The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You will have realised from lectures given recently that in our times a materialistic view of the world, a materialistic way of thinking, is not the outcome of man's arbitrary volition but of a certain historical necessity.

Those who have some understanding of the spiritual process of human evolution know that, fundamentally speaking, in all earlier centuries and millennia man participated in spiritual life to a greater extent than has been the case during the last four or five hundred years. We know with what widespread phenomena this is connected. At the very beginning of Earth-evolution, the heritage of the Old Moon clairvoyance was working in mankind. We can envisage that in the earliest ages of Earth-evolution this faculty of ancient clairvoyance was very potent, very active, with the result that the range of man's spiritual vision in those times was exceedingly wide and comprehensive. This ancient clairvoyance then gradually diminished until times were reached when the great majority of human beings had lost the faculty of looking into the spiritual world, and the Mystery of Golgotha came in substitution. But a certain vestige of the old faculties of soul remained, and evidence of this is to be found, for example, in the nature-knowledge which was in existence until the fourteenth and fifteenth, and indeed until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This nature-knowledge was very different in character from modern natural science. It was a nature-knowledge able to some extent still to rely, not upon clear, Imaginative clairvoyance but nevertheless upon vestiges of the Inspirations and Intuitions which were then applied and elaborated by the so-called alchemists. If an alchemist of those times was honourable in his aims and not out for egotistic gain, he still worked, in a certain respect, with the old Inspirations and Intuitions. While he was engaged in his outer activities, vestiges of the old clairvoyance were still astir within him, although no longer accompanied by any reliable knowledge. But the number of people in whom these vestiges of ancient clairvoyance survived, steadily decreased. I have often said that these vestiges can very easily be drawn out of the human soul today in states of atavistic, visionary clairvoyance. We have shown in many different ways how this atavistic clairvoyance can manifest in our own time.

From all this you will realise that the nearer we come to our own period in evolution, the more we have to do with a decline of old soul-forces and a growth of tendencies in the human soul towards observation of the outer, material world. After slow and gradual preparation, this reached its peak in the nineteenth century, actually in the middle of that century. Little as this is realised today by those who do not concern themselves with such matters, it will be clear to men of the future that the materialistic tendencies of the second half of the nineteenth century had reached their peak in the middle of the century; it was then that these tendencies developed their greatest strength. But the consequence of every tendency is that certain talents develop and the really impressive greatness of the methods evolved by materialistic science stems from these tendencies of the soul to hold fast to the outer, material world of sense.

Now we must think of this phase in the evolution of humanity as being accompanied by another phenomenon. If we carry ourselves back in imagination to the primeval ages of humanity's spiritual development, we shall find that in respect of spiritual knowledge, men were in a comparatively fortunate position. Most human beings, in fact all of them, knew of the spiritual world through direct vision. Just as men of the modern age perceive minerals, plants and animals and are aware of tones and colours, so were the men of old aware of the spiritual world; it was concrete reality to them. So that in those olden times, when full waking consciousness of the outer, material world was dimmed during sleep or dream, there was really nobody who would not have been connected with the dead who had been near him during life. In the waking state a man could have intercourse with the living; during sleep or dream, with the dead. Teaching about the immortality of the soul would have been as superfluous in those primeval times as it would be nowadays to set out to prove that plants exist. Just imagine what would happen at the present time if anyone set out to prove that plants exist! Exactly the same attitude would have been adopted in primeval times if anyone had thought it necessary to prove that the soul also lives after death.

Humanity gradually lost this faculty of living in communion with the spiritual world. There were, of course, always individuals who used whatever opportunity was still available to develop seership. But even that became more and more difficult. How did men in olden times develop a particular gift of seership? If with insight today we study the philosophy of Plato, or what exists of that of Heraclitus, we must realise—and this applies especially to the still earlier Greek philosophies—that they are altogether different from later philosophies. Read the first chapter of my book Riddles of Philosophy, where I have shown how these ancient philosophers, Thales and Parmenides, Anaximenes and Heraclitus, are still influenced by their particular temperaments. This has not hitherto been pointed out; the first mention of it is in my book. Inevitably, therefore, some time must elapse before it is accepted—but that does not matter. Of Plato, we can still feel: this philosophy still lays hold of the whole man. When we come to Aristotle however, the feeling is that we have to do with an academic, learned philosophy. Therefore to understand Plato requires more insight than a modern philosopher usually has at his command. For the same reason there is a gulf between Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle is already a scholar in the modern sense. Plato is the last philosopher in the old Greek sense; he is a philosopher whose concepts are still imbued to some extent with life. As long as a philosophy of this kind exists, the link with the spiritual world is not broken, and indeed it continued for a long time, actually into the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages did not develop philosophy to further stages but simply took over Aristotelian philosophy; and up to a certain point of time this was all to the good. Platonic philosophy too was taken over in the same way.

Now in days of antiquity, as long as at least the aptitude for clairvoyance of a certain kind was present, something very significant took place when men allowed this philosophy to work upon them. Today, philosophy works only upon the head, only upon the thinking. The reason why so many people avoid philosophy is because they do not like thinking. And especially because philosophy offers nothing in the way of sensationalism they have no desire to study it. Ancient philosophy, however, when received into the human soul, was still able, because of its greater life-giving power, to quicken still existing gifts of seership. Platonic philosophy, nay, even Aristotelian philosophy, still had this effect. Being less abstract than the philosophies of modern times, they were still able to quicken faculties of seership inherent in the human soul. And so it came to pass that in men who devoted themselves to philosophy, faculties that were otherwise sinking below the surface were quickened to life. That is how seers came into existence. But because what had now to be learnt about the physical world—and this also applies to philosophy—was of importance for the physical plane alone, and became increasingly important, man alienated himself more and more from the remnants of the old clairvoyance. He could no longer penetrate to the inner depths of existence and it was increasingly difficult to become a seer. Nor will this again be possible until the new methods indicated as a beginning in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? are accepted by mankind as plausible.

We have heard that a period of materialism reached its peak—one could also say, its deepest point—in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is certain that conditions will become more and more difficult but the threads of connection with the earlier impulses in the evolution of humanity must nevertheless not be broken. The following diagram indicates how seership has developed:

Here (yellow) seership is still present in full flower; it vanishes more and more completely until the lowest point is reached in the middle of the nineteenth century, and then there is again an ascent. But understanding of the spiritual world is not the same as seership. Just as in regard to the world, science is not the same thing as mere sensory perception, clairvoyance itself is a different matter from understanding what is seen. In the earliest epochs men were content, for the most part, with vision; they did not get to the point of thinking to any great extent about what was seen, for their seership sufficed. But now, thinking too came to the fore. The line a–b, therefore, indicates seership, vision; line c–d indicates thought or reflection about the spiritual worlds.

In ancient times man was occupied with his visions and thinking lay, as it were, in the subconscious region of the soul. The seers of old did not think, did not reflect; everything came to them directly through their vision. Thinking first began to affect seership about three or four thousand years B.C. There was a golden age in the old Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean and also in very ancient Greek culture when thinking, still youthful and fresh, was wedded with vision in the human soul. In those times, thinking was not the laboured process it is in our day. Men had certain great, all-embracing notions, and, in addition, they had vision (e in diagram) . Something of the kind, although already in a weaker form, was present to a marked degree in the seers who founded the Samothracian Mysteries and there gave the monumental teaching of the four gods: Axieros, Axiokersos, Axiokersa and Kadmillos. In this great teaching which once had its home in the island of Samos, certain lofty concepts were imparted to those who were initiated in the Mysteries and they were able to unite with these concepts the still surviving fruits of ancient seership. It may be possible on some other occasion to speak of these things too in greater detail.¹

But then seership gradually sank below the threshold of consciousness and to call it up from the depths of the soul became more and more difficult. It was, of course, possible to retain some of the concepts, even to develop them further; and so finally a time came when there were initiates who were not necessarily seers—mark well, initiates who were not necessarily seers.

In different places where there were assemblies of these initiates, they simply adopted what was in part preserved from olden times, of which it could be affirmed that ancient seers revealed it—or what could be drawn forth from men who still possessed the faculties of atavistic clairvoyance. Conviction came partly through historical traditions, partly through experiments. Men convinced themselves that what their intellects thought was true. But as time went on the number of individuals in these assemblies who were still able to see into the spiritual world, steadily diminished, while the number of those who had theories about the spiritual world and expressed them in symbols and the like, steadily increased.

And now think of what inevitably resulted from this about the middle of the nineteenth century, when the materialistic tendencies of men had reached their deepest point. Naturally, there were people who knew that there is a spiritual world and also knew what is to be found in the spiritual world, but they had never seen that world. Indeed, the most outstanding savants in the nineteenth century were men who, although they had seen nothing whatever of the spiritual world, knew that it exists, could reflect about it, could even discover new truths with the help of certain methods and a certain symbolism that had been preserved in ancient tradition. To take one example only.—Nothing special is to be gained by looking at a drawing of a human being. But if a human form is drawn with a lion's head, or another with a bull's head, those who have learnt how these things are to be interpreted can glean a great deal from symbolical presentations of this kind—similarly, if a bull is depicted with the head of a man or a lion with the head of a man. Such symbols were in frequent use, and there were earnest assemblies in which the language of symbols could be learnt. I shall say no more about the matter than this, for the schools of Initiation guarded these symbols very strictly, communicating them to nobody who had not pledged himself to keep silence about them. To be a genuine knower a man needed only to have mastered this symbolic language—that is to say, a certain symbolic script.

And so the situation in the middle of the nineteenth century was that mankind in general, especially civilised mankind, possessed the faculty of spiritual vision deep down in the subconsciousness, yet had materialistic tendencies. There were, however, a great many people who knew that there is a spiritual world, who knew that just as we are surrounded by air, so we are surrounded by a spiritual world. But at the same time these men were burdened with a certain feeling of responsibility. They had no recourse to any actual faculties whereby the existence of a spiritual world could have been demonstrated, yet they were not willing to see the world outside succumbing altogether to materialism. And so in the nineteenth century a difficult situation confronted those who were initiated, a situation in face of which the question forced itself upon them: Ought we to continue to keep within restricted circles the knowledge that has come over to us from ancient times and merely look on while the whole of mankind, together with culture and philosophy, sinks down into materialism? Dare we simply look on while this is taking place? They dared not do so, especially those who were in real earnest about these things.

And so it came about that in the middle of the nineteenth century the words “esotericist” and “exotericist” which were used by the initiates among themselves, acquired a meaning deviating from what it had previously been. The occultists divided into exotericists and esotericists. If for purposes of analogy, expressions connected with modern parliaments are adopted—although naturally they are unsuitable here—the exotericists could be compared with the left-wing parties and the esotericists with the right-wing parties. The esotericists were those who wanted to continue to abide firmly by the principle of allowing nothing of what was sacred, traditional knowledge, nothing that might enable thinking men to gain insight into the symbolic language, to reach the public. The esotericists were, so to speak, the Conservatives among the occultists. Who, then—we may ask—were the exotericists ? They were and are those who want to make public some part of the esoteric knowledge. Fundamentally, the exotericists were not different from the esotericists, except that the former were inclined to follow the promptings of their feeling of responsibility, and to make part of the esoteric knowledge public.

There was widespread discussion at that time of which the outside world knows nothing but which was particularly heated in the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed the clashes and discussions between the esotericists and the exotericists were far more heated than those between the Conservatives and Liberals in modern parliaments. The esotericists took the stand that only to those who had pledged themselves to strictest silence and were willing to belong to some particular society should anything be told concerning the spiritual world or any knowledge of it communicated. The exotericists said: If this principle is followed, people who do not attach themselves to some such society or league will sink altogether into materialism.

And now the exotericists proposed a way. I can tell you this today: the way proposed by the exotericists at that time is the way we ourselves are taking. Their proposal was that a certain part of the esoteric knowledge should be popularised. You see, too, how we ourselves have worked with the help of popular writings, in order that men may gradually be led to knowledge of the spiritual worlds.

In the middle of the nineteenth century things had not reached the point at which anyone would have ventured to admit that this was their conviction. In such circles there is, of course, no voting, and to say the following is to speak in metaphor. Nevertheless it can be stated that at the first ballot the esotericists won the day and the exotericists were obliged to submit. The society or league was not opposed, because of the good old precept of holding together. Not until more modern times has the point been reached when members are expelled or resign. Such things used not to happen because people understood that they must hold together in brotherhood. So the exotericists could do no other than submit. But their responsibility to the whole of mankind weighed upon them. They felt themselves, so to speak, to be guardians of evolution. This weighed upon them, with the result that the first ballot—if I may again use this word—was not adhered to, and—once again I will use a word which as it is drawn from ordinary parlance must be taken metaphorically—a kind of compromise was reached. This led to the following situation.

It was said, and this was also admitted by the esotericists: it is urgently necessary for humanity in general to realise that the surrounding world is not devoid of the spiritual, does not consist only of matter nor is subject to purely material laws; humanity must come to know that just as we are surrounded by matter, so too we are surrounded by the spiritual, and that man is not only that being who confronts us when we look at him in the material sense, but also has within him something that is of the nature of spirit and soul. The possibility of knowing this must be saved for humanity. On this, agreement was reached—and that was the compromise.

But the esotericists of the nineteenth century were not prepared to surrender the esoteric knowledge, and a different method had therefore to be countenanced. How it came into being is a complicated story. Particularly on occasions of the founding of Groups I have often spoken of what happened then. The esotericists said: We do not wish the esoteric knowledge to be made public, but we realise that the materialism of the age must be tackled.—In a certain respect the esotericists were basing themselves on a well-founded principle, for when we see repeatedly the kind of attitude that is adopted today towards esoteric knowledge we can understand and sympathise with those who said at that time that they would not hear of it being made public. We must realise, however, that over and over again it can be seen that open communication of esoteric knowledge leads to calamity, and that those who get hold of such knowledge are themselves the cause of obstacles and hindrances in the way of its propagation. In recent weeks we have often spoken of the fact that far too little heed is paid to these obstacles and hindrances. Most unfortunate experiences are encountered when it is a matter of making esoteric knowledge public. Help rendered with the best will in the world to individuals—even there the most elementary matters lead to calamity! You would find it hard to believe how often it happens that advice is given to some individual—but it does not please him. When the outer world says that an occultist who works as we work here, exercises great authority—that is just a catchword. As long as the advice given is acceptable, the occultist, as a rule, is not grumbled at; but when the advice is not liked, it is not accepted. People even browbeat one by declaring: “If you do not give me different advice, I simply cannot get on.” This may come to the point of actual threats, yet it had simply been a matter of advising the person in question for his good. But as he wants something different, he says: “I have waited long enough; now tell me exactly what I ought to do.” He was told this long ago, but it went against the grain. Finally things come to the point where those who were once the most credulous believers in authority become the bitterest enemies. They expect to get the advice they themselves want and when it is not to their liking they become bitter enemies. In our own time, therefore, experience teaches us that we cannot simply condemn the esotericists who refused to have anything to do with popularising the esoteric truths.

And so in the middle of the nineteenth century this popularising did not take place; an attempt was, however, made to deal in some way with the materialistic tendencies of the age. It is difficult to express what has to be said and I can only put it in words which, as such, were never actually uttered but none the less give a true picture. At that time the esotericists said: What can be done about this humanity? We may talk at length about the esoteric teaching but people will simply laugh at us and at you. At most you will win over a few credulous people, a few credulous women, but you will not win over those who cling to the strictly scientific attitude, and you will be forced to reckon with the tendencies of the age.

The consequence was that endeavours were made to find a method by means of which attention could be drawn to the spiritual world, and indeed in exactly the same way as in the material world attention is called to the fact that in a criminal the occipital lobe does not or does not entirely cover the corresponding part of his brain.—And so it came about that mediumship was deliberately brought on the scene. In a sense, the mediums were the agents of those who wished, by this means, to convince men of the existence of a spiritual world, because through the mediums people could see with physical eyes that which originates in the spiritual world; the mediums produced phenomena that could be demonstrated on the physical plane. Mediumship was a means of demonstrating to humanity that there is a spiritual world. The exotericists and the esotericists had united in supporting mediumship, in order to deal with the tendency of the times.

Think only of men such as Zöllner, Wallace, du Prel, Crookes, Butlerow, Rochas, Oliver Lodge, Flammarion, Morselli, Schiaparelli, Ochorowicz, James, and others—how did they become convinced of the existence of a spiritual world? It was because they had witnessed manifestations from the spiritual world. But everything that can be done by the spiritual world and by the initiates must, to begin with, be in the nature of attempts in the world of men. The maturity of humanity must always be tested. This support of mediumship, of spiritualism, was therefore also, in a certain sense, an attempt. All that the exotericists and esotericists who had agreed to the compromise could say was: What will come of it remains to be seen.—And what did, in fact, come of it?

Most of the mediums gave accounts of a world in which the dead are living. Just read the literature on the subject! For those who were initiated, the result was distressing in the utmost degree, the very worst there could possibly have been. For you see, there were two possibilities. One was this.—Mediums were used and they made certain communications. They were only able to relate what they communicated to the ordinary environment—in the material elements of which spirit is, of course, present. It was expected, however, that the mediums would bring to light all kinds of hidden laws of nature, hidden laws of elemental nature. But what actually happened was inevitable, and for the following reason.—

Man, as we know, consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. From the time of going to sleep to waking, therefore, the real man is in his ego and astral body; but then he is at the same time in the realm of the dead. The medium sitting there, however, is not an ego and an astral body. The ego-consciousness and also the astral consciousness have been suppressed and as a result the physical and etheric bodies become particularly active. In this condition the medium may come into contact with a hypnotist, or an inspirer—that is to say, with some other human being. The ego of another human being, or also the environment, can then have an effect upon the medium. It is impossible for the medium to enter the realm of the dead because the very members of his being which belong to that realm have been made inoperative. The mediums went astray; they gave accounts allegedly of the realm of the dead. And so it was obvious that this attempt had achieved nothing except to promulgate a great fallacy. One fine day, therefore, it had to be admitted that a path had been followed which was leading men into fallacy—to purely Luciferic teachings bound up with purely Ahrimanic observations. Fallacy from which nothing good could result had been spread abroad. This was realised as time went on.

You see, therefore, how an attempt was made to deal with the materialistic tendencies of the age and yet to bring home to men's consciousness that there is a spiritual world around us. To begin with, this path led to fallacy, as we have heard. But you can gather from this how necessary it is to take the other path, namely, actually to begin to make public part of the esoteric knowledge. This is the path that must be taken even if it brings one calamity after another. The very fact that we pursue Spiritual Science is, so to say, an acknowledgment of the need to carry into effect the principle of the exotericists in the middle of the nineteenth century. And the aim of the Spiritual Science we wish to cultivate is nothing else than to carry this principle into effect, to carry it into effect honourably and sincerely.

From all this it will be clear to you that materialism is something about which we cannot merely speculate; we must understand the necessity of its appearance, especially of the peak—or lowest point—it reached about the middle of the nineteenth century. The whole trend had of course begun a long time before then—certainly three, four or five centuries before. Man's leanings to the spiritual passed more and more into his subconsciousness, and this state of things reached its climax in the middle of the nineteenth century. But that too was necessary, in order that the purely materialistic talents of men might develop unhindered by occult faculties. A materialistic philosopher such as Kant, a materialistic philosopher from the standpoint of the Idealists of the nineteenth century—you can easily read about this in my book Riddles of Philosophy—could not have appeared if the occult faculties had not drawn into the background. Certain faculties develop in man when others withdraw, but while the one kind of faculties and talents develops outwardly, the other kind takes its own inner path. These three, four or five centuries were not, therefore, a total loss for the spiritual evolution of mankind. The spiritual forces have continued to develop below the threshold of consciousness, and if you think about what I have indicated in connection with von Wrangell's pamphlet² on the subject of what he there calls the “dreamlike”, you will be able to recognise the existence of occult faculties which are merely waiting to unfold. They are present in abundance in the souls of men; it is only a matter of drawing them out in the right way.

It was necessary to say these things by way of introduction, and tomorrow we will pass on to the question of the relation between the Living and the Dead, bearing in mind that in one respect the wrong path resulting from the compromise between the exotericists and the esotericists has actually been instructive. To understand the nature of this compromise we must study the questions of birth and death and then show what effect the materialistic methods have had in this connection.

• 1. See Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres, Lecture XII. Fourteen lectures given in Dornach, 23rd November to 21st December, 1923. (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973)
• 2. Published in Leipzig in 1914, with the title, Wissenschaft and Theosophie.

Yesterday, using Nietzsche as an example, I tried to show how a person who lives entirely in the external world of today's civilization, and yet, like Nietzsche, wants to seek moral impulses from human nature, must fail because it is impossible to find out from the present-day way of knowing how moral impulses intervene in physical life. Today we have a civilization that, on the one hand, accepts the laws of natural science and shapes our education accordingly, so that from childhood we absorb views about the interrelationships in nature. On the other hand, we have a moral world view that stands on its own. We understand moral impulses as commandments or as conventional rules of conduct that arise in the context of social human life. But we cannot conceive of the moral life on the one hand and the physical life on the other as being intimately connected. And yesterday I pointed out how Nietzsche, starting from what he made his supreme virtue, from honesty, from honesty towards himself and others, ultimately came to accept only the physical in man, and then to let the moral emerge from the physical, which he perceived as the humanly all-too-human. Because he wanted to be honest with the world view of his time, his moral philosophy failed because he could not see how the moral and the physical interact in one.

This interaction cannot be seen either unless one enters into that realm which, in the right sense, is called the supersensible. One must be clear about the fact that only in human life itself is contact established, as it were, between what one feels as moral impulses, between moral ideals for my sake, and the physical activity, the physical processes in the human being itself. And the big question today is this: when I have a moral impulse, does it remain something quite abstract, or can it intervene in the physical organization?

I told you yesterday: When we stand before a machine, we can be sure that a moral impulse will not intervene in the workings of the machine. There is initially no connection between the moral world order and the mechanism of the machine. If, as is increasingly the case in the modern scientific world view, the human organism is also depicted in a machine-like way, then this also applies to humans, and moral impulses remain illusions. At most, man can hope that some being, given to him through a revelation, will intervene in the moral order of the world, rewarding the good and punishing the bad; but he cannot somehow see a connection between moral impulses and physical processes from within the world order itself.

Today, I would like to point out the area in which this connection between what a person experiences within themselves as moral and the physical really occurs. To better understand the explanations that I will give, let us first take the animal.

In the animal, we have an interaction of the physical organism, an etheric formative forces organism and the astral organism. The actual I is not directly embodied in the animal organization itself, but intervenes from the outside as a group I in the animal organization. Now, with the animal, we must be clear about the fact that two directions can be clearly distinguished in its organization. We see the animal head. In the higher animals, as in man, the head is the most excellent carrier of the nervous-sensory organism. We see how everything that the animal takes in from the external sensory world essentially penetrates the animal through the organs of its head.

What I have emphasized again and again is certainly true: we cannot directly relate the structure of an organism to a physical part of it. We have to say: the animal is entirely head in a certain respect, because it can perceive all along its body. But the animal is primarily a nerve-sense organism at the head. This is where it effects its relationship to the external world. If we then look at the animal in its overall organization, in that we see it in relation to the rest of its organism, how it has, as it were, the other pole of the head organization towards the tail end, then, when we look at the structure of the animal in its physical, etheric and astral organization, we have the matter in such a way that, as it were, the astral mobility of the animal flows from back to front. The astral currents, the currents of its astral organism, constantly flow from back to front, and they encounter the impressions that the senses experience at the head. So that we have an intermingling from back to front and from front to back in the animal. I would like to draw this interflow schematically in such a way that the astral currents in the animal flow from back to front (red arrows), and that the sense impressions flow from the head to the back (yellow arrows). Between these two currents, there is an interaction in the animal that extends throughout the entire organism.

You can clearly see this interaction in the dog. The dog sees its master and wags its tail. When the dog sees its master and wags its tail, this means that it has the impression of its master, and that the astral current flows from the inside towards this impression, which goes from front to back, from the outside. And this flowing towards the tail from the whole organism from back to front is expressed in the dog's wagging. There is a complete coming together. And anyone who wanted to ask about the dog's physiognomy when it expresses joy should not so much look at the dog's face when it looks at its master, but should consider the wagging of the tail: there is a physiognomy in that.

This is basically the case with every animal. Only, let us say, when we go down to the fish, it is not noticed so much because the astral body has a great deal of independence there. But for the observing consciousness it is all the more vivid. It becomes quite clear to the observing consciousness that when the fish perceives something through its nervous-sensory apparatus, which comes towards it in the current, it itself sends its own astral current from behind towards the front, and then there is a wonderful interlocking of what the fish sees and what it brings. This intimate interlocking of the astral current from outside – for it is an astral current from outside that a being receives with the sense impressions – and the astral current from behind to the front is interrupted in the human being by the fact that the human being is an upright being.

Because man is an upright being, he is not able to send the astral current directly towards the sense impressions in the same way as a dog, for example. The dog has a horizontal spine. The astral movement from back to front passes directly through its head. In man the head is raised. Thus the whole relationship of those astral currents that flow from back to front, which make up the actual inner being, the harmony of these currents with those currents that come through the sense impressions, is not as simple as it is in the animal. And especially as regards the moral nature of man, one must study exactly what I have just assumed in order to understand the intervention of the moral in the physical in man. With animals we do not speak of morality because in the animal world this streaming of the astral from behind to the front and from the front to the back is uninterrupted. In man the following occurs.

The human being raises his head out of the astral current that comes from him and goes from behind to in front. This raising of the head signifies the embodiment of the actual self. The fact that the blood does not just take the horizontal path, but that the blood must flow up as a carrier of the inner ego forces, makes that the human being experiences this ego as his ego, as his individual ego. But it also means that in the human being, the head, the main seat of sensory impressions, is purely devoted to the outside world. In fact, the human being is much more organized in such a way that he has a looser connection between his sense of touch and his sense of sight than the animal. In the animal, the sense of touch and the sense of sight are more intimately connected. When the animal sees something, it immediately feels what it sees. The organs of touch are also stimulated by sight. This stimulation of the organs of touch then comes together, in particular, with the current that goes from back to front. In humans, the head is raised and purely devoted to the external world. This is particularly evident in the sense of sight. One might say that the human sense of sight is a kind of etheric sense. We only gradually learn to assess, through our judgment, what distances or the like are in the physical world. As human beings, we see primarily what is expressed in color and in the shades of color.

Consider only that it was only in the time when intellectualism was born that man also began to use perspective in painting. You won't find spatial perspective in the older painters, because only in this period, through the detour of judgment, of intellectualism, have the eyes become accustomed to seeing that which is real, which expresses itself in perspective, that is, in distances.

The eye is primarily for color, light and dark, and gradations of light and dark. But this – in that it is spread over the objects – actually comes from outer space. The sun sends forth light, and in that the light that comes from outer space falls on the things of the earth and is reflected back, the eye actually sees the things not with the help of earthly powers, but with the help of cosmic, of world powers.

But this is symptomatic of the human head in general. It is more devoted to the ethereal world than to the physical. Man actually finds his way into the physical world by walking around in it, by touching it. But he finds his way into the physical world less through the senses of his head.

Just think how ghostly the world would be, how ethereally ghostly, if we did not grasp space through the sense of touch, but if we only grasped what the eye transmits to us about space! The animal organization in relation to the head is quite different from the human organization. The animal organization is much more closely connected with physical reality through the head than is the human organization. When man takes the perceptions of his head, he has something ideal in it because it is ethereal. He actually lives entirely in the etheric world through his head.

Now the head is also external – and this is not something merely superficial that I am mentioning – but the head is also externally reproduced in man according to the cosmos. Take the individual animal head formations. They are directly an expression of the animal's own physicality. You cannot find that cosmic roundness of the formation of the head in animals. Man is indeed an image of the cosmic-spherical in his head, and he struggles to achieve this image of the cosmic-spherical by having not the horizontal but the vertical to his bodily line; by rising from the horizontal to the vertical.

This is particularly evident when we consider the whole organization of the human being. The physical organization of the human head is bound to an etheric organization that truly reflects the purity of the cosmos. Throughout a person's earthly life, the organization of the human head in the etheric body is something that is rarely touched by the earthly, but which remains thoroughly cosmic in its etheric and even more so in its astral. It is also the case that when a person passes from one earthly life to the next, the organization that lies outside of his head, that is, what is below his head (the head loses itself as a system of forces after death), is transformed, not the physical matter of course, but the context of forces, is metamorphosed and becomes the head in the next incarnation, in the next earthly life. Thus, in order to become an organization of the head, the human organization must first pass through the cosmos. The human organization of the head cannot develop at all on earth. Through his head, man is completely devoted to the cosmic, only through the rest of his organization is man bound to the earthly. Therefore, we can say: In the animal, the entire configuration of the head arises from the rest of its organization, while in the human being, the head stands out with a certain independence from the rest of the organization. This remaining organization, however, is expressed in the human being's head in everything that becomes a gesture and facial expression. If you have an inner agitation, let us say a feeling of fear, that which lies within the metabolic area, in the blood circulation system, is expressed by the forces of the human organism in the paleness of the face and in the play of expressions. And it is similar with other inner agitations. We see in the human being what is in the rest of the organism, pouring into the head spiritually and mentally, but astrally, and what lives astrally in the rest of the organism is expressed physiognomically, one might say, in the movement of the facial muscles, in the skin coloration, but especially in the play of expressions in the head.

It is a very interesting study when, for example, we see how a person accompanies what he speaks – which of course comes from his I – with a certain facial expression, how what lives in his astral body is expressed in his face. If you look at a person's face as they speak, you receive their thoughts with the words they utter and the accompanying processes in their astral organism with their facial expressions. But the etheric organism of the head is also connected with this astral organism of the head, and this etheric organism of the head is a wonderful reflection of the cosmos. It is a very remarkable experience to observe a person speaking by means of supersensible vision. We see how the astral organism is everywhere manifested in the play of expression, but how the etheric organism of the head is little affected by it. The etheric organism of the head resists the entry of the play of expression into its own formation. It is very interesting to see that certain hymn-singing, for example, in which the human being is imbued with a sense of holiness in his astral body, are easily absorbed into the etheric body of the head, and in fact the etheric body shows a play of light on the side facing the face with every expression; but in the parts situated further back, the etheric body shows a sharp resistance to the absorption of any processes from the expression.

From this you can see that although the human head is related to the rest of the organism, this relationship is subject to certain laws because the etheric body is modeled on the cosmos and wants to remain in this configuration of the cosmos, not wanting to be distracted, especially not by what comes from the passions, the drives, the instincts of human nature.

Now there is something else that is highly significant. In the countenance, we see a certain play of expression that manifests itself outwardly in man. This play of expression depends on the temperament, the character of the person, and on various mental and physical peculiarities. But there is another play of expression in man, even a much more lively play of expression, only this play of expression is not in his consciousness, but in the subconscious. It is extrasensory in nature. It lies in a realm that man cannot reach with his sensory observation. If you look at the human being's astral body, not as it belongs to the head, but as it belongs to the metabolism-limb-organism, if you look at the human being's astral body as it encompasses and permeates the legs, how it encompasses and permeates the abdomen, then, in this part of the astral organism, if you have supersensible vision, you also get to see a play of expression, a very lively play of expression, a physiognomy that is expressed there. And the strange thing is that this play of features, this physiognomy, reveals itself from the outside in. So while the play of features that expresses human speech or the human aspect in the environment reveals itself to the outside, a play of features that the human being does not have in his ordinary consciousness reveals itself to the inside. This is a very interesting fact.

I would like to show you this schematically. Suppose you have the human being here. Then we have the astral body (red), which is the cause of the play of expression and reveals itself to the outside. We have the same astral body, but a different part of it here (yellow), and while here (above) in this astral body we have the play of expression revealing itself outwardly, here (below) we have a play of expression that reveals itself entirely inwardly: this part of the astral body, so to speak, turns its face inward. The human being is unaware of this in ordinary consciousness, but it is so. When we look at a child, we find that this part of the astral body is constantly turning its expression inward, and when we look at more adult people, the expressions even become more or less permanent. The human being takes on an inward physiognomy. And what is this facial expression? Yes, this facial expression is based on the following.

If a person has an impulse for what in everyday life, and rightly so, is called a good deed, a moral deed, then the play of expression within is different than when one has an impulse for an evil deed. There is, as it were, an ugly expression, an ugly facial expression, if I may say so, inwardly, when a person performs an egoistic act. For basically all moral acts reduce themselves to the non-egoistic, all immoral acts to the egoistic. The only difference is that in ordinary life this true moral judgment is masked by the fact that someone can actually be very immoral, namely thoroughly permeated with selfish motives, but conventionally follows certain moral rules. These are then not his own at all. He is integrated into what he has been raised in, or what he does because he is embarrassed about what others will say. He is threaded in as a link in a chain. But the truly moral, which actually adheres to human individuality and lives in it, is already such that the good comes from the interest that we have in the other person; from the interest that we can gain from we can feel what others feel and experience as our own, while the immoral is something that originates in the fact that the human being closes himself off, where he does not empathize with what other people feel. To think good is basically to be able to put yourself in other people's shoes, to think evil is not to be able to put yourself in other people's shoes. This can then become a law, a conventional rule, something that one is or is not ashamed of. Then what is actually selfish can be greatly suppressed by convention. But basically, it is not what a person does that is decisive for the moral evaluation; rather, one must look deeper into the human character, into human nature, in order to be able to judge the actual moral value of the person.

The moral value expresses itself in the astral body in that this part of the astral body turns a beautiful countenance inward when unselfish actions and altruistic impulses live in the person, and an ugly facial expression inward when selfish, evil impulses live in the person. So that a spirit who reads inside the [astral] person can judge exactly the same way by this physiognomy whether a person is good or evil, as one can judge the person by other characteristics of his facial expressions. All this is not in the ordinary consciousness, but it is inevitably there. There is no possibility that dishonesty does not go deep into this person. One could imagine a devious scoundrel who has complete control over his facial expressions, what goes outwards, who has the most innocent face in the world, while unfolding the most villainous impulses; but in what is there in his astral body and gives him an inward expression, a facial expression, there he cannot be dishonest, there he makes himself a devil in the moment when he has his immoral motives. Outwardly, he can look as innocent as a child; inwardly, within himself, he looks like a devil; and the pure egoist looks at his heart with a devilish grin. This is just as much a law as the laws of nature are laws.

But now comes the crucial point. When an ugly physiognomy develops here (below), then the head, accustomed to the cosmos, rejects this physiognomy, does not take it in, and the human being forms in his etheric body such a body as was done with Ahriman, where the head has atrophied, has become instinctualized. Everything goes into the lower limbs of the etheric body. The head does not absorb this, and the human being makes himself Ahrimanic in his lower etheric body, and then also permeates his head with what this Ahrimanic body still pushes into the head. That is the strange thing, that in his head, already in the warmth ether of the head, the human being repels the physiognomy of the immoral, does not let it up. So that the immoral person carries an etheric Ahrimanic organism within him and his head remains unaffected by what is within him. It remains an image of the cosmos, but it actually belongs to him less and less because he cannot permeate it with his own being.

An immoral person gets little further than his life in the previous incarnation. Whatever has become his head in the transformation from the rest of the body of the previous incarnation remains the head, and when he dies, he has not come very far at all in relation to his head. On the other hand, what the moral imagination inwardly brings about flows up to the head in man. It causes the vertical direction. In fact, no immoral thing flows in the vertical direction. This gathers together and Ahrimanizes the human being. Only the moral flows in the vertical direction. And this is so because in the ether, in the warmth ether of the blood, the physiognomy of the immoral is rejected in the vertical direction. The head does not absorb this. The moral element, however, goes up into the head with the warmth of the blood, even more so in the light ether, and especially in the chemical and life ether. Man permeates his own being with his own being.

There is truly an influence of the moral into the physical, so that one can say: the etheric organization of the head has affinity for the moral in man, but not for the immoral. And no one can see how the moral impulses work into the physical through the detour via the ethereal, if they stop at mere physical-sensory observation of the world. One must take the human being as a whole, according to his etheric and astral organization, and then one has the field in which one sees how the moral element intervenes in the whole organization of the human being.

Now you can imagine what it looks like when a person dies. If his head has repelled the forces of his other organizations, then in fact nothing of him is actually in his head in the etheric body, which he sheds after a few days. He makes no particular impression on the world. He does not work with the further development of the earth, because he does not send any forces into that which reaches into the future. If a person has developed moral impulses within himself, which his head has taken up, then his ether body leaves him as a human being. The immoral person is abandoned by his ether body, in that the ether body really looks truly ahrimanic. One gets a good impression of the Ahrimanic form, even without making an effort to meet Ahriman himself, when one sees the etheric body of immoral people passing into the cosmos. It is Ahrimanized in form. In contrast, the etheric body that detaches from the astral body and the ego two or three days after the death of a person with moral impulses is humanized, humanly rounded and serene.

Such a person processes what he experiences as a human being on earth, including in his head, not just in the rest of his organism, and he hands it over to the cosmos through the similarity of his head. The head is indeed similar to the cosmos, the rest of the organism is not very similar to the cosmos; after some time, after it has been handed over to the cosmos, it is, one might say, scattered like a cloud and more or less falls to the earth, or at least is driven into currents that circle around the earth. But what a person has imprinted in his head in terms of morality is poured out into the vastness of the cosmos, and in this way the person contributes to the reshaping of the cosmos. And so we can say: By the way a person is moral or immoral, he contributes to the future of the earth. The immoral person hands over to the forces that surround the earth - and these are important for all activity, because the physical of the earth later arises out of the etheric - that which etherically trickles down to the earth and in turn connects with the earth, or what lives in the vicinity of the earth. The moral man, on the other hand, having absorbed into his head the forces that develop precisely through the moral impulses, gives to the whole cosmos what he has worked for on earth.

Well, you can also name the virtues differently, depending on whether you summarize certain human impulses in one way or another. Yesterday I mentioned Nietzsche's four cardinal virtues, which in turn group somewhat differently. He distinguishes, as I said, honesty towards oneself and one's friends, bravery towards one's enemies, generosity towards the defeated, and courtesy towards all people. And other moral philosophers have listed other virtues. But all these virtues remain abstractions if one only knows the physical about a person. Then one stands before people with these virtues as impulses, as one stands before a machine with an order: No matter how well you address a machine, it does not occur to it to accept any of your impulses. Likewise, human nature, as expressed by today's world view, cannot accept any of the moral impulses. In order to understand the reality and effectiveness of the moral, one must enter the supersensible realm.

A supersensible thing is the inward-turned facial expression, the inward-turned gesture, which, depending on whether it is moral or immoral, is taken up or rejected by the head and thus passes into the world, or is shattered, burst, splintered on the earth.

Thus even a moral philosopher like Nietzsche, with his moral principles, is completely adrift and can only achieve a kind of consolidation, as I told you yesterday. But this is not a real consolidation. Despite everything, he ultimately had to resort to the human physical plane, despite all his “Beyond Good and Evil.” He failed because of this. Thus, if we wish to consider the efficacy of the moral, we must go beyond the mere physical world order, we must enter the supersensible realm, and we must be clear about the fact that although the moral appears abstractly in the physical, its efficacy can only be seen and judged in the supersensible.

To begin with, let me remind you of something which most of you already know from previous lectures. When the human soul unfolds in the way which I have so often described even in public lectures, we arrive at a different picture of the world. The essential thing is that our soul follows, as it were, the path leading from the physical into the spiritual world. When the soul progresses in its development, the physical world gradually transforms itself and assumes the aspect of a spiritual world. We might say: Little by little, the characteristics of the physical-sensory world vanish and on the horizon of our consciousness appear forms, beings, and events pertaining to the spiritual world.

An important thing which now rises up in our consciousness with everything that appears before us, might be described as follows: We ourselves undergo a change—in our own sight, of course, we ourselves change, and even the surrounding world which exists in our physical-sensory perception undergoes a change. Let us first consider what lies nearest to us, the earthly plane.

Man really knows very little of the world which transcends the earth, if during his earthly existence he does not abandon his habitual attitude, if he remains within this whole way of looking at the world, which makes him grow together with his earthly life. When we penetrate into the spiritual world (we are then outside the physical body) and look back upon our body, upon our whole physical life, or in general upon our whole being, it is evident that we grow richer and richer; our content grows, our whole being expands and becomes a world. Man himself actually grows to the size of a whole world, when we thus look back upon him.

This is the true significance of something which we have often emphasized: Through spiritual development we identify ourselves with the world. We perceive a new world which seems to come out of our own being. We expand into a world. The earth instead loses is solid substance, or what we are accustomed to see physically—mountains, rivers, etc. This vanishes and we gradually begin to experience ourselves within the earth—I purposely say within the earth—we feel as if we lived within a great organism. We are outside our own world, and our inner world, this inner reality, now becomes an immense world, whereas the physical world which surrounded us becomes a Being and we live within it. This is what we should be able to conceive. When we transcend our own self, the human world expands into an immense world, and we ourselves grow into the organism of the earth; within it we experience ourselves in the same way in which our finger would, for example, feel that it belongs to our organism—if the finger were endowed with consciousness.

Man passes through this experience and this has often been expressed by more poetical natures, by people with a deeper capacity of feeling. The moment of waking up in the morning has often been compared with the awakening of Nature outside; the daily course of human life, with the sun's ascent to the zenith, and sunset with the need to sleep which appears in the form of fatigue.

These similes are born out of the feeling that man stands within the life of Nature. Nevertheless they are not worth much, for they do not touch the essential. I have therefore told you many times that a comparison really in keeping with the facts must differ from the one in which Nature's course of events is compared with the processes of sleeping and waking. The course of human life during the space of 24 hours should instead be compared with the course of events upon the earth during a whole year. The simile will agree if we take the whole year and compare its events with the processes of waking up and falling asleep which take place within us in the course of 24 hours. It is quite wrong to compare man's waking life from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep with the summer season, for man's waking condition corresponds to winter, when Nature outside is awake, and summer should be compared with man's sleeping condition. If comparisons are drawn in, we should therefore say: Man falls asleep; i.e., he passes over into the summer season of his personal existence; whereas his waking condition would more or less correspond to autumn, winter, and early spring.

Why is this in keeping with the actual facts? Because when we develop in the manner described and become part of the whole earthly organism, we should indeed consider that in the summer the Spirit of the Earth is asleep; summer is the earth's real sleeping condition and the great consciousness of the Spirit of the Earth then withdraws. In the spring the Spirit of the Earth begins to slumber and it wakes up again in the autumn, when the first frost falls; it then begins to think and lives through its thinking, waking condition. This is daytime for the Spirit of the Earth, in the course of the year.

When we look back upon the sleeping human being, we see that when he falls asleep and goes out with his Ego and astral body, there arises a kind of vegetable activity in the organism abandoned by the astral body and Ego. There is activity in man's inner being and we feel that the first moments of sleep are like the beginning of a vegetative process; to the clairvoyant, sleep appears as if the body were pervaded by the growing life of plants. Imaginative knowledge enables us to perceive this. This vegetation, however, does not grow in the same way as that upon the earth. It is possible to describe this, to meditate over such things, for then we progress further and further.

Upon the earth, the plants grow out of the soil. But it is otherwise when we observe the “vegetable growth” in man. There the plants grow in such a way that their roots are outside and grow into man; their flowers should therefore be sought in man. Sleeping man is indeed a beautiful sight—I mean, to the clairvoyant. He is like the earth with its budding, greening life, but with a whole vegetation growing into it. What disturbs the view is that at the same time we have the impression that the astral body is gnawing at the roots. This appears in the course of sleep. The animals consume, eat up what summer produces upon the surface of the earth, and we perceive that our astral body behaves like the animal world, except that it gnaws at the roots. If this were not so, we could not unfold the nucleus, the kernel, which we take with us through the portal of death. What the astral body thus appropriates, is what we really take with us through the portal of death, as harvest of our life.

I am describing to you facts which rise up before the clairvoyant consciousness. And even as winter comes over the fruits of the earth and covers them with frost, I might say, so the astral body and the Ego, when diving down into the etheric and physical body cover with frost, freeze up the vegetation or spiritual plant growth which arises in our organism during the night.

What I described to you as the Spirit of the Earth, is really a personality, like man—except that the Spirit of the Earth leads a different kind of life. One year is one of his days, and in the Spirit of the Earth we gradually learn to recognize the Impulse which I described to you when speaking of the Impulse of Golgotha. We find in it that vivifying power which did not live in the earth before the Mystery of Golgotha, and within it we feel in the safekeeping of the Spirit who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. We grow aware of this when we really penetrate into that condition in which the earth becomes for us a Being to whom we belong in the same way in which a finger belongs to our organism. In the present time, occult immersion in the world cannot help taking on the character of religious immersion in the divine essence that streams through the world and spiritualizes it. Real knowledge of the spiritual world cannot therefore take away religious feeling; on the contrary, it deepens it.

I wished to speak of the true aspect of things when one enters the image world of spiritual reality; for what we appear to our own sight, in our ordinary physical consciousness, is merely a reflexion, only an inner kernel—but I must immediately add that this expression is not quite appropriate, for it is difficult to coin words for such significant facts; what we appear to be in our own sight always remains connected with us when we are outside the body with our soul being. It is therefore not correct to say that this is a kernel, for a fruit has its peel outside and its best substance inside—in man, on the other hand (in the spiritual, things are frequently reversed) his best part is outside and his peel inside; what exists inside is only his peel, whereas the spiritual is something which may spatially be described as peel.

When we follow the path leading into the spiritual world we learn that man is not a simple, but a very complicated being. We gathered that man and everything that lives in him participates in all the worlds which are accessible to him. With his physical body he belongs to the physical world; with his soul he belongs to the soul world; with his spirit he belongs to the spiritual world. We reach into these three worlds.

We know that when we enter the spiritual world we really experience ourselves in a multiplied form. What is so alarming is that the oneness, the unity is then split up, so that we feel as if we belonged to many worlds. It is possible to bring forward different points of view, but I will now draw attention to one aspect and refer to explanations repeatedly given in recent lectures.

When studying human life from the inner aspect, we should look upon it as a structured life; but when we leave the body, the human being immediately appears structured, subdivided into four parts. We have, to begin with, the force which lies at the foundation of memory. Through memory, things experienced in the past rise up in our consciousness. Memory brings a connected sequence into life, so that our existence from birth to death becomes a whole, a unity.—A second element is what we call thinking, our representing power—I cannot go into further details, this is not the essential point just now, but our thinking activity is something that lives in the present. And if we proceed further, we come to feeling, and still further to the will. When we look into ourselves, our own inner being takes on the aspect of memory, thinking, feeling and will.

We may now ask: What is the essential difference between these four soul activities? Ordinary psychology enumerates, but does not differentiate them. Truth can only be reached if we are able to penetrate into the essence of these four soul activities, and there we discover that the will is, as it were, the infant among them; feeling is older, thinking still older, and the activity that lives in memory is the oldest, the old man among our soul activities. You will grasp this more clearly from the following standpoint:

We have often explained that man did not begin his development upon the earth, for the evolution of the earth was preceded by the old Moon evolution, the old Sun evolution, and the old Saturn evolution. Man did not first come into being upon the earth, but in order to become man he had to pass through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon.

You see, what we unfold in our will, the will as it exists today, arose upon the earth; its development is not complete and it is altogether a product of the evolution of the earth. During the Moon evolution man was not an independent volitional being; the Angels willed for him. The will rayed in, as it were, when the evolution of the earth began. During the Moon evolution, man was already endowed with feeling; he was endowed with thinking during the Sun evolution, and with memory during the Saturn evolution. If you now connect these things with other facts described in my “Akasha Chronicle” and in “Occult Science” you will discover an important connection. The first foundation of man's physical body arose during the Saturn stage of evolution; the first basis of man's etheric body arose during the Sun stage of evolution; during the Moon stage of development arose the first foundation of the astral body, and the Ego began to unfold during the earthly stage of development.

Let us now consider separately the activity which we designate as memory. What is memory? The picture of an event which we experienced remains behind in the soul, in the same way in which something of the thoughts of a book's author remain in the book we read. When you read a book, you may think through (not always, but this does not count now) everything thought out by the author of the book. Memory is a subconscious reading activity. In memory remain the signs which the etheric body engraved upon the physical body. You may have lived through something years ago and gathered from it the necessary experience; what remains behind is the impression which the etheric body engraved upon the physical body, and when you remember this past experience your memory process is a subconscious act of reading.

The mysterious processes which take place in the human organism, in order that the etheric body may engrave upon it the signs which lie at the foundation of memory, began to form part of man's structure during the ancient Saturn evolution. We have in fact within us this secret Saturn-organism and its existence reveals a life and being of its own. Upon it the etheric body writes down the signs connected with man's experiences in the external world, so that these signs may be drawn up again from memory. That man carries out this subconscious writing activity is essentially dependent on the fact that during his first seven years of life, the body, or that part of his physical body which receives these impressions or signs, is still elastic. Consequently we should not—as explained in my book “The Education of the Child”—maltreat a child by developing its power of memory. During the first seven years, the essential thing is to leave the child's elastic organism to its own elemental forces, without maltreating it. We should therefore tell a child as much as possible, but without stressing the point that it should unfold its memory power artificially. In regard to the unfolding of memory, the child should instead be left to its own resources. Spiritual science may thus be of immense importance in pedagogical life.

Even as the power of memory is one of human nature's oldest components, so the activity which lies at the foundation of thinking is part of something which we may designate as having been formed upon the Sun. This too is relatively old. The Sun forces organized man's etheric body so as to enable it to exercise this peculiar activity of thought, or representation. This will show you that we must go far back into cosmic evolution in order to give an answer to the question: Why is man able to remember things, and why is he able to think?—We must go back to the evolutions of Saturn and of the Sun.

If we consider man's feeling life, we only have to go back as far as the Moon evolution, and for his volitional life as far as the evolution of the Earth. This will enable you to understand many things. In the case of people who were strongly moulded by their preceding incarnation, who are not elastic, but have a sharply moulded form, many things will be pressed into their organism; they will be people endowed with an almost automatic memory, but with their thinking power they will not be able to unfold much in a productive way. Whereas the power of memory should be connected chiefly with the etheric body, and man's feeling life with the astral body, his volitional life should be connected chiefly with the Ego. Man says “I” to himself only because he is a being endowed with will. If he had merely the power of thinking, his life would only be like a dream.

We thus have, I might say, an organic connection of inner soul activities which were impressed on our soul's being in the course of development. In regard to the will, I have already explained that it only arose during the development of the Earth. Upon the Moon, higher spiritual hierarchies, the Angeloi, still willed for man. During the Moon evolution, man's whole will was still of such a kind that when the clairvoyant consciousness tried to recall this state of existence, it perceives that although the will then existed upon a higher stage, it lived in man instinctively, in the form in which it now exists in the animals of the earth. The animal necessarily follows its hot and whirling instincts and it lives in the common will of its species.

Even as higher spiritual beings, the Angeloi, willed for us during the Moon evolution, so higher spiritual beings are now at work in determining our Karma from one incarnation to the other. The Angeloi do not work in our will, but in the uninterrupted stream of our Karma. Even as during the Moon evolution man felt that his will was not his own, but that of an Angel, so here on earth we do not think that it is we who shape our Karma; this is ruled by the spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. Only if our will can be silenced, as it were, a gleam of the course of Karma, which ordinarily remains concealed, may shine through and reveal itself even to a non-clairvoyant consciousness.

Bear clearly in mind what I have explained to you: That in man a nucleus unfolds which passes through the portal of death and enters the spiritual realm; this nucleus is the bearer of our Karma. What each one of us will do tomorrow is determined by Karma and already lives in us today. If the will had not to be unfolded here on earth, we might be able to see through our Karma. We could see through it to the extent that under certain conditions it might be possible to foresee the near future. But the will which penetrates into the stream of Karma darkens our outlook into the events which may happen to us, for example tomorrow. Only if the will is completely silenced, something of what will happen—not through us, but to us—may gleam through.

Let me give you an example, related by Erasmus Franceschi and based on truth. In his youth, Erasmus Franceschi lived with an aunt. Once he dreamed that a man whose name he also heard in his dream would fire at him, but that he would not be killed, because his aunt would save his life. This is what he dreamed. On the following day, before anything had happened, he told his aunt what he had dreamed. She was greatly alarmed and said that quite recently a man had been shot in the neighbourhood, and she entreated her nephew to remain at home, so that nothing might happen to him. She gave him the key to the apple pantry, so that he might always go up and fetch himself some apples. He went to his room and sat down at his desk to read. But at that moment the book did not interest him as much as the pantry key in his pocket which his aunt had given him. He decided to go upstairs to the apple room. No sooner had he moved, than a shot was fired, aimed in such a way that the bullet would have struck his head, if he had still been reading. If he had not got up, the bullet would have gone through his head. In the neighbour's house, the manservant, whose name was the one which Franceschi had heard in his dream and whom he did not know, was cleaning two guns and was not aware that they were loaded. A gun went off, and if Franceschi had not risen from his chair at that very moment, in order to go to the apple pantry to which his aunt had given him the key, he would unfailingly have been killed. The dream therefore faithfully rendered what would have taken place on the following day.

You see, of this event we may say that the will had nothing to do with it, for Franceschi could not influence the events with his own will; he could not protect himself, yet something entered his Karma so that he could live on. In his case, the spiritual being that moulded his Karma had already had the rescuing idea. The dream was foresight of the spirit controlling Karma, who saw what would have occurred on the following day, and because that young man's soul had, almost through natural meditation, passed through a certain deepening, something arose which may be compared with certain things in external life. In regard to external life man can prophesy only in a very limited measure. But in a certain sense we are all prophets. For example, we all know that tomorrow at a certain moment the light will dawn, or a man crossing a field will be able to foretell what it will look like tomorrow ... yet he will not be able to foresee whether rain will fall upon it tomorrow. The same applies to inner life. Man lives in accordance with his will, and Karma is contained in his will. Through feeling, we may learn to know the things which lie closest to us, and in the same way a light may be kindled in the souls of certain people who have passed through an inner deepening, so that they can see events in which the will must remain silent. In the study of spiritual science it is important to bear in mind such things, because they show us that in man's inner being lives something which he is unable to survey through his ordinary consciousness and which points to the future. Karma then penetrates through the silenced will.

Everything which thus rises up before our soul in spiritual-scientific research, shows us that what we call the great illusion chiefly consists therein that with his ordinary consciousness man cannot survey his own being; he belongs to the whole universe, although his ordinary consciousness only enables him to see the shell, enclosed, as it were, by the skin, etc. But what he thus sees in an enclosed state is only an extract of what he really is, for man is as great as the universe. Even in ordinary life we look back upon ourselves from outside.

When we clearly realize these things, we gradually begin to feel that within us lives something which we may designate as man's etheric body. Indeed, even in our ordinary life it is possible at least to observe this second man—the etheric being in man's physical being, but for this it is necessary to observe life in a far more delicate way than is usually the case.

Think, for example, that you are lying lazily in bed in the morning and would much rather remain in bed than get up; indeed it costs you an effort to get up. You will find it difficult to get up if you only rely on what lives in you. But imagine that you are suddenly struck by the thought that in the room next to yours there is an object which you were expecting for some days. A thought connected with something outside rises up in you, and this will work almost like a miracle. For you will see that it is even capable of driving you out of bed!

What has happened? When you awoke and dived down into your physical body, you felt what the physical body can make you feel; but this cannot inspire you with the thought of getting up. The etheric body acts independently, when you draw its attention to something which is outside. This example will show you how you may confront your physical body with the etheric body, and how the etheric body literally takes hold of you and pushes you out of bed.

A definite sensation may be reached in regard to our own being: that of looking at ourselves and distinguishing between two kinds of human activities: the things we do in the ordinary hubbub of life, and those in which we feel that an inner activity asserts itself. These are, of course, finer observations, and if we want to, we may always deny them. But our observation should be adapted to life and we should really gain insight into life as it reveals itself to us. This will push our feeling in the right direction. We should realize that the path leading into the spiritual world cannot be discovered all at once; it leads out of the world little by little, so that we ascend to what I have described before, when that which used to be our world loses its lifeless character and becomes a living being.

We thus grow together cognisantly with the spiritual world. We grow together with something of which we may say that it forms part of us when we discard what is given to us with the instrument of the physical body and what essentially constitutes our life from birth to death. When passing through the portal of death we grow into a world which very much resembles the one described just now, which reveals itself to higher knowledge. And then we notice an infinitely important thing: If we wish to penetrate in the right way into the world we enter through the portal of death, we need—in the same way in which a light is needed in a dark room—something which we unfold here on earth in the innermost depths of our soul. Life on earth should not be looked upon as a prison. In the natural course of development man must, of course, pass through the portal of death and he must pass through the life between death and a new birth, but the whole of life exists in order that each part of our being may add to us something we need, something new, and in the present cycle of evolution, life on earth should give us something that flames like a torch, so that we do not simply live through our spiritual existence, but recognize it; our life in the spiritual world will then be flooded with light. The light which illumines us is the imperishable element which we gain from birth to death for our life between death and a new birth.

In connection with these things, we should always say that particularly in the present time it is important that as many people as possible should grasp that the truths connected with the spiritual world which we learn to know in the physical world, within the physical body, become a flaming light, when we live in the spiritual realms. All the difficulties which more developed human beings must encounter in the present time, admonish us in a certain way to deepen our soul and immerse it in spiritual feelings, in spiritual vision. Consciousness of the fact that a spiritual-scientific deepening is needed in the present time and that the difficulties of our age are a warning, induce us to conclude with words which we always pronounce before parting. I hope that we shall be able to continue these lectures in a not too distant future. Let us now close with the words:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
aus dem Leid Verlass'ner,
aus des Volkes Opfertaten—
wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
lenken Seelen geistbewußt
ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
from the sorrow of the abandoned,
from the people's sacrifices—
shall spring forth a spirit fruit,
if souls, spirit-consciously direct
their mind (thoughts) to the spirit realm).

Health is something for which every man naturally longs. We may say this longing for health derives indeed not only from egotistic feelings and wishes, but also from the justified longing for work. We owe thanks for our capacity to work, for the possibility of becoming effective in the world, to our health. Hence, it is that we treasure health as a quite special beneficence. Indeed, there lies in this way of thinking about health something of the highest significance for its pursuit. In a certain way there is contained therein the secret of the particular circumstances under which health becomes at all worth pursuing. That the pursuit of health should only under certain circumstances be worthwhile might appear unusual. Our considerations today, however, should disclose that health belongs to those virtues that most readily become a reality in us if we pursue them not for their own sake, but for another's. That this does not always happen today can be taught us if we but look out into our present surrounding world.

However remarkable it may be when speaking of the feverish pursuit of health, the feverish insistence upon health, yet it is possible today for many people to make their own observations about it. With what means, in what countless ways, do most people today press towards health! Everywhere we find a hurried pursuit of health. We may travel through regions in which old castles and ruins tell us of monks and knights who once could call strength of spirit and of body their own. Today they have fallen into decay and replacing them in these same regions we find sanitaria. Was there ever in any time of world evolution such a variety of special efforts to achieve health, to struggle through to health by natural ways of living, by water- or aero-healing methods? People are sent for air and sun baths.

Once an acquaintance of mine who was on his way to a sanitarium came to me during the first half of summer. It had been with much difficulty that he managed to get four weeks' vacation, which he planned to spend there. Of course, it seemed to be the best that could happen to a person, to stay for a time, more or less satisfying, in a sanitarium. Hence I had no wish to explain the futility of his plan and thus deprive him of all hope. On his return journey he came again to me. He brought a little book along in which was written all he was supposed to have accomplished during those four weeks contemplating his organism. Again one could not deprive him of his joy, but, on the tip of one's tongue lay the question, “Do tell me, when have you been more driven? During the whole year at work or during those four weeks during which you were shoved from warmth to cold, from dryness to dampness, and were scrubbed with all those brushes?”

The worst part of it was that after some weeks he said to me, “This cure has helped me as little as all the others in the last thirty years.” He had tried something different each summer. Whoever cared for this person could well look upon his feverish search for health in a somewhat sympathetic way.

How many people today run to mesmerizers and spiritual healers? How many writings there are on “Harmony With the Infinite” and the like! In short, the feverish pursuit of health is something that lives in our time. Now, one might raise another question. “Are these people actually sick?” Well, of course, something is probably wrong with them, but is there a chance that they will attain health through all these things?

Especially among ancient people an age-old saying remains even today. One says so frequently that what the simple person gets from such sayings often may contain something good, but just as often it is something false. So it is with the saying, “There are many illnesses, but only one state of health.” This is foolish. There are as many states of health as there are human beings. For each human being his individual health. What this says is that all general standard prescriptions holding that this or that is healthy for the human being are nonsense. The very part of humanity that is overcome by the feverish pursuit of health suffers most from the general prescriptions for health. Among them are those who believe that there could be something generally tagged as health, that if one does thus and so, that it would be healthy. It is most incredible that there is no realization that a sun bath can be healthy for a person, but that this may not be applied in general. It could be quite harmful for another. Generally, this is admitted but there is no following through in particular instances. We must make it clear to ourselves that health is a quite relative concept, something that is liable to a continuing process of change, especially for the human being, who is the most complicated being on the earth. We need but look into spiritual science. Then shall we penetrate deeply into human nature and recognize how changeable what we call health is. In reality, one forgets almost entirely today that upon which so much value is laid in material aspects. One forgets that the human being is in the throes of development.

What is meant by, “The human being is undergoing development?” Again it is necessary to refer to the being of man. The physical body is only a part of the human entity. This he has in common with all lifeless nature. But he has as second member the etheric or life body, which he has in common only with what is life-imbued. This member wages a continuing battle against everything that would destroy the physical body. Were the etheric body to withdraw from the physical body, in that moment the physical body would become a corpse. The third member is the astral body, which he has in common with animals, the bearer of desires and sorrow, of every feeling and representation, of joy and pain, the so-called consciousness body. The fourth part is his ego, the central point of his being, that makes of him the crown of creation. The ego transforms the three bodies through development out of the central point of the human being.

Let us consider an uneducated savage, an average man, or a highly educated idealist. The savage is still slave to his passions. The average man refines his urges. He denies himself the satisfaction of certain urges and sets in their place legal concepts or high religious ideals, that is, he remodels his astral body from out his ego. As a result the astral body now has two members. The one still has the form that exists in the savage, but the other part has been transformed into spirit self or manas. Through impressions from art or great impressions from founders of religion man works on his ether body and creates buddhi or life spirit. The physical body also can be transformed into Atma, Spirit Self, [In other lectures, Rudolf Steiner refers to "Atma" as "Spirit-man." – e.Ed.] if a person devotes himself to the practice of certain spiritual-scientific exercises. Thus, the human being works unconsciously or consciously on his three bodies.

Were we able to look far, far back into the early development of man, we would find everywhere primitive cultural conditions, simple modes of life. Everything that those early people had in the way of appliances to satisfy their spiritual and bodily needs, their way of life, was simple. Everything, everything evolves, and within evolution the human being develops himself. This is most important. Imagine as vividly as you can a primitive man who grinds his grain to flour between stones, and picture to yourself the other things surrounding this individual. Compare him with a man of more recent cultural times. What surrounds this modern person, what does he see from morning until evening? He takes in the frightful impressions of the noisy big city, of street cars, buses and the like. We must then understand how evolution proceeds. We must carry over the insight we gain concerning simple things into the cultural process.

Goethe made the following statement, “The eye was fashioned by the light, for the light.” If we had no eyes, we could not see colors or light. Whence have we eyes? Goethe also said that out of undifferentiated organs the light drew forth eyes. So also is the ear formed by tone, the sense of warmth by warmth. The human being is formed by that which in the whole world spreads itself around him. Just as the eyes owe their existence to the light, so do other delicate structures owe their existence to what surrounds man. The simple primitive world is the dark chamber that still holds back many organs. What light is for the undifferentiated organs out of which the eye developed itself, the environment is for primitive humanity. Things work quite differently upon man in his present mode of living; he cannot turn back to the primitive conditions of culture. Rather is it so that an ever more intense, stronger spiritual light has been effective around him that has called forth the new.

We are able to realize the meaning of this transforming cultural process if we picture to ourselves how the being fares who is also subject to this influence but cannot go along with the transformation. Here we have the condition of the animals. They are differently structured from men. When we look at the animal as it appears in the physical world, we find that it has its physical body, its etheric body and its astral body in the physical world, but it has no ego in the physical world. Hence, the animals are powerless on the physical plane to undergo transformation of the three bodies, and cannot adapt themselves to a new environment. Two days ago we considered wild animals in captivity, how, out in the wilderness certain animals never have tuberculosis, tooth decay, -etc., but do in captivity. A whole series of decadent appearances show up in captivity or under other circumstances.

During the cultural process, men are continually subject to other conditions. This is the nature of culture. Otherwise, there would be no development, no history of human beings. What we observed as experiments with animals as to the effect on the physical body appears as the opposite in men. Man, because he has an ego, has the capacity of inwardly digesting the impressions that storm in upon him from our culture. He is inwardly active, first adapts his astral body to the changed conditions and then reorganizes it. Thus, as he keeps evolving, he comes to higher cultures and always receives new impressions. At first these express themselves in feelings and perceptions. Were he now to remain passive, inactive, were there no activity stirred up in him, no creativity, then he would become stunted and sick as does the animal. This it is that distinguishes the human being, that he can adapt himself and, from out the astral body, gradually change the etheric and physical bodies. He must be inwardly up to this transformation, however, otherwise there is no adjustment of the balance between what comes to him from the outside and what counters it from within. A man would be crushed by the impressions from outside as the animal in a cage is crushed by them because it has no inner creativity. But man has his inner activity. Against the spiritual lights around him, he must be able to set something, in a sense, to counter with eyes, with seeing.

Whatever turns out as a disharmony between impressions from the outside and the inner life is unhealthy. It is in the big cities that we can see what happens when impressions from the outside grow ever more powerful. When we tear along faster and faster, when we must let rumbling sounds and hurrying people go by us without taking a stance, without countering them—this is unhealthy. As regards this position towards the outside, the intellect is the least important, but what is important depends upon whether our feelings, our soul, indeed, our living bodies, can take a position towards it. This we will understand rightly through the consideration of a definite illness that appears especially in our time, and that did not occur earlier. A person not accustomed to absorb much, one poor in soul, is brought up against all kinds of impressions so that he finds himself standing before a quite incomprehensible outer world. This is the case with many feminine natures. Their inner being is too weak, too little organized to digest it all. But we find this condition also in many masculine persons. The consequences result in the illnesses of hysteria. Everything connected with hysteria is derived from this imbalance.

Another form of illness takes hold when our lives bring us to the position of wanting to understand too much of what is set before us in the outer world. It is mostly the case with men who suffer with causality illness. One accustoms oneself always to ask, “Why? why? why? why?” It is even said that the human being must be the never-resting causality animal. Today, because we are too polite, we may no longer give the idle questioner the answer that a founder of religion gave. When he was asked, “What did God do before the creation of the world” he answered, “He cut rods for those who ask useless questions.” This is exactly the opposite condition of the hysterical one. Here the restless longing for the solving of enigmas is too great. This is only a symptom of an inner attitude. The one who never wearies of always asking, “Why?” has a different constitution from other people. He gives signs of a different inner working of spiritual and bodily functions from the person who asks “Why” only on outer provocation. This leads to all hypochondriacal conditions, from the lightest case to the deepest illusory illness. So it is that the cultural process affects human beings. Man must above all have an open mind in order always to be able to digest what comes towards him. Now we can also make it clear to ourselves why so many people have the urge to shed this culture, to have done with this life. They are no longer up to what presses in upon them. They strive to get out. These are always weak natures who do not know how to counter the outer impressions with a mighty inner response.

Thus it is that we cannot speak today in clichés as regards health just because life itself is so manifold. The one person stands here, the other there. Because what has developed in the human being has developed in a certain sense through the outer world, each has his own health. This is why we must make the human being capable of understanding his environment, even to the very functions of the body. For the man who is born into circumstances in which light muscles and nerves are necessary, it would indeed be foolish to develop heavy muscles. Where does the gauge for the successful developing of the human being lie? It lies within the human being. As with money, so it is with health. When we go after money in order to have it for benevolent purposes, then it is something wholesome, something good. Going after money may not be condemned, for it is something that enables us to forward the cultural process. If we go after money for money's sake, then it is absurd, laughable. It is the same with health. If we go after health for health's sake, then the striving has no significance. If we put ourselves out for health for what we can achieve through our health, then the effort for the sake of health is justified. Whoever would acquire money should first make it clear to himself how much of it he needs. Then he should press forward for it. Whoever yearns for health must look into the easily misunderstood words like comfort, love of life, enjoyment of life, and what could be meant with them. Joy of life, satisfaction in life, love of life are present in savages. In the human being in whom outer and inner life are in harmony, in the harmoniously developed man, conditions must be such that if there is discomfort, if there is this or that hurt of body or of soul, this feeling of discomfort must be seen as some sort of illness, as a disharmony. Hence it is important in all education, in all public work, not to carry on routinely, but rather out of the expanse of a cultural view, so that joy and satisfaction in life are possible.

It is curious that what has just been said has been said by a representative of spiritual science. Yes, so says spiritual science whom people reproach for striving for asceticism. Someone comes along who takes great pleasure in nightly visits to the girlie shows or in downing his eight glasses of beer. Then he encounters people who take joy in something on a higher level. So he remarks that they punish themselves. No, they would punish themselves were they to sit with him in the music hall. Whoever enjoys the girlie shows and such belongs there, and it would be absurd to deprive him of the enjoyment. It is healthy only to take away his taste for it.

One should work to ennoble one's pleasures, one's gratifications in life. It is not so that anthroposophists come together because they suffer when talking about higher worlds, but rather because it is their heart's deepest enjoyment. It would be the most terrible deprivation for them to sit down and play poker. They are completely full of the joy of life in every fiber of their beings.

There is no point in saying, even concerning health, that one should do thus and so. The point is to provide joy and satisfaction in life. Indeed, the spiritual scientist in this case is quite the epicure of life. How is this to be conferred upon health? We must be clear about this, that when we give someone a rule about health, we must aim at what gives joy, bliss and pleasure to his astral body. For by the astral body the other members are affected. This is more easily said than done.

There are, for example, even those among the theosophists who mortify their flesh by no longer eating any meat. Should these be people who still hanker for meat, then must this mortification be seen at best as a preparation for a later condition. There comes, however, a point at which a person may have such a relation with his environment that it becomes impossible for him to eat meat. A physician who was also of those who ate no meat, not because he was a theosophist, but because he considered this way of life healthy, was asked by a friend why he partook of no meat. He countered with the question, “Why don't you eat horse or cat meat?” Of course, the friend had to say that they disgusted him, although he ate meat of pig or cow, etc. To the physician all meat was disgusting.

Only then, when the inner subjective conditions correspond to the objective fact, has the moment come when the outer fact has a healthy effect. We must be inwardly up to the outer facts. This is expressed by the words, “comfortable feeling,” which we may not use lightly, but rather in its dignified meaning of harmonious concordance of our inner forces. Happiness and joy and delight and satisfaction, which are the foundation for a healthy life, always spring from the same foundation, from the feelings of an inner life that attend creativity, inner activity. Happy is the human being when he can be active. Of course, this activity is not to be understood as coarse activity.

Why does love make the human being happy? It is an activity we often do not see as such because it moves from within out, embracing the other one. With it we let our inner being flow out. Hence love's healing and blessing of life. Creativity may be of the most intimate nature; it does not have to become tumultuously visible. When someone is hunched over a book and the impressions from it depress him, overwhelm him, he will gradually become depressed. When, however, the reading of a book brings pictures to mind, then there is a creative activity that makes for happiness. It is something quite similar to becoming pale when one is anxious about coming events. Then the blood flows inwards in order to strengthen us so that what comes at us from the outside can find a counter-balance within. With the feeling of anxiety inner activity is alerted to outer activity. Becoming aware of an inner activity is healing. Had the human being been able to feel the activity of the inner formation in the arising of the eyes out of the undifferentiated basic organ, then he would have perceived a feeling of well-being. He was not conscious, however, of that happening.

Instead of bringing a worn-out human being to a sanitarium, it were far better to bring him into an environment where he would be happy, at first soul-happy, but also physically happy. When you put a human being into an environment of joy, in which with each step he takes an inner feeling of joy awakes, that it is which will make him healthy, when, for example, he sees sunbeams streaming through the trees and perceives the colors and scents of flowers. This, however, a person must himself be able to feel, so that he himself can take the problem of his health in hand. Every step should stir him to inner activity. Paracelsus gave us the beautiful saying, “It is best that everyone should be himself, by himself, and no one else.” It is already a limitation of what makes us healthy if we must first go to another person. Here we are confronted with outer impressions that for a short while appear to help, but finally lead to hysteria.

When one considers the problem so, one comes upon other healthy thoughts. There are people and doctors today, especially “lay doctors,” who battle against doctors. Medicine does, indeed, need to be reformed, but this cannot come about through these battles. Rather must facts of spiritual science themselves reach into science. Spiritual science exists, but not to further dilettantism. There are people today who have the itch to cure others. It is, of course, easy to find this or that illness in a person. So somebody finds this or that organ in a person different from the way it appears in another. Or a person does not breathe as the one possessed with the curing fever thinks all people should breathe. So for this a cure gets invented. Shocking, most shocking! For it is not at all a matter of directing one's efforts at a routine concept of health. It is easy to say that this and that do not make for health. Consider someone who has lost one of his legs. He is sick, certainly sicker than one who breathes irregularly, whose lungs are affected. It is not a question of healing this person. It would be foolish to say, “One must see to it that this person gets a leg again!” Just try to get him to grow another leg! What really matters is that life for his person be made as bearable as possible.

This is so in gross, but also in more subtle conditions. It is a fact that one can find a small flaw in each human being. Also, what often matters here is not to clear up the flaw, but rather, despite the human being's flaw, to make his life as bearable as possible. Think of a plant, the stem of which is wounded. The tissues and the bark grow around the wound. So is it also with human beings. The forces of nature maintain life as they grow around the flaw. Especially lay doctors fall victim to the error of wanting to cure everything. They would like to cultivate one kind of health for all human beings. There is as little of the one kind of health as there is one kind of normal human being. Not only are illnesses individual, but also healths. The best we can give to the human being, be we physician or counselor, is, to give him the firm frame of mind that he feels himself comfortable when he is healthy, uncomfortable when he is sick. Today this is not at all so easy in our circumstances. He who understands the matter of health will mostly fear such sicknesses as do not come to expression through fatigue and pain. It is, therefore, detrimental to sedate oneself with morphium. It is healthy when health brings zest. Illness brings apathy. This healthy way of living we can acquire only when we make ourselves inwardly strong. This we do when we oppose our complicated conditions with strong, inner activity. The feverish search for health will cease only then when human beings no longer strive for health as such. The human being must learn to feel and perceive whether he is healthy and to know that he can easily put up with a flaw in health. This is only possible through a strong world conception that is effective right down into the physical body. This world outlook makes for harmony. This, however, is only possible through a world concept that is not dependent upon outer impressions. The spiritual scientific world concept leads man into regions that he can only reach if he is inwardly active. One cannot read a spiritual scientific book as one reads other books. It must be so written that it evokes one's own activity. The more one must struggle, the more there is between the lines, the healthier it is. This is so only in the theoretical matters, but spiritual science can be effective in all areas.

What we call spiritual science exists in order to become effective as a strong spiritual movement. It calls forth concepts that are provided with the most powerful energies so that human beings can take a stance against what faces one. Spiritual science would like to give an inner life that extends right into the limbs, into the blood circulation. Then will every individual perceive his health in his feeling of joy, in his feeling of zest and satisfaction. Almost every dietary regime is worthless. That the other fellow tells me that this and that are good for me is of no consequence. What matters is that I find satisfaction when taking my food. The human being must have understanding for his relation to this or that food. We should know what the spiritual process is that goes on between nature and us. To spiritualize everything—that's what becoming healthy means.

Perhaps it is currently thought that for the spiritual scientist eating is something to which he is indifferent, that he gorges himself, devoid of understanding for it. To become aware of what it means to partake of a part of the cosmos, a part that has been drenched with sunlight; to know of the complete spiritual relationship in which our environment stands, to savor it not only physically, but also spiritually, frees us from all sickening disgust, from all sickening encumbrances. Thus we see that to direct this striving for health onto the right tracks sets humanity a great challenge. But spiritual science will be strong. It will transform every human being who dedicates himself to it, bringing him to the attainment of what, for himself, is the normal pattern. This is at the same time a noble striving toward freedom that comes out of spiritual science and makes man his own master. Every man is an individual being from the standpoint of his characteristics as well as of his states of health and illness. We are placed in lawful relation to the world and must learn to know our situation therein. No outer power can help us. When we find this strong inner stance, then only are we complete human beings from whom nothing can be taken. But it also holds that nobody can give us anything. Nevertheless, we shall find our way in health and in illness because we have a strong, inner stance within ourselves. This secret, too, of all healthy striving has been expressed by a spirit, an eminently healthy thinking and healthy feeling spirit. He tells us how the harmonized human being unerringly goes his way. It was Goethe who, in his poem, Orphic Primal Words, says:

As on the day that to the world bestowed thee
The sun stood high to greet the planet's sphere,
Thou didst thenceforth thrive ever on and on,
According to the law that brought thee here.
So must thou be, canst not from thee escape
The Sibyls and the Prophets spoke thy fate;
Not time nor power can destroy the mould
When form once cast doth livingly unfold.

In these studies I wanted to draw your attention to certain things which can lead us back to a more concrete study of the Universe than is contained in the cosmogony of Copernicus. We must not forget that the Copernican cosmogony arose during the epoch after the middle of the fifteenth century when there was an increasing tendency towards an abstract conception of the Universe. It came indeed at a moment of time when the tendency to make everything abstract was at its height. We must also remember that it is essential now that we should get free of this tendency and bring to our thought about the Universe concepts that contain something more than mere abstract ideas. It is not a matter simply of constructing a cosmogony similar in kind to that of Copernicus, on slightly different lines. This was brought home to me in the questions arising out of the last lecture. For the point in these questions turned on the possibility of being able at once to draw lines that would give us a picture of the world—once more a picture in quite external abstractions. That of course is not what is wanted. What we have to do is to grasp in its spiritual nature all that is not man, in order to build a bridge from the spiritual in Man to the spiritual outside him. You must understand that here, at this particular time at all events, it cannot be our task to discuss a mathematical astronomy. That would necessitate beginning over again from the very rudiments; for the fundamental concepts employed to-day have their source in the whole materialistic mode of thinking in use since the middle of the fifteenth century. If we wanted to develop and complete the cosmogony we have sketched, it would be necessary to begin with the most elementary principles and elaborate them anew. The fate that befell Copernicanism came about, as we shall see, because of the strong tendency to abstraction, which may so easily lead to intellectual excesses. True Copernicanism is not really the same as that which it has become in the hands of the followers of Copernicus. Certain theories have been selected from Copernicanism which were quite in keeping with the ways of thought of the last few centuries, and from them the cosmogony now taught in all the schools has arisen.

It is not my wish to do anything in the direction of a similar cosmogony, where, instead of the well-known ellipse in which the Sun is placed as one of the foci, and in which the Earth moves with an inclined axis, we simply put a screw-shaped line! What I want rather to do is to present the relation of Man to the Universe and it is in this direction that we will now pursue the matter further.

I have tried to show you how, the moment one begins to pass to a more intensive experience of the three directions of space in one's own form, one realises how these directions differ in nature and kind from one another; it is only the faculty of mental abstraction in the head which makes these three dimensions abstract and does not distinguish between above and below, left and right, before and behind, but simply takes them as three lines. And a similar error would immediately again be incurred if one set out to build any other construction into space in a purely abstract way. The point at issue can be made clearer if for a moment we turn to something else.

Let us consider colours. We will take colour once more as an example. Suppose we have a blue surface and, let us say, a yellow one. The conception of the world which, in its abstract thinking, gave rise to the Copernican cosmogony, has indeed succeeded in saying: “I see before me blue, I see before me yellow. That is due to the fact that some object has made an impression on me. This impression appears to me as yellow, as blue.” The point is that we should not begin to theorise in this way at all, saying: “Before me is yellow, before me is blue, and they make a certain impression upon me.” That is really just as if you were to treat the word PICTURE in the following way. Suppose you were to set about making deep researches into the word and think: “ ‘P’, something must be at the back of this; behind ‘P’ I must seek the vibrations which cause it. Then again, behind the ‘I’ there must be vibrations, and behind the ‘C’ more vibrations, and so on.” There is no sense in this. We find sense only when we unite the seven letters, connecting then one with another in their own plane, and read the whole word ‘Picture’; when we do not speculate as to what lies behind, but read the word—‘Picture’. So here too the point is that we should say: “This first surface makes me penetrate, as it were, behind it, makes me plunge into it. This other surface makes me turn away from it.” It is to these feelings into which the impression passes over that we must pay attention; then we come to something concrete. If we thus seek in the world outside what we experience inwardly, we come indeed to the feeling that we are not really within ourself at all, but that with our real Ego we are in the Universe, poured out into the Universe. Instead of searching behind the external Universe for ‘vibrations’, the atomists should seek for their own Ego behind the phenomena and then try to find out how their own Ego is placed into the outer Universe is, as it were, poured out into it. Just as with colour we should try to ascertain whether we feel we must plunge into it or whether we feel ourselves repelled by it, so, as regards the structure of our organism, we should feel how the three directions, above and below, forwards and backwards, right and left, differ concretely from one another; we should feel how differently we experience them inwardly, when we project ourselves into the Universe. When we are aware of ourselves as Man standing on the Earth, surrounded by the planets and fixed stars, we begin to feel ourselves as part of all these; it is not a matter merely of drawing three dimensions at right angles, but of thinking concretely about the Cosmos and penetrating into the concrete reality of the dimensions.

Now there is a series of constellations that is immediately evident to those who study the outer Universe at night-time, and has indeed always been seen when men have studied the stars. It is what we call the Zodiac. It is immaterial whether we believe in the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system; if we follow the apparent course of the Sun it always seems to pass through the Zodiac in its yearly round. Now if we imagine ourselves placed into the Universe in a living way, we find that the Zodiac is of very great significance. We cannot conceive of any other Plane in celestial space as being of like value with the Zodiac, any more than we could conceive the plane which divides us in two and creates our symmetry, as being placed at random just anywhere. We then perceive the Zodiac as something through which a plane may be described. (Drawing.) Let us suppose this plane to be the plane of the blackboard, so that we have here the plane of the Zodiac; the plane of the Zodiac is just the plane of the blackboard. We shall then have one plane before us in Cosmic space, precisely as we imagined the three planes sketched in Man. That is certainly a plane of which we can say that it is fixed there for us. We see the Sun run its course through the Zodiac; we relate all the phenomena of the heavens to this plane. And we have here an analogy of an extra-human kind for what we must perceive and experience as planes in Man himself. Now when we draw the Symmetry plane in Man, and have on one side of the Symmetry-axis the liver organised in one way, and on the other side the stomach organised in a different way, we cannot think of such a fact without feeling at the same time some inner concrete relation; we cannot imagine mere lines of space lying there, but what is in the space must manifest definite forces of activity; it will not be a matter of indifference whether something is on the right or on the left. In the same way we must imagine that in the organisation of the Universe it is a matter of consequence whether a thing is above or below the Zodiac. We shall begin to think of Cosmic space—as we see it there, sown with stars—we shall begin to think of it as having form.

Now just as we can think of this plane on the blackboard, so we can also think of another at right angles to it. Let us think of a plane extending from the constellation Leo to that of Aquarius on the other side. Then we can go further and imagine a third plane at right angles again to this one, running from Taurus to Scorpio. We have now three planes at right angles to one another in Cosmic space.

These three planes are analogous to the three we have imagined described in Man. If we think of the plane we have denoted as that of Will—the plane namely which separates us behind and before—we have the plane of the Zodiac itself.

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If we think of the plane running from Taurus to Scorpio, we have the plane of Thinking; that is, our Thought Plane would be co-ordinated to this plane. And the third plane would be that of Feeling. Thus we have divided Cosmic space by means of three planes, just as we divided Man in our first lecture.

What is primarily of importance is not simply to unlearn as quickly as possible the Copernican Cosmic system, but to enter into this concrete picture, to imagine Cosmic space itself so organised that one can distinguish in it three planes at right angles to one another, just as can be done in the case of Man.

The next question to arise for us must be: Is really the whole of Man to be thought of as forming an integral part of what appears to us as an outer Cosmogony, in which Man is included? We emphasised in the last lecture that the Earth with the Sun and other planets progress in a spiral. Such a statement is, of course, merely diagrammatic, for the spiral line itself is curved. That however does not concern us here; what is important for us at the moment is that the Earth as we have seen, follows the Sun in such a spiral, and the question is whether Man too is so interwoven in this movement that he is absolutely compelled to take part in it in any case; for if that be so, if he absolutely must follow completely, then there is no place at all for free will or for moral activity on his part. Let us not forget that we began our study with this very question: how to build a bridge leading from pure natural necessity to morality, to what takes place under the impulse of free will.

Here we can go no further if we rely only on the Copernican system; for what have we there? We picture the Earth upon which we stand; whether the Earth or the Sun goes rushing along is of no moment ... If Man is connected with all this in an absolute natural causality, it is impossible for him to develop free will. We must therefore put the question: Does the entire being of Man lie within this natural causality, or does the being of Man move up out of it at some point? We must not however put the question out of the mood of thought of the materialists of the nineteenth century, who remarked that so many people have died on Earth that it would not be possible to find room for all their souls. They wanted to know about the space required for souls. But the point in question really is: What meaning is there in asking about a place for souls?

We must above all clearly understand that the full sense and meaning of the events in the Universe—and movement is also an event—only becomes clear to us when we grasp it in definite cases. We distinguish in some way what takes place in the four realms,—what is above and below the plane of the Zodiac (Will), and what is right and left of the plane of Feeling; or again, we can consider what lies on this or on the other side of the plane of Thinking. We feel that something is connected with this differentiation, something of Cosmic happening, namely, that which manifests in recapitulation, as we have it for instance in what we designate as the “course of the year”. And we must now ask in a concrete way: How can we find a connection between Man and the yearly course of the outer Universe? Well, first of all we find that when Man descends from the spiritual world into the physical, he passes through conception. He remains for about nine months in the embryonic condition—that is to say, three months less than the year's course. We might be inclined to call this a very irregular proceeding. In his evolution Man seems to show, even at the very genesis of his physical earthly existence, that he pays no attention to the course of Cosmic events outside. This is however not the case. If we have the faculty for observing the child during the first three months of his earthly existence, we find that these first three months—which make the year complete—manifest in a very true sense a continuation of his embryonic life; what takes place in the brain, as well as other things happening with the little child, can from a certain aspect be considered as still belonging to its embryonic life. Thus we can say that in a certain respect the first year of human development can after all be identified with the year's course.

Then comes another year—or about a year. If we observe the child after the first year, we see that the second year is approximately the time of the growth of the milk teeth. We observe the child during the second year after its conception, and we find that this year corresponds on an average with the growth of the first teeth. Now let us ask, does this continue? No, it does not. The first ‘teething’ seems to represent an inner year of Man. And so it does, just as the first year is at the same time an inner year of Man. In the formation of the milk teeth, the Universe obviously works in the child. But then something different happens.

In a space of time seven times as long—it is indeed far from completion even then, but at least it begins its activity during this period—in a period seven times as long from birth, the force which pushes out the second teeth is at work in the child. Here something occurs which we can not connect with the world's course but with something that is withdrawn out of it, and works from the inner being of the child.

Here, then, we have a concrete instance. We have, first of all, in respect to one series of facts, the world organism projected into Man in the formation of his milk teeth. And then again, when we look at the permanent teeth, which grow forth from Man, we find that these are Man's own production. An inner human Cosmic system has placed them into the other Cosmic system. Here we have the first herald of Man's becoming free, in the fact that he engages in something which clearly shows his independence of the Universe; because although this process retains within it in Man's being the time-course of the Universe, Man has slowed it down within him, he has given the same process a different velocity, seven times as slow, thus taking seven times as long. Here we have the contrast between the inner being of Man and the outer being of the Universe.

Another independence of the outer Universe is very clearly demonstrated in the alternation between sleeping and waking. Positions of the Earth alternate in respect to certain constellations, but they alternate always with day and night. How is it with Man?

What does this alternation between waking and sleeping signify to us human beings? It means, roughly speaking, that we go about at one time with our Ego and astral body united with our etheric and physical bodies, and at another time with the Ego and the astral body separated from the etheric and physical bodies.

Now a man in the present cycle of civilisation, especially one who calls himself a civilised man, is no longer entirely dependent in this respect on the cycle of Nature. The cycle of waking and sleeping, in its measure of time, seems to resemble the cycle of Nature; but there are persons at the present time—I have known such!—who turn night into day and day into night. In short, Man can wrest himself free from connection with the world's course. The sequence in him of the sleeping and waking states shows however that he still has within him a copy of this conformity to law. The same is true of many phenomena of the human being. When we observe how Man alternates between waking and sleeping, and Nature alternates between day and night, and how Man is still today bound to the alternation of waking and sleeping though not to that of day and night, we must say: Man was at one time, as regards his inner conditions, bound to the outer course of the Universe, but he has broken away from it. Civilised Man today has almost entirely broken away from the course of outer Nature. He is really returning to it when he perceives, when he discovers with his intellect, that it is better for him to sleep at night rather than by day. It is not the case however, that night takes possession of Man in such a way that he must under any circumstances sleep. No civilised man really feels: ‘Night makes me sleep, day wakes me up.’ At most, if night falls and a lecture is still going on here, the two facts taken together may perhaps affect some in such a way they experience an absolute demand of Nature that they should fall asleep. These however are incidents not necessarily involved in our cosmogony.

Thus the point to observe is that Man has wrested himself away from the course of Nature, but that nevertheless in his periodicity he still shows a reflection of it. Let us see how transitions from one to the other condition manifest themselves. We may say that in our waking and sleeping we still distinctly show the course of Nature in picture, but that we have wrested ourselves free from it. In the appearance of the second teeth, we no longer show in chronological sequence a picture of the course of Nature such as is still expressed in the growth of the first teeth. When we receive our second teeth, a new course of Nature arises in us; for this is not in our control like sleeping and waking. Our free choice does not enter here. Here something appears belonging to Nature and yet not following the larger course of Nature, something which Man has for his own. And yet it is not within his free choice, it is inserted as a second natural organisation within the first.

In all these things, I am speaking of quite simple everyday matters, but it is a question of noticing them in the right way. We must now say to ourselves: There is a certain natural ‘happening’, within which is interwoven the growth of the first teeth. Let us draw it in diagram. Within this natural event or process, as a part of the process, goes forward the formation of Man's first teeth. Then we have another natural happening, one of Man's own, not all within the general happening of the world—the growth of the second teeth (red). To draw it, we must present it as a different stream. Yet the difference is not yet clear in the drawing, they both look alike. The fact is, we must represent

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it in a quite different way if we want to depict the connection between the receiving of the first and second teeth; we must draw the first teeth seven times deeper in. If we draw them side by side, parallel, we have no picture of the relation of

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the first teeth to the second; we only get a picture of the force upon which the growth of the first teeth depends by drawing it encircled by another force, upon which the growth of the second teeth depends. Here, through the difference of velocity, the necessity arises for the movement to curve. Thus, when we say that there is a star somewhere in space with another circling round it ... then through the simple fact of the revolution, something qualitative arises—a creative activity.

I might also say: we look at the growth of the first teeth and of the second; that must have something to do in Cosmic space, with certain forces, one of which circles round the other. I put this example before you, because from it you will see what it means to speak of concrete movements in space, and how empty is the kind of talk which says: Jupiter—or, it may be Saturn—is so and so many miles distant from the Sun and encircles it in such and such a line. That tells one nothing at all, it is an empty phrase. We can only know anything about facts like these when we unite some content with them, such as: the orbit of Jupiter is like this, the orbit of Saturn like that, and the revolution of the one serves the revolution of the other.

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I have here merely pointed out the necessity for certain definite processes and happenings. Some of you may say that they are difficult to understand. Or perhaps you will not say so, but will consider that there is no need to discuss them! Not until people learn to study such things will they be able to progress to a definite and clear view of the Universe. And then they will give up what is presented so superficially in Copernicanism—the conception of the celestial movements solely in lines. Rather should an impulse enter humanity which says: It is necessary to be clear first about our own most elementary experiences before turning our attention to the outer mysteries of the Universe.

We only learn the significance of certain connections which we read from the stars, when we understand the corresponding processes in our organism; for what lies within our skin is no other than a reflection of the organism of the outer world. Thus if we draw a man in diagram, we have here the blood circulation (in diagram only) and we can trace its path. It is all in the inner being of Man. If we now go out into the Universe and look for the Sun, it is the Sun which corresponds to the heart within Man. What goes out from the heart through the body, or in point of fact out from the body to the heart, does in truth approximately resemble the movements connected with the course of the Sun. Instead of drawing abstract lines, we should look into the human being. Within his skin would be found what is outside in celestial space. Man too would be found to have his part in the Cosmic order. And, on the other hand, his independence of the Cosmic system would also be seen; and how he gains this independence little by little, as I have shown. We will speak further about this in the next lecture; for the present we must realise that we are dealing with it here merely in a diagrammatic way.

Look at the principal course of the blood-vessels in the human organism. Seen from above it is like a looped line. Instead of drawing it, we should follow the hieroglyphs inscribed in our own selves; for then we would learn to understand the nature of the qualities in the Universe outside. This we can only do when we are able to recognise and experience livingly the fact of which I have also spoken in public lectures, the fact namely, that the heart does not work like a pump driving the blood through the body, but that the heart is moved by the circulation, which is itself a living thing, and the circulation is in its turn conditioned by the organs. The heart, as can be followed in embryology, is really nothing more than a product of the blood circulation. If we can understand what the heart is in the human body, we shall learn to understand also that the Sun is not, as Newton calls it, the general cable-pulley which sends its ropes (called the force of gravitation) towards the planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and so forth, drawing them by these unseen forces of attraction, or spraying out light to them, and the like; but that just as the movement of the heart is the product of the life-force of the circulation, so the Sun is no other than the product of the whole Planetary system. The Sun is the result, not the point of departure. The living co-operation of the solar system produces in the centre a hollow, which reflects as a mirror. That is the Sun! I have often said that the physicist would be greatly astonished if he could travel to the Sun and find there nothing of what he now imagines, but simply a hollow space; nay, even a hollow space of suction which annihilates everything within it. A space indeed that is less than hollow. A hollow space merely receives what is put into it; but the Sun is a hollow space of such a nature that anything brought to it is immediately absorbed and disappears. There in the Sun is not only nothing, but less than nothing. What shines to us in the light is the reflection of what first comes in from Cosmic space—just as the movement of the heart is, as it were, what is arrested there in the co-operation of the organs, in the blood-movement, through the activity of thirst and hunger and so forth.

If we understand the processes in the inner being of the organism, we can also understand from them the processes in outer Cosmic space. The abstract dimensions of space are only there to enable us to follow up these things in an easy indolent way. If we wish to follow them up in conformity with the truth, we must try to experience ourselves inwardly, and then turn outwards with inner understanding. They understand the Sun who understand the human heart; and so it is with the rest of Man's inner being.

Thus it is a matter of supreme moment to take the saying ‘Know Thyself’ seriously, and from that to pass on to the comprehension of the Universe. By a self-knowledge which embraces the whole Man, we shall understand the Universe outside Man.

You see we cannot get on so quickly with the construction of a cosmogony! In order to make a few of the features of this cosmogony clear, we can draw a spiral; but this does not yet show the actual state of things. For to describe a few more features, we must make the spiral itself move spirally; we must make the line itself curve. And even then we have not come far, for in order to describe certain facts such as the difference between the growth of the first year's teeth and the growth of the seven years' teeth we must describe a displacement of the line itself.

So you see that the construction of a Universe is not a thing that can be done very quickly. The wish to construct a cosmogony with a few lines must be relinquished, and man must learn to regard the present conception of the world as an absolute delusion.

This is intended as a preparatory study for what I mean to say in the next lecture. It had to be rather more difficult; but when we have overcome these initial difficulties, we shall have constructed the preliminary conditions for uniting the three important domains of life—Nature, Morality and Religion—by means of two corresponding bridges.

You will now see the gradual emergence of the subjects on which you were good enough to put questions, in the course of these lectures. But there must be a certain foundation for rational answers to these inquiries. Now, it is my intention to start from the point to which we advanced yesterday, namely from the significance of splenetic functions in the human organism. These functions must be regarded as actually the main factors in regulating the subconscious life of the soul; so it is a misunderstanding of the whole nature of man, to regard the spleen as an organ of minor importance. This error may often occur, however, because of the case with which the spleen's functions can be taken over by its etheric equivalent, and this for the very reason that it is a highly spiritualised organ; and also because other organs may be called in to help do its work. Nevertheless the activity of the spleen becomes more remarkable, if raised out of the subconscious sphere into some degree of awareness. This brings us to the consideration of a remedial method which has aroused much interest of recent years. It is significant that we arrive at its consideration by way of the spleen. You may convince yourselves by experiment that mild massage in the region of the spleen regulates and benefits the instinctive activities in mankind. In a certain way, the patient thus treated obtains better instincts for suitable food and sounder and more beneficial organic habits;. Note that this method of local massage has strict and close limitations. In the moment that the massage becomes too vigorous it becomes apt to undermine completely the life of instinct. So that we must be most careful to observe the zero point. The gentle massage must not go too far.

Gentle massage of the regions round the spleen, brings something into those regions which is not there as a rule. In a sense, the consciousness of the person massaged is projected as it were into those regions. And very much depends on this displacement of consciousness, this letting it stream in, although it is often difficult to define these delicate workings of our organism in the crude terms of our speech. However strange the statement may appear, there is a powerful interaction between the unconscious activities of reason of which the splenetic functions rather than the spleen itself are the mediators, and the actual conscious functions of the human organism. What precisely are these conscious functions of the human organism? All those processes in the organism whose nature involves that their physical occurrences are accompanied by the higher processes of consciousness, especially by the conceptual processes, are toxic activities in the organism. This must not be overlooked. The organism poisons itself continually precisely through its conceptual activity; and counteracts these toxic conditions continually through the operation of the unconscious will. The centre for these conditions of the unconscious will is the spleen. If we stimulate the spleen and imbue it with a certain awareness, by means of massage, we take action against the powerful toxic effects caused by our higher consciousness. And this massage may be applied not only externally but from within as well. You may dispute the term massage in this connection, but you will understand what I mean. Let us take an individual case, in which we perceive an excessive inner organic activity caused by toxic conditions. The abnormal state of splenetic consciousness can be beneficially affected by the following advice, “Do not confine your intake of food to the chief meals of the day, but rather eat as little as you can at those meals, and take other nourishment in between meals; spread out your consumption of food, so that you eat little at a time but frequently, at short intervals.” The abnormal consciousness of the spleen can be influenced in this way. For to eat little and often is essentially an internal massage of the spleen, which considerably alters the activity of that organ. Of course, there is a “but”; all that concerns the organic processes under discussion has its “buts.” In our age of haste and hurry in which almost everyone is caught up in some exhausting external activity, the spleen and its functions are extraordinarily liable to impairment through this ceaseless round of work. Mankind does not follow the example of certain animals who keep themselves sound and “fit,” by lying down to rest after food, so that their digestive processes are not disturbed by external activity. These animals are really taking care of their spleen. Man does not take care of his spleen if occupied in some hurried activity at the expense of nervous energy. And therefore the splenetic function in the whole of modern civilised peoples gradually becomes thoroughly abnormal; so that especial significance attaches to its relief and recovery through the sort of remedies I have just indicated.

Such delicate processes as massage of the spleen, whether external or internal, draw attention to the relationship between those organs of mankind which transmit the unconscious experience. They illuminate the whole significance of massage. Massage has a certain definite significance and under some circumstances a powerful remedial effect, but above all it influences and regulates rhythm in man. The regulation of human rhythmic processes is the main office of massage. And to massage successfully, one must know the human organism well. You will find the way if you consider the following. Think for a moment of the immense difference between arms and legs in the human frame, as distinct from the animal. The arms of man, which are liberated from the oppression of weight and can move freely, have their astral body far less closely bound to the physical, than in the case of the feet. To the feet the astral body is closely bound. In fact we may say that in the case of the arms, the astral body acts from and inwards through the skin, enveloping arms and hands and working centripetally. In the legs and feet, the will works through the astral body very strongly in a centrifugal direction radiating powerfully outwards, from within. Therefore, if massage is applied to the legs and feet in man, the process is essentially different from that of massage applied to the hands and arms. If the arms are treated by massage, the astral element is drawn from outside inwards, and the arms become very much more instruments of the will than they would otherwise be. Through this there is a regulative effect on internal metabolism, especially on that part of the metabolic process taking place between intestine and blood vessels. In short, massage of the upper limbs acts to a great extent on the formation of the blood. If, on the other hand, the feet and legs are massaged the physical element is transmuted rather into something of a conceptual nature and a regulative action follows on the metabolism that is concerned with processes of evacuation and excretion. The extreme complexity of the human organism is most clearly revealed in these indirect and secondary effects of massage whether starting from the arms and mainly affecting the upbuilding internal processes of metabolism, or starting from the legs and feet and affecting the disintegrating processes of metabolism. If you investigate rationally, you will indeed find that every bodily region and part has a certain connection with other regions and parts; and that the efficacy of massage depends on an adequate insight into these interrelationships. Massage of the lower body will always be of benefit even to the function of breathing; a circumstance of special interest. And in fact the farther we go from above downwards, we find that the organs above the centre benefit progressively. For example, massage directly below the cardiac region influences respiration; if we go farther down, the organs of the throat are influenced. It is a reversed process; the farther we descend from the centre, in massage of the trunk, the greater the effect on the upper organs, and strangely enough, massage treatment of the arms is much helped by massage of the upmost region of the trunk. These facts illustrate the interlocking of the individual regions and limbs of the human body. This interaction of upper and lower organs, which may be quite distant but are nevertheless akin to another, is especially evident in such ailments as, e.g., migraine.

Migraine or sick headache is nothing but a transference to the head of the digestive activities in the rest of the organism. All conditions of special organic stress, such as the monthly period in women, are apt to influence migraine. When a digestive activity wholly foreign to the head thus takes place, the head nerves are loaded with a burden from which they should be, and normally are, free. If the normal digestive activity, i.e., only the absorption of substance, goes on in the head, then the local nerves are permitted to become sensory and perceptive. They are deprived of this character if there is a disorderly digestive activity in the head, as just indicated. They become, therefore, inwardly sensitive, and their receptivity for processes to which the internal organism should be quite indifferent is the basis of the pain typical of migraine and of its characteristic symptoms. It is easy to understand what the sensations must be, if someone is suddenly compelled to be aware of the interior of his own head, instead of the external environment. And true comprehension of the condition will mean that the best remedy can only be sought in “sleeping it off.” For all other “remedies,” which are applied and which one is sometimes obliged to apply, are actually harmful. Let us suppose you use the popular allopathic preparations; what is achieved is merely the culling and blunting of the sensitiveness of the over-stimulated nervous apparatus, that is to say, you lower its activity. Take an instance: suppose an attack of migraine occurs just before the sufferer has to appear in public, on the stage; he prefers to inflict some injury on himself rather than to break what should really not be blunted or dulled, can be especially well observed. In such cases it becomes obvious how extremely delicate our human organism is, and how we often through the pressure exercised by social life, are compelled to offend against the needs of our organism. That is an obvious and important factor which must not be forgotten and one is sometimes compelled to accept a harm, simply arising through the social conditions of the patient, and merely to cure its sequelæ.

The delicacy and sensitiveness of our bodily organisation become evident also by objective and systematic study of light and color treatment for disease. This use of light and color should be more considered in the future than it has been in the past. One must learn to distinguish here, between color which appeals exclusively to the upper sphere of the human being and light proper which has a more objective tendency and appeals to the whole human being. If we simply take the person into a room lit in a certain way, or even expose a portion of the body to the objective influence of color or light—we act directly on the human organs. We then have indeed an influence wholly external. But if the “exposure” is made in such a way as to affect consciousness through the sensation of color—as when instead of irradiation with colored light, the person is brought into a room draped and furnished throughout in a certain colour—the effect penetrates all the organs adjacent to those of consciousness. This “subjective color therapy” always works upon the ego; while in “objective color therapy,” the influence is primarily on the physical system, and through the physical vehicle on the ego, indirectly. Do not raise the objection that it is useless to bring a blind person into the environment of a room furnished in one color, because the patient can receive no visual impression and the result must be nil. Such is not the case. In such conditions the sensory effects which work under the sensory surface, so to speak, are very powerful. There is a difference to a blind person, according to whether a room is entirely red, or entirely blue. The difference is considerable. Take a blind person into a room with blue walls: the effect is to draw or deflect all functional activity from the head to the rest of the organism. If the same person is taken into a completely red room, the effect is reversed; the organic functions are deflected towards the head. From this it is evident that the main effect lies in the rhythm of changing the colour in the environment. The changes of color are the main factor rather than the colors themselves. The isolated influence of a blue room or red is less significant than the contrast in reactions, when the individual who has been in a red environment is brought into a blue, or after being surrounded with blue, into a red. This is significant. Suppose we see a patient, and diagnose the need of improving his upper organic sphere by stimulation of the functions of the head; we should take the patient into a blue room and afterwards into a red. If we wish to act indirectly, through the rest of the organism upon the head function, we should take the person out of a red environment into a blue.

In my opinion much importance should be attached to these methods in a not distant future. Color therapy, not only light treatment, will soon play a great part. The interplay of conscious and unconscious elements is important in itself, and should be given scope. Through this interplay, we shall also be able to form a sound judgment of the special effects of medicinal substances as administered in baths: there is a great difference according to whether the external application of any substance to the human organism produces the sensations of warmth or cold. If anything, whether compress or bath, acts in a cooling way upon me then the effect is to be ascribed mainly to the substance employed; if a cure follows, it will be due to the substantial remedy employed. But if the application produces a sensation of warmth, e.g., a warm compress, its effects are not due to the substance used, for that is almost a matter of indifference, but to the action of warmth itself; and the action of warmth is identical from whatever quarter it may operate. In applying cold compresses, care should be taken to mix the particular liquid employed, whether water or not with this or that substance. These substances can be made efficasious, if they are soluble at low temperatures, when used in cold water. On the other hand—with the exception of ethereal [etheric] substances which are powerfully aromatic and exercise their specific effects even at high temperatures—there will be little specific substantial effect in the case of materials which are easily soluble when in solid form. They do not easily operate even in warm compresses and hot baths. Substances which are phosphoric or sulphuric, as, e.g., sulphur itself, used as accessories to warm baths, exercise their peculiar healing properties most fully.

Such interactions as those I have just cited, must be minutely observed. And in this connection it will be of great service to you to establish a sort of “Primary Phenomena.” This method of establishing a kind of primary phenomena was much in use during the ages when the practice of medicine had its source in the Mysteries. Knowledge was not then expressed theoretically but in primary phenomena, as for instance: “If thou takest into thyself honey or wine, thou dost thereby strengthen from within the forces of the cosmos working into thee from outside.” This might be expressed in other terms: “by doing so thou strengthenest the actual forces of the ego”:—the meaning would be the same. This way of putting things makes them very easy to survey. “But if thou dost rub thy body thoroughly with an oily stuff thou dost weaken thereby the harmful action of the forces of earth”: that is to say, of the forces opposed to the action of the ego, within the organism. And these ancients, these physicians of old, have also said: “If thou findest the right measure between the strengthening by sweetness from within, and the weakening by oil from without, then thou shalt live long.” We might say: “Let the action of oil avert from your organism the harmful influence of earth; and if you are able to do so and not constitutionally too feeble, let the forces of your ego be strengthened with wine or honey; then you strengthen the forces that lead you to a green old age.” Such are the prescriptions and statements in axiomatic form. The aim was to guide mankind aright through facts, not doctrines. And we must return to this method. For among the multitudinous and various materials of the external world we can find our way far better in the light of primary phenomena than by abstract laws of nature, which always let the student down when he has to approach some concrete case.

Now some of these primary phenomena are most easily enunciated, and I should like to give you some examples; here is one: “Put your feet in water and you will stimulate forces in the lower abdomen, which will promote the formation of blood.” This is one which is full of suggestion. “If you wash your head you stimulate forces in the lower abdomen, which regulate evacuation.” Such rules are illuminating for they embrace law, reality. The human being is there, when I express something of this sort; for the things are of course meaningless unless one is thinking of the human being, and it is essential to keep man in mind in the case of all these things.

These matters are more connected with the spatial and regional interactions of forces in the human organism. There is, however, also an interaction in time which is unmistakably conspicuous in cases where a man has received such mistaken treatment during childhood or early youth, that throughout the whole of life, what should have been developed in childhood and youth, remains lacking, and only that is evolved which should be evolved in the adult. To put it in another way. It is the nature of man that he develops certain forces in early youth which then become formative for the organism. But not everything formed in the youthful organism finds its right use and place in life during the years of youth. We form and build up our bodies in youth, in order to obtain and conserve some things which can only be active and evident in later life. Thus, in childhood certain organs;—as I would call them—are built up, which are not meant for use during childhood; but in later life they can no longer be acquired. They are therefore held in reserve, so to speak, for use in adult age. Let us assume that no heed is paid to the fact that until the teeth are cut a child should be educated by imitation, and that after dentition, education and teaching should attach great importance to authority. If both imitation and authority are thus ignored, the organs which appertain to the adult may be used prematurely. Of course the materialistic attitude of today may deprecate the use of imitation or authority as principles of education. But their significance is great, because of their effects, and they reverberate throughout the organism. It must, however, be understood that the child must live with his whole soul within the act of imitation. Here is an example. Suppose you educate the child in liking and eating some wholesome food, by accustoming it to copy the adult's enjoyment of that food: in this manner you will combine the principle of imitation by action, with the cultivation of an appetite for suitable food. The imitative act is continued into the organism. The same suggestions holds good with respect to authority in education. If those organs (they are naturally subtle organisations) which should normally remain latent till the later age are called into activity during childhood, then the dreadful Dementia Præcox may result. That is the true origin of Dementia Præcox. And a sound objective education is a splendid remedial method. We are at present making efforts in this direction at the Waldorf School, but cannot as yet extend them to an earlier stage of growth before the sixth or seventh year. But when we are at last in a position to put the whole educational process at the service of the knowledge that spiritual science offers—on the lines of my booklet Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, Dementia Præcox will be on the way to disappear. For such educational methods will avert the danger of premature and precocious employment of organs essential to the adult. So much for the general principles of sound education.

There is also the opposite phenomenon. It consists in this: we also tend to accumulate and conserve what should only be unfolded as an activity of the organs in youth. Throughout life there are, to be sure, calls on the organs which are destined to function mainly in childhood and youth; but this continued activity must become less vigorous, or harm may ensue. Here is the domain in which owing to different causes such theories as that of psychoanalysis have been able to confuse the whole of human thinking. Indeed it is true that the most harm in life is not done by the greatest mistakes, for such great errors can soon be refuted, but by conceptions containing a grain of truth, for this grain of truth is accepted, exaggerated and abused.

What are the facts which support the rise of conceptions of psycho-analytic lines? Because of the current habits of life today (which are in many respects opposed to nature, and in no way give man the necessary adaptation to the external environment)—much that makes a deep impression on the human mind in childhood, is not worked up. Thus there remain in the life of the soul, factors not adequately embodied by the organism; for all that operates in the soul's life, however slightly, has its continuance, or should have it, in some effect on the organism. Our children, however, receive many impressions so contrary to normal conditions that they remain confined to the soul, they cannot forthwith transmute themselves into organic impressions. Thus they remain, as it were, in the soul where they are and as they do not share in the whole development of man, they remain as isolated impulses of the soul. Had they kept pace with man's whole organic development, had they not remained isolated impulses, they would not take possession, at a later stage, of the organs which are destined only to function at maturity and which have no longer the task of turning to account the impressions of youth. Something wrong is thus brought about in the whole human being. He is obliged to let the soul's isolated impulses work upon organs which are no longer fitted for it. There then result the manifestations which may certainly be diagnosed by means of a psychoanalytic method, wisely employed. Careful interrogatories will bring to light certain things in the life of the soul which are simply not worked up, and which have a devastating effect on organs already too old for such working up. But the main thing for consideration is that by this route it is never possible to effect a cure, but only to diagnose a condition. If we keep to the purely diagnostic use of psycho-analysis, we are employing a method which has its justification when used with due discretion. Note well, with due and honourable discretion, so that there may be no such occurrences as I can testify have happened in some cases and for which there is corroborative written evidence. Such occurrences, for example as the employment of servants and attendants, as spies to furnish intimate particulars which are then used as bases for catechising the patients in question. That kind of thing happens sufficiently often to constitute a grave danger and gross abuse. But apart from this—for after all, in these matters so much depends on the ethical standard of the persons concerned—we can admit that from the standpoint of diagnosis, there is some truth in psycho-analysis. But it is impossible to achieve therapeutic results on the lines laid down by psycho-analysts. And that is again linked up with a characteristic of the present age.

It is the tragedy of materialism, that it leads directly away from the knowledge of matter; that it hinders the comprehension of the properties of matter. Materialism is in fact not so detrimental to the proper recognition of the spiritual as it is to the recognition of the spiritual in matter. The repudiation of the conception that spiritual activity is everywhere at work in matter, represses so much that must not be repressed if we are to form a sound conception of our human life. If I am a “materialist” I cannot possibly ascribe to matter all the characteristics we have discussed in these studies. For it is ruled out as merely preposterous to ascribe all those qualities to substances which they in fact possess. That means one is estranged from the knowledge of the material sphere. One no longer talks of phosphoric manifestations, saline manifestations, and so forth, because “all that sort of thing” is dismissed out of hand, as nonsense. This loss of the knowledge of spiritual factors in material substances deprives us of the systematic study of formative processes, and above all, it means the loss of the perception that every organ of man has actually a twofold task, one related to an orientation to consciousness, the other, its opposite, to an orientation to the purely organic process.

The recognition of this fact has been particularly obscured in a matter with which we must now briefly deal: in the study of teeth. From the materialistic point of view the teeth are more or less regarded as mere chewing implements. But they are more than that. Their double nature is easily apparent, for if they are tested chemically, they appear to be part of our bone system; but ontogenetically, they emerge from the skin system. The teeth have a double nature and office, but the second of the two is deeply hidden. Compare, for a moment, a set of human teeth with that of an animal. You will find most conspicuous in the latter what I pointed out in the first of our lessons here, the heavy down-draw weight, the massiveness characteristic of the whole skeleton, which I pointed out in the case of the ape. In man, on the other hand, the teeth themselves show in a certain way the effect of the vertical line. This is because our teeth are not only implements for chewing, they are also very essential implements of suction; they have a mechanical external action, and also an extremely fine, spiritualised inward sucking action. We must inquire: what is it that the teeth draw into the body by means of this suction? So long as they are able to do so, they suck in fluorine. Our teeth suck in fluorine. They are instruments of suction for that substance. Man needs fluorine in his organism in very minute amounts, and if deprived of its effects—here I must say something which will perhaps shock you—he becomes too clever. He acquires a degree of cleverness which almost destroys him. The fluorine dosage restores the necessary amount of stupidity, the mental dullness, which we need if we are to be human beings. We require constant dosage with fluorine in very small amounts as a protection against excessive cleverness. The premature decay of the teeth, which is caused by fluorine action, points to excessive demands on the process of fluorine suction. This indicates that man is stimulated to self-defence against dullness through some agency, with which we shall deal presently, although time forbids detailed treatment. Man as it were disintegrates his teeth so that the fluorine action should not go beyond a certain point and make him dull. The interactions of cause and effect are very subtle here. The teeth become defective in order that the individual may not become too stupid! Such is the intimate connection between what is of benefit to man on the one hand, and what tends to cause harm on the other. Under certain circumstances we have need of the action of fluorine, in order not to become too clever. But we can injure ourselves by excess in this respect, and then our organic activity destroys and decays the teeth.

I beg you to consider these suggestions thoroughly; for they are connected with things of the greatest significance in the human organism.

The following lecture is included in Bn/GA 275. It is lecture 8 of 8 in the series entitled, Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom. It is also known as, Working with Sculptural Architecture—2.

To the impulses necessary for the transformation of the present age belongs an ever wider and more comprehensive understanding of the processes of the human soul in those regions which open to Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive observation. For what first makes our world into a whole, raising us above Maya and leading us into true reality, lies within those spheres which open to this observation. It must be emphasized again and again that what we are striving towards as a new spiritual knowledge cannot consist in any warming-up of the results of an earlier clairvoyance. It is true that many people aspire to such a warming-up of an earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is past, and only atavistic echoes of it can appear in certain individuals. However, the stages of human existence that we must surmount do not disclose themselves through a revival of old clairvoyance, and thus we will endeavor to consider once again that which must lie at the basis of the new clairvoyance. We have often spoken of the principle of this, and today we shall try to do this again, but from another side.

Let us start once more from something we all know, from the fact that, during daytime waking consciousness, man lives with his ego and astral body in his physical and etheric body. During the last few days I have emphasized that this waking state of man, from waking until falling asleep, is not a fully-awake condition, because there is still something asleep in man. What we experience as our will is really only partially awake. Our thoughts are awake from waking until falling asleep, but the will is something which we exercise quite dreamily. On this account much of the pondering on the freedom of the will, and on freedom in general, is in vain, because people have not noticed that what they know of the will in waking daily life is really only a dream or a tale of will impulses. When they will, and represent something to themselves concerning it, they are of course awake. But how the will arises and passes over into action, of this man can only dream in daily waking life.

If you lift a piece of chalk and then think about this action, then you have of course an idea of it in your mind. But without clairvoyance, how the ego and astral body flow into the hand—how the will spreads out there—you can know nothing more of this in ordinary day consciousness than you know of a dream while you are dreaming. Man only dreams of real willing during ordinary waking life, and in most things we do not even dream, we sleep. You can clearly conceive of how you put a morsel of food on a fork; you can also conceive to a certain extent of how you bite this morsel; but how you swallow the morsel, this you do not even dream. For the most part you are quite unconscious of it, just as you are unconscious of your thoughts when you are asleep. A great part of the activity of will while man is awake is similarly performed in a half-sleeping condition.

For instance, if we were not asleep as regards our powers of desire and the feeling impulses connected with them, we would develop an extraordinary activity. We would follow the actions we perform right into the body; everything we fulfilled as will impulse we would follow inwardly—into our blood, and into all the blood vessels. This means that if you could follow the lifting of a piece of chalk with reference to the will impulse, you would be able to follow what takes place in your hand, right into all the blood vessels. You would see from within the activity of the blood and the feelings attached to it, for example, the gravity of the particles of chalk, and things of that nature, and would thereby become aware that you were following your nerve-paths and the etheric fluidity found therein. You would inwardly experience yourself, along with the activity of blood and nerves. This would be an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But during our life on earth this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity must be withheld from us, otherwise we would go through life in such a way that in everything we did we would experience this inner self enjoyment. But man, as he has become, may not have this enjoyment, and the secret of why he may not we again find expressed in a part of the Bible towards which we should always feel the greatest reverence.

After those things had taken place which are expressed in the Paradise-Myth, man was permitted to eat of the Tree of Knowledge but not of the Tree of Life. Eating of the Tree of Life would mean this inner gratification, and this must not happen to man. I cannot develop this motif further here today because it would us lead too far, but through your own meditation on the motif here touched upon you will be able to make further discoveries for yourselves. However, starting from this point, there is something else you can keep in mind which can be of essential importance for you: we are unable to eat of the Tree of Life, i.e., enjoy within our inner being our own blood and nerve activity—we cannot do this—yet something happens, especially when observing the world through our senses and our intellect, which is closely connected with such an inner enjoyment. In the perception of any object in the outer world, and in pondering over any object in the outer world, we follow the senses, that is, when we follow the eyes, nose, ears and taste nerves, we follow the path of the blood vessels. And when we think, we follow the path of the nerves. But we cannot perceive what else might have been perceived along the path of the blood and the nerves. What we might have perceived in the blood is reflected through the senses; it is as it were thrown back, and from this, sense impressions arise. And that which is conducted along the path of the nerves is also reflected and brought to where the nerve paths reach their end, and is then reflected as our thoughts.

Just suppose for once that a man appeared who was in a position not merely to follow along the path of his blood under the influence of the outer world, and then to receive reflection of what his blood does; not merely to follow his nerves, and receive reflected back what his nerves do, but to experience inwardly what is denied us in regard to the blood and sense nerves, to experience inwardly what leads to the eye, to experience inwardly the blood as it tends towards the nerves and the eyes. This he would enjoy inwardly, at least in regard to those parts of the blood and nerves. It was in this way that those forms arose that belong to the old clairvoyance. For what is reflected back for us are but images, finely filtrated images, as it were, of what is contained in the blood and nerves. Cosmic mysteries are contained in our blood and nerves, but such cosmic mysteries as are already exhausted, because we have developed beyond them. We only learn to know ourselves when we learn to know the Imaginations which are revealed to us when we experience ourselves within the blood extending to the senses; and we only learn to know those Inspirations destined to up-build us when we live within the nerves extending to our senses.

A whole inner world is thus built up. This inner world can consist of a sum of Imaginations, whereas in perceiving the outer physical world in a way fitted to our earth evolution we perceive reflections and reflected images of what takes place in blood and nerves. We are unable, when deeply sunk in the inner enjoyment of ourselves, to get beyond the senses, but only reach the point where the blood streams enter the senses. Man then experiences the Imaginative world so that he seems as it were to swim in the blood as a fish in water. But this Imaginative world is in truth no outer world, but a world which lives in our blood. When a man lives in the nerves which extend to the senses, he experiences an Inspired world, a world of sphere-tones, and a world of inward pictures. This is also cosmic, but it is nothing new, it is merely something which has completed its task in that it has streamed into our nerve and blood system.

The clairvoyance which thus arises, and which does not lead man beyond himself, but leads him rather deeper into himself, is a self-enjoyment, truly a real self-enjoyment. This is why in a certain sense it produces a higher bliss in people when they become clairvoyant in this way, that is, when they experience a new world. This way of becoming clairvoyant is on the whole a falling back to an earlier stage of evolution. For what I have just described, the life within ones own sense organs and blood, did not exist at that time in the form it does now, although the nervous system was already foreshadowed.

This kind of perception was the normal kind of perception on the Old Moon, and in what existed at that time in the tendencies toward the formation of nerves, a man was inwardly aware of himself. Blood was not yet developed within him, it was more something which came to him from outside like a warm breath, as the sun's rays come to us. Therefore what now on earth is a conscious perception of the inner blood system was on the Moon the normal perception of the outer world.

If therefore the nerve is here the boundary between the human inner and outer world, then what is now nerve was already foreshadowed on the Moon. While following the nerves a man was able to perceive what revealed itself to him as an inner, Imaginative world, which was a part of himself. He perceived how he himself is included in the cosmos. He also was aware Imaginatively of what came to him as a breath from outside… not from within. This perception has now fallen from him, what was outside him on the old Moon has become inward, as the circulation of the blood in earthly evolution. The old perception is therefore a going-back to the Old Moon evolution.

It is well to know of such things, because again and again things arise that are of this kind of clairvoyance. What appears clairvoyantly in this way has no need of being developed by those difficult paths of meditation and concentration described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. This clairvoyance, which arises through learning to live inwardly in ones nerves and blood—to feel satisfaction in oneself—is in general but a finer development of the organic life, a refinement of what a man experiences when he eats and drinks. When all is said such clairvoyance is not the task set before man today, but is rather something that arises as a hothouse plant through our bringing to a more refined existence that self-enjoyment afforded us by eating, drinking and similar things. Just as an inner after-effect arises in an epicure when he has drunk Rhinewine or Mosel, which of course rises only to an Imagination of taste but does not work formatively, so in many people a refined inner enjoyment arises, and this is their clairvoyance.

A great deal of clairvoyance is nothing else but a refined, rarified, hothouse-like after-enjoyment of life. Attention must frequently be drawn to these things in our day. For I may tell you that the last time the secrets concerning these things were still known, when people still spoke of them in literature, was really the first half of the 19th century. Then came the second half of the 19th century, with its so highly-rated discoveries—highly-rated from their point of view—when all understanding for these things and for the finer connections of existence was lost. It may be added parenthetically that people have not yet lost the enjoyment experienced under the influence of the coarser, let us say more selfish enjoyment; they can still live with the after-pleasure of eating and drinking, in fact these have even been developed to a certain high degree in this materialistic age.

But in such things, man lives in a cyclic, rhythmic movement. And the materialistic age, because it has extinguished what was formerly a general feeling—the passing of self-enjoyment into the senses, nerves, and blood-circulation—can therefore give itself up ever more thoroughly to the impressions of eating and drinking. We can easily observe the complete “volt face” and transformation which has taken place in this connection within a relatively short time. We have but to look at a hotel menu card from the 70's, and compare it with one of today, and we see what strides life has made in refined enjoyment, in the self-gratification of our own bodies. But such things also progress in cycles, for everything can only be reached to a certain degree, and just as a pendulum can only rise to a certain point and must then return, so mere physical enjoyment must recede when it has reached a certain point. It will then come to pass that when the keenest epicures, those who have the greatest longing for enjoyment, stand before the most daintily prepared repast, they will not yearn for it, but will say: “Ah! I cannot. All that is finished for me.” This also will come in time, for it is a necessity of evolution. Everything passes in cycles.

The other side of life is that which man experiences during sleep. His life of thought is asleep, and naturally, entirely different connections make their appearance. I have already said that in the first half of the 19th century people still had insight into these things. The clairvoyance which arises through following ones own blood and nerve paths was still called, in accord with certain memories, the Pythic clairvoyance, because it was in fact related to what lay at the root of the pythic clairvoyance of antiquity.

Other connections are present during the life of sleep. Man with his ego and astral body is then outside the physical and etheric body. Ideas from ordinary life are then suppressed and weakened, but man lives continually from falling asleep till waking in a state of longing for his physical body. Sleeping consists essentially in this, that man, from the moment he begins to sleep, develops longings for his physical body. These longings increase until a climax is reached when he is forced back more and more towards his physical body. The longing for ones physical body becomes ever greater and greater in the state of sleep. And because longing fills the ego and astral body like a cloud, the life of thought is dimmed. Perceptions become dim because desire for the physical body pervades the ego and astral body like a cloud. Just as we cannot see the trees in a wood if mist spreads over everything, neither can we ask variance of our inward life of perception if the mist of our desire spreads over it.

But it may happen that this life of desire becomes so strong during sleep that man not merely develops this desire when outside his physical and etheric body, but he becomes greedy to such an extent that he partially seizes on this inner part of his physical and etheric body so that he reaches with his desire to the furthest limits of his blood and nerve paths, he sinks through as it were from outside into the extremities of the senses of circulation, and into the ultimate ends of the nerve paths.

In ancient times, when the Gods still helped man with such experiences, they were entirely regular and good. The ancient Hebrew Prophets, for example, who did such great things for their people, performed what they did and received their prophetic gifts because they applied such infinite love to the blood and nerve structure of their people, and even in the sleeping state they did not entirely absent themselves from what lived physically in this people. These ancient Hebrew prophets were seized by such longing, filled with such love, that they remained united even in sleep with the blood of the people to whom they belonged. It was because of this that they received their prophetic gifts.

This is the physiological origin of these gifts, and most beautiful and splendid results came from what has just been told you. The prophets of different peoples were of such significance to these peoples just because, while outside the physical body, they still lived with this physical body in the way described.

As explained, a certain consciousness of this still existed up to the first half of the 19th century in the life of mankind. As the first clairvoyance described here was called Pythic clairvoyance, so the clairvoyance of which I have just spoken, in which a man dives down into the blood and nerve paths of the physical body with what otherwise lives outside the physical and etheric body during sleep, was called Prophetic clairvoyance.

If you pursue the literature of the first half of the 19th Century—even if it cannot be described with the exactitude and precision of modern spiritual science—you still find descriptions of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance. The distinction between them is not recognized today, because people can no longer understand what they read of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance.

Neither kind of clairvoyance is that which is really capable of advancing mankind at the present time. These are the kinds of clairvoyance that were valid for ancient times. The modern clairvoyance, which must develop more and more towards the future, can come neither by enjoying what penetrates our body from within during waking conditions, nor by diving down into this body from outside in a state of sleep, but from love—not for ourselves, but for that portion of mankind to which our body belongs. The earlier forms are stages of development which have been outgrown.

Modern clairvoyance must develop as a third kind of clairvoyance that does not involve desire for laying hold of the physical body from without, nor as enjoyment of the physical body from within.

That which lives within and is capable of penetrating our body, enjoying it inwardly, and that which can seize the body from without, must be detached from the body if modern clairvoyance is to arise. Neither must enter into any further connection with the body other than in the [normal] incarnation between birth and death, so that blood and nerves can be enjoyed neither from within nor from without; but each must remain connected with the body in pure renunciation of such self-enjoyment and such self-love. A connection with the body must nevertheless remain, for otherwise, death would take place. Man must remain united with the body which belongs to him during his physical incarnation on earth, remain united with it through those members which in a sense stand far, or at least relatively far, from the activity of blood and nerve. A release from blood and nerve activity must be attained.

When man no longer finds inward enjoyment along the paths which lead to his senses, or penetrates his own being from outside as far as to the senses, but when he can enter into such union with himself both from within and from without so as to really lay hold in a living way of that which in physical existence is the symbol of death, and can unite himself with that which gives the expectancy of physical death, the condition we are considering is then reached. For considered physiologically, we really die because we are capable of developing a bony system—a skeleton. When we are capable of comprehending our bones, which through a wonderful intuition people recognize as the symbol of death—the bony skeleton—and which is so far removed from the blood and nervous systems, we then attain to something which is higher than pythic and prophetic clairvoyance, we come to what we can call the Clairvoyance of Spiritual Science.

In this spiritual scientific clairvoyance, we no longer grasp only a part of human nature, we grasp the whole man. And fundamentally, it is all one whether we grasp it from within or from without, because this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an “enjoyment,” it is no longer a refined pleasure, but a going forth into the divinely spiritual forces of the All. It is a becoming-one with the cosmos, an experience no longer of man and of what is secreted in man, but an experience that is a living within the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, a real raising of oneself above self-enjoyment and self-love. Just as our thoughts are members of our souls, so man must become, as it were, a thought, a member of the higher Hierarchies. To allow oneself to be thought, pictured, perceived by the higher hierarchies, this is the principle of the clairvoyance of spiritual science. It is being taken up, not taking up.

I hope that what I am now saying may very definitely become the subject of your further meditations, for precisely those things that I have explained today are capable of stimulating very much in all of you, and this can serve toward an ever deeper and more comprehensive penetration to the real impulses of our spiritual scientific stream. How much earnestness is necessary for this penetration into our spiritual scientific stream has been spoken of often in these past days. Something might be realized of what is—I do not say willed, but what must be willed—within this spiritual stream, if as many as possible would resolve to ponder in a living way this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds, so that clearer and ever clearer ideas might arise concerning what we all desire at bottom, and which is so easily confused with what is far easier and more comfortable to acquire.

We have in fact worked from cycle to cycle of lectures for no other purpose than to bring together, ever more and more, ideas and concepts. It is necessary to study these ideas and concepts, and in this way we prepare in ourselves those impulses of soul which lead to real spiritual scientific clairvoyance. Often because one has sipped a little here or there of what is imparted within our spiritual scientific stream, and thereby given some part of our human nature to pythic or prophetic clairvoyance—because of this one may perhaps become proud and haughty. When this is the case opinions arise as are often heard when one or another says: I need not study every detail, I do not require what is said in this cycle. What I hear I already know, and so on. The principle of living in a few Imaginations which might be called blood and nerve Imaginations, still exists in many. Many think they possess something quite special if they have a few blood and nerve Imaginations. But this is not what leads us to selfless labor for human evolution; such a tarrying in blood and nerve imaginations leads only to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a refined egoism. In this event, it may be that a more refined egoism is cultivated through the pursuit of spiritual science than exists even in the outside world.

Naturally, in referring to such things, one never speaks of these matters to those who are present, and never of the members of the anthroposophical society who are present. Yet it may be mentioned that societies exist in which people are to be found who, according to the principles of these societies, bring themselves to co-operate, not with true selflessness, but to undertake preferably that which kindles the blood or nerve Imaginations. They then think they can be excused from anything else. They attain to such an atavistic clairvoyance—or perhaps they do not attain to it, but merely to the feelings which are held to be an accompaniment of the phenomenon of such Imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not a conquest of egoism, but only a higher blossoming of it. One finds within such societies—the anthroposophical society being excepted from politeness—that although their duty is to develop love and esteem, harmony and compassion, at the profoundest depths of their souls one finds disharmony, quarrelsomeness, mutual calumniation, etc, growing more and more from member to member. I venture to express myself thus, because, as I have said, I always exclude the members of the anthroposophical. society.

We then see how, that where an especially strong light should arise, deep shadows are also cast. It is not so much as if I wished to place blame on such things, or believed they could be rooted out at once, between today and tomorrow. That is impossible because they arise naturally. However, each one can at least work on himself. And it is not good if the consciousness is not at least directed to such matters.

One can thoroughly understand that just because a certain stress must be worked out within such societies, the shadow-sides also make themselves felt, and that what flourishes outside in life often flourishes all the more vigorously within such societies. Nevertheless a certain bitter feeling is evoked when this appears in societies that should naturally (otherwise the society would have no meaning) develop a certain brotherliness and unity, and when, with this closer contact, certain qualities that exist but fleetingly outside are developed with all the greater intensity. Since the Anthroposophical Society—being present—is excepted, it is all the more possible for us to think over these things objectively, as non-participators, so that we can learn to know them more intimately. And if we find such things anywhere in the world, we do not regard them as anything other than what they are. We believe—if anyone thinks he understands anthroposophy with especial depth, yet reveals certain qualities which not only show themselves in him as they do in the world, but more intensely—that these things are not incomprehensible, but realize that they are comprehensible, yet as matters we must fight. We can frequently only fight them when we have really understood them.

This is also something which shows us how life is connected with the spiritual scientific view, and can only reach its goal when it is understood as acceptance of life, as an art of life; when it is carried into all life. How beautiful it would be if each single relationship of life, let us now say of the Anthroposophical Society, showed itself to be in such mutual harmony as is attempted in the forms of our building, where the separate forms pass over into each other, and all are in harmony one with another; if it could be in life as it is in the building, if the whole life of our society could be as we would have it through the beautiful co-operation of those who are active on the building; so that this labor which is already something harmonious and noble, might be a copy of that which finds expression in the building itself.

Thus the inner meaning of the life-principle of our building, and the inner meaning of the co-operation of the souls should ... no, would rather not say that. Thus the inner meaning of the co-operation in the forms of our building should find a path outwards into each separate relationship of the life of our Society—should in its inward construction stand before us as an ideal. I should like to assure you that I did not make a slip when I omitted a sentence just now. I left it out with full intention, and many a time that also is said which one did not say.

Summing up, what I have put before you during the last few days is a theme varying in the most diverse manner, and what I would fain lay on your hearts especially is this: that you not only place the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual investigation, before your intellect, before your reason, but that you receive that which lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of the future progress of mankind really depends upon this. I say this without presumption, and anyone who attempts to study but a little the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our time can recognize this for himself.

With this the series of lectures, what I have permitted myself to give you at this turning point of the year is concluded.

As you will have gathered from yesterday's lecture, a proper presentation of eurythmy has to take its start from Melos, from the melodic element, or we could also say, from the motif or phrase. [25] It is the progression of the motif, the musical motif in time, which indicates the path which eurythmy must take on the basis of the musical element.

Let us concentrate on this today. Here again you will see how necessary it is to pay special attention to the actual musical element. Now, the musical element makes sense in the progression of the motifs—that is, the musical element as such, not as it manifests in expression. And this sense has absolutely to be brought out in a presentation of eurythmy. The question, then, is how the progression of a musical phrase must be treated in eurythmy.

Usually in music itself, even when listening.to it, people fail to observe the musical sense progressing within the motif itself You all know that a motif frequently includes the bar line [American: bar]; indeed this is generally the case. The bar, the change of bar that is, interrupts the motif And when passing from one completed motif to the following formation you often feel that something like a ‘dead interval’ lies between them (musicians frequently even use this expression). It is further said that such a dead interval corresponds to the progression from the end of one spoken word to the beginning of the next. The matter is frequently regarded in this way. But this very comparison, as I said yesterday, demonstrates that people have no feeling for the fact that the true musical element actually is that which is inaudible. When the dead interval is spoken about, and is compared with what lies between two spoken words, the comparison is not valid. Anyone wishing to speak out of an understanding of art really should not speak of the ‘dead interval’ between two words, but on the contrary should place the greatest value upon the way the transition proceeds from one word to another.

Just think that in speech, in the treatment of speech, we can observe the following fundamental difference between good and bad treatment. You can treat each word separately, but this is quite different from a clear feeling that one word ends in a specific way and the next begins in a specific way. And you look for meaning between what is apparent to the senses (that is to say, between the end of one word and the beginning of the next), where the spirit lies, which you are endeavouring to express. The spirit also lies between the words. Furthermore, the sounds we hear in words are only the sensory impression; when we speak, too, the spirit lies in the inaudible realm. It is sad that people today have so little feeling for the inaudible realm, and are no longer able to listen between the words. A lecture on spiritual science can never be understood when you follow merely the actual words; you have to listen between the words, even listen into the words, discovering in the words what lies behind them. In this case words at all times are an aid to express what cannot be heard.

The question, then, is to find some means of differentiating in eurythmic movement the position of a bar line in a motif, and the transition from one motif to the next. This difference may be shown by holding the movement at the bar line, so that whoever carries the movement does it, so to speak, within himself, wherever possible indicating through the position of the arms and hands that he is pushed together, and especially in moving a form by contracting the movement of the form into himself—in other words, becoming stuck whilst in the form. Conversely, in the transition from one motif-metamorphosis to the next, we are dealing with a swinging-over (Schwung) from the one metamorphosed motif to the other. We swing in a spirited manner from one metamorphosed motif to the next; in the actual bodily movement itself we have a kind of upward swing. And where the bar line appears within a motif we aim for a rigidly upright posture.

Try to practise this until it becomes a matter of course when moving. This will be of great significance. It would be quite good to make sure that the matter is clear. Let us take the following to clarify this. (It is important to make a beginning with the very simplest of examples, and it is no matter if this simplicity is somewhat home-baked.)

Here, then, we will select as simple a phrase as possible to make clear to ourselves the real significance of what I have been speaking about. The phrase starts with a G and progresses to B, returns to G, progresses to F#, and so on. Thus we have the first motif, then the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth, and the question is: How should this progression of motifs be carried out in eurythmy? In the first motif we hold ourselves back, in the second we boldly swing onwards to the next motif: the curve is first up, then down, and between we have the bar lines. The phrase continues (see Fig. 4) with holding ourselves back, boldly swinging onwards, holding ourselves back.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Thus, if I draw the whole thing: up, down, up, down, up, down—we always find the bar line in between, and in the fifth and sixth motifs, two bar lines each. The progression is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight restraining-ourselves, and one, two, three, four, five swinging-onwards. Try to be quite upright, but go together with the whole movement; to be upright at the bar line and boldly swinging onwards at the transition from one motif to its following metamorphosis. The bar line must be strongly indicated by means of a strong holding-on to yourself. This may never take place simultaneously with the notes, however, but must always occur between them.

This, hopefully, is clearly understandable. Always show the bar line, and its holding-on movement, very distinctly. This, of course, is something I ask you to ponder about, what it means for the various forms of phrasing. I wanted to show you this with as simple an example as possible. You see, the presentation of eurythmy reveals that the melody receives the actual spirit and carries it on. Fundamentally speaking, everything else does not add the spirit of the musical element, being at all events a more or less illustrative element. But in order to gain a real conviction of this for yourselves, I ask you to try first and foremost to seek the whole human being in the musical element. The eurythmist is really obliged to study the way in which the human being streams out, as it were, into the musical element.

It is a fact that when we stand with our physical form, whether slim or short, fat or thin (that part of us which is actually visible), this is really the very least part of us. It even remains, in fact, for a short period after we have gone through the portal of death. But yet how much of the human being is present in the corpse? When we look at the human being as he stands before us in the physical world it is only the corpse, or hardly more than the corpse, that may be seen. Now in music, the physical form of man corresponds to what may be called the least significant of the musical elements; it represents the beat. It is therefore quite natural that with the bar line there should be an emphasis of the physical form, a holding-on to yourself. [26]

When you pass over to rhythm, presenting the ‘short-long’, you already go beyond what is represented by the human bodily form. In rhythm you already show a very considerable part of the life of your soul. With beat in eurythmy, you always feel that a person's heaviness is the determining factor in its expression. When the beat is shown in eurythmy, you always feel (as you just saw from these attempts) that it becomes evident how heavy a person is. A heavier person will be able to mark the beat in eurythmy better than a lighter person. This is less apparent in the case of rhythm. Rhythm brings the human being into movement. And here already it is quite easy to differentiate whether the movement has artistic taste or is tasteless, whether the movement is permeated with soul: slow—quick, slow—quick. You see, here the etheric element in the human being makes its appearance. It is the etheric human being which is revealed in rhythm.

If, however, we turn our attention to melody, which conveys the actual spirit in the musical element, then the astral being of man is revealed. When you are active in the musical element the whole human being, with the exception of the ego, is brought into play. It is really true to say: ‘As physical human being I mark the beat; as etheric human being, the rhythm; as astral human being I am the evolver of Melos: it is thus that I appear before the world.’ And, you see, the moment when you pass over from the musical realm to that of speech, the ego steps in. Naturally, speech is then transmitted into the astral element and even into the etheric, but its original impulse lies in the ego. [27]

At the end of yesterday's lecture I indicated the hidden parallel between the scale and the vowels, and we even saw how the musical element enters eurythmically into the vowel element. Now we must also be clear about the fact that in singing the realm of the pure musical element is already exceeded. The pure and real musical element is expressed in the astral make-up of the human being. This is why singing becomes more essentially musical in proportion to the degree in which it holds to what is purely musical—the more it follows Melos. And indeed this following of Melos will be the most sympathetic in singing.

Passing from singing to speech (to declamation and recitation), we find marked disharmony between Melos and something that has also to be borne in mind by the reciter, namely the sense of the words. It ought to be emphasized that the musical element has to be active in recitation and declamation, but an inner conflict will always exist, a conflict which the singer can only solve in the musical element. The more musical a singer, the more he will enter into the sphere of the astral, into Melos, thus solving for himself the problem of how to remain musical in singing. Consequently it requires greater skill to remain musical in singing than for instance it is to remain musical in instrumental music.

But now let us consider the following. I think everyone must feel that a certain poem of Goethe's produces an extraordinarily musical effect. I refer to the poem:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch. [28]

Let us take the principal words from this poem: Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh: Gipfeln, ist Ruh, Wipfeln, Hauch, auch, warte, balde.

If you enter into this poem with your feeling, you will find that what is appealing and musical (for it is extraordinarily appealing and musical) lies in the use of the words Gipfel, Wipfel, ist Ruh, Hauch, auch, warte, balde. It is in these words that the actual musical element lies. Now I ask you, what have we got here? Let us compare this with what I told you yesterday of the correspondence of the vowel sounds, with the scale. I always write the scale thus (naturally any note can be written on a C [i.e. tonic]) but I write C in the usual way, as the note from which the scale starts. Of course, the matter is not dependent on this way of writing it, but when you write in the way I did yesterday, then we have in the word Gipfel B G, BAG—a descending third. It has the effect of a minor third (Moll-Terz). It is the mirror image of a third. And it is the repetition of this mirrored third in Wipfel and Gipfel which initially renders this wonderfully subtle musical effect.

Going further, we have ist Ruh. In ist Ruh, according to the model I described yesterday, we first have a B, and the u [‘oo’] represents C: B C. We find the seventh relating back to the prime, and in this relationship we have an example of everything I said both yesterday and the day before. When the human being enters into the seventh he goes out of himself. There is a relating back when he returns from the seventh to the keynote; he regains himself, as it were. You can feel this in ist Ruh, because it is inherent in the words.

Now it is especially interesting that in balde and warte we have E G—once more a kind of third, but the other third which moves in the opposite direction; it is the mirror image of the previous third, a kind of major third (Dur-Terz). Consequently we have a marvellous correspondance here: thirds which relate to each other as mirror images and the descending seventh chord, seventh harmony, in which the human being is given back to himself.

And now we will go further. Hauch and auch are words in which the diphthong makes its appearance. What are diphthongs? Where may we look for them in music? Here, you see, we may reverse our usual process. We have often found a transition from music to speech, and now we will pass over from speech into the diphthong element, into the musical element. If you possess an ear for such things, applying the principle about which I have often spoken, you will ask: Where does the essence of the diphthong lie? - of ei, for instance, or au? Does it lie in the e or the i, in the a or the u?[1] No, it lies between them. The actual sounds ei, au, are uttered (Ausgesprochene), but the ‘essence’ (Ausgegeisterte, ‘spirited out’) of the diphthong lies between them, and for this reason we must look in the diphthong not for notes, but for intervals. Diphthongs are always intervals. And the interesting thing about Goethe's poem is that Hauch (au, that is to say) is truly the interval of the third. You only need call to mind yesterday's model Wipfel—B G, ist Ruh—B C, Gipfel—B G, Hauch—third, auch—third, warte—E G, balde—E G. In this way Goethe not only makes use of clear thirds and their mirror images, but in order to employ every possibility in this matter, he adds true intervals of the third in the diphthongs. Here you have what matters.

When someone reads or recites this poem of Goethes, it does not matter that he should think it contains intervals of the third and even the seventh. Of course he does not think about it! Nevertheless, when the poem is rightly felt, something of this will be expressed by the reciter. It will find its way through. But what have we here? What is it that is almost as spiritual as the meaningful utterance of the ego, and which yet remains unknown? It is the astral element. And so behind the meaning of the poem there is a deeper, unconscious meaning for the human being, which is the musical meaning to be found in the astral element; this is especially effective in this poem. In this poem Goethe has transferred the effect of the poem, as far as this is possible, from the ego back into the astral realm.

Now you will best express this poem in eurythmy when you actually manage to emphasize the separate sounds less, but rather to indicate them wherever possible, without finishing them. Thus the i (‘ee’) in Wipfel and Gipfel is not quite finished, but left hovering in the air. This whole poem is most beautifully expressed, both eurythmically and musically, when the movements for the vowels are left hovering, and the eurythmist pulls back before completing them.

These are the things I have in mind when I say that eurythmy should be studied with feeling. Feeling should not be allowed to disappear while you are engaged in eurythmy, but rather cultivated. For the onlooker can clearly differentiate (he is not aware of this, for it does not reach his consciousness, but unconsciously the onlooker can tell quite clearly) whether a eurythmist automatically goes through the motions in eurythmy, or whether feeling is poured into the forms he or she creates. And two eurythmists, one of whom is an intellectual, only presenting the meaning of what has been learned, whereas the other feels through everything down to the details of curved or stretched arm movements, feeling through the finger movements—two such eurythmists will really be as different as the virtuoso is from the artist. A person can know perfectly well how to be a virtuoso, but is not therefore an artist. These things, when brought to full consciousness, will be apparent in the beauty of your eurythmic movements. Consequently it should not be a matter of indifference whether or not you know the relationship that exists between a eurythmic presentation of music and a eurythmic presentation of recitation. Through a knowledge derived from feeling- experience you will assume the attitude which must be embraced if eurythmy is increasingly to develop into a real art.

Just consider how the sense of the words actually destroys melody. It might be said that the necessity of attending to the meaning of the words entails a certain fear lest the melody be destroyed. The result is that speech does violence, as it were, to the musical element. These words are naturally somewhat drastic, but speech does do violence to the musical element. Must this be so? Can it be confirmed anywhere in the world?

Yes, how this is confirmed in the world may be seen from the following: Speech consists, on the one hand, of the vowel sounds, which mainly serve to express what lives within. In the vowel sounds, as we have seen, it is easy to see that the musical element leaves its mark, whereas in the consonants this is very difficult to find. But you also know how often I have emphasized the fact that the vowels have been wrested from man's inner being. They are the direct expression of feeling, of the inner essence of the soul; wonder, amazement, shrinking back in fear, holding yourself in relation to the outer world, self- assertion, giving way, loving embrace—all this is clearly expressed in the vowels.

The consonants are entirely adapted to the outer world. If you study a consonant you will find that it always imitates some thing or process existing in the outer world. When someone speaks i [‘ee’], you can feel quite definitely that here someone asserts himself. Certain German dialects even use i instead of ich, and here the human being feels his own being the strongest, as I know, for until my fourteenth or fifteenth year I myself spoke in dialect: ‘Na, nit du, i!’ [‘No, not you, me!’]; I know how one's own being asserts itself when one says i [‘ee’]. When speaking this sound i, you first jump into the air and then you stand on the ground. This is what has to be felt.

Now for the consonants—let us take l—you can picture the sound, but i has to be heard; ah has also to be heard. At most they may be pictured astrally. But you can quite well picture l or r. L—if someone creeps along, you straightaway have l. The r. someone skips while running; you have r, which is a process. An ordinary wheel creeps along, it l’s, so to speak, but a cog-wheel r’s along! You can immediately picture it. If you have ever noticed a stake being driven into the ground with a hammer, you cannot picture anything else but a t; it is a t. An external process is a consonant. It is always an external process. Thus the consonantal formations of speech plainly point to the world outside. The vowels fit themselves into the consonants.

You know, of course, that in [certain] languages the consonants are interchangeable with the vowels. Every consonant has something of the vowel about it, and every vowel something of the consonant. We need only remember that in some languages the l becomes i; a consonant becomes a vowel. In certain German dialects, for instance, the final l is always pronounced i. When speaking dialect ‘Dörfl’ is always pronounced ‘Dörfi’, [approximately, ‘Dirfee’]. The sound is i, and the l is very softly indicated in it; it is the i which is really pronounced.

But this also brings the vowel sounds towards the outside, towards the outer world. Speech is something which comes into contact with the outer world; in a certain sense it may be said to be an image of the outer world.

This is why speech does violence to the musical element, and why great skill is necessary if we are to retrieve the musical element in recitation. Great skill is necessary in order to strive back to the musical element, and we will only find the melodic element in speech if the musical element in the poet comes to meet us; indeed rhythm and beat have to be taken into account when reciting any passage of poetic language. If we neglect this, we sin against rhythm and beat (which in the musical realm itself do tend, of course, more towards the outside), and this results in incorrect recitation. The nearer you approach the musical element itself, the more you enter into Melos. Melos is the musical element.

When you examine everything I have just said, you will find that in the world outside the human being, the musical element is only present to a limited degree. By proceeding from within outwards, passing from musical experience to the experience of speech, we ourselves retreat ever further from the realm of music. Why do we retreat ever further? Because speech has to lean on external nature. But external nature can only be laid hold of by speech when an element is introduced into speech which is really foreign. For nature scorns beat, rhythm, and indeed our melodic speech. And a purely naturalistic materialist deems poetic speech of any sort, that is, artistic speech, affected and sentimental.

I once knew a fellow student, for example, who regarded himself as highly gifted. This was at the time of certain lectures held by Schröer, of which I wrote in The Course of My Life. [29] The classes took the form of practical exercises in lecturing and essay-writing. This student arrived one day, saying that he was prepared with subject-matter of the very greatest, indeed world-shaking, importance. He went on to tell us what these world-shaking ideas were. They amounted to the following: All metrical, poetic language is fundamentally wrong. People write in iambic, trochaic rhythms; they write in rhyme. This, however, is entirely wrong, for it is not natural but artificial. It must all be abolished from poetry. Such was the discovery he had made. He declared that a new poetry must make its appearance—without rhythm, without iambus or trochee, and without rhyme. Later on I even experienced that such poetry is actually written. At that time my fellow student only put it forward as theory. We thrashed him so thoroughly that he never held his lecture!

You will see from all this that it is perfectly obvious that what comes from nature does not form the basis of the musical element, for the musical element itself is a creation of the human being. And if we examine the inner nature of music and speech, we shall realize why it is that the musical element is so far removed from anything naturalistic. It is the self-creating force in the human being, and imitating nature is an aberration of the musical path.

As I said before, I do not mean to cast aspersions on the imitation of ‘rustling forests’, soughing winds, bubbling springs, ‘a brook in March’, [30] and so on. It is far from my intention to criticize these things in any way; but there does lie behind them the urge to pass out of the actual musical element, to enrich music by the introduction of something unmusical. In certain circumstances the result may be very agreeable, for it is possible to enlarge the sphere of every art in every direction, but because eurythmy demands that music be taken still more musically than it already is, terrible difficulties will arise if attempts are made to express in the right way in eurythmy something that is not purely musical.

Yet another thing can be understood from this, and that is the beneficial effect of tone eurythmy therapy; for this must gradually be developed side by side with usual tone eurythmy. Why is this? Fundamentally speaking, a large number of illnesses are caused by the fact that people have an inward tendency to turn into nature in some way, instead of remaining human. We always turn into a piece of nature when we are ill. Now we are human beings through the very fact that we inwardly do not tolerate natural processes to remain as they are, but instantly subject them to an inner transformation; we instantly make them inwardly human. There is no process in the human being (with the exception of the dissolving of salt, the metamorphosis of salt) [31] which is not a transformation of some process of nature. We become ill when we are powerless against natural processes in this inner transformation, if we cannot metamorphose them (a process they have to undergo within the human being), and when they still run their course as natural processes. If in any part of the human organism a natural process preponderates over the human, and we then make the person practise tone eurythmy, this is a therapeutic factor; for by this means we lead the part of the body in question away from nature and back into the human realm. When we let someone do tone eurvthmy because nature in him is too strong, it is as though we said to the natural process in the organ: ‘Out you go!’—for these movements are solely human and have nothing of nature about them. The musical element belongs only to man, not to nature. [32]

In earlier times the musical element itself was recognized as a means of healing, and music in such times did bring about many cures. But because the musical element comes especially to the fore in eurythmy, so the therapeutic forces of the musical element must also come to the fore with an efficient therapy. This is what I wanted to tell you today. Tomorrow at the same time we shall continue.

Notes:

1. For pronunciation of German vowels, see p. xiv. (Translator's note.)

If we pass from the life of soul itself to which we paid some attention yesterday, to how the soul works upon physical man, particularly in connection with the experiences then described, we are led in two different directions. Remembrance or memory points the soul back to earlier experiences; thinking leads the soul into the realm of etheric existence. That which affects a man even more strongly than his memory, so strongly indeed that the inner impulses pass over into his bodily life, I called ‘gesture’. And the study of gesture brings us to the subject of how soul-and-spirit manifest in the physical.

Man’s entry into physical life on Earth is a process in which the being of soul-and-spirit takes hold of the physical. And remembrance, memory—to keep to that for the moment—consists in something experienced previously in earthly existence being carried over into a later period of life. The question now is: Just as memory points back to earlier happenings in the course of earthly life, is it possible to look still further back to what preceded a man’s entry into this life?

Here we come to two considerations: firstly, the experiences which man as a being of soul-and-spirit has undergone in pre-earthly existence. We will leave this for later considerations. Secondly, there is something that is connected with his physical, bodily constitution which he, as an individual, carries over into that bodily constitution. It is what scientific thinking calls heredity. In the very traits of his temperament which have a considerable effect upon the life of soul, man bears within him qualities and impulses having an obvious connection with those of his physical ancestors.

Modern humanity approaches such matters superficially and with little real thought. Only this morning I was reading a book dealing with the head of a well-known, now extinct, Royal Family, and the effect of heredity on the dynasty. The author mentions qualities and characteristics which can be traced right back to the seventh century and were repeatedly inherited. Then comes a passage to the effect that some members of this Royal Family have displayed a marked tendency towards freakish behaviour, eccentricity and the like. Again, we are told that there are members of the same family who have no such tendencies. You will agree that this is a peculiar kind of thinking, for surely a writer who makes such a statement would realise that no conclusions whatever can be drawn from it. But if you examine much of what at the present time is supposed to lead to well-founded views, you will find plenty of similar examples.

However superficial prevailing views of heredity seem to be, it must be admitted that a man is indeed the bearer of inherited characteristics. That is the one aspect. He must often battle against these inherited traits and rid himself of them in order to bring to fulfilment the talents laid into him by his pre-earthly life.

The second aspect to be noted has to do with what a human being acquires by education, by intercourse with his fellows and with outer nature. Customary study of the lower kingdoms of nature leads us to speak of this as man’s adaptation to his environment. And as you know, modern natural science regards these two impulses, heredity and adaptation, as the influences of supreme importance for a living being.

But if we steep ourselves open-mindedly in these matters we feel that we cannot reach any real explanation without taking the path into the spiritual world. And so today we will consider in the light of spiritual knowledge, these questions which meet us in life at every turn.

We must here go back to something with which we have been repeatedly concerned in earlier studies, namely the separation of the Moon from the Earth. The Moon separated from the Earth at a particular time in order to influence it from a distance. But I have also spoken of the spiritual reality behind this separation of the Moon. I have told you how at one time there lived on the Earth superhuman Beings who were the first great Teachers of humanity and from whom originated what our human thinking may call the primeval wisdom; it is of deep significance and inspires reverence even in the fragmentary form in which it survives today. It was once tire content of what was taught by those superhuman Teachers at the time when the evolution of earthly humanity was beginning.

These Beings found their way to the Moon sphere and are now part of the Moon population. Now when a man has passed through the gate of death, he journeys by a series of stages through the planetary world belonging to our Earth. After his earthly existence he enters first into the sphere of the Moon’s activities, then into the spheres of the activities of Venus, Mercury, the Sun and so on. Today we are particularly concerned with how he passes into the Moon’s sphere of activities.

I have already indicated here that with Imaginative vision a man’s life can be followed beyond the gate of death and that in actual fact after his physical body has been laid aside and returned to the elements of Earth, he is to be found in the world of spirit. After Iris etheric body has been received into the etheric sphere connected with our Earth, soul-and-spirit remain, that is to say, his Ego and astral body and all that is part of them. But when we follow with Imaginative vision this being who has passed through the gate of death, he still presents himself to us in a definite form: it is the form which gives shape to the physical matter which the man bears within him. Compared with the robust physical body this form is little more than a shadow but makes a very forceful impression upon the soul. In this form, the head of the man makes only a weak impression, whereas a very powerful impression is made by what, in the course of the life between death and a new birth, is gradually transformed into the head of the next incarnation. But there is something important to say about this form that is visible to Imaginative perception after a man has passed through the gate of death: the form is a kind of physiognomical expression of his life on Earth; it is a faithful portrayal of the manifestations of good or evil for which he was responsible in his physical life on Earth. In earthly life a man can conceal whether the evil or the good is active in his soul. After death that is no longer possible. The spirit-form present after death is the physiognomical expression of what the man was on Earth.

A man who carries through the gate of death some moral evil inherent in his soul, will bear a physiognomy in which there is an outer resemblance to Ahrimanic figures. During the first period after death it is a fact that a man’s feeling and perception are dependent upon what he can reproduce in his own being. If he has a physiognomical resemblance to Ahriman because he has carried some moral evil with him through the gate of death, he can reproduce in himself— which means he can perceive—only things that resemble Ahriman and he is as it were blind to those human souls who passed through the gate of death with a sound and good moral disposition. Indeed it is one of the sternest judgments confronting a man after death that he can see only what resembles himself, in so far as he is himself evil, because he can reproduce in his own being only the physiognomy of other evil men.

After his death, man enters into the sphere of the Moon, and there, if he brings evil with him, he comes into the presence, not only of supersensible, superphysical Beings but also into that of others with a physiognomical resemblance to himself—that is to say, Ahrimanic figures. This passage of certain individuals through an Ahrimanic world has very definite significance in the whole nexus of cosmic happenings. And we shall grasp what actually happens if we bear in mind the purpose of those ancient Teachers of humanity when they departed to establish the Moon-colony in the Cosmos.

Now as well as those Beings of the higher Hierarchies whom we usually call Angels, Archangels and so forth, other beings who belong to the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic realms are also bound up with the whole process of cosmic evolution; and these beings are active in that process just as are the normally developing beings. The Luciferic beings work continuously with the aim of preventing anything that has the tendency to press on into physical materiality, from achieving that end. In the realm of man the Luciferic beings use every opportunity to lift him away from his physical corporeality. Their endeavour is to make man into a purely etheric being possessed of spirit-and-soul. The endeavour of the Ahrimanic beings is to separate from man everything that urges him towards the soul-and-spirit to be developed in the human kingdom. They want to transform into the spiritual the subhuman elements, the instincts and impulses, everything that comes to expression in the body. In their own way both the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings want to transform man into the spiritual. But while the Luciferic beings want to draw the soul-and-spirit out of man so that he would cease to concern himself with his earthly incarnations but would like to live as a being of soul-and-spirit only, the Ahrimanic beings would prefer to disregard soul-andspirit entirely and detach from man what has been given him as a sheath, a covering or an instrument in the physical and etheric realm, and bring it all into their own world.

And so on the one side man is faced by the Beings of the normally developing Hierarchies, but because he is interwoven with the whole of existence, he is also faced by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Whenever the Luciferic beings endeavour to approach man, their purpose is to estrange him from the Earth. On the other hand when the Ahrimanic beings make efforts to dominate man, their aim is to make his nature more and more earthly although they also want to spiritualise the Earth, imbuing it with spiritual substance and with dense spiritual forces.

In speaking of spiritual matters one sometimes has to use expressions which may seem grotesque when applied to such matters, but one has, after all, to use human language. So you will allow me to use ordinary words even when I am speaking of something that takes place on the purely spiritual plane. You will understand me and yourselves raise what I say, into the spiritual.

Those Beings who at the beginning of Earth existence brought the primal wisdom to man, withdrew to the Moon in order, as far as lay in their power, to establish the right relationship of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic to the life of man. Why was that necessary? Why was it necessary for Beings as exalted as these primordial Teachers to elect to leave the Earth which for a time had been their field of action, and proceed to the extra-terrestrial Moon in order to bring the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic as far as possible into the right relationship with man?

When as a being of soul-and-spirit man descends from his pre-earthly existence into the Earth sphere he traverses the path I described in the course of lectures entitled Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy. As a being of soul-and-spirit he unites with the physical embryo provided for him in the direct line of heredity by father and mother. These two components, the physical embryo and the spiritual, interpenetrate and unite, and in that way man enters into existence on Earth. But in the line of heredity, in the inherited characteristics transmitted by ancestors to their descendants, there lie points of attack for the Ahrimanic beings. The Ahrimanic forces lie in the forces of heredity. And if a man has within him many of these inherited impulses, he will have a bodily make-up to which the Ego cannot satisfactorily gain access. Indeed the secret of many human beings is that they have within them too many inherited impulses. This is what is meant today by saying that a man is ‘burdened by heredity’. The consequence is that the Ego cannot penetrate fully into his body nor adequately fill the bodily organs. The body then develops an activity of its own, independently of the impulse of the Ego which should properly be working in the body. Thus by their efforts to lay as much as possible into heredity the Ahrimanic powers succeed in ensuring that the Ego is only very loosely connected with the human being. That is the one aspect.

But man has also to adapt himself to external conditions. This is very evident when you think of the effect of climate and other geographical conditions upon human beings. This effect of the purely natural environment is extraordinarily significant for man. There were even times when the wise leaders of humanity made use of it in particular ways.

When we consider a certain remarkable phenomenon in ancient Greek culture, namely the difference between Spartans and Athenians, we shall realise that this difference which is described very superficially in our history textbooks, is based ultimately on measures adopted in the ancient Mysteries, and the effect of these measures upon the Spartans differed from that made upon the Athenians.

In Greece as you know, great value was attached to Gymnastics. Gymnastics was regarded as the most essential part of a child’s education because through training and causing the body to be used and manipulated in a particular way, an effect was made upon the nature of spirit-and-soul by methods characteristic of the Greeks. But the method used by the Spartans was different from that used by the Athenians. The Spartans were primarily concerned to ensure that by means of their gymnastic exercises the boys’ development should depend as completely as possible upon what the body—the body by itself alone—can achieve. Hence the Spartan boy was obliged to carry out his exercises no matter what the weather might be.

Among the Athenians, it was different. They attached great importance to the gymnastic exercises being adapted to the weather conditions, and insisted that the boy doing those exercises should be exposed to the sunlight in the appropriate way. To the Spartans it was a matter of indifference whether the exercises were carried out in rain or sunshine. The Athenians considered it essential that the human being in question should receive a stimulus in some form, particularly that coming from the Sun.

The treatment given to a Spartan boy was intended to make his skin impervious, in order that whatever he might develop should originate within his body. The skin of an Athenian boy was not treated with sand and oil but he was exposed to the influences of the Sun.

The influences of the Sun penetrated into an Athenian boy from outside. He was encouraged to be eloquent, to express himself in beautiful language. A Spartan boy, on the other hand, was enclosed in himself as a result of all kinds of massage with oil; indeed the purpose of massaging the skin with sand and oil was that he should develop everything within himself, independently of outer Nature. He was trained to drive whatever forces can be developed by human nature back into his inner being, not to allow them to emerge.

Thus the Spartan boy did not, like the Athenian boy, become talkative. He was trained to be sparing with words, to say little, to remain silent. If he did say anything it must be significant, have real content. Speeches made by Spartans were rare but were renowned for their substance and content; speeches made by Athenians were renowned for the beauty of the language. All this was connected with the adaptation of human beings to their environment through the appropriate system of education.

You can perceive this elsewhere in a relationship that is established between man and his environment. Southerners who are everywhere exposed to the influences of the Sun, gesticulate a great deal and are talkative; their speech is melodious because their own warmth connects them with the warmth in the outside world.

Northerners, on the other hand, are not talkative because they must retain their bodily warmth within themselves as a stimulus. Northerners are notorious for their silence; they will sit together evening after evening without feeling any urge to speak. One of them may ask a question; then two hours later, or possibly not until the next evening, the other will answer him with a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’. The reason for this is that it is necessary for Northerners to have stronger impulses within themselves for the production of warmth, because warmth does not come to them from outside.

Here you have examples of man’s adaptation to external conditions in the natural world. Just think of the effects of all this in education, and in other spheres of the life of soul-and-spirit. Just as the Ahrimanic beings exercise their essential influence upon what lies in heredity, Luciferic beings exert their essential influence upon adaptation to environment. They can approach man when he is establishing a relationship to the external world. They entangle the human ‘I’ in the external world. But in so doing they often bring about confusion between this ‘I’ and Karma. Whereas the Ahrimanic beings bring a man’s ‘I’ into confusion in regard to his physical impulses, the Luciferic beings bring the ‘I’ into confusion in regard to his Karma. For what comes from the external world does not always lie in Karma immediately but must first be woven into Karma by means of many threads and relationships so that future Karma may contain it.

Thus the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic powers are intimately connected with human life. This state of things must be regulated in the process of man’s whole evolution. Hence it became necessary for the primeval Teachers of mankind to leave the Earth where such regulation would not have been possible. It cannot be undertaken during a man’s earthly life, and when that life is over he is obviously not on the Earth. The primeval Teachers were therefore obliged to withdraw from the Earth and continue their existence on the Moon. When they had thus withdrawn—and here I must use ordinary language for something that one would prefer to clothe in different word-pictures—these wise Teachers came to an arrangement with the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers. Now the appearance of the Ahrimanic beings in man’s existence after death would have been particularly injurious if they could have exercised a real influence upon him. For when a man goes through the gate of death, bearing the after-effects of anything evil in his soul, he finds himself, as I have told you, in an entirely Ahrimanic environment; he will even hold Ahrimanic views and he himself has an Ahrimanic physiognomy. He can perceive only those human beings who have a similar appearance. All this must remain purely an experience in the soul. If Ahriman could now intervene and influence the astral body, this would become a force which Ahriman could propel into man—a force which would not only gradually find its karmic balance but would bring man into too close a connection with the Earth. That indeed is the endeavour of Ahrimanic beings. While a man after death in his spirit-form still resembles his earthly form, the Ahrimanic powers strive to gain access to him by way of the evil impulses he carries with him through the gate of death. They want to permeate this spirit-form with forces, to draw as many of such beings as possible down to earthly existence and so to establish there an Ahrimanic Earth-humanity.

It was for this reason that the primeval Teachers, now inhabiting the Moon sphere, made a contract with the Ahrimanic powers, a contract which those powers were obliged to accept for reasons which I will explain later. Under the terms of this contract the Ahrimanic powers were allowed to exercise their influence in the fullest sense of the word and within the limits of possibility, on man’s life before he descends to earthly existence. So that when he is again passing through the Moon sphere on his way to the Earth, in accordance with the agreement reached between the primeval Teachers and the Ahrimanic powers, these powers might have a definite influence upon him. This influence is made manifest in the fact that heredity has become possible. As against this, after the domain of heredity had been allotted to the Ahrimanic beings as a result of the efforts of the primeval Teachers, the Ahrimanic beings were obliged to renounce all interference with processes in man’s evolution after death.

On the other side an agreement was reached with the Luciferic beings that they might exercise their influence upon man only when he has passed through the gate of death and not before he is descending into earthly existence.

Thus the great primeval Teachers were able to regulate the extra-earthly Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences. But we have already heard and a little reflection will at once make it obvious that man is thereby brought into contact with Nature. Because Ahrimanic beings can exert their influence upon him before he descends to the Earth, he is exposed to the operations of the forces of heredity. And because the Luciferic beings can work upon him he is exposed to factors in the physical environment, such as climate and the like, also to factors in the social and mental environment, such as education, modes of behaviour and the like. Thus a relation is established between man and Nature around him, and Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings can work into this environment.

I want now to say something from a quite different side about the existence of these Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings in Nature around us. I have already referred to this subject when dealing with the Michael problem and I will now go into it in more detail. Picture to yourselves the change that occurs in Nature in the phenomenon of rising mist. We may perhaps be living in an atmosphere that is saturated with watery vapours rising up from the Earth. One who has developed spiritual vision discovers that in this phenomenon of Nature there is something that carries an earthly element upwards in the centrifugal direction. It is not without reason that people who live in misty areas easily become melancholic, for there is something in the experience of mist that weighs down the will.

Now there are exercises whereby a man can manipulate his imaginations in such a way that he can himself weigh down his will. These exercises consist in concentration upon certain bodily organs, especially the muscles, whereby a kind of inner feeling, inner awareness, of the muscles is evoked. The feeling evoked by this concentration differs from the awareness of muscles produced by walking or while standing. If such exercises are practised consistently, like others described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, the will is weighed down by a man’s own activity. And then he begins to see what it is in rising mist that can make people morose and melancholy; he also perceives with the eyes of soul-and-spirit that certain Ahrimanic beings live in the rising mists. Spiritual knowledge makes it clear that in rising mist Ahrimanic beings rise up from the Earth into cosmic space, thus expanding their sphere of action.

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It is again different—and there are excellent opportunities for this here at the Goetheanum—if you gaze at the sky in the evening or morning and see the clouds flooded with sunlight. A few days ago in the late afternoon, you could have seen a kind of red-golden sunlight becoming embodied in the clouds and producing an infinite variety of wonderful formations. And that same evening the Moon shone with special intensity. Elsewhere too, of course, you can see the clouds illuminated in a brilliant play of colours. Such a spectacle can be seen anywhere. I am merely speaking of what can be seen from this very place.

Luciferic spirits live here in the light that floods the clouds, just as Ahrimanic spirits live in the rising mist. If someone can look at all this with conscious Imagination and succeeds in so training his ordinary thinking that it accompanies the clouds with all their changing formations and colour, if he can get rid of the singularity of his thoughts and enable them to change and be metamorphosed, to expand and contract in harmony with the forms and colours of the clouds, then he will genuinely begin to see this play of colour above the clouds, especially in the evening and morning sky, as a sea of colours in which Luciferic figures are moving. And whereas moods of melancholy are produced in a man by rising mist, his thoughts and also his soul learn to breathe with almost superhuman freedom at the sight of this Luciferic sea of flowing light. This is a special relationship which man can establish with the surrounding world, for then he can have the feeling that his thinking is like an inhalation of the light. He feels his thinking to be a breathing, a breathing of the light. If this is actually experienced, the passage in the Mystery Plays about beings who breathe light will be better understood.

So we find that Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces are also part and parcel of the phenomena of external Nature. In the realm of heredity and adaptation to his environment man’s soul-and-spirit makes contact with Nature. When we contemplate the rising mists and the clouds bathed in flowing light we see how Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings unite with the phenomena of Nature. But when man’s soul-and-spirit approaches the facts of heredity and adaptation, this, as I have shown, is also simply an approach to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. Thus in man’s own nature we shall find the Luciferic and Ahrimanic; again we find the Luciferic and Ahrimanic in certain natural phenomena containing something which need not concern the physicist. And from this point we can be led to perceive an influence of Nature upon man which transcends the phenomena of earthly existence.

To begin with let us hold firmly in our minds that Ahriman and Lucifer are present in the sphere of human heredity and adaptation. We find them in the rising mists and in the light which floods the clouds and is caught and held with them. We find in man an urge to establish adjustment, rhythm, between heredity and adaptation; but we also find in external Nature the urge to create rhythm between the two Powers working in Nature—the Ahrimanic and Luciferic Powers.

If you follow the whole process in the world of Nature, you have a wonderful drama. Follow the rising mist and observe how Ahrimanic spirits in it are striving outwards into the cosmic expanse. The moment the rising mists form themselves into a cloud, these spirits must give up their striving and return again to the Earth. In the clouds, Ahriman’s arrogant striving finds its limits. When mist becomes cloud it can no longer be a home for Ahriman. But the cloud enables the light to spread above it: Lucifer is there, above the clouds!

Try to grasp this in its full significance: picture the rising mists with greyish yellow Ahrimanic figures gathered into cloud-masses, and in the light above the clouds the Luciferic figures striving downwards. Then you will have a picture of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic in Nature.

And then you will also realise that in times when men still had a feeling for what lies beyond the Threshold, for what lives and weaves in the luminous clouds and in the rolling mist, the position of painters, for example, was quite different from what it came to be later on. The spiritual power they recognised carried the colours to the right place on the canvas. The poet, conscious that divinity, that spirituality, was speaking in him, could say: ‘Sing, O Muse, of the wrath of Peleus’ son, Achilles’; or: ‘Sing to me, O Muse, of the man, the much-travelled one’. These are the opening lines of Homer’s epics. Klopstock, who lived in times when feeling for the Divine-Spiritual was no longer present, substituted: ‘Sing, Immortal Soul, of the redemption of sinful man.’ I have often spoken of this. But the old painters too, even those living in the epoch of Leonardo and Raphael would still have been able to say and would moreover have felt it in their own way: ‘Paint for me, O Muse, paint for me, O Divine Power, direct my hands, carry soul into my hands so that the brush in my hands is guided by you.’ It is very important to understand this close union of man with the spiritual in all situations of life, especially in the most significant.

Let us hold the following firmly in mind: in heredity and adaptation the human is brought into relationship with the Ahrimanic and Luciferic; on the other hand, by intuitive observation of Nature the Luciferic and Ahrimanic can be brought into relationship with Nature in its external manifestations.

We will continue these studies in the lecture tomorrow.

We have seen that out of the Mysteries grew something that made man aware of being related to the world in a way that can be expressed in the annual festivals; and in particular we have learned that Easter is an outgrowth of the principle of initiation. From all that has been set forth it will have become evident what a significant role the Mysteries played in the entire evolution of humanity. Really everything of a spiritual nature that has permeated the world and developed through mankind originated in the old Mysteries. In modern terms we could say that the Mysteries were all-powerful in guiding the spiritual life.

Now, it was intended from the beginning that mankind should develop freedom; and to this end it was necessary for the old Mystery system to recede and for humanity to be less closely linked, for a time, with the powerful guidance that proceeded from the Mysteries, to be cast more upon its own resources, as it were. We certainly cannot assert today that the time has arrived in which men have achieved their true inner freedom and are ready to pass over into the next phase of evolution that is to follow upon that of freedom. This is not the case. Still, many have already passed through a number of incarnations in which the power of the Mysteries was less strongly felt than formerly; and though the seeds of these incarnations have not yet sprouted, they are nevertheless potentially present in the souls of men. And with the coming of a more spiritual age they will develop what they have not developed in their present dimness of vision. Above all things, however, it will be necessary that the wisdom, the vision, the experience of the spiritual such as can be attained by modern initiation, be met with esteem, with reverence; and this must be offered out of man's freedom. Without esteem and reverence, true enlightenment and a spiritual life of humanity is really not possible.

Surely we make the right use of festivals if with their help we try to implant in our souls this esteem, this reverence for things spiritual as they have evolved during the course of human history; if we try to learn how to observe in the most intimate way possible the spiritual significance of outer events, to understand how these carry spiritual meaning from one age over into another. For the time being men keep returning to Earth in repeating incarnations, thus carrying over their experiences of earlier epochs into later ones. Human beings are the most important factor in the further development of all that takes place within the history of mankind. But men of all periods live in a definite environment, and clearly, one of the most significant environments was that of the Mysteries. A most important factor in the progress of humanity is the carrying over of what has been experienced in the Mysteries and re-experienced, be it again through the medium of Mysteries, whence it acts upon mankind, or by other means of enlightenment. Today it must be the latter, for the true Mystery system has withdrawn from the present outer world and is to reappear only in the future.

If the impulse that went forth from here, from the Goetheanum, at the time of the Christmas Meeting, really takes root in the Anthroposophical Society, it is certain that by leading to ever deeper insight the Anthroposophical Society will be the foundation for the Mysteries of the future. These new Mysteries must be consciously nurtured by the Anthroposophical Society. We recall an event that can be utilized in our development as once a similar one was used: the burning of the Temple of Ephesus. Both were the result of a grave wrong; yet on different planes things have different meanings, and it is possible for a frightful iniquity, as it appears on one plane, to be employed on another for the advancement of human freedom—in the sense that precisely such horrible events can bring about a real advance in human progress.

But as I have already said, such matters must be grasped through their inner meaning if they are to be approached understandingly. One must enter into the particular manner in which the spiritual element of the world pervaded the Mysteries. Yesterday I pointed out how the establishment of the annual Easter Festival grew out of a spiritual conception of the constellation of Sun and Moon, and that from the Moon viewpoint the other planets were observed. And I said further that according to what is learned by observing the other planets, the human being, in descending from the pre-earthly to the earthly existence, is guided in forming his light-ether body.

If we would observe and rightly understand how this light-ether body, these ether forces, are transmitted to us by the Moon forces, Moon observations—by what I might call the spiritual Moon observatory, this can be done as we have just endeavored to do it: by turning to the cosmos where it is all inscribed and exists as a fact. But it is important to ponder in our souls the human element as well, the part it plays in the different epochs as a factor of these truths.

As a matter of fact, never did the souls of men take part so intimately, so fervently, in this last phase of the descent to Earth—the enveloping in an etheric body—as in the Mysteries of Ephesus. There the whole service of the Goddess of Ephesus, exoterically called Artemis, was directed toward co-experiencing the spiritual weaving life within the cosmic ether. When members of the Ephesian Mystery approached the image of the Goddess, the feeling this gave them may be said to have become intensified to hearing; and what they heard, as though the goddess were speaking, was something as follows: I rejoice in all that bears fruit in the wide expanse of cosmic ether.—A deep impression was created by this expression of intense joy on the part of the Goddess of the Temple, her joy in all that grows, sprouts and burgeons in the world-ether; and an ardent feeling of close relationship with blossoming and flowering was in particular something that permeated the spiritual atmosphere of the Ephesian Sanctuary as with a magic breath.

Nowhere else was the growth of the plant life, the drive of the Earth forces into the plants, co-experienced so intensely as in the Mystery of Ephesus, for the entire training here tended to that end. And this led to the next step: it was here that instruction was given, if I may so call it, specially intended to induce in the minds of members a feeling for the Moon secret, of which I spoke yesterday. It was everyone's own experience to feel himself as a light-being, because the act of receiving his light-form from the Moon was made so alive for the neophytes and initiates.

A part of the ritual ran something as follows—and one who could take part in it was actually transported into that act of forming himself out of the sunlight that circles around the Moon: as though proceeding from the Sun, there came to him the sound J O A.¹

He knew that this J O A activated his ego, his astral body. J O (ego, astral body) and A (the approach of the light-ether body), joining in J O A. Then, with the J O A vibrating in him, he felt himself to be composed of ego, astral body and etheric body.

And then it seemed as though he heard sounding up to him from the Earth—for he had been transported into the cosmos—something that saturated the J O A: eh v. JehOvA What rose up to him in the eh v were the Earth forces.

Now he realized that in this JehOvA he felt the complete human being. The premonition of the physical body, which he acquired only on Earth, he felt intimated in the consonants complementing the vowels that in the J O A indicate the ego, the astral and the etheric body.—This becoming one with the JehOvA was what enabled the disciple of Ephesus to sense in their full significance the last steps of the descent from the spiritual world.

But in feeling the import of this J O A the neophyte at the same time felt himself to be the sound J O A in the light. Then he was a human being: resonant ego, resonant astral body, in a shimmering light-ether body. He was sound in light. That is the nature of cosmic man; and in this state the initiate was able to grasp what he saw in the cosmos, just as on Earth he could perceive through his eyes what occurs in the physical environment of the Earth. When the neophyte of Ephesus bore this J O A within him he really felt transported into the Moon sphere, and he took part in all that could be observed from the point of view of the Moon.

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In this condition the human being was man in general, in the sense that the differentiation between man and woman did not enter until the descent to Earth occurred. Man felt himself transported into this pre-earthly existence, the region immediately preceding his approach to the terrestrial. The Ephesian disciples were able to achieve this ascent to the Moon sphere in a particularly intimate way; and henceforth they carried in their heart, in their soul, what they had experienced there. It sounded for them something as follows:

World-engendered being, thou art shaped in light,
By the Sun empowered in the Moon's full might;

Mars' creating chiming, power to thee is bringing,
And Mercury, moving limbs in oscillation swinging;

Jupiter's radiant wisdom is on thee gleaming,
And Venus' love-bearing beauty is on thee beaming;

So that Saturn's world-aged spirit-inwardness
Doth to space's being and to ages now aborning consecrate thee.²

Weltentsprossenes Wesen, du in Lichtgestalt,
Von der Sonne erkraftet in der Mondgewalt,

Dich beschenket des Mars erschaffendes Klingen
Und Merkurs gliedbewegendes Schwingen,

Dich erleuchtet Jupiters erstrahlende Weisheit
Und der Venus liebetragende Schönheit,

Dass Saturns weltenalte Geist-Innigkeit
Dich dem Raumessein und Zeitenwerden weihe!

That expresses what permeated every Ephesian, and he counted it the most important of all that pulsed through his being. When a participant in the Ephesian Mysteries heard these words ringing in his ears, as it were, there was something about them that made him feel himself completely as a human being; for through them he became aware of the relation between the forces of his etheric body and the planetary system. This came to forceful expression. The cosmos speaks to the etheric body:

World-engendered being, thou art shaped in light,
By the Sun empowered in the Moon's full might.

Now the human being feels himself to be in the power of the moonlight.

Mars' creating chiming, power to thee is bringing.

The chiming, endowed with creative force, sounds across from Mars. And what gave strength to man's limbs, endowing him with the power of movement:

And Mercury, moving limbs in oscillation swinging.

From Jupiter there rays across:

Jupiter's radiant wisdom is on thee gleaming.

And from Venus:

And Venus' love-bearing beauty ...

In order that then Saturn may gather up all that rounds off the human being within and without, prepare him to descend to Earth and there to clothe himself in a physical garb; and then further enable this physically garbed being, who bears the god within him, to live on the Earth:

So that Saturn's world-aged spirit-inwardness
Doth to space's being
And to ages now aborning
Consecrate thee.

From what I have described you can readily see that the spiritual life in Ephesus was colorful and aglow with inner light. Epitomized in the thought of Easter, it comprised really everything that had ever been known about man's true dignity in the cosmos, in the whole universe. And many of the wanderers I mentioned yesterday—those who went from one Mystery to another in order to benefit by the totality of the Mysteries—many of these have repeatedly assured us that nowhere else as in Ephesus—at least, not so joyously—did they perceive so intimately and brightly the harmony of the spheres through that Moon point of view, where the radiant astral light of the world shone on them, where they sensed it in the spiritual sunlight flooding the Moon: in other Mysteries the saturation of man's soul and spirit with astral light was not felt with such an intense, inner artistic grasp.

All this was associated with the temple that went up in flames by the hand of a criminal or a lunatic. But as I mentioned during the Christmas Conference, initiates of the Ephesian Mysteries were re-embodied in Aristotle and Alexander; and these personalities came close to what was still capable of being sensed, in their time, of the Mysteries of Samothrace.

Now, what appears to be an outwardly fortuitous event can be of great spiritual significance in world evolution. Among ourselves it has frequently been mentioned for years that the Temple of Ephesus was burned at the hour in which Alexander the Great was born. But as this temple burned, something significant occurred.

What untold experiences had come to the dwellers in that temple through the centuries! What a wealth of spiritual light and wisdom had suffused its halls! And while the flames lept up from the Temple of Ephesus, all that wisdom was imparted to the cosmic ether, so that we may say: the perpetually recurring Easter Festival of Ephesus that had been locked in the temple halls was henceforth inscribed in the dome of the universe, in so far as this is etheric, though in less legible letters.

That is often the way things work out: much human wisdom that in olden times had been enclosed within temple walls was released, was inscribed in the world-ether, and there at once becomes visible to one who ascends to real imagination. And this imagination is the interpreter, as it were, of the secret of the stars: what once was secret within the temples has been inscribed in the world-ether, and there it can be read by means of imagination.

We can put it another way, but it means the same. I go out into the starlit night, contemplate the firmament and throw myself open to it. Then, if I have the right capacity, the forms of the constellations and the movements of the planets are transmuted as into vast cosmic script. And if I read this script, something emerges like that which I explained yesterday in referring to the Moon secret. When the stars no longer remain merely something to be mathematically and mechanically computed, but become the alphabet of cosmic script, these things can indeed be read there.

But I should like to develop the matter further. When Alexander and Aristotle approached the Kabirian secrets in Samothrace at a time when the old Mysteries were already on the decline,² something occurred to them at that moment through the influence of the Kabirian Mysteries like a memory of the old Ephesian time, which both had passed through in a certain century. And once more there resounded the J O A, and again they heard intoned:

World-engendered being, thou art shaped in light,
By the Sun empowered in the Moon's full might;

Mars' creating chiming, power to thee is bringing,
And Mercury, moving limbs in oscillation swinging;

Jupiter's radiant wisdom is on thee gleaming,
And Venus' love-bearing beauty is on thee beaming;

So that Saturn's world-aged spirit-inwardness
Doth to space's being and to ages now aborning consecrate thee.

But in this memory, this historical recollection of something ancient, there resided a certain power, the power to create something new. And from that moment there streamed forth this power to create something new—but it was something strange and little observed by mankind. For you must really first understand the nature of this creative power that went forth from the collaboration of Alexander and Aristotle.

Take any notable poem or other work of art—it can be a most beautiful one, such as the Bhagavad Gita or Goethe's Faust or his Iphigenia—anything you value very highly—and reflect on its rich and mighty content—let us say, on the content of Goethe's Faust. Now, by what means, my dear friends, is this rich content transmitted to you? Let us assume that it is transmitted in the ordinary way, as it is to most people. At some time during your life you read Faust. What did you encounter on the physical plane—on the paper? Nothing but combinations of a b c, and so forth. The means by which the mighty content of Faust is disclosed to us consists only of combinations of the letters of the alphabet. If you know the alphabet, the paper contains nothing that does not correspond with one of the twenty-odd letters. Something is conjured up out of these twenty-odd letters—if you know how to read—that evokes for you the whole glorious substance of Faust. You may find it excessively tiresome to recite the alphabet, and you may consider it as abstract as anything could well be; yet rightly combined, this superlative abstraction gives us the whole of Faust.

Now, when there was heard again the cosmic resounding from the Moon that disclosed to Aristotle and Alexander what the blaze of Ephesus signified, how that fire had carried the secret of Ephesus out into the world-ether, there came to Aristotle the inspiration to found the cosmic script. This, however, is not achieved by means of the alphabet, but rather through thoughts, as book writing is made up of letters. And so the letters of the cosmic script came into being.—When I write them down for you they are just as abstract as the alphabet:

There you have a number of concepts. They originated when Aristotle laid them before Alexander. Learn to accomplish with these concepts what you do with the alphabet, and you will have learned to read in the cosmos by means of Being, Quantity, Quality, Relationship, Space, Time, Position, Having, Doing, Suffering.

In our age of abstractions something peculiar happened to logic, as it is taught in the schools. Imagine a custom existing in some school to teach—not reading, but, for instance, to provide books from which the pupils had to keep learning the letters in all conceivable combinations, but never arriving at using them for envisioning the wealth of the contents: that would be the same as what the world has done to Aristotle's Logic. In the books on logic are listed his categories—that's what people call them. People memorize them, but have no idea what to do with them. It is exactly like memorizing the alphabet without knowing how to apply it.

Reading the cosmic records bases on something just as simple as extracting the content of Faust by means of the alphabet—it must merely be learned. And fundamentally, all that anthroposophy has ever brought forth or ever will has been experienced by means of these concepts, just as what is read in Faust is experienced through the letters. For all the secrets of the physical and the spiritual world are comprised in these simple concepts that are the cosmic alphabet.

Something intervened in Earth evolution at the time of Alexander that stands in contrast with the direct perception so characteristic of Ephesus. It did not develop till later, especially during the Middle Ages; and it is deeply hidden, profoundly esoteric. Profoundly esoteric is the meaning that dwells in those ten simple concepts; and actually we are learning more and more to live in them. But we must keep striving to experience them as livingly in our soul as we do the alphabet when a wealth of spiritual substance is in question.

Thus you see how something that for thousands of years had been a mighty instinctive revelation of wisdom flowed into ten concepts, whose inner power and light, however, remain to be re-disclosed. And when man will have learned again to read in the cosmos, when he will experience the resurrection of what has lain buried as though in a grave during this interlude in human evolution between the two spiritual ages, then it will come about at some future time that the world wisdom, the light of the world, will be found again. It is our task, my dear friends, to bring to light again what is hidden. We must make of Easter an experience for all humanity. And just as it could be said on other occasions that anthroposophy is a Christmas experience, so it is in its whole manifestation an Easter experience, a resurrection experience coupled with an experience of the grave. And it is especially important during this Easter gathering that we should feel, if I may so express it, the solemnity of anthroposophic striving by realizing that today we can turn to a spiritual Being Who may be close to us, directly beyond the threshold, and appeal to Him thus: Oh, how blessed was mankind at one time with divine-spiritual revelation that still shone so very bright in Ephesus! But now all that is buried. How can I uncover what is so deeply buried?—for one would like to believe that what once existed might in some historical way be found again in the grave where it lies.

Then the Being will reply to us, as did once before a like being in a similar case: What you seek is no longer here. It is in your heart, if only you will unlock your heart in the right way.

Anthroposophy is indeed latent in the hearts of men, but it is for these human hearts to open in the right way. That is what we must deeply feel. Then we will be led back—not instinctively, as of old, but in full awareness—to the wisdom that lived and shone in the Mysteries.

All this I would like to implant in your hearts, my dear friends, at this Easter time; for to permeate yourself with something that can enkindle a feeling of solemnity in every heart dedicated to anthroposophy, that is something which carries up into the spiritual world and which must be correlated with the Christmas impulse given at Dornach. For this impulse must not remain a thought-out, intellectualistic one, but must spring from the heart; it must not be formal or matter-of-fact, nor must it be sentimental: it must issue from the cause itself and bear the mark of solemnity. When the conflagration at Ephesus blazed up, first in the outer ether and then in the heart of Aristotle, it revealed anew to Aristotle the secrets that could then be epitomized in the simplest terms; and we may say in all modesty that, just as he was able to use the fire of Ephesus to this end, so it is our task—and we shall fulfill it—to use what the flames of the Goetheanum carried into the ether: the aims and purpose of anthroposophy.

What do we gather from all this, my dear friends? That at the memorial service in the Christmas-New Year time, the time in which the disaster struck us a year before, it was vouchsafed us to send forth a new impulse from the Goetheanum. How could this be? Because we are right in feeling that what had previously been a cause pertaining to this Earth, worked for and established as such, was carried by the flames out into cosmic space. Because this misfortune has come to us we are, recognizing its consequences, justified in saying, Now we understand that we may no longer represent a mere Earth cause, but must know it as one of wide etheric space in which the spirit lives: the cause represented by the Goetheanum is a cause of the cosmic ether in which lives the spirit-filled wisdom of the world. It has been carried out into the ether; and it is granted us to permeate ourselves with the Goetheanum impulses flowing in from the cosmos.

Take this in any sense—as an image, if you like: even as an image it signifies a profound truth, a truth that can be simply expressed: the Christmas impulse calls for the permeation of anthroposophical activity with an esoteric element. This is present because what had been earthly now reacts on the impulses of the anthroposophical movement through the astral light in the physical fire that rayed forth into cosmic space; but we must be able to receive these impulses.

Then, if we are able to receive them, we feel a certain important link in the chain of all that lives in anthroposophy: it is the anthroposophical Easter spirit, which can never in the world believe that the spirit perishes, but rather that it arises ever and again after dying through the world; and anthroposophy must hold fast to the spirit resurrected again and again out of eternal depths.

That is what we will take into our hearts as the Easter thought, the Easter feeling; and from this gathering we shall carry away feelings, my dear friends, that will fill us with courage and strength for work when we return to our allotted spheres.

• 1. Translator's Note:—For readers not familiar with German it must be explained that j is pronounced like our y in “yet”—in other words, like an excessively short German i. For this reason it is not too strange that one often encounters J for I (but only in capitals), and the above is a case in point. Indeed, there is no choice here but to use it, as the same letter must serve as a pure vowel in J O A and later as a modified vowel in Jehova.—The letters J O A must be pronounced Ee Oh Ah, and Jehova that appears later, Yay-hoh-vah.
• 2. Translation by Henry B. Monges.
• 2. Samothrace still existed as a memorial and also as a sanctuary for work, but in the main the Mystery schools had declined in the time of Alexander.