The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Spiritual scientific findings concerning rights and moral and social forms of life

You will have seen from the three lectures I have given here to characterize the way anthroposophically orientated spiritual science relates to three different fields of human endeavour in the sciences, that with this spiritual science it is above all important to develop ideas that relate to the reality of things and make it possible to enter into the fullness of real life in order to gain knowledge of that real world. We may say—and this will have been evident from the whole tenor of my lectures—that for a relatively long period in the evolution of human science, concepts in accord with reality have only been gained in the field of natural science that is based on the evidence of the senses. In some respects these concepts are exemplary scientific achievements. However, with regard to reality they only go as far as lifeless nature—I think it is reasonable to say this. Lifeless nature exists not only where it is immediately apparent to the senses but also as a mineral element in the life forms and mind-endowed entities that live in the physical world. In modern science, people have a grasp of things that is exemplary. I think we have very clear evidence of this in the applications of natural science in human life, applications that have been perfected and are tremendously successful. When concepts are applied to human life we can, under certain conditions, see how far they are in accord with reality. A watch cannot be constructed if one has the wrong concepts of mechanics and physics; it would soon tell us that the wrong concepts have been used.

This is not the case with all areas of life, and especially in the areas we are going to consider today, reality does not always immediately make it clear if we are dealing with concepts that are in accord with it, if they have been gained on the basis of reality or not.

In the field of natural science it is relatively safe to use concepts that are not in accord with the truth, for they will show themselves to be erroneous or inadequate for as long as one stays within the field of natural science, that is, theoretical discussion which may then also be put into practice. However, when it comes to social life, the life of human communities in any form, we have to consider not only how to gain concepts but also how to bring these to realization. Under present-day conditions there are spheres of life where inadequate concepts can indeed be introduced. The inadequacies of the ideas, notions, reactions and so on will then show themselves; but in some respect people living entirely with a natural scientific bias will be helpless in face of the consequences of such concepts. In a sense it would be reasonable to say that the tragic events which have now come upon the human race are essentially connected—more than one would think, and more so than can be even hinted at in one brief lecture—with the fact that for long periods of time people did not know how to develop concepts that were in accord with reality, concepts that could be used to encompass the facts of real life. These facts of real life have become too much to handle for humanity today. In many ways the inadequate ideas humanity developed in the course of centuries are being reduced to absurdity in a most terrible way in these tragic events.

We discover what really lies behind this if—let us now take a view that is different from those taken in the previous lectures—we first of all look at the way attempts have been made again and again in recent times to establish a general human philosophy on the basis of natural science, the way people have tried to introduce natural scientific thinking, so exemplary in its own sphere—let me repeat this over and over again—to all spheres of human life—psychology, education, politics, social studies, history, and so on.

Anyone who knows about developments in this direction will know the efforts people who think in the natural scientific way have made to apply the ideas and concepts they have evolved in natural science to all the above spheres of life. Proof of this is available in hundreds of ways, but let me just give some characteristic details. They may go some way back, but 1 think we can say that the trend they reflect has continued to this day and has indeed been growing.

Someone who in my view is an outstanding scientist spoke at two scientific gatherings in 1874 and 1875 on the sphere of rights, issues concerning morality and law, and human social relationships. In the course of those lectures he said some highly characteristic things. He actually claimed that anyone who in terms of modern scientific education has the necessary maturity ought to demand that the natural scientific way of thinking should be made part of people’s general awareness, like a kind of catechism. The inner responses, needs and will impulses arising in human beings as the basis of their social aspirations would thus have to be closely connected as time goes on with a purely natural-scientific view of the world that would be spreading more and more. This is what Professor Benedikt said at the 48th science congress.⁸⁰ He said the scientific view of the world needed to gain the breadth, depth and clarity to create a catechism that would govern the cultural and ethical life of the nation. It is his ideal, therefore, that everything in social life that speaks out of the cultural, heart-felt and will-related needs of people should be a reflection of natural-scientific ideas!

With regard to psychology, the same scientist said that it, too, had become a natural science since it followed physics and chemistry in casting off the ballast of metaphysics and no longer took hypotheses for its premises that were unfathomable for our present-day organization.

Many scientists—including Oscar Hertwig, whom I mentioned the day before yesterday, Naegeli and many others—emphasize again and again that natural science can only work effectively in its own field. The scientific ideas that are developed are such, however, that the way in which they are developed, as it were, prevents humanity from searching and striving for other spheres of reality than those that can at best be reached with natural science. I have quoted things people said some time ago, but if we were to quote today’s speakers we would find that they are entirely in the same spirit.

It is reasonable to quote Benedikt, who is a criminal anthropologist, for although he wants to take the purely scientific point of view also in looking at social life, he still has so much purely naive conceptual material in him which is in accord with reality that much of what he says—really going against his own theoretical theses—does truly extend into the reality of the world. On the whole, however, one may say that this tendency or inclination to develop a whole philosophy based on natural-scientific concepts, which are excellent in their own field, has gradually produced a quite specific philosophy, and one might almost get oneself a bad name by actually putting the philosophy that has developed out of this tendency into words. Today someone may do excellent work in his field, and if he then establishes a philosophy he extends knowledge which in its own field is indeed excellent to the whole world, and above all also to areas of which he in fact knows nothing. We can certainly say therefore that we have an excellent science today and its contents relate to things which people understand thoroughly. But then there are also philosophies which generally speaking are about things people do not understand at all!

This is certainly not without significance when it comes to the sphere of social life. Here man himself is the reality factor. Human beings are in these social spheres and anything they do is indeed such that anything that lives in their philosophy of life does enter into their impulses and into the social structures and the way in which people live together. This is why the kind of things were created which I referred to briefly at the beginning today.

In what I am saying today, I want again, as in the first three talks, base myself more on individual aspects of real life, on findings made in what I call spiritual investigation. I hope that with the aid of these I will be able to show how we should approach the fields of social studies in spiritual research.

A particular problem arises for modern people who have scientific knowledge, and whose life of ideas is based entirely on scientific training, when they approach the sphere of social life and immediately have to consider a fundamental concept, which is the concept of human freedom. This concept, which doubtless has many nuances, has in some respect become a cross that has to be borne in modern thinking about the world. For on the one hand it is extraordinarily difficult to understand the social structure of today without having clarity with regard to the concept of freedom. On the other hand, however, someone who is thinking in the natural scientific way, in the thinking habits of our time, will hardly know what to do with the concept of freedom. We know that disputes concerning this concept go back a long way and that there have always been two factions, though the nuance has varied—the ‘determinists’ who assumed that all human actions are in a way predetermined, in a more naturalistic or some other way, so that a person only does things under an unknown yet existing compulsion or causality; then there were the ‘indeterminists’ who denied this and concentrated more on subjective reality, that is, on what human beings experience inwardly as they develop their conscious awareness, and who maintained that genuinely free human actions were independent of such fixed predetermination which would exclude the concept of freedom.

Considering the way in which natural science has developed so far it is truly impossible to make something of the concept of freedom in that science. Anyone who makes a training in natural science the basis for establishing a sociology will be forced, in many respects, to take the wrong view of that concept of freedom and produce a structure for life that takes no account of the concept of freedom, ascribing everything to particular causes that lie either outside or inside the human being. In some respects such an approach is easy, for it allows one in a way to determine the social structure from the beginning. It is easier to reckon with human actions if they are predetermined than if one must expect a spirit of freedom in the human being to play a role.

It would be wrong to present as a concept of freedom some kind of visionary concepts, vague mystical ideas that would tend to be more or less the opposite of what modern natural science has to offer. We have to realize that a science of the spirit is only justifiable if it does not go against the true meaning of progress in natural science. Because of this, I must again start today by relating the fundamental concept in developing social life, which is the concept of freedom, to such natural scientific ideas as can be gained with the help of the science of the spirit.

According to the customary natural scientific concepts, human beings depend for their actions on the peculiarities of their organization. These are themselves investigated, as I have shown the last time, by applying the law of conservation of energy like a formula to the inner life, and this leads to the concept of freedom being excluded. If it is true that human beings are only able to develop energies and powers by transforming things they have taken in, then it will, of course, be impossible for the soul to develop any energies and powers of its own—which would be the requirement if freedom were to become a reality.

In the science of the spirit it is, however, evident that it is absolutely necessary to put the whole of the knowledge gained in the natural sciences on a new basis in this particular area. Admirable factual discoveries have been made in the natural sciences, as I have also said in the preceding lectures. But concepts and ideas about nature are so narrowly defined that it is not possible to have a comprehensive view of those discoveries. In the last lecture I referred to the way in which the science of the spirit makes it possible to relate the whole sphere of the human soul and spirit to the whole sphere of the living body, and that it then emerges that we need to relate the actual life of ideas to the life of the nerves, the life of feeling to the ramifications and to anything depending on the breathing rhythm, and the life of the will to metabolism.

If, for a starting point, we take the natural scientific view of the relationship between the life of ideas in the human soul and the life of the nerves, someone familiar with modern scientific ideas will have to say: ‘Processes occur in the life of the nerves; they are the causes of parallel processes in the life of ideas.’ Since there has to be a process in the nerves—and by definition this has its causal origin in the whole organism—for every idea-forming process in the soul, the corresponding process in the mind cannot be free, seeing that the process in the nerves is apparently the result of causal conditions existing in the organism. It thus has to be subject to the same necessity as the corresponding process in the nerves.

That is still the view taken today. It will not be like this in future, seen from the natural scientific point of view! People will then look with very different eyes at certain new approaches that have already been developed in natural scientific research. It will however mean that the directions to be taken in research are indicated out of the science of the spirit, for this alone can make it possible to throw a truly comprehensive light on the findings made in natural science.

The strange thing the spiritual investigator finds is that the life of our nerves relates in a quite specific way to the corresponding rest of the organism. We have to say it is like this: In the life of the nerves the organism destroys itself in a specific way, it is not built up in it. And in the life of the nerves—if we take it as pure life in the nerves, not nutritional life in the nervous system—the first processes to be considered are not growth or development processes, but processes of involution, of destruction.

One is easily misunderstood in this area, for it is still completely new today. And in one short lecture it is difficult to bring in all the concepts that will prevent such misunderstanding. So I simply have to accept the danger of being misunderstood. What I can say is that the life of the nerves as such proceeds in a way that is completely different from all the other organic processes that serve growth, reproduction and the like. The latter mean development in the ascent. This includes the development of cells, the cell division processes we can observe in reproduction and growth processes, as something side by side with cells that are still in the life of reproduction, or at least a degree of partial reproduction. When the human organisation—it is similar for the animal organization, but this is only of minor interest to us today—extends into the life of the nerves, it partly dies off in that life of the nerves. Going into the life of the nerves, developing processes are broken down. We may thus say that even from a purely natural scientific point of view it is evident—and the life of the red blood cells runs to some degree parallel to the life of the nerves—that division processes come to a stop as they enter into nerve cells and red blood cells. This is wholly factual evidence of something which a conscious mind with vision is able to perceive: that the nerve cannot have part in anything that is in any way productive, but that the nerve inwardly brings life to a halt, so that life comes to an end where the nerve branches.

By having a nervous system, we are, as it were, bearing death in us at the organic level. To compare what is really going on in the life of the nerves with something else in the organism, I’d have to say, strange though it may sound: ‘The unconscious processes in the life of the nerves cannot be compared with the process, for example, which happens when someone has taken in food and this food is processed in the organism for constructive development. No, the actual process in the nerves—as a process in the nerves, and not a nerve nutrition process—can be compared to what happens in the organism when it breaks down its tissues because of hunger.’ It is thus a destructive and not a constructive process which extends into the nervous system.

Nothing of any kind can emerge or result directly from this nervous system. This nervous system represents a process that has been stopped, a process that shows itself in progress in the cell life of reproductive cells and growth cells. There it is progressive; in the neural organs it is stopped. In reality, therefore, the life of the nerves merely provides the basis, the soil, on which something else may spread.

The principle which spreads on top of this life of the nerves, extending over this life of the nerves, is the life of ideas—initially stimulated by the outer senses—entering into the life of the nerves. It is only if we understand that the nerves are not the reason for forming ideas but merely provide a basis by having destroyed organic life, that we understand that the principle which develops on the basis of this life of nerves is something foreign to the life of nerves itself.

The mind and soul principle developing on the basis of a life in the nerves which is destroying itself is so foreign to it that we may say: It really is just as when I walk along a road and leave my footprints behind me. Someone following those footprints should not derive the shapes he sees in my footprints from any kind of forces in the soil itself, coming, as it were, from inside the soil to produce my footprints. Every expression of inner life may be seen in the nervous system, like my footprints in the soil, yet it would be wrong to explain the life of mind and soul as something inwardly ‘arising from the nervous system’. The life in mind and soul leaves tracks in the prepared soil, a soil that has been prepared by ‘forgoing’ the possibility of the nerve continuing its own productivity, if I may put it like this in symbolic terms.

Perceptive vision also shows the life in mind and spirit which thus develops on a basis of destruction, of a dying process in the human being, to be connected with organic life, initially the life of nerves; but in such a way that this life of nerves provides only the conditions, the soil, something which has to be there to provide the basis on which it can be active in this place. Seen from the outside, the principle which is active here may seem to arise from the nervous system, to be bound to the nervous system, but this life in soul and spirit is as independent of the nervous system as a child is of his parents when he develops independent inner activity, though the parents are, of course, the soil or basis on which the child must develop. Just as we may see the parents as the cause of the child if we look at this from outside, and just as the child is wholly free in developing his individual spirit and we cannot say that when the child develops independence there is not an activity in him which is in no way connected with his parents, we have to say in exactly the same way that the principle which is coming alive and developing in terms of mind and spirit becomes independent of the soil which it needs to thrive.

I am just referring briefly here to a system of ideas that will develop further in the course of time—the science of the spirit is only in its beginnings now—by taking certain ideas from natural science to their highest extreme. Those very ideas from natural science will not lead to the exclusion of human freedom but to a way of explaining and understanding freedom actually in natural scientific terms, for they will make people observe not only constructive and progressive processes in the organism but also those that are destructive, paralysing themselves in themselves. They will show that if the element of soul and spirit is to arise, the organic principle cannot continue in a straight line of development and so produce something non-physical. No, as the non-physical, spiritual principle begins to come into existence, this organic principle must first prepare the soil by destroying itself, breaking itself down, within itself.

When the ideas of constructive development, which are the only ones to be considered nowadays, have ideas about destructive development added to them, this will bring tremendous advances in the natural scientific approach. A bridge will be built that needs to be built because natural science must not be shut out today—a bridge from nature as it is understood to the sphere of social life which still needs to be understood.

A natural science that is incomplete prevents us from developing the concepts needed for the sphere of social life; once it is completed, its inner sterling character, inner greatness, will help us to establish the right kind of sociology.

I have thus presented, albeit briefly, the fundamental concept of social life, the concept of freedom. This has been set out fully in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, published in 1894, and the inner reasons given there accord fully with what I have now shown in a more natural scientific way. This is also evident from what I have written in my book The Riddle of Man⁸¹ which appeared almost two years ago. Let us now continue our consideration of the connection between man’s life in spirit and soul and other spheres of existence.

The last time and today I referred briefly to the way in which this element of mind, spirit and soul is connected—as life of ideas with the life of the nerves, as life of feeling with life in the breathing rhythm, and as life of will with metabolic life. This only shows the connection in one aspect, however. Just as natural science will one day, when it has perfected itself in this direction, relate the threefold soul as a whole—as I have shown—to the whole bodily human organism, so will spiritual science be able to look for the connections of the human mind and soul with this spiritual principle, that is, in the other direction.

On the one hand, the life of ideas has its bodily foundation in the life of the nerves, on the other it is connected with the world of the spirit, a world to which it belongs. This world, with which the life of ideas is also connected, can only be discerned through perceptive vision. It is perceived by a mind that has reached the first level of this vision, which I have called imaginative perception, or perception in images. This is gained out of the soul itself, like the opening of an inner eye. I characterized this in my first lecture.

As the life of ideas relates to the life of nerves in the body, which is its physical foundation, so it also arises from the realm of the spirit, a purely non-physical world that is seen to be a real world when we come to observe this reality with that vision in images. This real world is not contained within the sense-perceptible world. It is, as it were, the first world that goes beyond the senses, bordering directly on our own.

Here one finds that the relationship which the human being has to the world around him, as he is aware of it in his mind, is only part of his total relationship to the world; anything we have in our conscious awareness is a segment of the reality in which we are. Below this level of awareness lies another relationship to the surrounding world, to the natural world and the world of the spirit. Even the connection between our life of ideas and the life of the nerves in the body has been pushed below the threshold of conscious awareness and can only be brought up from there with an effort if one wishes to characterize it the way I have done today. On the other hand the relationship of our life of ideas to the spiritual world which we can only perceive in images is also such that it does not enter into our ordinary conscious awareness, though it does enter into human reality.

In the human mind we have first of all everything that has been stimulated by the senses and by the rational mind which is bound to the senses; this is the usual content of the conscious mind. Below this, however, lies a sum total of processes that initially do not come to ordinary awareness, but arise as a spiritual principle, which can only be perceived in images; this plays into our soul nature just as sounds, colours, smells and so on play into the everyday life of our souls. Ordinary conscious awareness thus rises, as it were, from another sphere which itself can only be brought to conscious awareness if we are able to perceive in images. The fact that people do not know of these things does not mean that they do not exist in reality. Moving through the world we bear the content of our ordinary conscious awareness with us; we also bear with us everything that comes from the ‘imaginative’ spiritual world, as I’ll call it for the moment.

It is of tremendous importance, especially at the present time, to understand that the human being relates to the world around him in this way. A field for research—I am far from underestimating this field, I appreciate its significance—and there was every reason for it to come up at the present time, has indeed come up at the present time. It is like a powerful pointer to man’s relationship to the world around him which I have just characterized as the spiritual world of images, a relationship that is only little known so far. It is a feature of our present time that much comes to human awareness that can really only be encompassed with the means of insight given through the science of the spirit. Humanity is called upon to perceive these things today in that one’s nose is rubbed in them, to put it plainly, with life taking a course where people cannot avoid seeing them. Yet modern people still cannot overcome their reluctance to tackle this with the means for insight provided by the science of the spirit. They therefore try to use the means of ordinary natural science or concepts developed in relation to other things to approach areas which today literally cry out for investigation.

The field I am referring to is that of analytical psychology, also called psychoanalysis, which is, of course, particularly well known in this city.⁸² What makes it remarkable is that a field opens up to challenge the investigator that lies outside our ordinary conscious awareness; it must refer to something that lies below the threshold of that awareness. People are, however, trying to work with what I may call inadequate tools in this field. As they endeavour to apply these inadequate tools also in practice—only therapeutically and educationally, to begin with, perhaps, but perhaps also pastorally—we have to say that the matter has more than theoretical significance. I am, of course, not in a position to discuss the whole field of psychoanalysis. That would need many lectures.⁸³ Let me, however, refer to some of the principles, some of the real aspects in this context. Psychoanalysis is a field where investigation and social life meet in a point, as happens also in other fields of this kind which we’ll be considering today.

Above all, and as you are no doubt aware, analytical psychology essentially has to do with bringing ‘lost’ memories back to mind for therapeutic purposes. The thesis is that the psyche contains certain elements that do not come to conscious awareness. It is then widely assumed that these memories have gone down into the unconscious or the like, and efforts are made to go and cast light below the threshold of consciousness by using the ordinary memory concept and enter into regions not illuminated by our ordinary consciousness.

Now I did already mention in these lectures that the science of the spirit has the task of illuminating the human memory process in a very major way. Again it will not be possible, of course, to avoid all the misunderstandings that can arise with such a brief review of the subject. I have heard it said, for example—several times, not just once—that psychoanalysis was really on the same road as the science of the spirit which I represent; it was only that psychoanalysts took some things in a symbolic way, whilst I took things which those enlightened psychoanalysts considered to be symbolic to be realities. That is a grotesque misapprehension, and you cannot characterize the relationship of psychoanalysis to the science of the spirit in a worse way than by saying that.

To understand this we need to take another look at the nature of the memory process. Let me emphasize once again that the process of forming ideas, the activity of doing so, is something which in the inner life of man essentially relates only to the present. An idea as such never goes down to some unconscious level of the mind, just as a mirror image seen when passing a mirror will not settle down somewhere so that it may come up again the next time you pass the mirror. The coming up of an idea is a phenomenon that begins and ends in the present moment. And anyone thinking that memory consists in there ‘having been’ an idea which ‘comes up’ again, may well be an excellent Herbartian psychologist, or a psychologist in some other direction, but is not basing himself on a genuinely observed fact.

What we have here is something entirely different. The world in which we live is filled not only with the sensory perceptions that enter into our present life of ideas through eye or ear. This whole world—and that of course also means the natural world—is based on a world that has to be perceived in images, a world which initially does not come to conscious awareness. The contents of this world of images act parallel to my momentary life of ideas: as I form an idea, letting these momentary processes take their course in me, another process runs parallel to them, with a current of unconscious life moving through my soul. This parallel process causes inner tracks to be left—I could characterize these in all detail, but have to limit myself to brief indications here—and these are observed when memory arises later.

When memory arises, therefore, it is not a matter of an old idea, which might have been stored somewhere, being brought back again. Instead we look inwards at tracks left in a parallel process. Memory is a process of perception directed inwards.

The human soul is capable of many things at an unconscious level which it is not able to do consciously in ordinary life. To compare the process that occurs when a ‘forgotten’ event ‘comes back to mind’, doing so in very general terms—let me emphasize this: in very general terms—with something else, I would say that it is quite similar to sensory perception using the outer senses. The difference is that with the latter I recreate my perceptions in temporary images that only exist for the moment. Anything I recreate from memory is a specific form of inner perception. Within myself, I perceive the residue of the parallel process; this has remained stationary. As a crude analogy, recall is a process in which the soul reads at a later time something that had gone parallel to the forming of an idea. The soul has this ability, at an unconscious level, to read in itself what had been developing when I formed an idea. I did not know this at the time, for the idea blocked it out. Now it is recalled. Instead of having a sensory perception of something on the outside, I perceive my own inner process. That is the real situation.

I am fully aware that a fanatical psychoanalyst—none of them see themselves as fanatical, of course, and I know this, too—will say that he has no problem in agreeing to this explanation of memory. But in fact he’ll never do so when considering these things in practice. Anyone who knows the literature will know that it is never done and that this is in fact the source of countless errors. For people do not know that it is not a matter of past ideas that linger somewhere in the unconscious, but concerns a process that can only be understood if we understand the way in which an imaginative world plays into our world in a process that runs parallel to the life of forming ideas.

The first significant errors arise because a wrongly understood memory process forms the theoretical basis and is applied in practice in analytical psychology. When we penetrate to the real process of remembering, there can be no question of looking for elements in the soul which psychoanalysts consider to be pathological in memories that linger somewhere. It is a matter of perceiving how the patient relates to a real, objective world of non-physical processes, which he is, however, adopting in an abnormal way. This makes a huge difference, something which we must of course think through in every possible aspect.

Psychoanalysts who apply their natural scientific training one-sidedly in an important sphere of real life also fall into another kind of error. They use dream images for psychological diagnosis in a way that cannot be justified in the face of genuine observation. We need genuine observation and concepts that relate to reality so that we may enter into this strange, mysterious world of dreams in the right way. This is only done if we know that human beings have their roots not only in the environment in which they live with their ordinary conscious minds but—even in the life of ideas, as we have seen, and later we’ll also see some other things—in a world of spirit. Our ordinary conscious awareness comes to an end when we sleep, but that connection with the world that remains at a subconscious level does not come to an end.

There is a process—I cannot characterize it in detail, time being short—in which the special conditions pertaining in sleep cause the things we live through in connection with our spiritual environment to be clothed in symbolic dream images. The content of those dream images is quite immaterial. The same process—the relationship of the human being to his spiritual surroundings—may appear as a particular sequence of symbolic images for one individual and as a different one for another. Anyone with the necessary knowledge in this field knows that typical unconscious processes in the psyche assume the garb of widely differing reminiscences of life in all kinds of different people, and that the content of the dream does not matter. You only come to realize what lies behind this if you train yourself to ignore the content of the dream completely and consider instead what I’d call the inner dynamic of the dream. It is a question of whether a foundation is first laid with a particular dream image, then tension is created and then an evolution, or whether the sequence is different, starting with tension which is then followed by resolution.

It needs a great deal of preparation before one can consider the evolution of a dream, the whole drama of it, wholly leaving aside the content of the images. To understand dreams one must be able to do something that would be like seeing a play and taking an interest in the scenes only in so far as one perceives the writer behind it and the ups and downs of his inner experience. We must stop wanting to grasp dreams by abstract interpretation of their symbolism. We need to be able to enter into the inner drama of the dream, the inner context, quite apart from the symbolism, the content of the images. Only then will we realize how the soul relates to its spiritual surroundings. These cannot be seen in the dream images which someone who does not have vision in images uses for reality under the abnormal conditions of sleep, but only through awareness in images. The drama that lies beyond the dream images can only be understood if we have imaginative awareness.

As you are probably aware, research in analytical psychology also extends—and in a way this is most praiseworthy—to mythology. Many interesting things have been discovered, and other things that are enough to make your hair stand on end. I won’t go into detail, but it is important to see that individual scientists still work in such a way today that they one-sidedly develop a limited area, taking no account of scientific discoveries that have already been made, though these can often throw much more light on the matter than one is able to do oneself.

An old friend of mine who died quite some time ago wrote a very good book on mythology. He was Ludwig Laistner.⁸⁴ After going right round the world, as it were, with regard to the origin of myths, he showed in a very interesting way that if you want to understand myths it is not at all important to consider the content, that is, what they tell—doing so in one way in one place and in a different way in another—or the actual images of those myths; no, in that case, too, it is important to let the dramatic events come to light that come to expression in the different mythological images. Laistner also considered the connection between mythological images and the dream world, doing so in a way that was still elementary but nevertheless correct. His studies therefore provided an excellent basis for connecting research into dreams with the investigation of myths. If in mythology, too, people were aware that it is merely images that come across into dream consciousness from the creative sphere of myths, images which arbitrarily, I would say, represent the actual process, that would be a much more intelligent way of working. As it is, people working in analytical psychology—and I do fully recognize their importance and that they work with the best and truly honest good will—attempt things that must be askew and one-sided because their means are inadequate.

There is very little inclination to go really deeply into things, and to get help from spiritual life to understand reality in terms that relate to reality. More recent research in psychoanalysis did, apart from the ordinary concept of memory and the kind of dreams that have their origin in individual life, also involve taking account of a ‘super-individual unconscious’,⁸⁵ as it is called. At this point, however, a research method pursued with such inadequate means has led to a most peculiar result. There is a feeling—and we have to be thankful that such a feeling at least exists—that this inner life of the human psyche is connected with a life of the spirit that lies outside it; however, there is nothing one can do to perceive this connection in real terms. I honestly don’t want to find fault with these scientists, and I greatly respect their courage, for in a present world which is so full of prejudice it needs real courage to speak of such things; but it has to be pointed out—especially because these things also enter into practical considerations—that there is a way of overcoming such one-sidedness.

Jung, a scientist of great merit who lives here in Zurich, has taken refuge, as it were, in trans-individual, super-individual unconscious spirit and soul contents. According to him the human soul relates not only to memories which the individual has somehow stored or the like, but also to things that lie outside its individual nature. An excellent, bold idea—to relate this life in the human psyche not only by the means of the body but also in itself to soul qualities in the outside world; it certainly merit's recognition. The same man does, however, ascribe what happens in the soul in this way to a kind of memory again, even if it is super-individual. You cannot get away from the concept of mneme, or memory, though we can’t really speak of memory any longer when we go beyond the individual element. Jung puts it like this: you come to see that ‘archetypal images' live in the soul, images of the myths evolved among the ancient Greeks—archetypes, to use Jacob Burckhardt’s term. Jung says, significantly, that everything humanity and not only the individual person has gone through may be active in the soul; and as we do not know of this in ordinary conscious awareness, this rages and rises up unconsciously against the conscious mind, and you get the strange phenomena that show themselves today as hysterical and other conditions. Everything humanity has ever known of the divine and also of devilish things rises up again, Jung says in his latest book; people know nothing about it, but it is active in them.

Now it is highly interesting to look at an investigation done with inadequate means, taking a characteristic instance. This scientist has come to say, in an extraordinarily significant way that when people do not consciously establish a connection with a divine world in their souls, this connection is created in their subconscious, even though they know nothing about it. The gods live in the subconscious, below the threshold of conscious awareness. And a content of which they know nothing in their conscious minds may come to expression in that they ‘project’ it, as the term goes, on to their physician or another person. Thus a memory of some devilry may be active in the subconscious but not come to conscious awareness; it rages inside, however; the individual must rid himself of it; he transfers it to some other person. The other person is made into a devil; this may be the physician, or, if he does not manage to do this, the individual does it to himself.

From this point of view it is most interesting to see how a scientist comes to his conclusions about these things. Let us look at one of the latest books on psychoanalysis, The Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Gustav Jung.⁸⁶ He writes that the idea of God is simply a necessary psychological function of an irrational kind. Jung deserves great merit for acknowledging this, for it means that for once recognition is given to the nature of the human subconscious as being such that people establish connections with a divine world in their subconscious. The author then goes on to say that this idea of God has absolutely nothing to do with the question as to the existence of God. This last question, he says, is one of the most stupid questions anyone may ask.

We are not concerned with the scientist’s own view of the idea of God. He may be a very devout person. What concerns us here is what lives in the scientist’s own subconscious life of ideas, if I may use that term. Inadequate means of research mean no less than that one says to oneself: The human soul has to establish relationships to the gods below the threshold of consciousness; but it has to make these relationships such that they have nothing to do with the existence of God. It means that the soul must of necessity content itself with a purely illusory relationship; yet this is eminently essential to it, for without this it will be sick. This is of tremendous import, something we should not underestimate! I have merely indicated how inadequate the means are with which people are working in a quite extensive field.

I’ll now continue my description of the human being and the way he needs to relate to his social environment. The life of feelings—not now the life of ideas, but the life of feelings—has its physical counterpart in the breathing rhythm, as I said, and on the other hand also relates to spiritual contents. The element in the spirit which corresponds to the life of feelings the way the life of the breathing rhythm does at the physical level, can only be penetrated, being a spiritual content, a content of spiritual entities, spiritual powers, with an ‘inspired’ mind, as I have called it in these lectures.

This inspired mind opens up not only the spiritual content that fills our existence from birth, or let us say conception, until death, one also comes to see things that go across birth and death and have to do with our life between death and rebirth, that is, of a spirit that is alive even when the human being no longer has this physical body.

Whereas the human being gains a basis for this physical body through physical heredity, the principle which is born out of the inspired world, creates its physical expression in the breathing rhythm. But into this life of feeling—whereas initially only elements coming between birth and death play into the life of ideas which the human being knows in his ordinary conscious awareness—enters everything by way of powers and impulses that has been active during the time from the last death to the present birth. This will be active again between this death and a new birth. The core of the human being’s eternal reality plays into this life of feeling.

The third thing to be noted is that the human being’s life of will relates on the one hand really to the lowest functions in the human organism, to metabolism, something which in the widest sense comes to expression in hunger and thirst. On the other hand it relates in the spirit to the highest spiritual world, the intuitive world, which I have mentioned on several occasions in these lectures. We thus do indeed have a complete reversal of the situation.

Initially the life of ideas is subconsciously in touch with the world of images, and with the life of nerves in its other aspect. In a world that projects beyond our personal life in a body as the core of our reality, the life of feeling goes towards the spiritual side. And the life of will, which comes to physical expression whenever there is a will impulse in some metabolic process, and therefore in the lowest processes in the organism, is on the spiritual side connected with the highest spiritual world, the intuitive world.

We have to enter into this region if we want to investigate ‘repeated lives on earth’, as they are called. Impulses that go from one life on earth to another cannot be grasped in images, let alone in our ordinary conscious awareness, and not even with inspired consciousness. This needs intuitive awareness. Impulses from earlier lives on earth enter into our life. Impulses from this life will enter into later lives on earth. The only possible character our investigations can have at this point is one of having developed a sense for real intuitions, not the wishy-washy kind of which we speak in ordinary life.

The complete conscious mind thus perceives the complete human being as he lives in soul and spirit in three ways—in ideas, feelings and will impulses, all of which rise up and go down again. For he has his basis in three ways in a living physical body and takes his origin in the world of the spirit. The science of the spirit takes us to the eternal in man not in any speculative or hypothetical way, but by showing how the conscious mind must develop if it is to behold the eternal core of the human being who develops in successive lives on earth.

This complete human being—not an abstract human being presented in natural science or by naturalists in an empty, abstract set of ideas that do not hold the whole of reality—this complete human being is part of a social life. Our ordinary conscious mind is able to understand the natural world outside in so far as it is not organic but something in the lifeless, mechanical sphere—in modern science this is often the only thing considered to have validity and be worth considering. This level of the mind is not able, however, to find concepts that are wholly viable when it comes to social life if they have evolved in the pattern used in everyday thinking. The secret of social life is that it does not develop according to the concepts we have in our ordinary thinking but does so outside the sphere of the conscious mind, in impulses that can only be grasped with the higher levels of conscious awareness of which I have spoken.

This insight can throw light on many things which in our present social life must inevitably end in absurdity because the concepts people want to apply to it do not relate to reality. So there we are today, with concepts gained from an education based on natural scientific ideas, and we want to be creative in social life. But this social life needs additional concepts that differ from those we have in our ordinary thinking—just as the subconscious life of the psyche presenting in psychoanalysis also calls for additional concepts.

In the first place three areas in social communities need to have light thrown on them through anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. I’ll only be able to give a rough outline, for the science of the spirit is still in its beginnings and many things still need to be investigated. I will thus merely characterize the general nature of the strands we have to see running from spiritual scientific insights to insight into social life.

Three spheres of social life may be seen. The first sphere where what I have been characterizing just now applies, is the sphere of economics. We know that economic laws live in our social structure, and that we need to know these laws. Anyone involved in legislation or government and anyone who runs any kind of firm which is after all part of the social structure in life as a whole must work with the laws of economics.

The economic structure, as it exists in real terms, cannot be grasped if we apply only the concepts gained in the natural scientific way of thinking, concepts that govern practically the whole of people’s thinking today. The impulses that are active in economic life are entirely different from those in the natural world, and that includes human nature. In basic human nature, our view rests on questions of need, for example. Issues concerning the meeting of needs are the basis of our external economic order. To gain genuine insight into a social community with its economic structure I need to perceive how depending on the geographical and other conditions the means are available to meet human needs. For the individual we start from the question of needs, but to consider the economy we must start from the opposite side. Then we do not consider what people need but what is available to people in a given area as community life develops. This is just a brief indication. Many things would need to be said if we wanted to consider the economic structure in its entirety. Yet the economic structure of a country or community, which is really an organism, cannot be dealt with by using concepts taken from ordinary natural science.

That may lead to some very strange things! Here it is reasonable to say something in particular because I am truly not just referring to it in the light of current events. People might object that I have been influenced by these current events, but that is not the case. What I am going to say now is something I spoke of in a course of lectures I gave in Helsingfors before the present war started.⁸⁷ My reasons for referring to it now have therefore nothing at all to do with the war. I need to say this in advance, so that there shall be no misunderstanding.

At that time in Helsingfors—that is, before the war—I showed how we can go astray if we want to grasp the social structure of human communities wholly with natural scientific ideas. For my example I chose someone who falls into this error to the greatest degree—Woodrow Wilson.⁸⁸ I referred to the strange way in which Woodrow Wilson—academic thinking had in this case advanced to statesmanship—said that if one considers the days of Newtonism, when a more mechanical view was taken of the whole world, one can see that the mechanical ideas which Newton and others had made current had also entered into people’s ideas of the state, their ideas of social life. It is wrong, however, to consider social life in such a narrow way, said Woodrow Wilson; we have to do it differently today and apply Darwinian ideas to social life. He was thus doing the same thing, only with the ideas that are now current in natural science.

Yet Darwinian ideas are of as little use in understanding social structures as were Newtonian ones. As we have heard, not all Darwinian ideas are actually applicable in organic life. This remained at a subconscious level for Wilson, however, and he did not realize that he was making the very mistake which he had identified and censured just before.

Here we have an outstanding example of people unable to realize that they are working with inadequate tools that will not cope with reality when they try to master and understand social life today. Such a situation, where the tools are inadequate even as people make world history, is something we come across wherever we go. And if people were able to see through what is happening here, they would be able to see deeply into the deeper causes of the phrase mongering that goes on at present, reasons that are generally not apparent to the world today.

Economic structures cannot be understood if we use natural scientific concepts—whether gained from Darwinism or Newtonism—for these only apply to the facts of nature. Instead, we must move on to other concepts.

I can only characterize these other concepts by saying that they must rest on if not perhaps a clear idea, then at least a feeling of entering wholly into the social structure, so that ideas come up that belong to life in images. It needs the help of image-based ideas to get a picture of a real social structure that exists in one place or another. Otherwise we only get abstractions of no value that have no substance to them.

We no longer create myths today. But the power to create myths was an impulse in the human soul that went beyond everyday reality. Today, people must take the same inner impulse which our forebears used to create myths; they created, if I may put it like this, images of a spiritual reality out of powers of imagination that related to that reality; we must have ideas in images of economic systems. We cannot create myths, but need to be able to see the geographical and other situations of the terrain together with the given character of people, the needs of people, in such a way that they are seen together with the same power that was formerly used to create myths, a power that is alive and active in the spiritual sphere as the power to form images and which is also reflected in the economic structure.

A second sphere in social life is the moral structure and the moral impulse that lives in a totality. Again we go down into all kinds of unconscious spheres to investigate the impulses revealed in human moral aspirations—moral in the widest possible sense. Anyone wishing to intervene in this, be it as a statesman, be it as a parliamentarian, or also as the head of some firm who wants to take a leading role, will only understand the structure if he is able to master it with concepts that have at least a basis in insights gained through inspiration.

This is even more necessary today than people tend to think; intervening in this social aspect in so far as moral impulses are involved. These moral impulses need to be studied truthfully and in real terms, just as the impulses of organic life cannot be invented but have to be studied by considering the organism itself. If people were to think up concepts about lion nature, cat nature, or hedgehog nature, if you will, the way they think up concepts in thinking up Marxism today, or other socialist theories, and failed to study nature in reality, and if they were to construct purely a-priori concepts of animal nature, they would arrive at strange theories about the animal organization.

The important point is that the social organism also has to be studied in absolutely real terms where moral principles in the widest sense are involved. The forces of need that human beings bring into play—they, too, are moral powers in the wider sense—can only be mastered if we investigate the real social organism on the basis of ideas that have their roots in the inspired world, even if these ideas are only dimly apparent. Today we are still a long way away from such a way of thinking!

In the science of the spirit one comes to study the nature of the impulses that live among the people in Central Europe, Western Europe or Eastern Europe in real terms and in detail. One comes to see in very real terms how the different inner impulses arising from the social organism are just as real and well-founded as the impulses that arise from the physical organism. One comes to see that the way nations live together is also connected with these impulses that can be studied from deep down. In the science of the spirit one finds that the structure of the soul differs greatly between the West and the East of Europe, and one comes to know that such a structure must become part of the whole of European life. Let me remind you that I have been talking about the different soul structures that underlie European social life for decades, speaking out of purely spiritual scientific ideas.⁸⁹ The discoveries made in the science of the spirit are confirmed by people with empirical knowledge who know the reality of life. Look in yesterday’s and today’s issues of the Nene Zürcher Zeitung [major Swiss paper] for what is said there about the soul of the Russian people and Russian ideals, taking a Dostoevskyan view.⁹⁰ There you have complete proof—I can only refer you to this, time being too short for a detailed description—in observations made in an outer way of a result arising very evidently from something that has been put forward for years in the science of the spirit.

You then come to study social impulses and energies in real life. As it is impossible to master life with concepts far removed from reality, this life gets on top of people. They no longer know how to encompass life with concepts as abstract as those used in the sphere of natural science. These prove inadequate in the social sphere. This life, which is surging and billowing deeper down and has not been grasped in conscious awareness, has therefore brought about the catastrophic events we are now going through in such a terrible way.

A third sphere we meet in social life is the one we call the life of rights. Essentially the social structure of any body is made up of economic life, moral life and the life of rights. All these terms must be taken in the spiritual sense, however. Economic life can only be studied in a real sense if we think in images; moral life and its true content can only be studied with the help of inspired ideas; the life of rights can only be understood with the help of intuitive ideas, and these, too, must be gained from full and absolute reality.

We can thus see how the insights sought into nonphysical aspects with the science of the spirit apply to different spheres of social life. In the field of education, too, which essentially is part of the social sphere, fruitful concepts will only arise if we are able to develop image-based concepts so that we may see life which is as yet unformed in images that arise in us—not in the abstract terms that are so common in education today but on the basis of genuine vision in images—and also guide it on that basis.

The life of rights, concepts in the sphere of rights—just think how much has been written and said about this in recent times. Basically, however, people have no really clear idea of even the simplest concepts in the sphere of rights. Here, too, we merely need to consider the efforts of people who want to work entirely out of a training in the natural sciences, Fritz Mauthner, for instance, author of the highly interesting dictionary of philosophy.⁹¹ Read the entry on law, penal law or, in short, everything connected with this, and you’ll see that he dissolves all known ideas and concepts, and also existing institutions, showing that there is no possibility whatsoever, nor ability, to put anything in their place. It will only be possible to put something in their place if people look for what they are seeking in the structure of rights in the world that is the very foundation of social structures, a world open only to intuitive perception.

Here in Zurich I am able to refer to a work in which the author, Dr Roman Boos, has made a start with looking at the sphere of rights in this way.⁹² An excellent beginning has been made in basing real issues in the sphere of rights on the situations pertaining to the structure of rights and the social structure and arriving at realistic ideas concerning individual details in the sphere of rights. Study such a work and you will see what is meant when we demand that social life as a life of rights should be studied in a realistic and not an abstract way, developing our ideas about it in real terms, encompassing it with concepts that relate to reality. It is of course harder to do than if we construct utopian programmes and utopian government structures. For it means that the whole human being has to be considered and one must truly have a sense of what is real.

I have made the concept of freedom the fundamental one in order to show that although we are looking for laws pertaining to the world of the spirit, the concept of freedom is wholly valid in the science of the spirit. It will not be easy, however, to study these things in real terms. For we then come above all to realize the complexity of reality, which cannot be encompassed in one-sided concepts that are like stakes put in the ground here or there. One realizes that as soon as we go beyond the individual person we must encompass this reality in concepts that are like the concepts used in the science of the spirit which I have described in these lectures.

Let me give you a powerful example. People like to live with biased ideas, concepts gained in their habitual way of thinking. When the first railway was built in Central Europe, a body of medical men—learned people, therefore—was also consulted. This has been documented, though it may sound like a children’s tale. The doctors found that no railway should be built, since it would cause damage to people’s nervous systems. And if people insisted after all on having railways, one should at least put high board fences on either side of the railway lines so that people would not get concussion when a train went past.⁹³ This expert opinion from the first half of the 19th century was based on the habitual way of thinking at that time. Today we may find it easy to laugh about such a biased opinion; for those learned gentlemen were, of course, wrong. Developments have overtaken them. Progress will overtake many things which ‘esteemed gentlemen’ consider to be right.

There is, however, another question, strange though it may seem. Were those learned gentlemen simply wrong? It only seems so. They were certainly wrong in one respect, but they were not simply wrong. Anyone who has a feeling for the more subtle things in the development of human nature will know that the development of railways does in a strange way relate to the development of some phenomena of nervousness which people suffer at present. Such a person will know that whilst it may not be as radical as those learned gentlemen put it, the trend of their opinion was partly right. Anyone who truly has a feeling for the differentiated nature of life, for the difference between our life today and life at the turn of the 18th to 19th century will know that railways did cause nervousness, so that the learned doctors were right in some respect.

The idea of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, which is still applicable to some natural event or some natural human phenomenon, does not apply when it comes to the social structure. Here it is necessary for a person to develop a faculty for more comprehensive ideas by training his inner abilities in a wholly different way. Those ideas need to encompass a social life that goes far beyond anything which one-sidedly abstract ideas taken from natural science—and they have to be abstract—are able to encompass.

Time being short, I have of course only been able to give brief indications that the sphere of social science, of economics, of social morality in the widest sense, law and everything connected with it, will only be mastered when people overcome the laziness which is such an obstacle today. For essentially it is laziness and a fear of genuine ways that lead to insight which prevent people from looking at the world in the light of spiritual science.

In spite of being permitted to give a course of four lectures, I have of course only been able to refer briefly to some things. I am fully aware that I could only give some initial ideas. It also was merely my intention to make the connection to the individual sciences known today in form of initial ideas. I know that many objections can be raised, and am thoroughly familiar with the objections that may be raised. Anyone who bases himself on the science of the spirit must always raise all possible objections for himself at every step, for it is only by measuring his insights against the objections that one truly develops from the depths of the soul the potential vision in the spirit that can cope with reality.

Yet though I am aware how imperfect the ideas I have presented have been—it would need many weeks to give all the details which I was able merely to refer to briefly as results—perhaps I may think after all that I have given some idea in at least one direction, and that is that spiritual science has nothing to do with stirring things up because one has some abstract ideal or other. It is a field of research which the progress of human evolution actually demands at this time. Someone who is working in this field of investigation and truly understands its impulses will know that it is exactly the areas that are demanded in the present time—like the field of psychoanalysis of which I spoke—which show, if truly penetrated, that they can in fact only come fully into their own if illuminated by what we are here calling spiritual science with an anthroposophical orientation. I wanted to show that this is not something dependent on sudden whims or vague mysticism but is pursued in all seriousness by people who are serious investigators, at least in their intentions. I therefore presented a number instances to show that current scientific thinking can gain a great deal from the science of the spirit which we have today.

I do not believe this science of the spirit to be something completely new. We need go back no further than Goethe to find the elementary beginnings in his theory of metamorphosis. These merely need to be developed further in the science of the spirit—though not with abstract, logical scientific hypotheses. They need to be developed in a way that is full of life.

As I myself have been working with the further development of the Goethean approach for more than 30 years, I privately like to refer to the approach called spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation as Goethe’s approach taken further. If it were entirely my own choice, I’d like to call the building in Dornach which is dedicated to this approach a Goetheanum,⁹⁴ to indicate that this spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation is not something new suddenly emerging into the light of day as something arbitrarily developed from a single case but something which the spirit of our age is calling for and also the spirit of human evolution as a whole.

It is my belief that people who have gone along with the spirit in human evolution have in their best endeavours at all times pointed to the principle which must today show itself as the fruits and flowers of scientific endeavour so that genuine, serious insight into the life of the spirit may be established. This must be done with the same seriousness and integrity which has also be brought to the development of natural science in recent centuries and especially in more recent times, a science which those working in the science of the spirit do not reject or denigrate.

My aim in giving these lectures has not been to fight other sciences or go against them in any way, but to show—as I said in my introduction—that I appreciate them. I believe they are great not only in what they are today but also in what may still develop. In my view it shows greater appreciation of natural scientific and other modern ways of thinking if one does not merely stay at the point where one is, but believes that if we enter wholly into everything that is good in the different fields of science, this will not only permit the logical development of some philosophy or other which then does not take us further than what already exists in its basic premises, but will be able to bring forth something that is alive. Spiritual science with anthroposophical orientation wants to be something which thus has life and is not merely based on logical conclusions.

Questions and answers

From the question and answer session⁹⁵ which followed the lecture given in Zurich on 14 November 1917

Question. How does the lecturer explain the process of forgetting?

Well, this is something that can be dealt with briefly. The process of forgetting essentially is due to the fact that the process I referred to as running parallel to the forming of ideas and on which memory depends has a phase of ascent and one of descent. To be more easily understood I might mention that a process which is not the same, but exemplifies the process we are considering, was something Goethe called the ‘fading away of sensory perceptions’. This fading away of sensory perceptions—when a sensory perception has come to an end, the effect of it is still there but fading—is not the process on which forgetting is based, but it helps to clarify the situation. It is exemplary, as it were, of the whole process which occurs there. Let me emphasize that I see this as a process which is mental and physical and not physiological, though it does extend into the physiological aspect. You will find more details about this in my books. But this process, too, has a phase when the effect dies down, and that is the basis of forgetting. The ascending phase is the basis of remembering, and the descending phase of forgetting. The process of forgetting is not all that surprising, I would say, if one takes the view of remembering which I have been presenting.

Question. What does it mean if someone never dreams, or is never aware of his dreams? How should we consider this phenomenon in psychological and anthroposophical terms respectively, that is, how does such a person differ from others in mind and spirit?

This is quite a problematical issue. It is easy for people to say that they never dream, but it is not really the case. What we have here is a certain weakness relating to the subconscious processes that give rise to dreaming. This weakness means a person is unable to bring up from the subconscious what is meant to be read from this subconscious, as I put it metaphorically. Everyone dreams. But just as there are other weaknesses, so some people are in a condition where it is impossible to bring their dreams up to conscious awareness. This weakness should not, however, be regarded the way we may regard an organic weakness, say. It can easily arise if the mind is outstanding in some other area. Thus we are told that Lessing never dreamt. In his case this would have been due to the fact that his was an eminently critical mind. By concentrating his powers as strongly as we know him to have done, thus using them in one aspect of his inner nature, Lessing weakened them in another area. We therefore should not see this weakness as something really bad; it may have to do with strengths in other areas.

To interpret such a thing ‘psychologically’ and ‘anthroposophically’ is, of course, one and the same thing for a spiritual scientist. It cannot even be said that someone with a certain weakness in bringing dreams to mind would also have a weakness, for example, relating to processes that are part of imaginative perception. This need not be the case at all. Someone may not have much of a gift for what is ordinarily called dreaming, and yet develop powers of imaginative perception and so on by using the methods I have given in my books, especially in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. It may be the case that when he now uses his powers specifically for imaginative perception of the world, in full conscious awareness, to look into the world of the spirit—we might say clairvoyant insight if the term can be used without prejudice—this may actually suppress ordinary dreaming, though the reverse may also be the case.

I know a great number of people who use the exercises described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds in their souls and experience a transformation in the life of dreams, which is also described in the book. Ordinary dream life is vague in its contents. It changes strangely under the influence of awakening imaginative perception.

The inability to bring dreams to mind thus points to nothing more than a partial weakness in someone’s nature, and this should be regarded in the same way as when someone has strong muscles in another sphere, and someone else’s muscles are weaker. It is something that lies entirely in the nuances of the way in which people are constituted.

• 80. Moriz Benedikt (1835–1920). Zur Psychophysik der Moral mid des Rechts. Zwei Vortraege gehalten in der 47. und 48. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher. Wien 1875.
• 81. See note 3.
• 82. See note 79.
• 83. Rudolf Steiner had given two lectures on anthroposophy and psychoanalysis in Dornach on 10 and 11 November 1917: Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology’ (from GA 178), tr. M. Laird-Brown; Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1990.
• 84. Laistner, Ludwig (1845–1896). Das Raetsel der Sphinx, Grundzüge einer Mythengeschichte, Berlin 1889. See the Rudolf Steiner’s story of his life (GA 28, various translations), chapter 15.
• 85. See Jung, C. G., Psychology of the Unconscious Chapter 5.
• 86. Ibid.
• 87. The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita (GA 146). about Wilson in the 5th lecture, on 1 June 1913.
• 88. Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow (1856–1924), 28th President of the USA 1913-1921. In The New Freedom, in a chapter on the meaning of progress, he wrote that a government was not a machine but a living entity. It was subject not to the theory of the universe but to that of organic life. It was elucidated by Darwin and not Newton. He went on to say that live political constitutions had to be Darwinian in structure and in the way they were used.
• 89. See e.g. Steiner R. The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls (GA 121); tr. A. H. Parker; London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1970.
• 90. This was a review of a volume of Dostoevsky’s political writings which had been published by Piper & Co. in Munich in 1917. It appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of 13 November (No. 2134) and 14 November 1917 (No. 2141). The review presents Dostoevsky as someone who took the Slavophile movement to its perfection in Russia, decisively demanding that people ‘turn away from St Petersburg’ and that Russian culture should again have its focus in ‘Moscow’—turning away from Western decadent intellectual thinking and concentrating once more on the thinking of the Russian ‘people’ ...
• 91. Wörterbuch der Philosophy, 1. Bd., München & Leipzig 1910.
• 92. Boos, Roman (1889–1952), social scientist. Active representative of anthroposophy and the threefold commonwealth impulse. His treatise on a labour contract was published by Duncker und Humblot in Munich and Leipzig in 1910.
• 93. The expert opinion of the Royal Bavarian College of Medicine has not survived; its original existence is therefore disputed by some. Reference to it is however made in Hagen, Rudolf, Die erste deutsche Eisenbahn, 1885, p. 45, and in Kemmerich, Max, Kultur- Kuriosa, Munich 1909, p. 282 & 295. Kemmerich was unable to give an ‘authentic source’, but spoke of a ‘sufficiently well-known fact’.
• 94. In a public lecture which Rudolf Steiner gave in Basle on 18 October 1917, he said for the first time that he would like to call the ‘St John’s Building’ in Dornach the ‘Goetheanum’. ‘... Most of all—providing it is not misunderstood—I would like to call the world view which thus arises in a scientific way after the sources from which it has arisen for myself, calling it Goetheanism. In the same way I would greatly prefer to call the building out there in Domach, which is dedicated to this world view, the ‘Goetheanum’, providing this does not lead to misunderstanding upon misunderstanding.’ Published in German in Freiheit—Unsterblichkeit—Soziales Leben (GA 72).
• 95. Some of the questions did not relate directly to the subject and have therefore been omitted.

If we bring to mind what we have gathered from our recent lectures, including yesterday's lecture, and not from their various details but from their whole trend and meaning, then we can say it is the following: It is demanded of the civilisation that must replace ours towards the future in an energetic way, that it should look deeper into true reality, that above all such high-sounding phrases, or rather, such high-sounding theories as those of Monism, Idealism, Realism, and so on, come to an end, and that men realise that the maya-reality, the reality of the surrounding external phenomena, is actually a confluence of two worlds, of two worlds, in fact, in conflict with one another. To look at reality means something very different from merely following up theoretically all that exists in the world of appearances around us, which is the way of modern natural science.

In order to discuss this theme practically, we will first go into a concrete example. Who would not suppose that the materialistic concept of the world which has spread among civilised nations since the 60's, 70's of last century, and the materialistic mode of living which indeed results from this concept, must necessarily have the effect of making men more materialistic? If one looks at the world merely from appearances one naturally supposes that there arises a sort of external manifestation of the ideas which men have had in their heads; but that is not the case. As soon as one turns one's mind to the conditions that in reality follow one another then that does not accord at all, it is not true that the world is somehow or other organised according to the ideas men set in their heads. One only understands that this cannot be the reality if one realises that the human being is of a double nature, as we have explained, that in him the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces are working through each other continually. Only because that is so is the following concrete phenomenon possible. Let us assume that an age would give itself up to materialistic ideas for a sufficiently long time, as our age has done. Misled by these ideas it would also in conscious will develop a kind of materialistic mode of life. The results will not enter the part of human nature that is the bearer of the conscious life. To begin with, the bearer of the conscious life has not that thoroughgoing influence on human life that a superficial observation is inclined to attribute to it; the results enter the unconscious. You can picture this schematically: in man's conscious head-nature lives materialism; in his subconscious nature, which goes through a metamorphosis after we have passed through the gate of death and live over into the next earth-incarnation, but which we carry in us now as an incomplete formation—this, let us say, lower nature of man is the bearer of the unconscious soul-life and in a remarkable way this unconscious soul-life becomes under the influence of materialism more and more spiritual. So that the actual result of materialistic ideas and of the materialistic way of life is that the lower nature of man becomes increasingly spiritual. You must therefore imagine the following. If you are completely immersed in concepts of matter and energy and believe solely in these, and order your life on the lines of “eat and drink and then the nothingness of death”—then, carrying out all your actions on this basis, materialism really enters your mode of living, and the lower nature gets increasingly spiritual.

The lower nature, however, which is becoming more and more spiritual, needs something to work on it; it cannot make its necessary way through evolution alone. Now since in the head, in man's upper nature, there are only materialistic ideas and sympathies, this upper nature is unable to work on man's lower nature, and in consequence of this deprivation, the lower nature is exposed to the working of the Luciferic principle. The Luciferic principle, as I said in the last lecture, does not manifest in sense-perceptible reality: the Luciferic beings are spiritual beings. They enter man's lower nature when it becomes so spiritual under the influence of materialism, and when this very materialism prevents anything from man himself flowing into the lower nature. The paradoxical truth appears before our soul that a materialistic age actually prepares a spiritual culture, but a Luciferic one.

Conversely, taking the reverse case, let us suppose that an ecclesiastical truth, not imbued with spirituality, but supported purely by tradition, takes hold of man, or works towards taking hold of him. And related to such an ecclesiastical truth is abstract idealism which believes only in abstract ideals, in morality and has no knowledge of how these abstract ideals arise—however fine and beautiful they may be, they are of no use if one has no feeling for the way in which such forces can come about. Purely religious and purely idealistic ideas have again the consequence that the lower nature of man becomes more material. Whereas materialistic ideas promote spirituality in man's lower nature, purely clerical concepts built on tradition without spiritual influence, as well as abstract idealism, promote an increasing growth of materialism in man's lower nature. Speaking crudely, one might say that the type of this increasing materialism of the lower nature through the traditional abstract churchy element is the corpulent parson; he devotes himself to traditional church conceptions and in this way fattens up his little stomach. This is only a comparison, it is no fact and no law—I merely want to make things clear, yet it corresponds to a fundamental reality. But now again the increasing materialism of mans lower nature has no nourishment if the head harbours none but traditional and abstract traditional ideas. Hence a humanity which founds such a culture is pre-eminently exposed not to their own head-nature but to Ahrimanic influences. And so we must say that the abstractly religious the abstractly idealistic, promotes in fact an Ahrimanic materialism, while, conversely, materialistic thinking promotes a Luciferic spiritualism.

All these things rest fundamentally on the fact that true reality is of a totally different nature from external apparent reality. But it is now required of man that he should get to know true reality according to its law and being. Social science, the science of human community-life and man's historical life must in particular always be permeated by a spiritual science that, as these lectures have shown, can really build the bridge between the nature-order and the spirit-order, real bridges, not those abstract ones built by monism. It will be necessary, however, for certain laws which are held back from the general consciousness of mankind by certain initiation quarters whose thinking is incorrect for the present time—for certain laws concerning true reality to become increasingly known.

One such law can be set before the soul in the following way, If you give real study to my Outline of Occult Science you know the point of time in the earthly sense when present-day humanity actually appeared on earth. We showed in the last lecture how this humanity has also a cosmic pre-history, a Saturn, Sun, Moon history, but Earth history was, to begin with, a recapitulation, and earthly humanity appeared at quite a definite time. And if you consult my Occult Science you will find that this human state appeared at the same time as clearly and distinctly there arose on earth the origin of the mineral kingdom. For we know that what we now call the mineral kingdom did not exist in the same way in the Saturn, Sun, Moon evolutions, There existed then the three elementary kingdoms which preceded the mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom entered earthly evolution and simultaneously with this macrocosmic fact of the entry of the mineral kingdom into earthly evolution, man entered earthly evolution in his present form, in the form of his present bodily formation. Although this bodily formation has only later in the course of time come to its full completion, yet the rudiments of the present human body appeared in earthly evolution at the same time as the entry of the mineral kingdom. In a certain sense therefore man, has formed a link as earth-man between the fourth member of his being, which then developed to the ego, and the mineral kingdom. One could also say that in the human microcosm the ego corresponds to the macrocosmic mineral kingdom;

Now we know—and even a simple superficial knowledge of nature tells us—that the cosmic mineral kingdom has a crystal-formation. In school our children must learn the different forms in which the various minerals crystalise. They must first learn them according to the laws of geometry, how they can be represented through these laws, and then how they appear in reality, in the mineral kingdom—octahedron, cube, and so on. When we see these forms of the mineral kingdom which may be expressed in geometry we have before us the original form proper to the minerals. These crystalisations, or rather, these crystal-forms, are in a certain sense the inborn, archetypal characteristic of the mineral kingdom. And the earth, when this kingdom was incorporated into its cosmic evolution, received at the same time the tendency to crystalise its mineral substances in the forms in which the mineral kingdom crystalises.

Now there is a counterpole, a polar opposite, to the form of the mineral kingdom, and I ask you to come to an understanding through the following picture. We will approach an important fact in life through a picture. The dissolving of any kind of substance is a very well-known phenomenon, You know that if you throw a certain amount of salt into a certain amount of water, the water is able to dissolve the salt completely, so that it is no longer there in its solid form. You also know that for certain purposes of practical life the solid salt will not do and it has to be dissolved. Now the tendency in earthly evolution to the crystalisation form of the minerals must not be allowed to remain united with the earth any more than for certain practical purposes the salt may retain its solid form. The cook must be able to change the solid form by dissolving it—she must use methods of dissolving, otherwise the salt will be of no use. So too in the cosmos the earth's tendency to crystalise the mineral must be dissolved. This means that a polar counter-tendency must exist which will bring, it about that when the Earth has reached the goal of its evolution and is ready to pass over to the next form, the Jupiter-form, this crystalising tendency is no longer there—has been dissolved, has disappeared. Jupiter must not possess the inclination to crystalise mineral substances. This particular tendency must be reserved solely for the Earth, and it must cease when the Earth has reached the goal of its earthly evolution.

Now the polar opposite to the tendency of crystalising is that other tendency which is imprinted into the human form—not the animal form. Every corpse which we give over to the earth-planet, whether by burial, fire, or in any other way, every corpse deserted by its spirit and soul and in which still works the human form as purely mineralogical form, works in opposition to the crystalising tendency, precisely as negative electricity, works in opposition to positive electricity, or as darkness to light, And at the end of earthly evolution the totality of human forms given over to the earth in the course of this evolution—I repeat: human forms, for in the form of man lies the force-tendency and it is matter of force not substance—these human forms will have cosmically dissolved the mineralising tendency, the crystalisation-tendency in mineralising.

You see how here again we have a point where a bridge is built between two world-currents which natural science cannot build. For natural science investigates what happens to the human form after death solely on the lines of mineralogy and its laws, it looks out for what lies in the earth's tendency to crystalise and deals with the corpse in that way. It can never arrive therefore at what a significant role in the household of the whole being of the earth is played by men, by the dead bodies, the form, of men. The earth has essentially altered since the middle of the Lemurian alter since mineralisation entered and with it the tendency to crystalise. What is less mineral today in the earth less inclined to the crystalisation-tendency than in the middle of the Lemurian age is due to the dissolving forms of human bodies. And when the Earth has reached its goal there will no longer remain any tendency at all to crystalisation. The totality of human forms given over to the earth will have worked as the solar opposite and dissolved crystalisation.

Here we have the event of human death placed into the whole household of world-order as a purely physical phenomenon. Here we have a bridge thrown between two phenomena which otherwise, as the phenomenon of death, remain quite incomprehensible in the household of the world and the phenomena which modern natural science describes. It is important to develop increasingly such concepts as alone give to the natural science world-conception its true, genuine character. What I have described to you here is just as much a fact of natural science as other facts are that are discovered by the natural science of today. But it is a fact which natural science with its present methods cannot discover. It therefore remains of necessity incomplete and cannot grasp the whole of life's phenomena: it must find its completion through spiritual science. And when such laws as this are known—that through the human forms given to the earth-planet the crystalising tendency of the earth is dissolved, then such laws will also make the human spirit ready to enter more deeply into the reality of spiritual evolution.

Those who think and make research only along the lines of modern natural science cannot build the bridge from natural science to social and political science. Those alone who know the great laws resulting from spiritual science which relate to the greatness of nature in the way I have just explained, are able then to lead across the bridge from natural science to the science of man, above all to the historical and political life of mankind. The natural scientist does not hesitate in the least to speak of polarity in nature. He will distinguish two magnetisms, the North and the South, he will distinguish two electricities, the positive and the negative. And if some day natural science is guided more into the right path of Goethe's world-conception, then natural science too will be still more Goetheanism than it can be today, when it is hardly so at all. Then the law of polarity in the whole of nature will be recognised as the fundamental law, as it has indeed already figured in the ancient Mysteries from atavistic clairvoyance. In the ancient Mysteries everything was founded on the knowledge of polarity in the world. In natural science itself, that is, in the knowledge of natural order the scientist of today is not disturbed by recognising polarity, but he will not approach polarity in the human order and spiritual order. Nevertheless, what we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic fully correspond as regards the spirit and its ordering, in which man too is placed, with what is recognised in natural science, for instance, as North and South magnetism or as positive and negative electricity. The creation of real harmony between spirit and nature will never be reached unless men find the reality of the concrete polarity of the Ahrimanic and the luciferic in the spirit-ordering. For true reality cannot be found in the abstract ideas which are simply transferred from nature to the spirit, but solely through being able to deepen oneself in the spirit itself and there find the polarities corresponding to the spirit.

And so it must be too with the other natural facts. One cannot simply study natural facts and then say that one should found a spiritual order, a spiritual world-conception on these natural science facts. That leads nowhere. If the spiritual life is to be studied in its reality, if the phenomena of life into which the spirit plays are also to be grasped, then one must decide to study the spirit-orderings themselves. Moreover what has taken place at some period of time or other through human souls or human organisations cannot be explained by natural science, it can only be understood in reality if it is explained through spiritual science.

If, for instance, we look at certain phenomena of present-day culture we must consider to what degree the Luciferic influence is there and to what degree the Ahrimanic. I made this attempt in 1914 before the outbreak of our present catastrophic war, in the lectures I held in Vienna: The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth. And I should therefore like to refer you to the decisive passage in which is set forth the whole essence of what is taking place today. I said then: The reason why spiritual science is now here in the world is because the evolution of humanity requires that this realisation of the spiritual worlds and the conditions of existence in them shall become more and more alive in human souls, instinctively at first, then consciously. Let me draw your attention to a purely external phenomenon, but one of immense significance, showing that a grasp of the laws of spiritual existence will become increasingly essential for any true judgment of life on the physical plane.

When we contemplate nature we observe the remarkable fact that in every case a small number only of seeds, of germinating entities, are used in the production of the same species of life, while myriads of seeds come to nothing. Of the myriads of fish-spawn in the sea, only a few become fish; the rest perish. Looking out over the fields we see vast multitudes of grains of corn, only a few of which become plants; as grains of corn the rest perish, being used as food-stuffs and for other purposes. In nature a great deal more has to be produced than actually comes to fruit and again seed in the on-flowing stream of existence. This is a wise provision; for in nature the rule is that what thus deviates from its own inherent stream of existence and fruiting is used in such a way as to serve the other stream of existence. Beings would not be able to live if all seeds actually became fruit and achieved the development possible to them. Seeds must be there to form the soil, as it were, out of which beings can grow. It is only apparently, only in maya, that anything is lost; in reality nothing is lost in nature's creative work. Spirit holds sway in nature, and the fact that something is apparently lost from the on-flowing stream of evolution is founded in the wisdom of the spirit; it is a spiritual law, and these things must be viewed from the standpoint of the spirit. Then we soon perceive that what seems to be diverted from the straightforward stream of world-processes has its well-justified place in existence. This provision is founded in the spirit; hence it can also take effect on the physical plane, to the extent that we had a spiritual life there.

My dear friends, take a concrete case which concerns us very closely. Public lectures have to be given on spiritual science. They are given to audiences brought together simply through the announcements. There is a similarity here to what happens with the grains of corn, only a part of which are used in the direct stream of existence One must not be put off by the fact that the streams of spiritual life have to be brought, apparently without choice, to many, many people, and that then only a few separate out and really enter into this spiritual life, become anthroposophists and join in the on-flowing stream. In this domain it still happens that these scattered seeds find their way to many who, after a public lecture, for example, go away saying: What crazy nonsense the fellow talked! Seen in direct relation to external life, this is life—shall we say—the spawn of fish that come to nothing in the sea. But from the standpoint of deeper investigation it is not so. The souls who through their karma came to a lecture and who then went away saying: What crazy nonsense the fellow talked!—these souls were not yet ready to receive the truth of the spirit, but it is necessary for their souls in the present incarnation to feel the approach of the force inherent in spiritual science. However much they may protest; this force remains in their souls for their next incarnation, and then the seeds have not been lost; they find their ways. With respect to the spiritual, existence is subject to the same laws, no matter whether we are following the working of the spirit in nature or in the case we could quote as our own.

But let us suppose that we wanted to refer this principle also to external, material life, and were to say: Well, people are doing the same thing in external life. Yes, my dear friends, that is just it. What I am now going to describe is happening, and we are living towards a future when it will happen to an ever-increasing extent. Production steadily increases, factories are built without asking: How much is needed?—as used to be the case when the village tailor made a suit only when it was ordered. There it was consumption which indicated how much should be produced, but now production is for the market; the goods are piled up in as large quantities as possible. Production goes on entirely in line with nature's principle. Nature is carried over into the social order. This tendency will, to begin with, more and more gain the upper hand. But here we are in the realm of the material. The spiritual law has no application to external life, precisely because it is valid for the spiritual world;—and something very remarkable results from this. As we are speaking among ourselves, these things can be said; the world today would certainly not understand us.

Goods are now produced for the market without regard to consumption, not according to the principle indicated in my essays on anthroposophy and the Social Questions. What is produced is piled up in warehouses, priced according to the money market, and then the producers wait to see how much is bought. This tendency will steadily increase until—and you will discover why I say the following—until its own nature it destroys itself.

(In this sentence is contained the most important of the present so-called causes of the War; but it is to be derived from spiritual life.)

One who observes social life with spiritual vision sees terrible tendencies to social ulcers springing up everywhere. That is the great anxiety for civilisation which arises in those who see to the roots of existence; that is the terrible fact which weighs so heavily and which—even if one could suppress all other enthusiasm for spiritual science and the impulse which makes one long to proclaim it—makes one long to cry out to the world the remedy for what is already so strongly under way and will gain increasing momentum. In the spreading of spiritual truths there is an element which of its own ground must work as nature works, but this way of working becomes a cancer when it enters into civilisation in the way described.

It was put before you previously in that lecture all that throws light on the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies. But you can clearly see from it that one only arrives at real knowledge of the social cancer or carcinoma-formation if one can find the Ahrimanic and Luciferic tendencies at work in the modern social order, find on the path of reality, not by simply comparing the social life with natural facts. What occurs in the social order must be sought on the spiritual path. And if it is sought on the materialistic path it can amount to no more than at most a comparison, an analogy of social occurrences with abstract facts of nature.

My dear friends, the fact that a number of cancerous tumours exist in modern society was expressed at that time in those lectures of 9th to 14th April 1914 But the expression was in fact a gathering together of what I had stated in various forms throughout our whole anthroposophical development, in order to prepare men for the point of time when the social cancer would reach its special crisis—1914!

There now appears a book which in itself is fairly worthless and stupid. It is by a C. H. Meray, entitled World Mutation, and published by Max Rasoher in Zurich in 1918. I will read you a few paragraphs of this book, the author of which has a merely intellectual grasp of industrial facts. And so just as the lectures on the inner nature of man are able to further reality the author by means of this book furthers the deviation from true reality, the misleading to false thinking. But I will let you hear a few of the sentences. There is an attempt to grasp the development of European and American civilisation merely through analogies, comparisons with facts in nature. Whereas in my lectures of 1914 you have reality, here you have abstract monistic comparisons, analogies which actually say nothing, because when one merely talks of natural facts and then points out that something similar exists in the social order these mere analogies rather darken understanding than shed light But what does this amount to? It is shown how seeds of disintegration have gradually entered western civilisation ever since ancient times aid how civilisation has been eaten into inwardly. Such an apercu is then summarised in words like:

“These unhealthy changes began in the fresh and flourishing early Renaissance cities, in the still purely production City-Republics of the striving citizens, as they had to nourish their giant cancer cells, prepared themselves for it and had to change themselves into an instrument for nourishing a cancerous growth.”

“The formation of this organisation out of which the structure of the modern State emerged, advanced side by side with the metamorphosis of the productive tissue which is definitely not to be regarded as belonging to its own life.”

(He calls regulated civilisation a productive tissue, that is, he picks up only a tissue of natural facts, not the real facts of the spirit.)

“For foreign elements in the body cannot normally come in contact with each other without producing inflammation—as in fact in the beginning such inflammations were produced when the soldiers of the Count of the city came in contact with the citizens (let us remember the bell, signalling the latter to form into bands!). Normally only the complete excision of the poisonous growth would have happened, such an effort was made to begin with and was also followed up later. The moment however the two elements, the cancerous growth and the working tissue, could carry on without inflammation, there arose an abnormality which could only preserve itself under pathological conditions

“Such abnormalities are everywhere to be found in organisms where tumours, ulcers, discharges, in short, foreign elements, are surrounded with a web that no more inflammation arises. The web or tissue which is formed there is a deformity and after the cure can be used for nothing further for the organism. Yet during the illness it serves as a protection for the organism; it forms a structure that renders the poison of the disease harmless to the body, although this formation meanwhile develops immeasurably and can itself become a serious phenomenon of disease.

“Thus the modern State also arose as a deformity of the completely uprooted working life; as it arose , however, the whole tissue had to co-operate for its own protection in order to paralyse the evil in it and remove the disintegrating poison-effects. Accordingly the State arose as a separate structure, interwoven it is true by the productive life, though it never became itself an apparatus of productivity. The whole system of modern political economy developed separately side by side with the State.”

“The wealthiest have the most direct connections with the poisonous growths, as they need an extensive protection for the sale of their goods. Hence they are more eager, and as being rich, also more capable of giving to the Governor a higher nourishment; he needs money, they as the ones who procure it for him; if he wants to accomplish something within the city he turns to the patricians. It lies in the interest of these patricians to strengthen the City-Prince, whereas those whose material business-circle does not extend beyond the walls feel a perpetual natural grudge against the Governor. (Physiologically: a negative chemico-tactic effect). They put up with him really only on account of the protecting of the wall-ring. The toxic effect, however, no longer changes the individuality of the patricians—or only seldom, they seldom become themselves warlike nobles—they belong already far too much to the antitoxic, working tissue. Their wealth has arisen from it and is bound up with it; a toxic effect is certainly shown – not on the individual but on the protoplasm, in the wealth.” (And protoplasm is now the wealth!)

“Whereas formerly wealth was not employed as yet to function as capital, but merely formed the reserves of life and well-being, its rôle now alters: wealth begins to annex to itself processes of work."

In connection with this passage I beg you to remember how in my lectures at Nuremberg in 1908 (on The Apocalypse) I pointed out that direct personal influence had withdrawn from modern industry and that money, that is, capital as such was beginning to work. I spoke of how the modern social order uses such exertion under Ahrimanic influence that someone is now below, now above. Personality no longer counts; it is a matter of the money itself doing business, now throwing someone up, now down again. Funds, accumulation of capital, and its counterpole, credit, this a-personal and anti-personal element is what is to evolve as the Ahrimanic counter-image of Spirit-Self for the future of the social order.

All of this is expressed here in this book in a purely Ahrimanic manner. But, my dear friends, there is a danger that something of this sort gains immense respect, since on every page it makes extensive quotations from natural science. Years after the reality has been pointed out through the researches of spiritual science, this Ahrimanic caricature of spiritual science appears, even with the same words for the same phenomena. This will impress people in spite of misleading and alluring them, because they will never understand reality unless they build the bridge between the purely external facts of natural science which are employed in this book and the purely spiritual-scientific processes which indeed can only be discovered through spiritual science. But it will certainly be accepted as genuine science—just as other similar things which have appeared and which I have spoken about in the course of our lectures—whereas in the near future the scientific nature of spiritual science will most certainly be attacked in a terrible way, in a way which you are not at all willing today to picture in its intensity!

These things, my dear friends, must be thoroughly realised, They must be seen through all the more as they touch upon facts which lie under the semblance of external reality. To possess insight into these facts requires the goodwill to pursue seriously and intelligently with sound human understanding the researches of spiritual science.

Opposite currents, polarities, must be held in balance, That can only be done if continually new influxes come directly from the spiritual world into what happens on earth, that is, if new facts which concern the world are continually revealed out of the spirit.

When once in Rome someone brought a Jesuit up to me, I had a conversation with him about just such things, I knew that it availed nothing and was actually a labour of love quite lost, but there were other reasons for it: there too it is necessary to lock at the true reality and not the outer semblance, I sought to make it clear to the Jesuit that, first, he must himself admit a revelation out of the supersensible in the course of the Mystery of Golgotha and what is written about it through the inspired Evangelists; that, moreover, the Catholic Church in which as a Jesuit he would believe accepts a continued evolution of the spiritual life through its saints. He replied, as was only to be expected: “Yes, that is all true, but that's done with; one must not bring that about of oneself. To work oneself through to spiritual life today is to begin to deal with the devil. One may study the Mystery of Golgotha, study the Gospels, the life of the saints, but unless one wants to fall a prey to demonic powers. one may not try in any way to come into direct relation with the spiritual world.” It is obvious that that would be said from such a quarter, and I could give you many similar examples.

There is the strongest opposition from certain quarters to the flowing in of new and ever newer spiritual truths. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, is even terribly afraid of spiritism, which of course is not sympathetic to us, because they live in the dread of something coming through a medium from the spiritual world which the Church, living solely in its old traditions, cannot accept. And it fears spiritism because it has materialist foundations and because—so it has believed for decades—it can easily gain followers through the fact that one could find something trickling in on a bypath out of the spiritual world into the world which the Roman Catholic Church wishes to rule.

Now you know, my dear friends, in the 1870s, in 1879, the possibility arose of a powerful, deeply-penetrating flowing-in from the spiritual world. I have often spoken of it, how a conflict that had taken place earlier in the spiritual worlds flowed into the earthly order, in the Michael-order. Since that time special opportunities have been given for men who so wish it to receive spiritual knowledge. Please do not imagine that the initiates of the Roman Catholic Church are not aware of such things! They are of course aware of them, but they construct their protective dams. And precisely in connection with the fact that spiritual life was particularly furthered by the spiritual worlds from the year 1879 on the Roman Catholic Church in a far-seeing way established the Infallibility-dogma in order through this to build a dam against any influx of any sort of new spiritual truths. It is obvious that if people are only allowed to frame their views in accordance with what is announced ex cathedra from Rome in the light of the dogma of Infallibility, then a powerful dam is erected against the inflow of spiritual truths from the spiritual world itself. That is the one thing, the Romish element, which had its natural stipulations in earlier times and brought over from these the rigidity in tradition, the rigidity in excluding the spiritual substance which could flow into the human soul out of the spiritual worlds.

Another stream is to be sought in that Centre which in a high degree—approximately at the time when Rome prepared the Infallibility-dogma—must be assigned to the English and American, the English-speaking peoples. We have already referred here to this occult Centre, in many connections. Just as the traditional element and false idealism in the head brings about the Ahrimanic element in the lower man, so, as you have seen, does materialism bring about the development of the spiritual in the lower man. And when this is not nourished from the head by new spiritual truths which are revealed to the world from time to time it will naturally be seized upon by Luciferic forces, the Luciferic principle. The Centre that has great influence on the English-American peoples (that is the best expression) prefers to reckon with the other pole. The occult Masonry which is anchored in that Centre and from there strongly influences the course of the outer culture of the whole civilised world, just as much promotes materialism—realising things of course—as Rome has promoted it through the papal Infallibility. Through the Infallibility-dogma Rome has intended to erect a dam against the influx of spiritual truths from the spiritual worlds; this Centre consciously promotes the spread of materialism in the modern civilised world, the spread of materialistic ideas in a more or less materialistic mode of life. And the strange thing is that when the Anglo-American initiates speak about Rome as a rule what they say is correct, and however much they inveigh against Rome they say what is right. They too, however, know that there is a spiritual life and that a continuous influx is possible, but they keep that secret and let it flow into civilisation only through unknown channels. And the non-English-speaking peoples in the civilised world have in the last decades, or last half-century, accepted an immense amount of what has flowed in there through this Centre; For these other civilisations in their present structure are in no way individualised, they are largely nourished by the materialistic tendency originating in his Centre.

And again, when Rome speaks about that occult Freemasonry, the Orders, it speaks correctly. One can therefore say that what Rome says is right, what the Freemasons of the West say is also right. That in fact is just the difficulty; these things in the most outstanding sense can be thrusting human nature towards the Luciferic or the Ahrimanic, and yet in what they say they cannot possibly be seized upon because what they say is right; when they speak of each other it is correct.

That is a factor that must be borne in mind very fundamentally in the present cultural tendencies. People nowadays are not inclined to consider what grows out of some affair or other, but merely look at what is expressed verbally in propaganda. But it is not at all a matter of the sounds and words of a propaganda, it is really a matter of making thane lower nature materialistic through materialism in the world of ideas—it becomes, however, spiritualised. And it is supposed to be a matter of making man more moral through an abstract idealism and discussion of every kind of fine ideal—yet one makes him—I speak figuratively of course—obese, materialistic in his lower nature, one makes him heavy and sleepy. And whereas on the one hand a strong tendency exists to scleroticise man Ahrimanically, which is particularly a Jesuit-tendency, there exists on the other hand a definite tendency to place the Luciferic beings in the service of the materialistic world-order, whereby precisely through materialism a spirituality may arise which is however a Luciferic spirituality. It is indeed not enough merely to look in its literal sense at what plays on the surface; one must go into the actual reality, which as is shown precisely by our instances today—however paradoxical they appear, often have an exactly opposite purpose to what one is led to believe through a superficial maya-observation. Things are being done in the world today from many different quarters on the principles of the occult Orders, though they are kept secret. Rome works just as much in accord with occult precepts as that other Centre does. Power lies just in the fact that men are kept in the dark and are not told what is actually going on. Hence arise the hatred and enmity against those who make their appearance and say what is taking place.—Naiveté moreover is especially harmful, the sort of naiveté which men show when they persist in believing that one attains something with these two streams if one tells them that spiritual science can give a beautiful understanding of Christ-Jesus, or something like that, or tells them how the deeper truths of spiritual science are to be found in true Christianity. It is a naiveté to suppose one can win over certain circles by showing them one has a truth which they really must recognise according to their whole hypotheses. That simply calls out hostility. The more we show in certain circles that we have the truth, the greater the hostility, and the more this truth proves effective all the more intense will the enmity appear. In recent times one has only waited to see if the moment would come when anthroposophical books would need larger editions, when thousands and thousands would listen to anthroposophy, in order from certain quarters not because they think anthroposophy says untruth, but because they fear it will say the true—in order to lay hold of this anthroposophy. That is what should be borne in mind. No naiveté should prevail among us, but penetrating knowledge, unbiased, unprejudiced observation of what happens.

It would please me much if you took away a feeling of this from this lecture; for once again let it be recapitulated what I said at the beginning of today's lecture: It is not so much a matter of the details, but of our receiving a firm impression of what lies in the whole spirit of these lectures. And then we must make ourselves more and more capable of taking such a place in the cultural life of today as befits a man of the present who is thoroughly awake and not sleeping.

The lecture yesterday dealt with questions of karma, and the endeavour was made to speak of them in such a way that they appear to us to be linked with inner processes in the soul, with something that is within our reach. It was said that certain tentative measures can be taken and that in this way a conviction of the truth of the law of karma may be awakened. If such questions are introduced again and again into our studies, this is because it is necessary to realise with increasing clarity how Anthroposophy, in the genuine sense of the word, is related to life itself and to the whole evolution of man.

There is no doubt that at least an approximately adequate idea can be formed of the change that will gradually and inevitably take place in all human life if a considerable number of people are convinced of the truths upon which studies such as those of yesterday are based. By steeping themselves in such truths, men's attitude to life will be quite different and life itself will change in consequence.

This brings us to the very important question—and it is a question of conscience for those who enter the Anthroposophical Movement: What is it, in reality, that makes a man of the modern age into an anthroposophist?—Misunderstanding may easily arise when endeavours are made to answer this question, for even to-day many people—including those who belong to us—still confuse the Anthroposophical Movement with some form of external organisation. There is nothing to be said against an external organisation, which from a certain point of view must exist in order to make it possible for Anthroposophy to be cultivated on the physical plane; but it is important to realise that all human beings whose interest in questions of the spiritual life is earnest and sincere and who wish to deepen their world-view in accordance with the principles of this spiritual Movement, can belong to such an organisation. From this it is obvious that no dogmatic, positive declaration of belief can be demanded from those who attach themselves to such an organisation. But it is a different matter to speak quite precisely of what makes a man of the present age into an anthroposophist.

The conviction that a spiritual world must be taken into account is, of course, the starting-point of anthroposophical conviction, and this must always be stressed when Anthroposophy is introduced to the public and reference made to its tasks, aims and present mission in life. But in anthroposophical circles themselves it must be realised that what makes the anthroposophist is something much more definite, much more decisive than the mere conviction of the existence of a spiritual world. After all, this conviction has always been held in circles that were not utterly materialistic. What constitutes a modern anthroposophist and, fundamentally speaking, was not contained in the theosophy of Jacob Boehme, for example, or of other earlier theosophists, is something towards which the efforts of our Western culture are strenuously directed—so much so, on the one side, that such efforts have become characteristic of the strivings of many human beings. But on the other side there is the fact that what particularly characterises the anthroposophist is still vehemently attacked by external culture and education, is still regarded as nonsense.

We do, of course, learn many things through Anthroposophy. We learn about the evolution of humanity, even about the evolution of our earth and planetary system. All these things belong to the fundamentals required by one who desires to become an anthroposophist. But what is of particular importance for the modern anthroposophist is the gaining of conviction with regard to reincarnation and karma. The way in which men gain this conviction, how they succeed in spreading the thought of reincarnation and karma—it is this that from now onwards will essentially transform modern life, will create new forms of life, an entirely new social life, of the kind that is necessary if human culture is not to decline but rise to a higher level. Experiences in the life of soul such as were described yesterday are, fundamentally speaking, within the reach of every modern man, and if only he has sufficient energy and tenacity of purpose he will certainly become inwardly convinced of the truth of reincarnation and karma. But the whole character of our present age is pitted against what must be the aim of true Anthroposophy.

Perhaps this fundamental character of our present age nowhere expresses itself so radically and typically as in the fact that considerable interest is shown in the central questions of religion, in the evolution of the world and of man, and even in karma and reincarnation. When such questions extend to the specific tenets of religions—concerning, let us say, the nature of the Buddha or of Christ—when such questions are discussed to-day, evidence of widespread interest will be apparent. But this interest peters out the moment we speak in concrete detail about how Anthroposophy must penetrate into every domain of external life. That interest dwindles is, after all, very understandable. Men have their places in external life, they hold various positions in the world. With all its organisations and institutions the modern world appears not unlike a vast emporium with the individual human being working in it as a wheel, or something of the kind. This indeed is what he feels himself to be, with his labour, his anxieties, his occupation from morning till evening, and he knows nothing beyond the fact that he is obliged to fit into this outer world-order. Then, side by side with these conditions, arises the question that must exercise every soul who is able to look even a little beyond what everyday life offers: it is the question of the soul's destiny, of the beginning and end of the soul's life, its connection with divine-spiritual Beings and Powers holding sway in the universe. And between what everyday life with its cares and anxieties brings to man and what he receives in the domain of Anthroposophy yawns a deep abyss.

It may be said that for most men of the present age there is almost no harmony between their convictions and what they do and think in their outer, everyday life. If some concrete question is raised in public and dealt with in the light of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, it will at once be evident that the interest which was still there in the case of general questions of religion and the like, no longer exists when it comes to matters of a really concrete kind. It cannot of course be expected that Anthroposophy will at once make its way into life, that everyone will immediately bring it to expression in whatever he is doing. But the world must be made to realise that it is the mission of Spiritual Science to introduce into life, to incorporate in life, everything that will emanate from a soul who has become convinced of the truth of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. And so the characteristic stamp of the modern anthroposophist may be said to be that he is on the way to acquiring a firmly based, inner conviction of the validity of the idea of reincarnation and karma. All the rest will then follow of itself.

Naturally it will not do to think: Now, reinforced with the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, I shall at once be able to grapple with external life. That, of course, is not possible. The essential thing is to understand how the truths of reincarnation and karma can penetrate into external life in such a way that they become its guiding principles.

Now let us consider how karma works through the different incarnations. When a human being comes into the world, his powers and capacities must, after all, be regarded as the effects of causes he himself engendered in earlier incarnations. If this idea is led to its consistent conclusion, every human being must be treated as if he were a kind of enigma, as a being hovering in the dark foundations of his earlier incarnations. If this idea of karma is put earnestly into effect a significant change will be brought about, not in methods of education only but in the whole of life. If that were achieved, the idea of karma, instead of being merely an anthroposophical idea, would be transformed into something that takes hold of practical life itself, would become a really potent factor in life.

But all external life as it presents itself to-day is the picture of a social condition which, in its development, has excluded, has indeed refuted, the idea of reincarnation and karma. External life to-day is organised almost as if there were a deliberate desire to quash any possibility of men being able, through their own inner development, to discover the reality of reincarnation and karma. In point of fact there is, for example, nothing more hostile to a real conviction of reincarnation and karma than the principle that a man must be remunerated, must receive wages corresponding to his actual labour. To speak like this seems utterly eccentric! Do not, however, take this example to imply that Anthroposophy would wish to throw to the winds the principles of an established practice and to introduce a new social order overnight! That cannot be. But men must become alive to the thought that no fundamental conviction of reincarnation can ever flourish in a world-order in which it is held that there must be a direct correspondence between wages and labour, in which man is obliged, through the labour he performs, to obtain the necessities of life. Naturally the prevailing conditions must remain, to begin with, for it will be clear, above all to anthroposophists, that what exists is in turn the outcome of karmic law and in this sense is justified and inevitable. But it is absolutely essential for men to be able to realise that what can, nay must, ensue from recognition of the idea of reincarnation and karma, unfolds as a new seed in the organism of our world-order.

Above all it follows from the idea of karma that we should not feel ourselves to have been placed by chance into the world-order, into the positions in which we find ourselves in life; on the contrary, we should feel that a kind of subconscious decision of the will underlies it, that as the result of our earlier incarnations, before we passed into this earthly existence out of the spiritual world between death and a new birth, we resolved in the spiritual world—a resolve we merely forgot when we incarnated in the body—to occupy the very position in which we now find ourselves. Consequently it is the outcome of a pre-natal, pre-earthly decision of the will that we are assigned to our particular place in life and have the actual inclination to steer towards the blows of destiny that befall us. If a man then becomes convinced of the truth of the law of karma, he will inevitably begin to incline towards, even possibly to love, the position in the world in which he has placed himself—no matter what it may be.

You may say: You are telling us very strange things. They may be all very well for poets or writers, or others engaged in spiritual pursuits. To such people you do well to preach that they should love, delight in, be devoted to, their particular positions in life. But what of all those human beings whose situations, in their very nature and with the labours they involve, cannot possibly be particularly welcome but will inevitably evoke the feeling of belonging to the neglected or oppressed?—Who would deny that a large proportion of the efforts made in modern civilisation aim at introducing into life continuous improvements which may help to get rid of the discontent at having been placed in such unpleasant situations? How numerous are the different institutions and sectarian endeavours to better life in all directions in order that even from the external aspect the earthly life of mankind might be bearable!

None of these endeavours reckon with the fact that the kind of discontent inevitably brought by life to numbers of people to-day is connected in many respects with the whole course taken by the evolution of humanity, that fundamentally speaking, the way in which men developed in past ages led to karma of this kind, and that out of the combined working of these different karmas the present state of human civilisation has proceeded. In characterising this state of civilisation we can only say that it is complex in the highest degree. It must also be said that the connection between what man does, what he carries out, and what he loves, is weakening all the time. And if we were to count those people who in their positions in external life to-day are obliged to engage in some activity that goes much against the grain, their number would by far exceed the number of those who affirm: I can only say that I love my external occupation, that it brings me happiness and contentment.

Only recently I heard of a strange statement made by someone to a friend. He said: ‘When I look back over my life in all its details I confess that if I had to live through it again from childhood to the present moment, I should do exactly the same things I have done up to now.’—The friend replied: ‘Then you are one of those most rarely to be found at the present time!’—The friend was probably right, as far as most men of the modern age are concerned. Not many of our contemporaries would assert that, if it depended on them, they would without hesitation begin life all over again, together with everything it has brought in the way of happiness, sorrow, blows of fate, obstacles, and would be quite content if everything were exactly the same again.

It cannot be said that the fact just mentioned—namely that there are so few people nowadays who would be willing to recapitulate the karma of their present life together with all its details—it cannot be said that this is unconnected with what the prevailing cultural state of humanity has brought in its train. Our life has become more complex but it has been made so by the different karmas of the personalities living on the earth to-day. Of that there can be no doubt at all. Nor will those who have the slightest insight into the course taken by human evolution be able to speak of any possibility of a less complicated life in the future. On the contrary, the complexity of external life will steadily increase and however many activities are taken over from man in the future by machines, there can be very few lives of happiness in this present incarnation unless conditions quite different from those now prevailing are brought about. And these different conditions must be the result of the human soul being convinced of the truth of reincarnation and karma.

From this it will be realised that something quite different must run parallel with the complexity of external civilisation. What is it that will be necessary to ensure that men become more and more deeply permeated with the truth of reincarnation and karma? What will be necessary in order that the concept of reincarnation and karma may comparatively soon instil itself into our education, take hold of human beings even in childhood, in the way that children now are convinced of the truth of the Copernican theory of the universe?

What was it that enabled the Copernican theory of the universe to lay hold of men's minds? This Copernican world-system has had a peculiar destiny. I am not going to speak about the theory itself but only about its entry into the world. Remember that this world-system was thought out by a Christian dignitary and that Copernicus's own conception of it was such that he felt it permissible to dedicate to the pope the work in which he elaborated his hypothesis. He believed that his conclusions were entirely in keeping with Christianity.¹ Was any proof of the truth of Copernicanism available at that time? Could anyone have demonstrated the truth of its conclusions? Nobody could have done so. Yet think of the rapidity with which it made its way into humanity. Since when has proof been available? To the extent to which it is correct, only since the fifties of the 19th century, only since Foucault's experiment with the pendulum.² Before then there was no proof that the earth rotates. It is nonsense to state that Copernicus was also able to prove what he had presented and investigated as an hypothesis; this also holds good of the statement that the earth rotates on its axis.

Only since it was discovered that a swinging pendulum has the tendency to maintain the plane of its oscillation even in opposition to the rotation of the earth and that if a long pendulum is allowed to swing, then the direction of oscillation rotates in relation to the earth's surface, could the conclusion be drawn: it is the earth beneath the pendulum which must have rotated. This experiment, which afforded the first actual proof that the earth moves, was not made until the 19th century. Earlier than that there was no wholly satisfactory possibility of regarding Copernicanism as being anything more than an hypothesis. Nevertheless its effect upon the human mind in the modern age was so great that until the year 1822 his book was on the Index, in spite of the fact that Copernicus had believed it permissible to dedicate it to the Pope. Not until the year 1822 was the book on which Copernicanism was based, removed from the Index—before, therefore, any real proof of its correctness was available. The power of the impulse with which the Copernican theory of the universe instilled itself into the human mind finally compelled the Church to recognise it as non-heretical.

I have always considered it deeply symptomatic that this knowledge of the earth's motion was first imparted to me as a boy at school, not by an ordinary teacher, but by a priest.³—Who can possibly doubt that Copernicanism has taken firm root, even in the minds of children?—I am not speaking now of its truths and its errors. If culture is not to fall into decline, the truths of reincarnation and karma must take equally firm root—but the time that humanity has at its disposal for this is not as long as it was in the case of Copernicanism. And it is incumbent upon those who call themselves anthroposophists to-day to play their part in ensuring that the truths of reincarnation and karma shall flow even into the minds of the young. This of course does not mean that anthroposophists who have children should inculcate this into them as a dogma. Insight is what is needed.

I have not spoken of Copernicanism without reason. From the success of Copernicanism we can learn what will ensure the spread of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. What, then, were the factors responsible for the rapid spread of Copernicanism?—I shall now be saying something terribly heretical, something that will seem quite atrocious to the modern mind. But what matters is that Anthroposophy shall be taken as earnestly and as profoundly as Christianity was taken by the first Christians, who also arrayed themselves against the conditions then prevailing. If Anthroposophy is not taken with equal seriousness by those who profess to be its adherents, it cannot achieve for humanity what must be achieved.

I have now to say something quite atrocious, and it is this.—Copernicanism, what men learn to-day as the Copernican theory of the universe—the great merits of which and therewith its significance as a cultural factor of the very first order are truly not disputed—this theory was able to take root in the human soul because to be a believer in this world-system it is possible to be a superficial thinker. Superficiality and externality contribute to a more rapid conviction of Copernicanism. This is not to minimise its significance for humanity. But it can truly be said that a man need not be very profound, need not deepen himself inwardly, before accepting Copernicanism; he must far rather externalise his thinking. And indeed a high degree of externalisation has been responsible for trivial utterances such as those to be found in modern monistic books, where it is said, actually with a touch of fervour: Compared with other worlds, the earth, as man's habitation, is a speck of dust in the universe.⁴ This is a futile statement for the simple reason that this ‘speck of dust,’ with all that belongs to it, is a vital concern of man in terrestrial existence, and the other worlds in the universe with which the earth is compared are of less importance to him. The evolution of humanity was obliged to become completely externalised to be quickly capable of accepting Copernicanism.

But what must men do in order to assimilate the teaching of reincarnation and karma?—This teaching must meet with far more rapid success if humanity is not to fall into decline. What is it that is necessary to enable it to take footing, even in the minds of children? Externalisation was necessary for the acceptance of Copernicanism; inner deepening is necessary for realising the truths of reincarnation and karma, the capacity to take in earnest such things as were spoken of yesterday, to penetrate into intimate matters of the life of soul, into things that every soul must experience in the deep foundations of its own core of being. The results and consequences of Copernicanism in present-day culture are paraded everywhere nowadays, in every popular publication, and the fact that all these things can be presented in pictures, even, whenever possible, in cinematographs, is regarded as a very special triumph. This already characterises the tremendous externalisation of our cultural life.

Little can be shown in pictures, little can be actually communicated about the intimacies of the truths embraced in the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘karma.’ To realise that the conviction of reincarnation and karma is well-founded depends upon a deepened understanding of such things as were said in the lecture yesterday. And so the very opposite of what is habitual in the external culture of to-day is necessary if the idea of reincarnation and karma is to take root in humanity. That is why such insistence is laid upon this deepening—in the domain of Anthroposophy too. Although it cannot be denied that certain schematic presentations may be useful for an intellectual grasp of fundamental truths, it must nevertheless be realised that what is of primary importance in Anthroposophy is to turn our attention to the laws operating in the depths of the soul, to what is at work inwardly, beneath the forces of the soul, as the outer, physical laws are at work in the worlds of time and space.

There is very little understanding to-day of the laws of karma. Is there anyone who as an enlightened man in the sense of modern culture, would not maintain that humanity has outgrown the stage of childhood, the stage of faith and has reached the stage of manhood where knowledge can take the place of faith? Such utterances are to be heard perpetually and give rise to a great deal that deludes people in the outside world but should never delude anthroposophists—utterances to the effect that faith must be replaced by knowledge.

But none of these tirades on the subject of faith and knowledge take into consideration what may be called karmic relationships in life. One who is capable of spiritual-scientific investigation and observes particularly pious, devotional natures among people of the present time, will ask himself: Why is this or that person so pious, so devout? Why is there in him the fervour of faith, the enthusiasm, a veritable genius for religious devoutness, for directing his thoughts to the super-sensible world?—If the investigator asks these questions he will find a remarkable answer to them. If in the case of these devout people in whom faith did not, perhaps, become an important factor in their lives until a comparatively advanced age, we go back to earlier incarnations, the strange fact is discovered that in preceding incarnations these individualities were men of learning, men of knowledge. The scholarship, the element of intelligence in their earlier incarnations has been transformed, in the present incarnation, into the element of faith. There we have one of those strange facts of karma.

Forgive me if I now say something that nobody sitting here will take amiss but would shock many in the outside world who swear by and are willing to accept only what is presented by the senses and the intellect that is dependent on the brain. In people who because of strongly materialistic tendencies no longer desire to have faith, but knowledge only, we find—and this is a very enigmatic fact—dull-wittedness, obtuseness, in the preceding incarnation. Genuine investigation of the different incarnations, therefore, yields this strange result, that ardently devout natures, people who are not fanatic but inwardly steadfast in their devotion to the higher worlds, developed the quality of faith they now possess on the foundation of knowledge gained in earlier incarnations; whereas knowledge founded on materialism is the outcome of obtuseness to views of the world in earlier incarnations.

Think how the whole conception of life changes if the gaze is widened from the immediate present to what the human individuality experiences through the different incarnations!

Many a quality upon which man prides himself in the present incarnation assumes a strange aspect when considered in the setting of how it was acquired in the preceding incarnation. Viewed in the light of reincarnation, many things will seem less incredible. We need think only of how, with these inner forces of soul, a man develops in one incarnation; we need observe only the power of faith in the soul, the power of soul that may inhere in faith and belief in something that as super-sensible reality transcends the phenomena of ordinary sense-perception. A materialistic monist may strongly oppose this, insisting that knowledge alone is valid, that faith has no sure foundation—but against this there is another fact, namely that the power of faith in the soul has a life-giving effect upon the astral body, whereas absence of faith, scepticism, parches and dries it up. Faith works upon the astral body as nourishment works upon the physical body. And is it not important to realise what faith does for man, for his well-being, for his healthiness of soul, and—because this is also the determining factor for physical health—for his body too? Is it not strange that on the one side there should be the desire to abolish faith, while on the other side a man who is incapable of faith is bound to have a barren, withered astral body? Even by observing the one life only this can be recognised. It is not necessary to survey a series of incarnations, for it can be recognised in the one. We can therefore say: Lack of faith, scepticism, dries up our astral body; if we lack faith we impoverish ourselves and in the following incarnation our individuality is drained dry. Lack of faith makes us obtuse in the next incarnation, incapable of acquiring knowledge. To contrast knowledge with faith is the outcome of worldly, jejune logic. For those who have insight into these things, all the palaver about faith and knowledge has about as much sense as there would be in a discussion where one speaker declares that up to now human progress has depended more upon men, while the other maintains that women have played the more important part. In the stage of childhood, therefore, the one sex is held to be more important, but at the present stage, the other! For those who are cognisant of the spiritual facts it is clear that faith and knowledge are related to each other as the two sexes are related in outer, physical life. This must be borne in mind as a trenchant and significant fact—and then we shall be able to see the matter in its true light. The parallelism goes so far that it may be said: Just as the sex usually alternates in the successive incarnations, so, as a rule, an incarnation with a more intellectual trend follows one more inclined towards faith, then again towards intellectuality, and so forth. There are, of course, exceptions—there may be several consecutive male or female incarnations. But as a rule these qualities are mutually fruitful and complementary.

Other qualities in the human being are also complementary in a similar way, for example, the two qualities of soul we will call the capacity for love and inner strength.

Self-reliance, harmonious inner life, a feeling of our own sure foundations, the inner assurance that we know what we have to do in life—in this connection too the working of karma alternates in the different incarnations. The outstanding stamp of the one personality is loving devotion to his environment, forgetfulness of self, surrender to what is around him. Such an incarnation will alternate with one in which the individual feels the urge not to lose himself in the outer world but to strengthen himself inwardly, applying this strength to bring about his own progress. This latter urge must not, of course, degenerate into lack of love, any more than the former urge must not degenerate, as it might well do, into a complete loss of one's own self. These two tendencies again belong together. And it must be constantly emphasised that when anthroposophists have the desire to sacrifice themselves, such desire is not enough. Many people would like to sacrifice themselves all the time—they feel happy in so doing—but before anyone can make a sacrifice of real value to the world he must have the strength required for it. A man must first be something before he can usefully sacrifice himself; otherwise the sacrifice of egohood is not of much value. Moreover in a certain respect a kind of egoism—although it is repressed—a kind of laziness, is present when a man makes no effort to develop, to persevere in his strivings, so that what he can achieve is of real value.

It might seem—but please do not misunderstand this—as though we were preaching lovelessness. The outer world is very prone to-day to reproach anthroposophists by saying: You aim at perfecting your own souls, you strive for the progress of your own souls. You become egoists!—It must be admitted that many capricious fancies, many failings and errors may arise in men's endeavours towards perfection. What very often appears to be the principle of development adopted among anthroposophists does not by any means always call for admiration. Behind this striving there is often a great deal of hidden egoism.

On the other side it must be emphasised that we are living in an epoch of civilisation when devoted willingness for sacrifice only too often goes to waste. Although lack of love is in evidence everywhere, there is also an enormous waste of love and willingness for sacrifice. This must not be misunderstood; but it should be realised that love, if it is not accompanied by wisdom in the conduct of life, by wise insight into the existing conditions, can be very misplaced and therefore harmful rather than beneficial. We are living in the age when it is necessary for something that can help the soul to progress—again something that Anthroposophy can bring—to penetrate into the souls of a large number of human beings, inwardly enriching and fertilising them. For the sake of the next incarnation and also for the sake of their activity between death and a new birth, men must be capable of performing deeds that are not based merely upon old customs, but are in essence new. These things must be regarded with great earnestness for it must be established that Anthroposophy has a mission, that it is like a seed of culture that must grow and come to flower in the future. But it can best be seen how this is fulfilled in life if we bear in mind karmic connections such as those between faith and reason, love and self-reliance.

A man who in accordance with the view prevailing nowadays is convinced that when he has passed through the Gate of Death the only prospect is that of an extra-terrestrial eternity somewhere beyond this world, will never be able truly to assess the soul's progress, for he will say to himself: If indeed there is such a thing as progress you cannot achieve it, for your existence is only transitory, you are in this world for a short time only and all you can do is to prepare for that other world.

It is a fact that our greatest wisdom in life comes from our failures; we learn from our failures, gather the most wisdom from the very things where we have not been successful. Ask yourselves seriously how often you have the opportunity of repeating a mistake, in exactly the same circumstances as before—you will find that such a situation rarely occurs. And would not life be utterly without purpose if the wisdom we can acquire from our mistakes were to be lost to earthly humanity? Only if we can come back again, if in a new life we can put into effect the experiences gained in earlier lives—only then does life acquire meaning and purpose. In either case it is senseless to strive for real progress in this earthly existence if it is regarded as the only one, and also for an eternity beyond the earth.

And it is particularly senseless for those who think that all existence comes to an end when they have passed through the Gate of Death. What strength, what energy and confidence in life would be gained by men if they knew that they can turn to account in a new life whatever forces are apparently lost to them! Modern culture is as it is because so very little was gathered for it in the previous incarnations of human beings. Truly, souls have become impoverished in the course of their incarnations.—How is this to be explained?

In long past ages, before the Mystery of Golgotha, men were endowed with an ancient clairvoyance and magical forces of will. And it continued to be so on into the Christian era. But in the final stages of this ancient clairvoyance it was only the evil forces, the demonic forces, that came down from the higher worlds. There are many references in the Gospels to demonic natures around Christ Jesus. Human souls had lost their original connection with the Divine-Spiritual forces and beings. And then Christ came to mankind. Human beings who are living at the present time have had perhaps two or three incarnations since then—each according to his karma. The influence exercised by Christianity until now could only have been what it is, because the souls of men were feeble, drained of force. Christianity could not unfold its whole inner power because of the feebleness of human souls. The extent to which this was so can be gauged if a different wave in human civilisation is considered—the wave which in the East led to Buddhism. Buddhism has the conviction of the truth of reincarnation and karma but in such a form that it regards the purpose and task of progress in evolution to consist in leading men away from life as quickly as possible. In the East a wave was astir in which there was no urge for existence. So we see how everything that should inspire men with determination to fulfil the mission of the earth has fallen away from those who belong to the wave of culture that is the bearer of Buddhism. And if Buddhism were to spread widely in the West, this would be a proof that souls of the feeblest type are very numerous, for it is these souls who would become Buddhists. Wherever Buddhism in some form might appear in the West, this would be a proof that the souls in question want to evade the mission of the earth, to escape from it as quickly as they can, being incapable of tackling it.

When Christianity was spreading in the South of Europe and was being adopted by the peoples of the North, the force of instinct in these Northern souls was strong and powerful. They absorbed Christianity, but, to begin with, its external aspects only could be brought into prominence, that is to say, those aspects which render it so important for men to-day to deepen their experience of the Christ Impulse, so that this Christ Impulse may become the inmost power of the soul itself and the soul grow inwardly richer as it lives on towards the future. Human souls have passed through incarnations of weakness, of uncertainty, and, to begin with, Christianity was an external support. But now the epoch has come when souls must become inwardly strong and vigorous. Therefore as time goes on, what the individual does in outer life will be of little consequence. What will be essential is that the soul shall fund its own footing, shall deepen itself, acquire insight into how the inner reality can be inculcated into the outer life, how the earth's mission can be permeated through and through with the consciousness, the strong inner realisation born from conviction of the truths of reincarnation and karma.

Even if no more than a humble beginning is made in the direction of enabling these truths to penetrate into life, this humble beginning is nevertheless of untold significance. The more we learn to judge man according to his inner faculties, to deepen life inwardly, the more we help to bring about what must be the basic character of a future humanity. External life will become increasingly complicated—that cannot be prevented but souls will find their way to one another through a deepened inner life. The individual may engage in this or that outer activity—but it is the inner richness of the soul that in the anthroposophical life will unite individual souls and enable them to work to the end that this anthroposophical life shall flow more and more strongly into external culture. We know that the whole of our outer life is strengthened when the soul discovers its reality in Anthroposophy; individuals pursuing occupations and vocations of every kind in outer life find themselves united. The soul of external cultural life itself is created through what is given us in Anthroposophy: benediction of the external life. To make this benediction possible, consciousness of the great law of karma must first awaken in the soul. The more we advance into the future, the more must the individual soul be able to feel within itself the benediction of the whole of life.

Outer laws and institutions will make life so complicated that men may well lose their bearings altogether. But by realising the truth of the law of karma the knowledge will be born in the soul of what it must do in order to find, from within, its path through the world. This path will best be found when the things of the world are regulated by the inner life of soul. There are certain things which go on quite satisfactorily because everyone follows the impulse that is an unerring guide. An example is that of walking along the street. People are not yet given precise instructions to step aside to one side of the pavement or the other. Yet two people walking towards each other very rarely collide, because they obey an inner instinct. Otherwise everyone would need to have a policeman at his side ordering him to move to the right or left. Certain circles would really like everyone to have a policeman on one side of him and a doctor on the other all the time—but that is not yet in the realm of possibility! Nevertheless progress can best be made in those things where a man is guided by an inner, spontaneous impulse. In the social life this must lead to respect for human beings, respect for the dignity of man. And this can be achieved only if we understand individuals as they can be understood when the law of reincarnation and karma is taken into account. This social life among men can be raised to a higher level only when the significance of this law takes root in the soul. This is shown most clearly of all by concrete observation such as that of the connection between ardent faith and knowledge, between love and self-reliance.

These two lectures have not been given without purpose. The real importance does not lie so much in what is actually said—it could be put in a different way. But what is of prime importance is that those who profess to adhere to Anthroposophy as a cultural movement shall be so thoroughly steeped in the ideas of reincarnation and karma that they realise how life must inevitably become different if every human soul is conscious of these truths. The cultural life of the modern age has taken shape with the exclusion of consciousness of reincarnation and karma. And the all-important factor that will be introduced through Anthroposophy is that these truths will take real hold of life, that they will penetrate culture and in so doing essentially transform it.

Just as a modern man who says that reincarnation and karma are fantastic nonsense, for it can be seen how human beings are born and how they die—something passes out at death but as that cannot be seen there is no need to take account of it just as a man who speaks in this way is related to one who says: What passes away cannot be seen, but this law can be taken into account and those who do so will for the first time find all life's happenings intelligible, will be able to grasp things that are otherwise inexplicable ... so will the culture of to-day be related to the culture of the future, in which the laws, the teachings of reincarnation and karma will be contained. And although these two laws—as thoughts held by humanity in general—have played no part in the development of present-day culture, they will certainly play a very leading part in all cultures of the future!

The anthroposophist must feel and be conscious of the fact that in this way he is helping to bring about the birth of a new culture. This feeling of the enormous significance in life of the ideas of reincarnation and karma can be a bond of union among a group of human beings to-day, no matter what their external circumstances may be. And those who are eventually held together by such a feeling can find their way to one another only through Anthroposophy.

• 1. Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) became a Church dignitary in Frauenburg. His celebrated astronomical work, De revolutionibus orbiurn coelestium, had been dedicated to Pope Paul III, but was not printed until 1543, in Nurnberg. Although protected, to begin with, by the dedication to the Pope, in 1615 it was put on the Index of books forbidden to Catholics, remaining there until 1822, when the ban was officially lifted by the Vatican on works dealing with the earth's motion and the fixed position of the sun.
• 2. In 1851, at the Pantheon in Paris, Leon Foucault demonstrated the diurnal motion of the earth by the rotation of the plane of oscillation of a freely suspended, long and heavy pendulum, and again the following year by means of his invention the gyroscope.
• 3. This was Franz Maraz, the priest at Neudorll, near Wiener Neustadt. Maraz was a Hungarian, later Canon at Oedenburg, and held high offices.
  
  In his autobiography, The Course of my Life, Rudolf Steiner says of him: “The image of this man was deeply engraved in my soul and throughout my life he has come again and again into my memory.”
• 4. cp. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). 66

By linking much of what has been said lately with various outside information, you will have gathered one thing, namely, that our anthroposophical movement has entered a state that expects of each individual seeking to participate in it that he associate this participation with a profound sense of responsibility. I have repeatedly alluded to this but it is not always envisaged thoroughly enough. Just because we are placed within our movement, we must not lose sight of the terribly grave time presently faced by European civilization and its American cousins. Even if we ourselves would say nothing about the connection between the impulses generated by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and contemporary historical events—although it is certainly necessary to speak up—such events would make an impact on our activities and inevitably would play a part in them without our having a hand in the matter. Therefore, the point is not to shut our eyes to the importance of what is indicated by such words.

From the interpretations put forward by Dr. Boos²⁰ yesterday, a number of friends who had not realized it before may have understood the necessary and practical connection existing between the idea of the threefold social order and the aims of anthroposophy.

The course of world events presently resembles that of an unusually complicated organism, and from all the various phenomena that must be carefully observed, the direction being taken by this organism becomes obvious. Much is happening today that initially makes an insignificant appearance. These seemingly unimportant events, however, frequently point to something immensely incisive and drastic. Again, things go on that clearly show the extraordinary difficulty we have in freeing ourselves from old familiar ideas in order to rise to a perception of what is in keeping with the times.

You can see from a number of newspaper reports of the last few days²¹ the effect made on the world by what issues forth from Dornach, how certain aspects of it are received by a number of persons. We should give these matters serious consideration, recognizing that every word we utter today must be well thought out. We should not say important things without assuming the obligation to inform ourselves about the course of world affairs in what is currently a most complicated organism. At the earliest opportunity I shall have to go into additional matters that have a bearing here; today I only wish to introduce the subject by saying that because of the connections of our movement with general world affairs it is above all else our duty to acquire a full understanding of the fact that we can no longer indulge in any sectarianism whatever in our movement. I have often mentioned this. The present time makes it necessary for us to rely on each individual co-worker, but each one bearing the full responsibility for what he represents in reference to our movement. This responsibility should take the form of an obligation never to say anything that does not appear through inner reasons to have the right relationship to the general course of contemporary world events. Sectarian activities are least of all in harmony with present-day world events. What is to be advocated today must be of a nature that can be represented before the whole world. It must be free in word and deed of any sectarian or dilettante character. We should never allow fear to deter us from sailing between Scylla and Charybdis.

Indicating a certain Scylla, many people may certainly say: How am I supposed to inform myself about what happens today when the course of events has become so complex, when it is so difficult to deduce the inner trends of facts from the symptoms? However, this should not lead to the Charybdis of doing nothing; it should induce us to steer the correct course, namely, to make us aware of our obligation to be in harmony with world events as far as possible, using all available means. It is certainly easier to say: This is anthroposophy and I am studying it; based on it, I engage in a little thinking, researching one or the other subject which I then represent before the world. If we wish to be active in the way indicated above without looking left or right, wearing blinkers in a sense in face of the great, important events of the present, we head straight for sectarianism. We are duty bound to study the contemporary course of events and, above all, to base our observations on the judgment we can acquire through the facts engendered by spiritual science itself.

Throughout the years, facts have been gathered together here for the purpose of enabling each individual person to form a judgment on the basis of these facts. They must not be left out of consideration when, based on our observations, a person wishes to give an opinion about something that is happening today. I mean to refer to this only in general terms, but plan to discuss it in greater detail at the first opportunity.

Today I should like to present something that will supplement what I said last Sunday about the nature of the human sense organism.²² I shall begin by pointing out a certain contradiction that I have often dwelt on before. On the one hand, without the general public knowing much about it, but nevertheless thinking along these lines, there exists the condition today of being infected in a sense with the natural scientific mode of thinking. On the other hand, we have one type of person still holding to the old traditional belief regarding moral or religious ideals; another has only skepticism and doubt, while for a third it is a matter of indifference. This great contradiction basically stirs and vibrates through all humanity today: How is the inevitable course of natural events related to the validity of ethical, moral and religious ideals?

I now wish to repeat what many of you may have already heard me say.²³ On the one side, we have the natural scientific world concept. It supposes that by means of its facts it can determine something about the course of the universe, in particular, that of the earth. And although it may consider its assertions to be hypothetical, they are imprinted into humanity's whole thinking, attitude and feeling. Our earthly existence is traced back to a kind of nebular condition. It is thought that everything arising out of this nebula is brought about entirely through the compulsion of natural laws. Again, the final condition of our earth's existence is also viewed as being based upon inflexible imperative laws, and concepts are formed about how the earth will meet destruction. Scientists base this kind of view on a widely accepted fundamental concept—even taught to school children—that the substance of the entire universe is indestructible, regardless of whether it is pictured as consisting of atoms, ions or the like. It is thought that at the beginning of earth's formation this substance was in some way compressed, then changed and metamorphosed, but that fundamentally the same substance is present today that existed at the beginning of earth evolution and that it will be present at the end, although compressed in a different form. It is supposed that this substance is indestructible, that everything consists only of transformations of this substance. The concept of the so called conservation of energy was added to this by assuming that in the beginning there were a number of forces which are then pictured as undergoing changes. Basically, the same sum of forces is again imagined to exist in the final condition of earth.

There have been only a few brave spirits who have rebelled against ideas of this kind. One of these I have often mentioned as a typical example, namely, Herman Grimm,²⁴ who has said: People talk of a nebulous state, of the nebulous essence of Kant-Laplace, at the beginning of the earth's or the world's existence. From it, it is supposed that everything on the earth, including the human being, has been compressed through purely natural processes. Furthermore, it is assumed that this undergoes changes until it finally falls back into the sun as a cinder. Now, Herman Grimm is of the opinion that a hungry dog nosing around the bone of a carcass presents a more attractive picture than this theory of Kant-Laplace concerning world existence, and that from a cultural and historical point of view people of the future will find it difficult to grasp how it had been possible for the nineteenth and twentieth century to have fallen victim to such pathological thinking. As I said, a few courageous individuals have opposed these ideas. The latter are so widespread today, however, that when somebody like Herman Grimm rejects them, it is said of him: Well, an art historian need not understand anything about natural science. When someone who claims that he is knowledgeable about natural science raises objections, he is regarded as a fool. These ideas are taken today as self-evident and the significance of this attitude is sensed by very few people. For, if this conception has even the slightest justification, all talk of moral and religious ideals is meaningless, for according to this conception these ideals are simply the product of human brains and rise up like bubbles. The social-democratic theorists label these ideals an ideology which has arisen through the transformations of substance, and which will vanish when our earth comes to an end. All our moral and religious concepts are then simply delusions. For the reality postulated by the natural scientific world-view is of a kind that leaves no room for a moral or religious outlook, if this scientific view of life is accepted in the way it is interpreted by the majority of people today. The point is, therefore, that, on the one hand, the time is ripe and, on the other, urgently requires that a world conception be drawn from quite different sources than those of today's education.

The only sources that make it possible for a moral and religious world concept to exist side by side with the natural scientific one are those of spiritual science. But they must be sought where they find expression in full earnestness. It is difficult for many people nowadays to seek out these sources. They prefer to ignore the glaring contradiction that I have once again brought to your notice, for they do not have the courage to assail the natural scientific world-view itself. They hear from those they look upon as authorities that the law of the conservation of matter and of energy²⁵ is irrefutable, and that anyone who questions it is a mere dilettante. Oppressed by the tremendous weight of this false authority, mankind lacks the courage to turn from it to the sources of spiritual science.

External facts also demonstrate that the well-being of Christianity, a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, depends upon our turning to the sources of spiritual science. The external course of events does indeed show this. Look at the so-called progressive theologians and what is expounded by the more advanced representatives of Christianity. Materialism has, after all, fastened its hold even upon religion. One can no longer understand how the spiritual, divine principle that is indicated by the name, Christ, is united with the human personality of Jesus of Nazareth. For, today, it is only through the sources of spiritual science that insight concerning this union can be acquired.

Thus, matters have reached the point where even theology has grown materialistic and speaks only of “the humble man from Nazareth,” of a man who is reputed to have taught something more sublime than others, but in the end is only to be considered as a great teacher. One of the most eminent among present-day theologians, Adolf Harnack,²⁶ actually coined the words: “It is the Father, not the Christ, Who belongs in the Gospel.” In other words, the Gospel is not supposed to speak of Christ, because theologians such as Harnack are no longer familiar with the Christ; they know only the teacher from Nazareth. They are still willing to accept his teaching. The teachings concerning the Father, the Creator of the world, belong in the Gospel, but not a teaching about Christ Jesus himself!

Without doubt, Christianity would continue on this path of naturalization, of materialization, if a spiritual-scientific impulse were not forthcoming for it. In all honesty, no conception concerning the union of the divine and the human natures in Christ Jesus can be derived by humanity from what has been handed down to it by tradition. For that we require the uncovering of new sources of spiritual science. We need this for the religious life and also for giving the social conditions of our civilization the new structure demanded by current events. Above all, we need a complete reconstruction of science, a permeation of all scientific fields with what flows from the spiritual-scientific sources. Without this, we cannot progress. Those who think that it is unnecessary to be concerned with the course of the religious or the social life, the course of public events throughout the civilized world or the accomplishments of science; those who believe they can present anthroposophy in sectarian seclusion to a haphazardly thrown together group that is looked upon as a circle of strangers by the rest of the world, are definitely victims of a grievous delusion.

The sense of responsibility in face of the whole trend of present events underlies everything that I say here. It is the basis of every sentence, of every word. I have to mention this because it is not always understood with all seriousness. If people today continue referring to mysticism in the same manner as was done by many during the course of the nineteenth century, it is no longer in harmony with what the world currently demands. If the content of anthroposophical teaching is merely added to what otherwise takes place in the course of world events, this is also not in harmony with present-day requirements. Remember how the problem, the riddle of human freedom has been the central theme of the studies I have conducted for decades. This enigma of human freedom must be placed by us today in the center of each and every true spiritual-scientific consideration.

This must be done for two reasons. First, because all that has come down to us from the old Mysteries, all that has been presented to the world by the initiation knowledge of old is lacking in any real comprehension of the riddle of human freedom. Sublime and mighty were the traditions those mystery teachers could pass on to posterity. There is greatness and power in the mythological traditions of the various peoples that can indeed be interpreted esoterically, although not in the way it is usually done. Something grand is contained in the other traditions that have as their source the initiation science of ancient times, if only the latter is correctly understood. One aspect is lacking, however; there is no reference at all to the riddle of human freedom in the initiation science of the ancient Mysteries, in the myths of the various peoples—even when they are comprehended esoterically—or in the traditions deriving from this initiation science. For, whoever proceeds from a present-day initiation knowledge, from an initiation of today, knows how present initiation compares to that of the past. He knows that in the course of its worldwide evolution mankind is only now entering the stage of real freedom, and that formerly it was simply not necessary to give to human beings an initiation science impregnated completely with the riddle of freedom. Today, hardly anybody has an inkling of what this riddle of freedom includes, what condition the human soul finds itself in when it becomes clearly aware of the burden it shoulders due to this enigma. New light must be shed, after all, on all initiation knowledge due to this riddle of human freedom. We observe how certain secret societies carry on in direct continuation from former times, some of them being quite strongly involved in present-day life. They only preserve the traditions of the past, however, only imitating and continuing on in the sense of the old practices. These societies are nothing more than mere shadows of the past; indeed, they represent something that can only do harm to mankind if it is active nowadays.

We have to realize that if anyone today were to teach even the loftiest former mysteries, they would be detrimental to humanity. No one who understands the nature of present initiation can possibly teach in a timely sense applicable to our age what was once taught in the Egyptian, Chaldean, the Indian or even those still so near our time, the Greek mysteries. After all, what has been propagated up to now as doctrine concerning Christianity has all been produced by these traditional teachings. What is needed is that we comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha anew based on a new teaching. This is what must be considered on the one side.

On the other side, we see the course of world events. We see how the striving for the impulse of freedom rises up from subconscious depths of the human soul; how, at the present time, this call for freedom resounds through all human efforts. It does indeed pervade them, but there is so much that resounds in human striving that is not clearly understood, that only echoes up from subconscious levels yet to be permeated by clear comprehension. One might say that mankind thirsts for freedom! Initiation science realizes that it must produce an initiation knowledge that is illuminated by the light of freedom.

And these two, this striving of humanity and the creation of a new initiation wisdom, illuminated by the light of freedom, must come together. They must meet in all areas. Therefore, a discussion of the social question must not be based on all sorts of old premises. We can only speak of it when we view it in the light of spiritual science, and that is what people find so difficult. Why is that?

Mankind is indeed striving for freedom, freedom for the individual, and rightfully so. I emphasize: rightfully so. It is no longer possible for human beings to cooperate with group souls in the sense of the ancient group system. They have to develop into individualities. This striving, however, seems to be at variance with what is acquired by listening to initiation science, something that must obviously originate from individual persons in the first place. The ancient initiate had his own ways and means of seeking out his pupils and passing on to them the initiation wisdom, even of gaining recognition for them, himself and his Mystery center. The modern initiate cannot allow that, for it would necessitate working with certain forces and impulses of the group soul nature, something that is not permissible today. Thus, humanity's condition today is one where everyone, proceeding from whatever his standpoint happens to be, wishes to become an individuality. For that reason, he naturally does not care to listen to what comes from a human being as initiation science. Yet, no progress can be made until it is understood that men can become individualities only when, in turn, they accept the content of initiation science from other individualities. This is not only related to isolated ideological questions. It is connected with the basic nature of our whole age and its effects on the cultural, political and economic spheres. Humanity is yearning for freedom, and initiation science would like to speak of this freedom. We have, however, only just reached the point in the stage of mankind's evolution where sound human reasoning can grasp the idea of freedom. Today, we must gain insight into much that can be gathered from anthroposophical literature, and that I should like to summarize in turn from a number of viewpoints. It must be understood today what sort of being man is. All the abstract chatter concerning monism misses the point of true monism which can only be attained after one has gone through much else, but it cannot be proclaimed from the first as a world conception.

Man is a twofold being. On the one side, we have what may be called man's lower nature—the word leads to misunderstandings, but there are few words in our language that adequately express what one would like to convey from the spiritual-scientific standpoint—namely, the physical, corporeal organization of which he consists in the first place. I have described the latter to you in my last lecture in connection with the sense organization. Today, we shall not go into that but refer to it again tomorrow. Those of you, however, who have studied anthroposophical literature to any extent at all, have some idea of man's physical, bodily organization and know that it is connected to the surrounding environment. What constitutes the outside world and dwells out there in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, also constitutes us human beings in the physical, corporeal sense. In a way we are its concentration, elevated to a higher level, and figuratively one could say that we are the crown of creation. In the physical, bodily sense we are a confluence of the effects of forces and substances occurring outside and appearing before us through our sense perceptions.

On the other side, we have our inner life. We have our will, our feeling, our thinking and our conceptual capability. When we reflect upon ourselves, we can observe our own will, feeling and thinking, and permeate these with what we call our religious, moral and other ideals. Here, we arrive at what may be termed the man of soul and spirit. Again, this term may easily lead to misunderstandings, but it must be used. We cannot manage if we do not turn the gaze of our soul on one hand to this soul-spiritual human being, and on the other to the physical, corporeal man. But whether we study the facts of nature impartially or contemplate spiritual science, it is necessary to come to the realization: This physical, bodily organization is not really available to what human science, currently existing in the exoteric world, is able to grasp in any sense. If I am to clarify this schematically by means of a sketch, I should like to say: When I condense all that constitutes the human physical organization and its connection with the whole surrounding world (red in sketch), this continues to a certain point. I shall indicate that here by a line. Despite all modern amateurish objections of psychology, beyond this point and polarically differing from it, we have what may be called the soul-spiritual nature of man (yellow), that, in turn, is linked with a world of soul and spirit. That world appears most abstract to present-day human beings, because they grasp it only in the sense of abstract moral or religious ideals that have also become increasingly abstract conceptions. Yet, in regard to both sides of human nature, we are obliged to say: What is looked upon today as science encompasses neither man's physical body nor his soul-spiritual nature. We cannot recognize the physical corporeal nature of man. You can discover the reasons for this in my little book, Philosophy and Anthroposophy.²⁷ For, if man would penetrate into himself with inner vision, that is, if he were to look into the very depths of his being and perceive what is going on there, he would be able to do so exactly in the sense of what modern science deems "exact." Then, however, man could not be the being he is today, for he would have no memory, no facility of recollection. When we look at the world, we retain its pictures in our memory. This means that impressions of the world reach only as far as this barrier (see arrow in sketch). From there, they strike back into the soul and we remember them. What thus strikes back out of our own selves into memory conceals from us our physical bodily nature. We cannot look into it, for if we were able to do so all the impressions would merely be momentary, nothing would be thrown back to form recollections. It is only because this barrier acts as a reflector—after all, we cannot look behind a mirror either, its impressions are reflected back to us—that we cannot see inside ourselves. The impressions are reflected back to us unless we rise to spiritual science. If they were not thrown back, we would not have the reflected impressions of memory in ordinary life. We must be so organized as human beings in life that we have memories. Due to this, however, our physical bodily organization is concealed from us. Just as we cannot see through a mirror to what lies behind it, we cannot look behind or under the mirror of memory and behold the way the physical body of the human being is organized.

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This is true psychology; this is the true nature of memory. Only when spiritual-scientific methods penetrate through this reflector in such a way that no use is made of the faculty of memory—as I have already mentioned in public lectures—and, instead, without recollection, one works each time with new impressions, only then are the true forms of body and soul discovered.

It is the same in the other direction. If, with our ordinary powers of cognition, we could penetrate the soul-spiritual concerning which I told you last Sunday that this is what is in truth located behind the world of the senses rather than atoms and molecules—and if we were not prevented, so to speak, by the boundaries and barriers of natural science, there would not be present in us something that is, in turn, needed in human life and must be developed by us between birth and death, namely, the capacity for love. The human capacity for love is created in us by the fact that, in this life between birth and death, if we do not advance to spiritual science, we have to forego penetrating the veil of the senses and seeing into the spiritual world. We retain the capacity of memory only by renouncing all ability to see into our own physical body. Thereby, however, we are exposed to two great illusions. The dogmatic adherents of the natural scientific world conception are at the mercy of one of these illusions. They pay no attention to initiation knowledge and do not come to the realization—in the way I described it to you last Sunday²⁸—that behind the veil of the senses there is no matter, no substance, no energy, of which natural science speaks, but soul-spiritual being through and through. Today, I must still reiterate with the same emphasis what I stressed in my commentary on the third volume of Goethe's scientific writings, namely, Goethe's Theory of Color.²⁹ Out there is the world's carpet of colors, the red, blue and green; out there are the other perceptions. No atoms and molecules are concealed behind it all, but spiritual beings. What is driven to the surface from these spiritual beings lives and expresses itself in the world's carpet of colors, in its relationships of sound and warmth and all the other sensations the world transmits to us.

Those, however, who are dogmatic followers of the natural scientific world view today do not realize this. They have no desire to listen to initiation science. In consequence, they begin to speculate about what is hidden behind color, warmth, and so forth, and arrive at a material construction of the world. However well founded this construction may seem for example, the modern theory of ions—it is always the result of speculation. We must not speculate about what is behind the world of the senses; we may only gain experiences there by means of a higher spiritual world. Otherwise, we must content ourselves to remain within the phenomena. The sense world is a sum of phenomena and must be comprehended as such.

Thus, we are given a picture of nature today which is then extended to include the state of the earth at its beginning and at its end—a picture that excludes an ethical and religious world view for the honest thinker.

The victims of the second illusion are those who Look within. For the most part, they do not go beyond what is reflected. Ordinary man in everyday life perceives the effects of memory—he recalls what he experienced yesterday and the day before, indeed, years ago. Someone who becomes a mystic today brings any number of things to the surface from within which he then clothes in beautiful mystical words and theories. But as I have recently pointed out,³⁰ these things are but the bubbling and seething of his inner organic life. For, if we penetrate this mirror, we do not come to what a Master Eckhart or Johannes Tauler have in their mysticism. We arrive at organic processes of which, it is true, the world today has scarcely any idea. What is clothed in such beautiful words is related to these organic processes as the flame of a candle is related to the flammable material—it is the product of these organic processes. The mysticism of a John of the Cross, of a Mechthild of Magdeburg, or of Johannes Tauler and Master Eckhart³¹ is beautiful, but nevertheless, it is only what boils up out of the organic life and is described in abstract forms merely because one lacks the insight into how this organic life is active. He can be no true spiritual scientist who interprets as mysticism the inwardly surging organic life. Certainly, beautiful words are used to describe it, but we must be capable of taking a completely different viewpoint from that of the ordinary world when referring to these matters. We ought not to adopt the humanly arrogant standpoint and say: The inner organic life is the lower form of life. It is not elevated if its effects are designated as mysticism. On the contrary, we are impelled into the life of the spirit when we discern this organic life and its effects and realize that the more we descend into man's individual nature, the more we distance ourselves from the spiritual. We do not approach it more closely. We draw near the spirit only by way of spiritual science, not by descending into ourselves. When we do the latter, it is our task to discover how the collaboration of heart, liver and kidneys produces mysticism; for that is what it does.

I have often pointed out that the tragedy of modern materialism is that it actually cannot perceive the material effects, indeed, that it cannot even reach as far as the material effects. Today we have neither a true natural science nor a genuine psychology. True natural science leads to the spirit, and the kind of psychology progressing in the direction that we have in mind today leads to insight into heart, liver and kidneys, not the abstractions our modern, amateurish psychology speaks of. For what is frequently called thinking, feeling and willing today is an abstract set of words. People lack insight into the concrete aspects, and it is easy to accuse even sincere spiritual science of materialism just because it leads into the nature of material elements in order to guide us in this way to the spirit.

It will be the specific task of true spiritualism to unveil the nature of all matter. Then it will be able to show how spirit is effective in matter. It must be taken quite seriously that spiritual science ought not to be concerned with the mere logicality of knowledge, but has to aim for a knowledge that is action. Something must be done—with regard to knowing. What is taking place in the process of cognizing must become involved in the course of world events. It must be something factual. It was just this that I was trying to indicate last Sunday and the days before. It is a matter of arriving at the realization that spirit as such must be comprehended as a fact; no theory concerning the spirit may be developed. Theories should only serve to lead to living experience of the spirit. This is the reason why it is so often necessary for the true spiritual scientist to speak paradoxically. We cannot persist today in talking in the customary formulations when we speak about spiritual science; otherwise, we come to what an erroneous theosophy has led to. It mentions any number of the members of man's being—the physical man, the etheric and astral being—each one more tenuous than the last. Physical man is dense, the etheric is less so, the astral being is still more rarefied. There are utterly tenuous mental and other states that are increasingly delicate, a perceptible mist, but all remain a mist, they all remain matter! That, however, is not the point. What does matter is that one learns in substance itself to overcome material. This is why one must frequently employ words that have a different connotation from the one customary in everyday life.

Therefore, we must say—and that matter will become clearer to us tomorrow: Take, on the one side, a person who is of a thoroughly materialistic mind and has been led astray, shall we say, by present-day materialism, one who cannot raise himself to a view of anything spiritual and, according to theory, is a complete materialist, considering any mention of the spirit pure nonsense. Suppose, however, that what he says concerning matter is intelligent and really to the point. This man, then, would have spirit. Although, by means of his spirit, he might uphold materialism, he would have spirit.

Then, let us look at another person who is a member of a theosophical society and adheres to the viewpoint: This is the physical body, then comes the more rarefied etheric body, followed by a more tenuous astral body, mental body, and so on. It does not take much spirit to make these assertions. Indeed, such a theory can be represented with very little spirit. The expounding of such a spiritual world is then, strictly speaking, a falsehood, because in reality one only pictures a material world phrased in spiritual terms.

Where would a person look who is genuinely seeking for the spirit? Will he seek it by turning to the materialistic theorist who has spirit, albeit in a logical manner, or will he turn to the one who makes plausible statements, so to say, but whose words refer only to matter? The true spiritualist will speak of the spirit in connection with the former, the one who represents a materialistic world conception, for there spirit can be present, whereas no spirit need be present in expounding a spiritual view. What is important is that spirit is at work, not that one speaks of spirit.

I wished to say this today merely to clear up certain matters that seem paradoxical. The spirited materialist may be more filled with spirit than the exponent of a spiritual theory who presents it spiritlessly. In the case of true spiritual science, the possibility no longer exists merely to dispute logically about ideological standpoints. It becomes imperative to grasp the spirit in its actuality. That is impossible unless one first comprehends some preliminary concepts such as those of which we have spoken today and shall be considering further tomorrow.

• 20. Dr. Roman Boos's descriptions, given on August 13, 1920, were not recorded. He reported orally on them to Dr. Steiner.
• 21. Refers to a news report carried by the French, German and Swiss press, according to which the German Foreign Minister, Simons, had supposedly told a reporter of the “Impartial” that he was a follower of the reforms suggested by Rudolf Steiner (the threefold social organism). See, among others, “Basler Nachrichte,” 1920, #345, August 14, in which an article is quoted from the “Vossische Zeitung” of August 6. In the lecture of April 22, 1921, in answer to a particularly crude article in which Simons was described as “the favorite disciple of the Theosophist, Steiner,” Rudolf Steiner made the following comment: “In the weekly magazine which is primarily the mouthpiece of widespread public opinion, we note in the last issue that public sentiment was being worked up against Simons' policies. It goes without saying that neither anthroposophical spiritual science nor the threefold movement have anything to do with Simons' politics. It is out of a spirit of deep untruthfulness that anthroposphical spiritual science is lumped together with Simons' policies.”
• 22. See Lecture III of this volume.
• 23. See the lecture of March 18, 1920; printed in “Menschenschule,” Pamphlet 6, 1958.
• 24. Hermann Grimm: 1828–1901, Goethe-Vorlesungen, Vol. 2, Berlin, 1877.
• 25. This law was first proclaimed by Julius Robert Mayer (1814–1878), doctor and scientist. See Rudolf Steiner: Erdensterben und Weltenleben, GA 181, Lecture XII (not included in English translation of this cycle). Dornach, 1967.
• 26. Adolf von Harnack: 1851–1930. The quotation literally says: “Not the Son, but only the Father belongs in the Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed it.” In Das Wesen des Christentums, Leipzig, 1900.
• 27. Rudolf Steiner: “Durch den Geist zur Wirklichkeits-Erkenntnis der Menschenraetsel: Philosophie und Anthroposophie. Vier Maerchen (aus den Mysteriendramen). Anthroposophischer Seelenkalender. Der Seelen Erwachen, 7.u. 8. Bild,” Berlin, 1918. Compiled upon requests by friends and published in book-form for the German soldiers on the front.
• 28. See Lecture III of this volume.
• 29. See Note #4
• 30. See Lecture II of this volume.
• 31. See Note #17

If you follow present-day developments with full awareness, in all humanity you will find a trend little adapted to direct thinking towards what the purely perceptible facts at work in the world themselves demand. There exists a general aversion to thoughts that do not run in the old grooves. But never before, perhaps, would it have been so apt to ask how it comes about that people are quite unready to entertain thoughts new to them. We experience today a fundamental phenomenon running through the whole evolution of the times. I have often pointed out how this came to expression some years ago. One could quote quite a collection of speeches delivered in the spring and early summer of 1914 by European statesmen, and find much the same in all their utterances—in what, for example, the Secretary of State, Jagow, said when addressing the Reichstag. This was to the effect that by the efforts of the European Cabinets it had been possible to create a satisfactory relation between the great powers, and that peace in Europe had been secured for a long time to come. Again and again you might find this kind of speech, repeated with variations by these self-styled ‘practical’ men. Thus it was at that time. A few weeks later began the world-conflagration now merely entering on a different phase.

What else do we experience today in the aims and actions of men so largely the children of their times? I have recently attended a so-called League of Nations Conference at Berne. There people talked of many things. Fundamentally everything concerning recent previous events was of the same caliber as the speeches of the European statesmen in the spring and summer of 1914. These men talk on the old customary lines of thought as for years they have been accustomed to talk. In truth, during the last four-and-half years they have actually learnt nothing, nothing at all from the lessons speaking to them out of the depths of world-existence. This is a fact to which the Anthroposophist should give his most earnest attention; for this depressing indifference in face of facts is widespread throughout the greater part of the continent of Europe. Despite many variations there repeatedly appears, quite typically, what is produced out of powerful depths, which are, however, ruinous for these times. This appears from the direction of a certain current in world-outlook, which on account of indifference and lack of interest among Europeans has every prospect of making impression upon impression, conquest upon conquest. When I was quite a boy—a long time ago now—in my religious books the following could be read, which was intended to lead boys to knowledge of Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ was either a hypocrite, a lunatic, or what He Himself said—the Son of the living God. Since one dare not accept His being either a hypocrite or a lunatic, there remains only the other possibility, namely, that it is true that He was, as He said, the Son of the living God! What was there in print in my religious books decades ago, I heard again recently in an address given in Berne by a Graz Professor Ude, in connection with the so-called Berne League of Nations Conference. Once again one could hear the words Jesus was either a hypocrite, a lunatic, or as He Himself said the Son of the living God. “And as we dare not call Christ”—this was hurled at the audience—“a lunatic or a hypocrite. He can only have been what He said, the Son of the living God!” With Jesuitical fervour this was cast at the audience, and there were few indeed in the hall who today in face of such things would ask the only really significant question: Has not this been repeated over and over again before the faithful, and in spite of it has not destruction descended upon mankind? Is there no one with heart and sense today in whom the thought can arise of the senselessness in the midst of the great world catastrophe of crying aloud to the multitude things that have shown such strong proof of their fruitlessness: And I heard another talk, by the same professor, on the social question, which from beginning to end gave no hint of what should happen, what must happen. It was solely a kind of condemnation of many immoral practices that, in the present time, are certainly both prevalent and predominant. But here, too, one realised that nothing had been learnt from the sad experiences of these four-and-a-half years.

This is a better example than many because, among the numerous speeches given in Berne these of Professor Ude were by far the best. For behind them was at least a world-outlook, even though one which if preached today must have its dangers. The other speeches had their roots in a lack of power to rise to any kind of world-outlook or understanding of life. We must continually emphasise that men's thoughts today have become dull and summary. They are unable to penetrate into realities. They move among illusions and are entirely superficial. Men cannot see into what it is that these times demand from those who would speak about the necessary organisation of things.

We should remind ourselves again and again, my dear friends, that during the last four centuries we Europeans, with the new blood of America, have produced a thinking only fit to understand what is lifeless. We have brought into being a thinking entirely dominated by mathematical technics. We have become incapable of directing our thought to what is living in nature, and comprehend only what is dead. What official science has to say about the living organism is only valid for the organism when dead, and is actually acquired from the corpse. So accustomed have people become to this thinking that it is also applied to the social organism. This simply means that mankind in general today is incapable of any creative thinking about the living social organism, at least they find it very difficult. But what thoughts do they find easy? They find easy such thoughts as have been drubbed into them for centuries through the method of catechism and as run in the ruts they have made; or those thoughts born of thinking that relates only to what is dead in the living organism. But today it is the living social organism we have to comprehend.

Let us start from a concrete example. Modern socialist thinking is directed against capitalism. Socialism demands the association of all private capital for means of production. There was already much talk about this socialisation in what I believe was called the National Assembly of Weimar. The way in which capitalism is now spoken of absolutely conforms with the dead thinking of recent centuries, which has greatly increased in the world-conception of purely materialistic natural science. What exactly have we in capitalism? We have something that fundamentally has become a terrible oppressor of the great mass of human beings, and we have the fact that there is very little to be said in answer to what is urged, and will continue to be urged from the side of the proletariat against the oppressive nature of capitalism in its relation to the spheres of the spiritual, of the economic, and of rights. But what conclusions are drawn by the socialist thinker from these undeniable facts? The conclusion that capitalism must be done away with! Capitalism is the oppressor, something dreadful, it has proven itself a scourge of modern mankind, so it must be destroyed. What should appear more comprehensible, more fruitful, for the usual agitator than this demand for the abolition of capitalism. But it has resulted in terrible deeds all over Europe. For those who do not confine themselves to these dead thoughts of the last four hundred years, but are able to turn to living thinking needed above all for our Spiritual Science—for those, this talk of the necessity for abolishing capitalism as an oppression and a scourge, is just as logical, based on just such factual as the following: We continually breathe in oxygen end breathe out dead carbonic acid; in us the oxygen is transformed into carbonic acid. Then why should we first inhale it? For it only produces a deadly poison in us, it becomes a deadly poison! There is no doubt that oxygen changes inside us to deadly poison, but for our life's sake we have to breathe it in; the life process in both human and animal bodies is unthinkable without the inhaling, of oxygen. And the social life is just as unthinkable without the continual building up of capital; without the constant building-up of the means of production which, strictly speaking, is nothing more nor less than capital. There is no social organism that would not show the interworking of individual human capacities. Were the demands of the social organism widely understood the worker would say: It is a question of having confidence in the director of the undertaking, for unless he takes the responsibility for it I cannot do my work. When there are directors of undertakings, however, the accumulation of capital necessarily follows. It is impossible to escape the accumulation. If socialistic thinkers, well-meaning up to a point, but mistaken, put the question: How is capitalism to be done away with? this is as significant as to ask: How is the social organism itself to be done away with? How, best is the social organism to be driven to its death?

It is quite clear for anyone who has insight into the matter that capital is accumulated even in the wisest social order, and equally clear that it is idle to ask: How can the amassing of capital be prevented; how can we arrange that no capital is accumulated?—But you see, people today find it too difficult to face up to these things; they prefer to avoid such thoughts. Where thinking is concerned they prefer everything to be easy. But this is not allowed by the times. It is always forgotten that everything living is in a state of becoming, that to comprehend the living time must be taken into account; what is living is one thing at one time and later something different. With a little thought it is not hard to become aware that to understand in its concrete nature anything living, we must take time into account. For the human organism in something alive. Think of your organism about half-past-one; you are all busy people who do not stay long over your meals; coming out after having eaten you have—at least it is to be hoped you have—satisfied your hunger, you are no longer hungry. You can describe your organism, taking it in its concrete condition at half-past-one, as a human organism that is a living being without hunger. But at half-past-twelve on entering the restaurant it was otherwise; then you were all hungry; then you would say: a human organism is something having hunger. The fact is that you are looking at the concrete, the living, at two different points of time, and that, at two different points of time, two entirely contrasting conditions are needed for the well-being of the organism, and something has to be brought about in the the organism that has the effect of causing its opposite to arise. It is the same in what is living in nature as it is in what is socially alive. In a living society capital can never be prevented from arising as a natural symptom of the work of individual human capacities; private property can never be prevented from becoming the means of production. When anyone devotes himself to the direction of some branch of production, and also shares equally in the resulting products with the manual workers working with him, the social organism would never be able to exist unless capital appeared as an attendant phenomenon. For the individual possesses this just as much as he possesses what he needs for his own use, what he produces so that he can exchange it for what he needs.

But we can think just as little whether or not we should eat since we shall certainly become hungry again, as we can think about how the building-up of capital can be permanently prevented. We can think only how this capital is to be transformed at some future date, what must become of it. You cannot wish to prevent the accumulation of capital without undermining the whole social organism in its capacity for life; you can only want what is thus accumulated not to cause harm to the soundness of the social organism.

What is demanded in this way for the soundness of the social organism to be found only in the threefold ordering. For only in the threefold social organism, as in the human natural organism, can the different members work in their various directions. It is in the interest of the individual that a member should be there in the social organism in which individual human capacities come to expression; but it is in the general interest that these individual human capacities should not take on a form that sooner or later would injure the organism. In the course of the economic life capital will always be accumulated. If just left there it will simply pile up to an unlimited extent. Capital piled up through the capacities of human individuals cannot be left in the economic sphere, it must be transferred to the sphere of rights. For the moment man acquires more than he needs of what is produced by him alone or in association with his fellows, the moment capital is accumulated, what he possesses is no more a commodity than is human labour. Possession is a right. Possession is nothing more nor less than an exclusive right, a matter of using or disposing of a thing—be it land, house, or anything of the sort—with utter disregard of others. No other definition of possession is fruitful for understanding the social organism. The moment a man acquires a possession, it must come under the political State and be directed from within the Rights State. But the State may not itself acquire, for then it would itself become economist. It has only to pass over what is acquired to the spiritual organism where the individual capacities of men are dealt with. Now-a-days a process of this kind is carried out only with goods today considered of least value. What I have just been stating holds good for these; it does not hold good for what is of value. When today anything spiritual is produced, a fine poem for instance, an important work by writer or artist, the proceeds from it can be left to his heirs for thirty years after his death, then it passes ever as the free property of all men in common. Thirty years after his death an author's works can be reprinted without any restriction. This originates in the sound idea that man has society to thank for his own individual capacities. Just as a man cannot learn to speak on a desert island but only in the company of others, it is also only from society that he has his individual capacities—on the basis of his karma, certainly, but that has to be developed in society. The fruits of individual activity must return to society. For a time only the individual has command of it because this is better for the social organism. A man himself best knows what he has produced, so to begin with he can be its best administrator. The goods valued least by modern mankind, the spiritual goods, are thus socially estimated in a certain way by taking into account the current concepts.

Some apparently capitalistic members of my recent audience in Berne are supposed to have been very angry—so I was told—when I asked in a lecture why it should not be possible for a capitalist to be obliged by law to assign his capital, a certain number of years after his death, to the free control of a corporation of the spiritual organisation, the spiritual part of the social organism. One can surely think out different ways of establishing a concrete right. But, if it should be expected of people today to return to what was a matter of right in the old Hebraic times, namely, that after a definite time: goods should be apportioned anew, it would be regarded as something unheard of. But what is the consequence of men looking upon it in this way? The consequence is that in the last four-and-a-half years ten million people have been killed, eighteen million crippled, and we have the prospect of more happening in this way. Reflection above all is needed in these matters. It is really not without importance that there should be a desire for the concept of time to be brought to the understanding of the social organism The social organism is thought of as being timeless if it is said that already in a condition of arising something should be done with the incipient capital. But one has to allow capital to come into existence, end even let it for a time be controlled by those who have caused it to arise. We must, however, have the possibility of letting it actually pass over again to men in general through a sound organisation, a sound organism, that is to say, an organism functioning as one that is threefold.

You cannot just ask why a social organism consisting in only one member should not be capable of doing all this. Today people still believe that it is possible, but when they believe it they must reckon badly with the human soul. Only think what it means—for the human soul must be reckoned with—when a near, or even distant, relation of a judge stands before him. As a relation he has his special feelings, but when he has to pronounce judgment it will not be in accordance with his feelings but obviously in accordance with the law. He will give his decision from this other source. Thought out in an all-embracing psychological way this gives you an idea of the necessity for men to judge from three directions, to control from three sources, whatever streams into the social organism. Our times demand that we should go into these things. For ours is the time of the epoch of consciousness, that wishes man to have concrete ideas as guiding impulses for his actions. Many people claim today that we should not keep to the intellect, and to abstract thinking (which is all the thinking they know) but that we should judge out of feeling and, since thinking is only for scientific matters, should hold above all to belief in principles that concern life between man and man.

This is all very doubtful because in our time men are inclined to the most abstract thinking and hold fast to the most straight-forward concepts. And when they have grasped these they cling to them with tremendous tenacity. This abstract thinking has for its organ chiefly the human head, is bound up at least with the physical organ. Formerly, in the time of atavistic clairvoyance, there entered into this thinking from the rest of the human organism a thinking directed to the spiritual. This time is past. Henceforward man must rise consciously to Imagination and grasp the spiritual life consciously. For without this penetration into spiritual life today man's thoughts remain empty.

Now why is this? You know from our recent discussions that what belongs to every human head today is brought over from the rest of the organism of the previous incarnation, excluding the head. I have often dwelt upon this with you. Naturally this does not mean the physical substance but the formative forces of the head,which even in the roundness of its form, resembles the cosmos, these forces after death merge into the cosmos. What remains over for our life as forces between death and a new birth, what in the next life will become the head, is the rest of the body of the previous incarnation. To this is appended the rest of the organism which, fertilised by the father, then comes from the body of the mother. On passing through death we lose what belongs to the head as forces, and transform the forces of the rest of the body into the head of our next incarnation. The great mass of mankind of the present day was in its former incarnation so placed on earth that in the way they thought, in a truly Christian sense, they despised this earthly vale of tears. This scorn is a feeling that is connected not with the head but with the remaining organism. When these human beings re-incarnate today, what appeared in their former incarnation as an exalted Christian feeling, being now reincarnated and developed into the head organism, is transformed into its opposite and becomes a longing for the material, a yearning after material life. Present-day man has reached a turning point in evolution of which we must say that very little from the previous incarnation has come into the head. And just because of this something fresh must enter man, something that as a revelation from the present is manifested anew from the spiritual world. It is no longer possible today simply to hold to the Gospels; it is necessary to listen to what man is now being told about the spiritual. The Catholic Church is sharing in this dead thinking that cannot grip the living organism. Here in Berne the preachers of the Catholic Church too never tire in their professions of faith in the Christ, the Son of the Living God. But of what use is it to believe in the Christ, the Son of the living God, if one grasps Him only with dead thinking, that is, if He becomes a dead ideal in one's own thoughts? Our need today is not to call on the Christ, the Son of the living God, but to call on Christ, the living Son of God, which means to call on the Christ who is living now in the new revelations He is sending to mankind.

Spiritual Science wishes to make what as new revelation is striving directly towards the earth out of the spiritual worlds, into the impulse behind all thoughts. Through this men would receive thoughts capable of diving deep down into reality. These thoughts, it is true, would in many respects be the opposite of those holding sway in men today. Present-day men would like to hold to the most audacious thoughts, as far as possible from reality. And when they have such thoughts they cling to then tenaciously without noticing what the realities are that alter the circumstances with regard to thoughts. I will quote you a striking example of this.

Just as in the Spring and early Summer of 1914 statesmen talked of world peace, so now in Berne the various so-called ‘internationally’ thinking people talk of the coming League of Nations. You know that this idea came from the head of Woodrow Wilson. In his speech of January, 1917, Wilson made public this idea of a League of Nations. He set it up as a model of what men must strive for if he is not again in the future to suffer the terrible catastrophe into which we have today been driven. He described the striving for such a league as an absolute necessity. At the same time he said—and this is important—that the realisation of this League of Nations would depend upon a certain assumption without which there could be no talk of founding a league of the sort. This necessary assumption would be that the war should end without victory on either side for a League of Nations could never be founded in a world where there was definite conquest on the one side, definite defeat on the other.

This is the assumption Wilson made for the setting up of a League of Nations. What has arisen is the exact reverse of this assumption. Nevertheless men will establish the League of Nations in the way that, in January, 1917, Wilson spoke of it as a hypothesis. This means he was very far from reality in his thinking, that he clung to a thinking that offers no possibility of going with these thoughts deeply into reality, comprehending reality, of coming to terms with reality through thought. But that is just what is most needed. for the present time. People do not in the least realise that they dare not hold to their old way of thinking but that it is absolutely essential with thought to look deep into reality.

Now at Berne, as an example of a well-meaning man, we might point to the pacifist, Schücking. There was a discussion about the League of Nations and its organisation. It was curious to listen to the words that the aim would have to be a super-State and a super-Parliament resembling the parliaments of the individual States. For example, Schücking said: The objection will be made that the various States remain individualities and will not submit to the control of a single centralised super-State. The answer to that is what is being done in the national Assembly in Weimar. In that Assembly small local principalities are also individuals, nevertheless there exists a sense of the collective whole.—Here we have, close at hand, an obvious thought for those who love abstractions; for what could be more illuminating than to see that what can be done in miniature with a number of principalities, by joining them into a National Assembly, is now sought to be realised on a large scale with this super-State? But who ever thinks realistically, concretely, whoever makes straight for reality in his thinking, will ask why it was possible in Weimar? It was possible only because a German revolution took place! Otherwise there would have been no talk of doing away with the small States.

Today it is very difficult to make people see that a completely new thinking is necessary, a thinking in sympathy with reality, and that setting things right in present conditions depends upon how much inclination men have for this kind of thinking. A thinking, however, that wishes to know nothing of the spiritual world cannot dive into reality for in all reality there lives the spiritual world. And when we know nothing of the spiritual world we are unable to grasp reality, either today or in the future. Therefore, for the healing of the world today the chief condition is that man should turn to the knowledge of spiritual science. This must form the foundation, this can form the foundation, this can easily form the foundation. Do not keep repeating the superficial chatter that it is difficult to apply Spiritual Science to reality because people are not ready to receive it. Abolish State control over universities, schools, all schools, and. in ten years, in place of the present science which harms and kills the human soul, Spiritual Science, at least in its rudiments, will have arisen! Then what today can grow out of the emancipated third part of the sound social organism, out of the spiritual organisation, will have a different appearance from what is supervised by the State. For this State wishes to develop only its own spirituality, which means that it tolerates only a State theology, or would train its own jurists so that State jurists alone are recognised. Not to speak of medicine! How stupid, how ridiculous it is that medical practice should vary from one State to another, that the same knowledge should not be supposed to heal human beings on both sides of a frontier!

I have often emphasised that to socialistic thinking all spiritual life is mere ideology. What is the deeper reason of this being so for the masses of the proletariat? The reason is that all knowledge is supposed to be controlled by an external political State, and that it is only the shadow of the political State. It is indeed an ideology! If the spiritual life is not to be mere ideology, it must continually out of its own forces, be proving its reality, that means being established on its own foundation. The spiritual life must continually be showing its reality and may not depend upon outward support. Only this kind of independent spiritual life, which sees itself established solely on human ability and has entire control over itself, only a spiritual life of this kind will let its tributaries flow into capitalism with healing effect. For the control of capitalism too is brought about simply by human ability. Make the sources healthy, and spiritual life where it joins with capitalism in guiding economic life, will also be healthy. Thus things hang together and we must become conscious of the connection. The thinking of the present abstractionists must be avoided, the thinking estranged from reality which meets us at every step. It created the conditions that caused our present conditions; but this is not yet understood.

Today men ask how the super-State must be created, and they think of the former State. What was done by that should be done also by the super-State.—But is it not more to the point to ask what the State should leave undone? When the States have landed us in a European catastrophe is it not more apt to askr what it should not do? It should have done with its meddling in spiritual life and its acting as economist; and it should limit itself to the political sphere! It can no longer be asked how a League of Nations should be established, by taking as model what the States have done or should do; it is better and more suitable to the times to ask what the States should give up doing.

People are still little inclined to look deeply into these things. But upon their doing so the destiny of man today will depend.

You will have noticed that all my lectures for years past have stressed the importance, both for the spiritual and social evolution of humanity, of the spread of what we spiritual scientists call the results of initiation research. You know also that by the word initiation, to use an ancient term, we understand a seeing into a spiritual world separated from our physical-sensible world by a kind of veil; a veil which may very easily lead to illusions. What is first given to man is the physical-sensible world, and he makes use of this either for the concerns of ordinary life or in pursuit of what today is called science. He combines his perceptions in the physical world with all kinds of concepts, ideas and so on; but all that does not lead him beyond the world of the senses; and we may say that the only means through which in ordinary life the human being can to a certain extent look beyond and above the sensible is in dreaming. The dream, as we experience it today in ordinary life, is only a poor imitation of what may be called experience in the super-sensible world. The super-sensible world has to be perceived not only with the same degree of consciousness that one has in ordinary life, a degree of consciousness which is not there in the dream condition, but with a consciousness of even higher degree. In order to experience the super-sensible world, one must enhance one’s consciousness, to come to a state which bears a similar relation to that of ordinary life, of ordinary consciousness, as that of ordinary consciousness bears to sleep consciousness, or at any rate to dream consciousness. Thus a kind of awakening out of the ordinary consciousness has to take place. Hence the dream is, of course, only a poor imitation of what is experienced in that other condition.

But really the dream differs far less from ordinary thinking than is believed to be the case. When you become aware of the picture world of an ordinary dream, it is actually in its content essentially the same as what underlies one’s thoughts, only that in thinking the human being enters into the outer world through his senses; and therefore what is arranged in the dream by mere analogy, is in thinking ordered in accordance with quite external relationships, is ordered by the perception of the outer sense world, in accordance with what this world says to us. You can have a kind of proof of this if you sit down and shut your eyes, or let us say if you are lazy and just allow your thoughts to wander, and then notice how they have wandered, notice that as you recall them in your mind you can hardly find between them any more connection than one finds in the events of a dream. The ordinary uncontrolled flow of man’s ideas is in a certain sense subject to the same law as that of the dream. It is only through our senses that we are torn out of our dreams. And as soon as we silence our senses, then we really begin to dream. This dream activity has to be intensified. It has to be so organized that it becomes permeated by a higher consciousness than that which our ordinary senses confer. Then imaginative consciousness arises, and then by degrees comes inspired consciousness, of which I told you yesterday in my public lecture, that it is recognized by Thomism as a justified source of cognition.

In our initiation science, then, we have the results of such an intensified condition of consciousness. The difficulty in the present evolution of humanity and in that of the near future is that humanity will most certainly need this science of initiation, and will not be able to get on without it, for if only the materialistic knowledge that has been developed in the last three to four centuries should continue to permeate human evolution, conditions such as we are now experiencing in the present social chaos of the civilized world will repeatedly recur, broken only by short intervals. What science has been able to give to humanity since the middle of the Fifteenth Century has certainly been sufficient for the making of technical discoveries; has been sufficient to spread over the earth a network of commerce and business intercourse, but it does not suffice for the creation of social arrangements really adapted to the consciousness of present-day humanity. That is something which has gradually to be realized. As long as the science of our universities, our recognized public education, rejects the science of initiation, as long as an external, material science is alone recognized, so long will humanity be perpetually in the grip of chaotic social conditions, such as we are now having. The science of initiation will alone be able to save humanity of the future from such chaotic social conditions. Above all, the science of initiation will be able to give those human beings who can approach it a consciousness of the fact that the life here on earth, which we enter through the gate of birth, is the continuation of a spiritual life which we have spent in the super-sensible world between the last death and this present birth. Now you know that this spiritual life which precedes our birth or conception is not spoken of in the churches of our modern civilized world. It is never spoken of, and for a quite definite reason. Because at a certain point of time, which coincides with that of the Greek evolution between Plato and Aristotle, all consciousness of a pre-natal spiritual life was lost. Plato speaks clearly of that life, but Aristotle vehemently defended the theory that every time a human being is born on the earth, a quite new soul unites with his physical body. The Aristotelian doctrine is that for each physically-born human being a new soul is created.

Now if one holds such a view, one cannot say otherwise than that the life which begins with death, which a man begins by throwing off his physical body—and of this Aristotle also speaks—continues to exist and does not again descend to earth. For, of course, unless one can speak of a prenatal existence, one has no justification for believing otherwise than that after his death man remains forever in a spiritual world. That had already led Aristotle to draw some very weighty conclusions. For instance, he argued that if anyone between birth and death here on earth has led a life which burdens his soul with evil, that human being is for all eternity forced to look back on that evil, which can never again be blotted out or overcome. So that according to Aristotle’s view, when the man dies, he has to look back eternally on the one earth life for which he has to pay.

This doctrine of Aristotle was taken over in its entirety by the Catholic Church, and when in the Middle Ages the Church sought for a philosophy which could carry its theology, it took over, as regards the life of the soul, this Aristotelian doctrine, and one can still today recognize its echo in the idea of eternal punishment in hell.

Now, after having for thousands of years had this doctrine of the origin of the soul with the body impressed upon them, how is it conceivable that people can free themselves from it again and arrive at the truth? They can only do so by receiving a new spiritual science. Without this renewal of spiritual science mankind will not be able to accept a life before birth as a justified belief or, rather, before conception. Just think what it signifies for the whole evolution of humanity not to speak of a prenatal life. When in the churches of today we are told only of a life after death, that simply arouses instincts connected with man’s egotistical desire not to be extinguished at death.

My dear friends, an essay, a thorough-going study is needed—“On the Cultivation of Human Egotism by the Churches”—In such a study one would have to explore the real motives which are worked upon in the sermons and doctrines of all the usual religious denominations, and one would everywhere find that appeal is made to the egotistical instincts of man, especially to the instinct for immortality after death. One could extend this study to cover more than a thousand years, and one would see that these religious denominations, by eliminating the life before birth under Aristotelian influence, have fostered in the highest degree the egotism in human nature. Churches, as cultivators of the deepest egotistical instincts, is a subject well worthy of study. By far the largest part of the religious life of the modern civilized world today panders to human egotism. This egotism can be felt in pronouncements which I could quote by the dozen. Again and again it is written, especially in pastoral letters, “that spiritual science busies itself with all kinds of knowledge about super-sensible worlds, but man does not need that. He only needs to have the childlike consciousness of his connection with Christ Jesus.” That is said both by pastors and by the faithful; this childlike connection with Christ Jesus is always emphasized. It is brought forward with immense pride against what is, of course, far less easy to attain—penetration into the concrete details of the spiritual world. It is preached over and over again. Again and again man is led to believe that he can be most Christian when he least exercises his soul forces, when he least strives to think something clear with what he calls his Christ consciousness. This Christ consciousness must be something which man attains by absolute childlikeness—so say these easy-going ones. And best of all they like to be told that Christ has taken all the sins of mankind on Himself, and has redeemed mankind through His sacrificial death, without men having to do anything themselves. All this points to the belief that through the sacrificial death of Christ, immortality is guaranteed after death; but that merely tends to nourish in humanity the most extreme egotism. By this cultivation of egotism on the part of the churches, we have finally brought about what is dawning today over all the civilized world. Because this egotism has been so widely cultivated, mankind has become what it is today. Just think if the human being, not merely theoretically with ideas and concepts, but with the whole inner life of his soul were to grasp the truth that this earthly life as he enters it through birth lays upon him the obligation of fulfilling a mission which he has brought with him from a life before birth! Just think how egotism would vanish if that thought were to fill our whole souls, if this earthly life were regarded as a task which must be fulfilled because it is linked to an over-earthly life through which we have previously passed! Egotism is combated by the feeling that stirs in us when we look upon life on earth as a continuation of an over-earthly life, just as it is fostered by the religious denominations which speak only of life after death. That is what is important for man’s social well being, to restore the fact of his pre-existence to the consciousness of mankind of the present and of the future, and of course the idea of reincarnation is inseparable from that of the pre-existence of the human soul.

Thus we can say that the Catholic Church itself accepted the Aristotelian doctrine and made it into a dogma of her own; but this dogma must now be replaced by the higher knowledge of repeated earth lives, of pre-existence, which Aristotle was clearly the first to leave out of account.

You see, if you can estimate what importance it has for mankind to absorb certain elements into its inmost life of soul, then you will recognize what it means for man’s life of feeling in its widest sense. It means that the human being gets quite another consciousness of himself. Now, my dear friends, let us add to what has just been said, the words of St. Paul, that this ordinary consciousness must become permeated more and more by the consciousness, “Not I, but Christ in me.” When we look upon ourselves as something different, Christ will also become different within us. If we look upon ourselves as something which, even as regards the soul-spiritual, has only originated at birth, then of course the Christ can only be in what has come into existence with this present birth, and will only have the task of carrying our souls through the gate of death and further through all eternity. But if we know that we have had a prenatal life, we can know also that it is the Christ Himself Who has laid on us a mission for this life on earth, that we have to develop our own forces, that we have to find Him in our forces, that we have to seek Him as the best we can have in us, the best in our spirit and soul.

The Catholic Church, by doing away with the spirit in the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in the year 869 has always taken care that those belonging to it should never think about the real psycho-spiritual nature of man. The Church laid down in that Council that man consists only of body and soul, though the soul has a few spiritual attributes; but that to regard man as consisting of body, soul and spirit is heretical, and when the Jesuit Zimmerman brought forward certain reproaches against spiritual science, he reckoned as its deepest sin that it seeks to re-establish the validity of trichotomy, by declaring that man consists of body, soul and spirit. For thereby the true nature of man and also his real relationship to the Christ must inevitably come to light. But what the Church worked for more and more was that man should not come to a true understanding of his real relationship to Christ. We may say, my dear friends, that the development of the western churches consists really in drawing an ever denser and denser veil over the real secret of Christ.

You see, fundamentally, all institutions are built on external abstractions. When a state is young it has but few laws and people are relatively unfettered by them. The longer a state exists, and especially the longer the various parties in the state apply their clever arguments, the more laws are made until finally no one knows where he is, for there is no longer only one law, but everything is entangled in the meshes of intertwining laws from which one has the greatest difficulty in freeing oneself.

That is the case also with the churches; when a church begins to make its way through the world, it has relatively few dogmas; but men must have something to do, and just as the statesman is always making laws, so do Churchmen create more and more dogmas, until finally everything becomes dogma, dogma becomes consolidated. It is only since the time when Scholasticism was at its height that this consolidation of dogma has been especially noticeable in modern civilization. Anyone who really studies thoughtfully the Scholasticism of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas will find that in their time everything to do with dogma was still fluid, still a matter for discussion, that discussion was still taken as a matter of course. True, in the Scholastic period there was already a certain opposition within the western church. There was the opposition between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The Dominican Order, of which Scholasticism was the flower, developed its knowledge through strictly logical ideas. The Franciscan Order declined to do that; the Franciscans wanted to achieve everything through a childlike feeling. I will not now enter into the relation between Dominican and Franciscan teaching, but I should like you to imagine what it would be like if people fought as vigorously today about the content of Dominican and Franciscan doctrine as they did in the Middle Ages, when they discussed dogma so freely. Of course, the Roman bishop even at that time declared people to be heretics; and he could have gone on doing so for a long while, had not the secular governments come to his assistance and burnt the people whom he merely wanted to condemn. In this matter one has to admit that greater blame falls on the secular rulers. All this did not prevent there being free discussion in the Catholic Church at that time. This free discussion has gradually been completely eliminated. Free discussion was something which the Catholic Church, as time went on, could not stand. And why not? Because a quite new consciousness was arising in humanity. This was the transformation of consciousness in man, which took place, as I have often explained to you, in the middle of the Fifteenth Century. The human being wants ever more and more to form his own judgment from the depths of his own soul. In the Middle Ages that was not so. Man then had a kind of communal consciousness, and only a few learned people, the real scholars, could get beyond that. They were able to evolve out of this common uniform folk consciousness because they had been trained in Scholasticism. This also applies to a certain number who were trained in the Rabbinical teaching. In general, however, man’s consciousness was uniform. It was a community consciousness, a family consciousness. But the individual consciousness was developing more and more.

Now, one thing that the Catholic Church had always had, because it had attracted highly educated people, was historical foresight. The Catholic Church knows quite well what I am now saying, that the principle of modern development is to foster the individual consciousness of man—but the Catholic Church is unwilling to let this individual consciousness arise. She wants to maintain that dull communal consciousness, from which only those will stand out who have received a scholastic education. Now, my dear friends, there is a very good way of maintaining this dull communal consciousness—it is always a dull one. And this is to damp down the ordinary consciousness which a person has whenever he makes use of his sense organs, to subdue it thoroughly. Just as the dream damps down the ordinary consciousness, similarly the consciousness is subdued for the purpose of making of it a dull communal consciousness. Now one of the many characteristics of the dream is that in many respects it is a liar. Or would you deny that the dream is a liar, that it represents things which are not true? It is, however, not due to the dream but to the subdued consciousness that when we dream we cannot test what is true and what is untrue. Hence it is one of the properties of this subdued consciousness that it takes away from human beings the possibility of distinguishing truth from untruth. Now if one is versed in these matters, what does one do? One relates to people under authority things which are not true, and one does this systematically. Thereby one subdues their consciousness to the dim state of the dream consciousness. Thereby one succeeds in undermining what since the middle of the Fifteenth Century has been seeking to emerge as individual consciousness in the souls of men. It is a fine undertaking so to work under authority as to write articles such as are now appearing in the “Katholischen Sonntagsblatt”; for thereby one succeeds in preventing men from developing in the way they should since the middle of the Fifteenth Century! Although the individual may not know it, the whole hierarchy is behind what happens in this respect, and has organized things extremely well. If one believes that these things happen out of mere naivety or purely from rancor, one is making a great mistake. Naturally, we must fight lying and untruth with all the means at our disposal, but we must not believe that these lies proceed out of simplicity or even out of the belief that what is said is the truth; for if these people spoke the truth, they would not attain what is their purpose to attain, which is to subdue consciousness by deliberately telling men lies, and that is a mighty and diabolical undertaking.

Now, my dear friends, this, too, must be said quite frankly. The simplicity is entirely on the other side. Simplicity today is not on the side of the Catholic Church but on the side of their opponents. They do not believe that the Catholic Church is great in the direction I have described; they do not believe that the Catholic Church long ago foresaw that the social condition which has now come over Europe would some day come about, and that the Catholic Church took her own measures to make her influence felt in those social conditions. What the Catholic Church intends is to create a bridge between the most radical socialism, Communism, and its own domination.

You see, this magnificent foresight is something one has to recognize in everything which has a real spiritual basis, a spiritual foundation that is rooted in a real spiritual life, and not in mere abstraction. You see, with all this modern enlightenment one arrives at nothing which can have a far-reaching significance in the course of human evolution. But the ceremonies practiced in the Catholic Mass are of far greater significance than all the sermons from evangelical pulpits, because they are deeds accomplished in the sensible world, and in their form they are at the same time something which enchants the spiritual world into the sensible world. For that reason the Catholic Church has never been willing to deprive herself of magical means of working on human beings. These magical means do exist. And we must not believe that anything other than re-entry into the spiritual world in all true inner sincerity and uprightness can be effective against these things. And as what one might call an external sign that the Catholic Church has always had a connection with the spiritual world, you can take something which I have already told a few of you.

In the first decade of the Twentieth Century a Papal Encyclical was issued which declared various things to be heretical. Papal Encyclicals speak in such a way that they always adduce the doctrine in question and then say: “Whoever believes that is anathema.” Thus it quotes some doctrine taken from one of the books of Haeckel or someone, and then says: “Whoever believes that is anathema.” It does not state what is true, but says: “Whoever believes that is anathema.”

Now, you see, the science of initiation makes it always possible to investigate such things, and I set myself the task of making certain investigations concerning this Encyclical. I am bound to say that here, as in so many other things, what was promulgated by the Pope “ex cathedra” at that time was really drawn from out of the spiritual world. I mean that what has flowed into that Encyclical did come down from the spiritual world. But in an extraordinary way it was completely reversed! Everywhere where there should have been a ‘yes’ there was a ‘no’, and vice-versa. That is something—and I could give other instances—which shows that the Roman Church has today some sort of real connection with the spiritual world but one that is extraordinarily harmful for mankind. Therefore, we need not be surprised that it sees in the rise of modern spiritual science something which it wishes at all costs to get rid of, for, my dear friends, what is the effect of this new spiritual science? It brings about a consciousness of a prenatal life, of pre-existence. That may not be! Under no circumstances shall that happen! So spiritual science must be condemned; for spiritual science calls man’s attention to his own being, makes him aware that he consists of body, soul, and spirit. Under no circumstances may that be; therefore spiritual science must be condemned. People would see, for example, that the dogma of eternal damnation in hell is an Aristotelian consequence of the creation of the soul at physical birth. Suppose a Catholic theologian today studies the connection between Aristotle and Scholasticism, and perceives that the Scholastics derived their proof of the origin of the soul together with the physical body from the philosophy of Aristotle! He would see behind the scenes of the origin of dogma. What is done to prevent this? The theologian is made to take the oath against Modernism. He is made to swear that it is part of his creed that he can never come to a historical conclusion contrary to dogmas which are given out from Rome. The fact that he has taken this oath works so strongly on his feelings that he is confused in his sober research and can never come to see that dogma is bound up with the historical evolution of humanity. Now things cannot remain in this state if the science of initiation arises, and therefore this science of initiation must under all circumstances be condemned.

Why am I telling you these things, my dear friends? So that you may not take the matter too lightly. For in our anthroposophical spiritual science it is verily not a question of the sort of things which go on, for instance in the Theosophical Society. That the Theosophical Society is not to be taken seriously is clearly to be seen from the fact that one day it came to accept by a majority the whole farce of Krishnamurti as the reborn Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Such a comedy is only based on hypocrisy, even though this hypocrisy be taken seriously by many. But what should grow on the soil of Anthroposophy, of spiritual science, should be a search for truth, sincere through and through. It is therefore something which, as the Catholic Church is well aware, penetrates behind the scenes, to what must not be discovered if that church is to maintain the dominion in the world to which she lays claim.

All that I am now saying is simply to show you that these things may not be taken lightly. For it must be recognized that the Catholic Church has shown great foresight. Though the individual sheep follows the lead and merely obeys orders, though he may be ignorant of what this systematic lying means for the whole evolution of mankind—though the individual knows nothing and does as he is told, the whole system is thoroughly well established, for the lying will be believed by large numbers.

On the other side there is the naïve belief that all the external fabrication of natural laws which today forms the subject of our university education can be of significance for the further development of humanity, that all that nonsense about the conservation of matter and energy can be of significance for the further development of mankind! Today people cannot even look with an unprejudiced eye upon the snow which is spread before them every winter (if they are living in the temperate zone), yet through the covering of the forces of growth by the snow crust one part of the earth goes through a complete transformation; and folk consciousness which speaks of the purity of the snow knows far more than our modern science which talks of the conservation of matter and energy. Of course I can only say what I am now saying because I have spent many weeks in showing you how ill-founded are the modern laws of the conservation of matter and energy, how in fact in every human being matter and energy are destroyed, as they work up towards the head, and new matter and new energy arise. All these things are bound to be fiercely contested in some quarters, and the only thing which can help is for as many people as possible to become conscious of the present task of mankind—to be aware that the individual consciousness must lay hold of the world. It will do so, but it can either lay hold of the wisdom of the world or of the blind instincts. If it seizes hold of the blind instincts there will come about a completely antisocial condition, such as is now being prepared in Russia. That, my dear friends, will gradually evoke an antisocial condition against which the English or North American governments, not to speak of the French or any other, will be absolutely defenseless. It would be childish to believe that the English Parliament will be able to deal with what will then lay hold of humanity if the individual consciousness works merely by instinct. But there is one power which will be ready to deal with it, and that is the power of Rome. It is only a question of how it will be done. Rome can establish a dominion; it has the necessary means for this. Thus the only real question is not whether Bolshevism or the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie will get the upper hand; the question is whether there will be antisocial chaos, Roman domination, or the resolve on the part of mankind to fill itself with that spirit which in 869 at the Council of Constantinople the western Church declared it heretical to recognize.

There is no other alternative than that mankind determine not to go on living in the way which is natural when there are only materialistic thoughts about the world. How does mankind live in a materialistic world? People earn their living in accordance with the fluctuations of the market; there is no other measurement for the social order. After that they may perhaps have a philosophy of life, as a sort of luxury, but only as a luxury. Those supposed to be still more profound say that one must raise oneself into the spiritual world and leave the evil material world behind; a really profound nature can have nothing to do with the material world; he must understand nothing about the material world, but become a mystic and live in the higher world! But even these profound natures as well as the less profound have children and have the notion that these children must “earn,” that it would be very, very wrong if the children were not sent to schools where they would be trained in present-day methods of earning a living. Thereby they have already come to terms with the existing state of things; thereby they hand on this materialism to the next generation.

Now when someone talks like this he is an inconvenient person, and it is best simply to revile him, for to hear what I have just been telling you is for most people as if they were being irritated by vermin. Now people do not like being irritated in this way by psychic vermin and so they cover themselves with a thick skin which makes them impervious to what spiritual science has to say about our present culture. It is on this side then that the naivety lies; and when the Catholic Church saw that people were becoming so one-sided, they took care to have people specially trained, and in this they really were indirectly guided by spiritual impulses. And the foundation of the Jesuit Order by Ignatius Loyola as a result of fundamental influences from the spiritual world is one of the most significant events of metahistory, and in it one has to do with a strong spiritual efficacy.

Now, my dear friends, we must, of course, among ourselves be able to speak frankly; hence I have been obliged to speak of the grand but questionable training of the Jesuits. I also dealt with this theme in the cycle From Jesus to Christ, which some misguided member has now delivered into the hands of a mudslinger and fabricator of nonsense. You know that in the Karlsruhe cycle I discussed the fundamental basis of Jesuit training. What, may I ask, is the use of stating in each cycle that it is printed as a manuscript for members only, when mudslingers have the cycle at their disposal and can use it for the preparation of all sorts of lies? This incident bears out in a remarkable way what I have already often said, that the time would come when one could no longer count on these cycles being restricted to a small circle, for mankind is not at present fit to be entrusted with anything. Of course, everything written in that quarter is rubbish and untrue, but it is written not on the basis of my public writings, but of private cycles which have been passed on, and I have good reason to believe that one of the first cycles given into the hands of the Catholic clergy was that very Karlsruhe cycle on the Jesuits. For they on their part are not inclined to let the truth about Jesuit training be known. The world must know nothing of how Jesuits are trained; the world must know nothing of their powerful discipline.

Modern mankind in its simplicity is merely retarding its own consciousness. On the subject of the Jesuits there are absolutely no true ideas. There are numerous men within that Order of such spiritual capacity that if they were scattered about the world and did not spend their time in the way they do but were working at external science or painting or poetry, they would be honored as individual geniuses; they would be recognized as the great minds of mankind. Within the Jesuit Order there are countless men who would be great lights if they were to appear as individuals and were busy with something different—with, for instance, materialistic science. But these men suppress their very names; they submerge themselves in their Order, and one of the conditions of their strength is that the world should know nothing of the way in which many a head, clothed in black cassock and Jesuit cap, has been trained.

These things are intended to show you how fundamentally different the whole form of consciousness is in different categories of human beings. But our modern simpletons, who consider themselves enlightened, will not take these things seriously. That must be emphasized again and again, and that, my dear friends, is what I had to speak to you about today.

Now for the next two weeks while I am away we can have no more lectures here. In conclusion to what I have said, partly in public, partly in these private lectures, I had to add all that I have said here today in order that you should not ignore the importance of this misuse of our lecture cycles by our own members. Of course, when the cycles were given, I thought I had to do with people who would respect the undertaking which in a certain sense they had been given. But I was mistaken, and it is quite clear from the rubbish that appears in articles today who has all the cycles at his disposal!

In the last lecture I tried to describe the course which was taken during the 19th century and on into our time; I showed how the knowledge and awareness of super-sensible impulses working in World-evolution was more and more exterminated, I tried to illustrate this by an example which is especially significant for us, namely, the complete misunderstanding of the Mysteries. We saw that there existed until the end of the 18th century a clear and distinct consciousness of the fact that there is a super-sensible essence behind the world of things sensible—behind those entities which man can reach with his ordinary, every-day intellect. Moreover, until the end of the 18th century there was a consciousness of the fact that it is necessary, somehow to bring the human soul into direct connection with this super-sensible world,

I pointed out the great contrast between such ways of thought as those of Louis Claude de Saint Martin, and of Dupuis. In Saint Martin we still find a consciousness of ancient truths of the Mysteries. This was possible for him, inasmuch as he was himself, in a certain sense, a pupil and successor of Jacob Boehme.

In Saint Martin, therefore, whose ways of thought still had great influence at that time, we found the declining aspect of the consciousness of the 18th century. In Dupuis, on the other hand, we found the other aspect—the rise of the way of thinking which was typical of the 19th century. This latter way of thinking is convinced that all Mystery-revelations are fundamentally based on error or deceit; and that no man is truly enlightened unless he does away with all that pertains to the truths of the Mysteries, and restricts himself to a science purely and simply founded on the world of the senses, and on the intellect which depends upon the senses. Then we pointed out that in contrast to the materialism which was subsequently developed in the 19th century, which was fundamentally Philistine, the materialism of Dupuis still had a certain greatness, freshness and freedom.

In a certain sense, the whole of the evolution of the 19th century—and reaching on into our time—stood under the influence of this rejection of all things super-sensible. Efforts were made, it is true, from one side and another, to introduce some kind of connection between the human soul and the super-sensible. But these attempts either remained in the most restricted circles, or else they worked with antiquated or otherwise inadequate methods. It was in fact the task of the 19th century to develop a certain fund of purely materialistic truths; this century had to collect a fund of purely materialist ideals and feelings, and impulses of will. It is for the man of to-day to bring this fact home to his consciousness, so as to draw the necessary conclusions. He must perceive the connection of the purely materialistic ideas with the results to which they have led; and he must learn the lesson, namely, that the path must now be found once more from a purely materialistic—or, as we may also put it, rationalistic—to a spiritual way of seeing things.

Comparing now the fundamental root-nerve of the life of the old Mysteries as we spoke of them yesterday, with Spiritual Science such as it must be in our time, we can say: The ancient Wisdom of the Mysteries had, above all, the task to protect mankind from using certain forces, of which we spoke yesterday, in the direction of harmful magic practices. And, as we said, in contrast to this, it is the task of spiritual Wisdom in modern time to draw the attention of mankind to the fact that the union of certain feelings with the material knowledge which has, once and for all, become a necessary thing in modern time, inevitably calls forth forces which are contrary to the true weal of man,—just as those other forces were, in another sense, of which we spoke yesterday. It is simply an inner law of the Universe: If the thoughts which must inevitably be the thoughts of modern time—the thoughts of Physics and Chemistry and economic dealings in the modern sense, of international finance and the like—if the thoughts that are applied to all these things, and that must be applied in like manner all the Earth over, are united in human souls with a mentality and outlook purely national, then, by this connection of national feeling—national pathos, one might say—with the international thoughts of Physics, Chemistry, Economics, international commerce and financial affairs and so forth, the Ahrimanic elemental beings are produced. Moreover, these elementals of an Ahrimanic kind will necessarily drive man more and more into things utterly contrary to the wholesome evolution of the last three civilisation-epochs which the human race has still before it on the Earth.

We shall see the Mystery of Golgotha in the true light, if we recognise in it that which must compensate and balance the harmful forces which are arising from these quarters: All that the Mystery of Golgotha can bring about, is such as to counteract that which proceeds from these forces. The latter cannot be rightly paralysed in any other way than by intelligent devotion to the Mystery of Golgotha. The mere narration that the Mystery of Golgotha took place at the beginning of our era—the mere repeating of the Gospel story as interpreted in the ordinary Churches of to-day—is ineffective in this sense; for it implies the fundamental prejudice that Revelation was only possible at the beginning of our era. Revelation continues. Christ Jesus is always present. The spirit and the outlook, recognising Christ Jesus as ever-present, is precisely that Christian spirit which can be gained through anthroposophical Spiritual Science. But this requires us to make ourselves acquainted in all detail with the real impulses that are connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. We must learn increasingly to recognise that which lies hidden in the Mystery of Golgotha.

One such truth I have recently pointed out. Whatever a man undertakes—not as concerns his own individual, personal Karma, but in the whole context of the social, ethical, historic working of mankind, is subject to a certain law of historic evolution, namely this: That which is done in a given year, when, as a thought, it springs forth from man, has—so to speak—a Christmas character. This, as I said, refers to the effects of our deeds in the whole nexus of the social life; not to our personal Karma. If I manufacture a pair of shoes, needless to say there is something in this act that rays back, so to speak, into my personal Karma. That is a stream by itself. But I manufacture the shoes for another human being; and inasmuch as I do so, I am already working socially. No doubt an elementary process; and it is a long way from this to the measures of political and social life on a large scale. Nevertheless, everything that lies along this line belongs to the realm of those things which become effective after 33 years. And after the 33 years—when a seed which has thus been planted has had time, as it were, to ripen,—then it goes on working. A seed of thought or of deed takes a whole human generation—33 years—to ripen. When it is ripened, it goes on working in historic evolution for 66 years more. Thus the intensity of an impulse planted by man in the stream of history can truly be recognised in its working through three generations, that is, through a whole century.

Now the fixing of the two outstanding festivals of Christianity—Christmas and Easter—has been done in a very significant way. Christmas is a so-called immovable Feast, coinciding approximately with the Winter Solstice. Easter is a movable Feast. Christmas is fixed because, as you know, it expresses a certain cosmic fact—a fact we cannot bring before our souls too often. It is prejudice to suppose that our Earth is no more than what Geology and Physics, Mineralogy and Geophysics, are prepared to recognise. The Earth in reality is a mighty spiritual organism. We live not only on a mineral Earth, surrounded by an airy atmosphere; we live within the mighty spiritual organism, Earth. This spiritual organism has, in a certain sense, an ascending and a descending life. It sleeps in Summer-time; its deepest sleep is at the time when the Summer Solstice has occurred, that is, at the time when—for us—the days are longest and the nights are shortest. Man's sleep is only determined by time; the sleep of the Earth is also determined by space. The different places on the Earth sleep differently. But I will only touch on that. It is in Winter that the Earth has its true waking season; then it is that that which we may call the intellect of the Earth is most active.

Herein lies the deep meaning of the Christmas Festival. It is to remind us that when the shortest days and the longest nights are with us—for the place where this is so—the Earth is most wide-awake. So, then, it is, for one who truly recognises the Christmas Festival: he should seek for the Earth-intellect, even as it can be found in the deep depths of the Earth,—just as the Christ-Child is found in a stable, or in a cave or grotto, according to the various conceptions.

Christmas is therefore an immovable Feast. Easter, on the other hand, is movable; determined by the positions of the Sun and Moon. Thereby the Easter Festival becomes the symbol of cosmic events beyond the Earth; it is, as it were, a spiritual, if celestial Festival. Materialistically minded people, as I have often pointed out, have not refrained from attacking this mobility of Easter, for the simple reason that it brings disorder into the Philistine, bourgeois order of the 19th century. I myself have often been present at discussions, notably on the part of astronomers, where it was advocated that Easter should be fixed in a purely pedantic and schematic way, say, on the first Sunday in April. From the 19th century point of view, many reasons no doubt could be adduced in favour of a fixed Easter. After all, you need but think of this: The movable Easter is completely in accord with the cosmic Book of the New Testament; it is at least in accordance with the spirit of the New Testament. But in the 19th century, and in a preparatory way even before that, there was another book which became far more important than the Gospels. People may not always admit it, but it is so. The book which became more important than the Gospels is the one on the first page of which [in German- speaking countries] the words ‘Mit Gott’ are always printed, though needless to say, only the ungodliest matters are entered in it, namely the figures under the respective headings Debit and Credit. In other words, it is the business man's ledger, on the front page of which—so far, at least, as my experience goes—you always find the inscription ‘Mit Gott,’ although its contents are as I said.

This book, naturally enough, is thrown into no little disorder by Easter falling on a different date each year. It would be far easier to keep it in order if Easter were fixed. The proposal has often been made in one form or another. It is in fact the attack of materialism on one of the last and outermost ramparts of a spiritual view of the world,—on the arrangement of Easter according to the heavenly constellations of the Sun and Moon.

But there is a yet deeper meaning in it, that the time between Christmas and Easter is made to vary in successive years. We know that the Christmas Festival, properly speaking, belongs to the Easter Festival that follows 33 years later. This indeed is a fixed period of time, representing as it does the time, required for the working out of world-historic seeds. But there is another thing which is not so fixed, namely the following: Certain impulses—we may describe them here as Christmas-impulses—take place in a given year; others again in the next year, others the year after, and so on. Now the successive Christmas impulses in historic evolution are by no means all of equal intensity; some of them work more strongly, others more feebly. It may be, for instance, that the impulses laid down in a given year have less incisive power for the 33 years that follow, than the impulses of the next year have, for the 33 years which follow it in turn; and so on. Precisely this fact is indicated, in that the time between Christmas and Easter is longer or shorter as the case may he. Thus, even this mobility of Easter calls our attention to something which a man ought well to study, if he would truly understand the working of events in history.

Now you may raise the question: How shall man gain any idea, how strongly his impulses will work into the next 33 years? Can he gain any conception at all, as to whether his impulses are working in a favourable or in an unfavourable sense? Undoubtedly the answer to such a question is immensely difficult for our Time, inasmuch as this Time suffers from abstraction as from a terrible and insidious disease. This age only desires, wherever possible, to understand the Universe with a few abstract concepts; it would fain be removed as far as can be from any comprehension of events with the full human being, or from a living human experience of Time and of the streams of Time. If you will only recognise, as a true Science of the Heavens, what modern astronomers can calculate with their quite abstract mathematics, it is no doubt impossible to stir your heart and mind into a full and living interest in these calculations of an abstract mathematics. Yet this is what humanity needs to evolve once more. It is necessary for mankind that we should no longer merely devote the intellect to the things we do. We should know that our very heart's blood is united with every action we perform, be it the most trivial and everyday. This is sincerely possible if we are prepared to enter earnestly into Spiritual Science,—into what Spiritual Science is and what it can be. It is quite true: a man who only wants to enter into things with abstract intellect (unless they fall within the narrow circle of his own selfish or family affairs),—he will not easily find the way to unite his heart's blood with the things he wills and does. Yet this is precisely the mission of Spiritual Science: to widen out the souls horizon, to extend the circle of interest over far wider domains than is possible under the influence of the materialist abstractions of the 19th century. What mankind needs is, above all, this widening of the sphere of interest, and there is only one way to attain it: to fill the human soul again and again with Knowledge, which—as we have seen once more during the last week's lectures—can be widened out in our time far beyond the limits of the senses and the sense-bound intellect, or of the life between birth and death. Knowledge to-day can be widened out beyond these frontiers,—out into the Universal All, which, as we know, we share in common with those human souls who are in the realms between death and a new birth. We cannot learn to know these human souls unless we also learn to know the other aspects—those other aspects through which human beings have to live between death and a new birth. No doubt the thoughts about life between death and a new birth were far remote from the Philistine science of the 19th or even of the 20th century. They could not have been more remote; for this epoch believed that the only salvation lay in piecing together by intellectual association all that the senses can afford.

From this point of view Spiritual Science is indeed in sharpest opposition to the ideal of the 19th century. Spiritual Science must emphasise most vigorously the turning of the soul towards the Spirit, even as the 19th century emphasised the turning of the human soul away from the Spirit. And as I have already pointed out during our recent lectures, the two fundamental pillars of the Christian understanding of the world,—namely the Immaculate Conception of Christ Jesus, and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus—can be none other than nonsense to the natural-scientific age. Spiritual Science, on the other hand, must turn again quite definitely to these two basic pillars of the Christian world-conception.

The Roman Catholic Church has acquired a certain habit of speech whereby it is able to get away from many important problems which are contained deep down within the womb of its evolution. The Roman Catholic Church will, speak, for instance, of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary; but it will not be prepared to look for those spiritual forces in the soul whereby the fact of the Immaculate Conception would be made intelligible. If you ask the enlightened theologians of the Roman Catholic Church about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, you certainly will not expect them to enter into a discussion such as must be brought into flow once more through Spiritual Science. They will tell you something like this:—You must rise from the idea of the woman Mary to that which the woman Mary has really become in the course of evolution, namely, the Church; The Church in reality represents the Virgin Mary. This being granted, it goes without saying that the Virgin Mary, the Church, perpetually gives birth to the Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, the Church must perpetually conceive the Christ. That is to say, the Church is under perpetual inspiration from the Holy Spirit, and that which the Church reveals is none other than the Word, the Logos.

This is the perfectly correct Catholic doctrine. In Holy Catholic Church the inspiring Holy Spirit kindles the eternal Word—the Word which was in the beginning, and which is born throughout all time by the Holy Church, the Virgin Mary. It is the correct and familiar Roman Catholic theological conception. You may tell me that one hears very little said of this. That is quite true, and for the 19th century it was just as well that there was little said of it. But the idea was all the more effective among those who were still able to be saved from the impulses of materialism.

These three,—the inspiring Spirit, the Virgin Mother, and the Logos or the Word—must of course be maintained; they must he sought for through Spiritual Science also. And would say, in an Imaginative form did endeavour to point out these things during my recent lectures, when I described the transition from the old Mysteries to the new. I said that Antiquity only got so far with its Mysteries that it was able to revere, in Pallas Athene, the Virgin Wisdom, Pallas Athene is indeed a virgin figure; but within the ancient epoch this Virgin Wisdom did not give birth to the Logos. This is precisely the characteristic feature of ancient Greece, for example; it stops short at the Virgin Wisdom, whereas the new Age passes on to the Son of the Virgin Wisdom—to the Logos, which is there on the physical plane through that which represents it: the human word, human speech or language. For human speech may truly be regarded from the point of view of its connection with Wisdom. In earthly life of man, Wisdom lives itself out through human thought. The air that is breathed out through our larynx, configured through our larynx and its movements, is wedded to the Wisdom that dwells in our thoughts; and the content we have to express is the inspiring Spirit. Every time you speak—no matter how profane the impulse of your speaking is—you have expressed earthly representation of the Trinity. The thought in your head, and the configured air that passes through your larynx,—these two arc wedded and united under the influence of the Spirit (that is to say, when you are voicing things of the sense-world, united by the percept itself).

It is indeed the earthly expression of the Trinity. And the Divine, the spiritual Trinity, must stand behind it,—the all-embracing Wisdom which becomes Teaching for mankind, and which expresses the Universal content. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science cannot admit or confess its faith in any earthly constitution; for an earthly constitution, whatever it might claim, would be unfolding mere claims of power. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes the Virgin cosmic Word in real earnest.

If we think in the sense of anthroposophical Spiritual Science, then, in this content of all that is brought forward by this Science, we see not a mere sum of abstractions or abstract ideas but a living entity that fills us and enfills us; For it can even fill us in our soul with active impulse. Thus it becomes the Word, the Teaching, not in a mere scholastic sense. For spiritual-scientific Wisdom grows to be of service in the social life. The Word itself becomes of social service. And the content which it expresses—brought down from super-sensible worlds into the world of sense, so to be the underlying basis of our impulses of action—is the inspiring Spirit. Thus I would say: We look for Pallas Athene, the Virgin Wisdom, the Virgin Wisdom of the Cosmos; but we also look for the Son who is born of her, who finds expression in this: that in all the things we do and will in the social life, the Virgin Wisdom is working with us, giving us that which becomes the guiding impulse of our willing and our doing. Then we express the Spirit—the Holy Spirit, the Supersensible—in our sense-perceptible actions on the physical plane.

All this implies that the Wisdom which we have to seek in the sense of Spiritual Science, must have a virginal character. Perhaps you will ask, is there any sense or meaning in this? Is it not mere talk, so many figures of speech.

There is indeed a meaning in it—important, significant, immense. Namely the following: Man turns his senses to the outer world. That is his proper task; for to this end he is placed into the world. What the senses as such receive, can only be naive and innocent; for the animals too receive it, and to the animals we cannot apply the ideas of ‘should’ or ‘should not.’ But man must go farther than that. With his intellect he combines and associates the things he perceives. What is the significance of this associative intellect? The Physical Science of to-day already gives an answer to this question (I mean, however, the Physical Science itself, and not its learned representatives).

The combinatorial, associative, intellect, and all that man thinks out concerning the impressions of his senses—his perceptions—is something that arises out of his own inner nature, and moreover, out of a comparatively lower part of his nature. Man is exceedingly proud of his brain, notably of the frontal portions. For a true Science, however, the frontal portions of the brain are of far less value than the portions that lie farther back, For the frontal portions of the brain are in their essence no more than the transmuted organ of smell. To be clever, in the sense of Physical Science, is to have developed the olfactory nerves, as man, to such an extent that you are equipped with good association-nerves. These nerves are then effective instruments for the associating or combining of sensory ideas. To be clever, in the materialistic sense, is to have a good metamorphosis of that part of the brain which, in the lower creatures—the animals—is connected with the nose. It is, so to speak, to be well “on the scent” in the associating of ideas. These things have indeed occasionally been pointed out by men who had a healthy faculty of insight and penetration. One need but think of this: if you have a sound feeling of such matters, you cannot but say that to be “sharp” or clever on the physical plane, is, in its essence, to have a peculiarly developed “scent” or sense of smell—transplanted into the human realm. It is, in a very real sense, to be able to “sniff things out,” Thus the Physical Science which has arisen by association of ideas is the mere outcome of human beings “sniffing things out” on the physical plane. This may be said in an absolutely literal sense. In so doing man can arrive at all manner of constructions of atomic processes, all manner of ideas of chemical and physical laws, and the like. But it is wide of the mark to pretend that there is anything very lofty or highly developed in these things; they are but the result of a metamorphosed sense of smell.

I said: Even Physical Science bears witness to this fact. You may convince yourself of what I have told you, from the physiological and anatomical facts. Unhappily, the transmuted olfactory sense, or “nose,” of our scholars is not yet quite adequate to draw this conclusion, so they most continue “nosing about” till they are able to draw this conclusion, too!

Among those who had healthy human feeling of this fact was Goethe. Goethe said something highly significant from this point of view. As I have shown for many years past and along many different lines, Goethe demanded quite another trend of Physical Science than that which actually arose in the 19th century and continued into our time. He wanted to have expunged from scientific research what is indeed quite justified in ordinary life; he wanted it radically expunged from our research into Nature. Goethe comes hack to this point again and again. The thing that he wished to have expunged was precisely the combining, the interpreting, the putting constructions on the facts perceived with the senses. He wanted to have the sense-perceived facts simply described according to their own nature, as pure phenomena; he wanted to refer the sense-perceived phenomena to their archetypal phenomena,—the “Ur-phenomena.” He did not want constructions put on them with the intellect, theorizing and inquiring as to what might lie behind them here or there.

There is a wonderful saying of Goethe's, a saying that throws a vivid light on his entire World-conception. “The blue of the sky,” Goethe once said, “is in itself the Theory; you should not look for anything behind it,” It was the pure perception, the pure vision of things which Goethe wanted men to seek. As to the intellect, he would only have it used to put the phenomena together in such a way that they would voice their own secrets. He wanted a Natural Research free of hypotheses and intellectual constructions. This is the very method of his Theory of Colour. People have failed to understand the fundamental point. Goethe wanted the associative intellect to refrain from putting constructions on the sense-impressions; he wished it to take another path. It amounts to this in other words: He wanted to make the human intellect—the human faculty of intellectual association—virginal, even in Natural Science. He wanted to take away the unchaste quality it has, inasmuch as it has suffered the Fall, so to speak, whereby it is now a mere transmuted organ of smell. For it is so indeed: The one part of the Fall is the event which we can place in the primeval epoch of which I have so often told you. But there was also a sequel to this “Fall into sin.” Again and again in their subsequent evolution, the organs of man took on a lower level than they should have had. The associative intellect of man is indeed subject to the Fall, inasmuch as it is working in the outer physical world.

For the outer physical world it is quite justified. This physical intellect cannot but be bound to the transmuted organs of smell. It must be so, just as for the outer physical world physical sexuality and reproduction must exist. In Science, however, we should seek the virginity of the intellect;—That is to say, we should loosen the intellect from the functions it performs when, as a mere transmuted sense of smell, it combines and associates the sensible objects. The blue of the sky should not be interpreted in the sense of Physical Science (Newtonian physics), as you will find it to-day in every textbook of Physics. The blue of the sky itself is Theory in Goethe's sense,—that is the true conception. In this sphere, too, rightly to understand Goethe is to see in him that personality who wanted to work entirely in the spirit which is also the spirit of Spiritual Science. Goethe thought consistently, right into the sphere of Natural Research. In Natural Research he demanded only those theories that go to the “Ur-phenomena,” the archetypal phenomenon. He did not want all manner of atomic theories,—theories of ions and electrons, theories of gravitation and the like—deduce by the combining intellect from the phenomena. Inasmuch as he thought thus, in Physics itself Goethe was pointing to that which I desired to point out when I referred to Pallas Athene as the representative of Wisdom. Thereby alone, we begin even in the realm of Natural Research to turn to the Son. We only begin to do so when we free the Mother from these intellectual constructions, and turn to the vision of the pure virgin “Ur-phenomena.”

Herein you see what a deep earnestness and significance is really contained in that which we may call Goetheanism. I simply wanted to point out to you, how—quite apart from the prevailing culture, so-called—even in the 19th century the impulses that lead in the other direction were there. Let us be mindful of this fact. Then, too, we shall interpret truly the requirements of the present time, and out of these requirements we shall derive the true and the right impulses. We live in a time of catastrophe. It would, of course, be wrong to imagine that that which is catastrophe in the Christmas sense must necessarily be catastrophe also in the Easter sense. Indeed, from the catastrophes of to-day the very opposite, the greatest things of human evolution, can result,—if only humanity finds ways and means to learn from them, and with straightforward sense and vision to observe what has taken place.

If I bring forward such ideas, which may be remote from the thoughts of many of our friends, it is only to point out again and again the important fact, that in our time we must not seek in a comfortable way to work with the old concepts and ideas, but strive in all earnestness towards new ideas and new perceptions.

What is it really underlies such a tendency as Goethe's, not to apply the combinatorial intellect to the outer phenomena, but to recognise the latter in their virgin nature; It is none other than this: that when we do so, we are not letting the intellect suffer the Fall into sin, by all manner of intellectual combinations, of atoms and groups and complexes of atoms, and ions, and gravitation, and so forth. We save the intellect from mingling with the outer sensual nature, to give birth to materialistic theories. When we do so, the intellect turns in the other, in the spiritual direction, and gives birth to the Son—that is, to the spiritual-scientific teaching which leads at length to a real understanding of man, of the whole man. For, as I told you in these days, the ancient Wisdom only led up to a certain point. Man, as it were, was not included in the wisdom of the middle epoch,—the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch. To-day we have the task of understanding man, by a true grasp of spiritual facts.

Humanity should really be pining for concepts, new ideas. We must bring this fully to our consciousness. And if we ask to-day. What thoughts will be the best Christmas thoughts, what thoughts will bear the best fruits after 33 years, the answer is: they will be those thoughts which take their start from seeking honestly and uprightly for a new grasp of the world, a new grasp of reality. To develop a longing for what the world has to reveal in the new sense will be the best of Christmas thoughts;—not to want to remain contented with the old. Alas! to this day it is an all-pervading impulse of mankind, to stop short at the old, because humanity can with such difficulty bestir itself to draw forth, from the inmost being of the soul, that which shall be made known by human lips. Man to-day can only rightly develop his task as man if he unfolds the will, down to the very centre of his being, to be genuine and true,—not only trying to ponder on the old things, but to make the new—the new that must be drawn out of the very depths of being into the content of his faith and action.

In thoughtless and inane repetition of what others say, one need not go so far as yonder politician who, wishing to send out into the world a great political manifesto in the year 1917, took up an old political Pronunciamento of the year 1864, and copied it almost word for word. Truly, one does not need to think very deeply if, as a dominant politician of 1917, one merely takes an old Brazilian document and copies it sentence by sentence, and places it before the world as though it were a great revelation. Truly, one need not go so far as this Woodrow Wilson, who actually contrived to fabricate the “highly important manifesto” which he sent forth a short time ago, by copying almost word for word a manifesto of the Emperor of Brazil of the year 1864. But it is necessary to see things in their true form and aspect, even such wretched details as this. One would be almost overcome with pity for poor mankind, when men are taking seriously things which if seen in their true light can only represent the most appalling untruthfulness and perfidy, passing throughout the world to-day.

I do not say this to make any attack,—nay, not even to criticise; but to awaken the sense of people, that they may open their eyes at length, and see with open eyes what is happening. Occasionally, nowadays, we see the world worshipping as greatness things that are merely absurd and laughable. These are precisely the things we must see through. If we develop the will really to see into things, then we shall also develop the Christmas thoughts which will become the true Easter thoughts. For we may even say, paradoxical as it may sound: the more full of pain and suffering this present is, the greater the fruits it can bear for the future.

A time like ours stands most in need of the poet's word not finding fulfilment in it,—I mean the word of the poet who said that “a great Time finds but it small and petty generation.”

Full of pain is our Time, yet great it can be; and in a certain sense, it must find the men who can think greatly. But they will not be the Wilsonians!

Only through a knowledge of the most important and essential laws of human evolution can man attain a real consciousness that supports his soul. He must learn to know the events of human evolution and make them part of his question of taking fully into account—I made this remark already a few days ago—that the evolution of mankind is itself an evolution of a living entity. Just as there is ordered growth in the single human individual, so is there ordered growth in the evolution of the whole human race. And since the present is the moment when we have to become conscious of certain things, and since the human being has participated, during his repeated earth lives, in the various configurations of humanity's evolutionary history, it is also necessary to develop an understanding for the different human soul moods in the various epochs of mankind's evolution. I have often stated that what we call history today is really a fable convenue, a fable agreed upon, for the reason that the abstract recounting of events and the searching for cause and effect in historical processes in an external sense does not take into account the transformations, the metamorphoses of human soul life itself. When, from this point of view, we make tests, we can easily show that it is a prejudice to believe that the soul mood of modern man prevailed also in the times to which the first historical documents reach back. This is not the case. Human beings, even the simplest, most primitive, of the ninth and tenth post-Christian centuries had a soul mood completely different from that of human beings after the middle of the fifteenth century. We can trace this right into the lower strata of the human race, but also into the upper levels. Try, for instance, to familiarize yourselves with Dante's curious work about “Monarchy.” If you read such a thing, not as an oddity, but with a certain cultural-historical sagacity, then you will notice that such a book of a representative of his time contains things which could not possibly have been spoken out of the soul of a modern human being.

In this book, which was intended as a serious treatise about the legal and political foundations of monarchy, Dante tries to show that the Romans were the most excellent people of the world, as far as it was known at that time, was the primeval right of the Romans. He tries to show that the conquest of the whole earth by the Romans constituted a right greater than for instance the right of independence of single, smaller peoples; for it was the will of God that the Romans should rule over the various smaller peoples, for the latter's own good. Dante offers many proofs, out of the spirit of his time, why the Romans were justified in ruling the earth. One of these proofs is the following: He says: The Romans descend from Aeneas. Aeneas married three times. First, Creusa; through this marriage he acquired the right, as progenitor of the race, to rule Asia. Secondly, he married Dido; through this marriage he acquired the right, as ancestor of the Romans, to rule Africa. Then he married Lavinia; through this he acquired the right for the Romans to rule Europe. Herman Grimm, who once discussed this matter, made the telling remark: How fortunate that at the time America and Australia were not yet discovered!

But this sort of conclusion was something quite self-evident for an enlightened spirit of the time of Dante, indeed, for the most outstanding spirit of that time. This was a juridical presentation at that time. Now I ask you to imagine that any lawyer of the present age would draw such conclusions. You cannot imagine it. And you can just as little imagine that the mode of thought which Dante employs in regard to other subjects could arise in the soul constitution of a man of the present age.

Thus a quite obvious fact shows that we have to take into consideration the transformation of the soul constitutions of human beings. To fail to understand these things was tolerable in a certain way up to our time. But it will no longer do in our time, and quite especially will it not do for mankind in the future, for the simple reason that mankind, right up to our time, or at least up to the end of the eighteenth century, had certain instincts; (since the French Revolution matters have gradually changed, but still, old remnants remained of the soul constitutions in question.) Out of these instincts mankind was able to develop a consciousness which supported the soul. But in the present state of the constantly changing organism of mankind these instincts no longer exist and man must consciously acquire the connection with the whole of humanity. This is, after all, the deeper significance of the social question in our present time. What people state in their party platforms are only superficial formulations. That which surges in the depths of human souls expresses itself in such formulas; mankind feels that it is necessary to acquire a conscious relationship of the individual to the whole of humanity, that is, to acquire a social impulse.

Now, we cannot do so without focusing our attention upon the law of evolution. Let us do this once more after having done so repeatedly in regard to other questions. Let us take the time from the fourth post-Christian century up to the sixteenth post-Christian century. We see how Christianity bears the character of which I spoke yesterday and on previous occasions. We find that great care is taken during this period to understand the secrets of Golgotha through human concepts and ideas as they had been transmitted by Greek culture. Then a changed form of evolution sets in. We know that it really set in at an earlier time, around the middle of the fifteenth century; but it became clearly discernible only in the sixteenth century. At that time the natural-scientifically orientated thinking began to take hold of the upper level of mankind and to spread further and further.

Let us focus our attention upon this natural-scientific thinking in regard to a certain quality. There are many qualities of natural-scientifically orientated thinking which might be mentioned, but today we want to emphasize one quality in particular. It is the following: If we are a really efficient, modern thinker in the present sense, we are unable to cope with the problem of the necessity of nature and human freedom. The natural-scientific thinking of the modern age pressed onward more and more toward conceiving of the human being as a member of the rest of nature, the latter being considered a stream of causes and effects determining one another. Certainly, there exist today many human beings who see clearly that freedom, the experience of freedom, is a fact of human consciousness. But this does not prevent them from being unable to cope with this problem as they steep themselves in the special configuration of natural-scientific thinking. If we think about the being of man in the way modern natural science demands we are unable to reconcile this thinking with the thinking about human freedom. Some people take it very easy in regard to human freedom, in regard to the sense of human responsibility. I knew a professor of criminal law who began his lectures on criminal law every time with the following remarks: Gentlemen, I have to lecture to you on criminal law. Let us begin by assuming the axiom that there is human freedom and responsibility. For, if there were no human freedom and responsibility, there could be no criminal law. However, criminal law exists, for I have to lecture on it to you; therefore, responsibility and freedom exist also.—this argumentation is somewhat simple, but it points to the difficulty that arises for human beings when they have to ask the question: How can the necessity of nature be reconciled with freedom? It shows, in other words, how the human being has been forced more and more through the evolution of the last few centuries to acknowledge a certain omnipotence of the necessity of nature. One does not express it in these words; nevertheless, a certain omnipotence of natural necessity is conceived of. What is this omnipotence of natural necessity?

We shall understand one another best if I remind you of something which I have mentioned frequently. Modern thinkers believe that they act—or, rather, think—without prejudice, merely as scientific researchers, when they assert that man consists of body and soul. People, all the way up to the great philosopher Wilhelm Wundt—who is great, however, merely through the graces of his publisher—people maintain: if we think without prejudice, we have to consider man as consisting of body and soul, if we ascribe any validity to the soul at all. And only timidly does the truth make its appearance, namely, that man consists of body, soul, and spirit. The philosophers who consider themselves unbiased in their belief that man consists of body and soul do not know that their concept is merely the result of a historical process which had its starting point in the eighth Œcumencial council of Constantinople when the Roman-Catholic church abolished the spirit by establishing the dogma that henceforth the orthodox Christian was to think of man as consisting of body and soul, the soul having some spiritual qualities. This was a church law; philosophers still teach it today and do not know that they are merely following a church law. They believe they carry on unprejudiced science. This is the situation today in regard to many things called “unprejudiced science.”

The matter is similar in regard to the necessity of nature. During the whole evolution between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries the concept of god took on a quite particular form. If one takes into account the more intimate aspects of the spiritual evolution of these centuries, one will become aware of the fact that a quite definite concept of God was more and more elaborated in human thinking, a concept of God which culminated in the dictum: God, the Omnipotent, the All-Mighty. Few people know that it would have had no meaning for human beings prior to the fourth post-Christian century to speak of God, the All-Mighty. My dear friends, we do not engage in catechism truths; there you will, naturally, find: God is all-mighty, all-wise, all-benevolent. All these are things which have nothing to do with realities. Prior to the fourth century, nobody would have thought of considering omnipotence as a fundamental quality of the Divine Being if he had an understanding of these matters and really lived with them. For at that time the after-effect of the Greek concepts still held sway. In thinking about the Divine Being, people would not have spoken of God, the All-Mighty, but of God, the Omniscient, the All-Wise.

God, the All-Mighty

(Previously: God the All-Wise)

fourth century sixteenth century

Wisdom was considered the fundamental attribute of the Divine Being. The concept of Omnipotence only gradually penetrated the idea of the Divine Being, from the fourth century onward. It continued to develop. The concept of personality was abandoned and the predicate was transmitted to the mere order of nature, which is conceived of more and more mechanically. And the modern concept of the necessity of nature, the omnipotence of nature, is nothing but the result of the evolution of the concept of God from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Only, the qualities of personality were abandoned and that which constituted the concept of God was taken over into the structure of thinking about nature.

Now, my dear friends, the genuine natural scientists of today would oppose such statements vigorously. Just as many philosophers believe they are thinking without prejudice about man by considering him as consisting of body and soul, whereas in truth they merely follow the eighth Œcumenical Council of Constantinople in 869,—just as these philosophers are dependent upon a historical stream, so all the Haeckeleans, Darwinists, physicists with their natural order are dependent upon the theological stream that developed in the period from St. Augustine to Calvin. These things have to be comprehended. It is the peculiar character of every evolutionary stream that it comprises evolution as well as involution or devolution. And while the concept “God the All-Mighty” developed, there existed a sub-current in the subconscious spheres of human soul life, which then became the leading upper current: the nature necessity. (See diagram, red) And since the sixteenth century there exists a new sub-current which prepares precisely in our time to become an upper current. (blue.)

It is characteristic of the Michael age that that which has been prepared in the form of a sub-current of nature-necessity must henceforth become an upper current. But if we wish to acquire a possible concept of what it is that has thus prepared itself, we must understand the inner spirit of Earth evolution.

I recently drew your attention to the fact that what takes place in the evolution of the earth and of mankind in particular moves in a descending line. Earth humanity and the evolution of the earth itself is on the path of decadence. I drew your attention to the fact that this is today a recognized geological truth, that geologists who are to be taken seriously admit that the earth crust is in a process of decay. Mankind itself, in particular, is in a process of decay through the sensuous-earthly forces. And mankind, in its evolutionary process, must receive spiritual impulses which counteract decadence. Therefore a conscious spiritual life must enter mankind. We must be clear about the fact that we have already passed beyond the pinnacle of Earth evolution. In order that it may proceed, the spiritual must be taken up more and more clearly and distinctly.

At the outset, this seems an abstract fact. But for the spiritual researcher this is not an abstract fact. You know that we can trace the evolution of the Earth through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon states right into the Earth state. This evolution may also be characterized in the following way: if we speak of present mankind, we may consider the evolution of mankind through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods as a preparation, as a pre-state. Only upon the Earth itself did man, as he received his ego, gain his true humanhood, and he will receive further elements into his true being during the subsequent evolutionary stages of the Earth.

Now you know that the so-called Archai, the present Spirits of Personality or Time Spirits, were in the Saturn state at the stage of evolution at which the human being is today, although in quite different forms, with a completely different outer aspect. I have expressed this in my books by saying: what we designate today as Archai, as Spirits of Personality, was man during the Saturn period. The Archangeloi were man during the Sun period, the Angeloi during the Moon period. During the Earth period we are man.

Our own evolution, of course, went on alongside all this, by way of preparation. If we go back to the Moon state we must say: Here the Angeloi were human beings, human beings, to be sure, with an appearance quite different from ours, for there were quite different conditions upon the ancient Moon. But alongside these Moon men, the Angeloi, we developed in a pre-state of the Earth evolution, in a very advanced state, so that we had to be taken into consideration by the Angeloi. Especially during the descending phase of the Moon evolution did we, at times, constitute a troublesome concern for the Angeloi. The same, however, is the case with us in descending Earth evolution: since the Earth evolution has entered its descending phases, other beings make themselves felt. My dear friends, it is a significant, an important result of spiritual-scientific research which is to be taken very, very seriously, that we have already entered the period of Earth evolution when certain beings make themselves felt who upon Jupiter—the next state of Earth evolution—will have advanced to the form of man, a different form of man, to be sure, but which, nevertheless, may be compared with the being of man. For we will be different beings on Jupiter. These so-to-speak Jupiter men exist already now just as we existed upon the Moon. They exist, of course not externally visible; but I explained to you recently what it means to be externally visible, and that man is also a super-sensible being. Supersensibily these beings are very decidedly present.

I emphasize once more: it is an extremely serious truth that certain beings make themselves felt which exist in the environment of mankind. They make themselves felt more and more since the middle of the fifteenth century. These beings possess chiefly the impulse of a force which is very similar to the human force of will, that force of will of which I told you yesterday that it exists in the deeper strata of the human consciousness. These invisible beings are related to that element of which ordinary consciousness thus remains unconscious today; but they already make themselves very strongly felt in the development of present-day humanity.

For the person who takes spiritual research truly seriously this is a problem of great magnitude. I was confronted with this problem especially strongly—at the time I spoke to a number of our friends about it in one or another form—I was confronted with this problem in a demanding fashion, as it were, when, in the year 1914, this war catastrophe broke in upon us. One had to ask oneself: How did an event overtake European mankind which it is impossible to gauge as to its causes in the way that is customary in regard to previous historical events? The one who knows that not more than thirty or forty people participated in Europe in the decisive events of the year 1914, and who also knows the soul condition in which most of these people were, will be confronted by this significant problem. For most of these people, as strange as it may sound today, my dear friends, most of these people had a dulled, obscured state of consciousness. During the last few years much has occurred that was caused by a dulled human consciousness. In the decisive places of the year 1914 we see everywhere that the most important decisions of the end of July and the beginning of August were reached with an obscured consciousness; and this has continued on right into our present day. This is a problem, terrifying in its nature. If we investigate it spiritual-scientifically, then we find that these obscured consciousnesses were the gateways through which precisely these will-beings were able to take possession of the consciousness of these men; they took possession of the obscured, veiled consciousness of these human beings and acted with their consciousness. And these beings who thus took possession, who are still sub-human beings, what kind of beings are they? We have to pose this question very seriously: What kind of beings are they?

Well, my dear friends, we have asked about the origin of human intelligence, about the origin of human intelligent behavior which, stating it simply, has its instrument in our head organism. And we have seen that this intelligent constitution of our soul stems from that deed of the Archangel Michael which is commonly presented in the symbol of the fall, the casting down of the Dragon. This is actually a very trivial symbol. For, if we really conceive of Michael and the Dragon, we have to visualize, first, the Michael Being, and, secondly, the Dragon who, in reality, consists of all that which enters into our so-called reason, into our intelligence. Not into a hell does Michael cast his opposing hosts, but into the human heads; there this Luciferic impulse continues to live. I have characterized human intelligence as an actual Luciferic impulse. Thus we may say: if we look back into the evolution of the Earth, we find the Michael-deed, and to this Michael-deed is joined the illumination of man by his reason.

The sub-human beings whose main character consists of an impulse which strongly coincides with human willing, with the human power of will, now appear from below, as it were, whereas the hosts of forces cast down by Michael came from above; and while these latter took possession of the human power of will; they unite themselves with it and are beings produced by the realm of Ahriman. Ahrimanic influences acted through those obscured consciousnesses. Indeed, my dear friends, as long as one does not take into consideration these forces as forces objectively existing in the world just as one takes into consideration what today is called magnetism, electricity, and so forth, one will not gain an insight into that nature which, according to Goethe's prose Hymn to Nature, comprises man. For nature, as it is conceived of in today's natural science does not contain man, but merely the human physical self.

At the beginning of Earth becoming we have to do with a downfall of Luciferic beings; today we have a rise of Ahrimanic beings. The former beings influence the Luciferic power of thought, the latter the human power of will; we have to recognize the arrival of these latter beings within the evolution of mankind. We have to realize that these beings arrive and that we have to reckon with a conception of nature which, to be sure, for the time being only includes man; for the animal kingdom will only be included later on in the Earth period. Upon the animal these beings have no influences as yet. We shall not comprehend the human race without taking these beings into consideration. And these beings, who are, as it were, pushed from behind, for behind them there stands the Ahrimanic power which endows them with their strong will power, which pours into them their directive forces,—these beings who as such are sub-human beings are controlled in their totality by higher Ahrimanic spirits and thus contain something which far surpasses their own nature and being. Therefore they show something in their appearance which, if it takes the human being captive, acts much more strongly, very much more strongly than that which the weak human being can control today, if he does not strengthen it through the spirit. What is the aim of this host? Well, my dear friends, just as the hosts which Michael has pushed down have aimed at human illumination, at human permeation with reason, so these hosts aim at a certain permeation of human willing. And what do they want? They burrow, as it were, in the deepest stratum of consciousness in which the human being is still asleep today in his waking state. Man does not notice how these beings enter his soul and also his body. Here they suck in, with their power of attraction, everything that has remained Luciferic, that has not become Christ-permeated. This they can reach: this they can take possession of.

My dear friends, our time raises these problems for us. We must no longer pass by these things. They are not convenient. For it has become convenient for human beings to think differently, that is, not to think at all about man, not to take him into consideration at all. And it is not without danger to speak about these things in complete truth at a time when many people do not at all love the sense for truth, quite apart from the fact that false sentimentality might find these things a psychic cruelty.

The result of the comprehension of these things, however, will be a thorough grasp of the necessity of the Christ impulse. One must recognize where the Christ impulse is lacking. Yesterday we showed that the Christ impulse takes hold of the middle stratum of consciousness; if man really permeates himself with the Christ, then these Ahrimanic powers cannot penetrate through this middle stratum, upward, and they cannot, with their spiritual forces, pull down the intellectual forces. Everything depends on that.

It is very necessary today that we recognize the nature of the influences which come to us from extra-human, sub-human beings which in turn are influenced by other beings. They are just as important as many influences which are only rooted in the world of man. A week ago I talked to you about the Michael influence. I have characterized this Michael influence for you. It is a very necessary one. For just as it is true that the Michael influence has brought about the Luciferic influencing of human intelligence, so true is it that now the counter-pole arises, namely, the appearance of certain Ahrimanic beings. And only through the constant activity of Michael is the human being armed against that which arises there. Even physiologically it is dangerous today to cling to mere nature necessity, to that kind of fatalism which is expressed in nature necessity. For education, through school and through life, in the concepts which are merely based upon nature necessity, upon the omnipotence of nature necessity, weakens the human head, and human beings become thereby so strongly passive in regard to their consciousness, that other forces are able to enter this consciousness, and human beings will fail to acquire the strength that is necessary for the reception into the human soul of the Christ impulse in its present form.

It is my duty, as it were, my dear friends, to speak at this time of the subject of which I have begun to speak today (I shall continue it tomorrow): of the appearance of certain Ahrimanic beings, which we have to take into account. Of this appearance numerous people upon earth are cognizant today. But they give it the wrong interpretation. They interpret it wrongly for the reason that they know nothing of the real triad of Christ-Lucifer-Ahriman, or do not wish to know anything about it, but jumble up Ahriman and Lucifer. Then discrimination is impossible; then it is impossible properly to recognize the true fundamental character of these Ahrimanic beings who now arise. Only if we clearly elaborate the Ahrimanic element and know the nature of the super-sensible influences which now arise as the counterpart, as it were, of Michael's casting down of the Dragon. It is like a lifting up, out of Ahrimanic depths, of certain beings. And these beings find special points of attack in the human being if the latter yields to unbridled instinctive impulses and does not strive for clarity in relation to them.

Now, there exists today a method I might call it an anti-method, of concealing the instinctive element, by putting down a concept and pushing another over it, so that it is impossible to form a proper judgment concerning it. Just think of the battle cry of the proletariat of the modern age. Behind this battle cry there stand very justified demands of mankind—I have often dealt with this. But these demands are not, to begin with, appealed to. In our idea of the three-fold social order they are appealed to for the first time. Something essentially different is appealed to: Proletarians of all countries, unite! What does this mean? It means: Foster your antipathy against the other classes, foster, as individuals, what resembles hate, and unite; that means, love one another, unite your feelings of hate, look for the love of one class, search among you for the love of the members of one class out of hate. Love one another out of hate, on the basis of hate.—There you have put down two concepts of opposing poles. This pushing back of instincts makes man's conceptions so nebulous, rendering him unable to know what he is dealing with in his own self. There actually exists a kind of anti-method, if I may use the paradoxical expression, in order to obscure, through present-day human thinking, the holding sway of an instinctive life which offers especially strong points of attack for the described Ahrimanic beings.

[ 1 ] The Austrian thinker, Bartholomaeus Carneri (1871–1909) attempted to open wide perspectives of world conception and ethics on the ground of Darwinism. Eleven years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, he published his work, Morality and Darwinism (1871), in which he used the new world of ideas as the basis of an ethical world conception in a comprehensive way. (Compare his books, Foundation of Ethics, 1881, Man as His Own Purpose, 1878, and Modern Man, Essays on Life Conduct, 1891.) Carneri tries to find in the picture of nature the elements through which self-conscious ego is conceivable within this picture. He would like to think this world picture so wide and so comprehensive as to contain the human soul within its scope. He aims at the reunion of the ego with the mother ground of nature, from which it has become separated. He represents in his world conception the opposite tendency to the philosophy for which the world becomes an illusion of the imagination and which, for that reason, renounces all connection with the reality of the world so far as knowledge is concerned.

Carneri rejects all moral philosophy that intends to proclaim for man other moral commandments than those that result from his own nature. We must remember that man is not to be understood as a special being beside all other things of nature but that he is a being that has gradually developed from lower entities according to purely natural laws. Carneri is convinced that all life is like a chemical process. “The digestion in man is such a process as well as the nutrition of the plant.” At the same time, he emphasizes that the chemical process must be raised to a higher form of evolution if it is to become plant or animal.

Life is a chemical process of a special kind; it is the individualized chemical process, for the chemical process can reach a point where it can maintain itself without certain conditions . . . that it formerly needed.

It is apparent that Carneri observes that lower processes are transformed into higher ones, that matter takes on higher forms of existence through the perfection of its functions.

As matter, we conceive the substance insofar as the properties that result from its divisibility and its motion effect our senses physically, that is to say, as mass. If this division or differentiation goes so far as to produce phenomena that are no longer sensually perceptible but only perceptible to our thinking, we say the effect of the substance is spiritual.

Also, morality does not exist as a special form of reality; it is a process of nature on a higher level. Therefore, the question cannot be raised: What is man to do to comply with some special moral commandment that is valid for him? We can only ask: What appears as morality when the lower processes develop into the higher spiritual ones?

While moral philosophy proclaims certain moral laws and commands that they are to be kept so that man may be what he ought to be, our ethics develops man as he is. It wants to do no more than to show him what he may at some time become. While the former moralizing philosophy knows of duties to be enforced by punishments, our ethics uphold an ideal from which any compulsion would merely distract because it can be approached only on the path of knowledge and of freedom.

As the chemical process individualizes itself into a living being on a higher level, so on a still higher level life is transformed into self-consciousness. The entity that has become self-conscious no longer merely looks out into nature; it looks back into itself.

The awakened self-consciousness constituted, if conceived dualistically, a break with nature, and man felt himself separated from nature. This breach existed only for him, but for him it was complete. It had not developed as suddenly as it is taught in Genesis, just as the days of creation must not be taken literally as days. But with the completion of self-consciousness, the breach was a fact and with the feeling of boundless lonesomeness that overcame man in this state, his ethical development began.

Up to a certain point nature leads life. At this point, self-consciousness arises, man comes into existence. “His further development is his own work and what keeps him on the course of progress is the power and the gradual clarification of his wishes.” Nature takes care of a11 other beings, but it endows man with desires and expects him to take care of their fulfillment. Man has within himself the impulse to arrange his existence in agreement with his wishes. This impulse is his desire for happiness:

This impulse is unknown to the animal. It knows only the instinct for self-preservation; to develop that instinct into the desire for happiness, the human self-consciousness is necessary as a fundamental condition.

The striving for happiness is the basis of all action:

The martyr who sacrifices his life, be it for his scientific conviction or for his belief in God, aims for nothing but his happiness. He finds it in the first case in his loyalty of conviction, and in the second case he expects it in a better world. To everyone happiness is the last aim and no matter how different the picture may be that the individual has of this happiness, it is to every sentient living being the beginning and the end of all his thinking and feeling.

As nature gives man only the need for happiness, this image of happiness must have its origin within man himself. Man creates for himself the pictures of his happiness. They spring from his ethical fantasy. Carneri finds in this fantasy the new concept that prescribes the ideals of our action to our thinking. The “good” is, for Carneri, “identical with progressive evolution, and since evolution is pleasure . . . happiness not merely constituted the aim but also the moving element that drives toward that aim.”

[ 2 ] Carneri attempted to find the way that leads from the natural order to the sources of morality. He believed he had found the ideal power that propels the ethical world order as spontaneously from one moral event to the next as the material forces on the physical level develop formation after formation and fact after fact.

[ 3 ] Carneri's mode of conception is entirely in agreement with the idea of evolution that does not permit the notion that a later phase of development is already pre-formed in an earlier one, but considers it as a really new formation. The chemical process does not contain implicitly animal life, and happiness develops as an entirely new element on the ground of the animal's instinct for self-preservation. The difficulty that lies in this thought caused a penetrating thinker, W. H. Rolph, to develop the line of reasoning that he set down in his book, Biological Problems, an Attempt at the Development of a Rational Ethics (1884). Rolph asks himself, “What is the reason that a form of life does not remain at a given stage but develops progressively and becomes more perfect?” This problem presents no difficulty for a thinker who maintains that the later form is already implicitly contained in the earlier one. For him, it is quite clear that what is at first implicit will become explicit at a certain time. But Rolph was not willing to accept this answer. On the other hand, however, he was also not satisfied with the “struggle for existence” as a solution of the problem. If a living being fights only for the satisfaction of its necessary needs, it will, to be sure, overpower its weaker competitors, but it will itself remain what it is. If one does not want to attribute a mysterious, mystical tendency toward perfection to this being, one must seek the cause of this perfection in external, natural circumstances. Rolph tries to give an explanation by stating that, whenever possible, every being satisfies its needs to a greater extent than is necessary.

Only by introducing the idea of insatiability does the Darwinian principle of perfection in the struggle for life become acceptable, for it is only thus that we have an explanation for the fact that the creature acquires, whenever it can do so, more than it needs for maintaining its status quo, and that it grows excessively whenever the occasion is given for it. (Biological Problems)

What takes place in this realm of living beings is, in Rolph's opinion, not a struggle for acquisition of the necessary means of life but a “struggle for surplus acquisition.” “While the Darwinist knows of no life struggle as long as the existence of the creature is not threatened, I consider this struggle as ever present. It is simply primarily a struggle for life, a struggle for the increase of life, not a struggle for existence.” Rolph draws from these natural scientific presuppositions the conclusions for his ethics:

Expansion of life, not its mere preservation, struggle for advantage, not for existence, is the rallying cry. The mere acquisition of life's necessities and sustenance is not sufficient; what must also be gained is comfort, if not wealth, power and influence. The search and striving for continuous improvement of the condition of life is the characteristic impulse of animal and man. (Biological Problems)

[ 4 ] Rolph's thoughts stimulated Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) to produce his own ideas of evolution after having gone through other phases of his soul life. At the beginning of his career as an author, the idea of evolution and natural science in general had been far from his thoughts. He was at first deeply impressed by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and from him he adopted the conception of pain as lying at the bottom of all existence. Unlike Schopenhauer and Eduard van Hartmann, Nietzsche did not seek the redemption from this pain in the fulfillment of moral tasks. It was his belief rather that the transformation of life into a work of art that leads beyond the pain of existence. Thus, the Greeks created a world of beauty and appearance in order to make this painful existence bearable. In Richard Wagner's musical drama he believed he found a world in which beauty lifts man beyond pain. It was in a certain sense a world of illusion that was quite consciously sought by Nietzsche in order to overcome the misery of the world. He was of the opinion that, at the root of the oldest Greek culture, there had been the will of man to forget the real world through a state of intoxication.

Singing and dancing man manifests himself as a member of a higher community. He has forgotten to walk and to speak and, in his dance, he is about to fly up into the air. (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872)

With these words Nietzsche describes and explains the cult of the ancient worshippers of Dionysos, in which he saw the root of all art. Nietzsche maintained of Socrates that he had overpowered this Dionysian impulse by placing reason as judge over them. The statement, “Virtue is teachable,” meant, according to Nietzsche, the end of a comprehensive, impulsive culture and the beginning of a much feebler phase dominated by thinking. Such an idea arose in Nietzsche under the influence of Schopenhauer, who placed the untamed, restless will higher than the systematizing thought life, and under the influence of Richard Wagner who, both as a man and as an artist, followed Schopenhauer. But Nietzsche was, by his own inclination, also a contemplative nature. After having surrendered for awhile to the idea of the redemption of the world through beauty as mere appearance, he felt this conception as a foreign element to his own nature, something that had been implanted in him through the influence of Richard Wagner, with whom he had been connected by friendship. Nietzsche tried to free himself from this trend of ideas and to come to terms with a conception of reality that was more in agreement with his own nature. The fundamental trait of his character compelled him to experience the ideas and impulses of the development of a modern world conception as a direct personal fate. Other thinkers formed pictures of a world conception and the process of this formative description constituted their philosophic activity. Nietzsche is confronted with the world conceptions of the second half of the nineteenth century, and it becomes his destiny to experience personally all the delight but also all the sorrows that these world conceptions can cause if they affect the very substance of the human soul. Not only theoretically but with his entire individuality at stake, Nietzsche's philosophical life developed in such a way that representative world conceptions of modern times would completely take hold of him, forcing him to work himself through to his own solutions in the most personal experiences of life.

How can one live if one must think that the world is as Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner imagine it to be? This became the disturbing riddle for him. It was not, however, a riddle for which he sought a solution by means of thinking and knowledge. He had to experience the solution of this problem with every fibre of his nature. Others think philosophy; Nietzsche had to live philosophy. The modern life of world conception becomes completely personal in Nietzsche. When an observer meets the philosophies of other thinkers, he feels inclined to judge; this is one-sided, that is incorrect, etc. With Nietzsche such an observer finds himself confronted with a ,world conception within the life of a human being, and he sees that one idea makes this human being healthy while another makes him ill. For this reason, Nietzsche becomes more and more a poet as he presents his picture of world and life. It is also for this reason that a reader who cannot agree with Nietzsche's presentation insofar as his philosophy is concerned, can still admire it because of its poetic power.

What an entirely different tone comes into the modern history of philosophy through Nietzsche as compared to Hamerling, Wundt and even Schopenhauer! These thinkers search contemplatively for the ground of existence and they arrive at the will, which they find in the depths of the human soul. In Nietzsche this will is alive. He absorbs the philosophical ideas, sets them aglow with his ardent will-nature and then makes something entirely new out of them: A life through which will-inspired ideas and idea-illumined will pulsate. This happens in Nietzsche's first creative period, which began with his Birth of Tragedy (1870), and had its full expression in his four Untimely Meditations: David Strauss Confessor and Author; On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life; Schopenhauer as Educator; Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. In the second phase of his life, it was Nietzsche's destiny to experience deeply what a life and world conception based exclusively on the thought habits of natural science can be to the human soul. This period is expressed in his works, Human, All Too Human (1878), The Dawn of Day (1881), and Gay Science (1882).

Now the ideals that inspired Nietzsche in his first period have cooled; they appear to him as bubbles of thought. His soul now wants to gain strength, to be invigorated in its feeling by the “reality” of the content that can be derived from the mode of conception of natural science. But Nietzsche's soul is full of life; the vigor of this inner life strives beyond anything that it could owe to the contemplative observation of nature. The contemplation of nature shows that the animal becomes man. As the soul feels its inner power of life, the conception arises: The animal bore man in itself; must not man bear within himself a higher being, the superman? Nietzsche's soul experiences in itself the superman wresting himself free from man. His soul revels in lifting the modern idea of evolution that was based on the world of the senses to the realm that the senses do not perceive, a realm that is felt when the soul experiences the meaning of evolution within itself. “The mere acquisition of life's necessities and sustenance is not sufficient; what must also be gained is comfort, if not wealth, power and influence. The search and striving for a continuous improvement of the condition of life is the characteristic impulse of animal and man.” This conviction, which in Rolph was the result of contemplative observation, becomes in Nietzsche an inner experience, expressed in a grandiose hymn of philosophic vision. The knowledge that represents the external world is insufficient to him; it must become inwardly increasingly fruitful. Self-observation is poverty. A creation of a new inner life that outshines everything so far in existence, everything man is already, arises in Nietzsche's soul. In man, the superman is born for the first time as the meaning of existence. Knowledge itself grows beyond what it formerly had been; it becomes a creative power. As man creates, he takes his stand in the midst of the meaning of life. With lyrical ardor Nietzsche expresses in his Zarathustra (1884) the bliss that his soul experiences in creating “superman” out of man. A knowledge that feels itself as creative perceives more in the ego of man than can be lived through in a single course of life; it contains more than can be exhausted in such a single life. It will again and again return to a new life. In this way the idea of “eternal recurrence” of the human soul thrusts itself on Nietzsche to join his idea of “superman.”

[ 5 ] Rolph's idea of the “enhancement of life” grows in Nietzsche into the conception of the “Will to Power,” which he attributes to all being and life in the world of animal and of man. This “Will to Power” sees in life “an appropriation, violation, overpowering of the alien and weaker being, its annexation or at least, in the mildest case, its exploitation.” In his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche sang his hymn of praise to his faith in the reality and the development of man into “superman.” In his unfinished work, Will to Power, Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values, he wanted to reshape all conceptions from the viewpoint that no other will in man held higher sway than the will for power.

[ 6 ] The striving for knowledge becomes in Nietzsche a real force that comes to life in the soul of man. As Nietzsche feels this animation within himself, life assumes in him such an importance that he places it above all knowledge and truth that has not been stirred into life. This again led him to renounce all truth and to seek in the will for power a substitute for the will for truth. He no longer asks, “Is what we know true?” but rather, “Is it sustaining and furthering life?”

“What matters in all philosophizing is never ‘the truth’ but something entirely different, let us call it health, the future, power, life . . .” What man really strives for is always power; he only indulged himself in the illusion that he wanted “truth.” He confused the means with the end. Truth is merely a means for the purpose. “The fact that a judgment is wrong is no objection to it.” What is important is not whether a judgment is true or not, but “the question to what degree it advances and preserves life, preserves a race, perhaps even breeds a race.” “Most thinking of a philosopher is done secretly by his instincts and thus forced into certain channels.” Nietzsche's world conception is the expression of a personal feeling as an individual experience and destiny.

In Goethe the deep impulse of modern philosophical life became apparent; he felt the idea come to life within the self-conscious ego so that with this enlivened idea this ego can know itself in the core of the world. In Nietzsche the desire exists to let man develop his life beyond himself; he feels that then the meaning of life must be revealed in what is inwardly self-created being, but he does not penetrate essentially to what man creates beyond himself as the meaning of life. He sings a grandiose hymn of praise to the superman, but he does not form his picture; he feels his growing reality but he does not see him. Nietzsche speaks of an “eternal recurrence,” but he does not describe what it is that recurs. He speaks of raising the form of life through the will to power, but where is the description of the heightened form of life? Nietzsche speaks of something that must be there in the realm of the unknown, but he does not succeed in going further than pointing at the unknown. The forces that are unfolded in the self-conscious ego are also not sufficiently strong in Nietzsche to outline distinctly a reality that he knows as weaving and breathing in human nature.

[ 7 ] We have a contrast to Nietzsche's world conception in the materialistic conception of history and life that was given its most pregnant expression by Karl Marx (1818–83). Marx denied that the idea had any share in historical evolution. For him, the real factors of life constituted the actual basis of this evolution, and from them are derived opinions concerning the world that men have been able to form according to the various situations of life in which they find themselves. The man who is working physically and under the power of somebody else has a world conception that differs from that of the intellectual worker. An age that replaces an older economic form with a new one brings also different conceptions of life to the surface of history. If one wants to understand a historical age, one must, for its explanation, go back to its social conditions and its economic processes. All political and cultural currents are only surface-reflectings of these deeper processes. They are essentially ideal effects of real facts, but they have no share in those facts. A world conception, therefore, that is caused by ideal factors can have no share in the progressive evolution of our present conduct of life. It is rather our task to take up the real conflicts of life at the point at which they have arrived, and to continue their development in the same direction.

This conception evolved from a materialistic reversal of Hegelianism. In Hegel, the ideas are in a continuous progress of evolution and the results of this evolution are the actual events of life. What Auguste Comte derived from natural scientific conceptions as a conception of society based on the actual events of life, Karl Marx wants to attain from the direct observation of the economic evolution. Marxism is the boldest form of an intellectual current that starts from the historical phenomena as they appear to external observation, in order to understand the spiritual life and the entire cultural development of man. This is modern “sociology.” It in no way accepts man as an individual but rather as a member of social evolution. Man's conceptions, knowledge, action and feeling are all considered to be the result of social powers under the influence of which the individual stands.

Hippolyte Taine (1828–93) calls the sum total of the forces determining every cultural event the “milieu.” Every work of art, every institution, every action is to be explained from preceding and simultaneous circumstances. If we know the race, the milieu and the moment through and in which a human achievement comes into being, we have explained this work. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–65), in his System of Acquired Rights (1861), showed how conditions of rights and laws, such as property, contract, family, inheritance, etc., arise and develop. The mode of conception of the Romans created a kind of law that differed from that of the Germans. In none of these thoughts is the question raised as to what arises in the human individual, what does he produce through his own inner nature? The question that is always asked is: What are the causes in the general social conditions for the life of the individual? One can observe in this thought tendency an opposite inclination to the one prevailing at the beginning of the nineteenth century with regard to the question of man's relation to the world. It was then customary to ask: What rights can man claim through his own nature (natural rights), or in what way does man obtain knowledge in accordance with his own power of reason as an individual? The sociological trend of thought, however, asks: What are the legal and intellectual concepts that the various social groupings cause to arise in the individual?

The fact that I form certain conceptions concerning things does not depend on my power of reasoning but is the result of the historical development that produced me. In Marxism the self-conscious ego is entirely deprived of its own nature; it finds itself drifting in the ocean of facts. These facts develop according to the laws of natural science and of social conditions. In this world conception the impotence of modern philosophy with regard to the human soul approaches a maximum. The “ego,” the self-conscious human soul, wants to find in itself the entity through which it can assert its own significance within the existence of the world, but it is unwilling to dive into its own depths. It is afraid it will not find in its own depths the support of its own existence and essence. It wants to derive its own being from an entity that lies outside its own domain. To do this, the ego follows the thought habits developed in modern times under the influence of natural science, and turns either to the world of material events or to that of social evolution. It believes it understands its own nature in the totality of life if it can say to itself, “I am, in a certain way, conditioned by these events, by this evolution.”

Such philosophical tendencies show that there are forces at work in the souls of which they are dimly aware, but which cannot at first be satisfied by the modern habits of thought and research. Concealed from consciousness, spiritual life works in human souls. It drives these souls to go so deep into the self-conscious ego that this ego can find in its depths what leads to the source of world existence. In this source the human soul feels its kinship with a world entity that is not manifested in the mere phenomena and entities of nature. With respect to these phenomena and entities modern times have arrived at an ideal of research with which the scientist feels secure in his endeavor. One would now also like to feel this security in the investigation of the nature of the human soul. It has been shown above that, in leading thinkers, the striving for such security resulted in world pictures that no longer contain any elements from which satisfactory conceptions of the human soul could be derived. The attempt is made to treat philosophy according to the method of natural science, but in the process of this treatment the meaning of the philosophical question itself is lost. The task with which the human soul is charged from the very depth of its nature goes far beyond anything that the thinkers are willing to recognize as safe methods of investigation according to the modern habits of thought.

In appraising the situation of the development of modern world conception thus characterized, one finds as the most outstanding feature the pressure that the mode of thought of natural science has exerted on the minds of people ever since it attained its full stature. One recognizes as the reason for this pressure the fruitfulness, the efficiency of this mode of thinking. An affirmation of this is to be found in the work of a natural scientist like T. H. Huxley (1825–95). He does not believe that one could find anything in the knowledge of natural science that would answer the last questions concerning the human soul. But he is convinced that our search for knowledge must confine itself to the limits of the mode of conception of natural science and we must admit that man simply has no means by which to acquire a knowledge of what lies behind nature. The result of this opinion is that natural science contains no insight concerning man's highest hopes for knowledge, but it allows him to feel that in this mode of conception the investigation is placed on secure ground. One should, therefore, abandon all concern for everything that does not lie within the realm of natural science, or one should consider it as a matter of belief.

[ 8 ] The effect of this pressure caused by the method of natural science is clearly expressed in a thought current called pragmatism that appeared at the turn of the century and intended to place all striving for truth on a secure basis. The name “pragmatism” goes back to an essay that Charles Pierce published in the American journal, Popular Science, in 1878. The most influential representatives of this mode of conception are William James (1842–1910) in America and F. C. Schiller (1864–1937) in England, who uses the word “humanism.” Pragmatism can be called disbelief in the power of thought. It denies that thinking that would remain within its own domain is capable of producing anything that can be proved as truth and knowledge justifiable by itself. Man is confronted with processes of the world and must act. To accomplish this, thinking serves him in an auxiliary function. It sums up the facts of the external world into ideas and combines them. The best ideas are those that help him to achieve the right kind of action so that he can attain his purpose in accordance with the facts of the world. These ideas man recognizes as his truth. Will is the ruler of man's relation to the world, not thinking. James deals with this matter in his book, The Will to Believe. The will determines life; this is its undeniable right. Therefore, will is also justified in influencing thought. It is, to be sure, not to exert its influence in determining what the facts are in a particular case; here the intellect is to follow the facts themselves. But it will influence the understanding and interpretation of reality as a whole. “If our scientific knowledge extended as far as to the end of things, we might be able to live by science alone. But since it only dimly lights up the edges of the dark continent that we call the universe, and since we must form, at our own risk, some sort of thought of this universe to which we belong with our lives, we shall be justified if we form such thoughts as agree with our nature—thoughts that enable us to act, hope and live.”

According to this conception, our thought has no life that could possibly concentrate and deepen in itself and, in Hegel's sense, for example, penetrate to the source of existence. It merely emerges in the human soul to serve the ego when it takes an active part in the world with its will and life. Pragmatism deprives thought of the power it possessed from the rise of the Greek world conception. Knowledge is thus made into a product of the human will. In the last analysis, it can no longer be the element into which man plunges in order to find himself in his true nature. The self-conscious ego no longer penetrates into its own entity with the power of thinking. It loses itself in the dark recesses of the will in which thought sheds no light on anything except the aims of life. But these, as such, do not spring from thought. The power exerted by external facts on man has become excessively strong. The conscious ability to find a light in the inner life of thought that could illumine the last questions of existence has reached the zero point. In pragmatism, the development of modern philosophy falls shortest of what the spirit of this development really demands: that man may find himself as a thinking and self-conscious ego in the depths of the world in which this ego feels itself as deeply connected with the wellspring of existence, as the Greek truth-seeker did through his perceived thought. That the spirit of modern times demands this becomes especially clear through pragmatism. It places man in the focal point of his world picture. In man, it was to be seen how reality rules in existence. Thus, the chief question was directed toward the element in which the self-conscious ego rests. But the power of thought was not sufficient to carry light into this element. Thought remained behind in the upper layers of the soul when the ego wanted to take the path into its own depth.

[ 9 ] In Germany Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) developed his Philosophy of As-If (1911) along the same lines as pragmatism. This philosopher regards the leading ideas that man forms about the phenomena of the world not as thought images through which, in the cognitive process, the soul places itself into a spiritual reality, but as fictions that lead him to find his way in the world. The “atom,” for instance, is imperceptible. Man forms the thought of the “atom.” He cannot form it in order to know something of a reality, but merely “as if' the external phenomena of nature had come to pass through compound actions of atoms. If one imagines that there are atoms, there will be order in the chaos of perceived natural phenomena. It is the same with all leading ideas. They are assumed, not in order to depict facts that are given solely by perception. They are invented, and reality is then interpreted “as if” the content of these imagined concepts really were the basis of reality. The impotence of thought is thus consciously made the center of this philosophy. The power of the external facts impresses the mind of the thinker so overwhelmingly that he does not dare to penetrate with his “mere thought” into those regions from which the external reality springs. But as we can only hope to gain an insight into the nature of man if we have spiritual means to penetrate into the characterized regions, there can be no possibility of approaching the highest riddles of the universe through the “As-If Philosophy.”

[ 10 ] We must now realize that both “pragmatism” and the “As-If Philosophy” have grown out of the thought practice of the age that is dominated by the method of natural science. Natural science can only be concerned with the investigation of the connection of external facts, of facts that can be observed in the field of sense perception. In natural science it cannot be a question of making the connections themselves, at which its investigation aims, sensually perceptible, but merely of establishing these connections in the indicated field. By following this basic principle, modern natural science became the model for all scientific cognition and, in approaching the present time, it has gradually been drawn into a thought practice that operates in the sense of “pragmatism” and the “As-If Philosophy.” Darwinism, for instance, was at first driven to proclaim a line of evolution of living beings from the most imperfect to the most perfect and thus to conceive man as a higher form in the evolution of the anthropoid apes. But the anatomist, Carl Gegenbaur, pointed out as early as 1870 that it is the method of investigation applied to such an idea of evolution that constitutes the fruitful part of it. The use of this method of investigation has continued to more recent times, and one is quite justified in saying that, while it remained faithful to its original principle, it has led beyond the views with which it was originally connected. The investigation proceeded “as if” man had to be sought within the line of descent of the anthropoid apes. At the present time, one is not far from recognizing that this cannot be so, but that there must have been a being in earlier times whose true descendants are to be found in man, while the anthropoid apes developed away from this being into a less perfect species. In this way the original modern idea of evolution has proved to be only an auxiliary step in the process of investigation.

[ 11 ] While such a thought practice holds sway in natural science, it seems quite justified for natural science to deny that, in order to solve world riddles, there is any scientific cognitive value in an investigation of pure thought carried out by means of a thought contemplation in the self-conscious ego. The natural scientist feels that he stands on secure ground when he considers thinking only as a means to secure his orientation in the world of external facts. The great accomplishments to which natural science can point at the turn of the twentieth century agree well with such a thought practice. In the method of investigation of natural science, “pragmatism” and the “As-If Philosophy” are actually at work. If these modes of conception now appear to be special philosophical thought tendencies also, we see in this fact that modern philosophy has basically taken on the form of natural science.

[ 12 ] For this reason, thinkers who instinctively feel how the demand of the spirit of modern world conception is secretly at work will quite understandably be confronted with the question: How can we uphold a conception of the self-conscious ego in the face of the perfection of the natural scientific method? It may be said that natural science is about to produce a world picture in which the self-conscious ego does not find a place, for what natural science can give as a picture of the external man contains the self-conscious soul only in the manner in which the magnet contains its energy. There are now two possibilities. We either delude ourselves into believing that we produce a serious statement when we say, “Our brain thinks,” and then accept the verdict that “the spiritual man” is merely the surface expression of material reality, or we recognize in this “spiritual man” a self-dependent essential reality and are thus driven out of the field of natural science with our knowledge of man. The French philosophers, Emile Boutroux (1845–1921) and Henri Bergson (1859–1941), are thinkers who accept the latter possibility.

[ 13 ] Boutroux proceeds from a criticism of the modern mode of conception that intends to reduce all world processes to the laws of natural science. We understand the course of his thought if we consider that a plant, for example, contains processes that, to be sure, are regulated by laws effective also in the mineral world, but that it is quite impossible to imagine that these mineral laws themselves cause this plant life through their own content. If we want to recognize that plant life develops on the basis of mineral activity, we must presuppose that it is a matter of perfect indifference to the mineral forces if plant life develops from this basis. There must be a spontaneously creative element added to the mineral agencies if plant life is to be produced. There is, therefore, a creative element everywhere in nature. The mineral realm is there but a creative element stands behind it. The latter produces the plant life based on the ground of the mineral world. So it is in all the spheres of natural order up to the conscious human soul, indeed, including all sociological processes. The human soul does not spring from mere biological laws, but directly from the fundamental creative element and it assimilates the biological processes and laws to its own entity. The fundamental creative element is also at work in the sociological realm. This brings human souls into the appropriate connections and interdependence. Thus, in Boutroux's book, On the Concept of Natural Laws in the Science and Philosophy of Today (1895), we find:

Science shows us a hierarchy of laws, which we can, to be sure, bring closer and closer together but which we cannot blend into a single law. It shows us, furthermore, besides this relative dissimilarity of the laws, a mutual influence of these laws on each other. The physical laws affect the living being, but the biological laws are at work at the same time.

Boutroux turns his attention from the natural laws represented in the thinking of natural science to the creative process behind these laws. Emerging directly from this process are the entities that fill the world. The behavior of these entities to one another, their mutual effect on each other, can be expressed in laws that are conceivable in thought. What is thus conceived becomes, as it were, a basis of the natural laws for this mode of conception. The entities are real and manifest their natures according to laws. The sum total of these laws, which in the final analysis constitute the unreal and are attached to an intellectually conceived existence, constitutes matter. Thus, Boutroux can say:

Motion (what he means is the totality of everything that happens between entities according to natural laws) is, in itself, obviously as much an abstraction as thinking in itself. Actually, there are only living entities, their nature being halfway between the pure concepts of thinking and motion. These living entities form a hierarchy and activity circulates in them from above to below and from below to above. The spirit moves matter neither directly nor indirectly, for there is no raw matter and what constitutes the nature of matter is closely connected with what constitutes the nature of the spirit.

But if natural laws are only the sum total of the interrelation of the entities, then the human soul also does not stand in the world as a whole in such a way that it could be explained from natural laws; from its own nature it adds its manifestations to the other laws. With this step, freedom, the spontaneous self-revelation, is secured for the soul. One can see in this philosophical mode of thinking the attempt to gain clarity concerning the true essence of nature in order to acquire an insight into the relation of the human soul to it. Boutroux arrives at a conception of the human soul that can only spring from its self-manifestation. In former times, according to Boutroux, one saw in the mutual influences of the entities, the manifestation of the “capriciousness and arbitrariness” of spiritual beings. Modern thinking has been freed from this belief by the knowledge of natural laws. As these laws exist only in the cooperative processes of the entities, they cannot contain anything that might determine the entities.

The mechanical natural laws that have been discovered by modern science are, in fact, the bond that connects the external world with the inner realm. Far from constituting a necessity, they are our liberators; they allow us to add to the contemplation in which the ancients were locked up, a science of action.

These words point to the demand of the spirit of modern world conception that has repeatedly been mentioned in this book. The ancients were limited to contemplation. To them, the soul was in the element of its true nature when it was in thought contemplation. The modern development demands a “science of action.” This science, however, could only come into being if the soul could, in thinking, lay hold of its own nature in the self-conscious ego, and if it could arrive, through a spiritual experience, at inner activities of the self with which it could see itself as being grounded in its own entity.

[ 14 ] Henri Bergson tries to penetrate to the nature of the self-conscious ego in a different way so that the mode of conception of natural science does not become an obstacle in this process. The nature of thinking itself has become a world riddle through the development of the world conceptions from the time of the Greeks to the present age. Thought has lifted the human soul out of the world as a whole. Thus, the soul lives with the thought element and must direct the question to thought: How will you lead me again to an element in which I can feel myself really sheltered in the world as whole? Bergson considers the scientific mode of thinking. He does not find in it the power through which it could swing itself into a true reality. The thinking soul is confronted with reality and gains thought images from it. It combines these images, but what the soul acquires in this manner is not rooted within reality; it stands outside reality. Bergson speaks of thinking as follows:

It is understood that fixed concepts can be extracted by our thoughts from the mobile reality, but there is no means whatever of reconstituting the mobility of the real with the fixity of concepts. (Introduction to Metaphysics)

Proceeding from thoughts of this kind, Bergson finds that all attempts to penetrate reality by means of thinking had to fail because they undertook something of which thinking, as it occurs in life and science, is quite incapable to enter into true reality. If, in this way, Bergson believes he recognizes the impotence of thinking, he does not mean to say that there is no way by means of which the right kind of experience in the self-conscious ego may reach true reality. For the ego, there is a way outside of thinking—the way of immediate experience, of intuition.

To philosophize means to reverse the normal direction of the workings of thought . . . Symbolic knowledge is relative through preexisting concepts, which goes from the fixed to the moving, but not so intuitive knowledge, which establishes itself in the moving reality and adopts the life itself of things. (Introduction to Metaphysics)

[ 15 ] Bergson believes that a transformation of our usual mode of thinking is possible so that the soul, through this transformation, will experience itself in an activity, in an intuitive perception, in which it unites with a reality that is deeper than the one that is perceived in ordinary knowledge. In such an intuitive perception the soul experiences itself as an entity that is not conditioned by the physical processes, which produce sensation and movement. When man perceives through his senses, and when he moves his limbs, a corporeal entity is at work in him, but as soon as he remembers something a purely psychic-spiritual process takes place that is not conditioned by corresponding physical processes. Thus, the whole inner life of the soul is a specific life of a psychic-spiritual nature that takes place in the body and in connection with it, but not through the body. Bergson investigated in detail those results of natural science that seemed to oppose his view. The thought indeed seems justified that our physical functions are rooted in bodily processes when one remembers how, for instance, the disease of a part of the brain causes an impediment of speech. A great many facts of this kind can be enumerated. Bergson discusses them in his book, Matter and Memory, and he decides that all these facts do not constitute any proof against the view of an independent spiritual-psychical life.

In this way, modern philosophy seems through Bergson to take up its task that is demanded by the time, the task of a concentration of the experience of the self-conscious ego, but it accomplishes this step by declaring thought as impotent. Where the ego is to experience itself in its own nature, it cannot make use of the power of thinking. The same holds for Bergson insofar as the investigation of life is concerned. What must be considered as the driving element in the evolution of the living being, what places these beings in the world in a series from the imperfect to the perfect, we cannot know through a thoughtful contemplation of the various forms of the living beings. But if man experiences himself in himself as psychical life, he stands in the element of life that lives in those beings and knows itself in him. This element of life first had to pour itself out in innumerable forms to prepare itself for what it later becomes in man. The effusion of life (elan vital), which arouses itself into a thinking being in man, is there already manifested in the simple living entity. In the creation of all living beings it has so spent itself that it retains only a part of its entire nature, the part, to be sure, that reveals itself as the fruit of all previous creations of life. In this way, the entity of man exists before all other living beings, but it can live its life as man only after having ejected all other forms of life, which man then can observe from without as one form among all others. Through his intuitive knowledge Bergson wants to vitalize the results of natural science so that he can say:

It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above the accidents of evolution. (Creative Evolution)

[ 16 ] From lightly woven and easily attainable thoughts like this, Bergson produces an idea of evolution that had been expressed previously in a profound mode of thought by W. H. Preuss in his book, Spirit and Matter (1882). Preuss also held that man has not developed from the other natural beings but is, from the beginning the fundamental entity, which had first to eject his preliminary stages into the other living beings before he could give himself the form appropriate for him on earth. We read in the above-mentioned book:

The time should have come . . . to establish a theory of origin of organic species that is not based solely on one-sidedly proclaimed theorems from descriptive natural science, but is also in agreement with the other natural laws that are at the same time the laws of human thinking. What is necessary is a theory that is free from all hypothesizing and that rests solely on strict conclusions from natural scientific observations in the widest sense of the word; a theory that saves the concept of the species according to the actual possibility, but at the same time adapts Darwin's concept of evolution to its own field and tries to make it fruitful. The center of this new theory is man, the species unique on our planet: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers began with the objects of nature and then went astray to such an extent that they did not find the way that leads to the human being. This aim had been attained by Darwin only in an insufficient and unsatisfactory way as he sought the ancestor of the lord of creation among the animals, while the naturalist should begin with himself as a human being in order to proceed through the entire realm of existence and of thinking and to return finally to humanity. . . . It was not by accident that the human nature resulted from the entire terrestrial evolution, but by necessity. Man is the aim of all telluric processes and every other form that occurs beside him has borrowed its traits from him. Man is the first-born being of the entire cosmos. . . . When his germinating state (man in his potentiality) had come into being, the remaining organic substance no longer had the power to produce further human possibilities. What developed thereafter became animal or plan. . . .

[ 17 ] Such a view attempts to recognize man as placed on his ground by the development of modern world conception, that is to say, outside nature, in order to find something in such a knowledge of man that throws light on the world surrounding him. In the little known thinker from Elsfleth, W. H. Preuss, the ardent wish arises to gain a knowledge of the world at once through an insight into man. His forceful and significant ideas are immediately directed to the human being. He sees how this being struggles its way into existence. What it must leave behind on its way, what it must slough off, remains as nature with its entities on a lower stage of evolution surrounding man as his environment. The way toward the riddles of the world in modern philosophy must go through an investigation of the human entity manifested in the self-conscious ego. This becomes apparent through the development of this philosophy. The more one tries to enter into its striving and its search, the more one becomes aware of the fact that this search aims at such experiences in the human soul that do not only produce an insight into the human soul itself, but also kindles a light by means of which a certain knowledge concerning the world outside man can be secured. In looking at the views of Hegel and related thinkers, more recent philosophers came to doubt that there could be the power in the life of thought to spread its light beyond the realm of the soul itself. The element of thought seemed not strong enough to engender an activity that could explain the being and the meaning of the world. By contrast, the natural scientific mode of conception demanded a penetration into the core of the soul that rested on a firmer ground than thought can supply.

[ 18 ] Within this search and striving the attempts of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) take a significant position. In writings like his Introduction to the Cultural Sciences, and his Berlin Academy treatise, Contributions to the Solution of the Problem of Our Belief in the Reality of the External World and Its Right (1890), he offered expositions that are filled with all the philosophical riddles that weigh on the modern development of world conception. To be sure, the form of his presentation, which is given in the modern terminology used by scholars, prevents a more general impression being created by what he has to say. It is Dilthey's view that through the thoughts and imaginations that appear in his soul man cannot even arrive at the certainty that the perceptions of the senses correspond to a reality independent of man. Everything that is of the nature of thought, ideation and sense perception is picture. The world that surrounds man could be a dream without a reality independent of him if he were exclusively dependent on such pictures in his awareness of the real world. But not only these pictures present themselves in the soul. In the process of life the soul is filled with will, activity and feeling, all of which stream forth from it and are recognized as an immediate experience rather than intellectually. In willing and feeling the soul experiences itself as reality, but if it experienced itself only in this manner, it would have to believe that its own reality were the only one in the world. This assumption could be justified only if the will could radiate in all directions without finding any resistance. But that is not the case. The intentions of the will cannot unfold their life in that way. There is something obtruding itself in their path that they have not produced but that must nevertheless be accepted by them.

To “common sense” such a thought development of a philosopher can appear as hairsplitting. The historical account must not be deflected by such judgment. It is important to gain an insight into the difficulty that modern philosophy had to create for itself in regard to a question that seems so simple and in fact superfluous to “common sense,” that is, if the world man sees, hears, etc., may rightly be called real. The “ego” that had, as shown above in our historical account of the development of philosophical world riddles, separated itself from the world, strives to find its way back into the world from what appears in its own consciousness as a state of loneliness. It is Dilthey's opinion that this way cannot be found back into the world by saying that the soul experiences pictures (thoughts, ideas, sensations), and since these pictures appear in our consciousness they must have their causes in a real external world. A conclusion of this kind would not, according to Dilthey, give us the right to speak of a real external world, for such a conclusion is drawn within the soul according to the needs of this soul, and there is no guarantee that there really is in the external world what the soul believes in following its own needs. Therefore, the soul cannot infer an external world; it would expose itself to the danger that its conclusion might have a life only within the soul but without any significance for an external world. Certainty concerning an outer world can be gained by the soul only if this external world penetrates into the inner life of the “ego,” so that within this “ego” not only the “ego” but also the external world itself unfolds its life. This happens, according to Dilthey, when the soul experiences in its will and its feeling something that does not spring from within. Dilthey attempts to decide from the most self-evident facts a question that is for him a fundamental problem of all world conception. A passage like the following may illustrate this:

As a child presses his hand against a chair in order to move it, he measures his power against the resistance; his own life and the object are experienced together. But now let the child be locked up. It is in vain that he rattles against the door; now his entire excited will becomes aware of the compulsion of an overwhelming powerful external world that hinders and restricts, and compresses, as it were, his own self-willed life. The desire to escape from the displeasure and to gratify his impulses is followed by the consciousness of obstruction, displeasure and dissatisfaction. What the child thus experiences follows him through his entire adult life. The resistance becomes pressure. We seem to be everywhere surrounded by walls of actual facts through which we cannot break. The impressions remain, no matter how much we would like to change them; they vanish although we strive to cling to them; impulses of motion directed by the idea of avoiding something that causes pain are, under certain circumstances always followed by emotions that hold us within the realm of pain. Thus, the reality of the external world grows, so to speak, progressively more dense around us.

Why is such a reflection, which seems unimportant for many people, developed in connection with the highest problems of philosophy? It seems hopeless to gain an insight into man's position in the world as a whole from such points of departure. What is essential, however, is the fact that philosophy arrived at reflections of this kind on its way, to use Brentano's words once more, to “gain certainty for the hopes of Plato and Aristotle concerning the continued life of our better part after the dissolution of our body.” To attain sure knowledge of this kind seems to become more difficult the more the intellectual development advances. The “self-conscious ego” feels itself more and more ejected from the world; it seems to find in itself less and less the elements that connect it with the world in a way different from that of our “body,” which is subject to “dissolution.” While this “self-conscious ego” searched for a certain knowledge concerning its connection with an eternal world of the spirit, it lost the certainty of an insight in its connection with the world as revealed through the perception of the senses. In our discussion of Goethe's world conception, it was shown how Goethe searched for such experiences of the soul that carry it into a reality lying behind sense perception as a spiritual world. In this world conception the attempt is made to experience something within the soul through which it no longer lives exclusively within its own confines in spite of the fact that it feels the experienced content as its own. The soul searches for world experiences in itself through which it participates with its experience in an element that it cannot reach through the mediation of the mere physical organs. Although Dilthey's mode of reflection may appear to be quite unnecessary, his efforts must be considered as belonging to the same current of the philosophical development. He is intent on finding an element within the soul that does not spring from the soul but belongs to an independent realm. He would like to prove that the world enters the experience of the soul. Dilthey does not believe that such an entrance can be accomplished by the thought element. For him, the soul can assimilate in its entire life content, in will, striving and feeling, something that is not only soul but part of the real external world. We recognize a human being in our soul as real not by forming a representative thought picture of the person we see before us, but by allowing his will and his feeling to enter into our own will and sentiment. Thus, a human soul, in Dilthey's opinion, acknowledges a real external world not because this outer world conveys its reality through the thought element, but because the soul as a self-conscious ego, experiences inwardly in itself the external world. In this manner he is led to acknowledge the spiritual life as something of a higher significance than the mere natural existence. He produces a counterbalance to the natural scientific mode of conception with his view, and he even thinks that nature as a real external world can be acknowledged only because it can be experienced by the spiritual part of our soul. The experience of the natural is a subdivision of our general soul experience, which is of a spiritual nature, and spiritually our soul is part of a general spiritual development on earth. A great spiritual organism develops and unfolds in cultural systems in the spiritual experience and creative achievement of the various peoples and ages. What develops its forces in this spiritual organism permeates the individual human souls. They are embedded in the spiritual organism. What they experience, accomplish and produce receives its impulses not from the stimulation's of nature, but from the comprehensive spiritual life. Dilthey's mode of conception is full of understanding for that of natural science. He often speaks in his discussions of the results of the natural scientists, but, as a counterbalance to his recognition of natural development, he insists on the independent existence of a spiritual world. Dilthey finds the content of a science of the spiritual in the contemplation of the cultures of different peoples and ages.

[ 19 ] Rudolf Eucken (1864–1926) arrives at a similar recognition of an independent spiritual world. He finds that the natural scientific mode of thought becomes self-contradictory if it intends to be more than a one-sided approach to reality, if it wants to proclaim what it finds within the possible grasp of its own knowledge as the only reality. If one only observed nature as it offers itself to the senses, one could never obtain a comprehensive conception of it. In order to explain nature, one must draw on what the spirit can experience only through itself, what it can never derive from external observation. Eucken proceeds from the vivid feeling that the soul has of its own spontaneous work and creation when it is occupied in the contemplation of external nature. He does not fail to recognize in which way the soul is dependent on what it perceives through its sense organs and how it is determined through everything that has its natural basis in the body. But he directs his attention to the autonomous regulating and life-inspiring activity of the soul that is independent of the body. The soul gives direction and conclusive connection to the world of sensations and perceptions. It is not only determined by stimuli that are derived from the physical world but it experiences purely spiritual impulses in itself. Through these impulses the soul is aware that it has its being in a real spiritual world. Into its experiences and creations flow the forces from a spiritual world to which it belongs. This spiritual world is directly experienced as real in the soul that knows itself as one with that world. In this way, the soul sees itself, according to Eucken, supported by a living and creative spiritual world. It is his opinion that the thought element, the intellectual forces, are not powerful enough to fathom the depths of this spiritual world. What streams from the spiritual world into man pours itself into his entire comprehensive soul life, not only into his intellect. This world of the spirit is endowed with the character of personality of a substantial nature. It also impregnates the thought element but it is not confined to it. The entire soul may feel itself in a substantial spiritual connection.

Eucken, in his numerous writings, knows how to describe in a lofty and emphatic way this spiritual world as it weaves and has its being: The Struggle for a Spiritual Content of Life (1896), Truth Content of Religion (1901), Basic Outlines of a New Life Conception, Spiritual Currents of the Present Time, Life Conceptions of the Great Thinkers, and Knowledge and Life. In these books he tries to show from different points of view how the human soul, as it experiences itself and as it understands itself in this experience, is aware of being permeated and animated by a creative, living spiritual substance of which it is a part and a member. Like Dilthey, Eucken describes, as the content of the independent spiritual life, what unfolds in the civilizations of humanity in the moral, technical, social and artistic creations of the various peoples and ages.

[ 19 ] In a historical presentation as is herein attempted, there is no place for criticism of the described world conceptions. But it is not criticism to point out how a world conception develops new questions through its own character, for it is thus that it becomes a part of the historical development. Dilthey and Eucken speak of an independent spiritual world in which the individual human soul is embedded. Their theory of this spiritual world, however, leaves the following questions open: What is this spiritual world and in what way does the human soul belong to it? Does the individual soul vanish with the dissolution of the body after it participated within that body in the development of the spiritual life manifested in the cultural creations of the different peoples and ages? One can, to be sure, answer these questions from Dilthey's and Eucken's point of view by saying that what the human soul can know in its own life does not lead to results with respect to these questions. But this is precisely what can be said to characterize such world conceptions that they lead, through their mode of conception, to no means of cognition that could guide the soul or the self-conscious ego beyond what can be experienced in connection with the body. In spite of the intensity with which Eucken stresses the independence and reality of the spiritual world, what the soul experiences according to his world conception of this spiritual world, and in connection with it, is experienced through the body. The hopes of Plato and Aristotle, so often referred to in this book, with regard to the nature of the soul and its independent relation to the spiritual world are not touched by such a world conception. No more is shown than that the soul, as long as it appears within the body, participates in a spiritual world that is quite rightly called real. What it is in the spiritual world as an independent spiritual entity cannot be discussed within this philosophy. It is characteristic of these modes of conception that they do, to be sure, arrive at a recognition of a spiritual world and also of the spiritual nature of the human soul. But no knowledge results from this recognition concerning the position of the soul, the self-conscious ego, in the reality of the world, apart from the fact that it acquires a consciousness of the spiritual world through the life of the body.

The historical position of these modes of conception in the development of philosophy appears in its right light if one recognizes that they produce questions that they cannot answer with their own means. They maintain emphatically that the soul becomes in itself conscious of a spiritual world that is independent of itself. But how is this consciousness acquired? Only through the means of cognition that the soul has in and through its existence in the body. Within this form of existence a certainty of a real spiritual world arises. But the soul finds no way to experience its own self-contained entity in the spirit outside the body. What the spirit manifests, stimulates and creates within the soul is perceived by it as far as the physical existence enables it to do so. What it is as a spirit in the spiritual world and, in fact, whether or not it is a separate entity within that world, is a question that cannot be answered by the mere recognition of the fact that the soul within the body can be conscious of its connection with a living and creative spiritual world. To obtain an answer of this kind it would be necessary for the self-conscious human soul, while it advances to a knowledge of the spiritual world, to become aware of its own mode of life in the world of the spirit, independent of the conditions of its bodily existence. The spiritual world would not only have to enable the soul entity to recognize its reality but it would have to convey something of its own nature to the soul. It would have to reveal to the soul in what way it is different from the world of the senses and in what manner it allows the soul entity to participate in this different mode of existence.

[ 20 ] A feeling for this question lives in those philosophers who want to contemplate the spiritual world by directing their attention toward something that cannot, according to their opinion, be found within the mere observation of nature. If it could be shown that there is something with regard to which the natural scientific mode of conception would prove to be powerless, then this could be considered to guarantee the justification of assuming a spiritual world. A mode of thought of this kind had already been indicated by Lotze (compare in Part II Chapter VI of this volume). It found forceful representatives later in Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) and others. These thinkers are of the opinion that there is an element entering into the world conception that is inaccessible to the natural scientific mode of thought. They consider this element to be the “values” that are of decisive importance in human life. The world is no dream but a reality if it can be shown that certain experiences of the soul contain something that is independent of this soul. The actions, endeavors and will impulses of the soul are no longer sparks that light up and vanish in the ocean of existence, if one must recognize that there is something that endows them with values independent of the soul. Such values, however, the soul must acknowledge for its will impulses and its actions just as much as it must recognize that its perceptions are not merely produced by its own effort. Action and will impulses of man do not simply occur like facts of nature; they must be considered from the point of view of a legal, moral, social, esthetic or scientific value. It is quite right to insist that during the evolution of civilizations in different ages and of different peoples, man's views concerning the values of right, morality, beauty and truth have undergone changes. If Nietzsche could speak of a “revaluation of all values,” it must be acknowledged that the value of actions, thoughts and will intentions is determined from without in a similar way to the way perceptual ideation receives the character of reality from without. In the sense of the “philosophy of values” one can say: As the pressure or resistance of the natural external world make the difference between an idea that is a mere picture of fantasy or one that represents reality, so the light and approbation that fall on the soul life from an external spiritual world decide whether or not an impulse of the will, an action and a thought endeavor have a value in the world as a whole or are only arbitrary products of the soul. As a stream of values, the spiritual world flows through the lives of men in the course of history. While the human soul feels itself as living in a world determined by values, it experiences itself in a spiritual element. If this mode of conception were seriously carried out, all statements that man could make concerning the spiritual would have to take on the form of value judgments. The only thing one could then say about anything not revealed in nature and therefore not to be known through the natural scientific mode of conception, would be in which way and in what respect it possessed an independent value in the whole of the world. The question would then arise: [ 21 ] If one disregards everything in the human soul that natural science has to say about it, is it then valuable as a member of the spiritual world, and does it have a significant independent value? Can the riddles of philosophy concerning the soul be solved if one cannot speak of its existence but only of its value? Will not the philosophy of values always be forced to adopt a language similar to that of Lotze when he speaks of the continuation of the soul?

Since we consider every being only as a creature of God, there is no fundamentally valid right on which the individual soul, for instance as a “substance,” could base its claim in order to demand an eternal, individual, continued existence. Perhaps we can only maintain that every being will be preserved by God as long as its existence is of a valuable significance for the whole of His world plan. . . . (Compare page in Part II Chapter VI). of this volume.)

Here the “value” of the soul is spoken of as its decisive character. Some attention, however, is also paid to the question of how this value may be connected with the preservation of existence. One can understand the position of the philosophy of value in the course of the development of philosophy if one considers that the natural scientific mode of conception is inclined to claim all knowledge of existence for itself. If that is granted, philosophy can do nothing but resign itself to the investigation of something else, and such a “something else” is seen in these “values.” The following question, as an unsolved problem, can be found in Lotze's statement: Is it at all possible to go no further than to define and characterize values and to renounce all knowledge concerning the form of existence of the values?

[ 22 ] Many of the most recent schools of thought prove to be attempts to search within the self-conscious ego, which in the course of the philosophical development feels itself more and more separated from the world, for an element that leads back to a reunion with the world. The conceptions of Dilthey, Eucken, Windelband, Rickert and others are such attempts. They want to do justice both to the demands of natural science and to the contemplation of the experience of the soul so that a science of the spirit appears as a possibility beside the science of nature. The same aims are followed by the thought tendencies of Herman Cohen (1842–1918) (compare in Part II Chapter IV of this volume), Paul Natorp (1854–1924), August Stadler (1850–1910), Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), Walter Kinkel (born 1871) and others who share their philosophical convictions. In directing their attention to the processes of thinking itself, they believe that in this highest activity of the self-conscious ego the soul gains hold on an inner possession that allows it to penetrate into reality. They turn their attention to what appears to them as the highest fruit of thinking. A simple example of this would be the thinking of a circle in which specific representative thought pictures of any circle are disregarded entirely. As much can be embraced in this way by pure thinking as can be encompassed by the power of our soul through which we can penetrate into reality. For what we can think in this way manifests its own nature through thinking in the consciousness of man. The sciences strive to arrive, by means of their observations, experiments and methods, at such results concerning the world as can be seized in pure thinking. They will have to leave the fulfillment of this aim to a far distant future, but one can nevertheless say that insofar as they endeavor to have pure thought, they also strive to convey the true essence of things to the possession of the self-conscious ego. When man makes an observation in the sensual external world, or in the course of historical life, he has, according to this conception, no true reality before him. What the observation of the senses offers is merely the challenge to search for a reality, not a reality in itself. Only when, through the activity of the soul, a thought appears, so to speak, to reveal itself at the very place where the observation has been made, is the living reality of the observed object integrated into real knowledge. The progressively developing knowledge replaces with thought what has been observed in the world. What the observation showed in the beginning was there only because man with his senses, with his everyday imagination, realizes at first for himself the nature of things in his own limited way. What he has at his disposal in this way has significance only for himself. What he substitutes as thought for the observation is no longer troubled by his own limitation. It is as it is thought, for thought determines its own nature and reveals itself according to its own character in the self-conscious ego. Thought does not allow the ego to determine its character in any way.

[ 23 ] There lives in this world conception a subtle feeling for the development of thought life since its first philosophical flowering within Greek intellectual life. It was the thought experience that gave to the self-conscious ego the power to be vigorously conscious of its own self-dependent entity. In the present age this power of thought can be experienced in the soul as the impulse that, seized within the self-conscious ego, endows this ego with the awareness that it is not a mere external observer of things but that it lives essentially in an intimate connection with their reality. It is in thought itself that the soul can feel it contains a true and self-dependent reality. As the soul thus feels itself interwoven with thought as a content of life that breathes reality, it can again experience the supporting power of the thought element as this was experienced in Greek philosophy. It can be experienced again as strongly as it was felt in the philosophy that took thought as a perception. It is true that in the world conception of Cohen and kindred spirits, thought cannot be considered as a perception in the sense of Greek philosophy. But in this conception the inner permeation of the ego with the thought world, which the ego acquired through its own work, is such that this experience includes, at the same time, the awareness of its reality.

The connection with Greek philosophy is emphasized by these thinkers. Cohen expresses himself on this point as follows. “The relation that Parmenides forged as the identity of thinking and being must persist.” Another thinker who also accepts this conception, Walter Kinkel, is convinced that “only thinking can know being, for both thinking and being are, fundamentally understood, one and the same.” It is through this doctrine that Parmenides became the real creator of scientific idealism (Idealism and Realism).

It is also apparent from the presentations of these thinkers how the formulation of their thoughts presupposes the century-long effect of the thought evolution since the Greek civilization. In spite of the fact that these thinkers start from Kant, which could have fostered in them the opinion that thought lives only within the soul, outside true reality, the supporting power of thought exerts itself in them. This thought has gone beyond the Kantian limitation and it forces these thinkers who contemplate its nature to become convinced that thought itself is reality, and that it also leads the soul into reality if it acquires this element rightly in inner work and, equipped with it, seeks the way into the external world. In this philosophical mode of thinking thought proves intimately connected with the world contemplation of the self-conscious ego. The fundamental impulse of this thought tendency appears like a discovery of the possible service that the thought element can accomplish for the ego. We find in the followers of this philosophy views like these: “Only thinking itself can produce what may be accepted as being.” “Being is the being of thinking” (Cohen).

Now the question arises: Can these philosophers expect of their thought experience, which is produced through the conscious work in the self-conscious ego, what the Greek philosopher expected of it when he accepted thought as a perception? If one believes to perceive thought, one can be of the opinion that it is the real world that reveals it. As the soul feels itself connected with thought as a perception, it can consider itself as belonging to the element of the world that is thought, indestructible thought, while the sense perception reveals only destructible entities. The part of the human being that is perceptible to the senses can then be supposed to be perishable, but what emerges in the human soul as thought makes it appear as a member of the spiritual, the true reality. Through such a view the soul can conceive that it belongs to a truly real world. This could be achieved by a modern world conception only if it could show that the thought experience not only leads knowledge into a true reality, but also develops the power to free the soul from the world of the senses and to place it into true reality. The doubts that arise in regard to this question cannot be counteracted by the insight into the reality of the thought element if the latter is considered as acquired by perception actively produced through the work of the soul. For, from what could the certainty be derived that what the soul produces actively in the world of the senses, can also give it a real significance in a world that is not perceived by senses? It could be that the soul, to be sure, could procure a knowledge of reality through its actively produced thoughts, but that nevertheless the soul itself was not rooted in this reality. Also, this world conception merely points to a spiritual life, but it cannot prevent the unbiased observer from finding philosophical riddles at its end that demand answers and call for soul experiences for which this philosophy does not supply the foundations. It can arrive at the conviction that thought is real, but it cannot find through thought a guarantee for the reality of the soul.

[ 24 ] The philosophical thinking at which A. v. Leclaire (born 1848), Wilhelm Schuppe (1836–1913), Johannes Rehmke (1848 – 1930), von Schubert-Soldern (born 1852), and others arrived, shows how philosophical inquiry can remain confined to the narrow circle of the self-conscious ego without finding a possibility to make the transition from this region into the world where this ego could link its own existence to a world reality. There are certain differences among these philosophies, but what is characteristic of all of them is that they all stress that everything man can count as belonging to his world must manifest itself within the realm of his consciousness. On the ground of their philosophy the thought cannot be conceived that would even presuppose anything about a territory of the world if the soul wanted to transcend with its conceptions beyond the realm of consciousness. Because the “ego” must comprise everything to which its knowledge extends within the folds of its consciousness, because it holds it within the consciousness, it therefore appears necessary to this view that the entire world is within the limits of this awareness. That the soul should ask itself: How do I stand with the possession of my consciousness in a world that is independent of this consciousness, is an impossibility for this philosophy. From its point of view, one would have to decide to give up all questions of this kind. One would have to become blind to the fact that there are inducements within the realm of the conscious soul life to look beyond that realm, just as in reading one does not look for the meaning in the forms that are visible on the paper, but to the significance that is expressed by them. As in reading, it is a question not of studying the forms of the letters as it is of no importance for the conveyed meaning to consider the nature of these forms themselves, so it could be irrelevant for an insight into true reality that within the sphere of the “ego” everything capable of being known has the character of consciousness.

[ 25 ] The philosophy of Carl du Prel (1839–99) stands as an opposite pole to this philosophical opinion. He is one of the spirits who have deeply felt the insufficiency of the opinion that considers the natural scientific mode of conception to which so many people have grown accustomed to be the only possible form of world explanation. He points out that this mode of conception unconsciously sins against its own statements, for natural science must admit on the basis of its own results

that we never perceive the objective processes of nature but rather their effect on us, not vibrations of the ether but light, not air vibrations but sounds. We have then, so to speak, a subjectively falsified world picture, but this does not interfere with our practical orientation because this falsification shows no individual differences and proceeds in a constant manner and according to law. . . . Materialism itself has proved through natural science that the world transcends beyond our senses. It has undermined its own foundation and it has sawed off the branch on which it had been sitting. As a philosophy, however, it still continues to sit on that branch. Materialism, therefore, has no right at all to call itself a philosophy … . It has only the justification of a branch of knowledge; furthermore, the world, the object of its study, is a world of mere appearance. To try to build a world conception on this foundation is an obvious self-contradiction. The real world is entirely different, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, from the one that is known to materialism, and only the real world can be the object of a philosophy. (Carl du Prel, The Riddle of Man.)

Such objections are necessarily caused by the materialistically colored mode of thought of natural science. Its weakness is noticed by many people who share the point of view of du Prel. The latter can be considered as a representative of a pronounced trend of modern philosophy. What is characteristic of this trend is the way in which it tries to penetrate into the realm of the real world. This way still shows the aftereffect of the natural scientific mode of conception, although the latter is at the same time most violently criticized. Natural science starts from the facts that are accessible to the sensory consciousness. It finds itself forced to refer to a supersensible element, for only the light is sensually perceptible, not the vibrations of the ether. The vibrations then belong to a realm that is, at least, extrasensory in its nature. But has natural science the right to speak of an extrasensory element? It means to limit its investigations to the realm of sense perceptions. Is anyone justified to speak of supersensible elements who restricts his scientific endeavors to the results of the consciousness that is bound to the senses and therefore to the body?

Du Prel wants to grant this right of investigating the supersensible only to a thinker who seeks the nature of the human soul outside the realm of the senses. What he considers as the chief demand in this direction is the necessity to demonstrate manifestations of the soul that prove the soul is also active when it is not bound to the body. Through the body the soul develops its sensual consciousness. In the phenomena of hypnotism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism, it becomes apparent that the soul is active when the sensual consciousness is eliminated. The soul life, therefore, extends further than the realm of consciousness. It is here that du Prel arrives at the diametrically opposite position to those of the characterized philosophers of the all-embracing consciousness who believe that the limits of consciousness define at the same time the entire realm of philosophy. For du Prel, the nature of the soul is to be sought outside the circle of this consciousness. If, according to him, we observe the soul when it is active without the usual means of the senses, we have the proof that it is of a supersensible nature.

Among the means through which this can be done, du Prel and many others count, besides the observation of the above-mentioned “abnormal” psychic phenomena, also the phenomena of spiritualism. It is not necessary to dwell here on du Prel's opinion concerning this field, for what constitutes the mainspring of his view becomes apparent also if one considers only his attitude toward hypnotism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism. Whoever wants to prove the spiritual nature of the human soul cannot limit himself to showing that the soul has to refer to a supersensible world in its cognitive process. For natural science could answer that it does not follow that the soul is itself rooted in the supersensible realm because it has a knowledge of a supersensible world. It could very well be that knowledge of the supersensible could also be dependent on the activity of the body and thus be of significance only for a soul that is bound to a body. It is for this reason that du Prel feels it necessary to show that the soul not only knows the supersensible while it is itself bound to the body, but that it experiences the supersensible while it is outside the body. With this view, he also arms himself against objections that can be raised from the viewpoint of the natural scientific mode of thinking against the conceptions of Eucken, Dilthey, Cohen, Kinkel and other defenders of a knowledge of a spiritual world. He is, however, not protected against the doubts that must be raised against his own procedure.

Although it is true that the soul can find an access to the supersensible only if it can show how it is itself active outside the sensual realm, the emancipation of the soul from the sensual world is not assured by the phenomena of hypnotism, somnambulism and hypnotic suggestion, nor by all other processes to which du Prel refers for this purpose. In regard to all these phenomena it can be said that the philosopher who wants to explain them still proceeds only with the means of his ordinary consciousness. If this consciousness is to be useless for a real explanation of the world, how can its explanations, which are applied to the phenomena according to the conditions of this consciousness, be of any decisive significance for these phenomena? What is peculiar in du Prel is the fact that he directs his attention to certain facts that point to a supersensible element, but that he, nevertheless, wants to remain entirely on the ground of the natural scientific mode of thought when he explains those facts. But should it not be necessary for the soul to enter the supersensible in its mode of thinking when the supersensible becomes the object of its interest? Du Prel looks at the supersensible, but as an observer he remains within the realm of the sensual world. If he did not want to do this, he would have to demand that only a hypnotized person can say the right things concerning his experiences under hypnosis, that only in the state of somnambulism could knowledge concerning the supersensible be acquired and that what the not-hypnotized, the non-somnambulist must think concerning these phenomena is of no validity. If we follow this thought consistently, we arrive at an impossibility. If one speaks of a transposition of the soul outside the realm of the senses into another form of existence, one must intend to acquire the knowledge of this existence within that other region. Du Prel points at a path that must be taken in order to gain access to the supersensible. But he leaves the question open regarding the means that are to be used on this path.

[ 26 ] A new thought current has been stimulated through the transformation of fundamental physical concepts that has been attempted by Albert Einstein (1879–1955). The attempt is of significance also for the development of philosophy. Physics previously followed its given phenomena by thinking of them as being spread out in empty three dimensional space and in one dimensional time. Space and time were supposed to exist outside things and events. They were, so to speak, self-dependent, rigid quantities. For things, distances were measured in space. For events, duration was determined in time. Distance and duration belong, according to this conception, to space and time, not to things and events. This conception is opposed by the theory of relativity introduced by Einstein. For this theory, the distance between two things is something that belongs to those things themselves. As a thing has other properties it has also the property of being at a certain distance from a second thing. Besides these relations that are given by the nature of things there is no such thing as space. The assumption of space makes a geometry that is thought for this space, but this same geometry can be applied to the world of things. It arises in a mere thought world. Things have to obey the laws of this geometry. One can say that the events and situations of the world must follow the laws that are established before the observation of things. This geometry now is dethroned by the theory of relativity. What exists are only things and they stand in relations to one another that present themselves geometrically. Geometry thus becomes a part of physics, but then one can no longer maintain that their laws can be established before the observation of the things. No thing has any place in space but only distances relative to other things.

[ 27 ] The same is assumed for time. No process takes place at a definite time; it happens in a time-distance relative to another event. In this way, temporal distances in the relation of things and spatial intervals become homogenous and flow together. Time becomes a fourth dimension that is of the same nature as the three dimensions of space. A process in a thing can be determined only as something that takes place in a temporal and spatial distance relative to other events. The motion of a thing becomes something that can be thought only in relation to other things.

[ 28 ] It is now expected that only this conception will produce unobjectionable explanations of certain physical processes while such processes lead to contradictory thoughts if one assumes the existence of an independent space and independent time.

[ 29 ] If one considers that for many thinkers a science of nature was previously considered to be something that can be mathematically demonstrated, one finds in the theory of relativity nothing less than an attempt to declare any real science of nature null and void. For just this was regarded as the scientific nature of mathematics that it could determine the laws of space and time without reference to the observation of nature. Contrary to this view, it is now maintained that the things and processes of nature themselves determine the relations of space and time. They are to supply the mathematical element. The only certain element is surrendered to the uncertainty of space and time observations.

[ 30 ] According to this view, every thought of an essential reality that manifests its nature in existence is precluded. Everything is only in relation to something else.

[ 31 ] Insofar as man considers himself within the world of natural things and events, he will find it impossible to escape the conclusions of this theory of relativity. But if he does not want to lose himself in mere relativities, in what may be called an impotence of his inner life, if he wants to experience his own entity, he must not seek what is “substantial in itself' in the realm of nature but in transcending nature, in the realm of the spirit.

[ 32 ] It will not be possible to evade the theory of relativity for the physical world, but precisely this fact will drive us to a knowledge of the spirit. What is significant about the theory of relativity is the fact that it proves the necessity of a science of the spirit that is to be sought in spiritual ways, independent of the observation of nature. That the theory of relativity forces us to think in this way constitutes its value within the development of world conception.

[ 33 ] It was the intention of this book to describe the development of what may be called philosophical activity in the proper sense of the word. The endeavor of such spirits as Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoi and others had for this reason to be left unconsidered, significant as discussion of their contribution must appear when it is a question of following the currents that lead from philosophy into our general spiritual culture.

One of the most important lectures on the etheric appearance of Christ was given at Nuremberg on the 13th of November 1910. The text of this lecture containing many details was published in the News Sheet in 1937 (page 105) under the title “THE WISDOM CONTAINED IN ANCIENT DOCUMENTS AND IN THE GOSPELS. THE EVENT OF THE CHRIST.” The text of the lecture which preceded it was discovered on looking through the notes of the lecture. This lecture of the 12th of November contains many valuable details on the effects and influences of Karma. And it should meet an objective and historical interest to publish this brief resume of the lecture given on the 12th of November in the News Sheet.

MARIE STEINER

Today I must tell you a few things on morality and karma and tomorrow I shall speak on the appearance of Christ and reveal a few facts which have not yet been revealed.

Theosophy becomes really fruitful if we can observe its influence on our own life and if it becomes living substance within us. Theosophical principles can be looked upon as interesting doctrines, but theoretically it is difficult to gain a real conviction of the truth implied by the spiritual-scientific doctrines, in the real meaning of the word. Of course, all theosophical facts discovered along the path of genuine spiritual-scientific investigation can be tested by the human intellect and recognized through logic; but if we take in spiritual-scientific truths we are still a long way from being able to test them. Among our audience many people prefer to tread an easier path, which is to accept spiritual truths on the authority of a teacher. This is far more comfortable. On the other hand, however, there is hardly any other alternative for the great majority of people, for the independent testing of spiritual-scientific truths is a very difficult path; the other path, of observing life in itself, is far easier. But if the laws of Karma hold good, life itself must take on a form which shows us how Karma works in the experiences of life and in the development of character. Those who strive after spiritual truths will more easily gain a conviction of these truths by observing facts supported by life itself.

I shall take two widely-spread qualities as a starting point in this lecture. Taken as moral qualities, there has always been a strong, instinctive repugnance against them. ENVY and FALSEHOOD have always been considered as a special moral failing. This special aversion may be seen in the fact that in the case of no other human error is the repugnance so strong and instinctive as in the case of envy and falsehood. This feeling may be found in great men and in insignificant people. Benvenuto Cellini, who was a great man, once said that he felt himself capable of every kind of sin, but that he could not remember any real lie which he had told. Also Goethe found a certain relief in being able to say that he had never harboured any feeling of envy. Consequently the souls of the simplest people and the souls of highly developed men have an instinctive repugnance against envy and falsehood and defend themselves against them.

Without taking into consideration the theosophical aspect it may be said, first of all, that envy and falsehood are visibly an offence against a fundamental element of social life: they are an offence against the feeling of compassion. Compassion does not only imply sharing another's grief and pain, but it also implies experiencing his value. Compassion is a quality which is not greatly developed among men. It still contains a great amount of egoism. Of Herder it is said, for instance (he intended to study medicine) that he fainted when he first entered an operating theatre where a corpse was to be dissected; he fainted not through compassion, but through weakness and egoism, because he could not bear that sight. Compassion must become less selfish; we should be able to rejoice at another person's success and rise; we should be able to look upon his good qualities without any feeling of bitterness.

Compassion is a fundamental element in the soul life which we share with others because all human soul experiences are connected with each other. Envy and falsehood in particular offend against the capacity of appraising another person's value. We damage our fellow man through envy and falsehood.

Envy and falsehood bring us in opposition to the course of the universe; by envy and falsehood we harm the laws which govern the world's course of events. They can easily be recognized as errors and people do not tolerate them.

As a rule both envy and falsehood have occult backgrounds. Certain mysterious laws hold sway, which easily escape our observation, and they work in such a way that both envy and falsehood can arise in the same person in later years.

Envy does not always take on the form of conscious green envy. Of course, if anyone is conscious of this feeling, he tries to get rid of it. Envy as such is a quality rooted in the astral body of man. We know that feelings, passions, etc. should be looked for in the astral body. There is a certain law according to which qualities arising in the astral body and which are so detestable that we wish to get rid of them, gradually insinuate themselves into the etheric body. There they take on delusive aspects and appear in the guise of certain definite judgments which we pass on other people. No envy is contained in these judgments, yet we criticize people and find everything in them bad. This is a secret form of envy which creeps into our etheric body. There it takes on the form of an opinion, of a critical judgment. We say: This person has done this or that, and our statement may seem perfectly correct; nevertheless it contains envy in a masked form. What has taken place? A very significant process has taken place.

We know that the human soul passes through many incarnations and that there was a moment in the development of mankind when the tempters, Lucifer and Ahriman, crept into the human soul. In what form do Lucifer and Ahriman live within us today? This is not easy to discover without the aid of clairvoyant investigation, and Goethe expressed a deep truth when he said: “Folks do not notice the Devil, even when he takes them by the scruff of the neck!” IN fact, it is possible to ignore the devil; it is possible not to see him. From the standpoint of modern natural science it is easy to say that Mephistopheles does not exist; nevertheless, Lucifer and Ahriman live in human nature. Ahriman lives in the etheric body and Lucifer in the astral body of man.

Lucifer is a power that tempts the human soul by drawing it down morally and by leading it away from its origin. He casts us into the depths of earthly nature and we should beware of this. Lucifer is the power that draws us down into the depths of passion.

Ahriman, on the other hand, is the spirit of falsehood and error and he falsifies our judgments.

Both Lucifer and Ahriman are powers which are hostile to human progress. Yet they get on very well with each other. Envy is a quality in which the Luciferic power comes to expression. It is a detestable quality and that is why people dislike it. They seek to get rid of it, to overcome it and drive it away. When a person first discovers that his soul is filled with envy, he begins to fight against Lucifer, the source of envy. What does Lucifer do in that case? He simply hands over the matter to Ahriman, and Ahriman darkens the human judgment.

When we fight against Lucifer in the astral body, Ahriman can easily insinuate himself into the etheric body, darkening our judgments on other people. This is falsehood and falsehood is an Ahrimanic quality.

People also feel a strong dislike for falsehood and they try to fight against it. When we try to overcome falsehood, we can see that Ahriman hands over the scepter to Lucifer, so that a quality creeps into the astral body which appears in the form of an extremely pronounced EGOISM. Egoism is restrained falsehood.

These two qualities, falsehood and envy, are a crass expression of the way in which Lucifer and Ahriman work within the human soul.

It is possible to observe the influence of envy and falsehood even in the course of a single incarnation. Let us now speak of facts which prove the truth of theosophical teachings. Let us observe a certain period in a person's life and let us suppose that this person was strongly addicted to telling lies. The law of Karma would in that case exercise its influence and we should wait until this becomes manifest. It is, however, possible to observe in the present incarnation the connection which exists between an earlier and a later period of life. A study of human life may show us that a person perhaps lost the habit of telling lies—for life itself is a great school—but he will reveal instead a new, plainly marked characteristic: a certain timidity. There are people who cannot look us in the face and it is possible to observe a certain relationship between a feeling of shyness in later life and hypocrisy at some earlier period of life.

Another example: A person may be filled with the feeling of envy. When this has disappeared, when it has been overcome, we can observe that at some later period of life such a person is dependent on others; he will lack independence in the way in which he faces life—be a weak and swaying person.

These connections between falsehood and shyness, envy and lack of independence, which can already be observed in one and the same incarnation, are Karmic connections.

In reality, Karma works in such a way that a faint fulfillment of its laws already comes to expression in one and the same incarnation, though the decisive influence upon man's character only appears in the next incarnation. Helplessness and lack of independence will arise in old age, when envy appeared during youth. This is a faint nuance of the influence of Karma; it remains after death, works throughout kamaloka, etc., and it will be contained in the forces which build up the next life; it will become interwoven with the fundamental character which expresses itself in the three bodies: the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

Goethe expressed this in a very fine way by saying: The desires of our youth are fully realized in our old age. This applies, of course, both to good and bad desires.

In the next life the character qualities build up the three bodies, our character is then the architect of these three bodies. If envy has been a fundamental quality during one incarnation, it will exercise an influence upon the three bodies during the next incarnation and produce, as a result, a weak physical constitution. It works upon the human organism during the next incarnation.

When we see someone facing life in a helpless and dependent way, we must say: “Envy must have been at work during his past incarnation,” and we should behave towards him accordingly. If the laws of Karma hold good, it will soon appear whether our attitude is justified. When we see someone entering life with bad health and a weak constitution, we may take for granted that envy played a certain part in his life during his past incarnation.

When there is such a person in our environment, we must say that Karma led us together with him for a definite purpose: perhaps we were the object of his former envy. What can we now do for him? If Karma is a fact which can be reasonably accepted, if it is a valid truth, it should become manifest that by adopting the right attitude towards such a physically weak person in our environment, a good result can be achieved. What he needs is forgiveness; he needs to encounter this forgiving attitude in the widest measure. Under the condition that we have something to forgive him, we should envelop him in an atmosphere of forgiveness. “You have to forgive him something—therefore do it”; this is what we say to ourselves, but not to HIM—we shall act accordingly and await the result, and we shall see him gaining health and strength. Simply try to do what is right and the result will not fail to appear. This is how we may live in accordance with the laws of Karma and the whole of Theosophy will then become living substance.

Now someone might come along and say: It is quite right that things should have gone wrong with that person, for this is the retribution for what he did during his past incarnation. It is very reasonable that things should have taken this course, because his Karma demands it. People who say this do not understand Karma, for to understand Karma we must know that another person's Karma does not concern us at all! The fulfillment of Karma will come of its own accord; our only task is to help him! We must, however, draw in everything which might bring about a favourable change in his Karma. To know and to feel this forms part of a deep understanding of Karma and its laws. It is another matter when someone is passing through an esoteric development; in that case advice may be given as to the best way in which he can live out his Karma.

Moral qualities in fact produce results; they bring about Karmic effects. They may change during one incarnation. But in the next incarnation they must descend right down into the physical organism.

We said that falsehood may change into timidity during one and the same incarnation, so that a person withdraws into himself. All the more will falsehood in one incarnation produce timidity in the next incarnation. Such a person is born as a timid soul, full of fears. He will not only be shy towards the people of his environment, but he will also fall a prey to certain pathological conditions of fear. The timidity which appeared in one incarnation as a slight karmic effect of falsehood, will therefore appear in the next incarnation as a fundamental organic quality also of the physical body.

What is the right attitude towards a person in whose case we must assume that he told many lies during his past incarnation? We say to ourselves—we do not say this to him—and this should determine our actions: He will have told us many lies during a past incarnation; he misled us. We must try to bring him fruitful and valuable truths. Those who are led together with him by Karma must try to penetrate into his soul with love and devotion. Falsehood must be recompensed by truth; these are two extremes which bring about a kind of compensation.

The secret of the whole matter is that a favourable influence cannot be exercised upon him by anyone, but just by those who are karmically connected with him. Those who adopt this attitude will see what good results can be achieved if he brings him positive truths and has real understanding for him.

Karma is a real law; its result will appear in a very peculiar way. If we lovingly penetrate into the weaknesses of such people, our influence upon them will be an immense relief to them and bring them freedom and health. If we can immerse ourselves completely in them, we shall have a rejuvenating influence upon such people.

Our attitude towards people may be an understanding one or a critical one. What is the effect? We may help them or be unable to help them. We may come towards a person with understanding; i.e., immerse ourselves lovingly in his soul, with a real understanding for his weaknesses, if Karma demands this from us, as a task. But we may also criticize him and remain by this.

Let us observe life in both cases. What is the effect of criticism and rebuke upon the object of such rebuke? One effect can be that the reproaches helped him, but it may also be otherwise. People who habitually criticize and rebuke others will also bring about a certain result: a certain feeling of isolation will take hold of them; they will feel themselves cut off from the others.

Let us compare this with the effects produced in one incarnation, when we immerse ourselves with love and understanding in the other person's soul, in spite of his failings. In this case, too, the result may be a good one or a bad one, but the effect upon the soul will undoubtedly be a favourable one.

This shows us that entirely different laws hold sway when we remain standing, as it were, by criticism and rebuke, or when we progress as far as real understanding. Rebuke recoils upon ourselves and forms new Karma, but understanding gives rise to a store of wealth in the other soul; it dissolves Karma, smoothens it and eliminates it.

This is a very significant fact in life. Let us now recapitulate the result of our observations in a sentence which constitutes a deep truth; namely, that we are in the position to be of very little help to ourselves, and that we can, on the other hand, harm ourselves greatly. We can, however, be of great help to others, whereas we cannot cause them much harm by our own errors. Our good qualities can therefore be of great help to others; our bad qualities cause us great harm, but cannot cause much harm to others, at least not permanently.

This is a very peculiar law. It shows the effect of Karma in one and the same incarnation: for one who helps another person by his good qualities and by immersing himself lovingly in his soul, may be sure of a favourable effect in his own life at some later period. Do not say that this is egoism, that it is selfish to be good and noble. No, goodness must be something quite natural, and its good effect at some later time arises as a natural consequence.

If we do not go beyond our own interests, if we have no understanding for other people and only criticize them, no good effects will arise. The strange thing is that unless we are good towards others we cannot progress; this is a condition for our own progress.

This is a fundamental law passing over from one incarnation to the other, and appearing in a wonderful way. If in one incarnation we are instinctively led to goodness, if a kind of life instinct draws us towards a good life, this will appear in the next life as Theosophy, which will already have exercised its influence. Let us for instance imagine a person who was good to us at a time when we were not yet able to guide ourselves. Here we see a great difference between the different qualities of good—there are the good things in life which we do not deserve (we speak of undeserved good) and we can see that in one case its effect may be a favourable one, whereas in another case it is useless.

The clairvoyant may now perceive something quite special: Another person's good actions towards us, at a time in which we did not deserve them, appear as goodness which we earned back from him. If this is the case, their effect upon us will be a good one; if this is not the case, they cannot have any good effect upon us. When we observe the workings of Karma we should bear in mind that every action has its effect, even though it may not immediately appear to the physical eye.

The paths of Karma are very intricate paths, but if we study life we may understand them, for life contains the proofs for the way in which Karma works in the world. If we study Karma and act accordingly, the success in life itself will show us that we went out from a real law, which holds good.

There are three ways in which we can face Karma: We may not believe in it at all; we may believe in it, and then we may apply the test by observing life itself. This will enable us to recognize the truth of its laws. Theosophy is not only a theoretical truth, but a search for proofs which establish this truth in life itself.