The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We shall best realise the significance of these 31 lectures given in 1905 if we transpose ourselves still further back in time to the year 1902, when, during her first personal conversation with Rudolf Steiner, Marie von Sivers, later Marie Steiner, put to him the all-important question: “Would it not be a very important thing to found an Occult Society suited to people of the West?” His response to this question was to begin laying the foundations of what was to become his greatest creation, the worldwide Anthroposophical Society.

A small number of Berlin theosophists gathered round him, and formed a group to which he began imparting the basic elements of Spiritual Science, “translating”—the expression was his—direct from the Akashic Script into the words of an earthly language. The mood of these first meetings was profoundly earnest. They were strictly private. If anyone wished to join the group he was only admitted after Marie von Sivers had taken through with him all the material already given. There was at that time no stenographer, and she, together with two members of the group, took copious notes, and as soon as possible after the meeting wrote the lecture out from memory. Later they compared their drafts and decided upon the final version. These manuscripts still exist and when these lectures were published in the complete edition of Rudolf Steiner's works they were again used to check their content.

When we remember that the Ancient Wisdom upon which Theosophy was based did not as yet include the immortality of the individual, or the eventual development, made possible by the Mystery of Golgotha, of individual human freedom, we can see that Rudolf Steiner had to give an entirely new direction to the thoughts of his hearers.

Thus we find that the manifold exact and detailed descriptions of the events of evolution form in a sense the background to the evolving figure of man. The mighty event of the Moon leaving the Earth, most vividly described, took place in order to provide an environment suited to his progress.

The wonderful moment when the higher being of man descended in a bell-like form and enveloped the lower human form, still on a level with the animals, depicts what eventually provided him with a body suited to the development of the ego. Spiritual Beings and the great Initiates led him along the path he had to tread.

Where do we look today for these ego-endowed human beings? They are within each one of us. We stand poised between guidance and responsibility. Let us turn our thoughts from the past to the future. One of the most impressive Basic Elements tells how the present conduct of life can affect the far distant future. It is a cosmic law that what has once taken place can never vanish, but must reappear later in a metamorphosed form. Every thought, feeling and action brought about by man does not only affect the world around him but will re-appear on the future Jupiter as the equivalent of the kingdoms of nature of our earthly world; for, to quote Rudolf Steiner's words, “Jupiter will be a man-made Planet”.

Vera and Judith Compton-Burnett

The lecture I am to give today puts me in a difficult position. I want to make some remarks which fall outside the way of thinking now called “scientific”. Since the views of most people are largely formed by the ideas generally current in scientific and popular-scientific circles, and since the subject-matter of this lecture will be far removed from any such ideas, the public at large may be inclined to regard my statements as mere fancies, derived from quite arbitrary cogitations, rather than for what they really are: the outcome of spiritual-scientific research.

I would ask you, therefore, to take this lecture as a sort of episode in our winter series, intended to point in a direction to which I am not likely to return this year, though it may occupy us further next year. The reason for touching on it now, is to show that what we are dealing with this winter as a science of the soul, branches out in many ways that lead from the immediate realm of human soul-life to the great connections we find in the wide universe, the whole cosmos.

Finally, I must ask you to remember that this lecture will deal only with one short chapter from a very large volume. It must be seen in strict relation to its title, “Something about the Moon in the Light of Spiritual Science”. It will not attempt to be in any way exhaustive.

In all sorts of popular books you will find this or that said about the moon from the standpoint of science today. But all you can learn from these sources or from the scientific literature will leave you quite unsatisfied as regards the real questions concerning this strange companion of the earth. As the 19th century advanced, the statements of science with regard to the moon became more and more cautious, but also less frequent; but today they will occupy us hardly at all. The picture of the moon's surface given by telescopes and astronomical photography, the descriptions of its surface-markings as crater-like formations, grooves, plains and valleys and suchlike, and the consequent impressions one can gain of the purely spatial countenance of the moon—all this will not concern us. The question for us today is a truly spiritual-scientific one—whether the moon has any special influence on or significance for human life on earth.

A significance of this kind has been spoken of from various points of view in the course of past centuries. And since everything that happens on earth, year in and year out, is related to the changing position of the earth relative to the sun, and is subject to the vast influence of the sun's light and heat, it was natural to wonder whether that other heavenly luminary, the moon, might not have some importance for life on earth, and especially for human life. In the comparatively recent past, people were inclined to speak of the moon as having a fairly powerful influence on earthly life. Quite apart from the fact that it has long been customary to attribute to the moon's attraction the so-called ebb and flow of the sea, the moon has always been regarded as affecting weather conditions on earth. Moreover, as late as the first half of the 19th century, serious scientists and doctors collated observations of how the moon in its various phases had a definite effect on certain illnesses, and even on the course of human life as a whole. It was then by no means a mere popular superstition to consider the influence of the moon in relation to the ups and downs of fever, of asthma, of goitre and the like; there were still doctors who recorded such cases because they felt compelled to believe that the phases of the moon had some influence on the course of human life and on health and disease in particular.

With the rise of that scientific way of thinking which had its dawn and sunrise in the middle of the 19th century, the inclination to allow the moon any influence on human life diminished continuously. Only the belief that the moon causes the tides of the sea survived. And there was one very important scientist, Schleiden,⁶⁵ who poured out the vials of his wrath on those who still believed in the influence of the moon, even if it were only on the weather or on some other terrestrial phenomena. Schleiden, who had done outstanding work in his own sphere by his discovery of the significance of the plant-cell, launched a vehement attack on another German natural scientist, Gustav Theodor Fechner,⁶⁶ notable especially for directing attention to certain subtle or frontier aspects of research. Thus in his Zend Avesta Fechner tried to show that the life of plants is endowed with soul, while in his Introduction to Aesthetics and his Elements of Psychophysics he achieved a great deal for the more intimate aspects of natural science. It may be better not to discuss this celebrated controversy about the moon without saying a little more about Fechner himself.

Fechner was an investigator who tried, with immense assiduity and great care and precision, to bring together the external facts in various fields of research; but he also used a method of analogies in order to show, for example, that all the phenomena of plant-life, and not only of human life, are ensouled. Starting with the phenomena of human life as it runs its course, he took similar facts and phenomena as they appear to observation in, let us say, the life of the earth, or of a whole solar system, or of the plant-world. When he compared these phenomena with those of human life, he found one analogy after another. Hence he concluded—to put it roughly—that in studying human life, with its ensoulment, we observe the occurrence of certain phenomena; and if in observing other phenomena we can establish certain similarities with human life, why should we not recognise the other phenomena as being also “ensouled”?

Anyone who stands on the ground of Spiritual Science, and is used to examining everything related to the spiritual in as strictly scientific a sense as the natural scientist applies to his studies of external phenomena, will feel that a good deal of what Fechner works out so cleverly is merely an ingenious game; and however stimulating a game of this kind may be, the greatest care must be taken in dealing with mere analogies. When a stimulating thinker such as Fechner employs this method, his work may be very interesting. But there are people of whom it can justly be said that they would like to solve the riddles of the world with as little knowledge and as much comfort as possible. And if they lean on Fechner and make his methods their own, we must remember that an imitator or a copyist does not by any means call forth in us the same feelings of satisfaction as does the man who was first in his own field—a man who we recognise as gifted and stimulating, even though we cannot credit him with anything more.

We have no need to characterise Schleiden any further than by saying that he discovered the significance of the plant-cell. Clearly such a man, who directed all his perceptive and cognitive faculties towards the immediately real—that is, towards what can be perceived with external instruments—will have little sympathy for analogies or with anything else that Fechner spoke of in his endeavours to show that plants are ensouled; for in Schleiden's view they are made up of single cells, and this fact naturally seemed to him, as its discoverer, a wonderful thing. So for Schleiden it was something of an outrage that speculations, with this brilliant model available as a starting-point, should prefer to deal with some even subtler relationships in nature. It was particularly Fechner's method of analogies that aroused Schleiden's wrath, and in this connection he touched on the question of the moon. With reference not only to Fechner but to all those who clung to the centuries-old tradition of attributing to the moon all sorts of influences on the weather, etc., he said that for these people the moon was like a cat in the house, held responsible for everything that cannot be otherwise explained.

Fechner naturally felt challenged as he was the main target of these attacks. He at once embarked on a work which—whether or not we agree with it—is highly stimulating. Although many details in it have since been corrected, Fechner's pamphlet, “Schleiden and the Moon”, published in 1856, is remarkably interesting. He had no need to go into the influence of the moon on the ebb and flow of the tides, for this was admitted even by Schleiden. It was the supposed connection of the moon with weather conditions that made the moon, for him, the cat of scientific research. Fechner therefore set out to investigate the very facts that his opponent brought against him, and from this material he drew some notable conclusions. Anyone who cares to check his procedure will find that in this investigation Fechner was an exceptionally cautious worker with a thoroughly scientific approach. His first conclusion from a mass of facts—which I need not repeat, for anyone can read them for himself—was that the quantity and frequency of rainfall were in many cases shown to be greater with a waxing than with a waning moon: greater when the moon approached the earth, smaller when it receded; and the proportion of rainfall during a waxing moon to that during the wane was 107:100. The recorded observations he used did not cover a few years only; some of them extended over many decades and concerned not a single locality but many parts of Europe.

In order to exclude chance effects, Fechner now assumed that some other condition, excluding the moon, might have produced this proportion of 107:100. He then studied weather conditions on the odd and even dates of the moon's phases, for he said that if the waning and waxing were not the cause, the odd and even days of the month would produce similar results. But that was not the case. Quite different figures emerged: the relationship was not constant but variable, so that here it could be attributed to chance.

Fechner himself realised that he had not achieved any world-shattering result; he had to recognise that the moon had no very great influence on the weather, but the facts did point to some influence. And he had, as you will have seen, proceeded quite scientifically, taking account only of observations carefully recorded for definite places. He made similar researches in relation to fevers and other bodily phenomena, and here too he obtained small positive results. It could hardly be denied that phenomena of this kind may take a different course under the waxing and under the waning moon. Thus the old view of the moon fought its last fight in the middle of the 19th century through the work of this highly gifted man, Fechner.

This example shows very well how wrong it is to accept the increasingly common assertion that science compels us to talk no more about the spiritual background of things, for science—we are assured—is on the verge of learning how to combine simple materials in such a way as to produce living substance. It is agreed that we have far to go before we can make protein from its constituents—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on—but the whole tendency of science is to make us admit that one day it will be done. When it has been done, the only tenable outlook—so we are told by those who make these assertions—will be a monistic one which holds that a living, thinking being is made up of nothing but an assembly of material elements.

Anyone who talks in this vein will have drawn on the latest aims and achievements of science to convince himself that we are not justified in postulating something spiritual behind what we perceive with our senses or are told by external science; for happily—he will feel—we are long past the days when it could be claimed that some kind of vague life-wisdom lies behind the sense-perceptible world.

At this point we may well ask. Is it really science that compels us to reject spiritual research? Is that a scientific conclusion? I want to remain entirely on the ground of those who believe that in the not too distant future it will be possible to produce living protein out of simple substances. Is there anything in that which compels us to say that life is materially constituted and that we must not look anywhere for the spirit?

An ordinary historical observation will show how unnecessary this conclusion is. There was a time when it was believed not only that carbon, hydrogen, etc., could be used to produce living protein, but that a whole man could be built up from the necessary ingredients in a retort. The worth of this belief need not concern us—you can read a poetical treatment of it in the second part of Faust. The point is that there were times when people really believed—however crazy it may seem to us—that Homunculus could be put together out of separate components. Yet in those times no-one doubted that behind the sense-perceptible was the spirit. Hence you can prove historically that no “science” can compel us to reject the spirit, for this depends on something quite different—on whether or not a capacity to discern the spirit is there. Neither the science of today nor the science of tomorrow can ever compel us to reject the spirit. We can take a perfectly scientific standpoint, but whether or not we reject the spirit does not depend on science. It depends on whether or not we are able to discern the spirit, and science cannot determine that.

So, without agreeing from the spiritual-scientific point of view either with Schleiden or with Fechner, we can understand that Schleiden, with his eyes fixed on the sense-world, rejected everything that might be sought as soul or spirit behind the phenomena. But it was not on scientific grounds that he took this attitude; he was simply so inured to looking at visible things that he had no sympathy for anything else. Fechner was a quite different sort of man; his outlook embraced the spiritual, and though he made one error after another he was a man of different quality, one who sought the spirit. Hence his tendency was not to reject but to clarify the significance of the subtler influences of the heavenly bodies on one another. He said to himself: When I look at the moon, it is not for me merely the slag-heap it looks like through a telescope; it is ensouled, as are all other bodies. Hence the moon-soul must have effects on the earth-soul, and these come to expression below the surface of ordinary life or in weather phenomena.

Now it is noteworthy, and has often been pointed out here, that the method of spiritual-scientific research is directed towards the practical, and that the best proofs of what it has to say can be found in everyday life. And that is just how Fechner set about defending his views. He suggested that the dispute between Schleiden and himself over the moon could perhaps be best settled by their wives. He said: “We both need rainwater for washing, and it could be collected in relation to weather conditions. Since Schleiden and I live under the same roof and can collect water at definite times, I suggest that my wife collects it during the waxing moon and Schleiden's wife during the wane. I am sure she will agree in order not to put her husband's theory to shame, the more so as she sets no great store by it. The result will be that my wife will have an extra can for every fourteen cans collected by Frau Schleiden, but for the sake of overcoming a preconceived opinion she will surely make this sacrifice.”⁶⁷

Here, then, we have drawn on the history of thought to show how the moon and its influence on the earth were regarded not very long ago. Nowadays one might say that people are more advanced in their scientific outlook—as they would call it—and so have gone a step beyond Schleiden in the sense that they would treat as a superstitious dreamer anyone who clung to the belief that the moon could have anything to do with weather conditions and the like. Even among quite sensible people today you will find no other opinion than that the moon has influence only on the tides; all other opinions having been superseded.

If we take the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we are of course not obliged to swear to everything that was once part of popular belief. That would be to confuse Spiritual Science with superstition. Quite often today we encounter a piece of superstition—which is really a misunderstood popular belief and are told it is part of Spiritual Science. A superstition about the moon can indeed be seen at every street-corner, for it is well known that an emblem of the moon is attached to our barbers' shops—why? Because it was once generally believed that the sharpness of a razor was connected with a waxing moon. In fact there were times when no-one would have cared to shear a sheep during the wane, for he would have believed that the wool would then not grow again. This is a superstition very easy to disprove, for anyone who shaves knows that the beard grows again during the wane. In this realm it is just as easy to mock as it is hard, on the other side, to see clearly. For we are coming now to a particular question where at last we touch on Spiritual Science. It concerns the ebb and flow of the tides, universally regarded as coming under the influence of the moon.

The flood-tide is thought to be obviously connected with the attractive force of the moon, and is looked for when the moon reaches its meridian. When the moon leaves the meridian, the flood is expected to change to ebb. But we need only remark that in many places ebb and flow occur twice, while the moon stands at the meridian only once during the same period. And there are other facts. You can learn from travel-books that in many parts of the earth the flood by no means coincides with the moon's meridian; in some places it occurs up to two and a half hours later. Certainly, science has thought up excuses to account for this: we are told that the flood is retarded. But there are also certain springs which show an indubitable ebb and flow; in some cases the well ebbs when the ocean tide is at flood, and vice versa. We are told that these cases, too, are examples of retarded ebb or flow in some cases so retarded as to run into the other phase. Of course this kind of explanation can explain almost anything.

One question has been rightly asked: whence does the moon get this power to attract the sea? The moon is much smaller than the earth and has only about a seventieth of the earth's attractive power, while to set the great masses of the sea into motion would require millions of horse-power. Julius Robert Mayer⁶⁸ made some interesting calculations on this question and it leads on to numerous other problems. Hence we can say: Here is something which is regarded as scientifically irrefutable, and yet, although no objections to it are heard, it is in fact highly vulnerable.

One very significant fact, however, remains. Although the position and influence of the moon are such that it is hard to speak of an immediate relation of cause and effect, it holds true that a definite flood occurs every day—in relation to the moon's meridian—about fifty minutes later than on the previous day. The regular sequence of ebb and flow does therefore correspond to the course of the moon, and that is the most significant fact of all. Thus we cannot speak of the moon at its meridian as having an actual influence on flow and ebb, but we can say that the course of the moon's orbit does stand in a certain correspondence with the course of the tides.

Now, to go a little way into the spiritual-scientific way of thinking, I would like to refer to a similar fact which gave Goethe a great deal of trouble. Most people know very little about the preoccupations of this great genius of modern times, but anyone who, like myself, has spent many years in the study of Goethe's scientific writings and has seen his manuscripts in the Goethe-Schiller Archives at Weimar, makes some surprising discoveries. He will, for example, come upon the preliminary notes which Goethe later condensed into a few pages as his meteorology.⁶⁹ He pursued these inquiries with enormous diligence and assiduity. Again and again he got his friends to collect facts and figures for him to tabulate. The purpose of these extensive studies was to show that the level of barometric pressure at various places is not due to chance but varies in some quite regular way. And Goethe did in fact assemble a great deal of evidence which indicated that in all sorts of places the rise and fall of the barometer were subject to a law which extended all round the globe. He hoped to disprove the assumption that air pressure depends entirely on external influences. He knew, of course, that densification and rarefaction of the air, resulting in pressure changes, were generally attributed to the moon, sun and other cosmic factors. He wanted to prove that whatever the positions of the constellations, whatever the effects of sun and moon on the atmosphere, a constant regularity in the rise and fall of air pressure prevails all round the globe. Hence he wished to show that in the earth itself lay the causes of the rise and fall of the barometer, for he believed that the earth is not the dead body it is usually taken to be, but is permeated by invisible elements from which all life flows, just as man has, in addition to his physical body, invisible elements which permeate him. And just as man has his in-breathing and out-breathing, where he draws in or releases air, so does the earth, as a living being, breathe in and out. And this in-breathing and out-breathing of the earth, as manifestations of its inner life, are registered externally in the rise and fall of the mercury in the barometer. Thus we have in Goethe a man who was convinced that the earth is a being imbued with soul and which behaves in ways that are comparable to the breathing process in human beings. Moreover, Goethe once said to Eckermann that he regarded the ebb and flow of the tides as a further expression of the inner vitality, the life-process, of the earth.⁷⁰

Goethe was by no means the only great thinker who looked with a spiritual eye on such things from this point of view. Materialistically minded people will of course find all this laughable; but among men who have a feeling for life, be it on such a particular level or more in general, there will always be those with ideas similar to Goethe's—for example, Leonardo da Vinci. In his outstanding book, where he sets out his comprehensive scientific views, the height of achievement for those times, we find him saying—and not meaning it merely as an analogy—that he really regarded the solid rocks as the skeleton of the earth, and that the rivers, streams and watercourses can truly be compared to the blood circulation in man.⁷¹ There you will find it stated also that ebb and flow are connected with a regular rhythm in the inner life of the earth. Kepler, too, spoke in a similar vein when he said that the earth could be regarded in certain respects as a gigantic whale and that ebb and flow were the in-breathing and out-breathing of this huge creature.⁷²

Let us now compare the facts mentioned earlier with such views as Goethe's on ebb and flow. Let us use the findings of Spiritual Science and our previous conclusions about the phases of the moon and the tides in relation, for example, to Goethe's views on the earth's inner life and breathing. For this we must build on the conclusions of Spiritual Science, which can be established only if researches are pursued by spiritual-scientific methods. Here we enter the highly dangerous realm where those who believe they have a firm foothold in modern science, will talk about the fantasies of Spiritual Science. Well, let them talk. It would be better if they were to take what is given as a stimulus; then they would be able to find proofs through a more intimate consideration of life.

In order to approach in the right way what the spiritual scientist has to say, let us consider man himself in relation to the world around him. As far as Spiritual Science is concerned, man has his origins not in the sense-world, but also in the spiritual foundations which lie behind the external physical world. Thus it is only as a being of the senses that man is born, from out of the sense-world. In so far as he is permeated with soul and spirit, he is born from out of the soul and spirit of the cosmos. And it is only when we find the way from man's soul and spirit to the soul and spirit of the cosmos that we are enabled to see something of the connection between the two.

In previous lectures we have discussed various phenomena of the inner soul-life of man. We found the soul to be not merely the nebulous something that it is for modern psychology. Among its members we distinguished, first, what we called the Sentient Soul. In this soul the ego, though dimly and scarcely aware of itself, experiences the impulses of pleasure and pain and everything that comes to it from the outer world through the sentient body. The ego is present within the life of the Sentient Soul, but as yet knows nothing of itself. Then the ego develops further and the soul advances to the stage of the Intellectual Soul or Mind Soul. And when the ego has carried still further its work on the soul, the Intellectual Soul gives rise to the Consciousness Soul. Thus in the structure of the human soul we distinguish three members: Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul.

The ego continues to work on these three members and brings man nearer and nearer to the peak of his developments. But these three members, since they carry out their work through man, have to live in his corporeal structure; in that way only can they accomplish their tasks. The Sentient Soul uses as its instrument the sentient body; the Intellectual Soul uses the etheric body. The Consciousness Soul is the first to use the physical body as bearer and instrument. Thus in man's corporeal structure we have first the physical body, which he has in common with the minerals. Next we have in man a higher part which he has in common with the plant world and everything that lives. The functions of growth, nutrition and reproduction in the plant are active also in man, but in man they are connected with the Intellectual Soul. The plant's etheric body is not permeated by the Intellectual Soul, as is the etheric body in man, just as the physical body is permeated by the Consciousness Soul. That which forms crystals in the mineral realm is permeated in man by the Consciousness Soul. In animals the astral body is the bearer of impulses and emotions; in man the astral body is inwardly deepened and is the bearer of the Sentient Soul. Thus the human soul, made up of Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, dwells in his threefold corporeality, in the sentient body, etheric body and physical body respectively.

That is man's condition while he is awake. During sleep it is different. Then, leaving his physical and etheric bodies behind in bed, he goes out from them with his ego and astral body, together with those parts of his soul which permeate his etheric and physical bodies as Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul. Thus during sleep he lives in a spiritual world which he cannot perceive, simply because here on earth he is obliged to use his physical and etheric bodies as instruments for perceiving the surrounding world. When in sleep he lays these instruments aside, he is unable to perceive the spiritual world, since in ordinary life today he lacks the organs for it.

Now there is something else to say about these states of waking and sleeping. Our waking life is directly connected with the course of the sun—though indeed this is no longer quite true of people today, especially in towns. But if we look at simple country life, where this relation between outer nature and human living still largely prevails, we find that for most of the time people are awake while the sun is up and asleep while the sun is down. This regular alternation of waking and sleeping corresponds to the regular action of sunlight on the earth and all that springs from it. And it is not merely a picturesque way of speaking but deeply true to say that in the morning the sun recalls into the physical body the astral body and ego, together with the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul; and while he is awake man sees everything around him by means of the sun and its radiance. And when man has once more united all the members of his being in daylight consciousness, it is the sun which summons him to ordinary life. We shall now easily recognise, if we are not taking a superficial view of these things, how the sun regulates the relationship of man to itself and to the earth. Let us now look more closely at three aspects of this relationship.

With regard to his threefold soul-nature, comprising Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, man is inwardly independent; but he is not with regard to their bearers, the astral, etheric and physical bodies. These three sheaths are built up from the outer universe, and in order that they may serve man in his waking life, they are built up through the relationship between sun and earth.

As we have seen, the Sentient Soul lives in its instrument, the sentient body. The sentient body owes its characteristics to the region which a man calls his home. Everyone has a home somewhere, and it matters whether he is born in Europe or America or Australia. For the physical and etheric bodies it makes no direct difference, but it does matter directly for the sentient body. Although man is gradually becoming more free from these effects on his sentient body, we still have to say: human beings whose roots are in their native soil, human beings in whom a feeling for their homeland is particularly strong, who have not yet overcome by strength of soul the power of the physical and are drawn to their place of birth—if such human beings have to move to another region, they are not only apt to become bad-tempered and morose, but may actually fall ill. Sometimes, then, the mere prospect of returning home is enough to restore them to health, for the source of their illness is not in the physical body or in the etheric body but in their sentient body, whose moods, emotions and desires spring directly from the environment of their native land.

Through higher development, which enhances his freedom, man will overcome the influences which bind him to his native soil; but a comprehensive view shows that a man's situation on earth varies in accordance with the relation of the place where he lives to the sun; for the angle at which the sun's rays strike the earth varies from place to place. We can indeed trace in certain instinctive activities, which then become culturally assimilated, that they derive partially from the homeland of the people concerned.

Let us take two examples: the use of iron and the milking of animals for food. We shall find that it is only in certain areas of Europe, Asia and Africa that these two practices developed. In other areas they were unknown in early times. And where they came into use later on, they were introduced by emigrants from Europe. We can trace exactly how throughout Siberia the milking of animals dates from remote antiquity, and extends only as far as the Behring Sea; there is no record of it among the original inhabitants of America. It is similar with iron.

Thus we can see how certain instincts which exist in the sentient body are connected with a particular region where people live, and how they are therefore dependent in the first place on the relation of sun to earth.

A second dependence concerns the etheric body. As the bearer of the Intellectual Soul, the etheric body shows itself to be dependent in its activity on the seasons of the year; hence on the relation of sun to earth expressed in the course of the seasons. A direct proof of this can of course come only through Spiritual Science, but you can convince yourselves by external facts that this statement is correct. For example, it is only in regions where a balanced alternation of seasons occurs that the inner activity of the soul as Intellectual Soul can develop; this means that only in such regions can a necessary bearer or instrument of the Intellectual Soul evolve in the etheric body of man. In the far north we find that when elements of culture are brought in from elsewhere, the soul has great difficulty in struggling with the etheric body, which is having to live under conditions characterised by excessively long winters and short summers. The Intellectual Soul will then find it impossible to forge out of the etheric body an instrument it can easily handle.

If we go to the tropics, we find that the lack of regular seasons produces a kind of apathy. Just as the forces of plant life vary in the course of the year, so do the forces in man's etheric body: they find expression in the joy of spring, the longing for summer, the melancholy of autumn, the desolation of winter. These regular changes are necessary if a proper instrument for the Intellectual Soul is to be created in the human etheric body. Thus we see again how the sun affects human beings through its changing relation to the earth.

Now let us take the physical body. If the Consciousness Soul is to work right into the physical body, we must follow in ordinary life a rhythm similar to the alternation of day and night. Anyone who never slept would soon notice that he was unable to control effectively his thoughts about the world around him. A regular alternation of waking and sleeping builds up our physical body in a way that can provide an instrument for the Consciousness Soul. Thus we have now seen how man's three bodies, astral, etheric and physical, are built up by the sun.

But what external influences play into the human being while he is asleep, while he is living in the spiritual world and has left his physical and etheric bodies behind?

While we are asleep we get something from the spiritual world to replace the forces that have been used up by our activities during the preceding day. Is it possible in this case also to point to an external influence as we did with regard to the daytime waking hours? Yes, it is, and what we find is in remarkable accord with the length of the phases of the moon. I am not maintaining that this external influence coincides exactly with the moon's phases, or that the phases themselves produce corresponding effects, but only that the course of these effects is comparable with the course of the phases of the moon. I will give two examples to show what I mean.

You will be well aware that people who are given to creative thoughts and the free play of imagination are not equally productive at all times. Poets, for example, if they are honest with themselves, have to admit now and then that they are out of tune, unable to write anything. People who observe this in themselves know that the productive periods, for which a certain imaginative frame of mind and a warmth of feeling are necessary, alternate in a remarkable way with periods when nothing can be accomplished. They know, too, that the soul has a fourteen day period of productivity, after which anyone who has to do with creative thinking goes through an empty period, when the soul is like a squeezed out lemon. During this empty period, however, he can apply himself to working over what he has done. If artists and authors would take note of this, they would soon see how true it is.

This alternation of periods is influenced not by daytime conditions, but by the times when the soul and the ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies. And so, for a fourteen-day period, productive forces are, as it were, poured into the human being while he is independent of his physical and etheric bodies, and then, during the next fourteen days, no such forces are poured in. That is the rhythm. It applies to all human beings, but is more clearly evident in the sort of people we have just mentioned.

Much clearer still is the evidence from genuine spiritual research. This is not the kind of research that can be undertaken whenever one chooses, but it is dependent on a rhythmical pattern. This point has hardly ever been mentioned anywhere, but it is so. During spiritual research one is not sleeping—the world-spirit does not bestow its gifts in sleep! The physical body is inactive with regard to the outer world, yet one is not asleep, although the physical and etheric bodies have been left behind; Meditation, concentration and so on have strengthened the researcher's faculties to such a degree that consciousness is not blotted out when it goes forth from the physical body. Sleep does not supervene and the spiritual world can be perceived. For the modern spiritual researcher there are two periods: one of fourteen days when he can make observations: he feels particularly strong and communications from the spiritual world press in on him from all sides. Then comes a period during which he is particularly well able, thanks to the forces just received, to penetrate with his thinking the illuminations, the imaginations and inspirations that have come to him from the spiritual world, to work over them so that they may acquire a strictly scientific form. Inspiration and the technique of thinking follow a rhythmical course. The spiritual researcher does not need to bring about a co-ordination with external facts; he simply sees how these periods occur in alternation, as do full moon and new moon, with their intervening quarters. But it is only their rhythmical course that has a parallel in the alternation of full and new moon. The period of inspiration does not coincide with full moon or the working over period with new moon. All we can say is that a comparison is possible between the two periods and full and new moon. Why should this be so?

When we study our earth, we find that it has evolved out of an earlier state. Just as each one of us has come in soul and spirit from a former incarnation, so has the earth emerged from a former planetary incarnation. But our earth retains relics of events which occurred under earlier conditions during its previous incarnation. And these relics are to be found in the course of the moon round the earth, as we see it today. From a spiritual-scientific point of view the moon is reckoned as part of the earth. For what is it that keeps the moon circling round the earth? It is the earth itself, and here spiritual science and external science are in complete agreement. External science, too, regards the moon as having been split off from the earth, and having gained the force which keeps it in orbit through having once formed part of the earth. Thus the orbiting moon represents simply an earlier condition of the earth. The earth itself has retained in its satellite these earlier conditions because it needs to have them shining into the present. Can we find any reason for this need?

Let us take man himself and observe how he lives as a soul in his body and how he is exposed to the course of the sun. We then must say: For normal consciousness today, everything associated with the sun is restricted to the life between birth and death. This is something you can test—ask yourselves whether what normal consciousness experiences during waking hours, in its threefold dependence on native place, the changing seasons and the alternation of day and night, is not restricted to the life between birth and death. Man would have nothing else in his consciousness, nothing more would illuminate it, if there were only this action of the sun on the earth and only this relation between earth and sun. That which plays over from one incarnation to the next and appears again in a new life, must be sought in the soul-spiritual element which permeates man's outer body and during sleep passes as astral body and ego out of the physical and etheric bodies. At death also it leaves the body, and reappears in a new form at the next incarnation. Here there is a rhythm which directs our attention to a similar rhythm associated with the moon.

If now we consider human evolution, we see that the work of the ego on the Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul has developed only on earth under the conditions that prevail between earth and sun. But the earth's relation to the moon reflects a former condition in its own evolution. Man's present phase of evolution, through Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, points to a period during which the bearers of the above soul-members, the astral, etheric and physical bodies, were being prepared. Then, just as the action of the sun is now still necessary for the proper development of these three bearers, the moon forces were at work in preparing them. Today the moon forces were once in harmony with man and prepared him to be what he is today; likewise the earth during its moon condition prepared our present earth. Thus we can say that the lower nature of man, on which are built the Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, points back to earlier conditions which the earth has preserved in the orbit of the moon as we see it today.

We can see, too, how man's inner being, as he passes from one incarnation to the next, must have a rhythm corresponding to the moon's. During earlier stages of the earth's evolution, it was not the transitory physical that was associated with the moon, but the inner activity which was working on this physical, just as the external physical is today being worked on by the sun. The earth has preserved in the moon something of its earlier conditions, and so has man in his inner, eternal being. In this inner being he is now evolving those higher qualities which were formerly an external influence and which are now to be developed by his own inner capacities.

An essential point we must emphasise is that man grows out of these external influences. He becomes more independent all the time—e.g. he can sleep by day and stay awake at night. But he still has to order his waking and sleeping in accordance with the rhythm of the sun; he has to maintain the rhythm within himself. In earlier times, inner day and night corresponded closely to the sun's day and night; man was then more closely bound to his native soil. He becomes free and independent precisely by inwardly liberating the rhythm under which he lives; by retaining it as a rhythm, but no longer dependent on the outer world. It is as if we had a clock marked for 24 hours but set in such a way that it does not correspond with external time; e.g., when the clock says it is 12 o'clock, it is not 12 o'clock by the sun. Thus although the clock follows a 24-hour rhythm, the time it shows is its own, not that of the sun.

Thus man frees himself inwardly by making the external rhythm into an inner one. He has long since freed himself from the rhythm which connected his inner being with the moon. Hence we have emphasised that man lives through the phases of the moon inwardly, but these experiences are not caused by the moon in the sky. The course of the moon shows a similar rhythm because man has retained the rhythm inwardly, though outwardly he has made himself free and independent of it.

We are led in this way to regard the earth as a living being, but since it shows us only its physical body, with no evident signs of life or feeling or knowledge, its condition is nearer to that of the moon. Now we can understand why it is wrong, even taking only the external facts, to speak of a direct influence of the moon on the tides, and why we can say only that the ebb and flow of the tides corresponds to the phases of the moon. The tides, as well as the course of the moon are caused by deeper spiritual forces in the living earth.

Thus we see how Spiritual Science helps us to clarify external facts in a wonderful way. The tides correspond to an inner process in the living earth, which produces them and also the orbit of the moon.⁷³ If you take the findings of Spiritual Science and then go through all the books where the phases of moon and earth and tides are recorded, you will understand the true relations between moon and earth and moon and man.

You can easily see that if a man loses his independence and sinks from a fully conscious into a less conscious or unconscious condition, he will regress to earlier stages of evolution. Man advanced from unconsciousness to his present state of consciousness, from his earlier dependence on the moon and its influence to his present independence from the moon and his dependence on the sun.

Because man was once directly dependent on the moon, it follows that if his consciousness is damped down, its functioning will be ordered by the course of the moon. This is an atavistic effect which brings out man's old connection with the moon's phases. A characteristic of mediums is that their consciousness is so far lowered that they revert to an earlier stage of evolution, and the old influence of the moon makes itself felt in them. It is similar in certain cases of illness where the consciousness is lowered. If you bear in mind the principles of Spiritual Science, you will be well able to understand these phenomena. The evidence for what Spiritual Science has to say can be found in all aspects of life.

One thing more. When someone is to be born again on earth after his sojourn in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, then, during the embryonic period, he passes through conditions which recall an earlier state of the earth. The embryonic period is still reckoned by science as covering ten lunar months; thus we have here a rhythm which runs its course through ten successive moon periods. We find also that each week in the ten-month period—that is, each phase of the moon—corresponds to a particular condition in the development of the embryo. Here, too, man has retained in himself the moon rhythm, as we may call it.

We could indeed mention a whole series of other phenomena connected with man's embryonic existence, before he emerges from the depths of nature into the light of day; they are of course not caused by the moon and do not coincide with the moon's phases but reflect the same rhythm, because they go back to primary causes which were present while the earth was passing through earlier conditions of existence.

Now I have thrown light on a subject which cannot be further illuminated in public. Thoughtful people will see that here a perspective is opened up into realms of life where Spiritual Science can indeed point the way to a great clarification of much in man that is hidden from external sunlight, that lies behind it. They are realms which have to be explored by a light different from the light of knowledge we have acquired through the light of the sun; namely by faculties which are not dependent on the service rendered by the sentient, etheric and physical bodies under the influence of the sun. A clairvoyant faculty makes itself independent of these three bodies; it can sink itself in inwardness and see into the spiritual world, and thus can open up a capacity for knowledge of what lies behind external sunlight and yet is full of light and clarity. But I must again emphasise that on the question of the moon an even more intimate light is needed if we are to get to the heart of it.

In conclusion, I am reminded of some verses by the German lyrical poet Wilhelm Muller: we are here concerned only with the last stanza. The moon is addressed and all sorts of intimate words pass between man and moon; and then, because the soul has spoken to the moon in a wonderful way:

This little song, an evening round,
A wanderer sings in full moonshine;
Those who read it by candlelight
Will always fail to get it right,
Childishly simple though it is.⁷⁴

That is rather how we should take what Spiritual Science has to say, as shown in our treatment of the moon and its significance for human life. The song of Spiritual Science about the moon can indeed be sung only if we have some understanding of the more intimate ideas of Spiritual Science. People who try to read the song by candlelight, by which I mean the telescope, and employ photographs of the moon, for so-called research—these people will hardly understand our song. But those who are ready to go even a little way into what life can tell us in all its aspects will say to themselves: It is really not so difficult! Anyone who seeks to understand the song that Spiritual Science sings about the moon—not by the candlelight of the telescope, but by the living light of the spirit, which shines even when all sense-impressions are absent—he will find that this song about the moon, and therefore about an important aspect of life, is truly quite easy, even if not childishly easy!

• 65. Matthias Jakob Schleiden, 1804–1881, Professor of Botany at the University of Jena.
• 66. Gustav Theodor Fechner, 1801–1887, Professor of Physics at the University of Leipzig. See The Riddles of Philosophy, 1973 edition, pp. 279, 375ff., 376, 380, 383. Published by Anthroposophic Press, New York.
• 67. G. Th. Fechner, Professor Schleiden und der Mond, Leipzig, 1856, p.1 56.
• 68. Julius Robert Mayer, 1814–1878, doctor and physicist, discovered the law of conservation of energy in 1842.
• 69. Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, as note 27, vol. 11, book 3, Meteorology, pp.323–398.
• 70. Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of his Life, conversation of 11th April 1827.
• 71. Leonardo da Vinci, der Denker, Forscher und Poet, from the published manuscripts; selection, translation and introduction by Marie Herzfeld (Jena, 1906), p.61 and following chapters.
• 72. Johannes Kepler, 1571–1630. Cf. for example in Harmonices Mundi book IV, chapter 7.
• 73. The correspondence between the moon's orbit and the tides can be led back to a joint cause, but the former does not cause the latter, just as the hand moving round the clock corresponds to the path of the sun, although no-one would suggest that the sun caused the clock-hand to move round.
• 74. Wilhelm Müller, 1794–1827, known for the cycles of poems “Die Winterreise” and “Die schöne Müllerin” which were set to music by Franz Schubert. This poem is the last verse from “Mondlied”, from Liederder Griechen, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1844.

These lectures were published under the title Spiritual Science's Answer to the Large Questions of the Present Time. In German: ‘Der Geist im Pflanzenreich,’ in Antworten der Geisteswissenschaft auf die Grossen Fragen des Daseins.

How spiritual science must recognize the living and weaving spirit in all beings surrounding us by proceeding from the principle that the knowing human being should understand himself in his knowing has been touched upon in the lectures about The Human Soul and the Animal Soul and The Human Spirit and the Animal Spirit.¹ It was said that the person knowing himself could never think of taking into his own spirit—as spiritual content—ideas, concepts, and mental images of things and beings if these concepts and ideas, this spiritual content through which the human being wants to make comprehensible what resides in the objects, were not first present in these objects, were not placed into them. All drawing forth of the spiritual from things and beings would be pure fantasy, would be a self-made fantasy, if we were not to presuppose that wherever we gaze and are able to discover the spirit, there this spirit is actually present.

Although still only in small circles, this general presupposition of the spiritual content of the world is made rather frequently. Even those who speak of the spirit in objects, however, usually remain with speaking about the spirit in general, i.e., they speak about the existence of spiritual weaving, of spiritual life lying at the basis of the mineral, plant, and animal realms, etc. To enter into the means by which the spirit individualizes itself for us, how it manifests itself particularly in this or that form of existence, is not yet given much thought in the wider circles of our educated contemporaries. Offense is usually taken to those who speak not only of the spirit generally but of its particular forms, its particular ways, how it makes itself felt behind this or that phenomenon. Nevertheless, in our spiritual science, we should not speak about the spirit in the vague and general way indicated today; rather, we should speak in such a way that we recognize how the spirit weaves behind the mineral or plant existence, how it is active in the animal and human existence. Our task today is to say some thing about the nature of the spirit in the realm of plants.

It must be admitted that if we do not begin with abstract philosophy, or with abstract theosophy, but if we begin with unbiased observations of reality and at the same time—as it must be on the healthy ground of spiritual science—we stand firm on the ground of natural science and then want to speak about ‘the spirit in the realm of plants,’ we not only collide with unjustified prejudices of our scientists or other educated contemporaries but also come into conflict with more-or-less justified concepts that have, and must have, the power of strong suggestion.

Especially in this contemplation, which is to concern itself with the spirit that finds its expression, its physiognomy, as it were, in the realm confronting us in the gigantic trees of the primeval forest, or those growing on Teneriffa thousands of years ago, as well as in the small, unassuming violet hiding in the quiet woods or elsewhere—especially in such a contemplation a person may feel himself in a rather difficult position, if the natural scientific concepts of the nineteenth century have been absorbed. Yes, a person feels himself in a rather difficult position if he has worked through to what should be said about the spirit in this area, for how could it be denied that great and wonderful discoveries in the realm of material research—even in the realm of the nature of plants—were made in the nineteenth century, thoroughly illuminating the nature of plants from a certain standpoint.

Again and again we should be reminded that in the second third of the nineteenth century the great botanist, Schleiden, discovered the plant cell. He was the first to place before humanity the truth that every plant body is built up out of small—they are called ‘elementary organisms’—independent entities, ‘cells,’ which appear like the building blocks of this plant body. While previously plants were able to be considered only in relation to their crude parts and organs, now attention was directed to how every leaf of the higher plants consisted of innumerable, tiny microscopic formations—the plant cells. No wonder such a discovery had a powerful influence on all thinking and feeling in relation to the plant world! It is entirely natural that the person who first discerned how the plant is built up out of these building blocks would arrive at the thought that by investigating these small formations, these building blocks, the secret of the nature of plants could be revealed.

The ingenious Gustav Theodor Fechner must already have experienced this idea when, around the middle of the nineteenth century, he actually tried to take into his thought sequences something like a ‘plant soul,’ although it could be said that his excessively fantastic elaboration of the nature of plants may have appeared somewhat too early. Fechner spoke comprehensively about a soul of plants (e.g., in his book Nanna), and he spoke not only as one who merely fantasizes but as one thoroughly and deeply acquainted with the natural scientific advances of the nineteenth century. He was unable, however, to think that plants are merely built up out of cells; rather, when he looked at the forms, the structures, of individual plants, he was led to assume that sense reality is the expression of an underlying soul element.

Now, you must admit that in contrast to what spiritual science has to say today about the life of the spirit in the realm of plants, Fechner's explanations appear rather fantastic, but his thoughts were actually an advance. In spite of this, Fechner had to experience the resistance that can come especially through the thinking into which the human spirit had penetrated by the discoveries of the nineteenth century. It must simply be understood that even the greatest individuals were fascinated by what they beheld when, under the microscope, the plant body revealed itself as a structure of small cells. They could in no way conceive how someone could still come up with the idea of a ‘plant soul’ after the material aspects had shown themselves in such a grandiose way to the searching human spirit. It is therefore easy to understand that even the discoverer of the plant cell became the greatest and most vehement opponent of what Fechner wished to say concerning the soul nature of plants. And it is rather interesting to see the fine and subtle mind of Fechner in battle with Schleiden, who became famous through his epoch-making discovery for botany but who did away, in a materialistically crude way, with everything that Fechner wanted to say about plants out of his intimate contemplations.

In a battle such as the one between Fechner and Schleiden in the nineteenth century, something basically took place that must be experienced by every soul who penetrates into the science of our time, working through the doubts and riddles that arise nevertheless, especially when one enters into the achievements of natural science. He will have grave doubts if he is able to work himself out of the frequently quite compelling concepts in such a realm. Whoever is not acquainted with this compelling quality of the materialistic natural scientific concepts of the nineteenth century may find trivial, possibly even narrow-minded, what is said out of the world view that wishes to place itself on the firm ground of natural science. One who approaches matters with a healthy sense for truth and a serious concern for solving life's riddles, however, and is at the same time armed with the botanical concepts of the nineteenth century, can have quite tragic inner soul experiences. Something about this need only be suggested here.

Thus we can learn, for example, what the botany of the nineteenth century has brought. There is much in this botany that is actually magnificent and truly astounding. A person who approaches the natural scientific concepts with a healthy sense for truth reaches the point where these concepts affect him like suggestion, with a tremendous power; they do not let him loose but whisper in his ears again and again, ‘You are doing something stupid if you leave the sure path on which one studies how cell relates to cell, how cell is nourished by cell,’ and so on. Finally it becomes necessary to tear oneself loose from the materialistic concepts in this realm. There is no other choice, no matter how firmly one wishes to be held by the suggestive power of the world views that are merely a consequence of outer materialistic concepts. After a certain point it no longer works. Not many people today experience that point. The suggestive power is experienced by most people who feel fascinated by the natural scientific results, and they do not dare take even a single step beyond what the microscope shows. The next step is taken only by very few. It is clear, however, to whoever maintains a healthy sense for truth, especially regarding the natural sciences—and this is necessary if one wishes to approach the spirit in the realm of plants—that first a person must occupy himself with a certain mental image, for otherwise he will always succumb to error, will always enter a labyrinth such as happened to Fechner despite his serious attempts to examine the symbolic, the physiognomic aspects of individual plant forms and structures.

I would like to suggest to you what is significant here first by means of a comparison. Imagine that someone found a piece of matter, some kind of tissue, on a path. If he examines this piece of tissue, in certain cases it may happen that he doesn't get anywhere. Why not? If this piece of tissue is a piece of bone from a human arm, the examiner will not get anywhere if he wants to look merely at this piece of bone and to explain it out of itself, for it would be impossible for this piece of tissue to come into existence without the prior existence of a human arm.

One cannot speak about the tissue at all if it is not considered in connection with a complete human organism. It is impossible, therefore, to speak about such a formation other than in connection with an entire being. Consider the following comparison. We find an object somewhere, a human hair. If we wanted to explain how it may have originated there, we would be led completely astray, because we can explain this only by considering it in connection with an entire human organism. By itself it is nothing; by itself it cannot be explained.

This is something that the spiritual investigator must consider in relation to the whole scope of our observations, of our explanations. He must direct his attention to the question of whether any object confronting him can be considered by itself or whether it remains inexplicable by itself, whether it belongs to something else or can be examined better as an isolated entity.

Curiously enough, the spiritual investigator becomes aware that it is generally impossible to consider the world of plants, this wonderful covering of the earth, as something existing by itself. When confronted with the plant he feels just as he does regarding a finger, which he can consider only as belonging to a complete human organism. The plant world cannot be considered in isolation, because to the view of the spiritual investigator the plant world at once relates itself to the entire planet earth and forms a whole with the earth, just as the finger or piece of bone or the brain forms a whole with our organism. And whoever merely looks at plants by themselves, remaining with the particular, does the same as one who wishes to explain a hand or a piece of human bone by itself. The common nature of plants simply cannot be considered in any other way than as a member of our common planet earth.

Here, however, we come to a matter that may annoy many today, though it is valid nevertheless for the spiritual scientific view. We come to look differently at our whole planet earth than is done customarily by today's science, for our contemporary science—be it astronomy, geology, or mineralogy—basically speaks about the earth only in so far as this earthly sphere consists of rocks, of the mineral element, of lifeless matter. Spiritual science may not speak in this way. It can only speak in such a way that everything found on our earth—that which a being coming from outer space, as it were, would find in human beings, animals, plants, and stones—belongs to the whole of our earth, just as the stones themselves belong to our earth. This means that we may not look at the earth planet as a dead rock formation but rather as something that is in itself a living whole, bringing forth the nature of plants out of itself, just as the human being brings forth the structures of his skin, of his sense organs, and the like. In other words, we may not consider the earth without the plant covering that belongs to it.

An outer circumstance might already suggest to us that, just as every stone has a certain relationship to the earth, so also everything plant-like belongs to it. Just as every stone, every lifeless body, shows its relationship to the earth by being able to fall onto the earth, where it finds a resistance, so every plant shows its relationship to the earth by the direction of its stem, which is always such that it passes through the center of the earth. All stems of plants would cross at the earth's center if we extended them to that point. This means that the earth is able to draw out of its center all those force radiations that allow the plants to arise. If we look at the mineral realm without also adding the plant covering, we are looking only at an abstraction, at something thought out. We must also add that the natural science that proceeds purely out of the outer material likes to speak about how the origins of all life—including plant-life—must lie in the lifeless, the mineral element.

This issue does not exist at all for the spiritual investigator, because the lower is never a precondition for the higher; rather the higher, the living, is always the precondition for the lower, the nonliving. We will see later, in the lecture, What Has Geology to Say About the Origin of the World,² that spiritual research shows how everything rock-like, mineral—from granite to the crumb of soil in the field—originated in a manner similar to what natural science says today about the origin of coal. Today coal is a mineral, we dig it out of the earth. What was it millions of years ago according to natural scientific concepts? Extensive, mighty forests—so says natural science—covered large portions of the earth's surface at that time; later they sank into the earth during shifts of the earth's crust and were then transformed chemically in regard to their material composition, and what we dig up today out of the depths of the earth are the plants that have become stone. If this is admitted today in relation to coal, it should not be considered too ridiculous if spiritual science, by its methods, comes to the conclusion that all rocks found on our earth have in the final analysis originated from the plant. The plant first had to become stone, as it were. Thus the mineral is not the precondition for the plant-like, but rather the reverse is the case, the plant-like is the precondition for the mineral. Everything of a mineral nature is first something plant-like that hardens and then turns to stone.

Thus in the earth planet we have something before us concerning which we must presuppose the following: it was once, with respect to its densest quality, of a plant nature, was a structure of plant-like being, and only developed the lifeless out of what was living, progressively hardening, turning to wood, turning to stone. Just as our skeleton first separates itself out of the organism, so we have to look at the earth's rock formations as the great skeleton of the earth being, of the earth organism.

Now, if we are able to consider this earth organism from a spiritual scientific viewpoint, we can go still further. Today I can give only the first outlines of this, because this is a cycle of lectures in which one thing must lead to the next. We can ask ourselves, what is the situation with the earth organism as such?

In studying an organism we know that alternations of different conditions are revealed. The human and animal organ isms reveal a waking and a sleeping condition alternating in time. Can we, from a spiritual scientific viewpoint, find something similar regarding the body of the earth, the earth organism? To outer consideration, what follows may appear to be a mere comparison, but for spiritual research it is not a comparison but a fact. If we study the curious lawfulness of summer and winter, how it is summer on one half of the earth and winter on the other half, how this relationship alternates, and if we pay attention to how this lawfulness—as wintertime and summertime—is to be discerned in relation to all earthly life, then it will no longer appear absurd if spiritual science tells us that winter and summer in the earth organism correspond to waking and sleeping in the organisms around us. It is simply that the earth does not sleep in time in the same way as other organisms but is always awake somewhere and al ways asleep at some other portion of its being. Waking and sleeping move around spatially: the earth sleeps in the part where there is summer, and it is awake in the part of its being where there is winter. Thus the whole earth organism con fronts us spiritually with conditions like waking and sleeping in other organisms.

The summer condition of the earth organism consists of a very specific relationship of the earth to the sun, and because we are dealing with a living, spirit-filled organism we may say that it surrenders itself to an activity that proceeds spiritually from the sun. In the winter condition the earth organism closes itself off from this sun activity, drawing itself together into itself. Now let us compare this condition with human sleep. I will now speak of what appears to be a mere analogy; spiritual science, however, provides the evidence for these observations.

If we study the human being in the evening, when he is tired, as his consciousness is diminishing, we find that all thoughts and feelings that enter our soul during the day from the outside, all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, sink into an indefinite darkness. During this time, the human spirit being—as we have shown in the lecture about the nature of sleep³—passes out of the human physical body and enters the spiritual world, surrendering itself to the spiritual world. In this sleep condition it is a curious fact that the human being becomes unconscious. For the spiritual investigator (we will see how he comes to know this) it is revealed that the inner aspect of the human being, the astral body and ego, actually draw themselves out of the physical and etheric bodies, but they do not simply draw themselves out and float over him like a cloud formation; rather this whole inner aspect of the human being spreads itself out, pours itself out over the whole planetary world around us. As incredible as it may seem, it is nevertheless revealed that the human soul pours itself out in a unified way over the astral realm. The investigators who were acquainted with this realm knew well why they called what departs from the physical the ‘astral body.’ The reason was that this inner element draws out of heavenly space, with which it forms a unity, the forces it needs in order to replace what the day's efforts and work used up from the physical body. Thus the human being in sleep passes into the great world and in the morning draws himself back within the limits of his skin, into the small human world, into the microcosm. There, because his body offers him resistance, he again feels his ego, his self-consciousness.

This breathing out and breathing in of the soul is a wonderful alternation in human life. Of all those who have not spoken directly from an occult, spiritual scientific point of view, I have actually found only one individual who made so fitting a remark about the alternation of waking and sleeping that it can be taken directly over into spiritual science, be cause it corresponds with spiritual scientific facts. It was a thoroughly mathematical thinker, a deeply thoughtful man, who was able to encompass nature magnificently with his spirit: Novalis. He says in his Fragments:

Sleep is a mixed condition of body and soul. In sleep, body and soul are chemically united. In sleep the soul is evenly distributed throughout the body—the human being is neutralized. Waking is a divided, a polar condition; in waking the soul is pointed, localized. Sleep is soul-digestion; the body digests the soul (removal of the soul stimulus). Waking is the condition of the soul stimulus influence: the body partakes of the soul. In sleep the bonds of this system are loosened; in waking they are tightened.

Thus sleep for Novalis means the digestion of the soul by the body. Novalis is always conscious that in sleep the soul becomes one with the universe and is digested, so that the human being can be further helped in the physical world.

With respect to his inner being, then, the human being alternates in such a way that in the daytime he draws himself together into the small world, into the limits of his skin, and then expands into the great world during the night, drawing forth through surrender forces from that world in which he is then imbedded. We will not understand the human being unless we understand him as formed out of the entire macrocosm.

For that part of the earth where it is summer, there is something similar to what goes on in the human being in the condition of sleep. The earth gives itself to everything that comes down from the sun and forms itself as it should form itself under the influence of the sun activity. In that part of the earth where it is winter, it closes itself off from the influence of the sun, lives within itself. There it is the same as when the human being has drawn together into the small, inner world, living in himself, while for the part of the earth where it is summer it is the same as when the human being is surrendered to the whole outer world.

There is a law in the spiritual world: if we direct our attention to spiritual entities far removed from one another—such as, for example, the human being here on one side and the earth organism on the other—the states of consciousness must be pictured as reversed in a certain sense. With the human being, stepping out into the great world is the sleep condition. For the earth, the summer (which one would be inclined to consider a waking condition) is something that can only be compared with the human being falling asleep. The human being steps out into the great world when he falls asleep; in summer the earth with all its forces enters the realm of sun activity, only we must be able to think of the earth and the sun as spirit-filled organisms.

In wintertime, when the earth rests within itself, we must be able to think of its condition as corresponding to the waking condition of the human being, although it may be tempting to consider winter as the earth's sleep. When we consider entities as different from one another as the human being and the earth, however, the states of consciousness appear re versed in a certain way. Now, what does the earth accomplish when it is under the influence of surrender to the sun being, to the sun spirit? To have an easier comparison, we would do well to turn the concepts around now. The earth's surrender to the sun being is simply something that may be compared spiritually with the condition of the human being when he awakens in the morning and emerges out of the dark womb of existence, out of the night, into his joys and sorrows. When the earth enters the realm of sun activity—although this could be compared with the sleep condition of the human being—all the forces that sprout forth from the earth allow the resting winter condition of the earth to pass over into the active, the living, summer condition.

What, then, are the plants in this whole web of existence? We could say that when spring approaches, the earth organ ism begins to think and to feel, because the sun with its being lures out the thoughts and feelings. The plants are nothing but a kind of sense organ for the earth organism, awakening anew every spring, so that the earth organism with its thinking and feeling can be in the realm of the sun activity. Just as in the human organism light creates the eye for itself in order to be able to manifest through the eye as ‘light,’ so every spring the sun organism creates for itself the plant covering in order to look at itself, to feel, to sense, to think by means of this plant covering. The plants cannot directly be considered the thoughts of the earth, but they are the organs through which the awakening organization of the earth in spring, together with the sun, develops its thoughts and feelings. Just as we can see our nerves emanating from the brain, developing our feeling and conceptual life through the eyes and ears together with the nerves, so the spiritual investigator sees in what transpires between earth and sun with the help of the plants the marvelous weaving of a cosmic world of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. The spiritual investigator finds that the earth is surrounded not merely by the mineral air of the earth, by the purely physical earth atmosphere, but by an aura of thoughts and feelings. For spiritual research the earth is a spiritual being whose thoughts and feelings awaken every spring, and throughout the summer they pass through the soul of our entire earth.

The plant world, however, which is a part of our entire earth organism, provides the organs through which our earth can think and feel. Woven into the spirit of the earth are the plants, just as our eyes and ears are woven into the activities of our spirit.

In spring a living, spirit-filled organism awakens, and in the plants we can see something that is pushed out of the countenance of our earth in some realm where it wants to begin to feel and think. Just as everything in the human being tends toward a self-conscious ego, so it is also in the realm of plants. The whole plant world belongs to the earth. I have already said that a person would be close to insanity if he did not think of how all feelings, sensations, and mental images are directed toward our ego. Similarly, everything the plants mediate during summertime is directed toward the earth's center, which is the earth ego. This should not be said merely symbolically! As the human being has his ego, so the earth has its self-conscious ego. That is why all plants strive toward the earth's center. That is why we may not consider plants by themselves but rather must consider them in interaction with the self-conscious ego of the earth. What unfolds itself as thoughts and sensations of the earth is similar to the thoughts and sensations that live in us, similar to whatever arises and disappears in us during our waking state, what lives in us astrally, if we speak from the viewpoint of spiritual science.

Thus we cannot picture the earth only as a physical structure, for the physical structure is for us something like our own physical body, which can be seen with the outer eyes and touched with the hands, and which is observed by outer science. This is the earth body that present-day astronomy or geology studies. Then we have to direct our attention to what in the human being we have come to know as the etheric body or life body. The earth also has such an etheric body, and it also has an astral body. This is what awakens every spring as the thoughts and feelings of the earth, which recede when winter approaches so that the earth rests in its own ego, closed off within itself, retaining only what it needs in order, through memory, to carry over the preceding into the following, retaining in the plant's seed forces what it has conquered for itself. Just as the human being, when he falls asleep, does not lose his thoughts and sensations but finds them again the next morning, so the earth, awakening again from sleep in the spring, finds the seed forces of the plants in order to permit what has been conquered in an earlier time to emerge again from the living memory of the seed forces.

When regarded in this way, the plants can be compared with our eyes and ears. What our senses are for us, the plants are for the earth organism. But what perceives, what achieves consciousness, is the spiritual world streaming down from the sun to the earth. This spiritual world would not be able to achieve consciousness if it did not have its sense organs in the plants, mediating a self-consciousness just as our eyes and ears and nerves mediate our self-consciousness. This makes us aware that we speak correctly only if we say that those beings who stream from the sun down to the earth, unfolding their spiritual activity, encounter from spring through summertime the being that belongs to the earth itself. In this exchange the organs are formed through which the earth perceives those beings, for the plants do not perceive. It is a superstition, shared also by natural science, when it is said that the plant perceives. The spiritual entities that belong to the earth activity and the sun activity perceive through the plant organs, and these entities direct toward the center of the earth all organs they need in order to unite them with the center of the earth. Thus what we have to see behind the plant covering are the spiritual entities that weave around the earth and have their organs in the plants.

It is remarkable that in our time natural science is actually moving toward a recognition of such spiritual scientific findings, for it is nothing less than full recognition of the situation to say that our physical earth is only a part of the whole earth, that the gaseous sun ball is only a part of the whole sun, and that our sun, as it appears to us physically, is only a part of the soul-spiritual entities who interact with the soul-spiritual entities of the earth. Just as the human world is connected with its environment, and just as human beings have their organs in order to live and to develop themselves, so these entities, which are real, create for themselves in the plant covering an organ in order to perceive themselves. As I said, it is superstitious to believe that the plant as such perceives or that the single plant has a kind of soul. This is just as superstitious as speaking of the soul of an eye. Although a remark able linking of facts, self-evident to spiritual science, impelled outer science throughout the nineteenth century to recognize what has just been said, it is nevertheless a fact that outer science does not know its way around very well in this realm; this is still so today, for what science has brought together so far about the sense life of plants completely sup ports what I have just said about the spirit and its activity in the realm of plants, but in outer science it cannot be comprehended as such. We can see this in the following example. In 1804 Sydenham Edward discovered the unusual plant called the Venus fly-trap, which has bristles on its leaves. When an insect comes near this plant so that contact with the bristles occurs, the insect is trapped by the leaf and then seemingly devoured and digested. It was remarkable when man discovered that plants can eat, can even take in animals, are meat eaters! But it was not known quite what to do with this, and this is interesting, because this discovery has repeatedly been forgotten and then rediscovered, in 1818 by Nuttal, in 1834 by Curtis, in 1848 by Lindley, and in 1859 by Oudemans. Five people in succession discovered the same thing! And science could not do much more with this discovery than for Schleiden, who made such a contribution to research of the plant world, to say that one should be on guard and not succumb to all kinds of mystical speculations attributing a soul to plants! Today, however, science is again prepared to attribute a soul to the individual plant, for example the Venus fly trap. This would be as superstitious as attributing a soul to the eye, however. Especially people such as Raoul France, for example, have immediately interpreted these things in an outer sense, saying, ‘There the soul element is evident, manifesting in a way analogous to the soul element of the animal!’

This shows how necessary it is, especially in the realm of spiritual science, not to succumb to all kinds of fantasies, for here outer science has succumbed to the fantasy that by attributing a soul nature to the Venus fly-trap, it can be thrown together with the human or animal soul nature. If this is done, a soul should also be attributed to other entities that attract small animals and, when these animals have come near, surround them with their tentacles so that they remain caught within. If one speaks of a soul in the Venus fly-trap, a soul can also be attributed to a mouse trap! We should not speak like this, however. As soon as there is the wish to penetrate into the spirit, things must be understood accurately and exactly, and one must not conclude from apparently similar outer qualities that the inner qualities work in the same way.

I have already directed attention to the fact that some animals exhibit something similar to memory. When an elephant is led to the drinking trough and on the way there someone irritates him, it can happen that when the elephant returns he has retained water in his trunk and sprays the person who irritated him earlier. It is said that here we can see that the elephant has a memory, that he remembered the person who irritated him and resolved: ‘On the way back I will spray him with water!’ But this is not the case. With the soul life it is important for us to follow the inner process exactly and not immediately to speak of memory when a later event occurs as an effect of an earlier cause. Only when a being truly looks back to something that took place at an earlier time do we have to do with memory; in every other case we are dealing only with cause and effect. This means that we would have to look exactly into the structure of the elephant's soul if we wished to see how the stimulus applied results in something that calls forth an effect after a certain time.

Therefore we must not interpret things such as what we encounter in the Venus fly-trap by thinking that the entire arrangement of the plant is there in order to determine an inner soul nature of the plant, but rather that what goes on there is brought about from outside. The plant serves as organ of the entire earth organism even in such a case. How the plants on the one hand pertain to the ego of the earth and on the other hand to the aura of the earth—the astral body, the earth's world of sensations and feelings—was shown particularly by this research in the nineteenth century. One can actually be grateful to those natural scientists—such as Gottlieb Haberlandt—who simply presented the facts they discovered in their research, and did not—like Raoul France or others—draw from these results purely outer conclusions. If the natural scientist were to present things as they really are, then one could be grateful to him; if he draws from them conclusions regarding the soul life of a single plant, however, then he should also immediately conclude something about the soul life of the single hair or tooth.

If we now study grain-producing plants, we discover remarkable little organs present in all these plants. Small structures in the starch cells are discovered. These cells are constructed in quite a remarkable way, so that within them there is something like a loose kernel. These structures have the unique property that the cell wall remains insensitive to the kernel at only one spot. If the kernel slips to another spot, it touches the cell wall, leading the plant to return to its earlier position. Such starch cells are found in all plants whose main orientation is toward the center of the earth, so that the plant has an organ within that always makes it possible for it to direct itself in its main orientation toward the center of the earth. This discovery, made during the nineteenth century by various scientists, is certainly wonderful, and it is most remarkable if it is simply presented as it is. Even if Haberlandt, for example, believes that this is a matter of a kind of sense perception by plants, he nevertheless presents the facts so clearly that one must be especially grateful for his dry and sober presentation.

But now let us turn to something else. If the leaf of a plant is studied, it is discovered that the outer surface is actually always a composite of many small, lens-like structures, similar to the lens in our eye. These ‘lenses’ are arranged in such a way that the light is effective only if it falls onto the surface of the leaf from a very specific direction. If it falls from another direction, the leaf instinctively begins to turn in such a way that the light can fall into the center of the lens, because when it falls to the side it works in another way. Thus there are organs for light on the surface of the leaves of plants. These light organs, which actually can be compared with a kind of eye, are spread out over the plants, but the plant does not see by means of them; rather the sun being looks through them to the earth being. These light organs bring it about that the leaves of the plant always have the tendency to place themselves perpendicularly to the sunlight.

In this—in the way the plant surrenders itself to the sun's activity in spring and summertime—we have the plant's second main orientation. The first orientation is that of the stem, through which the plants reveal themselves as belonging to the earth's self-consciousness; the second orientation is the one through which the plants express the earth's surrender to the activity of the sun beings.

If we now wished to go still further, we would have to find, if the previous considerations are correct, that through this surrender of the earth to the sun, the plants somehow ex press how the earth, through what it brings forth, really lives in the great macrocosm. We would have to perceive some thing in the plants, so to speak, which would indicate to us that something works into the plant world that is brought about outside especially by the sun being. Linnaeus pointed out that certain plants open their blossoms at 5 a.m. and at no other time. This means that the earth surrenders itself to the sun, which is expressed in the fact that certain plants are able to open their blossoms only at very specific times of the day; for example, Hemerocallis fulva, the day lily, blossoms only at 5 a.m.; Nymphaea alba, the water lily, only at 7 a.m., and Calendula, the marigold, only at 9 a.m. In this way we see a marvelous expression of the earth's relationship to the sun, a relationship that Linnaeus termed the ‘sun clock.’ The plant's falling asleep, the folding together of the petals, is also limited to very specific times of the day. A wonderful lawfulness and regularity is evident in the life of plants.

All of this shows us how the earth is surrendered—like the human being in sleep—to the great world, living within it. Just as it allows the plants to bloom and wilt, it shows us the spiritual weaving between sun and earth. Looking at matters in this way, however, we would have to say that we gaze there into deep, deep mysteries of our environment. For the serious seeker after truth, this puts a stop to the possibility—regardless of how fascinating the results of purely material research are—to think of the sun merely as a ball of gas racing through space; it puts a stop to the possibility that the earth can be considered as it is by astronomy and geology today. There are compelling reasons that must lead the conscientious natural scientist to admit the following: ‘In what natural science reveals, you may no longer see anything but an expression of the spiritual life lying at the foundation of everything!’ Then we regard the plants as a physiognomic expression of the earth, as the expression of the features of our earth. Thus what we call our aesthetic feeling in relation to the plant world deepens especially through spiritual science. We stand before the gigantic trees in the primeval forest, before the quiet violet or lily of the valley, and we look at them as single individualities, yes, but in such a way that we say, there the spirit that lives throughout space expresses it self to us—sun spirit! earth spirit! Just as we recognize in a human being the piety or impiety of his soul, so we can come to an impression, from what looks at us out of the plants, of what lives as earth spirit, as sun spirit, of how they battle with one another or are in harmony. There we feel ourselves as living and weaving within the spirit.

Just as an illustration of how spiritual science can be verified by the natural science of the nineteenth century, I will relate to you the following. Listeners who have heard lectures here in the past will recall how I have indicated that there are plants in the earthly world that are misplaced, that do not belong in our world. One such plant is mistletoe, which plays such a remarkable role in legends and myths, because it be longs to an earlier planetary condition of our earth and has remained behind as a remnant of a pre-earthly evolution. This is why it cannot grow on the earth but must take root in other plants. Natural science shows us that mistletoe does not have those curious starch cells that orient the plant toward the center of the earth. I could now begin briefly to take apart the entire botany of the nineteenth century bit by bit, and you will find little by little how the plant covering of our earth is the sense organ through which earth spirit and sun spirit behold each other.

If we pay heed to this, we receive a science—as seems appropriate for the plant world that we love and that gives us so much joy—a science that can at the same time raise our soul, bring it close to this plant world. With our soul and spirit we feel ourselves belonging to the earth and to the sun; we feel as if we had to look up to the plant world, as it were, we feel that it belongs to our great mother earth. We must do this. Everything that as animal or human being seems to be independent of the immediate effect of the sun is actually, through the plant world and its dependence on the plant world, indirectly dependent on the sun. The human being does not undergo the kinds of transformations that plants go through in winter and summer, but it is the plant that gives him the possibility of having such a constancy within himself. The substances that the plant develops can be developed only under the influence of the sun, through the interrelationship of sun spirit and earth spirit. The carbohydrates can arise only if the sun spirit and the earth spirit kiss through the plant being. The substances developed here yield what the higher organisms must take into themselves in order to develop warmth. The higher organisms can only thrive through the warmth developed by taking up the substances prepared by the sun via the plants.

Thus we must look to mother earth as to our great nourishing mother. We have seen, however, that in the plant covering we have the physiognomy of the plant spirit, and through this we feel as though standing in soul and spirit. We gaze, as it were—just as we gaze into the eyes of another person—into the soul of the earth, if we understand how it manifests its soul in the blossoms and leaves of the plant world.

This is what led Goethe to occupy himself with the plant world, which led him to an activity that consisted fundamentally of showing how the spirit is active in the plant world and how in the plant the leaf is formed out of the spirit in the most diverse forms. Goethe was delighted that the spirit in the plant forms the leaves, rounds them, and also leads them to wind around the stem. And it was remarkable when a man who truly recognized the spirit—Schiller, who met Goethe after a botanical lecture in Jena—when Schiller, who was not satisfied by the lecture, said, “That was just an observation of plants as they are in isolation!” whereupon Goethe took out a sheet of paper and sketched in his way, with a few lines, how for him the spirit is active in the plant. Schiller, who was un able to understand such a concrete presentation of the spirit of the plant, said in reply, “What you are drawing there is only an idea!” to which Goethe could only say, “Isn't it nice that I can have ideas without knowing it and can even see them with my own eyes!”

Especially in the way in which a man like Goethe studied the plant world on his journey over the Brenner—when he looked at the coltsfoot with completely different eyes—the way in which he saw in this how the spirit is active on the earth and forms the leaves, shows us how we can speak of a common spirit of the earth that brings itself to expression only in the manifold plant being as in his own special organ. What is physical is spirit; we simply have the task of pursuing the spirit always in the right way. Whoever pursues the plant as it grows out of the common spirit of the earth will find the earth spirit that Goethe already had in view when he let his Faust address the spirit active in the earth, who says of him self:

In Lebensfluten, in Tatensturm
Wall' ich auf and ab,
Webe hin and her!
Geburt and Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein gluhend Leben,
So Schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.

In the tides of life, in action's storm,
Up and down I wave,
To and fro weave free,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A varied weaving,
A radiant living,
Thus at Time's humming loom it's my hand that prepares
The robe ever-living the Deity wears.

The person who beholds in this way the spirit in the plant life of the earth feels himself strengthened by seeing what he must consider his inner being poured out over the whole environment he is allowed to inhabit. And he must say to himself, “If I study what encircles my space, I find it confirmed that the origin of all things is to be found in the domain of the spirit.” And an expression of the relationship of human spirit and human soul, and also the relationship of plant soul and plant spirit, we can encompass in these words:

Die Dinge in den Raumesweiten,
Sie wandeln sich im Zeitenlauf.
Erkennend lebt die Menschenseele
Durch Raumesweiten unbegrenzt
Und unversehrt durch Zeitenlauf.
Sie findet in dem Geistgebiet
Des eignen Wesens tiefsten Grund.

To the sense of man there speak
The things in breadths of space
Transforming themselves in course of time.
Knowing lives the human soul
Unbounded by the breadths of space,
Unaltered by the course of time;
It finds in the realm of spirit
Its own being's deepest ground!

• 1. Berlin, November 10 and 17, 1910
• 2. Berlin, February 9, 1911.
• 3. Berlin, November 24, 1910.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

In the lectures I have given here this winter, I have tried to give some indications of the essential character of the development of the Germans and its relation to the development of other nations of Europe. Today I would like to take the liberty of giving some aphorisms about the psychological and spiritual development of the Germanic-German character, all with a view to our fateful and difficult times. Tomorrow I will then try to show what the insights of spiritual science can be for people in happy, but also in serious, painful and also sorrowful hours of life, especially with regard to our time.

The considerations that are to be given here will start from the point of view of spiritual science – a point of view that has been mentioned here several times, and which is still not very well recognized or even approved in public. But those who are close to this spiritual science feel from their insights how it can not only enrich and uplift life, but how it can provide enlightenment about intimate, important connections in life - and not only in the life of the individual person, but also in the life of nations, in human relationships, in human coexistence.

However, right at the starting point of a consideration of the life of nations, reference must be made to insights of spiritual science that have been mentioned here several times in past lecture cycles, but which must be drawn upon for an understanding of today's consideration. Attention must be drawn to spiritual-scientific findings that are among the least recognized and approved: to findings that tell us that at the starting point of every people's development, the soul life takes a very special form, that the origins of people on earth showed a very different soul life than our present. In our time, with its materialistically colored world view, this cannot yet be recognized. One imagines that the starting points of human beings on earth lie in very primitive soul states, in soul states that one currently, one might say, endeavors to think of as animal-like as possible. Spiritual science shows us something essentially different. It shows us that at the starting point of human development on earth — and reaching even into the starting points of the development of each nation — there is a clairvoyant behavior of the souls. This means that at the beginning of this human development and also of the development of nations, human souls not only live in states through which they see external material reality with their senses and form ideas, concepts and images from it with their minds , but that the souls are capable of living in other states, in states of consciousness that are not those of our ordinary daily life, but which are also not those of our chaotic dream life and even less those of unconscious sleep. In the beginning of the development of nations, people lived in states of consciousness in which the souls were able to develop imaginative clairvoyance, that is, to come into contact with the spiritual reality around us, with that reality which no eye can see, which no ear can hear, which cannot be grasped with the mind that is bound to the senses and to the brain, and whose perceptions do not penetrate from the outside into our soul like the sensory impressions, but arise in images in the soul, but in images that are not dream images, but that reflect realities of the spiritual world, those realities that lie behind the sensory world in terms of cause and effect. Thus, in the original human being, there are states of consciousness in which he knows himself to be connected with a spiritual world, in which this spiritual world arises in him in images.

However, in these earlier primitive human states, this clairvoyant insight into the spiritual worlds can only be achieved by the fact that what we call human “self-awareness” is still underdeveloped, the awareness of life in the personality. The times of ancient clairvoyance correspond to a state of soul in which the soul could not yet say “I” to itself with full understanding, as it can now, in which the soul did not yet feel itself as an individuality, as a personality, but as a part of a great spiritual world organism, like a member of the cosmos as a whole. Thus, in those ancient times, personality consciousness was clouded, dim. But in certain periods a tableau of pictures spread out before the soul, which were shades of the spiritual world thrown into the soul. And if we look at the starting points of the individual national developments, we can only understand these national developments if we are able to go back to the point in the development of a nation when the human souls within that nation still have at least some of this clairvoyant knowledge; when we go back to times when there was imaginative knowledge of the spiritual world. We get to know the individual nations, we get to know the souls of the nations, the spirits of the nations, when we consider the different ways in which nations develop from these original clairvoyant states to those that then signify higher, more advanced levels of culture. For this development from the state of primitive clairvoyance to the higher stages of culture, which are attained when man is fully conscious of his personality, this development is different for each individual people, and the nature of the people depends on how the people develop from the primitive stage of culture indicated above to a higher one.

The ancient Greeks are a characteristic example of this, and most Oriental peoples are similar to them, as are, to some extent, the peoples of the ancient Italian peninsula. Such a people as the Greeks can only be fully understood if it is clear that this people passes from the original pictorial impressions of a spiritual world to the formation of the world view given to us in their mythology, in their religious ideas. This is still little recognized today, but the beginnings are already given in external science, which lead to the view as it has just been indicated here. In his beautiful book, “The Riddle of the Sphinx”, Ludwig Laistner attempts to show how all ancient myths, all ancient conceptions of the gods, especially those of the Greeks, are, as it were, already transformations of earlier clairvoyant conceptions that have passed into fantasy. And when we look at the ancient Greek world of gods, we can understand it only if we grasp it as transformed images of the supersensible world, gained in the state of ancient clairvoyance. But this people, the Greeks, experienced the transformation of the perceptions of ancient clairvoyance into the mythical world view and even the transformation of the mythical world view into the philosophical world view in such a way that they went through this transformation as a people in a youthful manner, so to speak. In ancient Greece, the transition from the old clairvoyant through the mythical to the philosophical world view was experienced at a youthful stage of national development. At the same time, the human consciousness, which presents man as a personality, as an individuality, develops in the people of such a nation. Everything that is the emotional, the personal, the hearty element of man develops. This develops alongside in the ordinary state of consciousness, and the human being is then only able to apply the emotional, the hearty element to the everyday circumstances of life. By living in the ordinary state of consciousness in the everyday circumstances of life, he can turn to spiritual matters — in a different state of mind. Thus two worlds enter his consciousness: one in which he lives with his feelings in everyday circumstances, and one that lifts him up with his spirit into the spiritual world; and he then confronts himself as an individuality with his emotional feelings, which he has inherited from what has passed from his clairvoyance into mythical and philosophical ideas. What constitutes the philosophical conceptions then appears to him as something given to him as a revelation, to which he looks up, but with which he is not so connected that every fiber of his soul and will is also directly connected with this world view in the creation of the world view.

This is how it is with the soul development of a people like the Greeks, a people who, as it were in their youth, went through what can be called the transition of clairvoyant knowledge into a worldview, through which one recognizes the soul's belonging to those powers that are exalted above life and death.

The development was quite different for those peoples, the Germanic peoples, who stormed from the east and north to the borders of the Greek and Roman empires around the beginning of our era. Of course, we also find clairvoyant knowledge at the starting point of their development among these peoples; there were also times when the soul was inclined towards the spiritual world through the images of clairvoyant imaginations. But the soul lost these clairvoyant imaginations, as it loses them with all peoples, so also with the Germanic peoples; because all of humanity must go through a state of development that is only intended for the physical world, that can only be intended for the reception of ideas about the physical world. At a certain point in time — and this coincides fairly exactly with the onslaught on the Roman Empire — the individual Germanic peoples not only lost the ability to see into the spiritual world in the original dream-like clairvoyance, but they also gradually lost their understanding of what the soul can get from such knowledge from the old clairvoyance during the migration of the peoples, during their onslaught against the Roman Empire. And it can be said that this is connected with the fact that these peoples all went through the state of their clairvoyant knowledge during their youth, but that they could not make a transition from their original clairvoyant knowledge to their later worldviews in their later years, so to speak, in their vigorous manhood. Thus, in these peoples, the development of the world view passes directly from the childlike state to the — I would say — “more mature” state of the people. In the childlike state, when consciousness is dulled, what was clairvoyant knowledge is present; there is also the dulled full receptivity of the peoples for the myths that have developed from ancient clairvoyance. These myths have been preserved at most as traditions for external understanding. Instead, a consciousness of personality has developed in these peoples, a firm foundation on the individuality of life. They have solidified what the qualities of the mind are, what the immediate character traits are, and through which traits of mind and character the human being stands in everyday life. And because the old clairvoyant ideas do not extend into this ordinary, everyday life, the mind, the impulses of will, and even the impulses of character must develop the longing to find the strength within themselves to feel, to experience, to learn the connection with the spiritual world. Out of the, as it were, dull forces of the mind, the longing for the divine spiritual worlds develops in these peoples. And unlike the Greeks, they cannot look back to anything that shines in their souls as the product of the development of ancient clairvoyant ideas; but they develop a deep soul, a soul that is indeed deep for grasping the ordinary circumstances of everyday life, but which at the same time feels the deepest longing for the spiritual foundations of life. In the mature manhood of these Germanic peoples, at the time we have indicated, their minds strive for a religious deepening of their world view, but no longer the old ideas of earlier clairvoyance resound in their minds.

Thus, while the Germanic peoples . stormed the peoples of the south, in the early days of the Germanic world, independently of the ideas of the world view, the personal character traits, the strong, courageous qualities of the will, of the mind, developed. We find a reflection of this state of mind above all in that wonderful poem, which stands worthily alongside the greatest poems of all times, alongside the Homeric epics, alongside the Kalewala of the Finns: the “Nibelungenlied”. As the Song of the Nibelungs has come down to us, it shows us people who no longer have a clear view of what holds them together with the old clairvoyant ideas. Instead, we see in them a deep insight into the struggles and overcoming that the soul undergoes in order to find its way in life. But if we look closely at the way the Nibelungenlied is presented, we become aware of how remnants of the old clairvoyant imagination still extend into the lives of these people, but how these remnants are shaped in such a way that they are, as it were, tailored to serve the everyday life of people and, further, the historical life of people. We become aware of this, for example, when we hear how the woman who is to become the wife of Siegfried of the Horn foresaw the entire misfortune that was to befall the man who was to become her husband by seeing in a dream a white falcon on which two eagles swoop down and kill it with their claws. And then again, when Siegfried has become her husband and Hagen is about to murder Siegfried, she sees two mighty mountains collapse over her husband Siegfried. — What remains of the old clairvoyant visions is no longer sufficient to lead man beyond the ordinary powers of imagination; but it is so integrated into his life that man can learn from it what is in store for him, on a large or small scale. These ancient images also make themselves felt in another way, for example, when we take what connects to the older traditions via the Nibelungenlied: when we see how Siegfried kills the dragon, bathes in the dragon's blood and thereby acquires a callosity that makes him invulnerable — except for the spot between his shoulders where a linden leaf has fallen, and which is then the spot where Hagen later murders him. Thus we have the penetration of the old connection with the spiritual world into the life of the Germanic peoples; but this penetration serves the way in which man places himself in the life of the physical world.

Thus we see how these Germanic peoples are initially called upon, I would say, to develop the qualities of the mind and character, and also the qualities of a strong individuality, while making sacrifices in the process, under the self-experienced connection with the spiritual world, as well as to develop those qualities that bind soul to soul, soul to soul, in the physical life. The impulses of gratitude, loyalty and everything that radiates from the mind of man, we see so excellently described for the soul of the ancient Germanic people in the Song of the Nibelungs, that those who helped to write the Song of the Nibelungs were involved in the composition of the Nibelungenlied had a dark awareness of how man is taken out of his connections with the spiritual world and, with all the qualities of his soul, is firmly placed in the physical world.

In this way we have outlined a fundamental characteristic of the Germanic soul, a soul that everywhere shows a peculiar kind of personal depth, a characterological depth, and at the same time that deep, deep longing for the spiritual worlds, which wants satisfaction, but initially feels this satisfaction like a tragically sorrowful yearning and hope, because the old ideas born of clairvoyance have lost their strong power over the human mind.

Now it is highly remarkable in what way the peoples of the south – and in what other way the Germanic peoples of the north – to the gift of the world: Christianity, by virtue of this state of mind, had to behave. Let us be clear that the peoples of the South, with their worldviews born out of the old clairvoyant ideas, had to receive this Christianity. They had to compare it in what it revealed to them with what they knew, or at least what they could have the definite conviction that one had once known through direct experience. A longing such as is taken for granted today, and as it developed among the Germanic peoples: a longing for the spiritual worlds, a — I would say — tragic longing to penetrate the veil that separates man from the spiritual worlds. Such a longing could not, in fact, arise among those peoples who had direct knowledge that a spiritual world existed, because they were in contact with these worlds in special states of consciousness. What a longing for a worldview makes possible, how it moves the soul inwardly, and how it can affect the whole person, can be seen particularly in the peoples of the North. Therefore, the peoples of the South could only receive the incoming Christianity by comparing it to the character that their old ideas, born of the earlier Hellsehen, had; that they regarded it as something given to man from outside, to which the human mind surrenders. Everywhere we see a twofold world coming to life among these peoples as well: a world to which the mind is devoted for the everyday relationship, for the historical relationship – and the world of the earlier given ideas, born out of the old clairvoyance, which is now illuminated and illuminated by the revelations of Christianity.

But Christianity had a different, quite different effect on the souls of the Germanic peoples, on those souls in whose innermost depths there lived a longing, a tragic longing for the spiritual worlds. To these souls now came what Christianity is able to give to souls; all that was of infinite warmth, all that moved the heart and mind, all that could flow into the souls from Christianity, came to them. And when one looked at the suffering of the Redeemer, when one looked at the Mystery of Golgotha, it was felt that it was intimately related to what the deepest impulses were in the foundations of the soul, with which man lives in the everyday. And so these souls felt as if what was revealed to them from the outer world was something that was born out of the soul itself, something that the soul had only not known, but which it had experienced in its depths long, long before. The Germanic peoples took up Christianity as an inner element, as an intimate matter of the soul itself, not as an external revelation. And the great difference that resulted for an emotional, for a sentimental understanding of the world can be particularly appreciated by looking at the relationship of man to nature and to the environment, by looking at the southern peoples who received Christianity, and then at the Germanic peoples. This Christianity directed souls – all souls – towards the eternal, towards that which has descended from the sphere of the cosmic and entered into the development of human history. It was something different from what was revealed in nature, in the outer life, and could be felt and experienced. Therefore, a peculiar view of nature developed among the southern peoples, something that has often been mentioned, a certain contempt for nature; a view of nature arose as if it were of less value for life, a descent from the divine-spiritual worlds. And a belief developed as if one must now turn away from life, become estranged from nature and life around. To put it radically, one could say: a kind of contempt for natural existence and human life in the physical world developed.

How different the attitude of the Germanic peoples towards nature was! Something lived in them that must have come from the characterized development of their souls. When the connection with the old clairvoyant ideas had dawned, they were dependent on living together with nature and with people. Thus they developed the character traits, the emotional traits, that could ignite in nature and human life in the most intense way. They looked into nature, they saw and felt everything that one can feel in joy at nature, and also how one can grieve over nature – over nature, how one sees it develop gloriously every spring, or when one sees the bright dawn, and how one sees it sink again when we see the sun sinking into the evening glow, or when autumn and winter set in. But they also felt a special connection between human life and their state of mind. This human life presented itself to them in such a way that what held this human life together with the forces that pulsate and wave out of the spiritual worlds through this human life was no longer alive for them, as it were. A certain tragic, one might say, “mournful mood” developed in these peoples from this view of nature and human life; and we see this mood of mourning, this lamentation poured out over the view of the gods of the old Germanic souls. The poet of the Nibelungenlied himself says that he wants to show his listeners how sorrow follows joy. After all, the Nibelungenlied ends in sorrow, in destruction, in hardship and murder and death! The poet of this song wanted to show how sorrow comes from joy. And if we survey the Germanic pantheon, we see how the ancient Germans looked upon their gods as those who would one day experience the 'twilight of the gods', who would one day no longer experience their rule as usual, but would lie in battle with one another, so that each would kill the other. The ancient Germans looked upon the world of the gods as the basis of nature and human life with a mood of sorrow and tragedy. This is a different mood from what, to put it radically, one might call disparaging and contemptuous of nature. It is a life intimately connected with nature, a life together with nature, but a life that mourns over existence, that reveals itself through the fate of nature and man, that loves the fate of nature and man, but believes that through this love it must experience impulses of suffering and lamentation.

That is the great, enormous difference in the conception of nature in the south and the north. And so we can empathize with the Germanic state of mind, and can initially look to those who, among the Germanic peoples, were, so to speak, the outposts of the European mission of the Germanic peoples, that is, to those Germanic tribes that first, in greater or lesser numbers, came into contact with the peoples of the south: the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Lombards. We look at them; and however barbaric the external appearance of these peoples may appear to us, if we only want to see, we see at the bottom of their minds, at the bottom of their conception of nature and life, the character traits that have just been characterized. And with these character traits, with this view of nature and life, they moved into the peoples of southern Europe and into what became of these peoples of the south and West. And we know that these peoples, who have just been named, merged with the peoples of the South and West. The Romanesque culture emerged.

But if we take a closer look at this Romance culture, what do we find in it? We find in it that which still lived on dimly from the old world-view born out of clairvoyance, and we find this permeated and interwoven and pulsating with what the individual Germanic tribes, who have disappeared in the world have disappeared except in name, have incorporated; and everything that developed in the west and south of Europe as Romance culture has at its core the Germanic soul, even if it was then drowned out by the continuation of ancient Roman culture. And only then can the Romanic element be understood when one knows that it draws its life from the perished Germanic soul world. One understands the creative spirits of Italian culture, one understands the wonderful Italian music, even spirits like Augustine and John Scotus Erigena, as well as the great artists of the great Italian Renaissance and the Quattrocento, one understands even Dante can only be understood if one realizes that the substantiality of the soul of these ancient Germanic peoples has been absorbed into what was then drowned out in the outer works by the continuous flow of ancient Roman culture. — Thus we have the first outposts of the Germanic soul world in these peoples, who, as it were, sacrificed themselves in the progress of external history. And it is only from the blending of the old Roman soul-life with the soul-life of the Germanic peoples that the cultures of the South and the West essentially arose and were then able to develop further. What was absorbed into these cultures can be called precisely the “Germanic soul-life,” which developed as indicated.

Now this Germanic soul-life was particularly opposed to Christian Revelation in such a way that it received it as a finished product, something that had been shaped into fixed forms in comparison with the traditional world views of antiquity. From this developed a juxtaposition, a duality of that which is spiritual, religious revelation, and that which is ideological; and as a different, as it were, second inner world, the emotional and the soul-like, which had come over from Germanic paganism, developed. Either this latter took up the Christian revelations like an exterior, or it developed later within the Romance-Germanic element from the soul-like – which still stood in contrast with inwardness to what Christianity had to give – the critical. The purely rational arose, which then reached its particular peak in Voltaire.

One might say that it was predetermined in world history that a part of the Germanic soul had to be sacrificed for the south and west of Europe; it flowed into those peoples. But another part remained behind in the center of Europe, and this had the special task of allowing the soul-like aspect of these peoples to progress through the further development of the soul into the spiritual. For we have so far basically only described the Germanic soul-life. But while the others, the advance troops of Germanic culture, spread out as soul-substantiality to the south and west of Europe, we see a core of Germanic soul-life remaining in the center of Europe. And how does this core develop? It develops that which has emerged as character traits, as emotionality in the peoples of Germania, and which has been illuminated and warmed by Christianity, upwards into the spiritual; for the spiritual is the higher development of the soul. And as the soul develops into the spiritual, the spiritual, because Christianity is the ruling power, must develop in the periods up to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in such a way that a still more intimate relationship is formed with that which the soul itself experiences intimately and which is revealed in Christianity.

As early as the ninth century, we see the first glimmering of the spiritual from the Germanic soul in that wonderful poem that originated in the Saxon lands: in “Heliand”. In Heliand we see the life of Christ Jesus related; but we see it related as if Christ Jesus were one of the Teutonic kings who went forth conquering through the world, having assumed a wholly Teutonic nature; and those who follow him, his disciples, appear in this poem as Teutonic vassals. Christianity is completely absorbed into the Germanic folk element; resurrected, reborn is the Christian legend from the souls of the people of Central Europe in the Heliand. And we feel that at this particular point, something arises that was already evident in ancient paganism but then passed away: the Germanic soul of the people relies not on receiving Christianity from the outside, as did the Romance world, but on generating from within itself that which can be experienced in Christianity, in the Christian impulses. Therefore, in the Heliand, the story that took place in the life of Christ Jesus is told as if it had taken place in Central Europe, at the center of Germanic culture. The author recounts the story as if he wanted to describe events in his homeland, not only in form but also in the way the locations are described and so on.

Then we see how the upward progression of the soul into the spiritual continues to confront us in that wonderful flowering of German intellectual life that we refer to as medieval German mysticism, which begins with Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, reaches a particular expression in Paracelsus, then progresses in Valentin Weigel and Jacob Böhme, and finally in the wonderful sayings of Angelus Silesius, who lived in Silesia in the seventeenth century, from 1624 to 1677. Here in this German mysticism we see, first with Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler and then with the others who became their disciples, how the soul-life passes directly over into the spiritual perception.

What is the relationship of these minds to what they call their “God”? Their relationship to what they call their God is that they want to overcome, to strip away from themselves everything that feels and wills and thinks in the individual personality, in the individual individuality, that they want to feel only as an instrument through which God Himself speaks and feels and thinks and wills. This feeling is expressed in every word, in every beautiful word: they want to become empty, that is, they want to cast off what one can call: 'I feel in this way through my personality, I think this and that through my personality, I want out of my impulses'. No! these spirits would not want that. What they call their God, what they also feel as the God who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, they want Him to fill their minds, all their inner powers completely, to spiritualize them completely, to fill the soul completely with Him, so that nothing of their own lives in them, but that they are completely filled by the Divine, and that the Divine wills in them, and they are only a vessel for this Divine. They want to place themselves in the spiritual order of the world so that they can say: When my hand moves, I know that it is the God in me who unfolds the power to move my hand; when I think – it is the God in me who thinks; when I feel and will – it is the God in me who feels and wills; I want to reject everything that is my own life in me, and I want to let only the God rule in me! And they expected everything from the grace that can radiate over them when they empty their soul and let themselves be radiated over by the grace of God that can flow into them. They expected the perfection of their souls from this.

What do we experience in these personalities? We experience that what appears to be a natural quality of the human soul, the old Germanic emotional life, the old Germanic emotional life, which was once filled with hope and longing for the spiritual world, permeates the Christian impulses with the same impulsiveness with which it once permeated the outer physical experience. What a person is in the outer physical world, that merges in these masters with the inner experience of God and the divine world order. It merges to such an extent that, for example, in a beautiful saying that I will read out, Master Eckhart was able to characterize this mood of the soul, where we see the soul-like merging into the spirit-grasping, with the words “If you love God, then you can do whatever you will, for then you will will only the Eternal and the One, and whatever you do, you do in God, and God does it in you.” This self-knowledge with God is what we encounter when the Germanic soul gives birth to the German spirit. And this inner experience of the spirit, this active presence of the spirit in the soul — oh, it shines out to us so wonderfully, in such a glorious — I say — in such a wonderfully glorious way from the beautiful poetic sayings of Angelus Silesius of the seventeenth century, in his “Cherubinischer Wandersmann”. We stand there as if at a high point of the development of the soul, steering towards the spirit. I cannot refrain from reading to you some of the sayings of this German mystic who lived in Silesia and was involved in the birth of the German spirit out of the Germanic soul:

That God is so blissful
and lives without desire,
He has received from me,
as I have from him.

How united a soul knows itself with its God, which can speak in such a way that it understands how to say: God is so blissful and without desire because he can experience bliss in me, because he receives it from me just as I do from him. Of course, in this, one must no longer think of the ego that is bound to the self-will of life, but of the ego that knows itself to be completely pulsed and warmed by what God wills - as I have just read from Meister Eckhart. Another saying

I myself am eternity,
when I leave time,
And in God and God
in me, combine.

What intimate interpenetration of the human ego with the divine is here generated by the feeling that the ego lives in the feeling that it itself grasps God in eternity! And

now the question: What is my God's form?
Go, look at yourself,
He who beholds himself in God, beholds truly God.

Unity of the human being with the divine. And so completely — I would say — intoxicated by the connection of the human soul with what lives in the mystery of Golgotha, with what lives in the impulses of Christianity, is the next saying:

The cross at Golgotha
cannot deliver you from evil
unless it is also erected within you.

That means that man must experience within himself everything that he can experience when he feels and relives everything that can arise before his spiritual eye in the process of sharing in and experiencing the sufferings and triumphs of the Redeemer. And this eternal consciousness comes to us most particularly in two sayings of Angelus Silesius, sayings of which one would like to say that it is one of the greatest good fortunes of life that these sayings were ever spoken in the German language. The first:

I neither die nor live:
God himself dies in me:
And what I should live, he also lives for and for.

Looking at death, beholding death – and knowing: “It is not I who die, but God dies in me” – that means nothing other than knowing that the human being passes through the gate of death alive. For if he knows that God lives in him, then he also knows that death is then overcome for knowledge; for to know that God dies in me is to know that I do not die; for God does not die. Thus once upon a time one of the German mystics knew how to put the greatest riddles of life into the most concise words. And just as profound is another saying of Angelus Silesius:

The love that proves
yours to God within you,
Is God's own power,
His fire and holy spirit.

It is not I who speaks – so says Angelus Silesius – it is not I who loves; God's language, God's love in me, that is what I can “become” for. That means that divine life descends into my soul and fills my soul when I try to become more and more empty, to be only a vessel for what can enter the soul as divine spiritual life.

And the forces that had thus entered into the development of the German spirit continued to work, and we see them emerging again where the German spirit has given its people the deepest impulses to date. In the period which we call the German classical period, we see the longing arising for the deepest experience of one's own human spirit, for the seeking out of everything that man can experience in spirit, and for the shaping of what the human spirit can experience into a world view. We see it dawning on minds like those of Lessing and Herder; we see it rising to great heights in Goethe and Schiller and in the German philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. And what do we see as the deepest strength of the German people, as it seeks to look at what has been handed down historically, but also at what can only be given through the outer physical contemplation of the world? She seeks the truth to which the human soul is predisposed, for which she searches in her depths; and she comes to it, out of the spirit, to recognize and give birth again in a new form everything that has been and continues to be through the whole of world history. And in this sense, Lessing provides an abstract of all human striving and research in the writing that also marks the conclusion of his life: “The Education of the Human Race”. In it he shows how divine spiritual forces run through historical development, how all history is an educational work on the part of divine spiritual powers, and how the Christian impulse presents itself as the greatest impulse in the progress of the development of the earth. But there is also something dawning in German spiritual life that can only gradually find its full expression in the future, that must first be grasped again in spiritual science in the present – the realization that how earlier historical epochs interact with later ones, how what man has conquered in earlier historical epochs can be carried over into later epochs. And Lessing, in explicitly saying that he is not afraid to recognize that a greater truth need not be considered inferior because it first appeared in the course of development and in times when humanity was not yet darkened by the prejudices of school, comes to the recognition that the human soul lives in repeated earthly lives, that the complete life of the human soul proceeds in such a way that it returns in ever new earthly lives, and that between two earthly lives an existence in a purely spiritual world passes, where the soul transforms the powers it has acquired in the last earthly life, in order to return and carry over into later epochs what it has acquired in earlier ones. In this way a continuous process of development is created, in which human beings themselves participate.

Then we see how, through Herder, the spirit that grasps itself, that seeks to flourish into such religious fervor in German mystics, how this spirit, illuminated and clarified, seeks to permeate all of nature and human life. A great and magnificent work is that which Herder created in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”, where he describes how spirit lives in everything, spirit that he finds when he looks into the depths of his soul, but which at the same time guarantees man's eternal serenity, man's eternal “engagement” and eternal resting in eternal-divine existence.

And we then see how in Goethe — to mention the work again, which has also played a role in earlier lectures — how this work becomes a “person” by creating “Faust”: the striving to connect the soul life of the human being with what rests and creates and works in the spiritual worlds through one's own power. And in addition to this, Goethe contrasted Faust with all the obstacles that can prevent man from this striving in the figure of Mephistopheles. Ultimately, however, man must win freedom for himself, where the word can resound to him from the other world: “We can redeem anyone who strives.”

Furthermore, we see the great attempt of the German national philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times found those heartfelt tones that he expressed in his “Discourses to the German Nation”. We see Fichte standing before us with his ideas, which create an entire spiritual world out of the human ego, which, however, knows itself to be imbued from the outset with all divine and spiritual impulses. We see one of the boldest philosophical-spiritual attempts in Fichte's philosophy. It is a philosophy that is convinced from the outset that man not only has his five senses and his ordinary mind, but that he also has a higher sense, a sense through which a spiritual world is directly experienced, whereby man knows himself to be one with the divine-spiritual life, and in the external reality only creates material for himself in order to be able to work in it. One would like to say: what still confronts us in a vague soul-like striving in the works of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and even Jacob Böhme and Angelus Silesius, becomes clear light in the philosophy of Fichte. It becomes clear light because here, although the soul element of the soul is the dominant one, it clarifies into ideas full of light that embrace and profess a spiritual world: The entire spiritual world lives in the self. Just as Angelus Silesius wanted to know himself in his I as one with his God, with the whole of divine activity and life, so for Fichte it was clear from the outset: when I really get to the place in my I where this I grasps itself in its deepest reason, then I am with God, then I create not just any old world view, but one that the God in me creates. And one of the boldest, most courageous thoughts is a Fichtean thought. Fichte does not express it as I am about to express it, but everything Fichte said can be summarized in the words: If the human ego, with its powers, with what it is, is to be dependent on anything, be it the external world, be it the brain, be it the body or whatever, then it is bound to something else; then it is not that which the divine-spiritual being can experience in itself. This ego must not be another being in itself, but must create itself again and again; and creating itself must be the most important activity of the ego. This is how Fichte feels. For Fichte, wanting to recognize the deepest essence of the ego means knowing in every moment that one is creating this ego. If it were to lose itself for a moment, it would have the strength to create itself again and again. Fichte conceives of this ego as creative. In this way, it is an immediate image, a real likeness of the spiritual divinity.

What Fichte wanted to find as the innermost core of the soul substance in the human being, the self united with its God, Hegel lays out in—albeit abstract—ideas, which in turn were supposed to span a world and at the same time represent the inner creative power of the world. Hegel reasoned: if the human spirit really comes to allow the pure, light-filled ideas to live in it, then it is not just the individual human spirit that is bound to the brain that then thinks; but then it is the higher power living in man, the divine power permeating the world; then God thinks in man. For Hegel it is only a matter of purifying and condensing his thinking to such an extent that he rises above everything that is bound to an outer world and arrives at the pure thought that God thinks in the soul. This striving is Hegel's philosophical striving.

In this way, the development of German thought had, for the time being, grasped the level of the “spirit” in the highest possible way. It is peculiar that here, at the highest tension of the development of thought, a point was reached that could not be held on to, from which one later fell back, so that in relation to everything that followed, what Hegel once said is truly valid: Only one person understood me, and even he misunderstood me. It was a height that few could reach and even fewer could hold on to.

What had been achieved with Hegel's philosophy – and what had not yet been achieved?

What had been achieved was that consciousness had been developed in the soul, that the Germanic development of the soul had progressed so far in German intellectual life that it had been recognized that man can only relive the spiritual world within himself if he seeks development, if he seeks to ascend into spiritual worlds from which nations once emerged when they still had ancient clairvoyance. But Hegel stopped at concept and idea. For he could not say to himself: Concepts and ideas are still bound to the human body; I must advance to what exists as experience outside the human body. How it is possible for the human soul to achieve such experiences outside of the body has been discussed here several times; it will be discussed further tomorrow, when it will be shown how such experiences and insights can help a person in the serious and happy hours of life. But in Hegel, consciousness has already been attained, as in the outer existence of man the spirit lives, even if he could only show it in the dry, sober ideas. And even if Hegel could only paint a picture of the world that is realized in dry, sober ideas, because it does not rise from inspiration to the grasp of real life in the spirit, the line is nevertheless given, the real direction for grasping the spirit in Hegelian philosophy within German intellectual life. And when we look at the impulses that are present in the Germanic soul, experiencing the spirit in this way, and when we are asked, “Is this the end of the way things have presented themselves?” then we can say: no! This is not an end; one might say that this is only a stage of the beginning. With Hegel's philosophy, something is achieved, of which one must say: if one can immerse oneself in it and make one's soul an inward tool of the ideas, then the soul develops further. So the German soul must have been entrusted with the world mission of rising from the abstract idea, from the comprehension of thoughts and ideas that pervade nature and human nature in nature, to the direct, living comprehension and experience in the spirit and in the spiritual world. We see the German spirit at one stage of its development, and we understand why it must be at such a stage of its development: because it has developed in such a way that, starting from the self-contained mind, it must first grasp within itself that which must unravel the riddles of the world. That is why this German spirit is so difficult to understand. It is curious, for example, to hear that the brilliant Pole Adam Mickiewicz gave a lecture in Paris in 1843 in which he said: “The German students had no idea about Hegel: does Hegel believe in an immortal human being? Does he believe in the true Christian God?” Mickiewicz said that Hegel's philosophy does not address these questions of life, so that one cannot even tell whether it wants to talk about these things at all. And he says: the Polish and French journalists understood Hegel much better than Hegel's students; for, he says, these Polish and French journalists knew that Hegel knew nothing of the immortal human being and the true Christian God. — How foolishly the otherwise bright Mickiewicz speaks about Hegel! Why could the French and Polish journalists so easily “understand” Hegel? Precisely because the journalists are navigating in shallow waters and do not realize that with Hegel one must descend deep, deep down, that the questions are posed there, that they must then be asked deeper and deeper, and that the mind, which is otherwise available, cannot reach the point of intuiting from the given concepts in Hegel the perspectives from which the great riddles of the immortal God must be solved. Mickiewicz meant nothing more than what has just been stated, than what can be characterized by a saying of the old satirist Lichtenberg, which I will quote, bringing it together with Mickiewicz's remarks: “When books and heads collide, and it sounds hollow, it is not necessarily the book's fault.”

That is the point: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, German intellectual life had learned to make a beginning in true intellectual science, a beginning in living spiritual knowledge, a beginning that carries within itself the power of progress, the power of completion. What follows from this consideration – and from this last consequence of the consideration for the essence of the German spirit? What follows for us from it – so that we can take it into our feelings, into the feelings that we can harbor in these fateful, difficult days, when so much precious blood and so much strength is being consumed for German spiritual life, for the German spirit in East and West? What follows from it?

We see the continuous development of the Germanic soul into the German spirit; we see the German spirit in an initial stage, we see the germs that are there and the promise that it must still ascend to heights that are already implicit in it and that must not be killed, but must develop because they belong to its essence. Individuals can die before they have lived their lives to the full. People can die in the early years of their existence because they return in other earthly lives, and because others can take their place in earthly cultural life. Unfinished human lives can take place in the outer physical existence. Unfinished national lives cannot! For if a nation, before it has fulfilled its mission, were to be wiped out or its existence curtailed, then another national individuality would not take its place. Nations must live out their lives! Nations must go through the cycle of their existence – not only childhood and manhood, but also their existence to the highest perfection. The German spirit, the German intellectual life is not at an end, not before a completion; but it is at a beginning. Much is still allotted to it. When the wishes of the enemies, who strive for the opposite, are raised from all sides against the possibilities of existence of the German people, of the Central European world, then this must be what gives the Central European world, what gives the German people the strength to resist, the strength to keep alive the germs that we find in its soul, especially when we consider this soul in all its living development. And the belief in the triumph of German life need not be a mere blind faith; it can arise out of a living realization of the German character, out of that living realization which comes to the view that German life must live on because the German soul must fulfill its mission in the evolution of the world, because nothing else exists that can lift the purely external materialistic world view to that most ideal spiritual height, the intention of which lies in the German soul. Truly, in this German spiritual life lies that which will one day lead the purely materialistic world view to the contemplation of the spiritual world. And that the best minds have sensed that there is a beginning and not an end to German intellectual life, we see in all great minds as they have expressed the impulses of this intellectual life. Herman Grimm, who is often mentioned in these lectures, once looked — this passage is in his Goethe lectures — at what the materialistic world view has made of the world in the present. He looks at the Kant-Laplace theory, which posits a great cosmic nebula as the starting point of our world development; this nebula condenses into a large ball of gas, which somehow begins to rotate, and in this way the other planets, our Earth also comes into being; over time, in some way that is not known, spirit and life develop on Earth, and later, according to this theory, when the Earth has died, all life and all spirit will fall back into the sun. For Herman Grimm, such a materialistic view of world development is incompatible with what can come from the sources of German intellectual life. That is why he is so drastic in his Goethe lectures about such a representation:

"No less fruitless a perspective for the future can be imagined than the one that is to be imposed on us today in the guise of being scientifically necessary. A carrion bone that a hungry dog would give a wide berth to would be a refreshingly appetizing prospect compared to this excrement of creation, as which our Earth will eventually fall back to the Sun. It is the our generation absorbs and believes such things, a sign of a sick imagination, which the scholars of future epochs will one day spend a lot of ingenuity explaining as a historical phenomenon of the times.

What hope can we derive from such a consideration of the German spirit, as it has been presented to us today? We have seen how the Germanic soul-life has developed out of the old Hellsehen; we have seen this soul-life develop further into the German spirit, the first glimmering of which is shown in German mysticism; we have seen this German spirit develop further into the appearance of appearance of Faust, to the spirit of Goethe, Schiller and the others, and today we can see how it will develop further in a permeation of the world, up to the sources of the spiritual, in which the human soul, if it grasps itself deeply enough, can truly participate. Looking at the German spirit in this way gives us confidence that German strength must be invincible; it gives us a confidence that is not based on mere blind faith, but that must be our consolation and our hope in these fateful and difficult days.

At the end of this reflection, let me summarize what follows as a consequence of it:

The German spirit has not yet completed
What it must accomplish in the world's evolution.
It lives in hope, in the future's cares;
It hopes for future deeds, full of life;
In the depths of its being, it feels mightily
Hidden things that must still mature and work.
How can a wish for his death arise in the power of the enemy,

My dear friends,

Today I should like to link on what I am about to say to the laboratory scene in Goethe's Faust just represented, and to connect it in such a way that it may form a unity, as well as a starting point for more thorough deliberations tomorrow.

We have seen that the transition from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the sixteenth and seventeenth forms a remarkably significant and suggestive incision into the whole course of human evolution—a transition from the Greco-Latin age to our fifth post-Atlantean epoch in which we are now living, out of which flow the impulses for all our knowledge and all our action, and which will last until the third millennium. Now, from all that you know of Goethe's Faust, and of the connection between this Faust and the figure of Faust originating in the legend of the sixteenth century, you will see that not only this sixteenth century Faust but also what Goethe has made of him is most closely connected with all the transitional impulses introduced by the new age, both from a spiritual and from an external, material point of view.

Now for Goethe the problem of the rise of this new age and the further working of its impulses was something very powerful, and during the sixty years in which he was creating his “Faust” he was wholly inspired by the question: What are the most important tasks and the most important trends of thought of the new man? Goethe could actually look back into the previous age, the age that came to an end with the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries, of which now so little is known even to science. As I have often said, what history tells of man's mood of soul, of his capacities and needs in former centuries, is indeed nothing but colourless theory. In the souls of men in the earlier centuries, even as in the centuries immediately preceding the age of Faust, things looked completely different from how they appear to the soul modern man, to human souls in the present epoch. And in his Faust Goethe has created a figure, a personality, who looks back in the right way on man's mood of soul in former centuries, in centuries long past, while at the same time he looks forward to the tasks of the present and those of the future.

But although at first Faust looks back to an era preceding his own, he can actually only see the ruins of a culture, a spiritual culture that has come to an end. He can look back only on ruins. To begin with we must always keep in mind the Faust of the sixteenth century, the historical Faust who actually lived and then passed into folklore. This Faust still lived in the old sciences that he had made his own, lived in magic, in alchemy, and mysticism, all of which was the wisdom of former centuries, and also the wisdom in particular of pre-Christian times. In the age, however, in which lived the historic Faust of the sixteenth century, this wisdom was definitely on the decline. What was accepted as alchemy, as magic, as mysticism, by those among whom Faust lived, was already in a state of confusion. It all originated in tradition, the legacy of older ages, but it was no longer possible to find one's bearings in it. The wisdom contained there was no longer recognisable. There were,all kinds of sound formulas here from past ages, and much real insight, but these could hardly be understood. Thus the historical Faust was placed into an age of decaying spiritual life. And Goethe constantly mingled the experiences of the historical Faust with those of the Faust he was creating, the Faust of the eighteenth century, of the nineteenth and indeed of many centuries to come. Hence we see Goethe's Faust looking back to the ancient magic, to an older type of wisdom, mysticism, that did not deal with chemistry in the modern, materialistic way, hoping to make contact with a spiritual world through its dealings with nature but no longer having the knowledge enabling it to do so in the way that was right for an earlier age. The art of healing, as it was looked upon in centuries long past, was by no means so foolish as modern science sometimes makes it out to be, but the real wisdom contained in it has been lost. It was already to a great part lost in Faust's time and Goethe knew this well. He knew it not only with his intellect but with his heart, with those soul forces that have specially to do with the well-being, the soundness, of man. He wanted to find an answer to the questions, the problems, arising from it; he wanted to know how a man, continually advancing, could arrive at a different kind of wisdom with regard to the spiritual world, a wisdom adapted to the new age, as the ancients had been able to attain their kind of wisdom which in the natural course of human affairs had now to die out. For this reason he makes his Faust a magician. Faust has given himself up to magic like the Faust of the sixteenth century. But he is still unsatisfied for the simple reason that the real wisdom of the old magic had already faded away. It was from this wisdom that the old art of healing sprang; all dispensing, the whole science of medicine, was connected with the ancient chemistry, with alchemy.

Now in touching on such a question we come at the same time to one of the deepest secrets of humanity—these secrets going to show that no one can heal diseases without also being able to produce them. The ways leading to the healing of disease are the same as those leading to its production. We shall shortly hear how completely in the ancient wisdom the principle prevailed that he who healed diseases was likewise able to produce them. Thus, in olden days, the art of healing was associated in men's s minds with a profoundly moral conception of the world. And we shall also shortly see how little what is called the new freedom in human evolution would have been able to develop in those days. Actually this freedom was not taken hold of until this fifth epoch of ours, the epoch following the Greco-Roman. We shall see what it would have been like if the ancient wisdom had persisted. But in every sphere this wisdom had to disappear so that man might make, as it were, a fresh start, striving towards freedom in both knowledge and action. This he could not have done under the influence of the old wisdom. In such times of transition as those in which Faust lived the old is passing away, the new has not yet come. Then arise such moods as may be seen in Faust in the scene preceding the one produced today. Here we see clearly that Faust both is and feels himself to be a product of the new age, in which the ancient wisdom still existed though it was no longer fully understood. We see how Faust accompanied by his famulus, Wagner, goes out from his cell into the green world where, to begin with, he watches the country people celebrating the Easter Festival out-of-doors in the meadows, until he himself is affected by the Easter mood. We see at once, however, that he refuses the people's homage. An old peasant comes forward to express this homage, for the folk think that Faust, as son of a former adept in the art of healing, must be distinguished in the same way, and be able to bring them health and blessing:

“Nay, of a truth, it is but meet
Our joyful day should see you here.
You proved a very friend in need,
In evil days when death was near.
And many a man stands here alive
Whom your good father, wrestling yet,
Snatched from the fever's burning rage,
When for the Plague a bound he set.
And you yourself, a young men then,
In every stricken house were found,
And corpse on corpse was carried forth,
But you came out, aye, safe and sound.
Steadfast in trials did you prove;
Helped was the helper from above.”

Thus speaks the old peasant, remembering Faust's connection with the ancient art of healing, not only the healing of physical diseases in the people but also the healing of their moral evil. Faust knows that he no longer lives in an age when the ancient wisdom could be really helpful to humanity, for it is already in decline. Humility begins to glimmer in his soul, and at the same time despondency over the falsity he is opposing. He says:

“Yet a few paces onward, up to yonder stone;
Here a brief while we'll rest us from our straying.
Here have I often sat and mused alone,
And racked myself with fasting and with praying.
For rich in hope and staunch in faith,
With tears and sighs and frenzied wringing
Of aching hands, to stay the Death
I thought, Heaven's Lord to mercy bringing.
And now the crowd's applause rings in my ears like scorn!
O could'st thou read what in my heart is hidden.
Father and son, no more than babe unborn,
Merit the fame that seeks them thus unbidden.
My father was a worthy gentleman,
To fame unknown, who sought with honest passion,
Yet whimsical device, as was his fashion,
Nature and all her holy rounds to scan;
In the Black's Kitchen's murky region,
Cloistered with masters of the craft.
He, guided by prescriptions legion,
Concocted nauseous draught on draught.
There a red lion with lily wedded,
A wooer bold within the tepid bath,
From bridal bower to bridal bower was speeded,
Racked by the naked fire's flaming wrath.”

After the manner of those days Goethe had thoroughly studied how the “red lion” (mercury-oxide, sulphurated mercury) used to be dealt with, how the different chemicals had been combined, what the results of these processes were, and how medicines had been manufactured from them. But all that no longer represented the ancient wisdom. Goethe also knew their mode of expression; what was to be shown was put into pictures; the fusion of substances was represented as a marriage. Hence he says:

“From bridal bower to bridal bower speeded,
And, thereupon, in gorgeous hues attired,
Shone the young Queen within the glassy cell.”

This was a technical expression; just as modern chemistry has its technical terms so in those days, when certain substances had reached a definite condition and colour, the result was called the young Queen.

“Here was the medicine, but the patients died”; they died in the days of Faust as they still die today in spite of many medicines.

“Here was the medicine but the patients died.
None asked the question: Who got well?
Thus have we wrought among these hills and valleys,
With hellish lecturaries, worse havoc than the malice
Of that same desolating pest.
Myself to thousands have the poison given;
They pined away—and yet my fame has thriven,
Till I must hear their shameless murderers blessed.”

This is Faust's sell-knowledge. This is how ho sees himself, he of whom you know that he has studied the ancient magic wisdom in order to penetrate into the secrets of nature. And through all that he has become spiritualised. Faust cannot remain satisfied like Wagner his famulus. Wagner contents himself with the new wisdom, relying on manuscripts, on the written word. This Wagner is a man who makes far fewer claims on wisdom and on life. And while Faust tries to dream himself into nature in order to reach her spirit, Wagner thinks only of the spirit that comes to him from theories, from parchments, from books, and calls the mood that has come over Faust a passing whimsy:

“I too have had my whimsies and my fancies,” (says Wagner)
“But no such freaks as that by any chances.
On woods and fields I soon have looked my fill.
I never shall begrudge the bird his pinion.”

He never wants to fly out on the wings of a bird to gain knowledge of the world!

“How elsewise flit we through the mind's dominion
From book to book, from leaf to leaf at will?”
Such snug delights the wintry eve console;
A blissful warmth in every limb comes o'er you;
Some venerable parchment then if you unroll
Ah, then, all heaven opens out before you!”

A thorough bookworm, a theory-monger! And so the two stand there after the country folk have gone—Faust, who wishes to penetrate to the sources of life, to unite his own being with the hidden forces of nature in order to experience them, and the other, who sees nothing but the external, material life, and just what is recorded in books by material means. It does not need much reflection to see what has taken place in Faust's inner being as the result of all the experiences which, as described by Goethe, he has passed through up to this moment. When we consider all that we meet with in Faust, we can be sure of this, however, that his inner being has been completely revolutionised, a real soul-development has taken place in him and he has acquired a certain spiritual vision. Otherwise he would not have been able to call up the Earth-spirit who storms hither and thither in the tumult of action. Faust has made his own a certain capacity not only to look at the external phenomena of the outside world, but to see the spirit living and weaving in all things. Then from the distance a poodle comes leaping towards Faust and Wagner. The way the two see the poodle—an ordinary poodle—the way Faust sees and the way Wagner sees it, absolutely characterises the two men, After Faust has dreamed himself into the living and weaving of the spirit in nature, he notices the poodle:

“Dost thou see yon black dog ranging through shoot and stubble?”

Wagner: “I saw him long ago; he struck me not in the least,”

Faust: “Look at him narrowly. What mak'st thou of the beast?”

Wagner: “A poodle who like any other poodle breathing
casts for the scent strayed from his master's heels.”

(The poodle goes circling round them.)

Faust: “Mark how, a mighty spiral round us wreathing,
Nearer and ever nearer yet he steals,
And see! unless mine eyes deceive me queerly,
He trails a fiery eddy in his train.”

Not only does Faust see the poodle but something stirs within him; he sees something that belongs to the poodle appearing as if spiritual. This Faust sees. It goes without saying that Wagner cannot de so; what Faust sees cannot be seen by the external eye.

Wagner: “I see a poodle, a black poodle only.
’Tis but some sport, some phantom of your brain.”

Faust: “Meseemth he softly coileth magic meshes
To be a future fetter round our feet”

Wagner: “He frisks in doubt and fear around us, lest ungracious
The strangers' welcome be. He thought his lord to greet.”

In this simple phenomenon Faust sees also something spiritual.Let us keep this firmly in mind. Inwardly struck by a certain spiritual connection between himself and the poodle, he now goes into his Laboratory. Naturally the poodle is there dramatically represented by Goethe as a poodle, and so it must be; but fundamentally we are concerned with what is being inwardly experienced by Faust. And in Goethe's every word he shows us in a most masterly fashion how in this scene Faust is passing through an inner experience. He and Wagner have stayed out of doors till late in the evening, till outwardly the light has gone, the dusk has fallen. And into the twilight Faust has projected the picture of what he spiritually wishes to see. He now returns home to his cell and is alone. When alone, such a man as Faust, having been through all this, is in a position to experience self-knowledge, that is, the life of the spirit in his own ego. He speaks as though his inmost soul were stirred, but stirred in a spiritual way:

“Now field and mead have I forsaken,
Which night enshroudeth, deep and still,
In us the better soul doth waken,
with a presaging, holy thrill.
Now stress of deed and storm of yearning
Sleep, at her all-compelling nod;
The love of man now bright is burning,
and burning bright the love of God.”

The poodle growls. But let us be quite clear that those are spiritual experiences; even the growling of the poodle is a spiritual experience, although dramatically it is represented as external. Faust has associated himself with decadent magic; he has associated himself with Mephistopheles, and Mephistopheles is not a spirit who can lead him to progressive spiritual forces. Mephistopheles is the spirit whom Faust has to overcome, and he is associated with him just in order that he may overcome him, having been given him not for instruction but as a test. That is to say, we now see Faust standing between the divine, spiritual world that bears forward the evolution of the universe, on the one hand, and on the other the forces stirring in his soul which drag him down into the life of the ordinary instincts, and these divert a man from spiritual endeavor. Directly anything holy stirs in his soul, it is ridiculed, the opposing impulses ridicule it. This is wonderfully presented now in the form of external events—Faust striving with all his knowledge towards the divine spiritual, and his instincts growling, as the materialist's mind growls, at spiritual endeavor. When Faust says: “Be quiet poodle,” he is really saying this to himself. And now Faust speaks—or rather, Goethe makes Faust speak—in a wonderful way. It is only when we study it word by word that we realise how wonderfully Goethe knows the inner life of man in spiritual evolution:

“When in our narrow chamber kindled
The lamp its cheerful radiance throws,
Bright gleams the light that erst had dwindled
Within the heart itself that knows.”

This is self-knowledge; seeking the spirit within itself.

“Reason again begins to speak”

A significant line, for whoever goes through the spiritual development Faust passes through during his life, knows that reason is not merely something dead within man, not only the reasoning of the head, but he realises how reason can become living—the weaving of an inner spirit that actually speaks. That is no mere poetical image:

“Reason again begins to parley
And hope to bloom that seemed dead.”

Reason again begins to speak of the past, of what is left alive out of the past. “Hope, blooms again that seemed dead,” that means that we find our will transformed, so that we know that we shall pass through the gates of death as spiritually living beings. Future and past are dove-tailed together in a wonderful way. Goethe now makes Faust say that through self-knowledge he can find the inner life of the spirit.

“Then for life's fountains long we dearly,
Ah, dearly, for life's fountain-head.”

And now Faust seeks to come nearer that towards which he is being pressed—nearer life's fountain-head. To begin with he seeks the path of religious exaltation; he picks up the New Testament. And the way in which he does so is a wonderful example of the wisdom in Goethe's drama. He picks out what contains the deepest wisdom of the new age—the John Gospel. He wants to translate this into his beloved German; and it is significant that Goethe should have chosen this particular moment. Those who know the workings of the deeply cosmic and spiritual beings realise that when wisdom is being put from one language into another, all the spirits of confusion make their appearance, all the bewildering spirits intervene. It is especially in the frontier regions of life that the powers opposed to human evolution and human well-being find expression. Goethe purposely chooses translation, to set the spirit of perversity, the spirit of lying (still inside the poodle) over against the spirits of truth. If we look closely at the feelings and emotions to which such a scene may give rise, the wonderful spiritual depths concealed in it become evident. All the temptations I have characterised as coming from what is inherent in the poodle, the temptation to distort truth by untruth, these go on working, and now they influence an action of Faust's which gives ample opportunity for such distortion, Yet, how little it has been noticed that this is what Goethe meant is still today made evident by the various interpreters of “Faust”; for what do these interpreters actually say about this scene? Well, you can read it; they say: “Goethe is indeed a man of external life, for whom the Word is not enough; he has to improve upon John's Gospel; he has to find a better translation—not: In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, but: In the beginning was the deed. That is what Faust after long hesitation decides on. This is a piece of Goethe's deep wisdom!” But this wisdom is not Faust wisdom, it is pure Wagner wisdom, genuine Wagner wisdom! Just like that wisdom quoted over and over again when, later, Faust speaks such beautiful words to Gretchen about the religious life:

“Who, then, can name Him? who thus proclaim Him? ...
The All-embracing, the All-sustaining ...”

And so on. What Faust says to Gretchen then is quoted repeatedly and represented as deep wisdom by the learned gentlemen who quote it:

“Who can name Him?
Who thus proclaim Him:
I believe Him?
Who hath that feeling,
His bosom steeling,
Can say: I believe Him not?
The All-embracing,
The All-sustaining,
Clasps and sustains He not
Thee, me, Himself?
Springs not the vault of Heaven above us?
Lieth not Earth firm—’stablished ’neath our feet?
And with a cheerful twinkling
Climb not eternal stars the sky?
Eye into eye gaze I not upon thee?
And floats in endless mystery
Invisible visible around thee? ...

These words of Faust's are often represented as deep wisdom! Now if Goethe had meant it to be accepted as such deep wisdom, he would not have put the speech into the mouth of Faust when he was trying to instruct the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is Gretchen-wisdom! We must take things seriously. The pundits are under a misapprehension and have mistaken this Gretchen-wisdom for deep philosophy. Faust's suggestion for the translation of the Bible is also taken for especially profound wisdom, whereas Goethe simply means to represent how men bandy about truth and error when they undertake much a task. Goethe has represented the two souls of Faust very profoundly indeed, here in this scene of the translation of the Bible.

“It is written: In the beginning was the Word.” We know that this is the Greek Logos. That actually stands in the John Gospel. In opposition to it there rises up in Faust what is symbolised by the poodle and it is this that prevents him from reaching the inner meaning of the Gospel. Why does the writer of the John Gospel choose precisely the Word, the Logos? It is because he wishes to emphasise that the most important thing in the evolution of man on earth, what really makes him externally man in this Earth-evolution, has not evolved gradually but was there in the primal beginning. What is it that distinguishes man from all other beings? The fact that he can speak, whereas no other being, animal, vegetable or mineral, can do so. The materialist thinks that the Word, Speech, the Logos, through which thought vibrates, was required by man only after he had passed through animal evolution. The Gospel of John takes the matter more deeply and says: No, in the primal beginning was the Word. That is to say, man's evolution was planned from the beginning; he is not in the materialistic Darwinian sense, simply the highest peak of the animal world; in the very first design of Earth-evolution, in its primal origin, in the beginning, was the Word. And man can develop on Earth a ego, to which animals do not attain, only by reason of the Word being interwoven with human evolution. The Word stands for the Ego in man. But against this truth the spirit of falsehood which has entered Faust rebels; he must go deeper to understand the profound wisdom of John's words,

“Already I am held up!”

But actually it is the poodle, the dog in him and what dwells in the dog, that is holding him up. He can get no higher; on the contrary he sinks much lower.

“Already I stick, and who shall help afford?
The Word at such high rate I may not tender;
The passage must I elsewise render,
If rightly by the Spirit I am taught.”

Seeing Mephistopheles coming to him he thinks that he is being “enlightened by the Spirit,” whereas in reality he is beclouded by the Spirit of darkness, and sinking lower.

“ ’Tis written: In the beginning was the Thought.” What is not higher than the Word. Sense, as we can easily prove, plays its part in the life of animals also, but the animal does not attain to the human Word. Man is capable of sense, thinking, because he has an astral body. Faust descends from the Ego to the astral body more deeply into himself.

“... In the beginning was the Thought. (Sinn)
By the first line a moment tarry,
Let not thine eager pen itself o'er hurry!”

He thinks he is rising higher but he is sinking lower.

“Does Thought work all, and fashion all outright?”

No, he is descending lower still, from the astral body to the dense, more material etheric body; and he writes:

“... In the beginning was the Force.”

(Force is what dwells in the etheric body.)

“Yet even as my pen the sentence traces,
A warning hint the half-writ word effaces.
The spirit helps me!”

(The spirit dwelling in the poodle. )

“From all-doubting freed,
Thus write I: In the beginning was the Deed.”

And now he has arrived at complete materialism; now he has reached the physical body through which the external deed is performed.

(Logos) Word.........Ego
Thought..................Astral Body
Force......................Etheric Body
Deed.......................Physical Body

Thus you have Faust living and weaving in self-knowledge. He translates the Bible wrongly because the several members of man's being of which we have so often spoken—the ego, the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body are working together in him, through Mephistopheles' spirit, in a chaotic way. And now we see how these impulses prevail, for the external barking of the dog is what stirs him up against the truth. In all his knowledge he cannot yet recognise the wisdom of Christianity. This is shown the way he connects Word, Thought, Force, Deed. But the impulse, the urge, towards Christianity is already alive in him, and by making use of the living force of what dwells there as the Christ, he overcomes the opposing spirit. He first tries to do this with what he has received from ancient magic. But the spirit does not yield, does not show himself in his true form. He then calls up the four elements and their spirits—the salamanders, sylphs, undines and gnomes, but nothing of all this affects the spirit in the poodle. But when he calls upon the figure of Christ, “the shamefully Immolated, by Whom all heaven is permeated” then the poodle has to show its true shape.

All this is fundamentally self-knowledge, a self-knowledge that Goethe makes quite clear. And what appears now? A travelling scholar! Faust is genuinely practising self-knowledge, he stands actually facing himself. Now for the first time the wild impulses in poodle-form, which have been resisting the truth, are working, and now he sees himself with a clearness that is still not clear! The travelling student stands before him but this is only Faust's other self, for he has not become much more than a travelling student with all a student's errors. Only now that he has learnt through his bond with the spiritual world to recognise the impulses more accurately,the travelling scholar—his own ego as up to now, he has developed it—confronts him as something more definite and solid. Faust has learnt like a scholar; he has given himself up to magic and through magic scholastic wisdom has been bedevilled. What has developed out of the old, good Faust, the old travelling student, is merely the result of his having added ancient magic to his learning. The travelling scholar is still present in him and meets him under a changed form; it is only his other self. This travelling student is himself. The struggle to be free of all that confronts him as his other self, is shown in the ensuing scene.

Indeed, in the different characters whom Faust meets, Goethe is always trying to show Faust's other ego, so that he may come to know himself better and better. Many of the audience may remember how in earlier lectures I explained that even Wagner was to be found in Faust himself, that Wagner was just another ego of Faust's. Mephistopheles, also, is only another ego. It is all self-knowledge; self-knowledge is practised for knowledge of the universe. But, for Faust, none of this is yet clear spiritual knowledge; it is all wrapt in a vague, dull spirit seership, impaired by the old, atavistic clairvoyance. There is nothing clear about it. It is not knowledge full of light, but the knowledge of dreams. This is represented by the dream-spirits fluttering around Faust—really the group-souls of all the beings that accompany Mephistopheles—and represented also by his final waking. Then Goethe says, or makes Faust say, clearly and unmistakably:

“What! am I once again then cheated?
And vanishes the spirit-foison thus?
That but a dream the devil counterfeited,
A poodle from my room broke loose?”

Goethe employs the method of directing attention over and over again to the truth. That he is representing a spiritual experience in Faust, is clearly enough expressed in the above four lines. This scene shows us too how Goethe was striving for knowledge of the transition from the old era to the new in which he himself lived, that is, from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch to the fifth. The boundary line is in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries. As I have said before, whoever thinks as men think today can hardly picture—unless he makes a special study of it—the soul-development of past centuries. In the days of Faust only the ruins of it remained. How often we experience today that men are not trying to come to the new spiritual research for which we are striving; they are trying to renew the old wisdom. Many indeed think that by renewing what was possessed by the people of old they will be able to find a deeper, magical and mystical wisdom about nature. There are two errors closely connected with all human spiritual striving. The first is that men buy ancient books and studying them come to prize them more highly than the newer science. They generally prize them more highly simply because they do not understand them, the language in which they are written being actually no longer comprehensible. Thus, the content of old books that has become double-Dutch being often put forward when spiritual research is under discussion is the one mischievous thing. The other is that whenever possible old names are given to new endeavours in order to justify them. Look at many of the societies calling themselves occult, or secret, or something of the kind; their whole endeavour is to give themselves an early origin, to talk as much as possible about a legendary past, and they delight in the use of old names. That is the second mischievous error. We do not have to do all this if we really see into the needs and impulses of our own age and of the inevitable future. If we pick up any book where traditions still existed, we can see from the way they were presented that, through the legacy of the past, the memory of an ancient wisdom formerly possessed by man, was still there, this wisdom had fallen into decay. Its modes of expression, however, continued for a considerable time.

I have at my disposal a book printed in the year 1740, that is, in the eighteenth century, from which I should like to read you a short passage, and we may be sure that many seeking spiritual knowledge today, coming upon such a passage will say: What depths of wisdom we have here! Indeed, there are many who believe they understand a quotation of this kind. Let me read you the one I am referring to:

“The King's crown should be of pure gold, and he must be married to a chaste bride. Now, if thou desirest to work upon our bodies, take the Greedy Grey Wolf who, according to his name, is subject to the warlike Mars but by birth is a child of ancient Saturn, and found in the hills and dales of the world, obsessed by hunger. Throw him the body of the King that he may feed upon it.”

This is the way chemical processes were described in olden days, the way to which Faust alludes when he talks of how Red Lion is married to the Lily in the glass. We should not make fun of such things for the simple reason that the way we speak of chemistry today will sound to those who come later just as this sounds to us. But we must be quite clear that this particular passage belongs to a late period of decline. Allusion is made to a “Grey Wolf.” Now this “Grey Wolf” stands for a certain metal found everywhere in the mountains, that is then subjected to a certain process. “King” is a name given to a condition of substances; and the whole paragraph describes a chemical process. The grey metal was collected and treated in a certain way; then this was called the “Greedy Grey Wolf”, and the other the “Golden King”, after the gold had gone through a process. Then an alliance was made and this is described: “And when he had devoured the King. ...” It comes about, therefore, that the Greedy Grey Wolf, the grey metal found in the mountains, is amalgamated with the Golden King, a certain condition of gold after it has been treated chemically. He represents it as follows:

“And when he has devoured the King, then make a great fire and throw the Wolf into it.”

—thus the Wolf who has eaten up the Golden King is thrown into the fire.

“So that he may be completely burnt up and the King released again.”

The gold once more makes its appearance.

“When that has happened three times the Lion will have overcome the Wolf, and will find nothing more of him to consume. Then our body is ready to begin our work.”

In this way then he makes something. To explain what he makes, we should have to describe these processes in greater detail, especially how the Golden King is made; but that is not told us here. Today these processes are no longer used. But for what does the man hope? He hopes for what is not entirely without reason for he has already made something. For what purpose exactly has he made it? The man who had this printed will certainly not have done anything more than copy it from some old book. But for what purpose was it done at the time when such things were understood? That you may gather from the following:

“And know that this alone is the right way thoroughly to purify our bodies; for the Lion cleanses itself by the blood of the Wolf; for the tincture of this blood delights marvelously in the tincture of the Lion's, for the two kinds of blood are closely allied.”

Thus he praises what he has been the cause of producing. He has invented a kind of medicine.

“And when the Lion is satiated, its spirit becomes stronger than before, and its eyes dart forth a gleam of pride, bright as the sun.”

(This describes the properties of what he has in the retort.)

“Its inner being is then able to do much, and is useful for all that is demanded of it. When it is made ready, children of men attacked by severe sickness and many diseases are grateful to it; the lepers run after it, hankering after its soul's blood, end all who have infirmities rejoice heartily in its spirit; for he who drinks of this golden spring, experiences a complete renewal of his nature, the removal of evil, strength in the blood, force in the heart and perfect health in all the limbs.”

This, you see, indicates that we are concerned with a medicine, but it is also sufficiently indicated that this also has to do with man's moral character. For naturally if a healthy man takes it in the right quantity then what is here described will make its appearance. This is what he means, and this is how it was with the men of olden days who understood something of these matters.

“For he who drinks of this golden spring, experiences a complete renewal of his nature”

Thus, by means of the art he describes here, he strives to discover a tincture that can arouse an actual stirring of life in man.

“Thanks to the strength of the heart's blood, and the perfect healthiness of all the limbs, they are either enclosed within or sensitive outside the body, for it opens all the nerves end pores so that evil can be driven out and good can peacefully take its place.”

I have read this aloud chiefly to show how in these ruins of an ancient wisdom one may find the remains of what was striven for olden times. By external means taken from nature men strove to stimulate the body, that is, to acquire certain faculties, not only through inner moral endeavour, but through the medium of nature herself, applied by man. Keep this in mind for a moment, for from it we shall be led to something of importance which distinguishes our epoch from earlier epochs. Today it is quite the thing to make fan of the ancient superstitions, for then one is accepted in the world as a clever man, whereas this does not happen should one see any sense in the old knowledge. And all this is lost, and had to be lost, for reasons affecting mankind; for spirit-freedom could never have been attained through what was thus striven for in ancient days. Now you know that in books of an even earlier date than this antiquated volume—that indeed belongs to a very late period of decline—you find Sun and Gold indicated by the same sign ⊙; and Moon and Silver by the sign ☾. To the modern man the application of the one sign used for Sun and Gold, and the other used for Moon and Silver, two faculties of the soul he necessarily has himself, is naturally sheer nonsense. And it is sheer nonsense as we find it in the literature that often calls itself “esoteric”. For the most part the writers of such books have no means of knowing why in the olden days Sun and Gold, Moon and Silver, were characterized by the same signs.

Let us start from Moon and Silver with the sign ☾. Now if we go further back in time, say a few thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, before the Christian reckoning of time, men did not only possess the faculties later in ruins; at the time when such things came into existence they possessed still higher faculties. When a man of the Egypto-Chaldean culture said ‘Silver’ he did not mean only what we mean when we say ‘Silver’. In the language of that time, the word signifying a ‘Silver’ was quite differently applied. Such a man had the spiritual faculties, and he meant a certain kind of force-activity found, not only in a piece of silver that actually spread over the whole earth. What he wished to say was: We live in Gold, we live in Copper, we live in Silver. He meant certain kinds of living forces were there, and these flowed towards him especially strongly from the Moon. This he felt that something sensitive and delicate that was in its coarsest, most material form in the piece of silver. He really found these forces flowing from the Moon, but also spread out over the whole earth, materialized in a particular way in the piece of silver. Now, the enlightened man of today says: Yes, of course, the Moon shines with a silvery light so they believe that it consisted of silver. It was not so, however, but rather men had an aerosol experience, lost today, in connection with the Moon, in connection with something dwelling as a force in the whole terrestrial globe, and materialized in the piece of silver.

Thus, the force lying in the silver has to be spread out over the whole earth. Naturally when this is said today it is regarded as absolute nonsense, yet, even from the point of view of modern Science it is not so. It is not nonsense at all, quite the contrary. For I will tell you something that science knows today although it is not often mentioned it. Modern Science knows that rather more than four lbs of silver, finally distributed, is contained in a cubic body the length of an English knot that you may imagine out of the ocean. So that, in all the seas surrounding the earth, there are two million tons of finally distributed silver. This is simply a scientific truth that can be proved today. The oceans of the world contain two million tons of finely distributed silver—distributed in an extreme homeopathic degree, one might say. Silver is actually spread over the whole earth. Today this must be substantiated—if one does so in the way of ordinary Science, by taking water from the sea and testing it by the most exact methods of investigation; then, with the means of modern Science itself it is found that there are two million tons of silver contained in the oceans. It is not that these tons of silver have been somehow dissolved in the ocean, or anything of that kind; they belong to it, belong to its nature and being. And this was known to the ancient wisdom through those delicate, sensitive forces originating in the old clairvoyance, at that time still in existence. The old wisdom also knew that the earth should not be looked upon merely in the way of modern Geology, but that in this earth, most finally dissolved, we have silver.

I could go further; I could show how gold is also dissolved, how, besides being materially deposited here and there, all these metals finely dissolved are really present. Ancient wisdom, therefore, was under no misapprehension when it spoke of silver; it is contained in the sphere of the earth. It was known, however, as a force, a certain kind of force. The silver sphere contains certain forces, the gold sphere other forces, and so on. More still was known of the silver that was dispersed throughout the earth-sphere; it was known that in the silver lies the force controlling the ebb and flow of the tides, for a certain force animating the whole body of the earth lies within this silver and is relatively identical with it. Without it there would be no tides; this movement, peculiar to the earth, was originally set in motion by the silver-content. It has no connection with the Moon, but the Moon is connected with the same force, and hence ebb and flow appear in certain relation with the movements of the Moon, because both they and the tides are dependent on the same system of forces. And these lie in the silver-content of the universe.

Even without clairvoyant knowledge we are able to see into such things, and to prove with a certainty unattainable in any other sphere of knowledge, unless it be Mathematics, that there used to be an old science knowing these things and knowing them well. With this knowledge and what it could do the ancient wisdom was connected, the wisdom that actually controlled nature has to be regained only through spiritual research, as it is today and as it goes on into the future. We live in the age in which an ancient kind of wisdom has been lost and a new kind only beginning to appear. What arose out of this ancient wisdom? Those consequences I have already indicated. If we knew the secrets of the universe we could make man himself more efficient. Think of it! By external means we could make man more efficient. It was possible simply by concocting certain substances and taking them in appropriate quantities, to acquire faculties which today we rightly assume to be innate in a man, such as genius, talent, and so forth. What Darwinism fantastically dreamed was not there at the beginning of earth-evolution, but the capacity to control nature existed, and from that to give man himself moral and spiritual faculties. You will now see that, for this reason, man had to keep the handling of nature within limits; hence the secrecy of the ancient Mysteries. The knowledge connected with these Mysteries, the secrets of nature, did not consist merely of concepts, ideas and feelings, nor merely of dogmatic imaginations. Whoever wished to acquire it had first to show himself wholly fitted to receive it; he had to be free from any wish to employ the knowledge selfishly, he was to use both knowledge and the ability derived from it solely in the service of the social order. This was the reason why the knowledge was kept so secret in the Egyptian Mysteries. In preparation for such knowledge, the one to whom it was to be imparted gave a guarantee that he would continue to live exactly as he had lived before, not taking to himself the smallest advantage but devoting the efficiency he would acquire, by his mastery over nature, exclusively to the service of the social order. On this assumption initiation was granted to individuals who then guided the ancient culture, of which the wonderful works are still to be seen, though, because men do not know their source, they are not understood.

But in this way men would never have become free. They would, through their nature-influences, have been made into a kind of automata. An epoch had to supervene in which man would work through inner moral forces alone. Thus, nature becomes veiled for him because in the new age, his impulses, his instincts, having become free, he has desecrated her. It is at most since the fourteenth, fifteenth, centuries that his impulses have been thus freed. Hence the ancient wisdom is growing dim; there is nothing left but the book-wisdom and that is not understood. For no one who really understood such things as the passage I have just read you would refrain from using them for his own advantage. That, however, would call forth the worst instincts in human society, worse instincts than those produced by the tentative progress of what today is said to be scientific, where, without insight into the matter, it is in a laboratory, without being able to see deeply into things, they obtain some result or other, perhaps that one substance affects another in a certain way—well, just what goes on today in chemistry. They go on trying this and find that but it is spiritual science that will have to find a way back into the secrets of nature. At the same time it must found a social order quite different from that of today, for men to be able, without being led away into a struggle with the most unruly instincts, to realize what nature conceals and her inmost depths.

There is meaning and there is wisdom in human evolution; I have tried to show you this in a whole series of lectures. What happens in history happens—although often by means of most destructive forces—in such a way that meaning runs right through historical evolution. It is often not the meaning man imagines and he has to suffer much on the paths history takes to its ends. Everything that happens in the course of time is sure to make the pendulum sometimes swing towards evil, sometimes towards the lesser evil; but by this swinging a certain condition of balance is reached. So then, up to the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries, a certain number of the forces of nature were known at least to a few; but this knowledge is now lost because the men of the newer age have not been attuned to it.

You see how beautifully it is pictured in the symbol standing for the forces of nature in the Egyptian legend of Isis. This image of Isis—what a deep impression it makes upon us when we picture it standing there in stone, but covered from head to foot with a veil, also of stone—the veiled Isis of Sais. It bears the inscription: “I am the Past, the Present in the Future; my veil no mortal man has yet lifted”. That has given rise to an unusually clever explanation—and a very clever people have accepted this clever explanation. We are told that the image of Isis is the symbol of a wisdom that can never be attained by man. Behind this veil is a being must remain eternally hidden, for the veil can never be lifted. Yet the inscription is “I am the Past, the Present and the Future; my veil no mortal man has yet lifted”. All the clever people then say: no one can fathom this being—are speaking about as logically as anyone who was to say: “I am John Miller you shall never know my name”. To say this is on a par with what you thus always hear said about the figure of Isis. To interpret the inscription: “I am the Past, the Present in the Future; my veil no mortal man has yet lifted” in this way, is as complete nonsense as to say: “I am John Miller, you will never know my name”. For what Isis is, stands written—Past, Present and Future; Time in its flight. Something quite different, therefore, from the clever explanation referred to is expressed in the words: “By veil no mortal man has yet lifted”. It means that this wisdom must be approached as those women are approached who have taken the veil, the vow of chastity; it must be approached with the same reverence, with a feeling that excludes all egoistic impulses. This is what is meant. It is like a veiled nun, this wisdom of ancient days. This is the feeling behind what is said about the veil.

Thus we see that in the days when the primal wisdom was a living thing, then either approached it in the proper way or had no access to it at all. But in the newer age men had to be left to themselves. They could no longer have this wisdom of old days, nor the forms of that wisdom. The knowledge of certain forces of nature was lost, those forces only to be known if experienced within—if they were at the same time lived inwardly. And at the time when materialism was at its height in the nineteenth century, at the beginning of the century, a force of nature appeared, the characteristic of which is recently expressed as follows: We have this nature-force but no one can understand it; it is even a secret for science.—You know how the force of electricity came to be used by man, and that electric power is such that no one can experience it inwardly through his normal forces; it remains an external force. And to a greater degree than one thinks that all the greatness of the nineteenth century arise through electricity. It would be quite easy to show how infinitely much in our present civilization depends upon electric power, and how much more, how very much more, will depend upon it in the future—even if it is employed in the present way without any inward knowledge. For in the evolution of human culture electric force has been put—as something by which man will be matured morally—in the place of the old, known force. Today in making use of electricity there is no thought of anything moral. There is wisdom in the progressive historical evolution of humanity. Man will mature by being able for a time to develop in his lower ego-bearer, in his uncontrolled egoism, what is deeply harmful—and in all conscience there is sufficient of this, as our own times clearly show. This would be quite out of the question should men have retained the ancient forces. It is electricity as a force in civilization which makes this possible. It is to a certain extent true of steam-power but to a lesser degree.

Now this is how the matter stands as I have explained to you. The first seventh part of our culture-period, that will last on into the third millennium, has passed; the peak of materialism has been reached. The social framework in which we live, that has brought about such lamentable occurrences in our days, is such that man cannot be subjected to it for another half-century without a fundamental change taking place in soul. For those having spiritual insight into world-evolution, this electoral age is, at the same time, the challenge to seek greater spiritual depth, a genuine spiritual deepening. For, to that force which remains outwardly unknown to sense-observation, there must be added in the soul the spiritual force line as deeply hidden as the electrical forces that also have to be awakened. Think how mysterious electrical power is! It was first drawn out of its secret hiding places by Galvani and Volta. And what dwells in the human soul, what is explored by Spiritual Science, that, too, lies hidden. The two like poles must meet each other. And as surely as the electric force is drawn out as the force hidden in nature, so surely will the force hidden in the soul,the force that belongs to it and is sought by Spiritual Science, also be drawn forth. This will be so, although today there are still many who look upon the endeavors of Spiritual Science as—well, almost as they might have looked upon the experiments of Galvani and Volta in the days they prepared their frogs and observed in the twitching of a leg that some force was at work. Did Science know that in the frog's leg lay the whole of Voltaic electricity, of Galvanism, all that is known today of electricity? Think back to the time when Galvani, it his primitive laboratory, was hanging his frog's leg to the window-latch; think of the moment when it began to twitch, and for the first time he was sure of this! It is true that it is not a question here of electricity itself being stimulated, but of contact electricity. When Galvani established this for the first time, could he suppose that the force that moved the frog's leg would someday be used by railways as a means of transport all over the world, or that with its aid thought would someday encircle the globe? It is not so very long since Galvani noticed this force in his frog's leg. If anyone had been expected such results to flow from this knowledge, he would certainly have been considered a fool. Thus, in our day, a man who presents the first beginnings of a spiritual science is considered a fool. A time will arrive when all that comes forth from Spiritual Science will be as important to the world, the moral world of soul and spirit, as a result of Galvani's experiment with the frog's leg for material civilization.

It is thus that progress is made in human evolution. It is only when we are aware of the things that we develop the will to collaborate in what can only be a beginning. If that other force, the force of electricity, which has been drawn out of its hiding place, has direct significance only for external, material culture, and only an indirect significance for the world of morality, what comes out of Spiritual Science will be of utmost importance in terms of its social significance. For the future, social institutions will be regulated by what Spiritual Science can give to humanity. Moreover, the whole of external, material culture will be indirectly stimulated by this Spiritual Science as well. I can only point to this today in closing.

Today we have seen Faust standing, as I said today, half in the old world and half in the new. Tomorrow we will expand this picure of Faust into one that will be a sort of worldview.

For many years now, I have been giving the lectures on spiritual science during the winter season from this very place. I have always tried to begin these lectures with a consideration of the connection between the particular view of the spiritual world that is represented within this spiritual science, as it is meant here, and the general spiritual life. And already last winter, I tried — which must be particularly obvious in our present fateful time — to turn my attention to the feelings that are currently living within the German people, to that time of German spiritual development in which, out of the very core of the German being, a connection, a living together with the spiritual world, was sought in a truly idealistic form. In our time, in which the German nation must defend itself against a world of enemies in its existence, in its hopes for existence, it must be particularly obvious to look to the time of which one of the most popular historians of the German nation says: it is the time in which the idealistic spirits of this German nation have shown that even in times of extreme distress, in times of extreme hostility, the German character is able to salvage that greatness which can be saved by cultivating the spiritual life, as it appears to be inherent in the very deepest characteristics of this nation. We need not fall into the error of our opponents, who today believe, in such a strange and peculiar way, that they must particularly characterize the importance of their own nation by belittling the nature of the opponents. We need not fall into the error, for example, of those of whom we now hear that the German Weltanschauung itself must have seduced them into leading the German people into the most savage warfare. We can, without making the mistake of belittling our opponents, turn our attention to what the German people believe, must believe, according to their very nature: that their world-historical task is rooted in the deepest inwardness of their nature. And there is no need, as so many of Germany's enemies do today, to form an opinion about the popular, be it one's own or that of another people, out of direct hatred and antipathy in the present.

And so let us take as our starting-point for today's consideration an idea which an outstanding mind, relatively calm, was able to form in a time long before our own fateful time. This idea was formed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schiller's great friend, who was able to delve so wonderfully into the essence of the development of humanity, who knew how to depict the needs of man within the development of world history in such a subtle way, In 1830, when Wilhelm von Humboldt looked back on what Schiller's friendship meant to him, but also on what Schiller's significance for the development of the German people was, on what Schiller's entire intellectual development was, he expressed himself in the following way about the German essence:

Thus someone who has devoted much thought to the feelings that go with knowing this points to what he had to believe lies in the task and the immediate destiny of the German people.

And when we look at what has shaped the German character from the spiritual side in the great age when German idealism raised Germanness to the stage of thought; and when we point to the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century with all what had developed up to the immediate phase of development of our time, then we see something that cannot be grasped by the certainly significant but not very lofty concept, let us say, of the internationality of science and the like, which, insofar as it concerns science, is self-evident. But what emerged so powerfully in Germany's greatest periods in terms of intellectual development was that at that time, through those minds that felt so intimately connected to German nationality, such as Fichte, for example, the question of the whole significance of knowledge, of what man can achieve through the knowledge that he develops as science; the question of the relationship of this knowledge to the secret of the world, to the eternal-working, eternal-spiritual in the world itself. That knowledge has been called into question, that knowledge itself has become a mystery, and that it is precisely through this tendency towards the mysteriousness of knowledge that man has had to make the matter of this knowledge a personal and yet objective and factual human interest, that is the tremendously significant thing is how one can feel connected in every fiber of one's being to what man can achieve through an ideal in his striving, through the pursuit of knowledge; how one can strive for knowledge full of light and yet still raise the question: Can one go beyond this knowledge, or rather must one go beyond this knowledge if one wants to arrive at the deepest thing that connects man to the eternal sources of existence? And the reason why this riddle could present itself to the German soul in its best minds in a particularly intense way lies in the fact that during the period of German idealism, the striving asserted itself to have knowledge not only as something that something that teaches you about the world in terms of concepts, something you can stand coolly opposed to in your desire to dissect the phenomena of the world, but to have knowledge as something that lives in the whole soul and sustains the human being. It was precisely out of this yearning for the vitality of knowledge, out of this intimate feeling of connection with knowledge, that the great riddles of knowledge arose. It seems as if one only wants to have knowledge, only wants to cultivate a science, if this science can really live in such a way that one can also find the way to the sources of existence in the experiencing of knowledge.

It is appealing to see how German minds want to live in their knowledge, in their science, in a much higher sense than is usually meant when one speaks of the connection between life and science. Last winter, in a similar context, I tried to characterize Fichte's idiosyncrasy, this noble German spirit who, in one of the most difficult times in the development of the German people, placed his spiritual striving entirely at the service of his people, who, from the depth of his spirit, found the most wonderful words of power to inspire German enthusiasm. The way in which he felt connected with the pursuit of knowledge, and how he strove to rise to German idealism, is part of what Fichte was able to be to his people. A picture that has been preserved for us can illustrate this beautifully. Forberg, who heard Fichte speak when he tried to bring to life, from the depths of his striving for wisdom, what he saw as his connection with the weaving, ruling world spirit, said the following beautiful words about Fichte's way of speaking about spiritual matters:

And if one wants to characterize Fichte's German nature, one must point out how, by wanting to rule in the realm of concepts, he sought within this realm of concepts something that was more than what is often called concepts and ideas, something that was a revival of those forces of the human soul, which are one with the creative powers of all existence, those creative powers that live outside in nature, that have placed man himself in nature, that guide and direct historical life, that interweave and permeate all existence. But in order to gain such a view in full vitality, Fichte could not stop at the abstractness of the concepts, at concepts that are only views. For this he needed concepts that were directly experienced and imbued with soul by an element of activity that not only illuminates the human soul, but also strengthens it, so that this human soul, by first withdrawing from the external world, feels connected to the very innermost part of reality. And so Johann Gottlieb Fichte directed his contemplation to something living in the human soul, something that is being willed into existence. And what he sensed there, as flowing into his will, he experienced as if the divine spiritual forces that permeate and interweave the world were entering the soul, and the soul itself felt at rest within the divine experience. If one wishes to call this trait in Johann Gottlieb Fichte mystical, then one must remove from this expression everything that brings any kind of nebulousness into the world view; one must then bring this concept together with everything that is the highest energy of knowledge in Fichte's entire striving. Then German idealism appears as if compressed into a focal point, not only when Fichte talks about German nationality, but especially when he speaks of the highest matters to which his thinking and, one might say, his inner experience turns. In his attempt to visualize the ruling will in his own soul and to make it come alive before those to whom he speaks, he speaks about this will as if he were aware that the innermost essence of the whole world lives in this will. He speaks as if he himself felt the exalted will of the world pulsating in the human soul's own will, when this human soul, in its striving for knowledge, goes back to the innermost outflow and activity of the will itself. Fichte speaks wonderful words here:

Thus Fichte addresses what he senses as the will of the world by deepening his quest for knowledge, so that it may find what, in the innermost part of the soul, holds that soul together with the sources of existence; that from which the soul must create if it wants to feel that its creation in harmony with the historical and eternal powers that guide all existence itself. That science, through an idealistic consideration of life, must lead to such a grasp of human inwardness that in this inwardness, at the same time, the innermost of the world's existence in human striving is embraced, that is the basic feature of German idealism. And with this idealism, Fichte's philosophical comrades basically also face the great riddles of existence. |

From a certain point of view, I tried last winter to present this very arena of thought within German idealism and the world view of this German idealism. I undertook to show how Fichte tried to grasp the world through the experience of the innermost nature of the human will itself, by wanting to grasp the human soul where the will can delve into it. I wanted to show how Fichte, in his attempt to penetrate to the human ego in its essence, could not be satisfied with grasping this ego in being or in mere thinking, in the sense of Descartes with his “I think , therefore I am”, but how Fichte wanted to grasp the self, the innermost essence of the human soul, in such a way that there lies in it something that can never lose its existence because it can create this existence anew in every moment. Fichte wanted to show the living, ever creative will as the source of the human ego; not by a judgment of the kind: I think, that is something, therefore I am — not by that did Fichte want to find the essence of the ego, but by showing that even if this ego were not in any given moment, or if it could be said of it, on the basis of some evidence, that it were not, then this judgment would be invalid on the grounds that this ego is a creative one, because it can, in every moment, generate its existence anew out of the depths of this ego. In this perpetual re-creation, in this continuity of the creative, in this connection with the creative of the world, Fichte tried to recognize the essence of the ego in the will, to preserve it in the will, to shape the striving for knowledge in a living way.

And Schelling, Fichte's philosophical companion, who in many respects went so far beyond him, placed himself before nature in such a way that nature was not for him what it otherwise is in many respects for external science: a sum of phenomena that one dissects; rather, for Schelling, nature was to the human spirit in its nature, except that the human spirit stands in the present, experiences itself, but nature has lived through this spirit, so that it now rests enchanted in it, so that it hides behind its veil and reveals itself through its external appearances. Just as one regards a person in relation to his physiognomy, not only describing this physiognomy formally like a statue, but looking through the physiognomy to what is the living soul life, what looks through the physiognomic features, what spiritualizes and warms the outer form. Through the outer phenomena of nature, through the outer revelations as through the physiognomy of nature, Schelling wanted to go back to what is spiritual in nature, to unite the spirit in the soul with the spirit in nature. And from this arose in him that one-sided but bold way of striving for knowledge, which is expressed in Schelling's saying: “To comprehend nature is to create nature!” That in the human soul there could be something that only needs to be dragged into creative, living existence, and by so doing, not creating the outer phenomena of nature, but creating images that are the same as what lives behind nature, is expressed in the words: “To understand nature is to create nature!” Today, there is truly no need to take this philosophy of German idealism dogmatically; one need not be a follower of it, that is not the point. What is important is to get to know the power and inner soul from which such a direction of spiritual life arises. And so someone could be an opponent of the dogmas of German idealism in the fullest sense of the word, but find something resiliently alive, something that carries the future, in the way the human soul wanted to penetrate into the deepest secrets of existence back then.

And in this context, we may refer to Hegel, the third in this series, who was not afraid to ascend into the coldest realms of pure thought. For Hegel believed that when the soul withdraws from all the warmth of external observation, from all direct resting in natural existence, when it is all alone with the concepts that live in the soul in such a way that this soul is no longer present with its arbitrariness in the thinking of the concepts, but the soul abandons itself to the process of how one concept arises from the other, how concepts prevail within her, without her turning in any way to anything other than to these prevailing pure, crystal-clear and transparent concepts, which she lets prevail and weave within her as they themselves want, not as the soul wills, - then, Hegel believed, in this process, in this flowing of concepts, a union of the soul with the ruling world spirit itself, which lives out itself in concepts, which, through the millions of years, by sending its concepts commanding through infinity, allowed the outer world to emerge from the condensation of these concepts and then placed man into it so that man can awaken in his soul these concepts from which the world itself emerged. Is it really one-sided, the way Hegel delves into the world of existence by trying to penetrate to the sources of existence by squeezing out all other reality from the pure world of concepts? Is it one-sided in the sense that the World-Spirit, which flows and weaves through the world as if it were a mere logician, conjure up the world out of pure logic, this striving, which arises directly from the German essence and German nature, also shows how the German spirit, in its striving for knowledge, by its very nature seeks to connect with that which lives in the soul, that which can be directly beheld in the soul in its inwardness and which, by being thus beheld, simultaneously seizes the spirit flowing in the world. The fundamental principle of this striving is the seizing of the world-spirit by the spirit developed in the soul. And even if the right way of relating to world-life and its knowledge can only be solved by the human soul in a reasonably satisfactory way in the farthest, farthest future, the way in which it has been attempted within German idealism , this way of seeking the world spirit is so intimately connected with the German essence and at the same time it is the way in which, in our time, the eternal must be sought in the temporal human soul.

One can see how closely interwoven with German striving this kind of knowledge is when, at the dawn of the newer spiritual striving, one looks at how two phenomena confront each other at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century; that is, the time when those forces first emerged that gave the newer world view the impulses for European development. It is interesting to see how the German soul relates to this dawn of intellectual life, for example, by juxtaposing two images from the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Regardless of one's own opinion of this remarkable spirit, let us consider him only in the context of the development of modern spiritual striving, if one places Jakob Böhme and compares him with a contemporary striving spirit in Western Europe, with a spirit who is also characteristic of his people, as Jakob Böhme is characteristic of his people, with Montaigne.

Montaigne is also a great and important figure, expressing one of the elements that arise at the dawn of the modern intellectual life. He is the great doubter. He is the one who, from within French culture, receives the following impulse: Let us look at the world. It reveals its secrets to us through our senses. We will try to reveal these secrets through our thinking. But who can say, in any way, that the senses do not deceive; that what is revealed to the senses from the depths of the world can somehow have a connection, which can be visualized, with the sources of existence. And who can deny, this great doubter asks, that if one does not rely on the senses, but on judgment, on thinking, if one seeks evidence and each piece of evidence in turn demands evidence, and the new proof in turn demands another proof, that one can then proceed along the chain of proofs and must also proceed, because everything that one believes to have proven appears fleeting when one looks at it more closely. Neither thinking nor sensual observation can provide any certainty. Therefore, a wise man, according to Montaigne, is one who does not seek such certainty at all; who has an inner irony about the phenomena of the world and about the knowledge of the sources of existence; who knows that although one can reflect on and observe all things , but that one thereby acquires only a knowledge that one can just as well admit as reject, without having any hope of attaining anything else through spiritual striving than precisely such a thing to which one can only relate doubtfully and ironically.

At the same time, within the German being stands Jakob Böhme, who undertakes the journey into the depths of the human soul by means of mere inner development of soul powers, by mere immersion in what the soul can draw up from its depths. And in the fact that he finds these depths of the human soul in the way he believes he is able to find them, he was clear about it, he was convinced that by descending into the depths of the human soul, he at the same time hears the sources of all existence, natural and spiritual, of all comprehensive existence, flowing into these depths. For Jakob Böhme, descending into the depths of the soul also means reaching out into the divine spiritual life that governs the world. And so Jakob Böhme sought this path; that in this path there can be no question of doubt or of an ironic mood in the Montaignean sense, because Jakob Böhme in his way is clear about the fact that he lives in the spirit, because one cannot doubt that in which one lives, in which one co-creates by immersing oneself in it. And one would like to say: Only a revival of this endeavor of Jakob Böhme's in a higher form lies in what lives on the scene of German idealism through the spirits just mentioned. And these just mentioned spirits basically all turn their gaze to a personality who – however much this has been doubted from a narrow-minded point of view – in her entire being, in her entire nature, emerged from the deepest popular German culture, to Goethe. And Fichte, the philosopher who was only struggling for clarity, who was never satisfied if he could not express what he had to say in concepts with sharp outlines, Fichte, who could be considered a dry, sober man of knowledge — that was not his way, but that is what characterizes his striving characterizes – who could be thought of as far, far removed from Goethe in the nature of his being, – Fichte addressed beautiful words to Goethe in which he wanted to express how he tried to align himself with the highest that he strove to bring forth, with what Goethe was by nature. When Fichte had brought the first, most abstract, one might say coldest, most historical, form of his “Wissenschaftslehre” to print, he presented the book to Goethe and wrote to him:

“I regard you and have always regarded you as the representative (of the purest spirituality of feeling) at the present level of humanity. It is to you that philosophy rightly turns. Your feeling is the same touchstone!”

Words that each of the others could have addressed to Goethe in the same way, and indeed each of them did address to Goethe in one way or another, as history shows.

And when Schiller, in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”, which, as I allowed myself to characterize here last winter, have been far too little appreciated, tried to answer the question from the depths of Kantian philosophy: How must the human soul strive in order to truly come to live together with the spirit of the world in freedom in the harmonious interaction of all its powers? And when Schiller turned his gaze to Goethe, he saw in him something like the German spirit in one of its centers, seeking to bring forth before the world, out of the deepest inwardness of his being, the highest that he had come to. Schiller admired the pure, free humanity of the ancient Greeks, that pure, free humanity that, on the one hand, is allowed to turn to external nature, but which does not allow this nature to have such an external hold on it as the more recent spiritual striving, in which man becomes unfree in his striving in the face of the coherence of nature. This Greek nature, which on the other hand became so aware of itself in the depths of its soul that it sensed itself as nature itself, also in its innermost being, this Greek element, which stood before Schiller's soul like a model of all human striving and living, Schiller saw it shine anew in Goethe's nature and life in the face of the newer spirit of the people. And Schiller characterized this at about the same time as Fichte wrote the words just quoted to Goethe, in a letter to Goethe with the following words:

"For a long time now, although from a considerable distance, I have been watching the course of your mind and have noted the path you have set out on with ever-renewed admiration. You seek what is necessary for nature, but you seek it by the most difficult route, which any weaker force would do well to avoid. You take all of nature to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the explanatory basis for the individual. Step by step, you ascend from the simple organization to the more complicated, in order to finally build the most complicated of all, the human being, genetically from the materials of the entire structure of nature. By recreating him in nature, as it were, you seek to penetrate his hidden technology. A great and truly heroic idea, which shows sufficiently how much your mind holds the rich totality of its conceptions together in a beautiful unity. You could never have hoped that your life would be enough for such a goal, but even just to embark on such a path is worth more than any other ending – and you have chosen, like Achilles in the Iliad, between Phthia and immortality. If you had been born a Greek, or even an Italian, and if from your cradle you had been surrounded by a refined nature and idealizing art, your path would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps made entirely superfluous. You would have absorbed the form of the necessary into the first view of things, and with your first experiences the great style would have developed in you. Now that you have been born a German, now that your Greek spirit has been thrown into this Nordic creation, you had no choice but to either become a Nordic artist yourself or to replace what reality withheld from your imagination by the application of your powers of thought, and thus to give birth to a Greece from within and in a rational way, so to speak.” The creative force that arises from the deepest inwardness, that not only creates the present, but that even gives birth to the past anew out of its own essence: the Goethean spirit. In this letter, Schiller selflessly characterizes it wonderfully, in which he truly laid the foundation for the friendship between these two minds, Goethe and Schiller; Schiller wonderfully characterizes this inwardness of the creation of the Goethean spirit. And truly, Goethe appears in the image of German idealism with all his striving.

Therefore, out of the striving of Goethe's personality, a poetic figure could arise that – I do not believe that one has to be prejudiced to say this – is uniquely placed in world literature and in the whole of world creation, the figure of Faust. How does he stand there, this Faust? As the highest representative of human striving, but still – after all, he is a university professor at heart – as a representative of the striving for knowledge, for knowledge! And right at the beginning of Faust, what becomes a riddle, what becomes a big question? Knowledge itself, the striving for knowledge becomes a question! Two elements come to life in this Faustian legend. And one must point out this living out of the two elements if one wants to understand the basic character of Goethe's Faustian creation on the one hand and, on the other hand, its connection with the innermost nature of German spiritual striving.

Of course, the term magic and everything connected with it is not exactly popular today. But Goethe was compelled to place his Faust before magic, after knowledge and insight had become a question, a riddle, for Faust. And the fact that today we are able to separate everything that is conventionally associated with the concept of magic from a deeper spiritual striving will be my particular task tomorrow in the lecture where I want to speak about the eternal powers of the human soul. But the way in which Goethe has Faust turn to magic can perhaps be thought of as quite separate from all the wild superstition and nebulous striving associated with the word magic and with magical striving in general. One can overlook secondary matters and look at the main thing, namely, the fundamental human striving as expressed in Faust. Why must Faust, who has really been involved in all human sciences, wanted to gain clarity in all human sciences about that which underlies existence as a source, why must Faust turn to magic, to a completely different way of interacting with nature than is the case with the ordinary pursuit of knowledge? Why? Because Faust has experienced everything that can be experienced in the pursuit of knowledge; because he has experienced everything that can be felt by a person who has a yearning for the depths of the nature of the world; everything that can be felt by a person when he feels alive in himself, which external science can comprehend. This science visualizes the laws of nature in concepts, in ideas. But do I exist with these concepts, or do I only have something in these concepts that weaves itself as a ghost in my own soul and that perhaps, with regard to this image, is clearly, but not with regard to its life, directly connected to the sources of existence? What forces itself into the soul as a question of this kind can be felt in different ways. It can be felt weakly, but it can also be felt strongly, so that the enigma that lives itself into the soul through these feelings becomes like a nightmare from which this human soul wants to free itself. For the soul can say to itself: All this knowledge is only something that one forms on the basis of existence. All this knowledge is something that has been subtracted from existence. But I must still descend into existence with what I experience in myself.

What one might say Schelling believed in his presumptuousness, Faust cannot believe: that by living in concepts, one creates in nature. Rather, he wants to descend into nature. He wants to seek out nature where it lives in creation. He wants to unfold an activity that is such that the human soul accomplishes it, but which, in that this activity is within the soul, is both creating nature and creating soul at the same time. Because Faust cannot do this in any other way, he tries to do it by seeking to invigorate within himself the path that ancient magicians have tried. Faust tries to have something in his soul that does not merely depict nature in terms within him, but that appears to him in what lives and creates behind appearances. He seeks to bring the spiritual in the creative power of nature, which flows and weaves through the world, which surges up and down in the tides of life and the storm of action, not only into knowledge, but seeks to connect with it in a living way. He seeks the path to it in such a way that the spiritual creation of nature stands beside him, as the soul of a human being stands embodied here in physical existence, so that one experiences existence, not just knows about it.

And in this way Faust stands before nature in the same way as—one need only point to a spirit like Jakob Böhme, in his own way, one need only look at that which underlies German philosophical striving in the idealistic period—Faust, yearning , yearning for knowledge, expecting certain achievements, to which he wants to rise, so in the face of nature, so next to nature, as befits the innermost life and weaving of the German spirit: to create nature in the soul and to let it become living science, living knowledge. That is why Goethe has to bring his Faust together with magic.

There is something else that Goethe brings together with his Faust, something that perhaps even more than the magical element that confronts us in the first scenes and then continues in what I would call a directly dramatic way, while it loses itself as a magical element – which seems perhaps even more wonderful than this magical element for this Goethean Faustian poem, which is now also intimately interwoven with the spiritual striving of the German people.

Let us try – as I said, without pronouncing dogmatically or in any way on the value – to place ourselves in the position of Jakob Böhme; let us try to bring to life before our soul one of the aspects of Jakob Böhme's striving. A great question confronts Jakob Böhme with regard to the riddle of existence, the question that arises from the contemplation of the world when one says: The world is governed by the World Spirit in its goodness, in its wisdom. He who is able to immerse himself in the spirit of the world senses the surging of the world's wisdom, the surging of the world's benevolence. But evil intrudes, evil in the form of suffering, evil in the form of human deeds. If we do not look at the abstraction of the thought, but at a striving for knowledge that is based on feeling and emotion, a striving for knowledge that takes hold of the whole person, we stand in awe at the way in which Jakob Böhme raises the question of the origin of evil. He cannot avoid saying to himself: the spirit of the world, the divine spirit of the world, must be thought of as connected with the sources of life; but one does not find the origin of evil by immersing oneself in the spirit of the world. And yet evil is there. — With tremendous intensity, the question of the origin of evil arises in the quest for knowledge of Jakob Böhme. He seeks to answer it by asking about evil, as one might ask about the origin of the deeds of light. What Jakob Böhme has developed in depth can only be illustrated here through this comparison, for the sake of brevity. For, just as one can never derive from the light that which appears as the deeds of light, but always needs darkness for this; just as one can never derive darkness, with which light must appear together, from the light itself, but rather one must go to this source of light if one wants to examine the deeds of light in external nature, Jakob Böhme attempts to find the essence, not merely the principle, of evil, not in the Divine either, but in that which takes its place beside the Divine, like the shadow, like the darkness beside the light, which one does not seek in the light, but for which one does not need reasons in the same way as for the light itself. He seeks to find it by undertaking the previously characterized journey into the depths of the soul and at the same time trying to grasp the existence of the world at its sources in the soul. Thus he does not confront evil as something that can be recognized in a concept, but as something that he tries to grasp in its reality. In his attitude towards evil as something that cannot be grasped conceptually but only in reality, Schelling is followed in his very significant treatise “Philosophical Investigations Concerning the Essence of Human Freedom and the Related Objects”, 1809. Schelling consciously follows Jakob Böhme in his search for evil.

Goethe, from the depths of the German soul, sensed this riddle of evil in a completely different way. Just think what a challenge it was to create a work of poetry in the way that Goethe did in his Faust. On the one hand, Goethe had to present a purely inward striving, which, after all, could only be expressed, one might think, by depicting a person who presents himself to the world lyrically. Goethe seeks to bring it to dramatic life as Faust stands before the world. He does this, however, by allowing what lives in the soul to shine through in such a way that it is inwardly alive in the soul and becomes external. The dramatic not only places the human being in the world as he stands in it lyrically, but also as he stands in it actively. This enables Goethe, as a dramatist must, to lead man out of subjectivity, out of the mere inwardness of the being into the outer world. But one should try to imagine what a challenge lay in what can be characterized in the following way. Now Faust is to strive, as man does when he lets the riddles of existence take effect on him, to go forward in the world, to become a fighter in the world. And yet such struggles, which arise from the riddles of knowledge, are inner struggles. As a rule, man stands alone in this, and as a rule nothing dramatic is connected with it. Dramas proceed differently, in that one simply lets the interior of the human soul unroll. What enabled Goethe to transform what is basically only an internal matter of the human soul into a vivid dramatic image? Simply by the fact that, just as he brings the human soul out into nature through magic on the one hand, on the other hand he brings this human soul out into the big wide world by trying to show that when one seeks out seeks out evil and wants to experience it in its reality, one cannot understand it merely as an inner principle and seek an inner explanation for it, but one must step out into life as it confronts one full of life. Therefore, Goethe cannot direct his attention to evil in such a way that he finds something in him that is mere philosophy, but he must direct his attention to the essence, to one who fights Faust, to one who is the embodiment of evil, who is as alive as the principle of evil as man is alive here in his physical body. And he must be able to feel and show that the fight against evil is not just an abstract, inward struggle, but that it is a struggle that is waged hourly, momentarily, in which man lives. In everything he does, he essentially encounters evil. Thus this obstacle was overcome. What is otherwise an abstract philosophical principle was brought into direct existence, into essential existence. Walking, changing, acting, fighting were brought about, which one otherwise speaks about. For these reasons, on the one hand, the magical element had to be revived in Faust, in that Faust tries to penetrate the shell of nature. On the other hand, evil had to be contrasted with Faust as something essential, something that is much more than what is usually called an idea or a concept; something that is usually conceived as living only within the soul had to be embodied, placed out into the world. And so in poetry, too, there was a need to resort to that deepening of the conception of evil which we find as such a wonderful fundamental trait of the German spiritual striving, from Jakob Böhme up through all the deeper German spirits who cannot satisfy themselves by seeking evil only in philosophical concepts, but who want to go out into the world. And in going out into the world, they encounter evil just as one encounters another human being in the physical world. In order to spiritually unlock the inner world, the striving had to connect with such a view of evil. That is to say, just as nature is to be sensed through magic to its sources, so spiritual life is to be placed in the context of human life by showing evil itself as a spiritually active being. Thus, as a poet, Goethe elevates man to the realm of the ideal, but of the living ideal.

And he was faced with a dilemma in yet another way: he, the great artist, of whom Schiller said that he could give birth to a Greece out of his own inwardness. He was faced with a dilemma in yet another way, one that we may only gradually come to see in its full significance. In Faust, we see the striving human being. Many commentators on Faust have emphasized the fact that Goethe did a great deed in having Faust redeemed, in not allowing Faust to perish, as was the case in earlier representations of Faust, but in having him redeemed, because, in accordance with the newer world view, one must assume that within man lie the forces that can achieve victory over evil. Yes, what this actually means for the overall view of the Faust epic is something that is not usually considered. One says, offhand: Goethe's Faust could only become what it is if Goethe had the idea from the very beginning to take into account the innermost nature of man in such a way that Faust could be redeemed. One imagines a drama, one imagines a work of art that takes place in time and that is supposed to be great, in such a way that one knows from the beginning what must come out in the end. And that is what it should actually be. For man, as one so often says, must bring with him his convictions from the highest riddles of life. Actually, nothing more and nothing less is expressed by this than that “Faust” should, by its very nature, be the most boring piece of writing in the world. After all, every pedant today knows, or at least believes he knows, that if man strives correctly, he should ultimately be redeemed. And now one of the greatest poets is to present a grandiose world poem in order to show this self-evident truth through all possible forms! And yet, Goethe has succeeded in embodying the thought just expressed, not in some abstract way, but in presenting living life before us through a long, long series of images. Why? Simply because he has shown how that which, when inwardly conceived in abstract thoughts, would be a mere truism, a matter of course, is set forth in life in a completely different way; because he attempts to extend life, on the one hand, in the direction of the magical , on the other hand, towards the spiritual side; because the striving for nature is not a striving for knowledge but a magical one; because the striving for evil or the recognition of evil is not just a philosophical matter but a matter of life. How does something become a matter of life that is otherwise only the soul's inner, abstract striving? It becomes a matter of life when the human being, when he stands before nature in the same way that Faust stands before nature in the sense of his striving, wants to go beyond abstract knowledge. He wants to go beyond that which can only live in concepts, which spins itself out as ideas, as concepts. He wants to enter into the sphere of nature, where there is creative life, with which the soul's own creative life connects, in order to go beyond nature's creation through mere abstract conceptual life.

But when you take hold of the matter in full life, you enter into that in man from which man in turn emerges by being able to acquire consciousness in his concepts. One need only go back to what, for example, the Greek Stoics strove for in their earnest quest for knowledge. They wanted a wisdom that would smooth the world, that would survey the world, and that would have nothing to do with human passion. Man should become dispassionate, dispassionate, in order to feel his soul absorbed in the calm conceptual grasping of the wisdom that pervades the world. Why did the Stoics want this? Because they felt that one comes out of a certain intoxication of life, out of a half-unconscious immersion in life, by coming to dispassionate understanding. Stoicism consists precisely in the search for a life free of intoxication.

Now, in the course of human evolution, the personality that is to be represented in Faust stands before nature in such a way that knowledge becomes a question for it, the very thing by which man tries to save himself from the intoxication of life. He can enter into the intoxication of life by immersing himself with the creative powers of the soul, but he does not absorb the same powers with which he has just risen, but rather he submerges himself seeking to connect the foundations of the soul with the foundations of nature. But from this arises what is now the error of Faust in the first part of the story, the submerging into sensuality, into sensual life, even into the outer trivial life, which he must undergo in his own personality because he is to connect what lives in his own personality, what lives in the depths of his soul, with what lives in the depths of world existence. The task of the first part of Faust and also of a large part of the second part is to present in a lively way the error by which man can be tested in his soul.

To what extent man, by wanting to grasp the world personally, the world in its power through knowledge, exposes himself to the danger of being submerged in the personal and being drawn into the whirlpool of life, is depicted in “Faust”. And that does not depend on some abstract doctrine, but on the will, on the character of this Faust. It is only through this that the poem becomes a poem. And on the other hand, since the human being strives for a real knowledge of evil and is not satisfied with a principal, conceptual understanding of evil, he must break through the ordinary life of the soul; for there he finds only concepts, ideas and feelings. He must go through this soul life, he must go to the place where man, without seeing the essential reality through the senses, perceives an essential reality through the pure soul experiences, from the spirit. This becomes the task of the one who wants to recognize evil in its reality through direct experience. This becomes the task of Faust in relation to Mephistopheles. But man cannot approach evil at all as he is at first. It is virtually impossible to approach evil as man is at first; for one must know the world, and one can only know it by knowing it in the soul. One must form concepts. One must have in one's soul that which can be experienced in one's soul. After all, as newer philosophers have so rightly and so wrongly asserted, one cannot transcend one's consciousness. But if one remains in consciousness, evil remains only an abstract concept, does not appear in essence.

Faust is faced with a great, so to speak, impossible task. But great, as it says in “Faust” itself, is “he who desires the impossible”. Faust is faced with the virtually impossible task of going beyond that which is the sole source of his consciousness, of going out of consciousness. This will be his further path, the path out of the ordinary consciousness of the soul. Tomorrow we will speak about the path of knowledge out of the ordinary consciousness to those realms where the spirit is grasped directly as spirit. This stands before Faust as a task. He cannot find evil in its essential nature in the field to which consciousness is initially directed. Therefore, he must again, and now not in a general, trivial, abstract way, come to find the reconciliation of man with existence, but in the way that he is able to do so as an individual human being. It must be shown how he finds his way out of ordinary consciousness to an understanding of life that now comes from deeper forces of the soul.

Thus we see Faust going, I might say, everywhere touching and feeling the existence of the world, feeling it inwardly, to see where he can find the gate through which he can penetrate into the inner being. Thus we see how he soars so high that, having transformed the soul and transformed it more and more, he really descends in experience to those depths towards which Jacob Boehme strove and which are then hinted at to us in the second part of “Faust” that Faust finds something widest, greatest, highest and at the same time deepest, which he had already striven for in his walk to the Mothers, in that his senses fail him, in that he goes blind and in his inner being inner bright light comes to life. Out of the ordinary consciousness, to a different consciousness, to a consciousness that slumbers in the depths of the soul, as the depths of the sources of nature slumber under the shell of nature that one sees with the outer senses, to a deeper consciousness that always accompanies man between birth and death, but that is not present in the ordinary field of consciousness. Faust must be guided in two ways through the strengthening of the spiritual life to the gates that lead from the abstractness of the idea to the livingness of spiritual existence itself: As a magician, Faust knocks at the gate of existence, which leads from mere observation of nature to co-creation with nature; in his dealings, in the living, dramatic dealings with Mephistopheles and with all that is structured by them, Faust knocks at the other gate, at that other gate that leads from the ordinary consciousness of the soul to a superconscious, supersensible consciousness, which opens up a spiritual world, from which evil also really originates, behind the ordinary existence of the soul, just as external natural revelation is only the expression of that which lives and moves entirely in nature.

Through the connection with what, one can say, is peculiar to the German national spirit, Goethe created a piece of writing that could only become a piece of writing in the most difficult sense. For the most non-sensuous, the most distant from the senses, the purely inward, was to be shaped dramatically. But this inwardness can only become dramatic if it is expanded in two directions. And Goethe sensed the necessity of this expansion in two directions. In doing so, he created the possibility of placing this unique poetry, which in a sense no one else in another nation would have conceived in the same way, into the world evolution.

If one has these thoughts, one can perhaps still raise the question: Yes, but did Goethe not actually create a work of art that requires a great deal of preparation to understand? It almost seems that way. For the commentaries that scholars, both German and non-German, have written about Goethe's “Faust” fill several libraries, not just one. But if one were to believe that a great deal of preparation is needed to understand the Faust epic, then the thought must arise: what did Goethe actually make this Faust epic out of? Was it the result of a philosophical quest? Was it speculation about the magical foundations of nature? Or was it speculation about the sources and origins of evil? No, truly not! He saw the puppet show, a pure folk performance, the folk play of Faust, which was presented to the simplest minds. He transformed what lives and breathes in it according to his own mind. The Faust legend, therefore, presents us with a work of art and a work of the spirit in the best sense of the words. If we look only at the most general aspect of its origin, it shows how this summit of German intellectual life has its source in the most direct folklore, that is, in the most elementary of the folk spirit, and how German idealistic intellectual striving is connected with the essence of the German folk spirit. It can also be proved historically from the origin of the highest poetry of mankind from the simplest folk drama. This is a significant world-historical drama, that a spirit that can delve so deeply into the folklore in its inner work, like Goethe, is able to create something supreme out of the most primitive folklore, something supreme that, as we have been able to show, is also connected to the most significant philosophical pursuit, to the philosophical idealistic pursuit in Germany's great intellectual period. In Faust — as I said, these things must not be taken dogmatically — we see the striving Fichte. How? Fichte does not seek to grasp being and the ego by bringing thought to consciousness, as Descartes and Cartesius did. Instead, Fichte seeks to grasp being and the ego by connecting with the world-creating powers that play into the inner soul, so that the ego creates itself in every moment. We see this, only translated into the dramatic will, into the directly living, flashing up again in Faust. Faust is not satisfied with the self that human striving for knowledge was able to convey to him, but he wants to experience his own self directly in the spiritual world. The whole progress of the dramatic action in 'Faust' consists in the fact that the ego, in its dealings with the world, creates itself anew, always elevating itself. Fichte lives in Goethe's Faust; Schelling also lives in Goethe's Faust, in that Faust, on the one hand, seeks to unite the truth of magic with his soul, but also seeks true striving in the depths of the soul seeks the true striving in the depths of the soul; in that which cannot be found in the ordinary life of the soul, in thinking, feeling and willing, he seeks it in his dealings with the representative of evil, as a direct spirit. Faust truly seeks out nature where it lives in creation. Schelling had, I might say, presumptuously explained it when he said: To understand nature is to create nature! Fichte stands on healthier ground when he says: To understand nature is to live with one's own creation in the creation of nature. But one can see how the power for a deeper striving for knowledge, for the sources of existence, also lives in Fichte. Hegel strove for the sober thought, and one cannot be more sober than Hegel. The world spirit with which the soul in Hegelian philosophy seeks to unite itself becomes a mere logical spirit. To think of the divine spirit of the world as a logical soul that only builds the world logically! It must not be taken dogmatically, but it must be taken as an expression of the striving that remains mystical even in the most extreme logic, that seeks a union of the deepest part of the soul with the summit of the whole existence of the world itself in nature and history. Hegel must also be taken in this way, that one cannot find one's own self in what the senses provide us, but only in what the human soul can achieve within itself when it comes out of the sensual world. This is also what Hegel's philosophy strives for. And Faust, after his eyesight has gone, is illuminated by a brighter light within. What Hegel seeks on the right path, only to fail to perceive as the right goal, is what Faust seeks: to let one's own self merge with the world-self, to unite with it, and thus to experience the world-self in one's own self.

As Wilhelm von Humboldt said, can we not say that this German striving has not only tried in a beautiful way to establish harmony between philosophy – if one wants to call the pursuit of a worldview such – and poetry, and art in general, but that the German spirit has also brought this striving to external expression in a very unique way in Faust? Is not the very essence of Germanness characterized in this harmonious blending of the creations of the imagination with the quest of the sense of truth? Is it not otherwise in the world, where one finds that the imagination creates in freedom, but in unreality? The sense of truth creates according to the necessities of existence, but it does not come to a real life through this, only to an objectification, to a representation of experience. To bring fantasy out of its unreality and to animate that which it is able to create in such a way that the created lives together with the living spirit, so that harmony, harmonious harmony between poetry and philosophy can also exist in a work of art for once – that is what Goethe attempts, out of the whole originality and the truly not at all philosophical nature of his being. And when he has achieved this harmonizing of poetry and philosophy, of imagination and philosophy, by connecting with the most popular sources of the German spirit, then we may say: just as this Goethean work (we might also show it in other of his works, but it is most clearly and explicitly shown in his “Faust” — shows itself in connection with what the idealistic German world view has sought; there it is, as it now stands before us, seemingly the spiritual heritage of a few who prepare themselves especially for it. One can also see that, basically, supporters and opponents have tried to come to terms with the paths taken in the Goethe, Schiller, Schelling and Hegel era in the further course of German intellectual life up to our time. Infinite efforts have been made to understand the paths taken at that time along which one can find the sources of existence. But anyone who delves deeper into the ideas of those who lived in the arena of German idealism may come to the conclusion that what was developed there need not remain the property of only a few, of only a few individuals. Of course, if today we want to delve into the world view as presented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel themselves, if we get involved in their books, it is understandable that we will soon close the books again if we do not want to make a special study of them. For it is understandable to say: All this is quite incomprehensible. Nor is there any criticism to be made of those who claim that it is incomprehensible and indigestible. But there is a possibility, and this possibility is actually offered by human development, that what appears to be an indigestible good for a few can become quite popular, can really find its way into the whole spiritual cultural life of humanity. In order to grasp the cosmic striving of man in the way it was grasped in German idealism, it was necessary that some people should devote themselves entirely to the particular formulation of concepts and ideas, that they should attempt this in a solitude of spiritual life that stands alone as such.

But it does not have to stay that way. It is possible to popularize that which lives in Fichte's thoughts, which are so abstract, so abstruse, and, as many might say from their point of view, so convoluted – I know that for many people I am saying something paradoxical, but time will teach that it is correct – if you live into the spirit and the way of thinking, to present it in such a way that it can be directly conveyed to the boy or girl in earliest youth; that it can be understood in the way one understands something that lies completely in the nature of human life if one wants to grasp this human life. And so with all the other spiritual heroes! It can be done just as it can with the Grimm fairy tales. It takes no more spiritual activity of the soul to recognize, feel and sense Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in the depths of their creations than it does to grasp a fairy tale in the right imaginative way, as it is in the Grimm fairy tales. But the path will first have to lead people to live with something that belongs to the highest that humanity has gone through in terms of knowledge and poetry. And that is the significance of this idealistic striving of the German spirit. If one can show how one can grasp the essence of the soul in a simple way by appealing to the creative powers that lie within everyone, if one can show how these powers can be accessed in the right way, then one can bring this to people in a simple, elementary and direct way, whereas Fichte, to find it for the first time, needed a particularly high level of intellect. The same applies to everything else. But is what I am saying really so incredible? I do not think that anyone who remembers how he learned to understand the Pythagorean theorem at school will find it so incredible. But that does not mean that he is inclined to consider himself a Pythagoras, although the spiritual level and power of Pythagoras was necessary to first discover the Pythagorean theorem. An intense stream of spiritual world experience will flow from what the best German minds have sought in lonely, abstruse thoughts within German idealism, down to the most ordinary aspirations and lives of human beings.

And there is much, infinitely much, in this ordinary striving of man, if he is able to relate to the ever-creative and to feel that the human ego is creatively creative in the infinite. It is only by merging with the creative forces of nature that the human soul will be able to experience and feel the great beauties of nature as it reveals itself. And in a similar way, this applies to the other elements of this German intellectual life.

One must feel this, then the right feeling comes over one for the connection of the German striving with the entire world striving. And to revive this feeling in our days, it seems certainly appropriate to our destiny-bearing time. And it already belongs to that in which the German soul finds its strength. In conclusion, an example of this.

Even before the unity of the German people, the new German state, came about out of the context of the world, out of history, an unknown spirit writes beautiful words in his contemplation of Goethe's “Faust”. It was in 1865. I only quote these words of an otherwise quite unknown interpreter of Faust because they express what countless others have felt in exactly the same way. Since the emergence of the elevation in German idealism, which we have spoken of again today, countless of the best German minds have felt the connection between the paths that the idea takes in idealism into the spirit of nature and into the deeper foundations of the soul-spiritual itself. They felt that there is a connection between what the German spirit at its height has created for thought, what it has given to humanity as the sum of thoughts and artistic creations, and a connection between all this and what can also live in the German deed, in what the German people have to do when they have to carry out their world struggles on a different stage than that of thought. The connection between German intellectual life and German action was most deeply felt by those who knew how to place German thought and German idealistic work highest in their way of thinking. And from the contemplation of the past of German idealism, with its ascent to the heights where thought introduces to the life of the spirit—from the contemplation of this sphere of German idealism, there has always emerged the most beautiful hope that the German people will find the impulse for action from the same source when they need it.

What could be shown by many can be exemplified by one – and deliberately by one who is little known, Kreyssig, an explainer of Faust. Kreyssig, in 1865, wrote a paper about Goethe's “Faust” in which he tried to clarify, in his own way, what Goethe actually wanted with his “Faust.” He concludes with the words:

“And so we would then also know the overall impression that the contemplation of this giant monument of our great educational epoch, which after all remained unfinished and fragmentary, leaves behind, here we cannot summarize it better than in the simple memory of a passage from the famous legacy of the then 75-year-old poet to the younger world, which was preparing to take on new paths.”

Kreyssig cites Goethe's own thoughts, where he envisages the way in which Goethe sought a path into the spiritual world into old age. Kreyssig states how the power that leads into this spiritual world seems to him to be connected with the power that German action is to create in distant, distant times, which Goethe, as an old man, could only guess at:

The earnest style, the high art of the ancients,
The primeval secret of eternal forms,
It is familiar with men and with gods,
It will leaf through books as readily as through rocks.
For what Homer created and the Scipios
Will never live in the learned hothouse!
They wanted to transplant us into the hothouse;
But the German oak grew to the whole!
A storm of growth has overtaken it,
It has taken the glass of the hothouse with it.
Now grow, O oak, grow to the delight of the world.
I can already see new solar auras flying.
And when my gray eyelashes close,
a mild light will still pour forth,
from whose reflection of those stars
the late grandchildren will learn to see,
and in prophetically higher visions
to accomplish greater things for the world and humanity.

And the “Faust” interpreter adds - in 1865 -:

"Let us add the wish that the words of the master, who looks down on us with a mild light from better stars, may come true for his people, who are seeking their way to clarity in darkness, confusion and struggle, but, God willing, with indestructible strength, and that “in those higher accounts of God and humanity, which the poet of 'Faust' expects from the coming centuries, German action too, no longer as a symbolic shadow, but in beautiful, life-affirming reality, may one day find its place and its glorification alongside German thought and German feeling!"

Thus thought a German personality in 1865 of the German idea in connection with the hoped-for German deed. How the disembodied souls of such personalities may look upon the field in which the German deed is called upon for its realization today!

But precisely in connection with the faith, love and hope of such personalities, and especially of those personalities who, either through creation or understanding, have stood within the world view of German idealism, it may be said: the German need not, if he wants to recognize the impulses that are to inspire him, disparage any opponent. He has only to reflect on what he must believe, according to the innermost part of his being, to be his world-task. He must therefore reflect that he looks up to the way in which it has been handed down by his fathers, his ancestors, to his time; how it has become a force for the present, and how from this force, which is before his eyes, which lives in his soul, from the present hope may spring into the future.

Indeed, in the context of the present with German idealism, one can say from the innermost feeling: By looking to the past of thought or to what he has striven for outside of thought, the German feels feel his world task; he may feel it in this fateful time, he may feel it out of his love for his past and out of his faith in the power of the present, which becomes his when he has the right love for what the past has brought him. And from this love and from this faith, from this dual relationship between past and present, will spring in the right way that which, transcending blood and pain, allows us to glimpse a blessed present: German hope for the future. Thus, by delving into the idealism of the German essence, we can create a triad of love for the German past, faith in the German present, and hope for the German future.

Allow me to expand on some of the things I mentioned yesterday. What I will say today can, of course, provide no more than a few pointers and suggestions; while, of course, a wealth of evidence could be provided to support everything that needs to be said from the medical point of view, from the perspective that I hinted at yesterday, which of course cannot be discussed today – and in such a short time anyway.

I already indicated yesterday that through the inner training of the soul, one can actually come to distinguish in the human being the actual physical body, then what I called yesterday – as I said, one must have terminology, and one does not need to bother about it — what I called yesterday the etheric body, which is the first supersensible link in human nature; that one then has to distinguish the astral body, which I also discussed yesterday in terms of its effect on kidney function, and finally the ego organization in the human being. When we speak of a person in a healthy or diseased state, it is always necessary to bear in mind that these four aspects of the human being have distinctly different functions that interact and exert mutual effects on one another in both healthy and diseased states. And only when one is able to visualize the unity of the human being from this confluence of four, I might say separate, levels of function, is one also able to gain a true conception of the healthy or the sick human being. I already mentioned yesterday: disease processes are, after all, natural processes. And with unbiased observation, one cannot really find a boundary between the so-called normal, healthy processes of the human organism and the diseased processes if one does not know this structure of human nature and thus knows: if any of these members interferes with the entire human unit more than it should interfere, then this is precisely how the abnormal, diseased functioning of the human being arises.

But we still cannot arrive at an idea of how the various forces, the sensory and the supersensible, interact in this miracle of the human organism, if we do not know one thing that was actually in my mind when I conceived it more than thirty-five years ago, but which I have only dared to speak out in recent years. Only in recent years have I been able to find the courage to say it, and it will be clear from this that the research meant here is no less conscientious than what is considered research today. The following is at issue.

We must also subdivide the human being according to the nervous-sense system, which is primarily localized in the head. But the human being is not such that one can say anything other than: the nervous-sense system is primarily localized in the head organization. It extends over the whole human being, and what I have to distinguish as three or four elements of human nature interlock; and when we speak of the nerve-sense organization, we can really only say, exactly and precisely, that the human being is most “head” in the head, but the head organization, the nerve-sense organization, extends over the whole human being.

Then, what can be called the rhythmic organization of the human being in the broadest sense plays into this nerve-sense organization. The rhythm of breathing and the rhythm of blood circulation are, of course, the most prominent phenomena within the rhythmic human being; but other rhythms also come into consideration: the rhythm of sleeping and waking, the rhythm that expresses itself in the narrower sense in digestion, and so on. Again, the rhythmic system extends throughout the whole human being and is only preferentially localized in the middle of the human being. And thirdly, we have to distinguish – we can look at it in one way or another – the metabolic-limb system. This is the system that primarily serves the movement of the human being and that in turn extends throughout the whole human being. These two systems, the metabolic system and the locomotor system, are also closely connected, which will perhaps become clear from the inner content of the observation I am about to make.

However, these three systems, although they are interrelated, are strictly distinguished from one another, so that we can say: In the nervous-sensory organization, what is physical, etheric, astral body and I-organization works quite differently than, for example, in the rhythmic organization or in the metabolic-limb organization. These four aspects of human nature – physical body, etheric body, astral body and I – are present in all three systems, so to speak, in separate locations, but they in turn engage with each of these systems in a wide variety of ways. And only when we are able to say, for example, how the ego organization or the astral body intervenes in the head system, are we able to speak of healthy and sick people in an exact and appropriate way. I would like to discuss this for a specific case.

Let us take the head organization, and more specifically how the nerve-sense system is localized in the head. Here too, we are of course speaking of the human being as a whole, because what can be said of the head is also present to a lesser degree in the rhythmic human being, in the middle human being, and in the metabolic-limb human being. But the essential point can be grasped through the head organization: the question here is — as I said, with the restriction I have just made — what is localized first in this head organization. The human being is entirely head, but I discuss the head organization in the head in the narrower sense. First of all, the nervous-sensory organization is localized; the various sensory organs of perception have their continued effects in the inner human organism, so we must say if we want to speak exactly about the senses. Now the question is: What do we actually have before us when we first speak of the sensory organization? — Here, too, I can only give a kind of general idea.

The sense organization is usually discussed in an extremely abstract way, so that one speaks of it as if it were mere concepts. The anatomical and physiological basis is discussed, but – as can be seen from the terribly amateurish discussions that can be found in physiology – the actual functioning within the sensory tract is something that is basically never properly considered. For this is something that behaves in the opposite ratio, so that one can say: The respiratory function is in the reverse proportion to the sense function as the blood circulation system is to the digestive function. So the digestive function, if I may express myself crudely, is, so to speak, a condensed blood circulation. Or the other way around: what circulates in the blood is a refined digestive process. And the sense process is a refined respiratory process. I could also say: the breathing process is a coarsened sensory process. These two processes differ quantitatively, not qualitatively. This, for example, is the reason why the methodology prescribed in Indian yoga philosophy for deeper knowledge is not the mere ordinary nerve-sense process, but a certain modified breathing process. What is to be achieved in the practice of yoga in this modified breathing process is nothing less than a coarser realization. There is actually a great deal of wisdom in this lowering of the process of realization into the breathing process through the yoga philosophy of India. But it is precisely what takes place from the senses inwards, a refined, so to speak spiritualized breathing process. In this refined breathing process, I would like to say, in those places where sensory perception first takes place, the function of the I and the function of the astral body must be present in the greatest possible freedom. They must be able to work in the eye, must be able to work in the ear; but they must be able to work in such a way that the effect is really transmitted to the physical organization.

If we consider the eye, we find the following. In the eye, first of all, is the physical organization of the eye. In it is the etheric body of the eye, which takes care of the vitalistic aspect. But then we have the astral and the I-organization of the human being; these must work independently for the eye, but they must take hold of the physical substance of the eye. Now, in line with what I indicated yesterday, what is found in the human organism is also found in nature outside, only that the natural process is not found in the human organism as a healthy process, but as an unhealthy one; but there is always a healthy process in nature corresponding to a process in the human organism. What the sense organs perceive outside in nature is most outstandingly encountered when you consider the way it functions, which, I would say, is captured in silica, in quartz, in silicic acid, when you therefore perceive as a living process that which appears to you as something that has become solid, as something congealed, so to speak. All solid bodies are only solidified processes, solidified occurrences. If we look at the silicic acid process, we have to say: where we find silicic acid in nature, where we find quartzite – it is also present in other substances in nature, but most prominently in quartz – we have something in what takes place there that corresponds to what takes place in the human being through the human organization, for example in the eye or in another sense organ. There is no justification for the assertion that we have quartz in there in a substantial sense; but what we have in the eye or in another sense organ is functionally, in terms of the process, the same as what is going on outside in quartz. And again, when we observe this process in the sense organs, which proves to be identical with the process in quartz, we come to the conclusion - and this is now also shown by mineralogy in the analogy of external natural , that of all the factors that can be involved in such a process as we have in the quartz process, the one that is least able to interact harmoniously with it is that which is carried by the organization of phosphorus. If you look at what has become fixed in phosphorus in nature outside, as a living process, and take the living interaction of the two, you have the same process that you have in the human eye, as a representative of the sense organization in general. And through this interaction of one process, which is like the phosphorus process, and another process, which is like the silicic acid process, the eye is the organ that can intervene in the physical organization of the eye, which is present as the ego and as the astral body in man. Everywhere the physical organization must create the basis for the spiritual to intervene in the right way.

Now something else is the case. If the process that takes place in the eye through this interaction of the phosphorus process and the silicic acid process, which represents an intimate, harmonious interaction of the two, were to continue into the brain, we would be completely filled with a sensory process, we would be completely given over to nature, we would not be lifted out of nature as human beings. But we have to lift ourselves out of nature as human beings. And for this to happen, a different process must take place in the brain than in the senses, a process that separates the human being from the processes of nature. While something actually takes place in the eye that is only a continuation of an external natural process into vitalization – the sense organs are actually like gulfs that extend into the human being – something must separate in the brain and become independent.

This happens again through a process that we also find in nature. What, if I may express myself in psychological terms, perception turns into an idea with the help of the human organization, is a process within the nerve-sense organization that corresponds to those processes that we find in lead. Therefore, we can say: When that which is perceived by the eye goes back further into the nerve-sense system, then a process must meet it that is the same as the lead process. Only through this can man also think what he perceives. This is what makes the brain a thinking organ; otherwise it would also be a perceiving organ. In this way, man becomes independent.

In saying this, I have indicated something that is characteristic in the organization of the head. I said, therefore, that the same thing that takes place outside in the lead process must take place in the organization of the head in order for the thinking process to come about in man.

Let us now take the lead function and not bring it into the nervous system – when a person is born, the lead is there from nature itself, the lead function is there, without the substance of the lead being able to be detected – but let us now bring the lead function into the digestive system and into the rest; life itself takes care of this, for example sometimes in lead poisoning. If you now observe in all phenomena what lead does to the metabolic limb of man, you get a picture that is presented in various individual symptoms, but which is actually most characteristically summarized in the symptom complex of dementia senilis or cerebral arteriosclerosis: you then get the picture of the human organism decaying in old age. In other words, if I apply the same process that ensures my independence as an organic being in the brain to the other pole of the human being, to the digestive system and to the limb system that is connected to it, then I get a clinical picture; what is a disease process in the metabolic-limb system is a necessary organic function for the nerve-sense human being. If I therefore regard sclerosis as a slow dying, I must also say that in a certain attenuated form it must continually function in the human head, where it is the normal state.

Thus the three members of the human being are distinct from one another: what is the normal state in the nervous-sense organization is a manifestation of disease in the other member of the human organism. But as I said yesterday, how should we approach therapy?

We have to relieve the astral body and the ego organization of the task of dealing with the disease process, when the disease process is allowed to run rampant. So what must we do when we have sclerosis? We must approach it in such a way that we relieve the human astral body of the digestive limb system of what it has to do with the aging, disintegrating, sclerotic body. And we can do that by giving it to the lead, the lead in a certain dosage. And this has led to our finding a remedy for this, which you will find in our list as remedy number 1, as the remedy for arteriosclerosis. It is therefore clear from the outset, through real knowledge of the human being, that the sclerosis can be substantially alleviated by introducing lead into the human being in the appropriate way; only now one must bring the lead to effectiveness. It is not necessarily the case that just because I have introduced the lead into the organism, it is actually effective. Here the further insights of a true knowledge of the human being are of help.

It helps then to be able to distinguish in the human organism between the building up and the breaking down forces. The latter are active, for example, in sclerosis, where the human organism is disintegrating. In the main, in the brain, the human organism is constantly disintegrating, because the brain is constantly filled with a slight sclerosis; this is in its organization. So everything depends on our ability to distinguish between the processes of degeneration and the actual vitalization processes, the anabolic, growth processes. If we can distinguish between these two processes, we can then look at that part of the human organism which carries the anabolic processes in the most eminent sense: in early childhood, the whole human organism. It is not yet overburdened with organs for thinking, with organs for the rest of the soul's activity; it initially lives in the organization of growth. If we now take the relationship between the milk function and the human child organism, we find that the milk function contains the plastic forces that the organism needs in childhood. In later life, we cannot obtain the still-necessary plastic forces in the same way as we do when we consume milk during childhood. Even in very old age, we still need plastic forces, formative forces, that transform the food we take in into the forms of the organism. It turns out that nothing promotes these plastic, formative forces and the assimilation of the absorbed substances into the human organism more than the often quite weak enjoyment of honey. Honey has a similar effect on the metabolism of the limbs of an elderly person as milk has on the brain of a child – and especially on that of a child. This indicates to us that there are special formative forces in honey that we cannot discover by simply analyzing it chemically, but only if we actually recognize in all its vitality the relationships that human beings have with the other substances in the universe. And this formative capacity of honey – for a more precise interpretation, it turns out that honey takes hold of the human organism in such a way that the astral body in particular can exercise its formative forces – these effects of honey can then be supported by adding sugar, provided that the human organism can otherwise tolerate it. Thus you will find that our first remedy for sclerosis, composed and functioning in a particular way, is made of lead, honey and sugar.

But this also indicates that it depends on how you do something like this. Because in a sense, an inner functioning of the forces of lead with the forces of honey and sugar must arise in the preparation itself. This preparation is made in such a way that when it is introduced into the human organism, it takes on the sclerotizing forces there. It takes the sclerotizing forces from the astral body and the ego organization of the person; these are thus released again and can now work for the normal, healthy organization of the person. But what I introduce into the human organism with this preparation is what the ego and the astral body had to do earlier, and which therefore were not free and diverted their functions to the disease process. Now I hand over the disease process to my preparation. The particularly effective element here is the lead; it takes over the sclerotization, because it is, after all, its own nature to have a sclerotizing effect. But I must first seek out the paths through the plasticity of the organism, through which I bring the lead to where it is needed: this is done by combining it with honey and sugar.

Thus our preparations are made in such a way that they contain what can take over a pathological process. But they are also composed and processed in such a way that what I want to introduce into the person to take over the pathological process can spread throughout the organism in the right way. Thus our preparations are absolutely rationally manufactured. As a result, it actually comes about – this could always be observed from step to step by Dr. Wegman at the Arlesheim Institute whenever we applied our preparations – that in healing in this way, what is necessary is to know that the human organism is like this: if I apply something to it, it must cause a corresponding change in it. If I now observe the change as it happens, I observe the process, which is the healing process; I observe what I have presupposed. And this is so important in our method: we do not test externally and determine by statistics, but rationally predict what must happen, and then it can be checked, even at the very first stage of what occurs, whether one is actually producing the corresponding effects.

In this way you can also see how the silicic acid contained in equisetum, which I mentioned yesterday, works. I have already mentioned that the special way in which silicic acid is contained in equisetum has an effect on kidney function. Today, it is no longer observed, anatomically or physiologically, that the nervous-sensory system can only be separated from the circulatory and metabolic system to a certain extent. In a sense, all organs are sensory organs again, and the kidney is already a particularly important organ in the human abdomen. So if, in the sense I explained yesterday, I use silicic acid as it is present in equisetum, I increase the sensitivity of the kidneys and thus act on those processes in the human organism that result from a dulling of the inner sensitivity of the kidneys.

What we see in an outstanding way in the sense organs can be applied to a certain extent to the whole human organism. This becomes particularly clear when we consider the effect of phosphorus in a particularly striking case. It is certainly extremely interesting to observe the physiological and anatomical processes that occur during human embryonic development. Now in human embryonic development we have two interacting processes, which are usually not very well distinguished when viewed anatomically and physiologically today. First of all, there is everything that is grouped around the development of the fertilized egg. Then there is everything that takes place in the chorion from the environment, from the uterus and so on, from the female organs surrounding the embryo. When we study this, we naturally see that everything that is organized is permeated not only by the physical organization but also by the etheric, astral and I organizations. If we now look at this process — I would call it a centrifugal process because it is a radiating process — and consider what starts from the actual fertilized germ cell, develops more and more through differentiation develops more and more, and what becomes the central embryo, then on the one hand in this process we have as the main effect, as the most predominant effect, something that can be found in the process that is recorded in the silver substance. As paradoxical as it may sound, in the silver substance we have something that can increase until excretion takes place – and it is an excretion – which takes place in the secretion of the ovum in the human organism. In silver, in the functional aspect of silver, we have the excretory forces that are at work in the human being, out in nature, in the silver substance. From the fact that silver has such an eminent excretory effect, you can see the tremendous importance of silver in the appropriate dosage for the human abdomen in general. And therefore, if the necessary binders and additives are used to introduce the silver substance in a fine dosage into the digestive process, it is possible to act precisely on the elimination processes. If the elimination processes are blocked, it is possible to act on them in an extraordinarily significant way.

But if we now take that which now has a centripetal effect, which emanates from the uterus, that is, enters from the outside, we have there again, in an eminent sense, in an external substance, namely phosphorus, that which emanates from the walls of the female birth organs inwards, which emanates from there and acts towards the embryo. From this, one can see the significance of the forces contained in the functioning of phosphorus. They work in exactly the opposite sense to silver; they work in such a way that they drive everything into the human being. While silver, for example, develops the tendency to excrete, especially for the lower abdomen, phosphorus develops the tendency to drive into the body. So that in silver we have something that most eminently evokes the forms of the physical body of the human being, whereas in phosphorus we have something that extinguishes these forms, that drives into the human being and extinguishes the physical organization, making this physical organization extinguished for the astral body and the ego. So phosphorus is what drives the astral organization and the ego out of the human being. In this respect, silver and phosphorus are polar opposites.

For the rhythmic and intellectual person, that is, for the circulatory system and for the nerve-sense system, there is another polar opposite to phosphorus: that is lime, or carbonate of calcium. This carbonate of calcium, when introduced into the human organism, has the peculiar tendency to have a secreting effect. Indeed, it is the case with calcium carbonate, with lime, that the centrifugal, radiating forces of the human being actually show up in an outwardly natural way in the lime; whereby, when these radiating forces become too strong and disease formations arise as a result, I can use lime preparations to reduce these disease processes. But what I am trying to say becomes particularly clear if we now consider how the lime supplied to the human organism is something that is excreted everywhere in the human organism. I would like to say: in the lowest human being it has a competitor in silver, but it also has an excretory effect there; so that lime excretes both watery and airy substances from the organism everywhere. The forces of lime localized in the human organism are therefore also everything that underlies human exhalation. Lime has the power within it that acts as an engine for exhalation. And again, it has the forces within it that expel warmth in the nerve-sense organization, causing a kind of cooling of the nerve-sense organization. So in the lower human being, in the metabolic-limb human being, it expels fluids; in the rhythmic human being, it expels the air substances; in the nerve-sense organization, it expels the warmth ether – or warmth, if you prefer.

In each of these relationships, phosphorus has the opposite effect to that of lime. You can see this again in the image of phosphorus poisoning. It introduces the liquid into the metabolic limb-man, or rather, the solid in a dissolved form, so that it is the driving force for inhalation, for all inward respiratory processes. It introduces the airy element into the organism in such a way that it has a warming effect on the nerve-sense organization. — But because lime is the expelling element, it prepares the way in the human organism for the functioning of the astral body and the I organization; these can then enter.

It is precisely through what lime expels that the astral body and the I organization can enter the human being. On the other hand, the physical organization that phosphorus drives in drives the astral body and the ego out. You can study these things in the most superficial way by observing that lime, so to speak, fetters the awakened ego and the awakened astral body to the physical body everywhere. But what does it mean when the astral body and the ego are fettered to the physical body? It means that I suffer from sleeplessness. If I cannot bring the I organization and the astral body out of the human organism, I suffer from sleeplessness. The function of lime, if it is not counteracted by the phosphorus function, is continually a cause for us to suffer from sleeplessness and thus from all the processes associated with it. The moment you introduce the phosphorus process into the human organism, you promote the ability to sleep; so that you promote what brings out the astral body and the ego from the human organism, because these are out during sleep. In the most eminent sense this property belongs to the phosphorus function; to a lesser degree it belongs to the sulphur function. And if we have irregularities in the rhythmical system, we can also apply sulphur instead of phosphorus. If, for example, we are dealing with insomnia, which shows its symptoms in the rhythmical human being, we will have to deal with some sulphur preparation for the healing process.

These can certainly only be indications. But these indications are intended to show that in all that is aimed at here as a rational diagnosis, rational therapy is already included. For if I proceed physiologically, then, for example, in the human head there is a refined process of sclerotization. By using such expressions, which connect the human being with the nature surrounding him, I can now call that which underlies thinking in the human brain as an organic function a lead process. I see this lead process, without the substance of lead, in the human nerve-sense organization; I see it as poison in the other organization, in the metabolic-limb organization. The one picture shows me in a terrible way what always takes place in a more delicate way in the nerve-sense organization. But I can also know now: if I introduce the lead function, the lead process, into the metabolic-limb human being, then I thereby take from this metabolic-limb human being in relation to the astral organization what must be taken away. And in doing so, I have allowed the healing to take place. So I no longer distinguish between diagnosis, pathology and therapy, because they all flow into one another. You recognize the disease and you know the process in the external nature that can take over this disease process in the human organism. You recognize one from the other. It is precisely this, between which today a terrible abyss gapes: pathology and therapy, that is interwoven, made one through this rational anthroposophical basis of medicine.

On the other hand, however, the disease processes themselves are also illuminated in a corresponding way. Let us take an illness that is always laughed at when we mention it because it is considered a very insignificant illness by doctors – at least by doctors in Central Europe; I don't know if this is the case in the Netherlands – only for the patient this illness is quite unpleasant: I am referring to migraine. It is only understood when one knows that it consists of a process that should not be in the nerve-sense organization at all - in the head - namely, a metabolic process that is hypertrophied, so to speak, the fine metabolic process that always takes place in the head. So there is a metabolic process in the head that should not be there, and the task now is to take this metabolic process away from the head. How do you do that? Well, first of all, you are faced with the task of introducing into the person what can take up this metabolic process, what can carry it out itself. From what I said earlier, you will now find that this is silicic acid. I said of it that it must enter into the sensory organization, which is also irritated in migraine. If we bring the silicic acid process into the human sensory organization, then we work in such a way that we take the morbid migraine process out of the head. But we must first bring the silicic acid process into the head. If we want to form the preparation so that it can be taken in through the mouth, we have to make sure that it does not get stuck somewhere in the digestive process. To do this, we have to make the astral body as active as possible, so that it carries the silicic acid up through the entire digestive process in rising waves, which we introduce into the head organization through the preparation. We can only do this if we promote the upward flow of the absorbed silicic acid by doing something to make the astral body as effective as possible. That means that we have to throw out of everything that mediates between the abdomen and the head – namely the rhythm of circulation – everything that could prevent the astral body from working actively. This happens when we apply sulfur. Thus, in our preparation, processed in a certain way, we must find silicic acid and sulphur. But in the human organism it must be so that not only does something work upwards, but especially when we attack the rhythmic system, the rhythm must go up and down. We follow the respiratory rhythm up and down, follow the circulation rhythm up and down. This rising and falling is most essentially promoted by that function which again lies in the substance of iron. And this, what we want: to flood upwards once, but then to prevent it from becoming established at the top, so that only something settles at the top and the whole person is not taken up, this is achieved by preparing a preparation in a certain way, containing iron, sulfur and silicic acid. In this way we obtain our preparation, Biodoron, which serves in the most eminent sense to relieve the patient of the migraine in the head, but then also to reintroduce what we have removed from the head into the right way of organizing the human being as a whole.

What can be said for the subordinate disease, the trivial disease of migraine, will, in principle, be more serious if the opposite is pursued. When, in particular, the process where breathing changes into the – as I said earlier – refined breathing, which then appears as the nerve-sense process, this process, which should actually only take place in the lower part of the uppermost part of the human being, roughly – and this is only an approximation and a rough expression – in the area between the lungs and the lower regions of the face When this process, this particular nuance of the human circulatory process, forces its way through and this process, which has already become a nerve-sense process, namely a nerve-head process, now takes place in the human intestinal tract, then we have a process that must be in the human being; only it does not belong in the intestinal tract, but in the head. There it has its normal place. If it enters the intestinal tract, it becomes typhoid. And we have simply grasped what a natural process is – every disease process is a natural process – that is, what such a disease process can be in the human being: something that is justified in another place is dislocated in this case. At a certain point in the organism, the process that plays a role in typhoid phenomena is normal; in the intestinal tract, it is a disease. It is a disease that presents itself in this way.

We must now have something in the head organization where the external world can have a particularly strong effect. We know that the head is the part of the body we feel least; but we feel the environment through the head. The environment must flood into our head. So we have something in our head with which we live most strongly in the outside world. We have only two such organizational links with which we live so strongly in the outside world: first, the head itself, namely that part that I have just characterized, where breathing passes into the nerve-sense function; and then we have something else that will seem very paradoxical to you. But when we have more thoroughly studied the medical literature on this subject, which we will accomplish in the very near future, then you will take a look at the things that can be found there, and you will see how the liver function, in particular, is something that, in a completely different way, most closely reflects the outside world within the human organism. The outside world acts in the liver as if the other organism were almost not there at all. This is the special nature of the liver function. But if what should be localized in this way as the actual bed for the external effects, if that occurs where it should not be, namely in the intestinal tract, then we have something in this intestinal tract that is functionally alienated from the human organism. If we now look again in the wide expanse of nature for a way to internalize again, so to speak, this externalized mode of action in the intestine and to restore it to human functioning, then we are presented with the process that is solidified in antimony. Antimony is a body that reacts in an extraordinarily fine way to the forces of its surroundings. The antimony structure is like revealed dynamite. Imagine these bundle-shaped radiations, try to feel how it wants to break free from becoming a mineral through the so-called saiger process; then you can see: antimony is, so to speak, mineral-sensitive, it internalizes external influences. This is particularly evident from the fact that under certain conditions antimony can be treated electrolytically. If it is then brought to the cathode, an explosion occurs at the slightest provocation. When all this is recognized, when it is known how antimony relates to the forces that play everywhere in the universe, then it can also be recognized how the antimony process, when properly processed and introduced into the organism, can take up the typhoid process; so that in turn the I and the astral body can be freed from their work on the typhoid process and the person can thus gradually be restored to health. This is how I tried to indicate the principles of what can be called rational medicine. Over time, our preparations, of which there are already almost two hundred, have always been developed in two ways. At first, a fairly large number of doctors came together who had become somewhat skeptical of current therapeutic methods and who asked whether it might not be possible to use anthroposophical knowledge to find relationships between the human being and the environment that could indicate something in the surrounding substances and in their processing and application that could provide a remedy. Now, in anthroposophy, there is a very detailed and exact knowledge of the human being, a knowledge of the human being according to body, soul and spirit, as well as a detailed knowledge of nature according to the different realms of nature and the different ingredients of the natural realms. And so the first thing I was set the task of doing was to go, so to speak, the way of seeking out natural processes and examining the extent to which these natural processes represent disease processes. So I went from the outer nature into the human being. This is how you first find the sclerosis remedy that has taken this path. I have tried to find out how plumbum metallicum and some plastic-dynamic system, as it is in honey, sugar or milk, can work. In this way, a number of remedies have been developed, initially from the outside in.

The question then arose: how can these remedies be brought into the world? I said: I do not want to have a remedy factory without clinics assigned to it. So the clinics came into being. And once a number of remedies were available, the clinics began to use these remedies. That is how the situation I just described came about. And now that I am in Dornach myself, Arlesheim and Dornach form one entity, and the institutes in Arlesheim are affiliated to the Goetheanum, it has been possible for me, through close collaboration with Dr. Wegman, to now go the other way for a further series of remedies, to look for the path from the disease process: where can this natural process corresponding to a disease process be found? In other words, to start with the human being and arrive at the natural substance in question. In this way, everything that can be found as a remedy flows together, especially in Arlesheim, where Dr. Wegman's Clinical Therapeutic Institute is located. What I discussed yesterday, the true courage of healing — is affiliated with the International Pharmaceutical Laboratory, which is concerned with the production of the appropriate remedies, which are to be brought into the world in the most diverse ways and which you can get to know if you are interested. I do not want to be agitational, I just want to discuss the scientific basis of the matter. But something has come about precisely in these two converging paths, which also gives great certainty for these things in purely external-empirical terms. And it is particularly satisfying when one is able to speak to an audience like yours, which has been made possible by Dr. Zeylmans inviting me to do so and invited you to attend, and you again had the kindness to come, which seems to be connected with the fact that Dr. Zeylmans himself wants to orient this institute here in the way it has now been discussed. Because I have to assume that the fact that I was allowed to give these lectures seems to indicate that an institute is to be established here that will serve as proof and evidence of what we are striving for in our clinical-therapeutic institutes, but also of an extraordinarily large number of private physicians. And from the relevant literature, you will be able to see for yourself that we not only have statistical material that is at least as reliable as clinical statistics usually yield, but that in many respects this also leads to the certainty that comes from the accuracy of the predictions, that in addition to this certainty, a particularly large statistical material is available.

However, it will be of particular importance if we can find a cure for those diseases that today can only be treated surgically, such as carcinoma. If one can say that any process can be dislocated, then this must be said of carcinoma in particular. It is a dislocated process, a process that should actually only take place at the outermost periphery, within the sense organization. It is very interesting to observe how this function, which belongs at the periphery of the body – and specifically at the periphery of the body that is prepared for this – can become dislocated and then appear as a carcinoma, which is actually, now not a nervous function, but which is actually a sensory function. In this way, one comes to recognize, in a deeper sense, the peculiar parasitic nature of the carcinoma. And then one comes to the point – not in the simple way that one would usually expect – of being able to produce something in the preparations, which usually consist of the various juices of the Viscum species, that can conquer the carcinoma by medicinal means. We have already achieved at least some good, promising partial successes; but we can only speak of partial successes because we have only recently completed the apparatus that produces the viscum preparation as it should be produced. Nevertheless, the preparations made so far have already led to very good prophylactic cures. In the case of carcinoma, it is particularly important to recognize it at the right time, which patients usually make difficult; but a carcinoma recognized at the right time can be combated medically with such preparations as we make from Viscum. I do not wish to speak here about the value or lack of value of surgical treatment, nor about the fact that it is often necessary; I only want to point out that, based on a true knowledge of the human being, even the most severe cases of illness can be considered in such a way that, based on such knowledge of the human being, one can arrive at healing processes from within.

This is essentially what I wanted to say to you as a matter of principle about our endeavors that have emerged from anthroposophy, what I wanted to say in relation to the path that leads from the external nature to the inner being of man and vice versa. I would just like to point out in conclusion that it is precisely from these methodical observations that something of enormous importance emerges: namely, how to introduce into the human being that which is intended to relieve the disease process in the organism. And if it is the case that the human being is a threefold creature, with a nervous-sensory organization, a rhythmic organization and a metabolic-limb organization, then healing also breaks down into threefold processes. These three processes are as follows: firstly, medications taken internally, which enter the human organism, so to speak, by the same route as the digestive process. The second type is through injections, where we try to bring the process, the function, into the rhythmic organism through the injection. And the third healing method is through the bath, where we work from the outside. The latter is an effect on the nerve-sense process, where we act more coarsely from the outside; but the effect of the bath is a perceptual activity pushed down to a lower level.

Let us follow these three forms in phosphorus. When we use phosphorus as a preparation, mixed with other things, chemically or otherwise processed, per os, internally, then we must be clear about the fact that it primarily promotes the absorption of fluids into the human organism. If we have to relieve the human organism of a disease process that, as it were, forces the fluid out of its own space, as for example in certain inflammatory phenomena at the periphery or in such phenomena that are trivially similar to nosebleeds, when we apply phosphorus internally, it relieves the astral organism and the ego of the disease process, as it were, in the functioning of the fluid. If we prepare a medicine in the appropriate dosage to inject, and we introduce phosphorus into the circulation process, then what we take from the organism must also be connected with abnormal circulation processes. If, for example, we observe accelerated breathing, some intensification of the heart activity, but especially something like an excessive secretion of bile, which also belongs to the rhythmic, then we can – and the same applies to a whole series of other processes, I will mention only the obvious – have an extremely favorable effect by injecting phosphorus. If we encounter something that plays more on the psychic side, the brain functions are such that they involuntarily drive the person to a kind of flight of ideas, the person cannot stop his thoughts, he gushes out his words and this escalates to the pathological, then we can work through appropriate baths in which phosphorus is dissolved, precisely to slow down the flight of ideas.

I mention this only as an example, but what is stated in this example can be multiplied a hundredfold. In this way, the human organism can be helped in three ways. It depends on how it can be realized.

On the other hand, there is the fact that one can approach people directly in a therapeutic way, which now works from the outside into the metabolic system: the dynamics of the world in which the human being can be placed. And we are really doing this with good success through eurythmy therapy. Eurythmy is something like spiritual gymnastics, but it can be developed into an art. Under Dr. Steiner's direction, we have already shown a large part of Central and Northern Europe what can be achieved through the art of eurythmy, and performances of eurythmy art were also given here in The Hague some time ago. In eurythmy, the transformation of human speech into human movement functions is immediately apparent to us in an artistic way. If you consider what science knows about this today, namely how hand and arm functions are related to the organization of speech – right-handed people have their speech center on the left side of the brain, and left-handed people vice versa – you may not completely deny what can be achieved through anthroposophy: that all human speech is actually related to human mobility. We can follow the way in which the legs and feet move when consonants are pronounced, especially palatal sounds. We can follow how the arms move and how this is transmitted through an internal switchover to what then becomes air movement when speaking. But all speech can in turn be traced back to movements of the individual human being or of human groups. This then gives rise to artistic eurythmy. But this can be transformed again in such a way that one develops what is initially presented as an art in such a way that one lets the movements concerned, which arise from the whole human being, from body, soul and spirit — ordinary gymnastics only arises from the physiological nature of the physical organism — be carried out by the human being as a eurythmy therapy gesture in context. We have developed a complete system for this in Arlesheim. When it is applied systematically, it has an effect on the person, and in this way the inner healing process can be supported in an extraordinarily fruitful way through eurythmy therapy, according to the three different types that I have described. This eurythmy therapy works in such a way that the process that comes about in normal human life as a result of walking, running and so on, whereby there are always inner processes that are connected with the breakdown and build-up processes of the human organism, that this process, where the human being is placed in a dynamic, has an effect on the inner processes. There are strict rules for this. So I can have people carry out a eurythmy therapy system of gestures that has such an effect on the organism that, for example, catabolic processes that do not want to take place must take place in the right way; or that another eurythmy therapy system counteracts excessively strong catabolic processes.

So everything comes down to understanding the healthy and sick person in terms of body, soul and spirit. Then you simply see in him what health or illness represents. And then you already have the therapeutic process in what you see.

In this way, we would like to work towards rational therapy in all modesty. I know that today there are still many objections to such rational therapy, that it is perhaps regarded as paradoxical or even worse by those who have now struggled through all the difficulties of what is officially recognized today. But such things have often been around in the world. However, I can assure you: I would find it more comfortable not to talk about these things; because I know how much one still comes up with and falls for today from what one has as a habitual way of thinking and because I can already make all the objections myself, I would find it more comfortable not to talk about it. But there are reasons to talk about what one believes needs to be introduced into the cultural process of humanity. Out of this sense of duty, you take the magnitude of the thanks that I would like to express to you for attentively following my remarks, which could only be suggestions in the two hours.

Question and Answer Session

Question: Do you imagine that there are vibrational differences? About lead,....

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against interpreting the processes involved in one way or another. However, it seems to me that, for practical purposes, this is a theory of what these processes consist of. Such theories could suffer the same fate as the emission and undulation theories of light. What is important to me is what is qualitative about the matter, what actually aims to show that ultimately the whole functioning, which is actually only localized in the lead substance as I have it before me in physical space, that this whole functioning externally represents the same as internally the processes that make the brain, so to speak, a suitable organ for independent thinking in relation to dependent perception. In this respect, the fact that we are accustomed to thinking of the inner processes of the organism as a schematic continuation of outer processes in nature makes the presentation more difficult. For example, we talk about the fact that carbonic acid is formed in the human organism from carbon through the absorption of oxygen; we call this a combustion process (listeners:... in the state of becoming!) — You are saying the word that I would have had to say later! — It is actually the case that we often speak of combustion in physiology and medicine. But these are just as little combustion processes as they take place on the outside, just as little as it can be a matter of a process that is not ensouled or spiritualized in the case of a human being. The connection between oxygen and carbon is also ensouled and spiritualized. So that the process occurs in the nascency and remains, but is also ensouled and spiritualized. So that I have captured the process in the nascency and the process now becomes a natural process by continuing outside, while if it starts from the nascency and works in the human organism, it becomes a different process.

Take, for example, the processes that I have just described as a kind of lead process that takes place in the human brain. Yes, what are they in the human organism? This brings us to a very delicate chapter. We can study the processes in the human abdomen, for example. There we find that the absorbed substances also undergo a certain metamorphosis, that then something is excreted. Let us now consider these excretory products and compare them in a really meaningful way, not just by proceeding chemically, for that is the least we can do. Proceeding chemically is about as useful as trying to understand a clock by looking at a gold mine, a glass factory, and so on. Of course, these things are all very important, but just as I do not learn anything about the clock in this way, I can learn just as little about the functions of the potato in the human organism if I know that it has so many carbohydrates and so on. I learn more if I know what the potato's function is in the plant itself, how it is actually a stem, a rootstock. If I know the level of its organization, then I begin to understand how I can compare these processes with what happens in humans. It comes down to how the process is different from the process that is fueled by legumes. The process that is fueled by the potato goes further up into the head function than the one that is fueled by legumes. If I can go into all this, then I will finally come to recognize that metamorphoses take place in the digestive tract and that the excretion products are only the processes that have stopped halfway. And where are these processes that go all the way through? These are the processes that take place in the nervous sensory system. The nerve-sense and perception process is a process that is carried to its conclusion. What goes on in the human excretory organs represents a process that has come to a halt. The intestinal contents are a brain that has not fully materialized, as paradoxical as that may sound. It is simply a different process at a different place in the organism, which is half of the process that occurs in the head.

When I consider all this, I am able to look into these process effects of the human interior, and then what presents itself to me is what now first arises for me to compare between the process that is outside, the lead process, and the process that takes place in the human brain. Then I can start, if I want to verify something, to look at what happens in lead. I observe the lead as it oxidizes, melts, what it otherwise does in melting. I go further into the geology and geography of lead. I see how lead binds, how it is connected with other substances. Then I already get images that can confirm what appears to the person who can observe the lead, who in fact sees a kind of aura of the lead, which is similar to the aura that forms the nervous substance of the brain.

And so we can speak of these connections, I attach particular importance to this, while of course leaving it up to everyone to make hypotheses about whether these are vibrational differences. But that is actually the physics of the matter, not what is physiologically important.

Question: I would like to ask whether you can recognize these inner processes that you have mentioned in any other way than we ordinary people.

Dr. Steiner: The inner processes are not observed through the usual external sensory empiricism. They can only be observed in their after-effects on the corpse or in some other way, through conclusions drawn from external events. They cannot be observed there. They only become observable when the methods I spoke of yesterday are applied, and as you can find them in the books mentioned yesterday. You see, for the realization, the human being actually becomes transparent at first. And then you can indeed speak of really, let us say, seeing the liver process. The derivation only refers to the fact that one must also mentally dissect out the liver; but what can be asserted must be looked at. When I look at the whole person, I see a jumble of all sorts of things. I must now remove everything that is not the liver, in my mind also. I must therefore dissect out the liver in the spiritual sense first. This is more difficult for one organ than for another. It is more difficult for the liver, for example, but then it is also more fruitful, because certain liver diseases can, I am convinced, only be understood at all in this way. But it is possible to understand every organ.

A member of the audience: Yesterday we heard a beautifully constructed system, but the foundations are not yet clear to me. You divide the human being into a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and a fourth element. If that is the case, then it is understandable that we also have an etheric kidney, an astral kidney and a fourth kidney. But what if it is not so? You should have first proved this division into four parts of the being.

The therapy was similar. For example, you did not say why you chose Equisetum, since there are many plants that contain silicic acid. As far as I know, Equisetum has no therapeutic powers.

Today you said: We make preparations that are rationally manufactured. You should prove that! We know nothing of these functions you describe.

On the whole, I have not grasped what the main thing is. The whole thing is logically constructed, but I lack the premises.

Dr. Steiner: In such a matter, it is of the utmost importance that one can see two things. Firstly, when something like this occurs and is discussed, as I have said, in two hours one can only point out the things, give directives and so on. Furthermore, I have made it clear through the whole way of presenting it that we are in the process of becoming, but that we are also willing to continue working. Now, when we speak of proofs, it is the case that this is not actually based on a completely scientific concept. And this stems from the fact that today we have become accustomed to only bringing forth proofs from what can actually be observed sensually. In another sense, no medicine has any proofs either, except in the sense that it can be observed sensually and physically.

I have now spoken of the fact that sensory observation can be further developed and modified by something higher. Yesterday I indicated that there are methods by which one can do this and I pointed to writings by which one can arrive at such methods. This, however, constitutes something for the whole so-called system of proof, which I can only make clear by means of a comparison: when we are here on earth, we talk about the fact that something that I place in the air is heavy and falls down, falls to the ground, then it has a basis. So we have to say that for a certain way of thinking that is based on sensual empirical evidence. If you go further, you come to the point – and I happened to experience this once as a boy, when someone told me – that if the earth were floating, it would actually have to fall down. This mutual support and bearing of the cosmic bodies and cosmic spaces is the image for what underlies such a science as I have meant today. The whole thing bears and supports each other. We are dealing here with a completely different area. Of course, you will not be able to support yourself very well if I can only select a few things from something as detailed as medicine in two hours in order to give you an idea of the perspectives. You have to bear in mind that the desirable could only come about if you now had four years of faculty study, built on the aspects that I discussed today. If one started from the medical preparatory studies with the assumption that there is a real, spirit-permeated natural science, and if a physiology were built up in the same way, passing into histology and into pathology-clinical, then, however, because things would approach people in the appropriate detailed way, we would find them just as plausible as the medical system can be plausible today.

Today I can give nothing more for these things than perspectives and suggestions.

The first thing is that today we have become accustomed to mentioning only what can be proven sensually, and that we do not take into account how things support each other. But the other thing is this: when you do, say, mathematics, for example, any science that is done rationally, how do you want to do it otherwise than by having one position supported by the other? Mathematics is something that supports itself reciprocally. If one were to talk about mathematics for two hours, even less would be gained than in today's discussion, although suggestions could also be made there. The moment I build a bridge with the help of mathematics, I speak of verification. And I have simply hinted at this when I said: I do not attach any importance to the remedies if clinics are not attached to them and one cannot see how the remedies work. If one has the diagnosis as I have explained it and comes to heal, and if after two or three days one can already see how things work, then the verification is there. Another method of verifying medical constellations is not known in conventional medicine either. Take the healing method of phenacetin. Statistics are compiled; it is verification that counts.

What I wanted to show is that in empirical medicine today we are at the stage where we only start from statistics. Here it depends on luck whether the connections are found. But this can be transformed by looking at the person in a rational therapy.

If today we say: a function such as that of phosphorus is effective in this or that way on the human organism, then it is a matter of setting about examining the We F'ru ww. mode of action. But I have indicated how the effects of lead and phosphorus can be in the human organism. And when it is said that one cannot speak of a phosphorus function or an equisetum function, then I must point out that what a substance is is in fact only a momentarily captured state. What then is lead? One can find a name by chance because we live in a certain temperature range and in this range lead exists in a fixed state. In other world situations it is something else, it goes through metamorphoses. In fact, we are not dealing with something that is fixed at a particular level, but with processes that only show themselves to be fixed. But one can indicate how the fixation occurs.

You spoke of horsetail. Of course other plants also have these constituents, like horsetail. I am expressing myself very carefully. I said of horsetail: Of course other plants also have these constituents; I quote horsetail as a characteristic because it has ninety percent silicic acid, other plants do not have that; thus the silicic acid effect is the prominent one.

If someone says, “To my knowledge, equisetum is not a medicinal plant at all,” this means no more than that the healing effect of equisetum has simply not yet been observed. We observe it very often. These are things that depend on how experience expands.

I understand every objection and could make it myself. But just think of how many objections were raised against the Copernican system. The Catholic objection was raised until 1827, only from then on was it also introduced in Catholic schools. You really wouldn't get very far in civilization if you only stuck to the objections. Not that I, having said all this, would immodestly present the things. But it all rests on work! It does not rest on carelessness to speak of the effectiveness of the smallest entities. If you look at the writings that lie here: for years, efforts were made to verify the matter in the laboratory. The objections you have raised apply, but everything can be objected to, that goes without saying.

Audience member: As soon as you accept general relativity, you are not referring to states.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but relativity is also relative. Someone once wanted to make Einstein's theory of relativity plausible to his audience by taking a matchbox and a match. And he said: I can now pass the match past the box, which I am holding still; but I can also hold the match still and pass the box past it: the same effect. It's relative. — I would have liked to shout at the gentleman: Why don't you nail the box to the wall, then it requires a little more. Then we enter into the relativity of relativity. And when we look at the human body in motion, we come to the conclusion that motion is not determined by coordinate systems or reference systems, but also by fatigue and organic changes, which already takes me a step from the relative to the absolute. I would like to say: relativity is again relative and asymptotically approaches absoluteness.

I see the importance of the concept of relativity in something else. We are accustomed, from the point of view of physical assumptions, actually so far in the usual theories, to consider everything in such a way that we relate it to a place in space and to the course of time. We also write the formulas in physics in this way. In fact, we cannot get by with such a way of looking at things in physics. Rather, we have to consider only the spatial relationship of one thing or process a to another b as two properties. This is where we come up with fruitful ideas. This is where we come to regard relativity as something more or less – even for qualities – as something more or less justified, but relatively justified.

[ 1 ] There is another group of spiritual beings, who from the world of the spirit are seen to be active in the physical world (and also in the elemental world), as in an adopted field of action. These are the spirits who desire to liberate the feeling soul entirely from the physical world, and therefore in a certain way to spiritualise it. Life in the physical world is part of the cosmic order of things. While the human soul is living in the physical world, it is passing through a development which is part of the conditions of its existence. Its being woven into the physical world is a result of the activity of beings whom one learns to know in the higher world. That activity is opposed by the beings who desire to wrench the feeling soul free from physical conditions. These latter beings may be called the Luciferic beings.

[ 2 ] The Luciferic beings stand in the physical world searching as it were, for everything of a psychic nature (feeling) which is to be found there, in order that they may draw it out of the physical world and incorporate it in a cosmic sphere of their own, adapted to their nature. Seen from the higher world, the activity of these Luciferic beings is also abservable in the elemental world. Within this they strive to obtain a certain sphere of power which they want to disconnect from the grossness of the physical world, although that sphere has been preordained, by the beings of the higher world, to be connected with the lower world. Just as the Ahrimanic beings would be keeping to their own sphere if they were only to bring about the temporary annihilation of existence which is based on the order of the cosmos, so the Luciferic beings would not be crossing the boundary of their own kingdom if they imbued the feeling soul with powers which would continually stimulate it to rise above the urgent necessities of the physical world, and feel itself, with regard to those necessities, a free and independent being. But the Luciferic beings go beyond the limits of their domain when they desire, in the face of the universal order of the higher world, to create a special spiritual kingdom for which they wish to remould the psychic beings in the physical world.

[ 3 ] We can see how the influence of Luciferic beings in the physical world expands in two directions. On the one hand it is owing to them that man is able to rise above the bare experience of what is physically real. He is able to derive his joy, his uplifting, not only from the physical world; but can also take pleasure in and feel elated by that which exists merely in semblance, that which, as beauty transcends the physical. From this point of view the Luciferic beings have cooperated in bringing about the most important, and especially the artistic, features of civilisation. Moreover, man is able to enjoy unfettered thought; he need not merely describe physical things and portray them slavishly in his thoughts. He is able to develop creative thought beyond the physical world, and to philosophise about things. On the other hand, the exaggeration of the Luciferic forces in the soul is the source of much extravagance and confusion, for they try to develop the activities of the soul without adhering to the conditions of the higher cosmic order. Philosophising which is not based upon a thorough adherence to the cosmic order, headstrong indulgence in arbitrary ideas, excessive forcing of one's own personal predilections: all these things are the dark side of the Luciferic activity.

[ 4 ] The human soul belongs, through its other self, to the higher world. But it also belongs to existence in the lower world. Clairvoyant consciousness, if it has passed through adequate preparation, feels itself as a conscious being in the higher world. The facts of the case are not altered, but, to those facts which hold good for every human soul, there is added in clairvoyant consciousness, the knowledge of the facts. Every human soul belongs to the higher world, and when man is living in the physical world, lie is associated with a physical body which is subject to the processes of the physical world. The soul is also associated with a subtle, etheric body, which lives subject to the processes of the elemental world. The Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces which are spiritual and supersensible work in both these bodies.

[ 5 ] In so far as the human soul lives in the higher or spiritual world, it is what may be called an astral being. One of the many reasons which justify this expression is that the astral being of man as such is not subject to the conditions which prevail within the sphere of earth. Spiritual science recognises that within man's astral being are working, not the “natural” laws of earth, but those laws which have to be taken into account in considering the processes of the world of the stars (astra). On this account the term may appear justified. Thus the recofnition of a third or astral body is added to that of the physical body and the subtle, etheric body of man. But it is necessary that the following should be borne in mind. As regards its original essence, man's astral body has its origin in the higher world, in the spiritual world proper. Within that sphere it is a being of the same nature as other beings whose activity is exercised in that world. Inasmuch then as the elemental and physical worlds are reflections of the spiritual world, the etheric and physical bodies of man must also be looked upon as reflections of his astral being. But in those bodies forces are working, which originate from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Now since those beings have a spiritual origin, it is natural that within the region of the etheric and physical bodies themselves there thould be found a kind of human astral essence. And a degree of clairvoyance which merely accepts the pictures of clairvoyant consciousness, without being able rightly to understand their meaning, may easily take the astral admixture in the physical and etheric bodies for the astral body proper. Yet that human astral essence is just that principle of human nature which opposes man's conforming to the laws really suitable for him in the order of the cosmos. Mistakes and confusions are more easily made in this domain because a knowledge of the soul's astral being is at the outset quite impossible for ordinary human consciousness. Even during the first stages of clairvoyant consciousness such knowledge is not yet attainable. The consciousness is attained when man experiences himself in his etheric body. But in this body he beholds the reflected images of his other self, and the higher world to which he belongs. In this way also he beholds the reflected etheric image of his astral body, and at the same time the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings which that body contains.

It will be shewn later in this work that the ego too, which man in ordinary life looks upon as his entity, is not the real ego, but only the reflection of the real ego in the physical world. In the same way the etheric reflection of the astral body may, in etheric clairvoyance, become an illusory image mistaken for the real astral body.

[ 6 ] When one penetrates further into the higher world, clairvoyant consciousness also succeeds in gaining a true insight as regards human beings into the nature of the reflection of the higher world in the lower. It then becomes supremely evident that the subtle, etheric body, which man bears about him in his present earthly existence, is not really the reflected image of that which corresponds to this body in the higher world. It is a reflected image altered by the activity of the Lucerific and Ahrimanic beings. The spiritual archetype of the etheric body is not able to reflect itself at all perfectly in man on earth, owing to the nature of the earthly essence in which the beings mentioned above are active. If clairvoyant consciousness betakes itself beyond the earth to a region in which a perfect reflection of the archetype of the etheric body is possible, it finds itself carried back to a remote past, previous to the present condition of the earth, before even the “Moon condition” which preceded it. It arrives at an insight into the manner in which the present earth was evolved out of a “Moon condition,” and the latter again out of a “Sun condition.” Further particulars as to why the terms “Sun.” and “Moon” condition are justified will be found in my Occult Science.

The earth, then, was once in a Sun condition, out of which it evolved to a Moon condition, and afterwards became earth. During the Sun condition the etheric body of man was an absolute reflection of the spiritual events and beings of the world from which it originates. Clairvoyant consciousness discovers that those Sun beings were made up of pure wisdom. Thus we may say that, during the earth's Sun condition in a remote past, man received his etheric body as a pure reflection of cosmic beings of Wisdom. Later, during the Moon and Earth conditions, the etheric body has become changed into that which it now is as part of the human being.

[ 1 ] It is not possible to perceive in the right light how the Michael Impulse breaks into human evolution, if one shares the conception which is universally accepted today, as to the relation of the new world of ideas to Nature.

[ 2 ] It is thought: There outside us is Nature with all that she accomplishes and is; within us are the ideas. These ideas are thoughts about the things of Nature, or about the so-called Laws of Nature. The thinkers of today are concerned first of all to show how to form such ideas as shall stand in a true relation to Nature, or in which the true Natural Laws shall be contained.

[ 3 ] It is of little importance to them how these ideas are related to the man himself, who has them. But in truth there can be no real insight until this question is raised: What does Man experience through the natural-scientific ideas of modern times?

[ 4 ] The answer can be arrived at in the following way.

[ 5 ] Man feels today that the ideas are formed within him through the activity of his soul. He has the feeling that he himself forms his ideas, while only the sense-perceptions come to him from without.

[ 6 ] Man did not always feel in this way. In times past he did not realise the content of his ideas as something he had made himself, but as something received through inspiration from the supersensible world.

[ 7 ] There were various stages of this feeling. And these stages depended on that part of a man's being in which he experienced what today he calls his ideas. Today, in the period of the development of the Spiritual Soul or Consciousness Soul, what is contained in the ‘Leading Thoughts’ of the last number is wholly true:—Thoughts have their true seat in the human etheric body. There, however, they are real, living forces. They imprint themselves in the physical body, as such “imprinted thoughts” they possess the shadowy character known to ordinary consciousness.

[ 8 ] Now one can go back to times in which the thoughts were directly experienced in the ‘Ego.’ But in those times they were not shadowy as they are today, nor were they merely living; they were full of soul and spirit. But this means that the man did not only think his thoughts; he had as an experience the perception of concrete spiritual beings.

[ 9 ] Everywhere amongst the peoples of antiquity one finds the consciousness that looked up to a world of spiritual beings. The historical remains of this are described today as a consciousness that expressed itself in myths and mythologies, which are not considered of much importance for an understanding of the real world. And yet with this consciousness man stands in his own world—in the world of his true origin—whereas with his present consciousness he is lifted out of his own world. [ 10 ] Man is a spirit; and his world is the world of spiritual beings.

[ 11 ] The next stage was one in which the element of thought was no longer experienced by the Ego but by the astral body. The soul here loses the direct vision of the Spiritual. Thought appears as an element which is ensouled and alive.

[ 12 ] At the first stage, that of the vision of concrete spiritual beings, man does not feel at all strongly the necessity of connecting what he sees with that which he perceives through his senses. The phenomena perceptible to the senses are seen to be the deeds of what he observes supersensibly, but he does not feel impelled to develop a special science of that which is directly seen by spiritual vision. Moreover, the world of spirit-beings which he sees is so rich that his attention is directed to it above all things.

[ 13 ] It is different at the second stage of consciousness. Here the concrete spiritual beings are hidden; their reflection appears in the form of an ensouled life. Man begins to relate the ‘life of Nature’ to this ‘life of souls.’ In the beings and processes of Nature he seeks the active spirit-beings and their deeds. The result of this stage of consciousness may be seen historically in that which appeared later as the quest of the alchemists.

[ 14 ] When at the first stage of consciousness man ‘thought’ the spirit-beings, he lived entirely in his own being; and at the second stage, too, he is still quite near to his origin. [ 15 ] But at both stages it is quite impossible for man to develop, in the true sense of the word, his own inner impulses of action.

[ 16 ] A spirituality which is of like nature with himself acts in him. What he seems to do is the manifestation of processes which come about through spirit-beings. What man does is the sensibly physical manifestation of a real spiritual and divine event which stands behind.

[ 17 ] A third epoch in the development of consciousness brings thought to consciousness in the etheric body, but as living thought.

[ 18 ] The Greeks lived in this consciousness when Greek civilisation was at its prime. The ancient Greek did not form thoughts for himself and then look out upon the world with them as with his own creations, but when he thought he felt that a life was being kindled within him—a life which also pulsated in the objects and events outside him.

[ 19 ] Then for the first time there arose in man the longing for the freedom of his own actions—not yet true freedom, but the longing for it.

[ 20 ] Man, who felt the life and activity of Nature asserting itself in him, could develop the longing to detach his own activity from the activity which he perceived outside him and around him. But after all, this outer activity was still perceived as the final result of the active spirit-world, which is of like nature with man himself.

[ 21 ] Only when the thoughts were imprinted in the physical body and when the consciousness extended only to this imprint—then only did the possibility of freedom arise. This condition came with the fifteenth century AD.

[ 22 ] For the evolution of the world the important point is not, ‘What is the significance of the ideas of modern natural science with regard to Nature?’ For in effect these ideas have assumed their forms, not in order to provide man with a certain picture of Nature, but in order to bring him forward to a certain stage in his evolution.

[ 23 ] When thoughts laid hold of the physical body, spirit, soul and life had been excluded from their immediate contents, and the abstract shadow attaching to the physical body alone remained. Thoughts such as these can make only what is physical and material into the object of their knowledge, for they themselves are only real in the physical and material body of man. [ 24 ] Materialism did not originate because material beings and processes alone can be perceived in external Nature, but because man had to pass through a stage in his development which led him to a consciousness at first only capable of seeing material manifestations. The one-sided development of this necessity in human evolution resulted in the modern view of Nature.

[ 25 ] It is Michael's mission to bring into human etheric bodies the forces through which the thought-shadows may regain life; then the souls and spirits in the supersensible worlds will incline towards the enlivened thoughts, and the liberated human being will be able to live with them, just as formerly the human being who was only the physical image of their activity lived with them.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 26 ] 103. In the evolution of mankind consciousness descends on the ladder of unfolding Thought. There was an earliest stage in consciousness when man experienced the Thoughts in the Ego—experienced them as real Beings, imbued with Spirit, soul and life. At a second stage he experienced the Thoughts in the astral body; henceforth they appeared only as the images of Spirit-beings—images, however, still imbued with soul and life. At a third stage he experienced the Thoughts in the etheric body; here they manifest only an inner stirring, like an echo of the quality of soul. At the fourth, which is the present stage, man experiences the Thoughts in the physical body, where they appear as the dead shadows of the Spiritual.

[ 27 ] 104. In like measure as the quality of Spirit, soul and life in human Thought recedes, man's own Will comes to life. True freedom becomes possible.

[ 28 ] 105. It is the task of Michael to lead man back again, on paths of Will, whence he came down when with his earthly consciousness he descended on the paths of Thought from the living experience of the Supersensible to the experience of the world of sense.