, here the arm, and the peculiar thing that arises: that the larynx, ear and chest come together and merge into the wing. You feel what becomes an expressionist work of art. This is something that the non-understanding person might call symbolic. It is not symbolic, it is observed as only an organic-physical form can be observed.

Here again this figure, and here the figure at the very top on one side of the group of wood. It turned out that we needed something purely to balance the gravity conditions so that the whole group would support itself. It became so that I had to dare to create something quite asymmetrical, a kind of elemental spirit, growing out of the rock form, but here made of wood. If you abandon yourself to the rock formations, look at them and let your imagination create, saying to yourself: nature has decided on their formation, but if they were to continue, what would arise? You end up with something that approaches the higher form but is not it. I tried to create that in this figure. Above are two luciferic figures, below two ahrimanic figures, and up there this entity, which was dared to be formed completely asymmetrical, because it occurs in a place where the symmetrical would be in contradiction to the whole, and which looks somewhat mischievously humorously at what is forming there as the human struggle. I say “mischievously humorous” because there are indeed entities in the spiritual world that look with a certain humor at the inner tragedy of the human soul struggle. Picture 62 (Fig. 94):

Here you see a photograph of my original wax model of the Ahriman figure, the Ahriman head, the original pedant, the original philistine, the head that would have formed if the other human-forming forces had not counteracted the head-forming forces. Once you have created something like this, you know that you have nothing more to add to it. If you then want to create the head for Ahriman, who lives down in the rocky cave and is in conflict with Lucifer, this head also undergoes a metamorphosis, and the place where it needs to be in the body goes through a corresponding metamorphosis.

Here, seen from the side, is the head of the central figure, of whom I have just shown the painted form; that figure, carved out of wood, is, in my opinion, supposed to represent Christ Jesus walking in Palestine.

It is remarkable; while I was creating this, it became clear to me once again that one should actually create all Christian motifs in wood. The warmth of the wood – this statue is made of elm wood – is necessary for Christian motifs. An Apollo, an Athena is better in marble; Christian motifs are better in wood. It was always a real pain for me to see Michelangelo's Pieta in Rome, the mother with the body of Christ on her lap. I would have liked to see this Pieta - which I nevertheless greatly admire, of course - in wood instead of marble. I don't yet know the reasons myself. Such things cannot be easily explained. But I think the Aperçu is correct that everything Christian must be represented in wood.

Now, regarding the group that I just showed, which forms the center of the building, there is one more thing. If we follow the development of architecture, and consider only two or three stages, we must say: let us look at a Greek temple. It is not quite complete if it does not have its god inside. You cannot think of a Greek temple in general, but only of a temple of Apollo, a temple of Athena. It is the god's dwelling.

Let us move from Greek architecture to Gothic. The Gothic cathedral is not complete unless the community is within it.

We live in an age in which the community is becoming individualized. Therefore, the social question is the most important question of our time, because people live according to their individuality. Grasping the deepest nerve of our contemporary culture, we must look at what a building that belongs to a community must be a framework for today: for the people themselves. Therefore, the representative of human self-knowledge, the trinity between man, as he struggles in his soul between the enthusiastic-mystical and the pedantic-philistine, materialistic, this trinity should be placed at the center of the building, just as the god stands in the Greek temple, as the community praises in the Gothic cathedral. In this way, the spectator area should be pervaded by the pictorial and plastic sound of the “know thyself,” not in abstract forms, but artistically embodied in the Trinity of which I have so often spoken and which, in my opinion, is the Trinity of the culture of the future of humanity. Therefore, this wooden figure did not have to be erected at the center of the building, but as the central figure of the building.

Here an adjoining building, a neighboring building. Again a metamorphosis of the two domes. Here the architectural idea has been developed into a different form. The main building has windows for which a special type of glasswork has been invented. What I said earlier – that those inside this building feel at one with the whole universe, not closed off – should be expressed through the windows. That is why all the windows are large panes of glass in a single color. These panes – red, green, blue – are engraved, etched out of the glass, which then gives the glass its visual effect. This visual effect is there when the sun shines through the windows. This glass etching was tried for the first time in this building. And here, with the glass window in front of you without sunlight, you can physically feel a kind of score; together with the sun, it becomes a work of art. And you feel in the building: when the sunlight floods in through red, green, and blue panes, what the sun paints with its light lives in these windows, so that it is a representation of human death, sleep, waking, and so on; but nowhere is it symbolic, rather these states of consciousness are experienced vividly within.

These glass windows were to be made in this smaller building. And because the first person to work there was called Taddäus Rychter, this house was called “the Richter house”. So it does not have this name because we want to implement the threefold social order, as some people have said, and so we would have built a legal building in which we would have had our own jurisdiction. That is not the case. This should be noted by those who have done something wrong; they will be convicted according to Swiss law.

This is the entrance gate. Everything about it, down to the locks and door handles, is designed in line with the organic architectural concept, so that everything has to be the way it is in its place. Hence the need for a separate lock for these structures.

Here you can see the one that has experienced the most challenges. One day I said to myself: there must be a heating house, a firing plant, near the building. One could have done something that would not have been in the spirit of the overall architectural concept of the Goetheanum; a red chimney would have stood there. But I tried to create a utilitarian building out of concrete. I tried, in turn, to form a shell around the heating elements and the firing machines that are inside, just as the nut fruit forms a shell around itself. Also around what comes out as smoke. The whole is only complete when smoke comes out. So there, too, an attempt is made to carry out a building idea in such a way that, despite the utilitarian idea being carried out, what is created out of the utilitarian form is that which, in utilitarian building, the artistic form-giver currently strives for.

The same building from the side.

By now, enough time has passed and I have kept you waiting for a long time with a large number of pictures that were intended to show you something that is being built in Dornach as the Goetheanum, as a free university for spiritual science. What I have shown you in a series of pictures is intended to provide an initial framework for the work that has arisen from the spirit of spiritual science, which I have now been able to present in Stuttgart for almost two decades. A building was to be erected in Dornach that would not only have an external connection to this spiritual science, in that it serves the cultivation of spiritual science, but that would also be an expression in every detail of life in this spiritual science, just as the word that is formed and through which this spiritual science is proclaimed is intended to be a direct expression of the ideal that can be experienced in this spiritual science.

This spiritual science should not be abstract, theoretical, unworldly or unreal. This spiritual science should be able to intervene in reality everywhere. Therefore, it had to create a building style, a framework that emerged from itself just as a nutshell emerges from a nut. Of course, one will rightly be able to object to some things that are also before my mind's eye. But there was always a certain sense of encouragement while I was working on this building idea and all its details, what went through my mind when I was a very young man in the 1880s and heard the Viennese architect von Ferstel, who built the Viennese Votivkirche, give his inaugural address on the development of architectural styles. With a certain emphasis, Ferstel, the great architect, exclaimed: “Architectural styles are not invented, architectural styles arise.

I always said to myself: But then we live today in a time in which everything spiritual must change in the human soul in such a way that a new architectural style must necessarily arise from this change of the spiritual. And that something like this must be possible was always before me. I believed that it must be possible, and therefore I did not shrink from seeking such an architectural style, even if it was initially in a very imperfect design, from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. A second time, if I were ever to supervise such a building again, it would be quite different. But one only learns by approaching reality, when one wants to deal not with abstract ideas, with something symbolic and allegorical, but with something vividly artistic and real in life. Spiritual science needs at least the beginning of a new architectural style, a new artistic formal language. No matter how imperfect it may be, present-day human civilization demands it! And those who have stood by me in such great numbers have seen it with me and have submitted to the first attempt at realizing this aspiration. And even if many still look with a sneer at what rises up as the Goetheanum, as a free college on the Jura hill in northwestern Switzerland — which is now difficult to reach from here, but otherwise easy to reach because it is only half an hour across the border — what stands there is already visited by thousands and thousands from all countries, especially from Switzerland itself. The eurythmy performances are also well attended, every Saturday and Sunday, and the lectures that I already give for the public in this school enjoy a certain interest even in circles that do not belong to the Anthroposophical Society. Dornach is beginning to open up to the world. It will still cost great sacrifices. We will still need many resources to really develop what is intended. But from what is there today, what is still unfinished, it can be seen that there can be a world view that not only thinks but also builds. On the other hand, we would like to show the world through the Federation for Threefolding that this world view can also have a socially constructive effect on the immediate life of the individual and of humanity. However great the faults of this structure, which is the external representative of our world view, our spiritual-scientific world view, and however much it is still rightly subject to criticism today, it had to be ventured. It had to be placed in our present civilization. And in the face of all contradictions - or rather in the face of all approval of the present - I would like to say, in harmony with all the friends who have helped me in such great numbers in erecting this building, in the face of what is intended here, the modest, summarizing word:

What has been willed must first become the right thing in later times, but a start had to be made. And speaking on behalf of all those who have been active in Dornach, I can summarize the attitude out of which flowed what I have tried to show you today: we dared to do it despite the difficulties, and we will continue to dare to do it!

1. Methodology

[ 1 ] We have established what the relationship is between the world of ideas—attained by scientific thinking—and directly given experience. We have learned to know the beginning and end of a process: experience devoid of ideas and idea filled apprehension of reality. Between the two, however, there lies human activity. The human being must actively allow the end to go forth from the beginning. The way in which he does this is the method. It is of course the case, now, that our apprehension of that relationship between the beginning and end of knowledge will also require its own characteristic method. Where must we begin in developing this method? Scientific thinking must prove itself, step by step, to represent an overcoming of that dark form of reality which we have designated as the directly given, and to represent a lifting up of the directly given into the bright clarity of the idea. The method must therefore consist in our answering the question, with respect to each thing: What part does it have in the unified world of ideas; what place does it occupy in the ideal picture that I make for myself of the world? When I have understood this, when I have recognized how a thing connects itself with my ideas, then my need for knowledge is satisfied. There is only one thing that is not satisfying to my need for knowledge: when a thing confronts me that does not want to connect anywhere with the view I hold of things. The ideal discomfort must be overcome that stems from the fact that there is something or other of which I must say to myself: I see that it is there; when I approach it, it faces me like a question mark; but I find nowhere, within the harmony of my thoughts, the point at that I can incorporate it; the questions I must ask upon seeing it remain unanswered, no matter how I twist and turn my system of thoughts. From this we can see what we need when we look at anything. When I approach it, it faces me as a single thing. Within me the thought-world presses toward that spot where the concept of the thing lies. I do not rest until that which confronted me at first as an individual thing appears as a part of my thought-world. Thus the individual thing as such dissolves and appears in a larger context. Now it is illuminated by the other thought-masses; now it is a serving member; and it is completely clear to me what it signifies within the greater harmony. This is what takes place in us when we approach an object of experience and contemplate it. All progress in science depends upon our becoming aware of the point at which some phenomenon or other can be incorporated into the harmony of the thought-world. Do not misunderstand me. This does not mean that every phenomenon must be explainable by concepts we already have, that our world of ideas is closed, nor that every new experience must coincide with some concept or other that we already possess. That pressing of the thought-world within us toward a concept can also go to a spot that has not yet been thought by anyone at all. And the ideal progress of the history of science rests precisely on the fact that thinking drives new configurations of ideas to the surface. Every such thought-configuration is connected by a thousand threads with all other possible thoughts—with this concept in this way, and with another in that. And the scientific method consists in the fact that we show the concept of a certain phenomenon in its relationship with the rest of the world of ideas. We call this process the deriving (demonstrating) of the concept. All scientific thinking, however, consists only in our finding the existing transitions from concept to concept, consists in our letting one concept go forth from another. The movement of our thinking back and forth from concept to concept: this is scientific method. One will say that this is the old story of the correspondence between the conceptual world and the world of experience. If we are to believe that the going back and forth from concept to concept leads to a picture of reality, then we would have to presuppose that the world outside ourselves (the transsubjective) would correspond to our conceptual world. But that is only a mistaken apprehension of the relationship between individual entity and concept. When I confront an entity from the world of experience, I absolutely do not know at all what it is. Only when I have overcome it, when its concept has lighted up for me, do I then know what I have before me. But this does not mean to say that this individual entity and the concept are two different things. No, they are the same; and what confronts me in this particular entity is nothing other than the concept. The reason I see that entity as a separate piece detached from the rest of reality is, in fact, that I do not yet know it in its true nature, that it does not yet confront me as what it is. This gives us the means of further characterizing our scientific method. Every individual entity of reality represents a definite content within our thought-system. Every such entity is founded in the wholeness of the world of ideas and can be comprehended only in connection with it. Thus each thing must necessarily call upon a twofold thought activity. First the thought corresponding to the thing has to be determined in clear contours, and after this all the threads must be determined that lead from this thought to the whole thought-world. Clarity in the details and depth in the whole are the two most significant demands of reality. The former is the intellect's concern, the latter is reason's. The intellect (Verstand) creates thought-configurations for the individual things of reality. It fulfills its task best the more exactly it delimits these configurations, the sharper the contours are that it draws. Reason (Vernunft) then has to incorporate these configurations into the harmony of the whole world of ideas. This of course presupposes the following: Within the content of the thought-configurations that the intellect creates, that unity already exists, living one and the same life; only, the intellect keeps everything artificially separated. Reason then, without blurring the clarity, merely eliminates the separation again. The intellect distances us from reality; reason brings us back to it again. Graphically this can be represented in the following way:

[ 2 ] In this diagram everything is connected; the same principle lives in all the parts. The intellect causes the separation of the individual configurations—because they do indeed confront us in the given as individual elements⁵²—and reason recognizes the unity.⁵³ [ 3 ] If we have the following two perceptions: 1. the sun shining down and 2. a warm stone, the intellect keeps both things apart, because they confront us as two; it holds onto one as the cause and onto the other as the effect; then reason supervenes, tears down the wall between them, and recognizes the unity in the duality. All the concepts that the intellect creates—cause and effect, substance and attribute, body and soul, idea and reality, God and world, etc.—are there only in order to keep unified reality separated artificially into parts; and reason, without blurring the content thus created, without mystically obscuring the clarity of the intellect, has then to seek out the inner unity in the multiplicity. Reason thereby comes back to that from which the intellect had distanced itself: to the unified reality. If one wants an exact nomenclature, one can call the formations of the intellect “concepts” and the creations of reason “ideas.” And one sees that the path of science is to lift oneself through the concept to the idea. And here is the place where the subjective and the objective element of our knowing differentiates itself for us in the clearest way. It is plain to see that the separation has only a subjective existence, that it is only created by our intellect. It cannot hinder me from dividing one and the same objective unity into thought-configurations that are different from those of a fellow human being; this does not hinder my reason, in its connecting activity, from attaining the same objective unity again from which we both, in fact, have taken our start. Let us represent symbolically a unified configuration of reality (figure 1). I divide it intellectually thus (figure 2); another person divides it differently (figure 3). We bring it together in accordance with reason and obtain the same configuration.

[ 4 ] This makes it explainable to us how people can have such different concepts, such different views of reality, in spite of the fact that reality can, after all, only be one. The difference lies in the difference between our intellectual worlds. This sheds light for us upon the development of the different scientific standpoints. We understand where the many philosophical standpoints originate, and do not need to bestow the palm of truth exclusively upon one of them. We also know which standpoint we ourselves have to take with respect to the multiplicity of human views. We will not ask exclusively: What is true, what is false? We will always investigate how the intellectual world of a thinker goes forth from the world harmony; we will seek to understand and not to judge negatively and regard at once as error that which does not correspond with our own view. Another source of differentiation between our scientific standpoints is added to this one through the fact that every individual person has a different field of experience. Each person is indeed confronted, as it were, by one section of the whole of reality. His intellect works upon this and is his mediator on the way to the idea. But even though we all do therefore perceive the same idea, still we always do this from different places. Therefore, only the end result to which we come can be the same; our paths, however, can be different. It absolutely does not matter at all whether the individual judgments and concepts of which our knowing consists correspond to each other or not; the only thing that matters is that they ultimately lead us to the point that we are swimming in the main channel of the idea. And all human beings must ultimately meet each other in this channel if energetic thinking leads them out of and beyond their own particular standpoints. It can indeed be possible that a limited experience or an unproductive spirit leads us to a one-sided, incomplete view; but even the smallest amount of what we experience must ultimately lead us to the idea; for we do not lift ourselves to the idea through a lesser or greater experience, but rather through our abilities as a human personality alone. A limited experience can only result in the fact that we express the idea in a one-sided way, that we have limited means at our command for bringing to expression the light that shines in us; a limited experience, however, cannot hinder us altogether from allowing that light to shine within us. Whether our scientific or even our general world view is also complete or not is an altogether different question; as is that about the spiritual depth of our views. If one now returns to Goethe, one will recognize that many of his statements, when compared with what we have presented in this chapter, simply follow from it. We consider this to be the only correct relationship between an author and his interpreter. When Goethe says: “If I know my relationship to myself and to the outer world, then I call it truth. And in this way each person can have his own truth, and it is after all always the same one” (Aphorisms in Prose), this can be understood only if we take into account what we have developed here.

2. Dogmatic and Immanent Methods

[ 5 ] A scientific judgment comes about through the fact that we either join two concepts together or join a perception to a concept. The judgment that there is no effect without a cause belongs to the first kind; the judgment that a tulip is a plant belongs to the second kind. Daily life also recognizes judgments where one perception is joined to another, for example when we say that a rose is red. When we make a judgment, we do so for one reason or another. Now, there can be two different views about this reason. One view assumes that the factual (objective) reasons for our judgment being true lie beyond what is given us in the concepts or perceptions that enter into the judgment. According to this view, the reason a judgment is true does not coincide with the subjective reasons out of which we make this judgment. Our logical reasons, according to this view, have nothing to do with the objective reasons. It may be that this view proposes some way or other of arriving at the objective reasons for our insight; the means that our knowing thinking has are not adequate for this. For my knowing, the objective entity that determines my conclusion lies in a world unknown to me: my conclusion. along with its formal reasons (freedom from contradictions, being supported by various axioms, etc.), lies only within my world. A science based on this view is a dogmatic one. Both the theologizing philosophy that bases itself on a belief in revelation, and the modern science of experience are dogmatic sciences of this kind; for there is not only a dogma of revelation; there is also a dogma of experience. The dogma of revelation conveys truths to man about things that are totally removed from his field of vision. He does not know the world concerning which the ready-made assertions are prescribed for his belief. He cannot get at the grounds for these assertions. He can therefore never gain any insight as to why they are true. He can gain no knowledge, only faith. On the other hand, however, the assertions of the science of experience are also merely dogmas; it believes that one should stick merely to pure experience and only observe, describe, and systematically order its transformations, without lifting oneself to the determining factors that are not yet given within mere direct experience. In this case also we do not in fact gain the truth through insight into the matter, but rather it is forced upon us from outside. I see what is happening and what is there; and register it; why it is this way lies in the object. I see only the results, not the reason. The dogma of revelation once ruled science; today it is the dogma of experience that does so. It was once considered presumptuous to reflect upon the preconditions of revealed truths; today it is considered impossible to know anything other than what the facts express. As to why they are as they are and not something different, this is considered to be unexperiencable and therefore inaccessible.

[ 6 ] Our considerations have shown that it is nonsensical to assume any reason for a judgment being true other than our reason for recognizing it as true. When we have pressed forward to the point where the being of something occurs to us as idea, we then behold in the idea something totally complete in itself, something self-supported and self-sustaining; it demands no further explanation from outside at all, so we can stop there. We see in the idea—if only we have the capacity for this—that it has everything which constitutes it within itself, that with it we have everything we could ask. The entire ground of existence has merged with the idea, has poured itself into it, unreservedly, in such a way that we have nowhere else to seek it except in the idea. In the idea we do not have a picture of what we are seeking in addition to the things; we have what we are seeking itself. When the parts of our world of ideas flow together in our judgments then it is the content of these parts itself that brings this about, not reasons lying outside them. The substantial and not merely the formal reasons for our conclusions are directly present within our thinking.

[ 7 ] That view is thereby rejected which assumes an absolute reality—outside the ideal realm—by which all things, including thinking, are carried. For that world view, the foundation for what exists cannot be found at all within what is accessible to us. This foundation is not innate (eingeboren) to the world lying before us; it is present outside this world, an entity unto itself, existing alongside this world. One can call that view realism. It appears in two forms. It either assumes a multiplicity of real beings underlying the world (Leibniz, Herbart), or a uniform real (Schopenhauer). Such an existent real can never be recognized as identical with the idea; it is already presupposed to be essentially different from the idea. Someone who becomes aware of the clear sense of the question as to the essential being of phenomena cannot be an adherent of this realism. What does it mean then to ask about the essential being of the world? It means nothing more than that, when I approach a thing, a voice makes itself heard in me that tells me that the thing is ultimately something quite else in addition to what I perceive with my senses. What it is in addition is already working in me, presses in me toward manifestation, while I am seeing the thing outside me. Only because the world of ideas working in me presses me to explain, out of it, the world around me, do I demand any such explanation. For a being in whom no ideas are pressing up, the urge is not there to explain the things any further; he is fully satisfied with the sense-perceptible phenomenon. The demand for an explanation of the world stems from the need that thinking has to unite the content accessible to thinking with manifest reality, to permeate everything conceptually, to make what we see, hear, etc., into something that we understand. Whoever takes into consideration the full implications of these statements cannot possibly be an adherent of the realism characterized above. To want to explain the world by something real that is not idea is such a self-contradiction that one absolutely cannot grasp how it could possibly find any adherents at all. To explain what is perceptibly real to us by something or other that does not take part in thinking at all, that, in fact, is supposed to be basically different from any- thing of a thought nature, for this we have neither the need nor any possible starting point. First of all: Where would the need originate to explain the world by something that never intrudes upon us, that conceals itself from us? And let us assume that it did approach us; then the question arises again: In what form and where? It cannot of course be in thinking. And even in outer or inner perception again? What meaning could it have to explain the sense world by a qualitative equivalent? There is only one other possibility: to assume that we had an ability to reach this most real being that lies outside thought in another way than through thinking and perception. Whoever makes this assumption has fallen into mysticism. We do not have to deal with mysticism, however; for we are concerned only with the relationship between thinking and existence, between idea and reality. A mystic must write an epistemology for mysticism. The standpoint of the later Schelling—according to which we develop only the what (das Was) of the world content with the help of our reason, but cannot reach the that (das Dass)⁵⁴—seems to us to be the greatest nonsense. Because for us the that is the presupposition of the what, and we would not know how we are supposed to arrive at the what of a thing whose that has not already been surely established beforehand. The that, after all, is already inherent in the content of my reason when I grasp its what. This assumption of Schelling—that we can have a positive world content, without any conviction that it exists, and that we must first gain the that through higher experience—seems to us so incomprehensible to any thinking that understands itself, that we must assume that Schelling himself, in his later period, no longer understood the standpoint of his youth, which made such a powerful impression upon Goethe.

[ 8 ] It will not do to assume higher forms of existence than those belonging to the world of ideas. Only because the human being is often not able to comprehend that the existence (Sein) of the idea is something far higher and fuller than that of perceptual reality, does he still seek a further reality. He regards ideal existence as something chimerical, as something needing to be imbued with some real element, and is not satisfied with it. He cannot, in fact, grasp the idea in its positive nature; he has it only as something abstract; he has no inkling of its fullness, of its inner perfection and genuineness. But we must demand of our education that it work its way up to that high standpoint where even an existence that cannot be seen with the eyes, nor grasped with the hands, but that must be apprehended by reason, is regarded as real. We have therefore actually founded an idealism that is realism at the same time. Our train of thought is: Thinking presses toward explanation of reality out of the idea. It conceals this urge in the question: What is the real being of reality? Only at the end of a scientific process do we ask about the content of this real being itself; we do not go about it as realism does, which presupposes something real in order then to trace reality back to it. We differ from realism in having full consciousness of the fact that only in the idea do we have a means of explaining the world. Even realism has only this means but does not realize it. It derives the world from ideas, but believes it derives it from some other reality. Leibniz' world of monads is nothing other than a world of ideas; but Leibniz believes that in it he possesses a higher reality than the ideal one. All the realists make the same mistake: they think up beings, without becoming aware that they are not getting outside of the idea. We have rejected this realism, because it deceives itself about the actual ideal nature of its world foundation; but we also have to reject that false idealism which believes that because we do not get outside of the idea, we also do not get outside of our consciousness, and that all the mental pictures given us and the whole world are only subjective illusion, only a dream that our consciousness dreams (Fichte). These idealists also do not comprehend that although we do not get outside of the idea, we do nevertheless have in the idea something objective, something that has its basis in itself and not in the subject. They do not consider the fact that even though we do not get outside of the unity of thinking, we do enter with the thinking of our reason into the midst of full objectivity. The realists do not comprehend that what is objective is idea, and the idealists do not comprehend that the idea is objective.

[ 9 ] We still have to occupy ourselves with the empiricists of the sense-perceptible, who regard any explaining of the real by the idea as inadmissible philosophical deduction and who demand that we stick to what is graspable by the senses. Against this standpoint we can only say, simply, that its demand can, after all, only be a methodological one. To say that we should stick to what is given only means, after all, that we should acquire for ourselves what confronts us. This standpoint is the least able to determine anything about the what of the given; for, this what must in fact come, for this standpoint, from the given itself. It is totally incomprehensible to us how, along with the demand for pure experience, someone can demand at the same time that we not go outside the sense world, seeing that in fact the idea can just as well fulfill the demand that it be given. The positivistic principle of experience must leave the question entirely open as to what is given, and unites itself quite well then with the results of idealistic research. But then this demand coincides with ours as well. And we do unite in our view all standpoints, insofar as they are valid ones. Our standpoint is idealism, because it sees in the idea the ground of the world; it is realism because it addresses the idea as the real; and it is positivism or empiricism because it wants to arrive at the content of the idea, not through a priori constructions, but rather as something given. We have an empirical method that penetrates into the real and that is ultimately satisfied by the results of idealistic research. We do not recognize as valid any inferring, from something given and known to us, of an underlying, non-given, determinative element. We reject any inference in which any part of the inference is not given. Inferring is only a going from given elements over to other equally given elements. In an inference we join a to b by means of c; but all these must be given. When Volkelt says that our thinking moves us to presuppose something in addition to the given and to transcend the given, then we say: Within our thinking, something is already moving us that we want to add to the directly given. We must therefore reject all metaphysics. Metaphysics wants, in fact, to explain the given by something non-given, inferred (Wolff, Herbart). We see in inferences only a formal activity that does not lead to anything new, but only brings about transitions between elements actually present.

3. The System of Science

[ 10 ] What form does a fully developed science (Wissenschaft) have in the light of the Goethean way of thinking? Above all we must hold fast to the fact that the total content of science is a given one; given partly as the sense world from outside, partly as the world of ideas from within. All our scientific activity will therefore consist in overcoming the form in which this total content of the given confronts us, and in making it over into a form that satisfies us. This is necessary because the inner unity of the given remains hidden in its first form of manifestation, in which only the outer surface appears to us. Now the methodological activity that establishes a relationship between these two forms turns out to vary according to the realm of phenomena with which we are working. The first realm is one in which we have a manifoldness of elements given to sense perception. These interact with each other. This interaction becomes clear to us when we immerse ourselves into the matter through ideas. Then one or another element appears as more or less determined by the others, in one way or another. The existential conditions of one become comprehensible to us through those of the others. We trace one phenomenon back to the others. We trace the phenomenon of a warm stone, as effect, back to the warming rays of the sun, as cause. We have explained what we perceive about one thing, when we trace it back to some other perceptible thing. We see in what way the ideal law arises in this realm. It encompasses the things of the sense world, stands over them. It determines the lawful way of working of one thing by letting it be conditional upon another. Our task here is to bring together the series of phenomena in such a way that one necessarily goes forth out of the others, that they all constitute one whole and are lawful through and through. The realm that is to be explained in this way is inorganic nature. Now the individual phenomena of experience by no means confront us in such a way that what is closest in space and time is also the closest according to its inner nature. We must first pass from what is closest in space and time over into what is conceptually closest. For a certain phenomenon we must seek the phenomena that are directly connected to it in accordance with their nature. Our goal must be to bring together a series of facts that complement each other, that carry and mutually support each other. We achieve thereby a group of sense-perceptible, interacting elements of reality; and the phenomenon that unfolds before us follows directly out of the pertinent factors in a transparent, clear way. Following Goethe's example, we call such a phenomenon an “archetypal phenomenon” (Urphänomen) or a basic fact. This archetypal phenomenon is identical with the objective natural law. The bringing together discussed here can either occur merely in thoughts—as when I think about the three determining factors that come into consideration when a stone is thrown horizontally: 1. the force of the throw, 2. the force of gravity, and 3. the air's resistance and then derive the path of the flying stone from these factors; or, on the other hand, I can actually bring the individual factors together and then await the phenomenon that follows from their interaction. This is what we do in an experiment. Whereas a phenomenon of the outer world is unclear to us because we know only what has been determined (the phenomenon) and not what is determining, the phenomenon that an experiment presents is clear, because we ourselves have brought together the determining factors. This is the path of research of nature: It takes its start from experience, in order to see what is real; advances to observation, in order to see why it is real; and then intensifies into the experiment, in order to see what can be real.

[ 11 ] Unfortunately, precisely that essay of Goethe's seems to have been lost that could best have supported these views. It is a continuation of the essay, The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object.⁵⁵ Starting from the latter, let us try to reconstruct the possible content of the lost essay from the only source available to us, the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller. The essay on The Experiment came out of those studies of Goethe that he undertook in order to show the validity of his work in optics. It was then put aside until the poet took up these studies again in 1798 with new energy and, with Schiller, submitted the basic principles of the natural-scientific method to a thorough and scientifically serious investigation. On January 10, 1798 (see Goethe's correspondence with Schiller) he then sent the essay on The Experiment to Schiller for his consideration and on January 13 informed his friend that he wanted, in a new essay, to develop further the views expressed there. And he did undertake this work; on January 17 already he sent a little essay to Schiller that contained a characterization of the methods of natural science. This is not to be found among his works. It would indisputably have been the one to provide the best points of reference for an appreciation of Goethe's basic views on the natural-scientific method. We can, however, know what thoughts were expressed there from Schiller's detailed letter of January 19, 1798; along with this, the fact comes into consideration that we find many confirmations and supplementations to the indications in Schiller's letter in Goethe's Aphorisms in Prose.⁵⁶

[ 12 ] Goethe distinguishes three methods of natural-scientific research. These rest upon three different conceptions of phenomena. The first method is ordinary empiricism, which does not go beyond the empirical phenomenon, beyond the immediate facts. It remains with individual phenomena. If ordinary empiricism wants to be consistent, it must limit its entire activity to exactly describing in every detail each phenomenon that meets it, i.e., to recording the empirical facts. Science, for it, would merely be the sum total of all these individual descriptions of recorded facts. Compared to ordinary empiricism rationalism then represents the next higher level, it deals with the scientific phenomenon. This view no longer limits itself to the mere describing of phenomena, but rather seeks to explain these by discovering causes, by setting up hypotheses, etc. It is the level at which the intellect infers from the phenomena their causes and inter-relationships. Goethe declares both these methods to be one-sided. Ordinary empiricism is raw non-science, because it never gets beyond the mere grasping of incidentals; rationalism, on the other hand, interprets into the phenomenal world causes and interrelationships that are not in it. The former cannot lift itself out of the abundance of phenomena up to free thinking; the latter loses this abundance as the sure ground under its feet and falls prey to the arbitrariness of imagination and of subjective inspiration. Goethe censures in the sharpest way the passion people have for immediately attaching to the phenomena deductions arrived at subjectively, as, for example, in Aphorisms in Prose: “It is bad business—but one that happens to many an observer—where a person immediately connects a deduction to a perception and considers them both as equally valid,” and: “Theories are usually the overly hasty conclusions of an impatient intellect that would like to be rid of the phenomenon and therefore sets in its place pictures, concepts, indeed often only words. One senses, one even sees, in fact, that it is only an expedient; but have not passion and a partisan spirit always loved expedients? And rightly so, since they need them so much.” Goethe particularly criticizes the misuse to which the concept of causality has given rise. Rationalism, in its unbridled fantasy, seeks causality where, if you are looking for facts, it is not to be found. In Aphorisms in Prose he says: “The most innate, most necessary concept, that of cause and effect, when applied, gives rise to innumerable and ever-recurring errors.” Rationalism is particularly led by its passion for simple relationships to think of phenomena as parts of a chain attached to one another by cause and effect and stretching out merely lengthwise; whereas the truth is, in fact, that one or another phenomenon that, in time, is causally determined by an earlier one, still depends also upon many other effects at the same time. In this case only the length and not the breadth of nature is taken into account. Both paths, ordinary empiricism and rationalism, are for Goethe certainly transitional stages to the highest scientific method, but, in fact, only transitional stages that must be surmounted. And this occurs with rational empiricism, which concerns itself with the pure phenomenon that is identical to the objective natural laws. The ordinary empirical element—direct experience—offers us only individual things, something incoherent, an aggregate of phenomena. That means it offers us all this not as the final conclusion of scientific consideration, but rather, in fact, as a first experience. Our scientific needs, however, seek only what is interrelated, comprehend the individual thing only as a part in a relationship. Thus, seemingly, our need to comprehend and the facts of nature diverge from each other. In our spirit there is only relatedness, in nature only separateness; our spirit strives for the species, nature creates only individuals. The solution to this contradiction is provided by the reflection that the connecting power of the human spirit, on the one hand, is without content, and therefore, by and through itself alone, cannot know anything positive; on the other hand, the separateness of the objects of nature does not lie in their essential being itself, but rather in their spatial manifestation; in fact, when we penetrate into the essential being of the individual, of the particular, this being itself directs us to the species. Because the objects of nature are separated in their outer manifestation, our spirit's power to draw together is needed in order to show their inner unity. Because the unity of the intellect by itself is empty, the intellect must fill this unity with the objects of nature. Thus at this third level phenomenon and spiritual power come to meet each other and merge into one, and only then can the human spirit be fully satisfied.

[ 13 ] A further realm of investigation is that in which the individual thing, in its form of existence, does not appear as the result of something else existing beside it; we therefore also do not comprehend it by seeking help from something else of the same kind. Here, a series of sense-perceptible phenomenological elements appears to us as the direct formation of a unified principle, and we must press forward to this principle if we want to comprehend the individual phenomenon. In this realm, we cannot explain the phenomenon by anything working in from outside; we must derive it from within outward. What earlier was a determining factor is now merely an inducing factor. In the first realm I have comprehended everything when I have succeeded in regarding it as the result of something else, in tracing it back to an outer determining factor; here I am compelled to ask the question differently. When I know the outer influence, I still have not gained any information as to whether the phenomenon then occurs in this, and only in this, way. I must derive this from the central principle of that thing upon which the outer influence took place. I cannot say that this outer influence has this effect; but only that, to this particular outer influence, the inner working principle responds in this particular way. What occurs is the result of an inner lawfulness. I must therefore know this inner lawfulness. I must investigate what it is that is taking shape from within outward. This self-shaping principle, which in this realm underlies every phenomenon, which I must seek in every one, is the typus. We are in the realm of organic nature. What the archetypal phenomenon is in inorganic nature, the typus is in organic nature. The typus is a general picture of the organism: the idea of the organism; the animalness in the animal. We had to bring the main points here again of what we already stated about the typus in an earlier chapter, because of the context. In the ethical and historical sciences we then have to do with the idea in a narrower sense. Ethics and history are sciences of ideas. Their reality is ideas. It is the task of each science to work on the given until it brings the given to the archetypal phenomenon, to the typus, and to the leading ideas in history. “If ... the physicist can arrive at knowledge of what we have called an archetypal phenomenon, then he is secure and the philosopher along with him; he is so because he has convinced himself that he has arrived at the limits of his science, that he finds himself upon the empirical heights, from which he can look back upon experience in all its levels, and can at least look forward into the realm of theory if not enter it. The philosopher is secure, for he receives from the physicist's hand something final that becomes for him now something from which to start” (Sketch of a colour Theory).⁵⁷—This is in fact where the philosopher enters and begins his work. He grasps the archetypal phenomena and brings them into a satisfying ideal relationship. We see what it is, in the sense of the Goethean world view, that is to take the place of metaphysics: the observing (in accordance with ideas), ordering, and deriving of archetypal phenomena. Goethe speaks repeatedly in this sense about the relationship between empirical science and philosophy—with special clarity in his letters to Hegel. In his Annals he speaks repeatedly about a schema of science. If this were to be found, we would see from it how he himself conceived the interrelationships of the individual archetypal phenomena to be, how he put them together into a necessary chain. We can also gain a picture of it when we consider the table of all possible kinds of workings that he gives in the fourth section of the first volume of On Natural Science.⁵⁸

Chance
Mechanical
Physical
Chemical
Organic
Psychic
Ethical
Religious
Of a Genius

[ 14 ] It is according to this ascending sequence that one would have to guide oneself in ordering the archetypal phenomena.

4. Limits to Knowledge and the Forming of Hypotheses

[ 15 ] One speaks a great deal today about limits to our knowing. Man's ability to explain what exists, it is said, reaches only to a certain point, and there he must stop. We believe we can rectify the situation with respect to this question if we ask the question correctly. For, it is, indeed, so often only a matter of putting the question correctly. When this is done, a whole host of errors is dispelled. When we reflect that the object that we feel the need within us to explain must be given, then it is clear that the given itself cannot set a limit for us. For, in order to lay any claim at all to being explained and comprehended, it must confront us within given reality. Something that does not appear upon the horizon of the given does not need to be explained. Any limits could therefore lie only in the fact that, in the face of a given reality, we lacked all means of explaining it. But our need for explanation comes precisely from the fact that what we want to consider a given thing to be—that by which we want to explain it—forces itself onto the horizon of what is given us in thought. Far from being unknown to us, the explanatory essential being of an object is itself the very thing which, by manifesting within our spirit, makes the explanation necessary. What is to be explained and that by which it is to be explained are both present. It is only a matter of joining them. Explaining something is not the seeking of an unknown, but only a coming to terms about the reciprocal connection between two knowns. It should never occur to us to explain a given by something of which we have no knowledge. Now something does come into consideration here that gives a semblance of justification to the theory of a limit to knowledge. It could be that we do in fact have an inkling of something real that is there, but that nevertheless is beyond our perception. We can perceive some traces, some effects or other of a thing, and then make the assumption that this thing does exist. And here one can perhaps speak of a limit to our knowing. What we have presupposed to be inaccessible in this case, however, is not something by which to explain anything in principle; it is something perceivable even though it is not perceived. What hinders me from perceiving it is not any limit to knowledge in principle, but only chance outer factors. These can very well be surmounted. What I merely have inklings of today can be experienced tomorrow. But with a principle that is not so; with it, there are no outer hindrances, which after all lie mostly only in place and time; the principle is given to me inwardly. Something else does not give me an inkling of a principle when I myself do not see the principle.

[ 16 ] Theory about the forming of hypotheses is connected with this. A hypothesis is an assumption that we make and whose truth we cannot ascertain directly but only in its effects. We see a series of phenomena. It is explainable to us only when we found it upon something that we do not perceive directly. May such an assumption be extended to include a principle? Clearly not. For, something of an inner nature that I assume without becoming aware of it is a total contradiction. A hypothesis can only assume something, indeed, that I do not perceive, but that I would perceive at once if I cleared away the outer hindrances. A hypothesis can indeed not presuppose something perceived, but must assume something perceivable. Thus, every hypothesis is in the situation that its content can be directly confirmed only by a future experience. Only hypotheses that can cease to be hypotheses have any justification. Hypotheses about central scientific principles have no value. Something that is not explained by a positively given principle known to us is not capable of explanation at all and also does not need it.

5. Ethical and Historical Sciences

[ 7 ] The answering of the question, What is knowing, has illuminated for us the place of the human being in the cosmos. The view we have developed in answering this question cannot fail to shed light also upon the value and significance of human action. We must in fact attach a greater or lesser significance to what we perform in the world, according to whether we attribute a higher or lower significance to our calling as human beings.

[ 8 ] The first task to which we must now address ourselves will be to investigate the character of human activity. How does what we must regard as the effect of human action relate to other effects within the world process? Let us look at two things: a product of nature and a creation of human activity, a crystal form and a wheel, perhaps. In both cases the object before us appears as the result of laws expressible in concepts. Their difference lies only in the fact that we must regard the crystal as the direct product of the natural lawfulness that determines it, whereas with the wheel the human being intervenes between the concept and the object. What we think of in the natural product as underlying the real, this we introduce into reality by our action. In knowing, we experience what the ideal determining factors of our sense experience are; we bring the world of ideas, which already lies within reality, to manifestation; we therefore complete the world process in the sense that we call into appearance the producer who eternally brings forth his products. but who, without our thinking, would remain eternally hidden within them. In human actions, however, we supplement this process through the fact that we translate the world of ideas, insofar as it is not yet reality, into such reality. Now we have recognized the idea as that which underlies all reality as the determining element, as the intention of nature. Our knowing leads us to the point of finding the tendency of the world process, the intention of the creation, out of all the indications contained in the nature surrounding us. If we have achieved this, then our action is given the task of working along independently in the realizing of that intention. And thus our action appears to us as the direct continuation of that kind of activity that nature also fulfills. It appears to us as directly flowing from the world foundation. But what a difference there is, in fact, between this and that other (nature) activity! The nature product by no means has within itself the ideal lawfulness by which it appears governed. It needs to be confronted by something higher, by human thinking; there then appears to this thinking that by which the nature product is governed. This is different in the case of human action. Here the idea dwells directly within the acting object; and if a higher being confronted it, this being could not find in the object's activity anything other than what this object itself had put into its action. For, a perfect human action is the result of our intentions and only that. If we look at a nature product that affects another, then the matter is like this: we see an effect; this effect is determined by laws grasped in concepts. But if we want to comprehend the effect, then it is not enough for us to compare it with some law or other; we must have a second perceptible thing—which, to be sure, must also be dissolvable entirely into concepts. When we see an impression in the ground we then look for the object that made it. This leads to the concept of a kind of effect where the cause of a phenomenon also appears in the form of an outer perception, i.e., to the concept of force. A force can confront us only where the idea first appears in an object of perception and only in this form acts upon another object. The opposite of this is when this intermediary is not there, when the idea approaches the sense world directly. There the idea itself appears as causative. And here is where we speak of will. Will, therefore, is the idea itself apprehended as force. It is totally inadmissible to speak of an independent will. When a person accomplishes something or other, one cannot say that will is added to the mental picture. If one does speak in that way, then one has not grasped the concepts clearly, for, what is the human personality if one disregards the world of ideas that fills it? It is, in fact, an active existence. Whoever grasps the human personality differently—as dead, inactive nature product—puts it at the level of a stone in the road. This active existence, however, is an abstraction; it is nothing real. One cannot grasp it; it is without content. If one wants to grasp it, if one wants a content for it, then one arrives, in fact, at the world of ideas that is engaged in doing. Eduard von Hartmann makes this abstraction into a second world-constituting principle beside the idea. It is, however, nothing other than the idea itself, only in one form of manifestation. Will without idea would be nothing. The same cannot be said of the idea, for activity is one of its elements, whereas the idea is the self-sustaining being.

[ 19 ] So much for the characterization of human action. Let us proceed to a further essential distinguishing feature of it that necessarily results from what has already been said. The explaining of a process in nature is a going back to its determining factors: a seeking out of the producer in addition to the product that is given. When I perceive an effect and then seek its cause, these two perceptions do not by any means satisfy my need for explanation. I must go back to the laws by which this cause brings forth this effect. It is different with human action. Here the lawfulness that determines a phenomenon itself enters into action; that which makes a product itself appears upon the scene of activity. We have to do with a manifesting existence at which we can remain, for which we do not need to ask about deeper-lying determining factors. We have comprehended a work of art when we know the idea embodied in it; we do not need to ask about any further lawful relationship between idea (cause) and creation (effect). We comprehend the actions of a statesman when we know his intentions (ideas); we do not need to go any further beyond what comes to appearance. This is therefore what distinguishes the processes of nature from the actions of human beings: with nature processes the law is to be regarded as the determining background for what comes into manifest existence, whereas with human actions the existence is itself the law and manifests as determined by nothing other than itself. Thus every process of nature breaks down into something determining and something determined, and the latter follows necessarily from the former, whereas human action determines only itself. This, however, is action out of inner freedom (Freiheit). When the intentions of nature, which stand behind its manifestations and determine them, enter into the human being, they themselves become manifestation; but now they are, as it were, free from any attachment behind them (rückenfrei). If all nature processes are only manifestations of the idea, then human doing is the idea itself in action.

[ 20 ] Since our epistemology has arrived at the conclusion that the content of our consciousness is not merely a means of making a copy of the world ground. but rather that this world ground itself, in its most primal state comes to light within our thinking, we can do nothing other than to recognize directly in human action also the undetermined action of that primal ground. We recognize no world director outside ourselves who sets goals and directions for our actions. The world director has given up his power, has given everything over to man, abolishing his own separate existence, and set man the task: Work on. The human being finds himself in the world, sees nature, and within it, the indication of something deeper, a determining element, an intention. His thinking enables him to know this intention. It becomes his spiritual possession. He has penetrated the world; he comes forth, acting, to carry on those intentions. Therefore, the philosophy presented here is the true philosophy of inner freedom (Freiheitsphilosophie). In the realm of human actions it acknowledges neither natural necessity nor the influence of some creator or world director outside the world. In either case, the human being would be unfree. If natural necessity worked in him in the same way as in other entities, then he would perform his actions out of compulsion, then it would also be necessary in his case to go back to determining factors that underlie manifest existence, and then inner freedom is out of the question. It is of course not impossible that there are innumerable human functions that can only be seen in this light; but these do not come into consideration here. The human being, insofar as he is a being of nature, is also to be understood according to the laws that apply to nature's working. But neither as a knowing nor as a truly ethical being can he, in his behavior, be understood according to merely natural laws. There, in fact, he steps outside the sphere of natural realities. And it is with respect to this, his existence's highest potency, which is more an ideal than reality, that what we have established here holds good. Man's path in life consists in his developing himself from a being of nature into a being such as we have learned to know here; he should make himself free of all laws of nature and become his own law giver.

[ 21 ] But we must also reject the influence of any director—outside the world—of human destiny. Also where such a director is assumed, there can be no question of true inner freedom. There he determines the direction of human action and man has to carry out what this director sets him to do. He experiences the impulse to his actions not as an ideal that he sets himself, but rather as the commandment of that director; again his actions are not undetermined, but rather determined. The human being would not then, in fact, feel himself to be free of any attachment from behind him, but would feel dependent, like a mere intermediary for the intentions of a higher power.

[ 22 ] We have seen that dogmatism consists in seeking the basis for the truth of anything in something beyond, and inaccessible to, our consciousness (transsubjective), in contrast to our view that declares a judgment to be true only because the reason for doing so lies in the concepts that are present in our consciousness and that flow into the judgment. Someone who conceives of a world ground outside of our world of ideas thinks that our ideal reason for recognizing something as true is a different reason than that as to why it is objectively true. Thus truth is apprehended as dogma. And in the realm of ethics a commandment is what a dogma is in science. When the human being seeks the impulse for his action in commandments, he acts then according to laws whose basis is independent of him; he conceives of a norm that is prescribed for his action from outside. He acts out of duty. To speak of duty makes sense only when looked at this way. We must feel the impulse from outside and acknowledge the necessity of responding to it; then we act out of duty. Our epistemology cannot accept this kind of action as valid where the human being appears in his full ethical development. We know that the world of ideas is unending perfection itself; we know that with it the impulses of our action lie within us; and we must therefore only acknowledge an action as ethical in which the deed flows only out of the idea, lying within us, of the deed. From this point of view, man performs an action only because its reality is a need for him. He acts because an inner (his own) urge, not an outer power, drives him. The object of his action, as soon as he makes himself a concept of it, fills him in such a way that he strives to realize it. The only impulse for our action should also lie in the need to realize an idea, in the urge to carry out an intention. Everything that urges us to a deed should live its life in the idea. Then we do not act out of duty; we do not act under the influence of a drive; we act out of love for the object to which our action is to be directed. The object, when we picture it, calls forth in us the urge to act in a way appropriate to it. Only such action is a free one. For if, in addition to the interest we take in the object, there had yet to be a second motivation from another quarter, then we would not want this object for its own sake; we would want something else and would perform that, which we do not want we would carry out an action against our will. That would be the case, for example, in action out of egoism. There we take no interest in the action itself; it is not a need for us; we do need the benefits, however, that it brings us. But then we also feel right away as compulsion the fact that we must perform the action for this reason only. The action itself is not a need for us; for we would leave it undone if no benefits followed from it. An action, however, that we do not perform for its own sake is an unfree one. Egoism acts unfreely. Every person acts unfreely, in fact, who performs an action out of a motivation that does not follow from the objective content of the action itself. To carry out an action for its own sake means to act out of love. Only someone who is guided by love in doing, by devotion to objectivity, acts truly freely. Whoever is incapable of this selfless devotion will never be able to regard his activity as a free one.

[ 23 ] If man's action is to be nothing other than the realization of his own content of ideas, then naturally such a content must lie within him. His spirit must work productively. For, what is supposed to fill him with the urge to accomplish something if not an idea working its way up in his spirit? This idea will prove to be all the more fruitful the more it arises in his spirit in definite outlines and with a clear content. For only that, in fact, can move us with full force to realize something, which is completely definite in its entire “what.” An ideal that is only dimly pictured to oneself, that is left in an indefinite state, is unsuitable as an impulse to action. What is there about it to fire us with enthusiasm if its content does not lie clear and open to the day? The impulses for our action must therefore always arise in the form of individual intentions. Everything fruitful that the human being accomplishes owes its existence to such individual impulses. General moral laws, ethical norms, etc., that are supposed to be valid for all human beings prove to be entirely worthless. When Kant regards as ethically valid only that which is suitable as a law for all human beings, then one can say in response to this that all positive action would cease, that everything great would disappear from the world, if each person did only what was suitable for everyone. No, it is not such vague, general ethical norms but rather the most individual ideals that should guide our actions. Everything is not equally worthy of being done by everyone, but rather this is worthy of him, that of her, according to whether one of them feels called to do a thing. J. Kreyenbühl has spoken about this in apt words is his essay Ethical Freedom in Kant's View⁵⁹: “If freedom is, in fact, to be my freedom, if a moral deed is to be my deed, if the good and right is to be realized through me, through the action of this particular individual personality, then I cannot possibly be satisfied by a general law that disregards all individuality and all the peculiarities of the concurrent circumstances of the action, and that commands me to examine every action as to whether its underlying motive corresponds to the abstract norm of general human nature and as to whether, in the way it lives and works in me, it could become a generally valid maxim.” ... “An adaptation of this kind to what is generally usual and customary would render impossible any individual freedom, any progress beyond the ordinary and humdrum, any significant, outstanding ethical achievement.”

[ 24 ] These considerations shed light upon the questions a general ethics has to answer. One often treats this last, in fact, as though it were a sum total of norms according to which human action ought to direct itself. From this point of view, one compares ethics to natural science and in general to the science of what exists. Whereas science is to communicate to us the laws of that which exists, of what is, ethics supposedly has to teach us the laws of what ought to exist. Ethics is supposedly a codex of all the ideals of man, a detailed answer to the question: What is good? Such a science, however, is impossible. There can be no general answer to this question. Ethical action is, in fact, a product of what manifests within the individual; it is always present as an individual case, never in a general way. There are no general laws as to what one ought or ought not to do. But do not regard the individual legal statutes of the different peoples as such general laws. They are also nothing more than the outgrowth of individual intentions. What one or another personality has experienced as a moral motive has communicated itself to a whole people, has become the “code of this people.” A general natural code that should apply to all people for all time is nonsense. Views as to what is right and wrong and concepts of morality come and go with the different peoples, indeed even with individuals. The individuality is always the decisive factor. It is therefore inadmissible to speak of an ethics in the above sense. But there are other questions to be answered in this science, questions that have in part been touched upon briefly in these discussions. Let me mention only: establishing the difference between human action and nature's working, the question as to the nature of the will and of inner freedom, etc. All these individual tasks can be summed up in one: To what extent is man an ethical being? But this aims at nothing other than knowledge of the moral nature of man. The question asked is not: What ought man to do? but rather: What is it that he is doing, in its inner nature? And thereby that partition falls which divides all science into two spheres: into a study of what exists and into one of what ought to exist. Ethics is just as much a study of what exists as all the other sciences. In this respect, a unified impulse runs through all the sciences in that they take their start from something given and proceed to its determining factors. But there can be no science of human action itself; for, it is undetermined, productive, creative. Jurisprudence is not a science, but only a collection of notes on the customs and codes characteristic of an individual people.

[ 25 ] Now the human being does not belong only to himself; he belongs, as a part, to two higher totalities. First of all, he is part of a people with which he is united by common customs, by a common cultural life, by language, and by a common view. But then he is also a citizen of history, an individual member in the great historical process of human development. Through his belonging to these two wholes, his free action seems to be restricted. What he does, does not seem to flow only from his own individual ego; he appears determined by what he has in common with his people; his individuality seems to be abolished by the character of his people. Am I still free then if one can find my actions explainable not only out of my own nature but to a considerable extent also out of the nature of my people? Do I not act, therefore, the way I do because nature has made me a member of this particular community of people? And it is no different with the second whole to which I belong. History assigns me the place of my working. I am dependent upon the cultural epoch into which I am born; I am a child of my age. But if one apprehends the human being at the same time as a knowing and as an acting entity, then this contradiction resolves itself. Through his capacity for knowledge, man penetrates into the particular character of his people; it becomes clear to him whither his fellow citizens are steering. He overcomes that by which he appears determined in this way and takes it up into himself as a picture that he has fully known; it becomes individual within him and takes on entirely the personal character that working from inner freedom has. The situation is the same with respect to the historical development within which the human being appears. He lifts himself to a knowledge of the leading ideas, of the moral forces holding sway there; and then they no longer work upon him as determining factors, but rather become individual driving powers within him. The human being must in fact work his way upward so that he is no longer led, but rather leads himself. He must not allow himself to be carried along blindly by the character of his people, but rather must lift himself to a knowledge of this character so that he acts consciously in accordance with his people. He must not allow himself to be carried by the progress of culture, but must rather make the ideas of his time into his own. In order for him to do so it is necessary above all that he understand his time. Then, in inner freedom, he will fulfill its tasks; then he will set to at the right place with his own work. Here the humanities⁶⁰ (history, cultural and literary history, etc.) must enter as intermediaries. In the humanities the human being has to do with his own accomplishments, with the creations of culture, of literature, with art, etc. Something spiritual is grasped by the human spirit. And the purpose of the humanities should not be any- thing other than that man recognize where chance has placed him; he should recognize what has already been accomplished, what falls to him to do. Through the humanities he must find the right point at which to participate with his personality in the happenings of the world. The human being must know the spiritual world and determine his part in it according to this knowledge.

[ 26 ] In the preface to the first volume of his Pictures from the German Past,⁶¹ Gustav Freytag says: “All the great creations of the power of a people, inherited religion, custom, law, state configurations, are for us no longer the results of individual men; they are the organic creations of a lofty life that in every age comes to manifestation only through the individual, and in every age draws together into itself the spiritual content of the individual into a mighty whole ... Thus, without saying anything mystical, one might well speak of a folk-soul ... But the life of a people no longer works consciously, like the will forces of a man. Man represents what is free and intelligent in history; the power of a people works ceaselessly, with the dark compulsion of a primal force.” If Freytag had investigated this life of a people, he would have found, indeed, that it breaks down into the working of a sum of single individuals who overcome that dark compulsion and lift what is unconscious up into consciousness; and he would have seen how that which he addresses as folk-soul, as dark compulsion, goes forth from the individual will impulses, from the free action of the human being.

[ 27 ] But something else comes into consideration with respect to the working of the human being within his people. Every personality represents a spiritual potency, a sum of powers which seek to work according to the possibilities. Every person must therefore find the place where his working can incorporate itself in the most suitable way into the organism of his people. It must not be left to chance whether he finds this place. The constitution of a state has no other purpose than to take care that everyone find his appropriate sphere of work. The state is the form in which the organism of a people expresses itself.

[ 28 ] Sociology and political science have to investigate the way the individual personality can come to play a part appropriate to it within a state. The constitution must go forth from the innermost being of a people. The character of a people, expressed in individual statements, is the best constitution for a state. A statesman cannot impose a constitution upon a people. The leader of a state must investigate the deep characteristics of his people and, through a constitution, give the tendencies slumbering in the people a direction corresponding to them. It can happen that the majority of a people wants to steer onto paths that go against its own nature. Goethe believes that in this case the statesman must let himself be guided by the people's own nature and not by the momentary demands of the majority; that he must in this case advocate the character of his people against the actual people (Aphorisms in Prose).

[ 29 ] We must still add a word here about the method of history. History must always bear in mind that the causes of historical events are to be sought in the individual intentions, plans, etc., of the human being. All tracing back of historical facts to plans that underlie history is an error. It is always only a question of which goals one or another personality has set himself, which ways they have taken, and so on. History is absolutely to be based on human nature. Its willing, its tendencies are to be fathomed.

[ 30 ] By statements of Goethe we can now substantiate again what has been said here about the science of ethics. The following statement is to be understood only out of the relationship in which we have seen the human being to stand with respect to historical development: “The world of reason is to be regarded as a great immortal individual, which ceaselessly brings about the necessary and thereby makes itself master, in fact, of chance happening.”⁶²—A reference to a positive, individual substratum of action lies in the words: “Undetermined activity, of whatever kind, leads to bankruptcy in the end.” “The least of men can be complete if he moves within the limits of his abilities and skills.”—The necessity for man of lifting himself up to the leading ideas of his people and of his age is expressed like this: “Each person must ask himself, after all, with which organ he can and will in any case work into his age.” and: “One must know where one is standing and where the others want to go.” Our view of duty is recognizable again in the words: “Duty: where one loves what one commands oneself to do.”

[ 31 ] We have based man, as a knowing and acting being, entirely upon himself. We have described his world of ideas as coinciding with the world ground and have recognized that everything he does is to be regarded as flowing only from his own individuality. We seek the core of existence within man himself. No one reveals a dogmatic truth to him; no one drives him in his actions. He is sufficient unto himself. He must be everything through himself, nothing through another being. He must draw forth everything from himself. Even the sources of his happiness. We have already recognized, in fact, that there can be no question of any power directing man, determining the direction and content of his existence, damning him to being unfree. If happiness is to come to a person therefore, this can come about only through himself. Just as little as an outer power prescribes norms for our action, will such a power bestow upon things the ability to awaken in us a feeling of satisfaction if we do not do it ourselves. Pleasure and pain are there for man only when he himself first confers upon objects the power to call up these feelings in him. A creator who determines from outside what should cause us pleasure or pain, would simply be leading us around like a child.

[ 32 ] All optimism and pessimism are thereby refuted. Optimism assumes that the world is perfect, that it must be a source of the greatest satisfaction for man. But if this is to be the case, man would first have to develop within himself those needs through which to arrive at this satisfaction. He would have to gain from the objects what it is he demands. Pessimism believes that the world is constituted in such a way that it leaves man eternally dissatisfied, that he can never be happy. What a pitiful creature man would be if nature offered him satisfaction from outside! All lamentations about an existence that does not satisfy us, about this hard world, must disappear before the thought that no power in the world could satisfy us if we ourselves did not first lend it that magical power by which it uplifts and gladdens us. Satisfaction must come to us out of what we make of things, out of our own creations. Only that is worthy of free beings.

• 52. This separation is indicated by the solid lines.
• 53. This is represented by the dotted lines.
• 54. Meaning: that it exists—Ed.
• 55. Der Versuch als Vermittler von Subjekt und Objekt
• 56. Later footnote of the author: “In my introduction to the thirty-fourth volume, I said that the essay appears, unfortunately, to have been lost that could serve as the best support to Goethe's views on experience, experiment, and scientific knowledge. It has not been lost, however, and has come to light in the above form in the Goethe archives. It bears the date January 15, 1798, and was sent to Schiller on the seventeenth. It represents a continuation of the essay The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object. I took the train of thought of his essay from the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller and presented it in the above-mentioned introduction in exactly the same way in which it is now found to be in the newly discovered essay. With respect to content nothing is added by this essay to what I expressed there; on the other hand, however, the view I had won from Goethe's other work; about his method and way of knowing was confirmed in every respect.
• 57. Entwurf einer Farbenlehre
• 58. Zur Naturwissenschaft
• 59. Die ethische Freiheit bei Kant (Philosophische Monatshefte). Published by Mercury Press as Spiritual Activity in Kant.
• 60. Geisteswissenschaften, literally: “spiritual sciences”—Ed.
• 61. Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit
• 62. All quotations in this paragraph are from Aphorisms in Prose.