The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of these lectures we have seen that the middle of the nineteenth century is an important time in the development of Western humanity. Attention was called to the fact that in a sense the culmination of the materialistic way of thinking and the materialistic world view occurred during this time. Yet it also had to be pointed out that this trend that has emerged in the human being since the fifteenth century was really something spiritual. Thus, it can be said that the characteristic of this developmental phase of recent human evolution was that simultaneously with becoming the most spiritual, the human being could not take hold of this spirituality. Instead, human beings filled themselves only with materialistic thinking, feeling, and even with materialistic will and activity. Our present age is still dominated by the aftereffects of what occurred in so many people without their being aware of it, and then reached its climax in mankind's development. What was the purpose of this climax? It occurred because something decisive was meant to take place in regard to contemporary humanity's attainment of the consciousness soul stage.

In focusing on the evolution of humanity from the third post-Atlantean epoch until approximately the year 747 (see sketch) before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that a process runs its course that can be called the development of the sentient soul in humanity. Then the age of the rational or mind soul begins and lasts roughly until the year 1413. It reaches its high point in that era of which external history has little to report. It must be taken into consideration, however, if European development is to be comprehended at all. This culmination point occurs approximately in the year 333 after Christ. Since the year 1413, we are faced with the development of the consciousness soul, a development we are still involved in and that saw a decisive event around the year 1850, or better, 1840.

A.D. 333

 ----------747-----------/-------------1413----------1840 Sentient Soul........Rational Soul....Consciousness Soul 

For mankind as a whole, matters had reached a point around 1840 where, insofar as the representative personalities of the various nations are concerned, we can say that they were faced with an intellect that had already assumed its most shadowy form. (Following this, we shall have to consider the reaction of the individual nations.) The intellect had assumed its shadowlike character. I tried yesterday to characterize this shadow nature of the intellect. People in the civilized world had evolved to the extent that, from then on it was possible on the basis of the general culture and without initiation to acquire the feeling: We possess intellect. The intellect has matured, but insofar as its own nature is concerned, it no longer has a content. We have concepts but these concepts are empty. We must fill them with something.

This, in a sense, is the call passing through humanity, though dimly and inaudibly. But in the deep, underlying, subconscious longings of human beings lives the call, the wish to receive a content, substance, for the shadow nature of rational thinking. Indeed, it is the call for spiritual science.

This call can also be comprehended concretely. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the human organization, in the physical part of which this shadowy intellect is trained, had simply progressed to the point where it could cultivate this empty shadowy intellect particularly well. Now, something was required for this shadowy intellect; it had to be filled with something. This could only happen if the human being realized: I have to assimilate something of what is not offered to me on the earth itself and does not dwell there, something I cannot learn about in the life between birth and death. I actually have to absorb something into my intellect that, although it was extinguished and became obscured when I descended with the results of my former earth lives out of spiritual soul worlds into a physical corporeality, nevertheless rests in the depths of my soul. From there, I have to bring it up once again, I have to call to mind something that rests within me simply by virtue of the fact that I am a human being of the nineteenth century.

Earlier, it would not have been possible for human beings to have practiced self-awareness in the same manner. This is why they first had to advance in their human condition to the point where the physical body increasingly acquired the maturity to perfect and utilize the shadowy intellect completely. Now, at least among the most advanced human beings, the physical bodies had reached the point where one could have said, or rather, since then it is possible to say: I wish to call to mind what it is that I am seeking to bring up from the depths of my soul life in order to pour a content into this shadowy intellect. This shadowy intellect would have been filled with something and in this way the consciousness soul age would have dawned. Therefore, at this point in time, the occasion arose where the consciousness soul could have unfolded.

Now you will say: Yes, but the whole era prior to that, beginning with the year 1413, was the age of the consciousness soul. Yes, certainly, but at first it has been a preparatory development. You need only consider what basic conditions existed for such a preparation particularly in this period as compared to all earlier times. Into this period falls, for example, the invention of the printing press; the dissemination of the written word. Since the fifteenth century, people by and by have received a great amount of spiritual content by means of the art of printing and through writing. But they absorb this content only outwardly; it is the main feature of this period that an overwhelming sum of spiritual content has been assimilated superficially. The nations of the civilized world have absorbed something outwardly which the great masses of people could receive only by means of audible speech in earlier times. It was true of the period of rational development, and in the age of the sentient soul it was all the more true that, fundamentally speaking, all dissemination of learning was based on oral teaching. Something of the psycho-spiritual element still resounds through speech. Especially in former days, what could be termed “the genius of language” definitely still lived in words. This ceased to be when the content of human learning began to be assimilated in abstract forms, through writing and printed works. Printed and written words have the peculiarity of in a sense extinguishing what the human being brings with him at birth from his pre-earthly, heavenly existence.

It goes without saying that this does not mean that you should forthwith cease to read or write. It does mean that today a more powerful force is needed in order to raise up what lies deep within the human being. But it is necessary that this stronger force be acquired. We have to arrive at self-awareness despite the fact that we read and write; we have to develop this stronger faculty, stronger in comparison to what was needed in earlier times. This is the task in the age of the development of the consciousness soul.

Before taking a look at how the influences of the spiritual world have now started to flow down in a certain way into the physical, sensory world, let us pose the question today, How did the nations of modern civilization actually meet this point of time in 1840?

From earlier lectures we know that the representative people for the development of the consciousness soul, hence for what matters particularly in our age, is the Anglo-Saxon nation. The Anglo-Saxon people are those who through their whole organization are predisposed to develop the consciousness soul to a special degree. The prominent position occupied by the Anglo-Saxon nation in our time is indeed due to the fact that this nation is especially suited for the development of the consciousness soul. But now let us ask ourselves from a purely external viewpoint, How did this Anglo-Saxon nation arrive at this point in time that is the most significant one in modern cultural development?

It can be said that the Anglo-Saxon nation in particular has survived for a long time in a condition—naturally with the corresponding variations and metamorphoses—that could perhaps be described best by saying, Those inner impulses, which had already made way for other forms in Greek culture, were preserved in regard to the inner soul condition of the Anglo-Saxon people. The strange thing in the eleventh and tenth centuries B.C. is that the nations experienced what is undergone at different periods, that the various ages move, as it were, one on top of the other. The problem is that such matters are extraordinarily difficult to notice because in the nineteenth century all sorts of things already existed—reading, writing—and because the living conditions prevailing in Scotland and England were different from those in Homeric times.

And yet, if the soul condition of the people as a nation is taken into consideration, the fact is that this soul condition of the Homeric era, which in Greece was outgrown in the tragic age and changed into Sophoclism, has remained. This age, a kind of patriarchal conception of life and existence, was preserved in the Anglo-Saxon world up until the nineteenth century. In particular, this patriarchal life spread out from the soul condition in Scotland. This is the reason why the influence proceeding from the initiation centers in Ireland did not have an effect on the Anglo-Saxon nation. As was mentioned on other occasions, that influence predominantly affected continental Europe. On the British isle itself, the predominant influence originated from initiation truths that came down from the north, from Scotland. These initiation truths then permeated everything else. But there is an element in the whole conception of the human personality that, in a sense, has remained from primordial times. This still has aftereffects; it lingers on even in the way, say, the relationship between Whigs and Tories develops in the British Parliament. The fact is that fundamentally we are not dealing with the difference between liberal and conservative views. Instead, we have to do with two political persuasions for which people today really have no longer any perception at all.

Essentially, the Whigs are the continuation of what could be called a segment of mankind imbued with a general love of humanity and originating in Scotland. According to a fable, which does have a certain historical background, the Tories were originally Catholicizing horse thieves from Ireland. This contrast, which then expressed itself in their particular political strivings, reflects a certain patriarchal existence. This patriarchal existence retained certain primitive forces, which can be observed in the kind of attitude exhibited by the owners of large properties toward those people who had settled on these lands as their vassals.

This relationship of subservience actually lasted until the nineteenth century; nobody was elected to Parliament who did not possess a certain power by virtue of being a landowner. We only have to consider what this implies. Such matters are not weighed in the right manner. Just think what it signifies, for example, that it was not until the year 1820 that English Parliament repealed the law according to which a person was given the death penalty for having stolen a pocket watch or having been a poacher. Until then, the law decreed that such misdeeds were capital offenses. This certainly demonstrates the way in which particular, ancient, and elementary conditions had remained. Today, people observe life in their immediate surroundings and then extend the fundamental aspects of present-day civilization backwards, so to speak. In regard to the most important regions of Europe, they are unaware of how recently these things have developed from quite primitive conditions.

Thus, it is possible to say that these patriarchal conditions survived as the foundation and basis of a society that was subsequently infused with the most modern impulse, unimaginable in the social structure without the development of the consciousness soul. Just consider all the changes in the social structure of the eighteenth century due to the technological metamorphosis in the textile industry and the like. Note how the mechanical, technological element moved into this patriarchal element. Try to form a clear idea of how, owing to the transformation of the textile industry, the nascent modern Proletariat pushes into the social structure that is based on this patriarchal element, this relationship of landowner to subjects. Just think of this chaotic intermingling, think how the cities develop in the ancient countryside and how the patriarchal attitude takes a daring plunge, so to say, into modern, socialistic, proletarian life.

To picture it graphically, we can actually say that this form of life develops in the way it existed in Greece approximately until the year 1000 B.C. (see drawing). Then it makes a daring jump and we suddenly find ourselves in the year A.D. 1820. Inwardly, the life of the year 1000 B.C. has been retained, but outwardly, we are in the eighteenth century, say 1770 (see arrows). Now everything that then existed in modern life, indeed, even in our present time, pours in. But it is not until 1820 that this English life makes the connection, finds it necessary to do so (see drawing); it is not until then that these matters even became issues, such as the abolition of the death penalty for a minor theft. Thus we can say that, here, something very old has definitely flown together with the most modern element. Thus, the further development then continues on to the year 1840.

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Now, what had to occur specifically among the Anglo-American people during this time period, the first half of the nineteenth century? We have to recall that only after the year 1820, actually not until after 1830, it became necessary to pass laws in England according to which children under twelve years of age were not allowed to be kept working in factories for more than eight hours a day, no more than twelve hours a day in the case of children between thirteen and eighteen years of age. Please, compare that with today's conditions! Just think what the broad masses of working people demand today as the eight-hour day! As yet, in the year 1820, boys were put to work in mines and factories in England for more than eight hours; only in that year was the eight-hour day established for them. The twelve-hour day still prevailed, however, in regard to children between twelve and eighteen.

These things must certainly be considered in the attempt to figure out the nature of the elements colliding with each other at that time. Basically, it could be said that England eased its way out of the patriarchal conditions only in the second third of the nineteenth century and found it necessary to reckon with what had slowly invaded the old established traditions due to technology and the machine. It was in this way that this nation, which is preeminently called upon to develop the consciousness soul, confronted the year 1840.

Now take other nations of modern civilization. Take what has remained of the Latin-Roman element; take what has carried over the Latin-Roman element from the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, what has brought over the ancient culture of the intellectual soul as a kind of legacy into the epoch of the consciousness soul. Indeed, what had remained of this life of the intellectual soul reached its highest point, its culmination, in the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. We note that the ideals, freedom, equality, and brotherhood appear all at once in the most extreme abstraction. We see them taken up by skeptics such as Voltaire,¹ by enthusiasts such as Rousseau;² we see them emerge generally in the broad masses of the people. We see how the abstraction, which is fully justified in this sphere, affects the social structure

It is a completely different course of events from the one over in England. In England, the vestiges of the old Germanic patriarchal life are permeated by what the element of modern technology and modern materialistic, scientific life could incorporate into the social structure. In France, we have tradition everywhere. We could say that the French Revolution has been enacted in the same manner in which a Brutus or a Caesar once acted in the most diverse ways in ancient Rome. Thus, here also, freedom, equality and brotherhood surfaced in abstract forms. Unlike in England, the old existing patriarchal element was not destroyed from the outside. Instead, the Roman juridical tradition, the adherence to the ancient concept of property and ownership of land, inheritance laws, and so on, what had been established in the Roman-juristic tradition was corroded by abstraction, driven asunder by abstraction.

We need only consider the tremendous change the French Revolution brought to all of European life. We only need remind ourselves that prior to the French Revolution those who, in a sense, distinguished themselves from the masses of the nation also had legal privileges. Only certain people could aspire to particular positions in government. What the French Revolution demanded based on abstraction and the shadowlike intellect was to make breaches into that system to undermine it. But it did bear the stamp of the shadowy intellect, the abstraction. Therefore, the demands that were being made fundamentally remained a kind of ideology. For this reason, we can say that anything that is of the shadowy intellect immediately turns into its opposite.

Then we observe Napoleonism; we watch the experimentation in the public and social realm during the course of the nineteenth century. The first half of the nineteenth century was certainly experimentation without a goal in France. What is the nature of the events through which somebody like Louis-Philippe, for example, becomes king of France, and so on—what sort of experimenting is carried out? It is done in such a way that one can recognize that the shadowy intellect is incapable of truly intervening in the actual conditions. Everything basically remains undone and incomplete; it all remains as legacy of ancient Romanism. We are justified in saying that even today the relationship to, say, the Catholic Church, which the French Revolution had quite clearly defined in abstraction, has not been clarified in France in external, concrete reality. And how unclear was it time and again in the course of the nineteenth century! Abstract reasoning had struggled up to a certain level during the Revolution; then came experimentation and the inability to cope with external conditions. In this way, this nation encountered the year 1840.

We can also consider other nations. Let us look at Italy, for instance, which, in a manner of speaking, still retained a bit of the sentient soul in its passage through the culture of the intellect. It brought this bit of the sentient soul into modern times and therefore did not advance as far as the abstract concepts of freedom, equality, and brotherhood attained in the French Revolution. It did, however, seek the transition from a certain ancient group consciousness to individual consciousness in the human being. Italy faced the year 1840 in a manner that allows us to say, The individual human consciousness trying to struggle to the fore in Italy was in fact constantly held down by what the rest of Europe now represented. We can observe how the tyranny of Habsburg weighed terribly on the individual human consciousness that tried to develop in Italy. We see in the 1820's the strange Congress of Verona³ that tried to determine how one could rise up against the whole substance of modern civilization. We note that there proceeded from Russia and Austria a sort of conspiracy against what the modern consciousness in humanity was meant to bring. There is hardly anything as interesting as the Congress of Verona, which basically wished to answer the question: How does one go about exterminating everything that is trying to emerge as modern consciousness in mankind?

Then we see how the people in the rest of Europe struggled in certain ways. Particularly in Central Europe, only a small percentage of the population was able to attain to a certain consciousness, experiencing in a certain manner that the ego is now supposed to enter into the consciousness soul. We notice attempts to achieve this at a certain high mental level. We can see it in the peculiar high cultural level of Goethe's age in which a man like Fichte was active;⁴ we see how the ego tried to push forward into the consciousness soul. Yet we also realize that the whole era of Goethe actually was something that lived only in few individuals. I believe people study far too little what even the most recent past was like. They simply think, for example the Goethe lived from 1749 until 1832; he wrote Faust and a number of other works. That is what is known of Goethe and that knowledge has existed ever since.

Until the year 1862, until thirty years after Goethe's death, with few exceptions, it was impossible for people to acquire a copy of Goethe's works. They were restricted; only a handful of people somehow owned a copy of his writings. Hence, Goetheanism had become familiar only to a select few. It was not until the 1860's that a larger number of people could even find out about the particular element that lived in Goethe. By that time, the faculty of comprehension for it had disappeared again. An actual understanding of Goethe never really came about, and the last third of the nineteenth century was not suited at all for such comprehension.

I have often mentioned that in the 1870's Hermann Grimm gave his “Lectures on Goethe” at the University of Berlin.⁵ That was a special event and the book that exists as Hermann Grimm's Goethe is a significant publication in the context of central European literature. Yet, if you now take a look at this book, what is its substance? Well, all the figures who had any connection with Goethe are listed in it but they are like shadow images having only two dimensions. All these portrayals are shadow figures, even Goethe is a two-dimensional being in Hermann Grimm's depiction. It is not Goethe himself. I won't even mention the Goethe whom people at the afternoon coffee parties of Weimar called “the fat Privy Councillor with the double chin.” In Hermann Grimm's Goethe, Goethe has no weight at all. He is merely a two-dimensional being, a shadow cast on the wall. It is the same with all the others who appear in the book; Herder—a shadow painted on a wall. We encounter something a little more tangible in Hermann Grimm's description of those persons coming from among the ordinary people who are close to Goethe, for example, Friederike von Sesenheim who is portrayed there so beautifully, or Lilli Schoenemann from Frankfurt—hence those who emerge from a mental atmosphere other than the one in which Goethe lived. Those are described with a certain “substance.” But figures like Jacobi and Lavater are but shadow images on a wall. The reader does not penetrate into the actual substance of things; here, we can observe in an almost tangible way the effects of abstraction. Such abstraction can certainly be charming, as is definitely the case with Hermann Grimm's book, but the whole thing is shadowy. Silhouettes, two-dimensional beings, confront us in it.

Indeed, it could not be otherwise. For it is a fact that a German could not call himself a German in Germany at the time when Hermann Grimm, for example was young. The way one spoke of Germans during the first half of the nineteenth century is misunderstood, particularly at present. How “creepy” it seems to people in the West, those of the Entente, when they start reading Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation today and find him saying: “I speak simply to Germans, to Germans as such.” In the same way, the harmless song “Germany, Germany above all else”^T1 is interpreted foolishly, for this song means nothing more than the desire to be a German, not a Swabian, a Bavarian, an Austrian, a Franconian, or Thuringian. Just as this song referred only to Germans as such, so Fichte wished simply to address himself to Germans, not to Austrians, Bavarians, those from the province of Baden, Wuerttemberg, Franconia, or Prussia; he wanted to speak “to Germans.” This is naturally impossible to understand, for instance, in a country where it has long since become a matter of course to call oneself a Frenchman. However, in certain periods in Germany, you were imprisoned if you called yourself German. You could call yourself an Austrian, a Swabian, a Bavarian, but it amounted to high treason to call yourself a German. Those who called themselves Germans in Bavaria expressed the sentiment that they did not wish to look up merely to the Bavarian throne and its reign within Bavaria's clearly defined borders, but implied that they also wished to look beyond the borders of Bavaria. But that was high treason! People were not permitted to call themselves Germans.

It is not understood at all today that these things that are said about Germans and Germany, refer to this unification of everything German. Instead, the absurd nonsense is spread that, for example, Hoffmann's song refers to the notion that Germany should rule over all the nations of the world although it means nothing else but: Not Swabia, not Austria, not Bavaria above all else in the world, but Germany above all else in the world, just as the Frenchman says: France above all else in the world. It was, however, the peculiar nature of Central Europe that basically a tribal civilization existed there. Even today, you can see this tribal culture everywhere in Germany. A Wuerttembergian is different from a Franconian. He differs from him even in the formulation of concepts and words, indeed, even in the thought forms disseminated in literature. There really is a marked difference, if you compare, say, a Franconian, such as cloddy Michael Conrad—using modern literature as an example—with something that has been written at the same time by a Wuerttembergian, hence in the neighboring province.

Something like this plays into the whole configuration of thoughts right into the present time. But everything that persists in this way and lives in the tribal peculiarities remains untouched by what is now achieved by the representatives of the nations. After all, in the realm commonly called Germany something has been attained such as Goetheanism with all that belongs to it. But it has been attained by only a few intellectuals; the great masses of people remain untouched by it. The majority of the population has more or less maintained the level of central Europe around the year A.D. 300 or 400. Just as the Anglo-Saxon people have stayed on the level of around the year 1000 B.C., people in Central Europe have remained on the level of the year A.D. 400. Please do not take this in the sense that a terrible arrogance might arise with the thought that the Anglo-Saxons have remained behind in the Homeric age, and we were already in the year A.D. 400. This is not the way to evaluate these matters. I am only indicating certain peculiarities.

In turn, the geographic conditions reveal that this level of general soul development in Germany lasted much longer than in England. England's old patriarchal life had to be permeated quickly with what formed the social structure out of the modern materialistic, scientific, and technological life first in the area of the textile industry, and later also in the area of other technologies. The German realm and Central Europe in general opposed this development initially, retaining the ancient peculiarities much longer. I might say, they retained them until a point in time when the results of modern technology already prevailed fully all over the world. To a certain extent, England caught up in the transformation of the social structure in the first half of the nineteenth century. Everything that was achieved there definitely bypassed central Europe.

Now, Central Europe did absorb something of abstract revolutionary ideas. They came to expression through various movements and stirrings in the 1840's in the middle of the nineteenth century. But this region sat back and waited, as it were, until technology had infused the whole world. Then, a strange thing happened. An individual—we could also take other representatives—who in Germany had acquired his thinking from Hegelianism, namely, Karl Marx, went over to England, studied the social structure there and then formulated his socialist doctrines. At the end of the nineteenth century, Central Europe was then ready for these social doctrines, and they were accepted there. Thus, if we tried to outline in a similar manner what developed in this region, we would have to say: The development progressed in a more elementary way even though a great variety of ideas were absorbed from outside through books and printed matter.

The conditions of A.D. 400 in central Europe continued on, then made a jump and basically found the connection only in the last third of the nineteenth century, around the year 1875. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon nation met already the year 1840 with a transformation of conditions, with the necessity of receiving the consciousness soul, the German people continued to dream. They still experienced the year 1840 as though in a dream. Then they slept through the grace period when a bridge could have been built between leading personalities and what arose out of the masses of the people in the form of the proletariat. The latter then took hold of the socialist doctrine and thereby, beginning about the year 1875, exerted forcible, radical pressure in the direction of the consciousness soul. Yet even this was in fact not noticed; in any case it was not channeled in any direction, and even today it is basically still evaluated in the most distorted way.

In order to arrive at the anomalies at the bottom of this, we need only call to mind that Oswald Spengler, who wrote the significant book The Decline of the West, also wrote a booklet concerning socialism of which, I believe, 60,000 copies or perhaps more have been printed. Roughly, it is Spengler's view that this European, this Western civilization, is digging its own grave. According to Spengler, by the year 2200, we will be living on the level of barbarism. We have to agree with Spengler concerning certain aspects of his observations; for if the European world maintains the course of development it is pursuing now, then everything will be barbarized by the time the third millennium arrives. In this respect Spengler is absolutely correct. The only thing Spengler does not see and does not want to see is that the shadowy intellect can be raised to Imaginations out of man's inner being and that hence the whole of Western humanity can be elevated to a new civilization.

This enlivening of culture through the intentions of anthroposophical spiritual science is something a person like Oswald Spengler does not see. Rather, he believes that socialism—the real socialism, as he thinks, a socialism that truly brings about social living—has to come into being prior to this decline. The people of the Occident, according to him, have the mission of realizing socialism. But, says Oswald Spengler, the only people called upon to realize socialism are the Prussians. This is why he wrote the booklet Prussianism and Socialism. Any other form of socialism is wrong, according to Spengler. Only the form that revealed its first rosy dawn in the Wilhelminian age, only this form of socialism is to capture the world. Then the world will experience true, proper socialism.

Thus speaks a person today whom I must count among the most brilliant people of our time. The point is not to judge people by the content of what they say but by their mental capacities. This Oswald Spengler, who is master of fifteen different scientific disciplines, is naturally “more intelligent than all the writers, doctors, teachers, and ministers” and so on. We can truly say that with his book about the decline of the West he has presented something that deserves consideration, and that, by the way, is making a most profound impression on the young people in Central Europe. But next to it stands this other idea that I have referred to above, and you see precisely how the most brilliant people can arrive today at the strangest notions. People take hold of the intellect prevalent today and this intellect is shadowy. The shadows flit to and fro, one is caught up in one shadow, then one tries to catch up with another—nothing is alive. After all, in a silhouette, in a woman's shadow image cast on the wall, her beauty is not at all recognizable. So it is also with all other matters when they are viewed as shadow images. The shadow image of Prussianism can certainly be confused with socialism. If a woman turns her back to the wall and her shadow falls on it, even the ugliest woman might be considered beautiful. Likewise, Prussianism can be mistaken for socialism if the shadowlike intellect inwardly pervades the mind of a genius.

This is how we must look at things today. We must not look at the contents, we must aim for the capacities; that is what counts. Thus, it has to be acknowledged that Spengler is a brilliant human being, even though a great number of his ideas have to be considered nonsense. We live in an age when original, elementary judgments and reasons must surface. For it is out of certain elementary depths that one has to arrive at a comprehension of the present age and thus at impulses for the realities of the future.

Naturally, the European East has completely slept through the results of the year 1840. Just think of the handful of intellectuals as opposed to the great masses of the Russian people who, because of the Orthodox religion, particularly the Orthodox ritual, are still deeply immersed in Orientalism. Then think of the somnolent effect of men like Alexander I, Nicholas I, and all the other “I's” who followed them! What has come about today was therefore the element that aimed for this point in which the consciousness soul was to have its impact on European life.

We shall say more tomorrow.

• 1. Francois de Voltaire (actually d'Arouet), 1694–1778, French philosopher of the Enlightenment.
• 2. Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1778, French philosopher and pedagogue.
• 3. Congress of Verona: Congress of the “Holy Alliance” (1822) to which all the European powers belonged with the exception of England and the Vatican. Under Metternich, it pursued a clearly reactionary course.
• 4. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German philosopher.
• 5. Hermann Grimm, 1828–1901, German art historian and literary critic.
• T1. “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” the German national anthem.

Today I should like to discuss a few things, speaking at times more generally, in connection with what was said yesterday and the day before. From those two lectures you will have been able to learn that spiritual science, as conceived here, is to be born, in our time and for the very near future, out of the deepest and most serious demands of human evolution. I have often mentioned that we are not concerned here with those ideals which originate in man's subjective nature, but rather with what is being deciphered from the spiritual history of the evolution of humanity; and from this spiritual history one can clearly see that the science of initiation, that is, the science which brings over its knowledge from beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, is absolutely necessary for the further evolution of mankind. But all that can be said today concerning a genuine knowledge of the spiritual world is opposed by those powers which stand for the antiquated; and the opposition of the people in whom these powers live must be overcome. The statement of the necessity for a complete transformation of learning and thinking with regard to the most important affairs of human evolution must be seriously and basically understood. Therefore I should like to ask you to attach special importance to the idea that it must be our purpose to overcome everything of a merely sectarian nature, still rampant even in the anthroposophical mind, and really to see the significance for the world and for humanity of anthroposophically-orientated spiritual science.

People today are still far from being awakened out of the sleep in which they were enfolded by that development which I have already described to you in certain of its fundamental characteristics, and which began about the middle of the 15th century. Certainly what was incorporated in the evolution of humanity during that time: namely, external physical science with its great triumphs, the materialistic conception of cosmic laws, and with it the mistaken social ideas so clearly evident today—all that has from this direction enveloped humanity in sleep continues to have a powerful effect; and a fruitful advance will not be possible unless mankind is shaken out of this sleep. Let us never forget that the knowledge of the spiritual has powerful enemies in all those who wish to be assured first of all—just from pure mental indolence—of the continuance of what they have been accustomed to think. We cannot say that we should take no notice when on the part of such people hostility and opposition to spiritual science as it is purposed here become more and more determined as this spiritual science becomes better known. To be sure, anyone might believe that such things should be allowed to pass entirely unnoticed; but that would be an utterly wrong view in our present time. We do not fail to notice noxious insects which approach us; we try to get rid of them, and often this must be done in ungentle ways. The mode of procedure must be decided in each individual case.

These things must also be understood out of the necessities of the time. Therefore it must be viewed with very special satisfaction in these times of ours, which are becoming ever more difficult, if there are nevertheless people who are possessed of sufficient power of will to stand up for our cause. But there are alas! still far too few people who fully comprehend the seriousness of what is now at stake in the evolution of humanity. On the one hand, there are those who do not intend to stir out of long-accustomed habits—not for any spiritual reasons, but from mental laziness and other such considerations; and on the other hand, there must be those who strongly oppose with their whole being whatever is ripe for destruction. We must not suppose that any sort of indulgence toward what is ready to perish can be allowed to hinder us today. In the last five or six years people could have learned that things belonging to the old order lead ad absurdum; and those who have not yet learned it will have abundant opportunity to do so in the immediate future. There must be in us the zeal for that which is to be implanted as something new in the evolution of mankind.

That a violent hatred would be manifest toward that anthroposophical spiritual science which has now been carried on in Europe for two decades, could be foreseen—anyone could foresee it who knew and knows that what we call anthroposophical spiritual science is intimately connected with the powers which must be summoned in the present and the very near future for the progress of humanity. This spiritual science must not be confused with sleepy-headedness, with that disposition to create for oneself a little sensual soul-enjoyment by means of spiritual ideas and concepts. We stand at the beginning. Against us rages the battle of the will to exterminate. In so far as we have understood the true impulse of our spiritual science, we have never intended to act aggressively; but we must not neglect whatever is necessary to meet the opposition of the aggressive element which will appear more and more from without. Here our courage must not give way; we must not try to proceed through indolence. It will not be easy to infuse truth into human evolution, and indulgence is positively not that with which to gird ourselves. Matters have come to a pretty pass indeed, as the recent events on the occasion of a lecture by Professor T. in Reutlingen prove. If the gentlemen who are the official representatives of Christianity are baffled, then they are ready to say, as a city clergyman did in the discussion: “Here Christ is mistaken!” Of course Professor T. is not mistaken; but if what he has to say does not agree with the revealed text of the Bible, then Christ is wrong, not Professor T. That is characteristic of the disposition we meet today, only people will not see it because it is uncomfortable to see it; and it could be found in all fields if only people were inclined to look for it.

For those who are able to see the relations in life, it is clear that the European calamity of recent years, although it has apparently played an external role, is inwardly connected with what people have become accustomed to think, and concerning which—please pardon the somewhat trivial, banal expression—concerning which people are so fond of saying: What glorious progress we have made! and smack their lips with satisfaction.

What is necessary is to become inwardly objective. Under the influence of modern culture people have lost objectivity. The personal is everywhere in evidence. When sometime the history of the last five or six years is written, that will be possible only from spiritual-scientific foundations, and then the chapters of this world history will show how enormously the personal element has influenced the great world-historical events. I said that it will be impossible without spiritual-scientific foundations to speak of the events of the last five or six years; and in support of this I need only refer to what I have frequently indicated here. Of the thirty or forty men in prominent leading positions who participated in 1914 in what is called the outbreak of the World War—people love inexact language nowadays, because it is adapted to cover up the truth; it was neither an “outbreak,” but something quite different, nor was it a “world war”; it was something entirely different, which will not come to an end for a long time yet—of the thirty or forty men who participated at that time, a large proportion were not entirely compos mentis, the forces of soul and spirit were not all functioning, and where the consciousness is clouded, there are doors by which the Ahrimanic powers have especially easy access to human resolutions and human intentions.

The Ahrimanic powers played an essential role in the beginning of those events of 1914. Even today anyone who is so minded could easily perceive, from following up events in a purely external way, how necessary it is to infuse spiritual knowledge into the evolution of humanity. But man is far removed by habits of thought, perception, and feeling from observing such things with absolute seriousness. There is on the one hand the fact—and more than that, the imminent fact—that the time is ripe for people to appear who are able to bring suitable and capable souls to meet those spiritual impulses which have been entering our physical world since the last third of the 19th century. Side by side with the fact that we have sailed into a materialistic time, there exists the other fact that the doors between the spiritual world and ours stand open since the last third of the 19th century, and that people who open their souls and minds to spiritual impulses can have relations with the spiritual world. To be sure, the number may be small of those whose consciousness is touched today by the spiritual world; but it is a fact that this spiritual world makes itself felt in many a human spirit. We may say that the next ten, twenty, thirty years, up to the middle of the century, will be years in which more and more people will have learned to listen to the still small voice, and so open their inner being to the impulses of the spiritual world which would enter.

Those people today who receive such impulses from the spiritual world, who know about the truths and the knowledge that must enter into human evolution, know the following also: If what we call science, and especially what we call art, is not fructified by the science of initiation practiced by such people, humanity will face a quick decline, a fearful decline. Let the kind of teaching that prevails in our universities continue for another three decades, let social questions be treated as they are now for thirty years more, and you will have a devastated Europe. You can set up ideals in this field or that as much as you please, you can talk yourselves hoarse about individual demands coming from one group or another, you can talk in the belief that with such urgent demands something will be done for humanity's future—it will all be in vain unless the transformation comes from the depths of human souls, from the thought of the relation of this world to the spiritual world. If in this regard there is not a change in learning, a change in thinking, then the moral deluge will overwhelm Europe!

The important thing is to realize what it would actually mean if a number of persons who look deeply into the knowledge from beyond the threshold were obliged to recognize that the confusion, the materialistic tendencies, the social errors, are going on and on—and people do not wish to alter their thinking and learning—it is important to realize what it would signify if these few persons possessing the science of initiation were compelled to see that humanity is going downwards because of sheer laziness in thinking and feeling. You should not be deceived as to the number of motives there are today for such a state of affairs in the so-called civilized world. There are many ruling motives—for is it not really natural to expect the humanity of our time in its pride to reject everything coming from the direction of the science of initiation? Humanity is so immensely clever in every single one of its individuals! humanity is so inclined to sneer at what can be won only by working upon the development of one's own soul. Humanity believes that without learning anything it knows everything. In neither the natural nor the social realm can the problems of the present time be solved without a fructifying of human thinking, feeling, and willing from the spiritual world. To many people today it seems positively like a creation of fancy when we speak of this science of initiation, or of anything like the threshold of the spiritual world. It is true, not everyone today can cross the threshold to the spiritual world; but no one would be prevented from perceiving the truth of what is said by those who have crossed that threshold. It is false reasoning when it is said again and again by one or another: How am I to know that what is presented by anyone as the science of initiation is correct, when I cannot myself see into the spiritual world? That is false reasoning. Common sense which is not led astray by the erroneous ideas of our time in the natural or the social sphere can decide of itself whether the element of truth rules in what anyone says. If someone speaks of spiritual worlds, you must take account of everything: the manner of speaking, the seriousness with which things are treated, the logic which is developed, and so on, and then it will be possible to judge whether what is presented as information about the spiritual world is charlatanism, or whether it has foundation. Anyone can decide this; and no one is hindered from making fruitful in the natural and social realms that which is brought over from the well-spring of spiritual life by those who have the right to speak of the principle of initiation.

Those forces of humanity's evolution which have so far guided man unconsciously, so that he has been able to advance, are becoming exhausted, and will be entirely exhausted by the middle of the century, approximately speaking. The new forces must be drawn from depths of souls; and man must come to understand that in the depths of his soul he is connected with the roots of spiritual life.

As to crossing over the threshold, naturally not everyone today can accomplish that, for the human being has become accustomed in the course of recent centuries to consider everything he encounters as taking place in time. But the first experience beyond the threshold is of a world in which time as we understand it has no significance. The time concept must be abandoned. Hence it is advantageous for people who wish to prepare themselves for an understanding of the spiritual world, to begin this training at least, by trying to picture backwards—let us say a drama, which outwardly starts, of course, with the first act and proceeds to the fifth—to picture it as starting at the end and going back to the beginning of the first act; to imagine and feel a melody, not in the succession in which it is played, but letting the tones run backward; to picture the daily experience, not from morning to evening, but running backward from evening to morning. In this way we seriously accustom our thinking to the canceling of time. In our daily life we are accustomed to picture the second event as occurring after the first, the third following the second, the fourth following the third, and so on; and our thinking is always an image of external happenings. If now we begin to think sometimes from the end toward the beginning, to feel from the end toward the beginning, we impose an inner compulsion upon ourselves, and this compulsion is good, for it forces us out of the ordinary sense world. Time runs one, two, three, four, and so on, in this direction. If we reverse our thinking, so that it goes from evening to morning, thus: instead of from morning to evening, then we are thinking against time. We cancel time.

If we are able to continue such thinking, going back in our life as far as we possibly can, we shall have gained very much; for only one who escapes from time can enter into the spiritual world.

We say that man is provided with physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. At first only the physical and etheric bodies come into consideration for the physical sense world. The etheric body still takes part in time in earth events; the astral body can be found only when we are freed from time. The physical body is in space; the ego, the true ego, can be found only when we have escaped from space, for the world in which the true ego lives is spaceless.

So there are two conditions belonging to the earliest experiences namely, that we become free from time and free from space when we cross the threshold to the spiritual world. I have often referred previously to various ways of attaining concepts which disregard space, when I have called your attention to the dimensions—not in such a childish way as four-dimensional space and the like are often spoken of by spiritists, but in a more serious way. Just consider how much of the content of your consciousness is lost when you are no longer in space and time. Your life is completely adjusted to space and time. The soul life of man, as well, is entirely accommodated to space and time. If you enter a world to which you are not adapted, the lack of adaptation implies sensations of pain and suffering; so that the first entrance into the spiritual world is not won without the vanquishing of pain and suffering. People fail to realize this, or else they shrink back in terror from the spiritual world because they are unwilling to enter the kind of abysmal world in which space and time do not exist.

When I thus call before your mental vision this first experience of life beyond the threshold, you become vividly conscious that there are indeed few people today who have sufficient inner courage to venture themselves, as it were, into the bottomless and timeless in actual experience. Certain people, however, are bound by their destiny to cross over the threshold; and without the wisdom which can be brought over from beyond the threshold no further progress is possible. From this you will feel what is necessary. It is necessary that what we call confidence of one man in another should be increased in the future. It would be a fundamental social virtue. In our time of social demands this virtue is one of the rarest, for although people demand that everyone shall serve the community, no one has confidence in another; the most unsocial instincts hold sway. In order that the general education of humanity shall progress in such a way that human beings may grow into the spiritual world, it will be necessary that those who may rightly speak of the science of initiation be given confidence—not confidence arising from blind belief in authority, but from common sense; for what is brought as information from beyond the threshold can always be comprehended if only common sense is really employed.

And then from the viewpoint of common sense, and keeping that in mind on the one hand, we must, on the other, constantly direct our attention to what confronts us today. Although not everyone says thus openly, “There the Christ is mistaken” yet the logic of the present life is characterized by this kind of talk. And when people say they cannot distinguish between what is announced with inner logic from the spiritual worlds and what the university professors say—then common sense is not in evidence, or at least there is no intention to use it. When anyone declares that Christ is mistaken, surely from his common sense a man can say without further ado that such a person can no longer be taken into account from this point of view.

We have lost a real science of the soul. We no longer have any; and I have pointed out—only recently in public lectures in Basel¹ and in other places—why we have lost the science of the soul. The science of the spirit became uncomfortable to the Catholic Church as early as the 9th century; and, as I have frequently explained, the spirit was abolished at the Eighth General Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 869. At that time the dogma was announced that, if a man is a true Christian, he must not think that he consists of body, soul, and spirit, but only of body and soul, and that the soul has spiritual qualities. Psychology still teaches that today, and believes that such teaching represents the point of view of unprejudiced science; but it is only repeating the dogma of 869. Even all that refers to the soul was monopolized by the confessional churches in the form of belief, in the form of creed or dogma. All knowledge pertaining to the soul that should come from man himself was monopolized by the denominational societies; and only external nature was left as the object of real knowledge, of free knowledge. No wonder we have today no science of the soul, for secular scholarship has devoted itself entirely to the science of nature, since the science of the soul was monopolized and the science of the spirit abolished. So we have no science of the soul. If we build upon the science that is the fashion today, we can make no progress; for if we build upon the word-psychology of our time (it really is not much more than that), we cannot come to a real understanding of what takes place in the soul. You know from my statement in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment that upon crossing over the threshold to the spiritual world, thinking, feeling, and willing become separated in the consciousness. In the ordinary present-day consciousness thinking, feeling, and willing form a sort of chaos; they are intermingled. At the moment when the threshold to the spiritual world is crossed, at the moment when one sets about acquiring the science of initiation through experience, thinking, feeling, and willing become independent powers in the consciousness. They become independent, and then one learns to know them.

Only then does one learn really to distinguish thinking from feeling and from willing.

Especially does one learn to distinguish thinking from willing. If we consider the thinking which is active in us as human beings, not according to its content, but as a force—if we consider the thinking force in us, we find that the very force with which we think is something like a shining into our life of that which we experienced in the spiritual world before birth, or before conception. And the will-nature in man is something embryonic, something germinal, which will come to complete development only post mortem after death. So we may say: If this (see diagram) is the course of human life between birth and death, then thinking, as it exists in man within the course of this human life, is only an appearance, for its true being lies in the time before birth, or before conception; and willing is only a germ, for what develops from this germ does so only after death.

Thinking and willing in human nature are fundamentally different.

If now someone appears possessing the logic of our time, which tends to classify and arrange everything systematically, he will say: “We have been told today that thinking is the force which comes from the life before birth, and that willing is the force which points to the life after death.” Now one has defined; by definition one has nicely drawn the line between thinking and willing. But nothing is accomplished by definitions, though their insufficiency is generally not observed. Many definitions, especially those which are considered scientific, appear very clever; but they all have a hitch somewhere—which recalls that definition once given in ancient Greece to the question, What is man? “Man is a two-legged creature without feathers.” Whereupon the next day a pupil brought a plucked fowl and said: “This is a man, for it is a two-legged creature without feathers.” Things are not so simple that they can be treated thus with the ordinary intellectual tools. You see we can say quite well, we must maintain, that what we experience as thinking has its true reality before birth, and that only something like a reflected image of it shines into us. Here a certain difficulty presents itself, but you will overcome it with a little effort of thought.

If you have a mirror here, and here an object—for example, a candle—you have here a reflected image. You can distinguish the image from the object, and will not take the one for the other. If in some way—let us say with a screen—you have the candle itself covered, you will see only the reflection in the mirror. The reflected image will do whatever the candle does, and so from the reflection you will be able to see what it does. You are accustomed to think spatially, and you can therefore easily imagine how the reflection of the candle is related to the reality. But the thinking force in us, as force, is a reflected image, and its reality is in the life before birth. The real force whose image we employ in this life, is in the life before birth. Therefore the principle of human consciousness which results from observing one's own consciousness is: I think, therefore I am not, cogito ergo non sum! That is based on the principle which must be grasped: that in thinking something of the nature of an image exists, and that the force of thinking belongs to the life before birth. Modern development began by setting up the opposite as the basic axiom of philosophy: Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am, which is nonsense. You see what tests modern humanity must go through; but we are at the crossroads, and we must learn to transform our thinking about the basic factors of the soul life.

Having thus in a certain way traced back thinking to its essential being, we might now be able to state something similar with regard to willing. When we regard the will-force between birth and death and what it becomes after death, we must conceive willing, not as reality and reflection, but as germ and completion. This provision: namely, that we have the image of thinking and the embryo of willing, alone gives us the possibility of The Riddle of Man, and Riddles of the Soul, as well as in the second edition of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity where these things are also treated philosophically.

But here is a peculiar fact from which you must see how little the indolent, everyday thinking suffices for entering into reality. We have grasped the essential nature of thinking; but when we do grasp this essential nature of thinking, we must say at the same time: This thinking is not mere thinking, but in it is also a force of willing. With the very inner being with which we think we will at the same time. It is principally thinking and has an undertone of willing; but in the same way, our willing has an undertone of thinking. We have in fact two different things in us: something which is chiefly thinking but has an undertone of willing; and something which is chiefly willing but has an undertone of thinking (see Diagram No. IX). When you consider the reality, you will not be able to form pure concepts which can be arranged systematically, but in a certain sense the one is always at the same time the other. Only when you come to an understanding of these things do you begin to perceive certain relations of man with worlds which are beyond those seen with our eyes and heard with our ears, but within which we live no less than in the world of the senses. We cannot say that other worlds than the sense world do not concern us; we are in their midst. We must realize that, while we are walking about here on this earth, we walk through the spiritual worlds exactly as we walk through the physical air.

Relations—I say—with the spiritual worlds result when one sees into these delicate details of human soul-life. Through that which is more thinking and has only an undertone of willing we are connected with a certain kind of spiritual existence of the spiritual worlds. And with another kind of spiritual worlds we are connected through that which is more willing and less thinking. That has indeed its deeper significance; for what we discover in this way manifests itself in human life; and the differentiations which exist in the world arise because the one or the other force of human nature is always developed more in one direction or another. Those forces, for example, existing in the willing which has an undertone of thinking were pre-eminently developed in the ancient Hebraic culture; and those forces of the human soul-being which are based essentially in the thinking which has an undertone of willing were developed in what is called the ancient pagan culture. At the present time we have the two streams flowing side by side; we have in the civilized world the two streams intermingling: one, a continuation of ancient paganism, in the conception of nature; and the other, which comes from the ancient Hebrews, we have in the social viewpoint of the present, in our ethical and religious concepts.

This dualism also exists today in the individual human being himself. On the one hand, man worships nature in a pagan fashion; and on the other—without finding a proper basis in nature, except that he carries over his habits of thought into so-called social science, or sociology—he ponders on the social life, even the ethical life. And when he philosophizes, he says that in one realm he finds freedom and in the other natural necessity, between which there is supposed to be no bridge; he finds himself in a ghostlike region between the two, and the confusion is terrible.

But in many respects this confusion is the content of the life of the present time, of the life that is perishing. What is lacking in this present life of ours? We have a conception of nature: it is merely the continuation of ancient paganism; we have a moral social conception: it is merely the continuation of the Old Testament. Christianity was an episode which was at first historically understood; but today it has fallen through the sieve of human culture, so to speak. In reality, Christianity does not exist; for with the people who frequently speak of Christ you can do as I recommended in connection with Harnack's Nature of Christianity. Wherever Harnack writes “Christ” in this book, you can strike out the word “Christ”, and substitute “God the Father,” or you can even replace it with a merely pantheistic “God,” or anything of the kind, and generally speaking there will be no essential contradiction. Where there is contradiction, he is talking nonsense, with predicates unrelated to subjects. All these things must be said today, for it must be thoroughly understood here what the content of the future consciousness must be.

Likewise, you see what the present theory of evolution is: that man has evolved from lower beings, and so forth; that these lower beings have developed themselves up to him. Certainly you need only to refer to my Occult Science to see that in one sense that must be said even by us. The fact is, however, that when we consider the human head, we see that this human head as we carry it on our shoulders today is already devolving, not evolving. If our entire organism (please understand me clearly now)—if our entire organism were to have the same organization as our head, we should have to be continually dying. We live only by means of the vital force in the rest of our organism, which is constantly being sent up into the head. The forces through which we finally die have their being in our head—are in our head. The head is an organism that is perpetually perishing; it is in retrogression. For this reason that which pertains to soul and spirit can attain its development in the head. If you represent the head in a sketch, you must do it thus: its ascending evolution has already passed over into a retrograde process; here is a void (see illus.).

Into this void, into what is being continuously destroyed, the soul and spirit enter. That is literally true: it is owing to our head that we have soul and spirit, because our head is already perishing. That is to say, in our head we are perpetually dying; and the undertone of willing, which is a quality of our thinking, lies in our head; but this undertone of willing is a continuous stimulus, a constant impulse to dying, to the overcoming of matter.

Now when we die, this willing really begins; and when our body is given over to the earth, that which played its role in our head between birth and death is carried on through our whole body, even physically in the earth-body. You carry your head on your shoulders, my dear friends, and in it the process goes on automatically which is accomplished when you are committed to the earth by fire or decomposition, only in life this process is constantly being revived, and hence obstructed, by what is sent up from the rest of the organism. After death the same process continues which you carry on in your body between birth and death. It is continued in the earth: the earth thinks according to the same principles as the thinking you do with your human head, owing to the fact that your body becomes decomposed in the earth, that corpses are put into it. When we pass through the gate of death, we carry into the physical earth, by means of our decomposing corpse, the process which we seize for ourselves during our life between birth and death. That is a truth of modern science, and people must know such truths in the future. The science of the present time is childish regarding such things, for it does not even think about them, investigate them.

And inversely, what we have in our head as evolution through destruction, is the continuation of that which existed before birth, or before conception. The destruction begins only with birth, for only then do we have a head—before that there was no destruction. Here we are really touching the edge of an extraordinarily significant mystery of cosmic existence. What exists in our head, through which we come into relation with other people and with external nature, is the continuation of something which exists in the spiritual worlds before we enter into the physical body. If anyone understands that perfectly, then he comes to comprehend how forces play into this physical world from the spiritual worlds. That is most clearly seen when these things are considered concretely, rather than in the abstract. Let me give an example:

In 1832 Goethe died. The period belonging to the first generation after his death, that is, up to 1865, was not such that many forces from his spirit influenced it. (This is merely a representative example; of course the forces of other men are active also.) Thus, up to the year 1865 anyone who directed his attention to Goethe's soul would have noticed little influence coming from his forces to the earth. Then after the first thirty-three years the forces began to come from him out of the spiritual worlds into our earth evolution; and they became stronger and stronger up to the year 1898. If we follow it further, beyond this period, we can say: The first period of influence of Goethe's super-sensible forces upon our earth civilization is, then, 1865 to 1898 (as I have said, up to 1865 it was insignificant, then it began). After thirty-three years we have in 1931 the end of a further period, which would be the second; and 1964 would be the end of the third period.

From such an example it can really be learned how relatively soon after a man has passed through the gate of death the forces which he then develops take part in what is going on here on earth. Only we must know how these forces take part. Anyone who works spiritually—really spiritually—knows how the forces of the spiritual worlds cooperate with the forces he uses. When I said day before yesterday that the middle of this century will be an important point of time, the statement was made—as in the example just given—on the basis of observations from which it can be seen how forces from the spiritual world pervade the physical world.

The middle of this century, however, will coincide with that point of time when the atavistic forces still remaining from before the middle of the 15th century will have fallen into the worst decadence; hence humanity must resolve before the middle of this century to turn toward the spiritual. We still meet many people today who say: “Why does misfortune come? Why do the Gods not help?” The fact is, we are in the period of humanity's evolution in which the Gods will immediately help if men turn to them, but in which the Gods are compelled by their laws to deal with free men, not with puppets.

Now I have reached the point to which I referred yesterday. When, let us say, a man with vision—even in the Greek epoch and up to the middle of the 15th century—alluded to the phenomena of birth and death, he could point to the divine world, he could point out that man's destiny between birth and death is woven out of the divine worlds. Today we must speak differently: we must say that man's destiny is determined by his previous earth-lives; and through the manner in which he is conditioned by his destiny he creates the forces through which the divine worlds can approach him. Our thinking must be the opposite of that of earlier times regarding the relation of man to the divine-spiritual worlds: we must learn to seek in man the sources from which the powers are developed which will enable one or another divine being to approach him. We have now reached this momentous point of time in earth-evolution. What takes place outwardly must today be understood as an expression of inner occurrence, which can be comprehended only from the point of view of spiritual-scientific insight. You see it is possible today for every person to observe, I might say the ultimate consequences of events. There have been plenty of people murdered in the last four or five years—at least ten or twelve million in the civilized world, probably more; three times as many have been made cripples in the different countries—our civilization has certainly done a grand job! But we must gradually come to recognize these things as the mouth of the stream, as it were, and we shall have to seek the source in what is going on in human souls in connection with that opposition to the will of the spiritual world to break into our world,—the spiritual world which would bear the being of man into the future. In our time everything must be observed from this point of view; that is, must be treated profoundly.

We might say that many events might perhaps be more correctly evaluated if we were to alter the viewpoint. Roughly speaking—and I say this now as something intended to give this lecture an entirely appropriate conclusion, as indeed the nuance has been given to these three lectures by the gratifying presence among us of a number of our English friends—we can speak today of victors and vanquished. It is an obvious point of view, but perhaps not the most important one. Perhaps there is another, a much more important point of view, which might be taken from the following.

I once read aloud here from this same platform a thesis of Fercher von Steinwand,² that German-Austrian poet, who in the sixth decade of the 19th century expressed his opinion about the future of the German people. The lecture is noteworthy because it was given before the ruling King of Saxony and his ministers. In this sixth decade—those who were there at the time heard it—Fercher van Steinwand said that his German people is predestined some time in the future to play a role somewhat like that which the Gypsies were playing then. It was a deep glimpse into the evolution of humanity which Fercher van Steinwand had. These things can be looked in the eye with complete objectivity; and if this is done, perhaps another point of view will be chosen than the one frequently taken today. It will be asked: What is to be said about the changed conditions—changed among the so-called vanquished, changed among the so-called victors? Well, the actual victor is Anglo-Americanism; and this Anglo-Americanism, through the forces which I have publicly characterized here is destined for world-dominion.

Now we can ask: Since the German people will be excluded from sharing the things by means of which the external world will be ruled in the future, what really happens in that case? The responsibility—not that of the individual, naturally—the people's responsibility for events concerning the whole of human society ceases. Not that of the individual, but the people's responsibility ceases among those who are down-trodden—for they are that. The responsibility ends, and it becomes all the greater on the other side; that is where the actual responsibility will rest. The outer dominion will be easily won; it is won by means of forces for which the victors can take no credit. The external passing over of the external dominion is accomplished as the final natural necessity; but the responsibility will be something of deep significance for souls. For the question is already written down in humanity's book of destiny: Will there be found among those upon whom the external dominion devolves as by an external necessity, a sufficiently great number of people who feel the responsibility, so that into this external, materialistic dominion, into this culmination of materialistic dominion, may be transplanted the impulses of the spiritual life? And that must not happen too slowly! The middle of this century will be a very significant point of time. The whole weight of the responsibility should be felt, if one is chosen, as it were by outer natural destiny, to enter upon the dominion of materialism in the external world,—for that is what it will be. For this dominion of materialism bears within it at the same time the seed of destruction. The destruction which has begun will not cease; and “entering upon external dominion” means taking over the forces of destruction, the forces of human illness, and living in them. That which will bear humanity into the future will come forth from the new seed of the spirit, and will have to be fostered. Therefore, the responsibility rests directly upon that side to which falls world-dominion.

Our thinking today must not be superficial concerning these things, but thorough; neither must we merely seem to be spiritual while in reality we are materialistic. Two things are very frequently heard in our time: One is, “Why talk of social ideas; no bread comes from ideas!” It is a cheap objection that is very often made. And the other is, “When the people are working again then everything will be all right; then the social question will have a different appearance.” Both statements are disguised materialism, for both have the purpose of denying the spiritual life.

In the first place, what differentiates us from the animal world? The animals go around and get their food, so far as there is any, according to their implanted instincts. If there is not enough, they must starve. In what way is man better off? He works on the production of food. At the moment he begins to work, thought begins; and only when thought begins, does the social question begin also. If a man is to work, he must have an incentive for it; and the incentives that have existed up to the present time will no longer exist in the future. New incentives will be required for work; and the question is not at all a matter of everything's being all right when the people work again—no; but when, arising from a feeling of world-responsibility, men shall have thoughts which sustain their souls, then the forces proceeding from these thoughts will be carried over from hand to will, and work will result. Everything depends upon thoughts, and thoughts themselves depend upon our opening our hearts to the impulses of the spiritual world. Of responsibility and of the significance of thoughts much must be said in our time. Therefore I wished in this lecture to lay stress upon just this aspect.

Since destiny is now such, my dear friends, that one really cannot get away when one wishes to travel, we shall still be here tomorrow. Therefore, at eight o'clock tomorrow night I will speak to you especially about the anthroposophical foundation, the spiritual-scientific, occult foundation of the social question. Thus I shall be able before leaving to speak to our friends on the social question, but I shall explain its deeper foundations from the spiritual-scientific point of view.

• 1. On November 10, 1919: The Spirit as Guide through the Sensible and Supersensible Worlds.
• 2. Compare: Entwickelungsgeschichtliche Unterlagen zur Bildung eines sozialen Urteils (not yet translated).

Anyone who chooses to address the themes that I shall address tonight and again on the 27th knows that many people today long for a new element in contemporary spiritual life, an impulse that could revitalize and transform important aspects of our present civilization. Such longings live especially in those who try to look deeply into their own inner being, stirred by the various signs in contemporary society indicating that, unless present trends change, our civilization is heading for a general collapse. These signs themselves, of course, are a result of many characteristic features of the cultural stream of Western Europe over the last few centuries.

What may be said about the supersensible worlds today may therefore be said to every human soul. It may be said even to a hermit, a recluse, who has withdrawn from the world. Above all, however, it may be said to those who stand fully and firmly in life: for what we are talking about is every human being’s concern.

But this is not the only point of view from which I wish to speak today and again on the 27th. I want to talk about how, if we let them work upon our souls, the fundamental issues facing our civilization affect our attitudes. Those who feel called upon to lead their fellow human beings will find much that is inwardly disturbing here and much that makes them yearn for a renewal of certain aspects of spiritual and cultural life.

If we consider humanity’s present cultural, spiritual situation, we may trace it back to two fundamental issues. One shines out in contemporary science and in the way in which scientific life has developed during the last three or four hundred years. The other shines out from the practical sphere of life, which, naturally, has been largely influenced by modern science.

To begin with, let us look at what science has brought in its wake more recently. At this point, to avoid any misunderstanding, let me state clearly that anthroposophical spiritual science—as I shall represent it here—must in no way be thought of as opposing the spirit of modern science, whose triumphant and important successes the exponents of spiritual science fully recognize. Precisely because it wishes to enter without prejudice into the spirit of natural science, anthroposophical spiritual science must go beyond its confines and objectives. Natural science, with its scrupulous, specialized disciplines, provides exact, reliable information about much in our human environment. But, when a human soul asks about its deepest, eternal being, it receives no answer from natural science, least of all when science searches in all honesty and without prejudice. This is why we find many people today who out of an inner religious need—in some cases more, in others less—long for a renewal of the old ways of looking at the world.

The outer sciences, and anthropology in particular, already draw our attention to the fact that our forebears, centuries ago, knew nothing of what splits and fragments many souls today; namely, the disharmony between scientific knowledge on one hand and religious experience on the other. If we compare our situation today with what prevailed in ancient times, we find that the leaders of humanity who cultivated science then—however childlike their science might appear to us now—also kindled the religious spirit of their people. There was certainly no split between these two spiritual streams.

Today, many souls long for the return of something similar. Yet one cannot say that a renewal of ancient forms of wisdom—whether Chaldean, Egyptian, Indian, or any other—would benefit our present society. Those who advocate such a return can hardly be said to understand the significance of human evolution, for they overlook its real mission. They do not recognize that it is impossible today to tread the same spiritual paths that were trodden thousands of years ago. It is an intrinsic feature of human evolution that every age should have its own particular character. In every age, people must seek inner fulfillment or satisfaction in appropriate though distinctly different ways. Because we live and are educated in the twentieth century, our soul life today needs something different from what people living in distant antiquity once needed for their souls. A renewal of ancient attitudes toward the world would hardly benefit our present time, although knowledge of them could certainly help in finding our bearings. Familiarizing ourselves with such attitudes could also help us recognize the source of inner satisfaction in ancient times. Now, this inner satisfaction or fulfillment was, in fact, the result of a relationship to scientific knowledge fundamentally different from what we experience today.

There is a certain phenomenon to which I would like to draw your attention. To do so is to open myself to the accusation of being either paradoxical or downright fantastical. However, one can say many things today that, even a few years ago, would have been highly dangerous to mention because of the situation that prevailed then. The last few catastrophic years [1914–1918] have brought about a change in people’s thinking and feeling about such things. Compared with the habits of thought and feeling of the previous decade, people today are readier to accept the idea that the deepest truths might at first strike one as being paradoxical or even fantastical.

In the past, people spoke of something that today—especially in view of our scientific knowledge—would hardly be acceptable. This is something that will be discussed again in a relatively short time, probably even in educated, cultured circles. I refer to the Guardian of the Threshold. This guardian stands between the ordinary world of the senses, which forms the firm ground of orthodox science and is where we lead our daily lives, and those higher worlds in which the supersensible part of the human being is integrated into the spiritual world. Between the sensory world—whose phenomena we can observe and in which we can recognize the working of natural laws with our intellect—and that other world to which we belong with our inner being, between these two worlds, the ancients recognized an abyss. To attain true knowledge, they felt, that abyss had first to be crossed. But only those were allowed to do so who had undergone intensive preparation under the guidance of the leaders of the mystery centers. Today, we have a rather different view of what constitutes adequate preparation for a scientific training and for living in a scientific environment. In ancient times, however, it was firmly believed that an unprepared candidate could not possibly be allowed to receive higher knowledge of the human being. But why should this have been the case?

An answer to that question can be found only if insight is gained into the development of the human soul during the course of evolution. Such insight goes beyond the limits of ordinary historical research. Basically, present historical knowledge draws only on external sources and disregards the more subtle changes that the human psyche undergoes.

For instance, we do not usually take into account the particular condition of soul of those ancient peoples who were rooted in the primeval oriental wisdom of their times, decadent forms of which only survive in the East today. Fundamentally speaking, we do not realize how differently such souls were attuned to the world. In those days, people already perceived external nature through their senses as we do today. To a certain extent, they also combined all of the various sense impressions with their intellect. But, in doing so, they did not feel themselves separated from their natural surroundings. They still perceived an element of soul and spirit within themselves. They felt their physical organization permeated by soul and spirit. At the same time, they also experienced soul and spirit in lightning and in thunder, in drifting clouds, in stones, plants, and beasts. What they could divine within themselves, they could also feel out in nature and in the entire universe. To these human beings of the past, the whole universe was imbued with soul and spirit.

On the other hand, they lacked something that we, today, possess to a marked degree, that is, they did not have as pronounced and intensive a self-consciousness as we do. Their self-awareness was dimmer and dreamier than ours today. That was still the case even in ancient Greece. Whoever imagines that the condition of soul—the psychic organization—of the ancient Greeks was more or less the same as our own can understand only the later stages of Greek culture. During its earlier phases, the state of the human soul was not the same as it is today, for in those days there still existed a dim awareness of humanity’s kinship with nature. Just as a finger, if endowed with some form of self awareness, would feel itself to be a part of the whole human organism and could not imagine itself leading a separate existence—for then it would simply wither away—so the human being of those early times felt closely united with nature and certainly not separate from it.

The wise leaders of the ancient mystery schools believed that this awareness of humanity’s connection with nature represented the moral element in human self-consciousness, which must never be allowed to conceive of the world as being devoid of soul and spirit. They felt that if the world were to be conceived of as being without soul and spirit—as has now happened in scientific circles and in our daily lives—human souls would be seized by a kind of faintness. The teachers of ancient wisdom foresaw that faintness or swooning of the soul would occur if people adopted the kind of world-view we have today.

You might well wonder what the justification for saying such things is. To illustrate that there is a justification, I would like to take an example from history—just one out of many others that could have been chosen.

Today, we feel rightfully satisfied with the generally accepted system of the universe that no longer reflects what the eye can observe outwardly in the heavens, as it still did in the Middle Ages. We have adopted the Copernican view of the universe, which is a heliocentric one. During the Middle Ages, however, people believed that the earth rested in the center of the planetary system—in fact, in the center of the entire starry world—and that the sun, together with the other stars, revolved around the earth. The heliocentric system of the universe meant an almost complete reversal of previously held views. Today, we adhere to the heliocentric view as something already learned and believed during early school days. It is something that has become part of general knowledge and is simply taken for granted.

And yet, although we think that people in the Middle Ages and in more ancient times believed uniquely in the geocentric view as represented by Ptolemy, this was by no means always the case. We only need to read, for instance, what Plutarch wrote about the system of Aristarchus of Samos, who lived in ancient Greece in the pre-christian era. Outer historical accounts mention Aristarchus’ heliocentric view. Spiritual science makes the situation clear.

Aristarchus put the sun in the center of our planetary system, and let the earth circle around it. Indeed, if we take Aristarchus’ heliocentric system in its main outlines—leaving aside further details supplied by more recent scientific research—we find it in full agreement with our present picture of the universe. What does this mean? Nothing more than that Aristarchus of Samos merely betrayed what was taught in the old mystery centers. Outside these schools, people were left to believe in what they could see with their own eyes. And why should this have been so? Why were ordinary people left with the picture of the universe as it appears to the eyes? Because the leaders of those schools believed that before anyone could be introduced to the heliocentric system, they had to cross an inner threshold into another world—a world entirely different from the one in which people ordinarily live. People were protected from that other world in their daily lives by the invisible Guardian of the Threshold, who was a very real, if supersensible, being to the ancient teachers. According to their view, human beings were to be protected from having their eyes suddenly opened to see a world that might appear bereft of soul and spirit.

But that is how we see the world today! We observe it and create our picture of the realms of nature—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—only to find this picture soulless and spiritless. When we form a picture of the orbits and the movements of the heavenly bodies with the aid of calculations based on telescopic observations, we see a world empty of soul and spirit. The wise teachers of the mystery centers knew very well that it was possible to see the world in that way. But they transmitted such knowledge to their pupils only after the pupils had undergone the necessary preparations, after they had undergone a severe training of their will life. Then, they guided their pupils past the Guardian of the Threshold—but not until they were prepared. How was this preparation accomplished? Pupils had not only to endure great deprivations, but for many years they were also taught by their teachers to follow a moral path in strict obedience. At the same time, their will life was severely disciplined to strengthen their self-consciousness. And only after they had thus progressed from a dim self-consciousness to a more conscious one were they shown what lay ahead of them on the other side of the threshold: namely, the world as it appears to us in outer space according to the heliocentric system of the universe. At the same time, of course, they were also taught many other things that, to us, have merely become part of our general knowledge of the world.

Pupils in ancient times were thus carefully prepared before they were given the kind of knowledge that today is almost commonplace for every schoolboy and schoolgirl. This shows how times and whole civilizations have changed. Because external history knows nothing of the history of the development of the human soul, we tend to be under a misapprehension if we go only by what we read in history books.

What was it then, that pupils of the ancient mystery centers brought with them before crossing the threshold to the supersensible world? It was knowledge of the world that, to a certain extent, had arisen from their instinctual life, from the drives of their physical bodies. By means of those drives or instincts, they saw the external world ensouled and filled with spirit. That is now known as animism. They could feel how closely a human being was related to the outer world. They felt that their own spirit was embedded in the world spirit. At the same time, in order to look on the world as we learn to do already during our early school days, those ancient people had to undergo special preparations.

Nowadays, one can read all kinds of things about the Guardian of the Threshold—and the threshold to the spiritual world—in books whose authors take it upon themselves to deal with the subject of mysticism, often in dilettantish ways, even if their publications have an air of learnedness about them. Indeed, one often finds that, the more nebulous the mysticism, the greater attraction it seems to exert on certain sections of the public. But what I am talking about here, what is revealed to the unbiased spiritual investigator concerning what the ancients called the threshold to the spiritual world, is not the kind of nebulous mysticism that many sects and orders expound today and many people seek on the other side of the threshold. Rather, it is the kind of knowledge which has become a matter of general education today.

At the same time, we can see how we look at the world today with a very different self-consciousness than people did in more ancient times. The teachers of ancient wisdom were afraid that, unless their pupils’ self-consciousness had been strengthened by a severe training of the will, they would suffer from overwhelming faintness of soul when they were told, for example, that the earth was not stationary but revolved around the sun with great speed, and that they too were circling around the sun. This feeling of losing firm ground from under their feet was something that the ancients would not have been able to bear. It would have reduced their self-consciousness to the level of a swoon. We, on the other hand, learn to stand up to it already in childhood.

We almost take for granted now the kind of world-view into which the people of ancient times were able to penetrate only after careful preparation. Yet we must not allow ourselves to have nostalgic feelings for ancient ways of living, which can no longer fulfill the present needs of the soul. Anthroposophical science of the spirit, of which I am speaking, is a renewal neither of ancient Eastern wisdom nor of old Gnostic teachings, for if such teachings were to be given today, they would have only a decadent effect. Spiritual science, on the other hand, is something to be found by an elementary creative power that lives in every human soul when certain paths that I will describe presently are followed. First, however, I want to draw attention to the fact that ordinary life, and science in general, already represents a kind of threshold to the supersensible world or, at any rate, to another world.

People living in ancient times had a quite different picture of life on the other side of the threshold. But what do we hear, especially from our most conscientious natural scientists, who feel thoroughly convinced of the rightness of their methods? We are told that natural science has reached the ultimate limits of knowledge. We hear such expressions as “ignorabimus,” “we shall never know,” which—I hasten to add—is perfectly justified as long as we remain within the bounds of natural science. Ancient peoples might have lacked our intense self-consciousness, but we are lacking in other ways.

To what do we owe our intense self-consciousness? We received it through the ways of thinking and looking at the world that entered our civilization with people like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Bruno, and others. The works of such thinkers not only provided us with a certain amount of knowledge but, through them, modern humanity underwent a distinct training of soul life. Everything that the mode of thinking developed by these personalities has achieved in more recent times tends to cultivate the powers of intellect. There is also a strong emphasis on scientific experimentation and on accurate, conscientious observation. With instruments such as the telescope, the microscope, X-rays, and the spectroscope, we examine the phenomena around us and we use our intellect mainly in order to extract from those phenomena their fundamental and inherent natural laws. But what are we actually doing when we are engaged in observing and experimenting? Our methods of working allow only the powers of reasoning and intellect to speak.

It is simply a fact that, during the last centuries, it has been primarily the intellect that has been tapped to promote human development. And a characteristic feature of the intellect is that it strengthens human self-consciousness, hardening it and making it more intense. Due to this hardening, we are able to bear what an ancient Greek could not have born; namely, the consciousness of being moved around the sun on an earth that has no firm ground to uphold it. At the same time, because of this strengthened self-consciousness that has led to the picture of a world devoid of soul and spirit, we are deprived of the kind of knowledge for which our souls nevertheless yearn. We can see the world with its material phenomena—its material facts—as the ancients could never have seen it without appropriate preparation in the mystery centers, but we can no longer perceive a spiritual world surrounding us. This is why conscientious scientists confess “ignorabimus” and speak of limits to what we can know.

As human beings, we stand in the world. And, if we reflect on ourselves, we must inevitably realize that, whenever we ponder various things or draw conclusions based on experiment and observation, something spiritual is acting in us. And we must ask ourselves, “Is that spirit likely to live in isolation from the world of material phenomena like some kind of hermit? Does that spirit exist only in our physical bodies? Can it really be that the world is empty of soul and spirit, as the findings of the physical and biological sciences would have us believe and, from their point of view, quite rightly so?”

This is the situation in which we find ourselves at the present time. We are facing a new threshold. Although that circumstance has not yet penetrated the consciousness of humanity as a whole, awareness of it in human souls is not completely absent either. People might not be thinking about it but, in the depths of their souls, it lives nevertheless as a kind of presentiment. What goes on in the realm of the soul remains mostly unconscious. But out of that unconsciousness arises a longing to cross the threshold again, to add knowledge of the spiritual world to present self-consciousness.

No matter what name we might wish to give these things—that in most cases are felt only dimly—they nevertheless belong to the deepest riddles of our civilization. There is a sense that a spiritual world surrounding all human beings must be found again and that the soulless, spiritless world of which natural science speaks cannot be the one with which the human soul can feel inwardly united.

How can we rediscover the kind of knowledge that also generates a religious mood in us? That is the great question of our present time. How can we find a way of knowing that also, at the same time, fulfills our deepest need for an awareness of the eternal in the human soul? Modern science has achieved great and mighty things. Nevertheless, any unprejudiced person must acknowledge that it has not really produced solutions, but rather—one would almost have to say—the very opposite. Yet we should accept even this both willingly and gladly.

What can we do with the help of modern science? Does it help us to solve the riddles of the human soul? Hardly, but at least it prompts us to ask our questions at a deeper level. Contemporary science has put before us the material facts in all purity; that is, free from what a personal or subjective element might introduce in the form of soul and spirit. But, just because of this, we are made all the more intensely aware of the deep questions living in our souls. It is a significant achievement of contemporary science to have confronted us with new, ever deepening riddles. The great question of our time is therefore: what is our attitude toward these deepened riddles? What we can learn from the spirit of a Haeckel, Huxley, or Spencer does not make it possible to solve these riddles; it does, however, enable us to experience the great questions facing contemporary humanity more intensely than ever before.

This is where spiritual science—the science of the spirit—comes into its own, for its aim is to lead humanity, in a way that corresponds to its contemporary character, over the new threshold into a spiritual world. How this is possible for a modern person—as distinct from the man or woman of old—I should now like to indicate, if only in brief outline. You can find more detailed descriptions in my books How to Know Higher Worlds and Occult Science, and in other publications of mine.

First, I would like to draw attention to the point of departure for anyone who wishes to engage in spiritual research or become a spiritual researcher. It is an inner attitude with which, due to present circumstances, a modern person is not likely to be in sympathy at all. It is an attitude of soul that I would like to call intellectual modesty or humility. Despite the fact that the intellect has developed to a degree unprecedented in human evolution during the past three or four hundred years, a wouldbe spiritual researcher must nevertheless achieve intellectual humility or modesty. Let me clarify what I mean by using a comparison. Imagine that you put a volume of Shakespeare’s plays into the hands of a five-year-old. What would the child do? The child would play with the book, turn its pages, perhaps tear them. He or she would not use the book as it was meant to be used. But, ten-to-fifteen years later, that young person would have a totally different relationship to the same volume. He or she would treat the book according to its intended purpose. What has happened? Faculties that were dormant in the child have meanwhile developed through natural growth, upbringing, and education. During those ten to fifteen years, the child has become an altogether different soul being.

Now, an adult who has achieved intellectual humility, despite having absorbed the scientific climate of the environment by means of the intellect, might say: my relationship to the sense world may be compared with the relationship of a five-year-old child to a volume of Shakespeare’s plays. Faculties that are capable of further development might lie dormant within me. I too could grow into an altogether different being as far as my soul and spirit are concerned and understand the sense world more deeply.

Nowadays, however, people do not like to adopt an attitude of such intellectual modesty. Habits of thought and the psychological response to life as it is steer us in a different direction. Those who have gone through the usual channels of education might enter higher education, where it is no longer a question of deepening inner knowledge and of developing faculties of will and soul. For, during a scientific training of that kind, a person remains essentially at the level of his or her inherited capacities and what ordinary education can provide. Certainly, science has expanded tremendously by means of experimentation and observation, but that expansion has only been achieved by means of those intellectual powers that already exist in what is usually called modern culture. In furthering knowledge, the aim of science has not been to cultivate new faculties in the human being. The thought would never have occurred that anyone already in possession of our present means of knowledge, as given both by ordinary life and by science, might actually be confronting the world of nature in a way similar to how a five-year old responds to a volume of Shakespeare. Allowance has not been made for the possibility that new faculties of cognition could develop that would substantially alter our attitude toward the external world. That such new faculties are possible, however, is precisely the attitude required of anyone who wishes to investigate the spiritual world of which anthroposophy, the science of the spirit, speaks. Here, the aim is to develop human faculties inherent in each person. However, in order to bring these potentials to a certain stage of development, a great deal must be experienced first.

I am not talking about taking extraordinary or even superstitious measures for the sake of this soul development. Rather, I am talking about the enhancement of quite ordinary, well known faculties that play important roles both in daily life and in the established sciences. However, although those faculties are being applied all the time, they are not developed to their full extent during the life between birth and death. There are many such faculties, but I would like to characterize today the further development of only two of them. More detailed information can be found in the books mentioned previously.

First of all, there is the faculty of remembering or memory, which is an absolute necessity in life. It is generally realized—as anyone with a particular interest in these matters will know from books on psychology and pathology—how important it is for a healthy soul life that a person’s memory should be unimpaired and that our memory should allow us to look back over our past life right down to early childhood. There must not exist periods in our past from which memory pictures cannot rise to bring events back again. If someone’s memory were to be completely erased, the ego or I of such a person would be virtually destroyed. Severe soul sickness would befall such an individual. Memory gives us the possibility for past experiences to resurface, whether in pale or in vivid pictures. It is this faculty, this force, that can be strengthened and developed further. What is its characteristic quality? Without it, experiences flit by without leaving any lasting trace. Also, without memory, the concepts formed through such experiences would be only fleeting ones. Our memory stores up such experiences for us (here, I can give only sketchy indications; in my writings and published lectures you will find a scientifically built-up treatment of memory).

Memory gives duration to otherwise fleeting impressions. This quality of memory is grasped as a first step in applying spiritual-scientific methods. It is then intensified and developed further through what I have called meditation and concentration in the books that I have mentioned. To practice these two activities, a student, having sought advice from someone experienced in these matters or having gained the necessary information from appropriate literature, will focus consciousness on certain interrelated mental images that are clearly defined and easy to survey. They could be geometrical or mathematical patterns that one can clearly view and that one is certain are not reminiscences from life, emerging from one’s subconscious.

Whatever is held in consciousness in this way must result from a person’s free volition. One must in no way allow oneself to become subject to auto suggestion or dreaming. One contemplates what one has chosen to place in the center of one’s consciousness and holds it for a longer period of time in complete inner tranquility. Just as muscles develop when engaged in a particular type of work, so certain soul forces unfold when the soul is engaged in the uncustomary activity of arresting and holding definite mental images. It sounds simple enough. But, in fact, not only are there people who believe that, when speaking about these things, a scientist of the spirit is drawing on obscure influences, but there are others who believe it simple to achieve the methods that I am describing here, methods that are applied in intimate regions of one’s soul life.

Far from it! These things take a long time to accomplish. Of course, some find it easier to practice these exercises, but others have to struggle much harder. Naturally, the depth of such meditation is far more important than the length of time spent over it. Whatever the case might be, however, one must persevere in one’s efforts for years. What one practices in one’s soul in this way is truly no easier than what one does in a laboratory, in a lecture hall for physics, or an astronomical observatory. It is in no way more difficult to fulfill the demands imposed by external forms of research than it is to practice faithfully, carefully, and conscientiously what spiritual research requires to be cultivated in the human soul over a period of many years.

Nevertheless, as a consequence of such practice, certain inner soul forces, previously known to us only as forces of memory, eventually gain in strength and new soul powers come into existence. Such inner development enables one to recognize clearly what the materialistic interpretation is saying about the power of memory when it maintains that the human faculty of remembering is bound to the physical body and that, if there is something wrong with the constitution of the nervous system, memory is weakened, as it is likewise in old age. Altogether, spiritual faculties are seen to depend on physical conditions. As far as life between birth and death is concerned, this is not denied by spiritual science. For whoever develops the power of memory as I have described knows through direct insight how ordinary memory, which conjures up pictures of past experiences before the soul, does indeed depend on the human physical body. On the other hand, the new soul forces now being developed become entirely free and independent of the physical body. The student thereby experiences how it becomes possible to live in a region of the soul in such a way that one can have supersensible experiences, just as one has sense-perceptible experiences in the physical body.

I would now like to give you an explanation of the nature of these supersensible experiences.

Human life undergoes rhythmical changes between waking and sleeping. The moments of falling asleep and awakening, and the time spent in sleep, are interspersed with waking life. What happens in this process? When we fall asleep, our consciousness is dimmed down, in most cases to a zero point. Dreams sometimes “bubble up” from half-conscious depths. Obviously, we are alive during this condition for, otherwise, as sleepers, we would have to pass away every night and come to life again every morning. The human soul and spirit are alive but, during sleep, our consciousness is diminished. This diminution of consciousness has to do with our inability to employ our senses between when we fall asleep and when we wake up, and also with our lack of access to impulses that derive from our physical organs of will.

This dimming down of consciousness can be overcome by those who have developed the new higher faculty of which I have spoken of their given faculty of memory. Such people reach a condition, as they do in sleep, in which they no longer need eyes in order to see, nor ears in order to hear. They no longer need to feel the physical warmth of their environment, nor to use will impulses that under ordinary conditions work through the muscles and through the human physical organization generally. They are able to switch off everything connected with the physical body. And yet their consciousness does not diminish as is usually the case in sleep. On the contrary, they are able to surrender themselves in full consciousness to conditions normally pertaining only to the sleeping state. A spiritual researcher remains completely conscious. Just as a sleeping person is surrounded by a dark world of nothingness, so a spiritual researcher is surrounded by a world that has nothing to do with the sense world but is nevertheless as full and intense as the sense world. In the waking state, we confront the sense world with our senses. But when they are able to free themselves from the physical body in full consciousness—that is, when they can enter, fully consciously, the state normally gone through between falling asleep and waking up—spiritual researchers confront a supersensible world.

They thus learn to recognize that a supersensible world always surrounds us, just as the sense world surrounds us in ordinary life. Yet there is a significant difference. In the sense world, we perceive outer facts through our senses and, through those facts, we also become aware of the existence of other beings. Outer facts predominate while beings or existences make their presence felt within the context of these outer facts. But, when the supersensible world is opened to us, we first encounter beings. As soon as our eyes are opened to behold the supersensible world, real beings surround us. To begin with, we cannot call this world of concrete and real supersensible beings in which we now find ourselves a world of facts. We must gain such facts for ourselves by means of yet something else.It is an achievement of the modern anthroposophical science of the spirit that it enables human beings to cross a threshold once more and enter a world different from what usually surrounds us.

After one has learned to experience the state of independence from the physical body, one finally comes to realize not only that the soul during sleep lifts itself out of the body only to return to it upon awakening, but also that this return is caused by the soul’s intense desire for the physical body. Supersensible cognition enables us to recognize the true nature of the soul, whose re-entry into the physical body upon awakening is due to a craving for the body as it lies asleep. Furthermore, if one can make this true conception of falling asleep and awakening one’s own, one’s understanding expands to such an extent that one eventually learns to know the soul before it descends—through conception and birth—from the spiritual world into the physical body offered by heredity.

Once one has grasped the nature of the human soul, and has learned to follow it outside the body between falling asleep and waking up—at the same time recognizing the less powerful forces pulling it back into the body lying in the bed—then one also begins to know what happens to the soul when it is freed from the body and passes through the portal of death. One learns to understand that the reason why the human soul has only a dim consciousness during sleep is because it has a strong desire to return to the body. It is this craving for the body that can dull human consciousness into a state of total impotence during the time between falling asleep and awakening. On the other hand, once the soul has passed through death, this desire for the physical body is no longer there.

And once, through the newly developed faculty of enhanced memory, we have learned to know the human soul, we can follow its further progress beyond the portal of death. One then learns to recognize that, since it is no longer bound to a physical body and is therefore freed from the desire to return to it, the soul is now in a position to retain a consciousness of its own while in the spiritual world, a consciousness that differs from what is given through the instrument of the physical body. One comes to recognize that there were forces in the soul before birth that drew it toward a physical body while it was still in the spiritual world. That physical body, however, was as yet quite indeterminate; it cast a certain light toward the descending soul. Then one begins to see how the soul develops a strong desire to re-enter physical, earthly life. One learns to know—but in a different language—the eternal being of the human soul. This being becomes clear and, through it, one learns to understand something else as well.

One learns to cognize in pictures the soul’s eternal being as it goes through births and deaths. I have called those pictures imaginations. And one comes to recognize that, just as the body belongs to the sensory world, so too does the soul belong to a supersensible world; and that, just as one can describe the sense world with the help of the physical body, so can one likewise describe the supersensible world with its spirituality. One comes to know the supersensible world in addition to the sensory world. But, in order to attain this faculty, it is necessary to cultivate another soul quality, the mere mention of which—as a way of gaining higher knowledge—is enough to make a modern scientist wince. Certainly, one can fully respect the reasons for this, but what I have to tell you about the enhancement of this second soul faculty is nevertheless true.

As I said, the first power to be developed is the faculty of memory, which then becomes an independent force. The second power to be developed is the power of love. In ordinary life, between birth and death, love works through the physical organism. It is intimately connected with the instincts and drives of human nature and only in sublime moments does something of this love free itself from human corporeality. In those moments, we experience being freed from our narrow selves. Such love is a state of true freedom, in which one does not surrender to inborn instincts, but rather forgets the ordinary self and orients one’s actions and deeds toward outer needs and facts. It was because of this intimate connection between love and freedom that I dared to state publicly in my book, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path (first published in 1892 and in which I tried to found a new sociology in philosophical terms), that, far from making people blind, love makes them see; that is, free. Love leads us beyond what otherwise blinds us by making us dependent on personal needs. Love allows us to surrender to the outer world. It removes whatever would hinder our acting in full freedom. The modern spiritual investigator must therefore develop such love—love that shines actively into ordinary life in truly free deeds. Gradually, love must be spiritualized, in the same way as the faculty of remembering had to be spiritualized. Love must become purely a power of the soul. It must make the human individual as a soul being entirely independent of the body, so that he or she can love free from blood ties and from the physical organization as a whole. Love of this kind brings about a fusion of the self with the external world, with one’s fellow human beings. Through love, one becomes one with the world.

This newly developed power of love has another consequence. It makes us “co-workers” in the spiritual world that we have been able to enter through the newly developed faculty of memory. At this point, we learn to know real beings as spiritual facts. When describing the external world, we now no longer speak of our present planetary system as having originated from some primeval cosmic nebula and of its falling into dust again—or into the sun again—in some remote future. We do not contemplate nature as being thus alienated from the world of spirit. And, if people today are honest, they cannot help becoming aware of the dichotomy between what is most precious in them on one hand, and the interpretation of the world given by natural science on the other. How often has one come across oppressed souls saying, “Natural science speaks of a world of pure necessity. It tells us that the world originated from a primeval mist. This condensed into the natural kingdoms—the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms and, finally, also the human kingdom. And yet, deep inside us, something rises that surely is of fundamental importance and value, namely, our moral and religious world. This stands before our souls as the one thing that makes us truly human. But an honest interpretation of the world of natural science tells us that this earth, on which we stand with our moral ideas like hermits in the universe, will disintegrate, will fall back again into the sun, it will end up as one vast cinder. A large cemetery is all that will be left and all of our ideals will be buried there.”

This is the point at which spiritual science enters, not just to grant new hope and belief, but resting entirely on its own sure knowledge, developed as I have already described. It states that the natural-scientific theory of the world offers only an abstract point of view. In reality, the world is imbued with spirit, and permeated by supersensible beings. If we look back into primeval times, we find that the material substances of the earth originated in the spiritual world, and also that the present material nature of the earth will become spirit again in future times. Just as, at death, the human being lays aside the physical body to enter, consciously, a spiritual world, so will the material part of the earth fall away like a corpse and what then is soul and spirit on earth and in human beings will arise again in future times, even though the earth will have perished. Christ’s words—taken as a variation of this same theme—ring true: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Human beings thus can say, “Everything that our eyes can see will perish, just as the body, the transient part of the human individuality, does. But there will rise again from this dying away what lived on earth as morality. Human beings will perceive a spiritual world around them; they will live themselves into a spiritual world.”

In this way, deepening knowledge with spirit, anthroposophical spiritual science meets the needs of our present civilization differently from external science. It deepens knowledge and cognition to the level of deeply felt piety, of religious consciousness, giving human beings spiritual self-awareness.

Fundamentally speaking, this is the great question faced by contemporary civilization. But, as long as human beings lack the proper inner stability, as long as they feel themselves to be material entities floating about in some vacuum, they cannot develop a strong inner being, nor play a vigorous part in social life. Outer planning and organization, directly affecting social conditions, must be created by people themselves. Such outer social conditions are of great significance to the questions of present and future civilization—questions that lead us to search for true consciousness of our humanity. But only those with inner stability, which has been granted them through being anchored in the spirit, will be able to take their proper place in social life.

Thus, a first question is, how can people place themselves into present social conditions with inner firmness and certainty regarding matters of daily life? A second question concerns human relationships or what we could call our attitude toward our fellow human beings: the way in which each person meets his or her fellow human being. Here we enter a realm where, no less than in the realm of knowledge, modern civilization has brought us new riddles rather than new solutions. Only think of how the achievements of modern natural science have expanded the scope of technology! The technology, commerce, and transportation that surround us every hour of the day are all offspring of this new, grandiose way of looking at the sense-perceptible world. And yet we have not been able to find an answer in this age of technology to what has become a new, vital question; namely, how are we, as human beings, to live in this complex technical, commercial and traffic-ridden world? This question has become a by-product of modern civilization itself. The fact that it has not yet been resolved can be seen in the devastating political movements, the destructiveness of which increases the farther east we go, even right into Asia. Due to a working out of human instincts, nothing noble or elevating is being put into the world there. Rather, because the burning questions of our day have not been solved, havoc and destruction rule the day. There is no doubt that modern civilization would perish if what is emerging in the East were to spread worldwide. What is lurking there, intent on bringing about the downfall of modern civilization, is far more horrific than people living in the West can imagine. But it also testifies to the fact that something else is needed for the solution of the problem of contemporary civilization.

It is not enough for us to work within the bounds of modern technology, which is a child of the modern world outlook. We must also work toward attainment of another possibility. Human beings have become estranged from their old kinship to nature. In their practical activities and in their professional lives, they have been placed into a soulless, spiritually empty, mechanistic world. From cooperating with nature, they have been led to operating machines and to dealing with spiritless and mechanical means of transportation. We must find the way again to give them something to take the place of the old kinship to nature. And this can only be a world-view that speaks to our souls with a powerful voice, making us realize that there is more to human life than what can be experienced outwardly. Human beings must become inwardly certain that they belong to a supersensible world, to a world of soul and spirit, that always surrounds them. They must see that it is possible to investigate that world with the same scientific accuracy as the physical world, which is being studied and explored by outer science and which has led to this technological age. Only such a new science of the supersensible can become the foundation for a new, right relationship between people. Such a science not only will allow them to see in their fellow human beings what appears during the life between birth and death, but will make them recognize and respect what is immortal and eternal in human beings through their humanity’s close links with a spiritual world. Such a deepened knowledge will surely bring about a change for the better in how one individual perceives another.

Here is yet a third point of importance. It is the recognition that human life is not fully exhausted within the boundaries of birth and death, as the “ideology of the proletariat” would have us believe. Rather, what we are doing every moment here on earth is of significance not only for the earth, but for the whole of the universe. When the earth will have passed away, what we have carried into our daily tasks out of moral, soul-and-spiritual depths will arise to live in another world. Transformed, it will become part of a general spiritualization. Thus anthroposophical spiritual science approaches the problems of our time in a threefold way. It enables us to become aware of our spirituality. It helps us see in our fellows other beings of soul and spirit. And it helps us recognize that our earthly deeds, however humble and practical, have a cosmic and universal spiritual meaning.

In working towards these aims, spiritual science has been active not only in theory; it has also entered the sphere of practical life. In Stuttgart, there is the Waldorf school, which was founded by Emil Molt and which I was asked to direct. It is a school whose pedagogical principles and methods are based on insights gained through the science of the spirit I am speaking of here. Furthermore, in Dornach, near Basel, lies the Goetheanum, which houses our High School of Spiritual Science. This Goetheanum in Dornach is still incomplete, but we were already able to hold a large number of courses in the unfinished building during the autumn of last year.

Some time ago, on a previous occasion, I was also asked to speak about spiritual science here in Holland. At that time, I could say only that it existed as a new method of research and that it was something inherently alive in every human being. Since then, spiritual science has taken on a different form. It has begun to establish its own High School in Dornach. Last spring, I was able to show how what I could only sketch tonight as the beginning of spiritual-scientific research can be applied in all branches of science. On that occasion, I showed doctors and medical students how the results of spiritual science, gained by means of strict and exact methods, can be applied to therapeutics. Medical questions, which can often touch on other problems related to general human health, are questions that every conscientious doctor recognizes as belonging to the facts of our present civilization. They have become riddles because modern science will not rise from observing only what is sense perceptible and widen its investigations to include the supersensible, the spiritual world. During that autumn course, specialists drawn from many fields—including law, mathematics, history, sociology, biology, physics, chemistry, and pedagogy—tried to show how all branches of science can be fructified by anthroposophical spiritual science. Representatives of the arts were also present to demonstrate how spiritual science was inspiring them to discover new developments in their professions. Then there were others, too, drawn from such spheres of practical life as commerce and industry. These could show that spiritual science not only lifted them out of the old routines that led the world into the catastrophe of the last war, but also that it can help relate people to practical life in a higher sense. The courses were meant to show how spiritual science, far from fostering dilettantism or nebulous mysticism, is capable of entering and fructifying all of the sciences and that, in doing so, it is uplifting and linking each separate branch to become a part of a comprehensive spiritual-supersensible conception of the human being.

I shall have more to say next time about the practical applications of spiritual science, particularly with regard to education and the social question. Once I have done so, you will appreciate that anthroposophical spiritual science is not striving for some vague mysticism, removed from daily life, but wishes to grasp the spirit consciously. It wishes to do so for two main reasons—first, because it is essential for human beings to become aware of how they are related to their true spiritual origin and, second, because spiritual powers are intent on intervening in the practical and material affairs of daily life. Anyone, therefore, who tends to combine a life devoid of spirit with a truly practical life, or combine a spiritual attitude with isolation from daily life, has certainly not grasped the real nature of anthroposophical spiritual science, nor recognized the paramount needs of our present age.

We have found people who understand what the High School of Spiritual Science seeks to accomplish for the benefit of humanity along the lines already indicated. We have found people who appreciate the necessity of working in this way in view of the great problems facing our present civilization. Yet, due to difficult local circumstances, the completion of the Goetheanum has been greatly delayed. This building is still in an unfinished state and its completion will largely depend on continued help from friends who have the heart and the understanding to give their support for the sake of human evolution, so needed today. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, more than a thousand people were assembled at the opening of our courses. Visitors can see in Dornach that spiritual science seeks to work out of the whole human being, that it does not wish to appeal only to the head. They can witness that it seeks to move ahead not only through what can be gained by experimentation and observation, but also by striving for truly artistic expression, free from empty symbolism or pedantic allegory. This is the reason why we could not possibly use just any arbitrary style for our building in Dornach. Its architecture, too, had to flow from the same sources from which spiritual science itself flows. Because it endeavors to draw on the whole human being, spiritual science is less one-sided than the other sciences, which work only on the basis of experimentation and observation. It is as exact as any other science could be and, in addition, wants to speak to the whole human being.

About the practical aspects, I shall have more to say next time. Today, I wanted to prepare the ground by showing how spiritual research leads us right into our present situation. When dealing with the practical side, I hope to show how our times are in need of what anthroposophical spiritual science has to offer. Such spiritual science seeks to complement the conscientious and methodical research into the world of matter, which it acknowledges more than any other spiritual movement. It is also capable of leading to a religious deepening and to artistic impulses, as did the old, instinctive science of the mystery centers, renewal of which, however, would no longer serve our present needs.

When dealing with the practical aspects, I shall have to show that spiritual science is in no way either antireligious or anti- Christian. Like all other true and religious aspirations toward an inner deepening, spiritual science strives toward the spirit.

This gives us the hope that those who still oppose spiritual science will eventually find their way into it because it strives toward something belonging to all people. It strives toward the spirit, and humanity needs the spirit.

Over the past four years, we have often heard that events as terrible for mankind as those that have just taken place have not occurred in the entire period covered by human historical thought. It is less common to hear this sentiment countered by the idea that the terrible events that have befallen mankind should at least be countered by attempts to reorganize social coexistence, which differ in their conceptual foundations just as thoroughly from what we are accustomed to think as the terrible events of recent years differ from what we have experienced in the course of human development. Indeed, when such an attempt arises to develop thoughts that run counter to ingrained habits of thought, then today one usually hears such an attempt met with reproach: Well, another utopia! - However, in the course of more recent times, we have already had some experience with the attitude on which such an accusation is based. It was precisely those people who think like those who speak of “utopia” in the case alluded to, who would have considered a description of the catastrophic events that affected us as late as the spring of 1914 to be a dream, a fantasy. They call themselves practitioners, these people. How did they talk back then, before the world-shattering catastrophe struck? Let's take a look at some of them. We need only look at some of the leading statesmen of Europe at that time, in the spring of 1914. They were almost verbatim when they said: “Such practitioners, such despisers of what they call utopias, spoke at that time something like this: the relations between the great European powers, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, give a certain guarantee that world peace cannot be shaken for the foreseeable future. - Such talk is not an invention, it can be read in the parliamentary reports; it is contained there in the most diverse variations.

However, anyone who could not follow the thinking of such people in the inner state of his soul at that time, but who tried to maintain an unbiased view of events, perhaps spoke in the same way as the person who had to speak to a meeting in Vienna in April 1914, who is also speaking to you today. At that time, my intellectual conscience and my powers of observation forced me to say: with regard to the development of our social and international relations, we are in the midst of something that can only be described as a carcinoma, a cancerous disease in the life of nations, which must break out in a terrible way in a very short time. - Perhaps the force of events will force people to regard as utopians less those who speak out of this state of mind than those who, in what they say, are so well in tune with events as I have just indicated. Today, on the other hand, you can hear the practitioners, who are poring over some of what they call utopias, saying: “We cannot climb the highest mountain peaks of a new order in human society right now, we have to move forward step by step. Certainly some thoughts - say such people - are nice, and perhaps we will come to such things centuries from now; but today it is up to us to take the next steps.

Now it is quite certainly simply a matter of course that one must first take the very next steps, but he will climb a mountain badly who has no idea at all, when he takes the next step, which direction he should take; who has no idea at all in which direction the summit actually lies. And those who do not think in the sense of these utopia-despisers, but perhaps think in a realistic sense, will perhaps have to start today from a different comparison with what lies hidden in the germ and could also erupt in a terrible way. He will perhaps not have to start from the carcinoma that has broken out in the war catastrophe of recent years. But he will have to point out that many people are now thinking like those who live in a house that has cracks and fissures, who are threatening the house with collapse, but who cannot decide to do anything to rebuild the house, but who enter into all kinds of discussions about how to connect the individual rooms that they live in with each other through doors, so that they can help each other more easily through these doors. - The help that can be afforded through these doors will be of little help when the leaps have grown to a corresponding strength!

Thinking such things, it seems, is probably due to the development of the facts, which today speak a louder and clearer language than people are often inclined to hear today.

Now, out of the horrors that had to be lived through, this world war catastrophe has released a sentiment that has gradually crystallized in such views as are now again the basis of the significant meeting that is being held here in Bern as a League of Nations Conference. The call for a League of Nations has developed out of the terrible events of recent years. It must be said, however, that it might be justified to approach the call for a League of Nations with different feelings than some people do today. For perhaps it is more important to ask not only: What could be done for this League of Nations? What measures could be taken to bring it about in the best way imaginable? Rather, the question could perhaps be raised: What foundations exist in the life of the peoples for the establishment of such a League of Nations? For only if one looks at the forces that exist in the life of nations can one perhaps recognize from these forces to what extent one is in a position to achieve something fruitful with such a League of Nations. And does it not seem necessary, I would say, to shift the question somewhat in this direction, since the important conception of this League of Nations, which is particularly plausible to the world, arose together with an idea whose realization can no longer be spoken of today? In 1917, in a speech by Wilson to the American Senate, a thought emerged which, in connection with another thought, went something like this: What one could strive for with this League of Nations had a certain precondition, namely the precondition that in the events of the war neither one side nor the other would achieve what one would have to call victory or defeat in the decisive sense. - Wilson was looking towards an outcome that was not that of victory or defeat for one party. And from the direction of thought towards such an outcome he derived the feelings that urged him towards this League of Nations.

To be sure, the thought had a reality in itself; but the reality that was thought of then can no longer be spoken of today; for today the decisive victory on the one side is the decisive defeat on the other. Indeed, perhaps it is precisely for this reason that the question of the League of Nations, for example, must be posed in a completely different way.

I think it is particularly natural for me to ask the question about the League of Nations myself and to dare to discuss it in front of people today, to ask this question in a very special way. As a member of the people on whose side the decisive defeat is, it is not possible today to pose the question as if its answer could only emerge from a free agreement of those peoples who might wish to unite in such a League of Nations, and to whom, according to their innermost feelings, the Central European peoples most certainly also belong. The events in Paris basically rule out such a question for the Germans today, and one should have no illusions about this. But that is not how I want to pose this question either. My aim is to find a question and formulate a corresponding answer in which even those who may be excluded from participation in this League of Nations for the foreseeable future can have their say. In other words, the question will have to be posed in this way: Whatever agreements are reached at the moment, what can each individual nation contribute from its own resources, regardless of whether it has suffered victory or defeat, to a real League of Nations that can bring humanity what it longs for?

But since a League of Nations will undoubtedly have to deal with international affairs, it will have to turn its attention above all to the most important international affairs, which will concern all peoples in the near future under all circumstances.

When dealing with such matters today, we first look in two directions, as is customary in this day and age. On the one hand, we look at the state, and on the other hand, we look at economic life. Those people who today want something with regard to the coexistence of people look first of all to the state with regard to the guidelines of this will, asking: What should the state do in this or that matter for which a change has become ripe? - Or else, in order to arrive at an explanation, people look today, as if, I might say, with hypnotized eyes, to economic life; for economic conditions seem to be the only ones that cause today's conflicts, the greatest conflicts at least of the present day.

In these considerations, which are based on these two points of view, one thing is usually ignored. Even if one assures oneself that one wants to take account of the circumstances of the present day and, above all, focus on the human being, this is rarely done in reality. Here I would like to try not to shy away from looking at what we find when we look at the state on the one hand and at economic life on the other. But above all, I do not want to neglect to ask a question in a very energetic way, starting from the point of view of man as such: What do the states have to do in order to unite in a league of nations? That is what is asked first and foremost. And many things - do not think that I wish to criticize or condemn - many quite good things will come about in the near future if this question is posed in this way, by attempting to find from the construction of the states, from the individual customs of the states, something that transcends the states, as it were, such as a world federation or a world parliament. -- But today I would like to contrast the question: What should the states do? - the other question: What should states refrain from doing for the good of mankind? - In many respects we have learned through the terrible events of recent years what the states have accomplished with their actions; they have led mankind into this terrible catastrophe. We cannot deny it, it is the states that have led humanity into this terrible catastrophe!

Shouldn't it make sense to consider whether a person, when he has seen that he is causing all kinds of harm with his actions, should always ask himself: How do I do things differently? - Might it not be more useful to say: perhaps I should leave what I have done badly to someone else to do? - Then, you see, the question might be led down a completely different track.

It may be necessary to turn to the most important international questions if we want to obtain fruitful documentation on what can be said to be the cracks and fissures in the house that present-day humanity inhabits, consisting of various states. One must perhaps ask: Where do these cracks and fissures come from? Where does it come from that the states have driven people into this terrible catastrophe of war?

Two things have certainly become international in the course of modern times; apart from many others, they are capitalism and human labor. Undoubtedly, we had a “League of Nations” or something similar to it: the League based on international capital. And another “League of Nations” was also in the making, and it is very much in evidence today: it is the one based on the international of human labor. And we will have to fall back on these two things if we want to arrive at the fruitful germs of such a League of Nations, which can now really be built on the affairs of man as such.

With regard to capital, we see that a large number of people regard the way in which it has been administered over the course of time and what has led to so-called capitalism as that which is most contrary to the interests of a large part of humanity, and which, moreover, through much that lies within it, has led us to such terrible events. And the call is being raised from many sides - which is expressed in opposition to this capitalism - the radical call that the entire social order based on capitalism must be changed, that the private management of capitalism must give way to what we are now used to calling socialization. This, combined with a feeling about human labor power, gives international life its coloring today. It must be repeated again and again: however little it is clearly expressed in the consciously expressed thoughts of the proletarian world population, it lives unconsciously in the subsoil of a mass of people numbering in the millions that in the course of capitalist development it is precisely human labor power that has taken on a character that it should not continue to have.

Let us first look in these two directions. Capital, the capitalist administration of economic life, must, if we wish to see through it clearly, be quite distinctly separated from what it is connected with today. Two things are connected today with what is called capitalism: the one points to something that cannot be separated from capitalism; the other is something that must be distanced from it. Today, economic enterprises based on capital and private ownership of capital are combined into one. But the question must be asked: Can these two things be separated? For the private management of economic enterprises, which is built on the greater or lesser intensity of individual human abilities, this private management, which requires an auxiliary means, capital, for its operation, cannot be abolished. Anyone who somehow makes an impartial effort to ask under what conditions the social organism is viable will always have to say to himself: This social organism is not viable if it is deprived of its most important source, namely that which flows into it through the individual abilities that one person or another can acquire on different scales. What works in the direction of capital must also work in the direction of individual human abilities. This indicates that in no way can the necessary addition to social life, which comes from individual human abilities, be separated from its means, capital, in the future state.

However, the private possession of capital, the ownership of private capital, is something else. This ownership of private capital has a different social function from the management of the enterprises for which capital is necessary, by individual human capacities. The fact that someone acquires or has acquired private capital, by whatever means, gives him a certain power over other people. This power, which will mostly be an economic power, cannot be regulated in any other way than by bringing it into connection with the legal relations of the social organism. That which supplies the social organism with really fruitful forces is the work which the individual faculties perform through capital. But that which harms the social organism is when people who cannot perform such work themselves through their individual abilities are nevertheless in permanent possession of capital through some kind of relationship. For such people have economic power. What does it mean then? To have capital? - Having capital means having a number of people work according to your intentions, having power over the work of a number of people.

Health can only be brought about by ensuring that everything that has to be achieved in the social organism by means of capital is not separated from the human personality with its individual abilities behind it. But it is precisely through the possession of capital on the part of those persons who do not put their individual abilities into the use of capital that the fruitfulness of the effect of capital is again and again detached in the social organism from that which capital is in general, and which can also have very, very harmful consequences for the social coexistence of people. That is to say, at the present historical moment of mankind we are faced with the necessity of separating the possession of capital from the administration of capital. That is one question. Let us leave it at that for the moment. We shall see shortly afterwards what possible solution can be found to this question.

The second is the question of the social significance of human labor. This social significance of human labor can be seen if we can follow what has passed through the minds of the proletarian population over the last few decades, if we have seen the impact on these minds of what Karl Marx and those who worked in his direction have said about this human labor. What Karl Marx said in his theory of surplus value struck a chord in the souls of the proletariat! Why? Because there were feelings in them that brought this question about human labor power together with the deepest questions about human dignity and about an existence worthy of human beings in general. Marx had to put into such words what he had to say about the social significance of human labor power, which said that human labor power had not yet been freed by the modern capitalist economic order from the character of being a commodity. In the economic process commodities circulate; but in the modern economic process not only commodities circulate; not only commodities follow the dictates of supply and demand, but human labor is also offered on the commodity market, which in this case must be called the labor market, and it is paid for, just as commodities are otherwise paid for. The person who has to carry his human labor power to the market feels, despite the existence of the modern labor contract, the degradation of his human value when he sees his labor power turned into a commodity. For this modern labor contract, it is concluded on the condition that the labor manager - in this case the entrepreneur - takes the worker's labor power from him in return for a compensation that proves necessary on the economic market. In short: labor power is turned into a commodity.

But this question can only be solved by not stopping at what Karl Marx said. Today it will be a vital question for what is to be achieved - whether on the part of the proletarian population or on the part of the leading bourgeois circles - to bring about liberation on this very point by learning in the right way to go beyond what Karl Marx was able to teach the proletarian population in this field. Wherever there are people today who believe that their social will is entirely in the direction of the proletariat, they are always and forever based on the feeling that those who are otherwise propertyless, who have only their labor power, must go out for wages; that is, they must turn their labor power into a commodity. How can labor-power best be made into a commodity? this is how the question is formulated, how can it be made most profitable? - This question will never be solved in such a way that it cannot give rise to new social upheavals unless the opposite demand is made: How can human labor power be stripped of the character of a commodity? How is a social organization possible in which human labour power is no longer a commodity? - After all, the fact of labor in the actual sense results in the following. Through the joint - let us now call it work -, through the joint work of the manual worker and the intellectual leader, a product is created. The question is this: How can this joint production of a product for the commodity market be brought into a satisfactory relationship with what is today called the employee and with what is today called the employer?

These are the two most important questions that can and must be raised today across the entire international community: What is there in the use of capital in human social life? What, on the other hand, is there in the flow of human labor power into this social human life?

The worker today - let us consider his situation - even if he does not express this, even if Marx did not learn to think in this direction to the end, the worker can feel: I manufacture my product together with the entrepreneur. That which is produced at the workplace comes from both of us. It can only be a question of: what division occurs between what is today called the entrepreneur and what is today called the manual worker? And such a division must occur, which can be satisfactory to both sides in the immediate concrete case.

What is the actual relationship today between the employer and the employee? I do not want to fall into agitational phrases. But let us look at this whole relationship soberly, soberly, as it is formulated by today's proletarians - though not even in clear terms - but as it is deeply and intensely rooted in the subconscious feelings of these proletarians. Since the economic power of the entrepreneur does not enable the worker to conclude a contract about what they jointly produce as a commodity, or what the joint yield of this commodity is, about how much accrues to one and how much to the other, since he is only in a position to conclude a labor contract, the worker gets into a state of mind which gives him the feeling that basically no labor power can ever be compared with any commodity. And yet today we speak of exchanging commodity for commodity or its representative, money, in the economic process. And we also speak of exchanging goods or their representative, money, for human labor power. So the worker today gets the impression that although he works together with the entrepreneur on the production of goods, he is actually being cheated because he does not get the part he is entitled to.

This already points to the fact that the individual human abilities that have to make use of capital are actually running on a slippery slope. For what these individual human faculties accomplish by managing capital out of human mental or physical strength is perceived by a large part of humanity as overreaching, as a kind of fraud. Whether this is justified or not is not something we want to investigate at the moment, but it is perceived as such. And in the perception it forms the basis for the vocal facts of the present.

This, however, points to the fact that the individual abilities of human beings must be rooted in something that is, or at least can be, placed in the social organism today in a skewed way. This utilization of man's individual abilities is connected today in the modern capitalist economy with the appropriation of the ownership of the means of production; it is thus connected with the appropriation of a certain economic power, an economic superiority. But that which can express itself in a power, which can express itself in this superiority of one person over another, is nothing other than what constitutes a legal relationship in human life.

Whoever now takes a look at how a legal relationship is strangely intertwined with the application of individual human abilities will perhaps, as happened to the person speaking to you here, have to direct his gaze to something that is more deeply rooted in the entire nature of the social organism than the things that are very often sought today. It is obvious to ask from such premises: How is right and how is the use of individual human abilities, which must always be productive anew, which must always emerge anew from their original source in man, how is the utilization of individual abilities in the social organism justified?

Whoever has retained an unbiased view of human life will gradually come to the realization that three quite different, original sources of human life can be distinguished in a social organism. These three original sources of human life flow together quite naturally in the social organism, they work together. But the way in which they work together can only be fathomed if we are able to look at the reality of the human being as such, who must be a unity, a unified being within the social trinity.

In the social organism these individual human faculties are first of all present. And we can trace their domain from the highest spiritual achievements of man in art, in science, in religious life, down to that form of the application of individual human faculties as they are more or less grounded in the spiritual or in the physical, down to that application of individual human faculties which must be used in the most ordinary, in the materialistic process, which is based on capitalism, right into the economic process, which is usually called with a derogatory word the material sphere. Up to this point a uniform current can be traced down from the other intellectual achievements. Within this area everything is based on the corresponding, on the fruitful application of that which must always be lifted anew from the primal sources of human nature if it is to flow in the right way into the healthy social organism.

In the healthy social organism everything that is based on law lives quite differently. For this right is something that takes place between man and man simply because man is generally man. We must have the opportunity to develop our individual abilities in social life. The better we develop them, the better for the generality of the social organism. The more freedom we have in bringing out and utilizing our individual abilities, the better for the social organism. For anyone who does not start out from theories and dogmas, who is able to observe real life, everything that must play out as law between people stands in stark contrast to this in real life. There is nothing else to be considered but that in which all men are equal to each other.

A third thing that plays a role in human social coexistence, which in turn is totally different from the other two - the individual human faculties that come from the inequalities of human nature, the right that comes from the consciousness of right - is the human need that comes from the natural foundations of physical and spiritual life, and which must find its satisfaction in the cycle of economic life through production, circulation and consumption.

This threefold structure of the social organism has not been brought about by some abstract thinking, this threefold structure is there. And the question can only be: How can this threefold structure be regulated in such a way that the result is not a sick but a healthy social organism? An unbiased view of the social organism - and of course I can only cite results in these allusions - leads one to say: It is precisely the misjudgment of this radical difference between the three sources of social life in the course of recent historical development that has led to the discussion in which we are already involved today, and in which we will find ourselves more and more. In the course of modern times, these three currents of human interaction have been mixed up in an unlawful way.

What started it? When, in more recent times, economic life, I would like to say, took up the view as if hypnotized, it was found justified in the progress of mankind to merge with the purely political state - which has to do with that in which all men are equal, with the actual right - at first certain branches of the economy, especially telegraphy, railroads and so on, i.e. those branches of the economy which appeared to be the most suitable for merging with the state, on which, as on economic life, the human gaze was hypnotized. And what does the socialist thinker of today actually do? He is merely inheriting the legacy of bourgeois thinking in this respect. He does not merely want certain individual branches of the economy that seem suitable to be nationalized or socialized. He wants to socialize either the entire property or the entire business. He just wants to draw the final consequences of what has been done.

Now one could cite many things. One need only mention in the external political sphere the role played by what I need only call the “Baghdad Railway” among the disastrous causes of war that have been preparing for years. Hundreds and hundreds of such things could be mentioned. What do such things mean? Such things mean a merging of economic interests with the pure interests of the state. So that in the end the result is that the administrators of state life must give themselves up to rendering the services that are possible to them by virtue of their power, following economic interests. And in this way the political interests of the states are drawn into the conflicts of economic interests. The whole configuration of states in recent times has shown this intermingling of economic life with political life.

Anyone who has been able to observe Central European life from this point of view - as the person who is speaking to you today has been able to observe it in Austria - knows that much of what has wiped the Austrian state out of the circle of the existing state has contributed to what people think of least. When, in the sixties, people in Austria thought of establishing a constitutional life, this constitutional life was based on the fact that the mere economic life was actually used for the configuration of the state. For the Austrian Imperial Council, voting was organized in such a way that four electoral curiae voted: that of the large landowners, that of the chambers of commerce, that of the cities, markets and industrial towns, and that of the rural communities, all economic communities. What was elected out of these economic communities became law in Austria. What emerged as law from purely economic interests could not, of course, come to terms with something that came from the spiritual and individual foundations of humanity: the interests of the people of the so-called Austrian state. And so things became entangled in such a way that what the people elected by the four economic curiae wanted to make law in a sham state out of their economic interests was made law. This, in turn, confounded itself with what one particularly likes to confound out of the sentiments of modern times, that confounded itself with the spiritual interests and aspirations of mankind, with all that which one can call the whole scope of spiritual life.

If, on the one hand, economic life has been incorporated into modern state life, then, on the other hand, the entire spiritual life has been incorporated into this state life. We have also seen in this that which is precisely in the spirit of modern human progress. The ideal was to gradually make all spiritual life a part of the political life of the state. How much has remained free today? Individual branches of the arts and individual branches of science, which are carried on by those who may not be employed by a state, and the like. Today there is still no sense of the fact that spiritual life can only integrate its reality into the social organism in the right way if this spiritual life is completely emancipated from all other life, if it can give itself its own administration, its own structure. While in recent times more and more efforts have been made to nationalize the entire school system, it is within the developmental powers of modern man to bring about a complete reversal in this area. Just imagine: If the lowest teacher is not the servant of the state, but if the lowest teacher knows how to place himself in a freely organized spiritual life, knows how to place himself in a spiritual organism, how differently he can then integrate what he is able to achieve into the unity of the human social organism, how differently than if the state demands of him what he must or must not do, what he must teach the developing human being!

Those who judge these things perhaps believe, from many a bad experience that has been made, that the people who have to deal with science, for example, on which so much depends, are employed according to certain considerations. But science itself and its teaching are free. Such laws can be found in the most diverse states. And many people claim that this is the case. Anyone who really knows things knows that these transgressions occur not only with regard to employment, not only with regard to the administration of intellectual offices, but also in the work itself. Free spiritual life, which can powerfully place itself with its own reality in the healthy social organism, must also be able to develop freely and separately from state and economic life, as being on its own.

I know the cheap objections that can be raised: “When schools are freed from state compulsion, when everyone can send their children to school out of the zeal they have for intellectual education, then we will return to illiteracy.” People who speak like this are reckoning with old sentiments in modern circumstances. We shall see in a moment how these modern conditions have quite a different effect from what these people with the old sentiments suppose. But the result - it must be said in advance - is that the real truth can only live in the social organism if the necessary division is also present and comprises the following: the spiritual organism, which is built on the individual physical and mental faculties of human beings - what we could also call spiritual life in its full extent; the legal organism, which comprises the area of the actual political state; and the cycle of economic processes, in which only the production, circulation and consumption of goods are concerned.

It is not believed that the unity of life is thereby destroyed. On the contrary, each of these members of the healthy social organism will become healthy again precisely because it receives its strength from itself and each member can give the other the appropriate contribution. And so those who aim at the recovery of our social conditions must demand the independence of these three links, which have been fused together by confused thinking and confused action in the last century, i.e. the independence of these three links: spiritual life, legal life and the life that comprises the cycle of the economic process.

The state cannot be an economist. Economic life must necessarily be placed on its own basis according to its own conditions. In economic life this has also developed to a certain extent in cooperative and trade union life. But this cooperative and trade union life has repeatedly become inappropriately intertwined with legal relationships. That which is necessary in economic life is the system of association, that is, the association of certain circles of people according to the needs of consumption and the production necessary for this, the association of people according to professional interests and the administration of that which circulates within these circles according to corresponding human needs, as can only result from an expert judgment of economic life itself.

The effects of human labor now play into this life, the effects of capital play into it. I can only indicate in a few lines how these effects are formed. The use of human labor power in the social organism consists in the relationship of the person who works manually to some spiritual leader who must make use of capital by managing some economic enterprise or anything at all that is useful to the social organism. This relationship can only be a legal relationship. The relationship that the worker has with the entrepreneur must be based on a right. It must be founded on a different ground than the ground of economic life itself. This will bring about a radically different situation from the one we have today. But today we must also come to radical judgments in the face of radical facts. Economic life today is, on the one hand, dependent on the natural basis. Man must face this with expert judgment. He can, to a certain extent, make one piece of land or another fertile through his diligence and technology, but only within certain limits. He is to a large extent dependent on his natural basis. Just as economic life is dependent on the natural basis on the one hand, it must also become dependent on what must be established on the basis of the rule of law, in the cooperation of all people, no matter what kind of work they do. Whether they are intellectual or manual laborers, they enter into a relationship on the basis of the rule of law in which the equality of men among themselves comes into consideration. And it is established, now not in an associative way, as it must be in economic life, but in a purely democratic way, in a way that makes the effects in the political field of the state equal for all people before the law. There is determined what relates to the utilization of human labor power, what relates to the relationship of the worker to the leader. Only a maximum or minimum working day and the type of work a person can perform can be determined. What is fixed - this must be taken into account - will have an effect on the prosperity of the people. If any branch of production should not prosper because too much legally impossible work is demanded of it, it should not be done; then a remedy should be found in other ways. Economic life should reach its limits on both sides: on the one hand, the limits of its scientific basis, and on the other, the limits of law. In short, we move from one part of the social organism to the other, the political state, in which everything legal and everything related to law is regulated to the greatest extent possible.

And then we come to the third member, which again must regulate itself out of its own conditions and needs and give laws: this is the organization of the spiritual. The spiritual must be based on the free initiative of man on the one hand, so that man is able to offer his powers individually to humanity in a free spiritual life. On the other side must be the free understanding and the free acceptance of these spiritual powers. How can this be? It can only be by the fact that the spiritual life, which is free in school life, in all spiritual branches, is administered solely by the spiritual organization right up to the use of the spiritual life, which expresses itself in the utilization of capital. How is this possible? It is only possible if that socialization really takes place which cannot come about by making human society into a uniform cooperative society in which perhaps only economic interests assert themselves and everything is to be organized on the basis of economic interests. If the spiritual organism is structured in a healthy way, free from the two other branches, the state and the economic organism, which have been mentioned, and if one is in a position to provide from that spiritual organism also that administration which relates to the use of capital and the whole economic life, that is: if all the places which are necessary in economic life are filled by the administration of the spiritual organization, if man with his individual abilities is placed in economic life from the spiritual organization, then alone one arrives at a healthy, fruitful socialization. For only in this way is it possible to separate what is the possession of private capital from the administration of this capital in favour of the healthy social organism.

What will happen? Well, many things will happen. I will only cite a few examples. It is quite natural that in the economic process man acquires private capital, property. But as little as it will be possible to separate the utilization of this private capital from the utilization of individual abilities as long as these individual abilities can be active, it will be necessary to separate private property from the individual when their activity ceases. For all private property is after all acquired through that which plays in the social forces, and it must in turn flow back into the social organism from which it is taken. That is to say, there will have to be a law from within the legal organism - for property is a right, the right to use some object or something exclusively - there will have to be a law that what one has acquired as private property from economic life must - through the free disposal of the one who has acquired it - after a certain time fall back to the spiritual organism, which in turn has to look for another individuality that can utilize it in a corresponding way.

Something similar will occur for all possessions that exist today, as for the possession of certain spiritual things that one produces, which belong to general humanity thirty years after death. One cannot say that one has more right to any other possession than to this spiritual possession. However long it may take to be allowed to keep what one has acquired, the time will have to come, be it for inherited property or otherwise acquired property, when, through the free disposal of the private owner, that which has passed into his possession through individual labor will return to the spiritual organism. In addition, the other will develop, that those who acquire private property from the economic process will be able to choose freely, out of free understanding, those whom they consider individually capable of operating something. But this will be made impossible by the power of the rule of law, of the actual political state, that a considerable part of private property will revert to pure interest, by means of which someone will be able to use private labor and other people's labor for himself without using individual abilities that enter into the economic process of life as a whole. It is possible, and it is made possible by these three links, that human productivity always remains connected with the individual abilities of man, with which it must be properly connected.

This tripartite structure of the social organism still appears to be a radical idea today. And yet, whoever will not be comfortable with this idea, whoever will not want to take the first step in this direction towards the summit that we must climb in the social order, whoever does not realize that the most immediate, most everyday, most immediate actions must be developed with the knowledge of this direction, will not be acting in the spirit of human development, but will be acting against this spirit of human development. Today we are faced with facts that have demanded the primal feelings of human beings. We must counter these with the original ideas of human social order. And one such original idea is this threefold structure.

This idea will now initially be regarded as something quite practical even by those who do not consider it to be a pure utopia, but who can perhaps bring themselves to regard it as something quite practical, it will only be regarded as something that relates to the interior of states.

And now you will ask: What does this have to do with the League of Nations? - That is what can at the same time be the most realistic foreign policy! For if we work towards answering the question: What should the state refrain from doing? - the answer that emerges from this consideration is that it should refrain from interfering in the functions of spiritual and economic life. It should confine itself to the purely political, the purely legal sphere. This, however, will also have the necessary consequence in non-political life that the economic interests of one area will come directly into negotiation, into exchange, into intercourse with the economic interests of the other area, and likewise the legal relationships and the spiritual relationships. If the spiritual conditions in one area are liberated, then no cause can ever arise from this spiritual area which could result in any warlike event. This can be observed on the smallest scale. Spiritual interests can only come into a relationship with warlike conflicts through the interposition of state life.

Even here one can really only judge from experience; but even small experiences can be eloquent. One could observe, if one has an eye for such things, how in Hungary, for example, in the times when state life in Hungary had not yet interfered with everything in the German-speaking parts, the people who had German children in the numerous German areas sent them to German-speaking schools, the Magyars living in German areas sent them to Magyar schools, and vice versa: the Germans who lived in areas with Magyar schools sent their children to such areas where there were German schools. This exchange of children was maintained in a free manner.

It was a free exchange of the spiritual goods of languages, just as one can cultivate other spiritual goods in free exchange, from country to country, from town to town. This free exchange of the spiritual goods of languages meant deep peace for the country of Hungary in all areas in which it was cultivated. The inner instinct of the people was imprinted in this free exchange. When the state became involved, things changed. That which happened in the inner political life, happened in the course of modern times in the outer political life. Anyone with an eye for such things could see how deeply peaceful the German intellectuals actually were. The mood of these German intellectuals would never have given rise to the mood of war! But the relationship they had with the state was what gave rise to this impression of the state. This is not meant to be an objection or anything else, but merely an understanding of the facts.

The economic life of a tripartite social organism will be able to live itself out within international economic life precisely because the economic relations are not made by state relations, but by people who grow out of territories in which there is not one parliament, but three parliaments, a spiritual, an economic and a state parliament, in which there is not one administration, but three administrations that work together. Only from such territories will people be able to grow up and play the right role in an intergovernmental organization. And it is not the state and the economy that matter, but the human being, the whole, full human being.

The role of the spiritual leaders will be different if it develops out of the emancipated spiritual organization, different from the theatrical play that takes place, for example, between the Middle States and America in the exchange of professors, which could only develop out of that which was spiritually improperly connected with the state. All these relationships will also be placed on a sound basis in the international sphere when the sound basis has been established in the individual social territory. From these individual social territories will then emerge the man who can also contribute in the right way to international life.

That seems to me to be the answer which can be given in such a way that it takes into consideration not only the coordination of the various peoples, but that the contribution of each people can be considered for the real future ideals of the human League of Nations. A German can also speak in this way; for even if the Central European countries or Germany are excluded from the next League of Nations, they can work in such a way that, through the recovery of their own territory, they work ahead for the healthy League of Nations of the future; they can contribute their share to it.

This is an answer that everyone can give for themselves. It is an answer that each state can also develop as its own policy towards the outside world. For just as the states that enter into peace negotiations with the German Empire, for example, elect their own peace delegates, it will not be possible to prevent the chaotic former German Empire from electing special delegates from the three members - from the economic, the state and the spiritual organism - who can then represent the healthy social organism to the outside world in a corresponding manner. That is real, possible, that is true real politics.

In the last few years I have often presented these ideas to people; I have also, as perhaps some of you have seen, summarized them in an appeal which is now appearing in the newspapers, signed by a very satisfactory number of people, among whom are those who cannot doubt that they have a right to judge these things, and I have often had to hear: such a division would bring back the old, which is precisely contrary to the feelings of a large part of modern mankind, that mankind would be divided again into the old three classes: Nourishing, military and teaching. The opposite is the case! Nothing is so different from these old estates of nourishment, defense and apprenticeship as what is wanted here; for it is not people who are divided into classes, into estates, as earlier times were divided, but that which is separated from man, in which man lives: the social organism is divided. And the human being is precisely that which, as a whole, complete, self-contained being, will only be able to develop as a human being within this structure that is self-contained. This liberated human being, he alone will be able to form the basis of the thoughts, the feelings, the acts of will that must play out in the modern League of Nations.

In thinking about these things, one does not want to become one-sided. And it is easy to become one-sided if you only take your own feelings as a basis. That is why I would like to refer to someone else now, at the end, after I have so radically presented what I have said as necessary for the recovery of the social organism and want to distinguish it from what has developed so far and what has led to this terrible catastrophe. I would like to refer to another, to a man to whom I often refer when I look for a highly respected spiritual observer of those things that have occurred within the development of humanity up to the present day: Herman Grimm. He once said in a passage that emerged from his thoughts on the modern social development of mankind: If one looks at Europe today, one sees on the one hand how people have come into connections with one another of which former times could not have dreamed; but one sees at the same time projecting into this, what is called modern civilization, that which expresses itself in our warlike armament - so he says as a German - in our own militarism and in the armament of the other states, which after all can only amount to invading one another one fine day. And when you see what could come of it - the words sound truly prophetic, they were written in the nineties, Herman Grimm died in 1901 - when you look at it, Herman Grimm says, it is as if a future consisting of nothing but human conflicts could develop, so that you would like to set aside a day for the general suicide of humanity so that it does not have to experience the terrible things that follow from these conditions.

Since then, people have seen many things that result from these conditions. What they have seen could well lead to thoughts that are then no longer regarded as utopian, especially when one has seen how many things that have really come into being should look like utopia to the eyes of practitioners compared to what they believed to be impossible just a short time ago.

This is what should make people today not only change their actions, but also change their thoughts and rethink. In the future, we will not only need different institutions, we will ultimately need new ideas, new people, which can only grow out of a new organization of the social organism. International alliances, we have basically experienced them after all! Whether what we are striving for is on firmer ground, offers a firmer foothold than the old conditions, can only be decided if we really go back to the basic conditions of human social coexistence. Have we not also seen something like an international life develop in the way people used to marry among the members of various royal houses? There would be nothing wrong with that if the princely houses had developed in a promising way! Something could then have arisen in terms of this “international alliance” that would have been very useful even under the monarchical principle! - We have seen other international alliances, for example the very real international alliance of capital. We have experienced international social democracy. We have experienced various international alliances. That which was based on the international of family instincts has disintegrated. That which is based on the economic power of unspiritual capitalism, it is clear to the unbiased eye: it will disintegrate. But what international socialism is aiming at is basically the longing for power. In the future, this power will have to give way to the right, because what man can seize through his striving for power in social life can only lead to the salvation of mankind if it is integrated into legal life, illuminated by legal life.

And so perhaps the feeling may arise in contemporary man in the face of many an internationalism that a truly fruitful alliance of nations of mankind must be founded on something other than these old relationships. It must be founded on entirely new human ideas, entirely new human impulses, and not on princely blood, not on the power of capital or labor. It must be founded on the right, on the truly liberated whole man. For only this truly liberated, whole human being, awake to international feeling, will also have the right understanding for what can then shine for him as the light of international law.

Discussion

1st speaker: Explained that the solution proposed by Dr. Steiner was not clear to him. Nor was it possible to dismiss socialism as a great spiritual concept in the way that Dr. Steiner had done, because, after all, a new right does not come into being by wiping away the healthy core of socialism. The idea of the threefold structure may seem to be a solution, but it is an arbitrary solution. According to this speaker, land reform is something that is in the nature of the times. Finally, reference was made to the progressive spread of socialism as a testimony to the fact that it is not an imaginary system but corresponds to a reality.

Rudolf Steiner: It is, of course, difficult to discuss whether or not what was indicated in a lecture that was, after all, not very short, must be clear to each individual in an absolute sense; after all, that is an individual matter, and each listener will, of course, have his or her own opinion about it. I will therefore not touch on this question in particular. I would just like to make a few very brief comments on the other thoughts expressed by the previous speaker, above all on matters of principle. Anyone who has followed my perhaps radical and therefore seemingly unprovable train of thought today has perhaps been able to see, from the way the matter was formulated, that what I said did not come from a mere flash of inspiration one fine morning, or from other ideas, but that they are built on what I believe has been proven by others. It is not necessary to prove to you again everything that socialism, for example, has proved! I have expressed one thought, the thought that the theory of surplus value and its relation to human labor power is particularly plausible to the proletarian soul. I then expressed the thought that this view must be taken one step further. In doing so, however, I believe I have also shown that I do not want to wipe away what the honorable previous speaker has just pointed out: modern socialism. Anyone who has listened to me more closely will perhaps also be able to tell that I have made sufficient allusions to the significance of modern socialism in my speech.

I could not understand what I said in any other way than in the sense of the example I mentioned. I meant that if one did not get involved in modern socialism, then one would live like the inhabitants of a house that was threatening to collapse and who did not decide to build a new one, but instead discussed how to connect all the rooms so that they could help each other through these doors.

Thus, with some good will, you could see the weight I actually attach to modern socialism. And it was basically not so difficult to derive from this the idea, which could of course be developed further in forty or fifty lectures, that you can't get by with what is already in modern socialism. I would like to point out one more thing. Of course, I will again only be able to be brief enough for those who wish to do so to be able to say that I am not giving the audience anything to take home with them. I would just like to say that I have the greatest respect for what Marxism and everything that has been built on Marxism has produced, especially in modern proletarian thought. I myself was a teacher for many years at a workers' education school founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, and I was involved, so to speak, in helping to establish socialist ideas within the working class. And I may perhaps point out that it would not exactly be incorrect if I said: I believe that a number of corresponding older editors of German socialist newspapers, even orators, who at least have a not insignificant say in Germany today, are perhaps my pupils. So I not only know modern socialism as such - one could have seen that from the way I put forward my points of view - but I also know the weight that this socialism has in the life of the modern proletariat. If you have been involved in it for years, I might say decades, then you don't really need to wait for a nice, special idea to develop a system, because you want to have one, but then you continue to build on what is there. And those who respond to things see from what they continue to build that they are respecting what is already there.

But there is one thing we must not lose sight of. Certainly, thoughts as such, if they are kept within the theoretical, are basically nothing more than symptoms of what is moving in real life. Therefore do not think that I want to suggest to you how the modern labor movement or anything else is actually carried only by the driving force of thought, but on the contrary I want to express that the thoughts that come to light - and I am not only thinking of economic forces - express deeper inner forces symptomatically. In general, I believe that in the future we will move towards a symptomatological view of history, not the causal one that is popular today.

But now we must see how certain thoughts, which are all to be regarded as symptoms of certain underlying facts, how these thought-symptoms present themselves. Today you are familiar with very radical forms of socialism. Do not believe how this could arise in the subconscious of some people who misinterpret this - which perhaps the previous speaker did not mean in this way - do not believe that I feel as frightened as some people in leading circles about what is emerging in the present - although I must regard it with the same weight as I did in my lecture. I can already look with a certain objectivity at the consequences of the social way of thinking and social development that are emerging today, for example. I would like to point out something that might seem significant to you. You see, Lenin and Trotsky are also socialists. And anyone who is not, I would say, intimidated by what is now being said about Eastern Europe and ascribes it all to the “wicked Bolsheviks”, but who knows that everything that is now tended to be attributed to the Russian socialists is still largely due to Tsarism and what preceded it, will perhaps take a somewhat more objective view of what is happening! And those who look objectively will then have to say to themselves above all: In a certain direction, Lenin in particular is a kind of final consequence of Marx, including the way he sees himself. And Lenin draws attention to two things in Marx. First, he draws attention to the fact that the modern social movement must strive to proletarianize the state itself through the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the state is only - I must briefly indicate this - taken up by the dictatorship of the proletariat because it thereby draws its ultimate consequences. The ultimate consequences of what is germinating in the state are drawn by social-democratism: namely, the state kills itself, it dissolves itself.

Now, the various dark sides of this socialist state must come to light. Lenin, for example, is under no illusions about this. That is also better than indulging in illusions, as so many people do. But he is working towards creating a state that carries within it the seeds of death, that will dissolve. Then comes the really new stage, where work is not paid equally, but where the motto is: each according to his abilities, each according to his needs. - And at that moment, when this appears: each according to his abilities, each according to his needs - which must not only be a socialist ideal, but a very general one - at that moment Lenin, like Marx, makes a strange remark that allows us to look much deeper than we usually do. He makes the remark: this social order, which can only come about in such a way that everyone is placed in the social order according to his needs and his abilities, cannot, of course, be achieved with today's people; it requires a completely new breed of people, which must first come into being.

Yes, you see, those who do not want to wait and cannot wait for a “new breed of man”, because otherwise the time might come when it would be better to establish the general suicide of which I have spoken, will turn their thoughts to the present life, and will try to gain from this present life an idea of what the mistakes were. And in this respect I do believe that it might already be evident from my, albeit brief and sketchy, train of thought, in which I have referred to the question: What should the state do, and what should it not do? How the entanglement of economic life with the state, the entanglement of intellectual life with the state, has caused damage to the social order - I have tried to indicate this; the examples I have given could be multiplied a hundredfold.

Does it not stand to reason that we should think about how these damages can be remedied? It can be remedied by not merging further, but by reversing what has just occurred.

You could call it naïve, of course, but I believe that my lecture today showed how deeply what I have said actually penetrates the very foundations of modern life. How far this is the case, however, must be left to the judgment of each individual. The ideas that are currently realized and recognized are indeed not new ideas; and nothing new can be built with these ideas.

I have presented the idea of the threefold structure to many a person who would have been in a position to realize it, especially during the difficult time of war. I have also found understanding in some circles. But today there is still no bridge between understanding and the courageous will to do something. This bridge has not been built.

I have had a strange experience in the last few days, which could perhaps point out to you how what I have said is deeply rooted in real life and is not a wiping away, but rather a taking up or rather a continuation of socialist thinking: I spoke - which is not exactly easy today - to a workers' meeting that was simply invited from the street. As I experienced many times during my work in Berlin, it was precisely the socialist leaders who opposed my remarks in many ways. And after many objections had been raised, a Russian woman appeared who - I'm just telling you! - said, among many other things, that we may have heard many things today against which we could object to this or that, but it would be impossible today to remain merely with the old ideas or even with the old socialist ideas, but it was necessary to move forward to new ideas.

We will not come to a real, thorough rebuilding of the house, but only to new doors and so on, which cannot help if the whole thing collapses, if we do not really engage in new thoughts. And that is why I have said to many people in these difficult times that many of the misfortunes that have happened in recent years could have been avoided if many people had thought like the Russian woman I spoke of. I am convinced that it would have been understood if the Central European negotiators at the time had made the ideas I have expressed here - which were very well known to a few of them - the content of foreign policy, the content of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. If these ideas had been presented to the outside world, they would have been understood.

Of course, one cannot explain such things in detail in a lecture; but one has the feeling that real life must live in the human soul in the present, as it is simply rooted in reality. I do not consider myself so clever that I know better than others what has to happen in detail!

Because I am not a program person, because I do not give programs and utopias, but because I am someone who wants reality to be grasped as reality, I am not at all interested in having all my suggestions carried out in detail. If at any point one begins to work in the spirit of what I have said today, then let not one stone of the content I have conveyed be left upon another; something quite different may result, but it will be something that is justified in the face of real life.

With programmes, whether socialist or other programmes, the aim is always to ensure that the individual ideas that have been devised are realized in accordance with the programme; here it is a matter of tackling reality at one point. Then the result may be something quite different! And so what I have said is only apparently so incomprehensible because the matter is not to be understood in the same way as other programs. You could say that today it is easy not only to introduce a program with a few thoughts, but even to prove it. But it is difficult to appeal to human souls, and to appeal in the way I wanted to do, namely to point these souls back to themselves, to give them suggestions. Then perhaps they will think something completely different. But it is basically the most necessary thing today for people to know: you have to start from one reality, then the other will follow.

There is therefore no need to despise what the land reformers are striving for. In a conversation I once had with Damaschke in Berlin many years ago, I pointed out to him that his ideas certainly have a great deal of power, but that they cannot fully intervene in real life and understand it thoroughly because the soil is not elastic. It is not; and therefore, I told him, it is not possible to translate them directly into reality.

Well, there is no other way of coming to terms with it than by looking at the tendency of the times, which results from the fact that people have come to a dead end through the confusion of legal life, economic life and spiritual life. Then something arises which is not at all difficult to prove, namely that one should not continue to confound them, but should start on the way back!

What I have said is intended to continue thoughts about how socialization should actually be carried out, how we can get into a situation where human labour may not legitimately be used in the sense of someone else's power. And as I said, as incomplete as this must remain, because it cannot be dealt with exhaustively in one lecture, I believe that today it is necessary to approach things with a little good will, because the facts speak too loudly! And even in the face of what might well appear to be different in the socialist field than four years ago, the facts speak too loudly today. I will soon explain all this comprehensively and in detail in a brochure, because I consider this to be extremely necessary for the present, which will then prove in detail what has now only appeared in a truly suggestive way.

I believe there is one thing we must not lose sight of today. I had a special experience yesterday. When I was a little boy, I used to learn the following in my religion books: I learned that you have to realize that Christ must either be a fool or a hypocrite, or that he must be what he pretended to be. And that's what it says in these religious books: And since he can be considered neither a fool nor a hypocrite, he must be the Son of the living God. - I also heard that answered yesterday as the solution to the social questions here in Bern! I read it in my school books more than fifty years ago, and I hear it repeated again today - as the right solution to the social question. Between the time when I read it in my religion books at school and this almost word-for-word repetition, which one could hear again and again during the difficult times, I would like to say: word-for-word exactly, but between the two points in time lies the experience that mankind should have had through the great catastrophe that we have lived through. We should learn something from this great catastrophe! Above all, I believe, we should have become more willing to accept thoughts that may seem somewhat sketchy today, but which, by the way in which they refer to things, perhaps show that they are at least making an attempt to delve into the depths of things.

2nd speaker (Baron von Wrangell): Sees in the threefold structure of the social organism proposed by Dr. Steiner the right solution. How the idea can be realized seems to him to be a different question. The fundamental error of socialism lies in the fact that it leads to an overvaluation of the state.

3rd and 4th speakers: Objected essentially that a realization of the idea of tripartism would unnecessarily complicate the situation, which speaks against this solution. The threefold structure would lead to fragmentation, whereas human life should form a unity.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I think I should perhaps say something very briefly. I can understand quite well what the honorable previous speaker wants; but I have the feeling that he does not understand himself very well! I think he should assess the whole situation we are in from a somewhat broader perspective. We humans really don't just have the task of making our lives comfortable. There are many other things in life than making ourselves comfortable! And I believe that a large part of the damage we suffer today comes precisely from the fact that a large part of humanity only strives to make life comfortable, in its own way. But it seems to me that what matters is something else.

You see, I would not bother you with any ideas about a tripartite division if these three parts were not inherent in the reality of the social organism. The fact that this threefold division wants to happen is something that does not depend on us, we cannot change it, it makes itself. I really did have the opportunity, I must come back to this again, during this difficult time, to talk to many a person who I thought should do something from the positions that are so authoritative today - it was two and a half years ago, there would still have been the possibility of doing something - and I said to some people: “You see, what is being said here is not a simple matter. It is the result of decades of observation of what will happen in Europe over the next ten, twenty or thirty years. For anyone who observes the course of events - and there is no other way to understand the social threefold structure than to recognize the possibilities for future development from the whole of the present - will see that, whether we like it or not, this threefold structure is taking place. In earlier times it arose instinctively; more and more in recent times there has been a confusion, a fusion of the three parts. Now these three parts want to separate again in the way that suits them, to become independent. - And I have said this to some people with the drastic words: “You see, those who are now at the helm could still do many things in this direction with reason; people have the choice - Goethe also said with reference to the revolution: either evolution or revolution - they have the choice of either doing this now through reason, or they will experience revolutions and cataclysms. Not only those who have been at the helm up to now will experience cataclysms, but also those who merely want to hold on to the dogmas of socialism will experience cataclysms. It is a matter of this threefold organization of the social organism taking place by itself. And you can also see that: That which is natural always occurs under certain extraordinary conditions in certain one-sidednesses of development; these three members want to become more and more independent. And they become independent in an unnatural way if they are not given their natural independence, if they are confounded, if they are thrown together; they develop in a way that hinders humanity. The spiritual power, the spiritual organization develops, be it as a church state or state church or whatever, becomes independent, and even if it cannot encompass the whole of spiritual life, it nevertheless seeks to catch as much as it can. The other, legal life, is taken up by the state, and in its turn makes serviceable to the state that which will seek to become independent. What wants to realize itself in political life in an unnatural way is everything that is today the much frowned upon militarism. For you see, many a healthy opinion was expressed during the war about this militarism and its one-sided relationship to state life. But if one gets to the bottom of these opinions with common sense, then one also realizes that militarism is nothing other than the one-sided realization of what one does not want to give its natural independence, political life in turn. And Clausewitz said: War is the continuation of politics by other means; Clausewitz puts it in a certain context; one can still go into these things, not as in recent years, when one has heard many such one-sided statements. One can also say that marital strife and divorce are the continuation of marriage by other means! There have been a lot of one-sided statements like that in recent years; people just mix everything up. But what everything is based on, if one wants to develop fruitful views in life, which then also turn into real institutions, is that one sees these relationships as healthy. And so these things really want to take on a life of their own, to develop independently. In recent times, the economic organism has flooded the whole of public life to such an extent that today many people no longer see anything but an economic organism. And then they see in what can otherwise be there only an administration of the economic organism.

That is what you can prove. But above all, if I have achieved nothing more than to stimulate some people, that is quite enough for me. That is all I want! For I do not believe that one can say anything right about what should happen socially. I would like to add the following: You know that there are two Bolsheviks in the present day: one is Lenin, the other Trotsky. I know of a third, who, however, does not live in the present day and whom few people think of when they talk about the Bolsheviks: Johann Gottlieb Fichte! Read his “Closed Commercial State” and you have, theoretically speaking, exactly what you can read in Lenin and Trotsky! Why? Because Fichte spins a state system out of his own soul! From the forces with which you can reach the highest heights in philosophy, he develops a state system, a political, or rather a social system. Why did this happen? Because it is not at all possible to gain a view of what is socially fruitful from the individual! That can only be found from person to person. Just as language cannot be developed if a person lives alone on an island, but just as language can only develop as a social phenomenon, only when people live together properly, so that which is social at all cannot be gained by spinning it out of an individual person! One cannot draw up a program out of oneself. But we can think about the social order in which people must be placed so that they relate to each other so naturally that they find the right social order of their own accord.

The social question will not disappear from the agenda! It is there and must continue to be solved more and more. But the task at hand is to answer the question: How should people relate to each other in the tripartite social organism? Then you will always more or less find the solution. People must relate to each other in the social organism in such a way that the solutions arise from their living together. To do this preliminary work is the task of truly social thinking, the preliminary work that shows how people can solve social issues in real social life.

I have already said that I do not believe I could be so clever as to draw up a social program. But I drew attention to the fact that if people live in this natural threefold division, and if they really allow what corresponds to their impulses as institutions in this natural threefold division to arise in the world, then it is only through people, in this cooperation of people appropriate to the healthy social organism, that the social order arises! One can cooperate in this! You can't do it the way modern Marxists say: first we make a big mess, then comes the dictatorship of the proletariat, then the right thing will happen. - No, at the very least it is necessary to do this preliminary work, to ask oneself: How must people stand in the social organism so that, through their cooperation, what is demanded of us today by the facts that truly speak loudly will happen?

In my first lecture, I drew your attention to the essence of anthroposophical spiritual science. I mentioned how methods have been sought in spiritual science that enable the spiritual investigator to penetrate a supersensible world with the same clarity as natural science penetrates the outer, sense-perceptible world with the sense organs and the intellect, which systematizes and interprets the results of sensory impressions. I described these methods in my last lecture. And I emphasized that, in addition to today’s ordinary science, another science exists. This uses spiritual methods and, by its path of research and the inner experiences unfolding along it, furnishes full proof of our being surrounded by a supersensible world, just as, in the ordinary state of consciousness, we are surrounded by the sense world. I would now like to return to a prior point, elaborated during the last lecture, that, at least to a certain extent, will form the basis of what I have to say today.

The anthroposophical science of the spirit, referred to here, is not at all opposed to what has become—over the last three or four centuries—the natural-scientific world-view. As I already pointed out, this spiritual science is opposed only to viewpoints that do not take into account the results of modern natural science and thereby become more or less dilettantish. Spiritual science wishes to be an extension or continuation of natural-scientific thinking. Only, this spiritual-scientific continuation allows a person to acquire the kind of knowledge that can answer the deepest longings in the minds and the souls of modern human beings. Thus, through spiritual science, one really comes to know human beings.

Not so long ago, modern science, in a way fully recognized by spiritual science, gave us a wonderful survey of the gradual development of living organisms right up to human beings. And yet, when all is said and done, the human being stands there only as the end product of evolution.

Biology speaks of certain muscles that are found both in human beings and in various animal species. We also know that a human being has a certain number of bones and that this number corresponds with the bones of the higher animals. Altogether, we have grown accustomed to explaining the emergence of the entire bone structure of higher animals and human beings as a development from a lower stage to a higher one. But we have no idea of the essential characteristics that are uniquely and exclusively human. Anyone willing to look at the situation without prejudice has to admit the fact that we are ignorant of what constitutes a human being. In general, natural phenomena and all living organisms are scrupulously investigated up to and including homo sapiens, and the conclusion is then drawn that human beings are encompassed by what is to be found in external nature. But, generally, there is no really adequate idea of what is essentially human.

In ordinary, practical life, we find a similar situation, very much as a result of natural-scientific thinking and knowledge. We find its effects overshadowing modern life, causing a great deal of perplexity and distress. The consequence of not knowing the essential nature of human beings becomes all too obvious in what is usually referred to as the social question. Millions of people who belong to what is called the proletariat, whom the traditional religions and confessions have abandoned, believe that reality is no longer to be found in the human soul, but only in the material aspects of life, in the processes of production within the outer economic sphere. Morality, religion, science, and art, as cultivated by humanity throughout the ages, are regarded as nothing more than a kind of ideological superstructure, built on a solid material or even economic material substructure. The moral and cultural aspects of life appear almost as a kind of vapor, rising from the only reality—material reality. Here, again, what is truly the human soul and spirit—what is psychical-spiritual in human beings—has been eliminated.

Not to be able to reach knowledge of the human being and, consequently, to be debarred from beholding and experiencing the truth of human nature, and from bringing down human ideals into will impulses in the social sphere—these seem to be the characteristic features of modern times.

Anthroposophical spiritual science, on the other hand, is only too aware of what needs to be accomplished in this direction for the sake of the deepest, yet often unconscious, longing of the souls of some of the best of our contemporaries. It is to be accomplished, first, by true knowledge of the human being and, second, by an inner sense of fulfillment strong enough to enable one to carry into public life truly social impulses arising in the soul. For, without these impulses arising from the depths of our humanity, even the best of outer practical arrangements will not lead to what in the widest circles is regarded as unrealizable, but toward which many people are striving nevertheless, namely to a dignified human existence.

The path leading into the spiritual world as I described it here a few days ago could easily be understood as something that estranges one from life rather than leading one to the two weighty questions that I have put before you once again today. For this reason, it was of paramount importance that anthroposophical spiritual science be practiced in the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Despite the unfinished state of the building, spiritual science has the possibility of pursuing practical activities there, demonstrating how knowledge of human nature and human faculties can enter into the practical sphere of life.

One of the most important practical activities is surely education of the young.

Those who work in the field of educating children are basically dealing with what will enter the world with the next generation, and this means a very great deal. Raising and educating children are a direct way to work into the near future. In its quest for a method of understanding human nature, anthroposophical spiritual science finds itself able to understand the human being in its becoming—the child—in a wide, comprehensive manner. From such comprehensive knowledge of the growing child, spiritual science seeks to create a real art of education. For what spiritual science can provide in understanding and penetration of human nature does not end in abstractions or theories, but eventually develops into an artistic comprehension, first of the human form and then of the potential of the human soul and spirit. It is all very well to maintain that science demands what is often called a sober working with objective concepts. But, ladies and gentlemen, what if the whole world, if nature, did not work with such concepts at all? What if it were to scorn our wish to restrict its creativity to the kind of natural law into which we try to confine it? What if the creativity of the world were to elude our sober, merely external grasp and our rather lightweight logical concepts? We can certainly make our demands, but whether by doing so we will attain real knowledge depends on whether nature works and creates according to them.

At any rate, more recent scientific attitudes have failed to recognize the essence of human nature because they have failed to consider the following. In her upward climb, at each successive step of the evolutionary ladder—from the mineral kingdom, through the plant and animal kingdoms, to the human kingdom—nature’s creativity increasingly escapes our intellectual grasp and sober logic, forcing us to approach her workings more and more artistically. What ultimately lives in a human being is open to many interpretations and shows manifold aspects. And because spiritual science, in its own way, seeks the inner harmony between knowledge, religious depth, and artistic creativity, it is in a position to survey rightly—that is, spiritually—the enigmatic, admirable creation that is a human being and how it is placed in the world.

Last time, I spoke of how it is possible to look with scientific accuracy into the world where human beings live before they descend into physical existence at conception or birth. I indicated how, with mathematical clarity, the human spirit and soul, descending from the spiritual worlds, place themselves before the spiritual eyes of the anthroposophical investigator, showing themselves to be at work on the interior of the future earthly body and drawing only material substances from the stream of heredity bequeathed by previous generations.

Anyone who talks about such things today is quickly judged inconsistent. And yet the methods pursued by spiritual science are much the same as those employed by natural science. The main difference is that the work entailed in the various branches of natural science is done in the appropriate laboratories, clinics, or astronomical observatories, whereas the science of the spirit approaches human nature directly in order to observe it as methodically as a natural scientist observes whatever might belong to his or her particular field of study. In the latter case, however, the situation is more straightforward for it is easier to make one’s observations and to search for underlying laws in natural science than in spiritual science.

As a first step, I would like to draw your attention to what one can observe in a growing human being in a truly natural-scientific way. Of course, in the case of spiritual science, we must include in our observations the gradual development of the human being through several different life periods. One of those periods extends from birth to the change of the teeth; that is, until about the seventh year. To recognize a kind of nodal point around the seventh year might easily create the impression of an inclination toward mysticism which is not, however, the case. The following observations have as little to do with mysticism as the distinction between the seven colors of the rainbow has. They are simply an outcome of objective, scientific observation of the growing child. Even from a physical point of view, it is evident that a powerful change occurs when, in about a child’s seventh year, forces from within drive the second teeth out of the organism. This event does not recur, indicating that some kind of conclusion has been reached.

What is going on becomes clearer when we do not restrict our observations to the physical or change-of-teeth aspect of this seventh year, but extend them to parallel developments occurring alongside the physical changes. In this case, if we are capable of observing at all, we will see how a child’s entire soul life undergoes a gradual change during this period. We can observe how the child, who previously could form only blurred and indistinct concepts, now begins to form more sharply contoured concepts—how it is only now in fact that the child begins to form proper concepts at all. Furthermore, we notice how quite a different kind of memory is now unfolding. Formerly, when younger, the child might often have displayed signs of an excellent memory. That memory, however, was entirely natural and instinctive. Whereas there was before no need for any special effort in the act of remembering, the child who has passed this watershed must now make a mental effort to remember past events clearly. In short, it becomes obvious that, with the change of teeth around the seventh year, a child begins to be active in the realm of mental imagery, in forming simple thoughts, and in the sphere of conscious will activity.

But what is actually happening here? Where had this force been that we can now observe in the child’s soul and spirit, forming more clearly-defined mental images and thoughts? Where was that force before the child’s milk teeth were shed? This is the kind of question that remains unasked by our contemporary theorizing psychologists.

When physicists observe in a physical process an increase of warmth that is not due to external causes, they explain this phenomenon by the concept of “latent heat becoming liberated.” This implies that the heat that emerges must have existed previously within the substance itself. A similar kind of thinking must also be applied in the case of human life. Where were those forces of soul and spirit before they emerged in the child after the seventh year? They were latent in the child’s physical organism. They were active in its organic growth, in its organic structuring, until, with the pushing out of the second teeth, a kind of climax was reached, indicating the conclusion of this first period of growth, so particularly active during the child’s early years. Psychology today is quite abstract. People cogitate on the relationship of soul to body, and devise the most remarkable and grandiloquent hypotheses. Empty phrases, however, will not lead to an art of education. Spiritual science, for its part, shows that what we see emerging cognitively in a child after the seventh year was actively engaged in its inner organism before the second dentition. It shows that what appears in a child’s soul after the change of teeth was active before as an organic force that has now become liberated.

In a similar way, a true spiritual researcher observes in a concrete manner—not abstractly—the entire course of human life. To illustrate that concrete manner of observation, let us now consider a well-known and specific childhood phenomenon. Let us look at children at play, at children’s games. If we can do so without preconception and with dedicated interest in the growing human being, we know—although every game has a certain form and shares common, characteristic features—that, whatever the game, each child will play it with his or her own individual style. Now those who raise or educate young children can, to a certain extent, influence or guide how a child plays according to the child’s own nature. Also, depending on our pedagogical skills, we can try to steer our children’s play into more purposeful directions. And, if we pay attention to all this, we can clearly discriminate between the various individual styles of playing until the child reaches an age when they are no longer so clearly identifiable. Once a child enters school and other interests are crowding in, however, it becomes more difficult to see the future consequences of his or her characteristic style of playing. Nevertheless, if we do not observe superficially and, realizing that the course of life represents a whole, extend the range of our observations to span the entire earthly life, we might discover the following.

Around twenty-four or twenty-five—that is, when young adults must find their links with the outer world, and when they must fit themselves into the social fabric of the wider community—there will be those who prove themselves more skillful than others in dealing with all aspects and details of their tasks. Now, careful observation will reveal that the way in which people in their twenties adapt themselves to outer conditions of life, with greater or lesser skill, is a direct consequence of their play activity during early childhood.

Certain rivers, whose sources may be clearly traced, disappear below the earth’s surface during their course, only to resurface at a later stage. We can compare this phenomenon with certain faculties in human life. The faculty of playing, so prominent in a young child, is particularly well developed during the first years of life. It then vanishes into the deeper regions of the soul to resurface during the twenties, transmuted into an aptitude for finding one’s way in the world. Just think: by guiding the play of young children, we, as educators, are directly intervening in the happiness or unhappiness, the future destiny, of young people in their twenties!

Such insights greatly sharpen our sense of responsibility as educators. They also stimulate the desire to work toward a genuine art of education. Tight-fitting, narrow concepts cannot reach the core of human nature. To do so, a wide and comprehensive view is needed. Such a view can be gained if we recognize that such interconnections as I have mentioned affect human life. It will also make us realize that we must distinguish between definite life periods in human development, the first of which extends from birth to the change of teeth and has a character all its own.

At this point, I should mention that those who choose to become teachers or educators through anthroposophical spiritual science are filled with the consciousness that a message from the spiritual world is actually present in what they meet in such enigmatic and wondrous ways in the developing human being, the child. Such teachers observe the child with its initially indeterminate features, noticing how they gradually assume more definite forms. They see how children’s movements and life stirrings are undefined to begin with and how directness and purpose then increasingly enter their actions from the depths of their souls. Those who have prepared themselves to become teachers and educators through anthroposophical spiritual science are aware that something actually descending from the spiritual worlds lives in the way the features of a child’s face change from day to day, week to week, and year to year, gradually evolving into a distinct physiognomy. And they know too that something spiritual is descending in what is working through the lively movements of a child’s hands and in what, quite magically, enters into a child’s way of speaking.

To learn to recognize this activity of the spiritual world, which is so different from that of the physical world; to meet the child as an educator with such an inner attitude and mood as I have described: this means that we see in the vocation of teaching a source of healing. This vocation could be expressed as follows: The spiritual worlds have entrusted a human soul into my care. I have been called upon to assist in solving the riddles that this child poses. By means of a deepened knowledge of the human being—transformed into a real art, the art of education—it is my task to show this child the way into life.

Such deepened knowledge of human nature reveals that, in the first period of life, a child is what I would like to call an “imitating” being. (You will find a more detailed account of this characteristic feature in my booklet The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.) Descending from the spiritual world, the child brings to outer expression—like an echo from the spiritual world—the last experiences undergone there. As anthroposophists, when we educate our children, we are aware that the way in which children imitate their surroundings is childish and primitive. They copy what is done before them with their movements. They learn to speak entirely and only through imitation. And, until they lose their milk teeth, they also imitate what happens morally in their environment.

What lies behind all of this can be rightly understood only with the help of spiritual science. Before conception or birth, a child lives in the spiritual world, the same spiritual world that can be known and consciously experienced if we strengthen the power of memory and develop the power of love in the ways I described during our last meeting. In that spiritual world, the relationship of one being to another is not one in which they confront one another outwardly; rather, each being is capable of living right into another—objectively, yet full of love. Children then bring this relationship of spiritual beings to one another down to earth. It is like a resonant echo of the spiritual world. We can observe here how children become creatures of imitation, how everything they learn and make their own during these first seven years, they learn through imitation. Any genuine art of education must fully respect this principle of imitation—otherwise, it is all too easy to misjudge our children’s behavior.

To illustrate this point, let me give you an example, just one of hundreds that could be chosen. The father of a boy, aged about five, once came to me and told me that a very sad thing had happened; namely, that his boy had been stealing. I suggested that we begin by carefully examining whether in fact the child had really stolen. The father told me that the boy had taken money from the drawer where his wife kept it and had then bought candy with it, which he shared with other children in the street. I asked the father what usually happened with the money kept in the drawer. He replied that the boy’s mother took the amount of money needed for the household that day out of her drawer every morning. Hearing this, I could reassure him that his boy had not stolen at all. I said, “The child is five years old. This means that he is still fully in the stage of imitation. Therefore, it is only good and proper that he should do what he sees done in his environment. His mother takes money out of the drawer every day, and so he naturally copies her. This is not stealing but merely behavior appropriate to the fundamental principle of a child’s development during the first seven-year period.”

A real teacher must know these things. During the first seven years of life, one cannot guide and direct a child by reprimands, nor by moral commands. During this period, one must guide a child by one’s own deeds and by setting an example. But there are of course imponderables to be reckoned with in human as in outer nature. We guide a child not only with external deeds, but also with inner thoughts and feelings. If children enjoy the company of grown-ups who never allow unworthy thoughts or feelings to enter into their lives, something noble and good could become of them. On the other hand, if adults allow themselves mean, ignoble thoughts or feelings when they are around young people, believing that such thoughts or feelings do not matter since everyone is safely ensheathed within an individual bodily structure, they are mistaken, for such things do work on children. Imponderables are at work.

Such imponderables also manifest themselves in the second period of life, which begins after the change of teeth—when the child enters school—and lasts until the age of puberty, around fourteen. When we were working out the fundamentals of a truly spiritual-scientific, spiritually artistic pedagogy for the Waldorf school in Stuttgart—founded by Emil Molt and directed by myself—we had to make a special study of this transition from the first life period, that of imitation, to the second period, from the change of teeth to puberty. For all teaching, education, and upbringing at the Waldorf School is to be based entirely upon anthroposophical insight into human nature. And because children change from the stage of imitation into quite a different stage—I shall say more about this presently—we had to make a special effort to study this time of transition.

During the second period, leading up to puberty, imitation alone no longer suffices to form the faculties, the child’s whole being. A new impulse now emerges from the depths of the child’s soul. The child now wishes to regard the teacher as a figure of undisputed authority. Today, when everything goes under the banner of democracy, the demand is easily made that schools, too, should be “democratized.” There are even those who would do away with the distinction between teacher and pupil altogether, advocating “community schools,” or whatever name these bright ideas are given. Such ideas are a consequence of party-political attitudes, not knowledge of human nature. But educational questions should not be judged from partisan positions; they should be judged only on their own merits. And, if you do this, you will find that, between second dentition and puberty, a child is no longer obliged to imitate, but now has a deep desire to learn what is right or wrong, good or evil, from a beloved and naturally respected authority figure.

Happy are those who throughout their lives can remember such childhood authorities and can say of themselves, “I had a teacher. When I went to visit her, opening the door to her room, I already felt full of awe. To me, it was perfectly natural that my teacher was the source of everything good and true.” Such things are not subject to argument on social or any other grounds. What is important is to gain the insight into human nature so that one can say, “Just as a young child’s urge to play, which manifests in individually different ways, resurfaces as more or less skill in fitting into life when the young person is in his or her twenties, so another, similar transformation also occurs regarding a child’s reverence for the teacher as a figure of authority. That is, only if faith in the authority of the adults in charge develops fully between the ages of approximately seven and fifteen will the right sense of freedom develop later, when the feeling for freedom must be the basis for all social life.”

People cannot become free as adults unless they found as children support in the natural authority of adults. Likewise, only those who during the first period of life are allowed to pass through the process of adjusting themselves to their environment through the inborn desire to imitate can be motivated as adults to take a loving interest in the social sphere. This ability to adjust based on imitation does not last; what is needed in later life is a social awareness, the development of which depends on how far educators of children under seven can become worthy models of imitation. We need people today who are able to place themselves into life with a genuine sense of freedom. They are those who were able to look up to their educators and teachers as persons of authority during the time between their second dentition and puberty.

If one has stated publicly—as I already did in my book Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, published in 1892—that the sense of freedom and the feeling for freedom are the basic facts of social life, one is hardly likely to speak against freedom and democracy. But, just because of this positive attitude towards freedom, one must also acknowledge that the practice of education as an art depends on the sense of authority, developed by the child during the second period of life. During this same period, the child also has to make a gradual transition from living in mental images—or pictures—to a more intellectual approach, a process that moves through and beyond another important turning point.

A true art of education must be able to penetrate such important issues.

The turning point to be discussed now occurs around a child’s ninth year—but sometimes not before the tenth or even the eleventh year. When our teachers recognize that a child is passing this point, they accompany the change with an appropriate change in pedagogy. In early childhood, a child learns to speak, gradually learning to refer to itself as “I”. Up to the ninth year, however, the distinction between the child’s “I” and the surrounding world is still rather undefined. Those who can observe things carefully recognize that the period when a child learns to differentiate between self and surroundings—approximately between the ninth and the eleventh years—is critical. It is a time when the child is actually crossing a Rubicon. The way in which the teachers respond to this change is of greatest importance for a child’s future life. Teachers must have the right feeling for what is happening. They must realize that the child no longer experiences itself as an organic part of its environment—as a finger might experience itself as a part of the body if it had its own consciousness—but as a separate, independent entity. If they do so and respond in the right way as teachers, they can create a source of lasting joy and vitality in life. But if they fail to respond rightly, they open the way to barren and weary lives for their pupils later on. It is important to realize that, prior to this significant change, the child still lives in a world of pictures so closely related to its own nature that, unable to appreciate the difference between self and environment, it merges into its surroundings. Therefore, in assisting a child to establish its relationship to the world at this stage, a teacher must use a pictorial approach.

We receive the children into our school from their parental homes. Today, we live in an age when writing and reading have produced conventional symbols no longer bearing any direct inner relationship to the human being. Compare the abstract letters of our alphabet with the picture writing used in ages past. What was fixed into written forms in ancient times still bore a resemblance to people’s mental images. But writing nowadays has become quite abstract. If we introduce children directly to these abstract letters in reading and writing lessons, we introduce them to something alien to their nature, or at least something inappropriate for six-, seven-, or eight-year olds. For this reason, we use a different method in our Waldorf school.

Instead of beginning with the letters of the alphabet, we engage our young pupils in artistic activity by letting them paint and draw; that is, work with colors and forms. In this activity, not only the head is engaged—which would have a very harmful effect—but the child’s entire being is involved. We then let the actual letters emerge out of these color-filled forms. This is how our Waldorf pupils learn writing. They learn writing first. And only afterward do they learn to read, for printed letters are even more abstract than our handwritten ones. In other words, only gradually do we develop the abstract element, so necessary today, from the artistic element which is more closely allied to life. We proceed similarly in other subjects, too. And we work in this way toward a living, artistic pedagogy that makes it possible to reach the very soul of the child. As for the nature of what we usually think of as plant, mineral, and so forth, this can be fruitfully taught only after the child has passed the turning point just characterized and can differentiate itself from its surroundings.

Working along these lines, it might well happen that some of our pupils learn to read and write later than pupils in other schools. But this is no drawback. On the contrary, it is even an advantage. Of course, it is quite possible to teach young children reading and writing by rote and get them to rattle off what is put before their eyes, but it is also possible to deaden something in them by doing this, and anything killed during childhood remains dead for the rest of one’s life. The opposite is equally true. What we allow to live and what we wake into life is the very stuff that will blossom and give life vitality. To nurture this process, surely, is the task of a real educator.

You will doubtless have heard of those educational ideas already published during the nineteenth century that emphasize the importance of activating a child’s individuality. We are told that, instead of cramming children with knowledge, we should bring out their inherent gifts and abilities. Certainly, no one would wish to denigrate such great geniuses of education. Important things have certainly been said by the science of education. On the other hand, though one can listen carefully to its abstract demands, such as that the individuality of the child should be developed, positive results will be achieved only if one is able to observe, day by day, how a child’s individuality actually unfolds. One must know how, during the first seven years, the principle of imitation rules the day; how, during the following period from the seventh to the fourteenth year, the principle of authority predominates; and how this latter principle is twinned with the child’s gradual transition from mental imagery—which is essentially of a pictorial or symbolic nature and based on memory—to the forming of concepts by the awakening intellect: a process that begins in the eleventh to twelfth year. If we can observe all of this and learn from a spiritual-scientific and artistic way of observing how to respond as a teacher, we shall achieve much more than if we attempt to follow an abstract aim, such as educating a child out of its individuality. Spiritual science does not create abstractions, it does not make fixed demands; rather, it looks toward what can be developed into an art through spiritual perceptiveness and a comprehensive, sharpened sense of observation.

Last time, I was able to describe only briefly the kind of knowledge of the human being given by spiritual science that can form a basis for dealing with such practical matters as education. The pressing demands of society show clearly enough the need for such knowledge today. By complementing the outer, material aspects of life with supersensible and spiritual insights, spiritual science or anthroposophy leads us from a generally unreal, abstract concept of life to a concrete practical reality. According to this view, human beings occupy a central position in the universe. Such realistic understanding of human nature and human activities is what is needed today. Let me reinforce this point with a characteristic example.

Imagine that we wanted to convey a simple religious concept—for instance, the concept of the immortality of the human soul—to a class of young children. If we approach the subject pictorially, we can do this before a child’s ninth year. For example, we can say, “Look at the butterfly’s chrysalis. Its hard shell cracks open and the butterfly flutters out into the air. A similar thing happens when a human being dies. The immortal soul dwells in the body. But, when death breaks it open, just as the butterfly flies from the chrysalis into the air, so the soul flies away from the dead body into the heavenly world, only the human soul remains invisible.”

When we study such an example from the point of view of a living art of education, we come face to face with life’s imponderables. A teacher might have chosen such a comparison by reasoning somewhat as follows: “I am the one who knows, for I am much older than the child. I have thought out this picture of the caterpillar and the butterfly because of the child’s ignorance and immaturity. As someone of superior intelligence, I have made the child believe something in which I myself do not believe. In fact, from my own point of view, it was only a silly little story, invented solely for the purpose of getting the child to understand the concept of the immortality of the soul.” If this is a teacher’s attitude, he or she will achieve but little. Although to say this might sound paradoxical in our materialistic age, it is nevertheless true: if teachers are insincere, their words do not carry much weight.

To return to our example. If Waldorf teachers had chosen this comparison for their classes, the situation, though outwardly similar, would have been very different. For they would not have used it—nor, for that matter, any other picture or simile—unless they were convinced of its inherent truth. A Waldorf teacher, an anthroposophically oriented spiritual researcher, would not feel, “I am the intelligent adult who makes up a story for the children’s benefit,” but rather: “The eternal beings and powers, acting as the spiritual in nature, have placed before my eyes a picture of the immortal human soul, objectively, in the form of the emerging butterfly. Believing in the truth of this picture with every fibre of my being, and bringing it to my pupils through my own conviction, I will awaken in them a truly religious concept. What matters is not so much what I, as teacher, say to the child, but what I am and what my heartfelt attitude is.” These are the kinds of things that must be taken more and more seriously in the art of education.

You will also understand when I tell you that visitors to our Waldorf school, who come to see the school in action and to observe lessons, cannot see the whole. It is almost as if, for instance, you cut a small piece out of a Rembrandt painting, believing that you could gain an overall impression of the whole picture through it. Such a thing is not possible when an impulse is conceived and practiced as a comprehensive whole—as the Waldorf school is—and when it is rooted in the totality of anthroposophical spiritual science.

You might have been wondering which kind of people would make good teachers in such a school. They are people whose entire lives have been molded by the spiritual knowledge of which I spoke last time. The best way of learning to know the Waldorf school and of becoming familiar with its underlying principles is by gaining knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual science itself at least as a first step. A few short visits in order to observe lessons will hardly convey an adequate impression of Waldorf pedagogy.

Plain speaking in such matters is essential, because it points toward the character of the new spirit that, flowing from the High School of Spiritual Science centered in Dornach, is to enter all practical spheres of life—social, artistic, educational, and so forth.

If you consider thoroughly all that I have been telling you, you will no longer think it strange that those who enter more deeply into the spirit underlying this art of education find it absolutely essential to place themselves firmly upon the ground of a free spiritual life. Because education has become dependent on the state on the one hand and on the economic sphere on the other, there is a tendency for it to become abstract and programmatic. Those who believe in the anthroposophical way of life must insist on a free and independent cultural-spiritual life. This represents one of the three branches of the threefold social order about which I wrote in my book The Threefold Commonwealth.

One of the demands that must be made for spiritual life—something that is not at all utopian, that may be begun any day—is that those actively engaged in spiritual life (and this means, above all, those involved in its most important public domain; namely, education) should also be entrusted with all administrative matters, and this in a broad and comprehensive way.

The maximum number of lessons to be taught—plus the hours spent on other educational commitments—should allow teachers sufficient time for regular meetings, in both smaller and larger groups, to deal with administrative matters. However, only practicing teachers—not former teachers now holding state positions or retired teachers—should be called on to care for this side of education. For what has to be administered in each particular school—as in all institutions belonging to the spiritual-cultural life—should be only a continuation of what is being taught, of what forms the content of every word spoken and every deed performed in the classroom. Rules and regulations must not be imposed from outside the school. In spiritual life, autonomy, self-administration, is essential.

I am well aware that people who like to form logical “quickly tailored” concepts, as well as others who, somewhat superficially, favor a more historical perspective, will readily object to these ideas. But in order to recognize the necessity of making spiritual- cultural life into a free and independent member of the social organism, one really must be acquainted with its inherent nature. Anyone who has been a teacher at a working-class adult education center for several years—as I was in the school founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, thereby gaining first-hand experience of the social question—knows only too well that this is not merely a matter of improving external arrangements or of dealing with dissatisfaction caused by unjust outer conditions. As I say, if one has taught in such circles, one knows that one word comes up repeatedly in proletarian circles, but extends far beyond proletarian life, namely, the word “ideology,” the meaning of which is set out in the first chapter of The Threefold Commonwealth. Now, what is hidden behind this?

Long ago, in the ancient East, people spoke of the great illusion or “maya.” According to this view—already decadent today and hence unsuited to our Western ways—maya refers to the external sensory world which offers us only semblance or outer appearance. To ancient sages, true reality of being—the reality that sustained human beings—lived and grew in the soul. All else, all that the outer senses beheld, was only maya.

We live today in an age that expresses—especially in its most radical philosophies—a total reversal of this ancient view. For most people today true reality resides in outer, physical nature and in the processes of production, while what can be found inwardly in the human soul as morality, art, religion, knowledge is maya, illusion. If we want to translate the word maya correctly, we must translate it as “ideology.” For modern humanity, all other translations fail. But ideology refers to exactly the opposite of what maya was for the ancient oriental. The widest circles of the population today call maya what the ancient oriental called the sole reality. And this reversal of the word’s meaning is of great significance for life today.

I have known people of the leading classes who lived under the influence of the philosophy that gave rise to ideology. I have learned to know the perplexity of people who reasoned thus: if we trust what natural science tells us, the entire origin of the cosmos can be traced to a primeval nebula. According to these theories, all of the different species of nature began during this stage. At that time, too, human beings densified out of the nebula. And, while this process continued, something not unlike soap bubbles unfolded in the human soul. According to natural science, what rises in the human soul as ethics, religion, science or art, does not represent reality. Indeed, if we look toward the end of earthly evolution as it is presented by science, all that is offered is the prospect of an immense cemetery. On earth, death would follow, due either to general glaciation, or to total annihilation by heat. In either case, the result would be a great cemetery for all human ideals—for everything considered to be the essence of human values and the most important aspect of human existence. If we are honest in accepting what natural science tells us—such people had to conclude—then all that remains is only a final extinction of all forms of existence.

I have witnessed the sense of tragedy and the deep-seated pain in the souls of such materialistically minded members of today’s leading circles, who could not escape the logical conclusions of the natural-scientific outlook and who were consequently forced to look on all that is most precious in the human beings as mere illusion. In many people, I have seen this pessimism, which was a result of their honest pursuit of the natural-scientific conception of the world.

This attitude took a special form in the materialism of the working class. There, everything of a spiritual nature is generally looked upon as a kind of a superstructure, as mere smoke or fog; in a word, as “ideology”. And what enters and affects the soul condition of modern people in this way is the actual source of the contemporary anti-social sentiment—however many other reasons might be constantly invented and published. They amount only to a form of self deception. It is the influence of this attitude which is the real origin of the dreadful catastrophes that are dawning—undreamt of by most people—in the whole East. So far, they have started in Russia, where they have already assumed devastating proportions. They will assume even greater dimensions unless steps are taken to replace an ideology by a living grasp of the spirit.

Anthroposophical spiritual science gives us not only ideas and concepts of something real but also ideas and concepts by which we know that we are not just thinking about something filled with spirit. Spiritual science gives us the living spirit itself, not just spirit in the form of thoughts. It shows human beings as beings filled with living spirit—just like the ancient religions. Like the ancient religions, the message of spiritual science is not just “you will know something,” but “you will know something, and divine wisdom will thereby live in you. As blood pulses in you, so by true knowing will divine powers too pulse in you.” Spiritual science, as represented in Dornach, wishes to bring to humanity precisely such knowledge and spiritual life.

To do so, we need the support of our contemporaries. Working in small ways will not lead to appropriate achievements. What is needed is work on a large scale. Spiritual science is free from sectarianism. It has the will to carry out the great tasks of our times, including those in the practical spheres of life. But to bring this about, spiritual science must be understood in a living way by contemporary society. It is not enough to open a few schools here and there, modeled on the Waldorf school, as some people wish. This is not the way forward, for it will not lead to greater freedom in spiritual life.

Often, I have had to suffer the painful experience of witnessing the conduct of certain people who, because of their distrust in orthodox, materialistic medicine, approached me, trying to tempt me into quackery. They wanted to be cured by creeping through the back door, as it were. I have experienced it to the point of revulsion. There was, for instance, a Prussian government official, who publicly supported materialistic medicine in parliament, granting it sole rights, only to enter by the back door to be treated by the very people whom he had opposed most violently in parliament.

The Anthroposophical Society—which could, from a certain point of view, be justly described as willing to make sacrifices and whose members have dedicated themselves to the cultivation of anthroposophical spiritual science—seeks a powerful impetus, capable of affecting and working into the world at large. What is at issue today is nothing less than the following—that a true spiritual life, such as our present society needs, can be created only by those interested in it, which fundamentally includes everyone, many of whom have children, and that these must bring about the right conditions in which children can mature into free human beings so that those children, in turn, can create an existence worthy of humanity. As far as spiritual- cultural life is concerned, everyone is an interested party and should do his or her share to work for what the future will provide in the form of spiritual-cultural life.

Thus, what I would like to call “a world school movement,” based on the ideas I have put forward today, should meet with approval in the widest quarters. What really ought to happen is that all those who can clearly see the need for a free spiritual-cultural life should unite to form an international world school movement. An association of that kind would offer a stronger and more-living impetus for uniting nations than many other associations being founded these days on the basis of old and abstract principles. Such a union of nations, spiritually implied in a world school movement, could be instrumental in uniting peoples all over the globe by their participation in this great task. The modern state school system superseded the old denominational schools relatively recently. It was good and right that this happened. And yet, what was a blessing at the time when the state took this step would cease to be one if state-controlled education were to become permanent; for then, inevitably, education would become the servant of the state. The state can train theologians, lawyers, or other professionals to become its civil servants, but if the spiritual life is to be granted full independence, all persons in a teaching capacity must be responsible solely to the spiritual world, to which they can look up in the light of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

A world school movement, as I envisage it, would have to be founded on an entirely international basis by all who understand the meaning of a truly free spiritual life and what our human future demands in social questions. Gradually, such a world school movement would give birth to the general opinion that schools must be granted independence from the state and that the teachers in each school must be given the freedom to deal with that school’s own administration. We must not be narrow minded or pedantic in these matters, as many are who doubt that enough parents would send their children to such schools. That is the wrong kind of thinking. One must be clear that freedom from state interference in education will be the call of the future. Even if there are objections from some parents, ways and means will have to be found for getting children to attend school without coercion by the state. Instead of opposing the founding of independent schools because of dissenting parents, ways and means will have to be found of helping free schools to come into existence despite possible opposition or criticisms—which must then be overcome in an appropriate way. I am convinced that the founding of a world school movement is of the greatest importance for the social development of humanity. Far and wide, it will awaken a sense for a real and practical free spiritual life. Once such a mood becomes universal, there will be no need to open Waldorf schools tucked away in obscure corners and existing at the mercy of governments, but governments will be forced into recognizing them fully and refraining from any interference, as long as these schools are truly founded in a free spiritual life.

What I have said so far about freedom in the cultural-spiritual sphere of life—namely that it has to create its own forms of existence—applies equally to the social sphere known by spiritual science as the sphere of economic life. Just as the sphere of cultural spiritual life must be formed on the basis of the capacities of every individual, so too must economic life be formed on the basis of its own principles, different though these are. Fundamentally, such economic principles derive from the fact that, in economics, a judgment made by an individual cannot be translated directly into deeds, into economic actions. In the cultural-spiritual sphere, we recognize that human souls strive for wholeness, for inner harmony. Teachers and educators must take that wholeness into account. They approach a child with that wholeness as their aim. In the economic sphere, on the other hand, we can be competent in a professional sense only in narrower, more specialized areas. In economics, therefore, it is only when we join together with people working in other areas that something fruitful may be achieved. In other words, just as free spiritual-cultural life emerged as one member of the threefold social organism, so likewise must economic life, based upon the associative principle, arise as another, independent member of this same threefold organism. In the future, economic life will be run on a basis quite different from what we are used to out of the past.

Economic life today is organized entirely according to past practices, for there is no other yardstick for earnings and profits. Indeed, people are not yet ready to contemplate a change in the economic system which is still entirely motivated by profit. I would like to clarify this by an example that, though perhaps not yet representing purely and simply the economic sphere, nevertheless has its economic aspects. It shows how the associative principle can be put into practice in the material realm.

There is, as you know, the Anthroposophical Society. It might well be that there are many people who are not particularly fond of it and regard it as sectarian, which it certainly is not. Or they may be under the impression that it dabbles in nebulous mysticism, which again is not the case. Rather, it devotes itself to the cultivation of anthroposophical spiritual science. Many years ago, this Society founded the Philosophic- Anthroposophic Publishing Company in Berlin. To be exact, two people who were in harmony with the Anthroposophical Society’s mode of thinking founded it. This publishing company, however, does not work as other profit-making companies, which are the offspring of modern economic thinking, do. And how do these profit-making enterprises work? They print books. This means that so and so many people have to be employed for processing paper; so and so many compositors, printers, bookbinders; and so on. But now I ask you to look at those strange and peculiar products that make their appearance every year and which are called “crabs” in the book trade. These are newly printed books, which have not been purchased by the book sellers and which, consequently, at the next Easter Fair wander back to the publishers to be pulped. Here we have a case where wares have been put on the market, the production of which had occupied a whole host of workers, but all to no avail.

Such unnecessary and purposeless expenditure of labor represents one important aspect of the social question. Nowadays, because one prefers to live with phrases rather than an objective understanding, there is too much talk about “unearned income.” It would be better to look at the situation more realistically, for similar situations arise in all branches of our external, material life. Until now, the Philosophic-Anthroposophic Publishing Company has not printed one single copy in vain. At most, there are a few books that were printed out of courtesy to our members. That was our conscious motive; they were printed as a kind of offering to those members. Otherwise there was always a demand for whatever we printed. Our books always sold out quickly and nothing was printed unnecessarily. Not a single worker’s time was wasted and no useless labor was performed within the social framework. A similar situation could be achieved in the whole economic sphere if one organized cooperation between consumers who have an understanding of needs and demands in a particular domain, traders who trade in certain products, and last, the actual producers. Consumers, traders, and producers would form an association whose main task would be the fixing of prices. Such associations would have to determine their own size; if they grew too large, they would no longer be cost effective. Such associations could then unite to form larger associations. They could expand into what might be called global or world-economic associations—for the characteristic feature of recent economics is its expansion of economies into a world economy.

A great deal more would have to be said to give an adequate account of what I can indicate here only in principle. I must, however, say that the concept of associative life implies nothing organizational. In fact, although I come from Germany (and have lived there frequently even though my main sphere of activity is now Dornach, Switzerland) the mere word “organization” produces a thoroughly distasteful effect in me. “Organization” implies an ordering from above, from a center. This is something that economic life cannot tolerate. Because the Middle-European states, penned in between the West and the East, were trying to plan their economies, they were actually working against a healthy form of economic life. The associative principle which must be striven for in economics leaves industry, as also industrial cooperatives, to their own devices. It only links them together according to levels of production and consumption regulated by the activity of the administrators of the various associations. This is done through free agreements among single individuals or various associations.

A more detailed description of this subject can be found in my book The Threefold Commonwealth, or in other of my writings, such as The Renewal of the Social Organism, which is supplementary to The Threefold Commonwealth.

Thus, in order to meet the needs of our times, anthroposophical spiritual science, based on practical life experience, calls for two independent members of the social organism—a free spiritual life and an associative economic life. Those two are essential in the eyes of anyone seriously and honestly concerned about one of the fundamental longings in the hearts of our contemporaries; namely, the longing for democracy.

Dear friends, I spent the first half of my life in Austria—thirty years—and have seen with my own eyes what it means not to take seriously society’s heartfelt demand for democracy. In the 1860s, the call for parliamentarianism was heard in Austria, too. But because it could not bring about the right social conditions, this land of political experimentation was the first to go under in the last great World War. A parliament was formed. But how was it constituted? It was composed of four assemblies: landowners, the chamber of commerce, the department of towns, markets and industrial areas, and, finally, the assembly of country parishes. In other words, only economic interests were represented. There were thus four departments, each dealing with various aspects of the national economy. Together, they constituted the Austrian Parliament, where they were supposed to come to decisions regarding political and legal matters as well as matters pertaining to general affairs of the state. This means that all decisions, reached by majority vote, represented only economic interests. Such majorities, however, can never make fruitful contributions to the social development of humanity. Nor are they the outcome of any expert knowledge. Truly, the call for democracy, for human freedom, demands honesty.

At the same time, however, one must also be clear that only certain issues are suitable for parliamentary procedures, and that democracy is appropriate only when the issues treated lie within the areas of responsibility of each person of voting age. Thus, between free spiritual life on one side and associative economic life on the other, the sphere of democracy becomes the third member of the threefold social organism. This democratic sphere represents the political sphere of rights within the social organism. Here each individual meets the other on equal terms. For instance, in such questions as the number of working hours and the rights of workers in general, each person of age must be considered competent to judge.

Let us move toward a future in which questions of cultural and spiritual life are decided freely and entirely within their own sphere, a future in which freedom in education is striven for so that schools can work out of the spirit and, consequently, produce skillful, practical people. Then, practical schools, too, will develop from such a free spiritual life. Let us move toward a future in which spiritual life is allowed to work within its own sphere and in which the powers of the state are limited to what lies within the areas of responsibility of each person of voting age; a future in which economic life is structured according to the principle of associations, where judgments are made collectively on the strength of the various members’ expertise and where agreements are made with others who are experts in their fields. If we approach the future with these aims in mind, we shall move toward a situation that will be very different from what many people, unable to adapt themselves to new conditions, imagine today.

There will be many who believe that a nebulous kind of cultural spiritual life, alienated from ordinary life, emanates from Dornach. But such is not the case at all. However absurd it may sound, according to the spirit prevailing in Dornach, no one can be a proper philosopher who does not also know how to chop wood or dig potatoes. In short, according to this spirit, one cannot be a philosopher if one cannot turn a hand to tasks requiring at least a modicum of practical skill. Spiritual science does not estrange people from practical life; on the contrary, it helps them develop skills in coping with life. It is not abstract. It is a reality, penetrating human beings with real strength. It therefore not only increases people’s thinking activity, it also makes them generally more skillful. At the same time, spiritual science is intimately connected to a sense of inner dignity and morality; that is, to morality, religion, and art. Visitors to the Goetheanum can convince themselves of this—although the building is not finished yet by any means. Indeed, in order to bring it even into its present state, people with an understanding for the impulse it embodies have already made many sacrifices. The Goetheanum is not a result of our employing the services of an architect and a builder to erect a building in a more or less conventional style—be it in Gothic, Renaissance, or any other style. The living quality of the science of the spirit spoken of here could not have tolerated that. Spiritual science had to evolve its own style in keeping with its own nature. This manifests in the various artistic forms. Just as the same growth forces that produce a nut’s kernel also form its shell—for the shell can be formed only by the same principle as also works in the kernel—so the outer shell of our building, the center of what is being willed in Dornach, can arise only from the same spiritual sources from which all of the teaching and researching in Dornach also flows. The words spoken there and the results of research conducted there all proceed from the same sources as the artistic forms of the building’s pillars and the paintings inside the cupolas. All of the sculpture, architectural design, and painting—and these are not empty symbolism or allegories—arise from the same spiritual impulses that underlie all of the teaching and researching. And, because all this is part of the one cultural-spiritual life that we hope to quicken in the human being, the third, religious element, is closely linked to the arts and to science, forming a unity with them.

In other words, what we are striving for as spiritual science—as it enters into the practical spheres of life as the “threefolding” (or tripartition) of the social organism—brings to realization the three great ideals that resound from the eighteenth century in such a heart-rending, spirit-awakening way. I refer to the threefold call to humanity: freedom, equality, brotherhood. Learned people in the nineteenth century pointed out repeatedly that it was impossible for those three ideals to be put into practice simultaneously under any one state or government. Such was their considered opinion and, from their point of view, justifiably so. But the apparent incongruity rests on false premises. Freedom, equality, and brotherhood do resound to us from the eighteenth century as the three great and justly-claimed ideals. The source of misunderstanding is the tacit assumption that the state must be given sole prerogative in matters pertaining to all three spheres of society. The thought never occurred that, in accord with its own nature, such a monolithic state should be membered into three social organisms: the free spiritual organism; the organism representing the sphere of politics and rights, built on equality; and the organism of the economic sphere, built on the principle of association.

Objections have been raised against these views by people who expect to be taken seriously in social questions and who maintain that, by demanding a tripartition of society, I seek to destroy its unity. But the unity of the human organism is not destroyed because it naturally consists of three parts. Nor is the unity of the human being disturbed because the blood, as it circulates rhythmically through the body, is sustained by a part of the organism different from the one in which the nerves are centered. Likewise, the unity of the social organism is enhanced rather than disturbed by recognition of its threefold nature (if the human head, apart from sending forth the nerves, would also have to produce the blood, then the unity of the human organism would certainly be destroyed). All of this is explained in much greater detail in my book Riddles of the Soul.

I would like to conclude these considerations about spiritual science and its practical application in social life by pointing out that, although the three great ideals of humanity—liberty, equality, fraternity—are not realizable within the framework of an all-powerful state monopoly—where any attempted implementation would be founded upon illusion—they can nevertheless penetrate human life in the form of a threefold ordering of society. Here, the following order would prevail: full freedom in the cultural-spiritual sphere; equality in the realm where each person of voting age shares in democratic rights and responsibilities on equal terms with fellow citizens of voting age; and brotherhood in the economic sphere which will be realized by means of the principle of associations. Unity will not be destroyed by this ordering, for every human being stands in all three spheres, forming a living link toward unity.

Basically, one may consider the meaning of world evolution to reside in the fact that the particular ways of its working and its underlying forces culminate in the human being as the apex of the entire world organism. Just as the forces of nature and the entire cosmos—the macrocosm—are to be found again on a minute scale in the microcosm, in the threefold human being, so the great ideals—liberty, equality, and fraternity—must come together again in the social organism. But this must not be brought about by external or abstract means: it must proceed in accordance with reality, so that these three ideals can work in harmony with the human nature in its integral unity. As free individuals, every human being can share in the free spiritual life to which all belong. Sharing equal rights with our fellow citizens, we can all participate in the democratic life of the state, based on the principle of equality. Finally, by participating in economic life, we share in the brotherhood of all human beings.

Liberty in the cultural spiritual sphere; equality in political life and the sphere of rights; fraternity in economic life. These three working together harmoniously will lead to the healing and further evolution of humanity—to new resources in the struggle against the forces of decline.

A combination of these three in a genuine social organism, a concurrence of freedom, equality, and brotherhood in integral human nature—this appears to be the magical password for the future of humanity.

The subject I addressed last Monday here in Utrecht was the question of how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can provide a method, a scientific path for penetrating the spiritual, supersensible world.

I have pointed out how it is only possible to penetrate into this environment if man brings forth from this soul certain abilities and powers that indeed lie dormant in every soul, and if he lifts up what is ordinary knowledge to the level of vision; to a vision that, for example, comes to develop full awareness of what it means to have a soul-spiritual life independent of all corporeality. We know precisely through modern science - and with regard to the everyday life of the soul, this science is absolutely right - that this ordinary life of the soul is bound to the instrument of the body. And only spiritual scientific methods can tear the spiritual-soul life away from the body, can thereby penetrate to the being in the human being that dwells in the spiritual world before it has united with a physical body through conception or birth, that passes through the gate of death, discards the human body and again consciously enters a spiritual world.

And I continued last Monday by saying that anyone who makes such an acquaintance with man's own supersensible being is also able to perceive, behind nature's sensuality and behind everything that can be explored with the ordinary mind, a supersensible environment, an environment of spiritual beings.

What is recognized in this way as the spiritual and soul life in man, what is recognized as the spiritual essence of the world in which we live, is what actually enables us to gain a true knowledge of the human being.

Over the last three to four centuries, we have acquired a complete natural science, but we have not been able to draw any knowledge about human beings from this natural science. In developmental theory, we start from the lowest living creatures. We ascend to the human being; we regard him, so to speak, as the end link in the animal series. We learn what humans have in common with other organisms, but we do not learn what humans actually are in the world as a separate being. We can only learn this through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And what asserts itself in this way in knowledge ultimately also asserts itself in the feelings and impulses that modern humanity has developed in social life.

Just think how many people who, through modern technology, have developed as a new class of people, through the whole modern economy - actually under the influence of certain socialist theories - believe that what lives in people as morality, as science, as religion, as art, is not drawn from an original spiritual source, but that it is only drawn from what economic, material processes are. The theory professed by modern social democracy, the theory that has sought to become reality in such a destructive way in Eastern Europe, this theory basically sees the forces that rule history as being outside of the human. And what man brings forth in art, custom, law, religion, that appears only as a kind of smoke. People call it a superstructure that rises up on the substructure. It is like a smoke that comes out of the purely economic-material. There, too, in this placing of the human being in the practical world, the actual human being is extinguished. If we are to characterize what modern education and the modern social consciousness have brought about, we cannot say otherwise than: the human being has been extinguished.

What spiritual science, as it is meant here, is to bring to humanity again is the knowledge of the human being, the appreciation of the human being, the connection of the human being as a supersensible being to the supersensible, universal being of the world.

And only with this do we stand in true reality. Only with this do we stand on ground that leads into a truly practical life. This is what I would like to substantiate today, first in the question of education and teaching. And here, in the way it has emerged from the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has from the very beginning been conceived not as something unworldly and far removed from the world, but as something thoroughly realistic and practical. And one of the first practical foundations was in the field of education with the Free Waldorf School, which Emil Molt founded in Stuttgart and which I myself have the educational and didactic responsibility for. In this Free Waldorf School, the impulses of a true knowledge of the human being that can flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science are developed pedagogically and didactically.

For a long time people have been talking about the fact that education and teaching should not graft this or that into the child's soul, but rather develop what is in the human being out of the human soul. But when it is expressed in this way, it is, of course, initially only an abstract principle. The point, however, is not to have this principle intellectually, to extract something from the human soul, but to be able to truly observe the developing human soul in the child. And for that, one must first develop a sense for it. This sense is only developed by someone who is aware of how the actual individuality of the human being, the actual spiritual-soul entity from a spiritual world in which it has lived for a long time, descends; how from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, in all that develops physically and psychically in the child, a supersensible element lives; how we, as educators, as teachers, have been entrusted with something from a supersensible world that we have to unravel. When we see from day to day how the child's physiognomic traits become clearer and clearer, when we can decipher how a spiritual-soul element, sent down to us from the spiritual world, gradually unravels and reveals itself in these physiognomic traits , it is important to develop, above all, a sense of reverence for the supersensible human being descending from the spiritual worlds as the basis of a pedagogical-didactic art.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science makes it possible to observe the child's development from year to year. First of all, I would like to show the main stages of human development.

It is often said that nature or the world does not make any leaps. Such things are constantly repeated without actually looking at what they are supposed to mean. Does not nature constantly make leaps when it develops the green leaf and then, as if with a leap, the sepal and the colored petal and then again the stamens and so on? And so it is with human life. For the person who, unbiased by all the stimuli and impulses that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can give him, observes this developing human life in the child, he finds, above all, not out of mystical grounds, but out of faithful observation, a leap in development around the seventh year, when the child begins to get the second teeth. Here we see how our knowledge of the soul, as it is currently used in science, has basically become somewhat exaggerated. Unless one has become completely materialistic, one differentiates between body and soul. But one speaks of the relationship between body and soul in an extraordinarily abstract way. One does not get used to observing in this field with the same kind of faithful and unprejudiced observation as one has learned in natural science. In natural science, for example, one learns that when heat appears through some process, and one has not added it, this heat was in some other form in the body. In physics one says “latent”. One says that the latent heat has been released. This attitude, which is provided by natural science, must also be adopted for the science of man, which, however, must then be spiritualized in relation to natural science. Thus, one must observe carefully: What then changes in the human being when he passes the age of changing teeth?

Now, if we really have the necessary impartiality for observation, we can see how the child, when it passes the age of seven, actually only begins to have outlined, contoured ideas, whereas before that it had no such ideas. We can see how it is only with this period that the possibility of thinking in actual thoughts, however childlike they may be, begins. We see how something emerges from the child's soul that was previously hidden in the human organism. Anyone who has acquired a spiritual eye for this matter can see how the child's soul life changes completely when the second dentition begins; how something emerges from the deepest, most hidden part of the soul and comes to the surface. Where did it come from, this thinking that now appears as a definite life of ideas? It was there as a principle of growth in the human being; permeating the organism; living as a spiritual-soul element in the growth that then comes to an end when the teeth are pushed out from within and replace the earlier teeth. When an end is put to this growth, which finds its conclusion in the change of teeth, then, so to speak, only one growth remains, for which less intensive forces are necessary. We see, then, how that which later becomes thinking in the child was once an inward organic growth force, and how this organic growth force is metamorphically transformed and comes to light as soul power.

By adopting this approach, we arrive at a science of the soul that is not clichéd, which, when it comes down to it, is simply transposed into the spiritual and is based on the same methods as those on which natural science is also based. Just as natural science is a faithful observation of a physical nature, so in order to understand the human being, a faithful observation is necessary, but now of the soul and spirit. If one learns to see through the human being in this way, then this way of looking at the human being is transformed into an artistic way of looking. It is indeed the case that today people often say, when someone expresses something like I just did: Yes, one should just look at something scientifically, in terms of knowledge; one should stick to sober logic; one should work through the intellect to arrive at abstractly formulated natural laws. This may be a comfortable human demand. It may appear to man that he would like to grasp everything in the wide-meshed logic of concepts in order to get to the bottom of things. But what if nature does not proceed in this way? What if nature works artistically? Then it is necessary that we follow her on her artistic path with our capacity for knowledge. Anyone who looks into nature and the world in general will perceive that what we bring about in natural laws through sober logic bears the same relation to the whole, full, intense reality as a drawing made with charcoal strokes does to a painting done in full color.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science draws from the full physical and spiritual reality. Therefore, it transforms mere logical recognition into artistic comprehension. But this also enables one to turn the teacher, the instructor, the educator into a pedagogical-didactic artist who acquires a fine sense for every single expression of the child's life. And indeed it is the case that every child has their own particular, individual way of expressing themselves. These cannot be registered in an abstract pedagogical science, but they can be grasped if one receives anthroposophically oriented impulses from the fullness of humanity and thereby gains an intuitive view of the spiritual and soul life in the human being, which then has an effect on the physical and bodily life. For what works roughly as the power of thought before the change of teeth in the growth of the child, we see more finely as a spiritual-soul activity in the child. As teachers and educators, we must pursue this from day to day with an artistic sense, then we will be able to be for the child what a real educator, a real teacher should be for the child.

I would like to give a brief description of how the first period of life, from birth to the change of teeth, and the second period of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, now emerges.

In the first period, from the first to the seventh year of life, the human being is primarily an imitative being. But we must understand this in the fullest sense of the word. The human being enters the world and gives himself completely to his surroundings. In particular, he develops what he initially brings to light as his impulses of will and instinct in such a way that he imitates what is around him. Language, too, is initially learned in such a way that it is based on imitation. Between birth and the age of seven, the child is entirely an imitator. This must be taken into account. In such matters, one must be able to draw the right conclusions. If you associate with the world in these matters, people sometimes come to you for advice on one matter or another. For example, a father once told me that he had a complaint about his five-year-old child. “What did the five-year-old child do?” I asked. “He stole,” said the father sadly. “But then you have to first understand what theft actually is.” He told me that the child had not stolen out of ill will. He had taken money from his mother's drawer and bought sweets, but then distributed them to other children on the street. So it was not blind selfishness. What was it then? Well, the child had seen his mother take the money out of the drawer day after day. At the age of five, the child is an imitator. It did not steal, it simply imitated the things that its mother does day after day, because the child instinctively regards what its mother always does as the right thing to do. - This is just one example of all the subtle things one needs to know if one is to understand the art of education in a way that truly corresponds to the human being.

But we also know that children play at imitating. Basically, the play instinct is not something original, but an imitation of what is seen in the environment. If we look with unbiased eyes, we can see that imitation is at the root of play. But every child plays differently. The teacher of a small child before the age of seven must acquire a careful judgment about this, and one necessarily has to have an artistic sense to make such a judgment, because it is different for each child. Basically, each child plays in its own way. And the way a child plays, especially in the fourth, fifth, or sixth year, goes down into the depths of the soul as a force. The child grows older, and at first we do not notice how one or other of the special ways of playing comes to light in the child's later character traits. The child will develop other powers, other soul abilities; what was the special essence of his play slips into the hidden part of the soul. But it comes to light again later, and in a peculiar way, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, in the period of life when the human being has to find his way into the outer world, into the world of outer experience, of outer destinies. Some people adapt to this world skillfully, others awkwardly. Some people come to terms with the world in such a way that they derive a certain satisfaction from their own actions in relation to the world; others cannot intervene with their actions here or there, and they have a difficult fate.

You have to get to know the life of the whole person, you have to see how, in a mysterious way, the sense of play comes out again in this sense of life in the twenties. Then you will gain an artistically oriented idea of how to direct and guide the play instinct, so that you can give something to the person for a later period of life.

Today's pedagogy often suffers from abstract principles. By contrast, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims to give pedagogy an artistic-didactic sense, to work in the earliest youth in such a way that what is formed there is a dowry for the whole life of the human being. For anyone who wants to teach and educate children must get to know the whole of human life. The magnificent scientific development of the last few centuries has not taken this kind of knowledge of human nature into account. Consider the social significance of really being able to give children the kind of education I have described.

When the child has now changed its teeth, or at least has got them, the second epoch of the child's life begins. Then the actual school age sets in, that which one has to study particularly carefully if one wants to pursue pedagogy from the point of view of true human knowledge. While the child up to the age of seven is essentially an imitator, from the age of seven until sexual maturity, that is, from about the age of thirteen to sixteen, there develops (and this varies from individual to individual) what the unbiased observer recognizes as a natural urge to submit to an authority, a human authority, a teacher or educator. Today, it is a sad day when one hears from all sorts of political parties that some kind of democratic spirit should enter the school; that children should, to a certain extent, already practice a kind of self-government. With such things, which arise from all kinds of partisan views, one rebels against what human nature itself demands. Those who truly understand human nature know what it means for one's entire later life if, between the ages of seven and fifteen, one has been able to look up with devoted veneration to one or more human authorities; if one has called true that what these human authorities said was true; if one felt that what these human authorities felt was beautiful; if one found that what such revered personalities presented as good was also good. - Just as one imitates until the age of seven, so one wants to believe in what comes from authority until sexual maturity. This is the time when one must be open to the imponderable influences that can come from a soul, from a personality.

We founded the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Many people say they would like to attend the Waldorf School to get to know something of the method and so on of this Waldorf School. Imagine a copperplate engraving of the Sistine Madonna, and someone cuts a piece out of it to get an idea of the Sistine Madonna. That would be the same as perhaps looking at what happens in the Waldorf School for a fortnight or three weeks. You wouldn't even see anything special. Because what happens in the Waldorf School is a result of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Those who are teachers there have acquired their artistic pedagogy and didactics from the impulses of anthroposophical spiritual science. If you want to get to know the Waldorf school, you have to get to know anthroposophically oriented spiritual science above all. But not in the way one gets to know it from the outside, where people are led to believe that it is some kind of complicated, nebulous mysticism, some kind of sectarianism; no, one has to get to know this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the inside, how it draws from the full humanity what the human being really is as a sensual and supersensible being within the world and within time.

These things do, however, lead one to perceive the supersensible nature of the working of such an authoritative personality. Let me give an example. One could imagine a picture – and it is best to speak in pictures to children from seven to fourteen years of age, especially up to the age of ten. Let us take any picture by which we want to teach the child an idea, a feeling, about the immortality of the soul. One can think up this picture. But one can also point out to the child the butterfly pupa, how the butterfly crawls out of the pupa. And one says to the child: the human body is like the pupa. The butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. When a human being dies, the immortal soul leaves the body as the butterfly leaves the chrysalis. It passes over into the spiritual world. There is much to be gained from such a picture. But a real intuitive perception of the immortality of the soul can only be conveyed to a child under very definite conditions. If, for example, a teacher thinks, “I am clever, the child is stupid, it must first become clever” – and the teacher thinks something like this in order to make the child understand something – then the teacher may perhaps achieve something, but what really brings the child to a sense of immortality will certainly not be achieved. For only that which one oneself believes, in which one oneself is completely immersed, has an effect on the child. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives you the opportunity to say: I myself believe in this image; for me, this crawling out of the butterfly from the chrysalis is absolutely the one that I did not think up, but what nature itself presents at a lower level for the same fact that, at a higher level, is the emergence of the immortal soul from the body. If I myself believe in the picture, if I stand within the content of the picture, then my faith has the effect of awakening faith, imagination and feeling in the child. These things are absolutely imponderable.

What happens on the outside is not even as important as what takes place between the feelings of the teacher and those of the pupil. It matters whether I go into the school with noble thoughts or ignoble ones, and whether I believe that simply what I say is what has an effect. I will give what I say a nuance that does not affect the soul if I do not enter the classroom with noble thoughts and, above all, with thoughts that are true to what I am saying. - That, first of all, about the relationship between the pupil and the teacher in the second epoch of life from the seventh to the fifteenth year. There would be much more to say about this, but I will only highlight a few specific points so that you can get to know the whole spirit that inspires the pedagogy and didactics that flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Then we started at the Waldorf school with really bringing out what the child should learn. We are faced with very significant questions, especially when we take the child into primary school. We have to teach the child to read and write; but when it comes to what lives in the human being, writing, the printed word, has long since become something quite abstract within human civilization, something that has taken on the nature of a sign and is no longer intimately connected with the full, original, elementary soul life of the human being. The external history of civilization does provide some information about such things, although only to a limited extent. If we go back to the various cultures, we find pictographic writing, where, however, what was fixed externally was pictorially recorded, which is what was actually meant. In older cultures, writing had not been developed to the point of the mere sign being as abstract as it is today. In fact, when we teach reading and writing in the usual way, we introduce something to the child that is not initially related to his nature. Therefore, a pedagogy and didactics that is truly based on a full knowledge of the human being will not teach reading and writing as it is usually done. Instead, we start from the child's artistic nature in our method. We do not begin with reading at all, not even with writing in the usual sense of the word, but with a kind of painting-drawing, drawing-painting. We lead the child to learn to form letters not only from the head, but from the whole human being, bringing lines and forms, even in colored drawing, onto paper or some other surface; lines and forms that naturally emerge from the human organism. Then we gradually introduce what has been taken from the artistic into the letter forms, first through writing, and from writing we only then move on to reading. That is our ideal. It may be difficult to implement in the early days, but it is an ideal of a true didactics that follows from a full knowledge of the human being. And as in this case, the essence of human nature is the basis for all education and teaching.

We start, for example, from the child's musical and rhythmic abilities because these flow from human nature and because we know that a child who is properly stimulated in a musical way around the age of seven experiences a particular strengthening and hardening of the will through this musical instruction.

Now, we try to teach the child in pictorial form what is to be taught to the child, so that the child is not introduced too early into an intellectualized life. We also note that there is an important turning point between the ninth and tenth to eleventh year of the child's life. Anyone who can observe childhood in the right way knows that between the ages of nine and eleven, there is a point in a child's development that, depending on how it is recognized by the educator and teacher, can influence the fate, the inner and often also the outer destiny of the person in a favorable or unfavorable sense. Up to this point, the child does not isolate itself much from its surroundings, and it must be borne in mind that a plant described by a child before the age of nine must be described differently than afterwards. Before this time, the child identifies itself with everything around it; then it learns to distinguish; only then does the concept of the self actually arise – before that, it only had a sense of self. We must observe how the child behaves, how it begins to formulate certain questions differently from this point on. We must respond to this important point in time for each individual child, because it is crucial for the whole of the following life.

We must also be aware, for example, that subjects such as physics and the like, which are completely separate from the human being and only attain a certain perfection by excluding everything subjective from the formulation of their laws, may only be introduced to the child from the age of eleven or twelve. On the other hand, we teach our children the usual foreign languages in a practical way right from the beginning of primary school. We see how, by not teaching a foreign language by translation but by letting the child absorb the spirit of the other language, the child's entire soul structure is indeed broadened. This is how an artistic didactics and pedagogy is formed out of this spirit. I could go on talking here for another eight days about the design of such a pedagogy and didactics as art. But you can see how what comes from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science flows directly into the practical side of education.

And how does this apply to the individual teacher? It applies in such a way that he actually gets something different from this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science than can be obtained from the rest of today's scientific education. And here we touch on one of the most significant social issues of the present day.

The social question is said to be the fundamental question of our time, but it is usually understood only as an external economic question, not really grasped in its depth. This depth only comes to mind when one becomes aware of how, in the broad masses of today's proletariat, one word can be heard again and again. That word is ideology. What does the modern proletarian mean when he speaks of ideology, according to his Marxist instruction? He means: When we develop any ideas about custom, law, art, religion, it is not something real in itself, it is only an abstraction, it is only an unreal idea. Everything we have in this way is not reality, it is an ideology. Reality is only the external, material production processes.

From this fact one can sense the radical change that has taken place in human development in terms of world view and state of mind. Consider the basic tenet of ancient Oriental wisdom. Last time I spoke here, I said that we should not long for the past, but there are many things we can take from it for our own orientation. The ancient Oriental spoke of Maja. What did Maja mean in the ancient Orient? It meant everything that man can recognize in the external sense world. For reality was that which lived within him, which sprouted within as custom, religion, art, science. That was reality. What the eyes saw, what the ears heard, what one otherwise perceived, that was Maja. Today, in the Orient, only a decadent form of that which, from a certain point of view, can be characterized as I have just done, is present. Our broad masses of people have come to the opposite through Marxist guidance. One could say that the development of humanity has taken a complete turn. The external, the sensual, is the only reality, and that which is formed within, custom, religion, science, art, is Maya. Only one does not say Maya, but one says ideology. But if one were to translate Maja in a general sense, then one would have to translate it with ideology, and if one wanted to translate into the language of the old world view of the Orient what the modern proletarian means by ideology, then one would have to translate it with Maja, only that the application is the opposite.

I mention this because I want to show what an enormous turn human development has taken, how we in the West have in fact developed the final consequences of a world view that runs directly counter to what is still contained in the Orient in a decadent way. Those who are able to observe the conflicts of humanity from such depths know what potential for conflict exists between East and West today. Things appear differently in the various historical epochs; but however materialistic the striving of today's East may be, in a certain way it is the striving that was also present in ancient Buddhism and the like, which has now become decadent. And our Western culture has undergone a complete turnaround in relation to this. We have now arrived at a point where broad masses of people do not speak of the fact that spiritual reality fills them within, but that everything that fills them within is only Maya, ideology.

This is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives back to humanity: not just thoughts that can be seen as ideology, not just unrealities; but man is again filled with what he was filled with at that time, with the consciousness: Spirit lives in my thoughts. The spirit enters into me; not a dead, ideological spirit, but a living spirit lives in me. To lead people back to the direct experience of the living spirit is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to give. This is then what is incorporated into anthroposophical pedagogy and didactics. This is what should live in the teacher's dealings with the pupil.

But it is also that which is directly involved in dealing with the social question. Those people who talk about ideology today have gone through our schools. But we need a humanity that actually develops social impulses from the very depths of its being. This humanity must emerge from other schools. What has emerged from the schools we so admire has led to the social chaos we see today. We need a humanity that has been educated in such a way that the education corresponds to a real, comprehensive knowledge of the human being. This is what makes the question of education a universal social question. Either we will have to decide to see the question of education in this sense as a social question, or we will be blind to the great social demands of the present.

But we must sense what is necessary for the teacher, for the educator, in order to practise such an education, in order to allow knowledge of the human being to be transformed into a pedagogical-didactic art. We must sense that this is only possible if the teacher, the educator, does not need to follow any other norm than the norm that is within his or her own inner being. The teacher and educator must be answerable to the spirit that he experiences. This is only possible within the threefold social organism, in a free spiritual life. As long as the spiritual life is dependent on the economic life on the one hand and on the state life on the other, the teacher is in the thrall of the state or of economic life. You will find, when you study the connections, what this thrall consists of.

In truth, one can only establish a surrogate for a free school today. It was possible in Württemberg to establish the Waldorf School as a free school in which only the demands of the pedagogical art prevail, before socialism created the new school law.

If freedom is to prevail, then every teacher must be directly involved in the administration; then the most important part of spiritual life - like all spiritual life, in fact - must have its free self-government. One cannot imagine a spiritual life in which such free schools are common other than in such a way that from the teacher of the lowest elementary school class to the highest teacher, everything falls into corporations that are not subordinate to any state or economic authorities and that do not receive instructions from any side. What happens in the administration must be such that every teacher and instructor needs only so much time to teach or instruct that he still has so much time left to help administer. Not those who have retired or who have left the field of teaching and education, but those who are currently teaching and educating should also be the administrators. Hence the authority of the capable arises as a matter of course. Just try self-administration and you will find that because you need someone who can really achieve something, their authority will naturally assert itself. If the spiritual life administers itself, it will not be necessary to use this authority or the like. Just let this free spiritual life develop and you will see that because people need the capable, they will also find them.

I have only been able to sketch out the issues here, but you will have seen how a truly artistic approach to education requires a free spiritual life. We can see how it is necessary to first separate the free spiritual life from the entire social organism.

Just as Karl Marx or Proudhon or other bourgeois economists base what they want to base, so one does not base things of life experience, things of life practice. What is said in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question” or in other writings on the threefold social organism is based on decades of all-round observation of life, and is spoken and written from practice. Therefore, one cannot grasp it with lightly-draped concepts. I know exactly where one can easily start a logical critique. But what has just been taken from reality is as multifaceted as reality itself. And just as little as reality can be captured in lightly-draped logical concepts, so little can something that is supposed to fit reality be captured in such concepts. But anyone who has ever inwardly felt what it means to be in school, in class, in education, as it is necessary to do so through a true understanding of the developing human being, the child, has, in their feeling, in the whole experience, full proof that the spiritual life must be given its free administration. And all the objections do not apply, so that one simply raises them, but only so that one must eliminate them through reality.

Then people come and say: If spiritual life is to be based on free recognition, people will not send their children to school, so you cannot establish a free spiritual life. — That is not what someone who thinks realistically says. Above all, he feels the full necessity of liberating spiritual life. He says: spiritual life must be freed; it may perhaps have the disadvantage that some people do not want to send their children to school; then one must think of means to prevent this from happening. One must not treat this as an objection, but one must raise such a thing and then think about how it can be remedied. In many things that concern the full reality of life, we will have to learn to think like this.

They sense that a complete turnaround must occur, especially with regard to intellectual life – and public intellectual life is, after all, essentially provided in its most important parts through teaching and education. Those who are accustomed to working in today's intellectual life will not go along with these things. I know that certain teachers at secondary schools, when they were approached with the suggestion of moving towards self-management, said: I would rather be under the minister than manage with colleagues; it's not possible. I am less likely to be with my colleagues from the faculty than with the minister, who is outside.

Perhaps one will not exactly get the necessary impetus in this direction. But just as, with regard to the big questions of life today, it is not the producer but the consumer who is becoming more and more decisive, so one would like the consumers of the educational system to reflect on what is necessary in the teaching and educational system as the most important public part of intellectual life. These are, above all, people who have children. We have seen the impression that parents have gained from the end of the school year, from everything else that children have experienced during the school year at the Waldorf School. We have seen how, when these children come home, their parents have realized that a new social spirit is actually emerging that is of tremendous importance for the next generation — provided, of course, that the Waldorf School does not remain a small school in a corner of Stuttgart, but that this spirit, which prevails there, already becomes the spirit of the widest circles.

But it is not only parents who are interested in what goes on in schools and educational institutions. Basically, every person who is serious about human development has an interest in it. Every human being must care about the next generation. Those who think this way and who have a sense of how we need a spiritual renewal today, as I explained in the last lecture here in Utrecht, should become interested in this new education that can be achieved through the school system from the lowest to the highest levels.

At the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, we are trying to establish an educational institution in the highest sense of the word, based on this spirit. We still have a hard time of it today. We can give people renewal and inspiration in the individual specialized sciences; we can give them something like our autumn courses were, like our Easter courses will be. We can show them how, for example, medicine, but also all the other sciences of practical life, can receive through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science what is necessary for the present and especially for the near future.

But for the time being we can give nothing but spirit, and that is not yet highly valued today. Today, people still value the testimonies that we cannot yet give. We must fight for what is recognized as a necessity for the development of humanity and for the near future to become official. This can only come about if a mood develops in the widest international circles for what I would call a kind of world school association. Such a world school association need not limit itself to founding lower or higher schools, but should include all impulses that lead to something like what has been attempted in Dornach in a certain special way. Such a world school association would have to embrace all those people who have an interest in the forces of ascent entering into the developmental forces of humanity in the face of the terrible forces of descent that we have in humanity today. For such a world school association would not become a kind of federation from the impulses that are already there; it would not try to shape the world according to the old diplomatic or other methods. Such a union, such a world school association would try to form a world union of humanity out of the deepest human forces, out of the most spiritual human impulses. Such a union would therefore mean something that could really give a renewal of that life, which has shown its fragility so much in the terrible years of the second decade of the 20th century.

The people who are educated there will have the social impulses, and they will be the ones who can develop the right strength in the other areas of social life, in the area of an independent legal or state or political life and in the area of an independent economic life. Just as a free spiritual life can only be built on objectivity and expertise, and not on what comes to the fore through the majority, economic life can only be beneficial for humanity if it is separated from all majority rule, from all those areas in which people judge simply from their humanity, not from their knowledge of the subject or field. In economic life we need associations where people who belong to the sphere of consumption, people who belong to the sphere of production, and people who belong to the sphere of trade, join together. I have shown in my writings that these associations, by their very nature, will have a certain size. Such associations can truly provide that in economic life which I would call a collective judgment, just as it is true [on the other hand] that in spiritual life everything must come from the human personality. For through birth we bring with us our gifts from the spiritual world. Every time a human being is born, a message comes down from the spiritual world into the physical world. We have to take it in, we have to look at the human individuality; the teacher at the human individuality in the child, the whole social institution at the free spiritual life, in which the teacher is so situated that he can fully live out his individuality.

What can turn out to be a blessing for humanity in this free spiritual life would turn out to be a disaster in economic life. Therefore, we should not have any illusions. As much as we have to strive for a comprehensive and harmonious judgment through our individuality in spiritual life, we can do so much less in economic life. There we are only able to form a judgment together with the other people, to form a judgment in associations. One knows, by having worked, in a certain area, but what one knows there is one-sided under all circumstances. A judgment comes about only by not merely dealing theoretically with the others, but by having to supply a certain commodity to the other, to satisfy certain needs for the other, to conclude contracts. When the real interests face each other in contracts, then the real, expert judgments will form.

And what is basically the main thing in economic life is also formed from what works within the associations: the right price level. You can read all this in more detail in my books “The Key Points of the Social Question” and “In the Execution of the Threefold Order”, as well as in the journals. There is even a Dutch magazine about threefolding. There you can read about how a collective judgment must be sought in economic life. Since we have had a world economy instead of the old national economies in economic life, it has become necessary for the organization of economic life to be based on free economic points of view, for economic life to be lived out in associations that deal only with economic matters, but in such a way that majorities are not decisive anywhere, but rather expertise and professional competence are decisive everywhere. The result will be a division of labor. Those who have the necessary experience or other reasons will be in the right place. This will happen naturally in the associations, because we are not dealing with abstract definitions but with the activity of a contract. For example, if an article is being overproduced in a particular area, it must be ensured that people are employed in other ways; because where this is the case, the article becomes too cheap, and the one that is underproduced becomes too expensive. The price can only be set when a sufficient number of people are employed by associations in a particular area. If such a thing is to become real, it requires an intense interest in the entire economic life of humanity. It is a matter of developing, not merely as an empty phrase, what is called human brotherhood, but of bringing about this human fraternization in associations in the economic sphere.

Today I can only sketch out the main lines. The literature on threefolding already discusses the details. But what I want to suggest is only how spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy can practically take hold of life here as well.

And so, in the social organism, we have on the one hand the free spiritual life based on the human individuality; on the other, economic life based on associations that come together to form the global economy as a whole – without taking into account the political state borders, which today contradict economic interests. This may still be uncomfortable for some people to think, but it is what can bring about change from the chaotic conditions.

Between the two, the free spiritual life and the associative economic life, stands the actual political life, the actual state life, where majority decisions have their justification; where everything, including human work, comes up for negotiation, for which every mature person is competent. In the free life of the spirit, not every mature person is competent; here, majority decisions could only spoil everything, as they can in economic life. But there are, for example, the nature and measure of work, of human work; there are areas where every human being, when mature, is competent, where one person stands before another as an equal. This is the actual state-judicial, political area in the threefold social organism. This is what spiritual life is already pointing to most clearly today, but it can also be pursued in the other areas of social existence in accordance with the demands and necessities.

Threefold social organism: a free spiritual life, based on the full and free expression of the individual human personality; a legal or state life that is truly democratic, where people face each other as equals and where majorities decide, because only in this link of the social organism does it come to a decision on which every adult person is competent; an economic life that is built on associations, which in turn decides on the basis of factual and technical knowledge, where the contract applies, not the law.

There are people who say that this would destroy the unity of the social organism. For example, someone objected to me that the social organism is a unified whole and must remain so, otherwise everything would be torn apart. At that time I could only answer the objection: A rural family is also a unit. But if one claims that the state must also manage the economy and administer the schools, then one could also claim that a rural household, which is also a unit with master and mistress and maid and cow, because the whole is a unit, everyone should give milk, not just the cow. The unity would arise precisely from the fact that each one does the right thing in its place. The unity arises precisely from the fact that the three links arise. One should just not rush into a matter that is based on correct observation of those things that are pressing for transformation in contemporary social life, based on a partial or incomplete understanding.

Liberty, equality, fraternity – these are the three great ideals that resound from the 18th century. What human heart would not have felt deeply about the three ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Nevertheless, there were always clever people in the course of the 19th century who constructed a contradiction between freedom and equality: How could one be free if, after all, all people had to develop their abilities to the same extent and how that was also not true of fraternity? — Much clever and concise things have been said in favor of the contradictory nature of these three ideals. Nevertheless, we feel them and feel their justification. What is actually at issue here? Well, people have formed the three ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity out of the intense depths of the soul, and these are truly as justified as anything historical and human can be justified. But for the time being people remained under the suggestion of the unitary state. In the unified state, however, these three ideals contradict each other. Nevertheless, they must be realized. Their realization will lead to the tripartite social organism. If one realizes that this is something that can be started tomorrow, that it is thought out and formed out of practice, that it does not remotely have a utopian character like most social ideas, that it is thoroughly practical, if one realizes how the unity state today, out of itself, creates the necessity to divide itself into three parts: then one will also understand the historical and human significance of the three great ideals that have been resonating in humanity since the 18th century. Then we will say to ourselves: the threefold social organism is what first consolidates these three ideals, it is what gives these three ideals the possibility of life. In conclusion, let me express, as a summary of what I wanted to say today about the practical development of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, how it must come about in humanity: the threefold social organism, Spiritual life administered for itself, economic life administered for itself, and in the middle the state-legal-political life administered for itself. Then, in a genuine, true sense, humanity will be able to realize itself: freedom in spiritual life, equality in democratic state life, brotherhood in associatively shaped economic life.

Answering questions

Question: How can we differentiate in the spiritual-scientific field between human and animal blood? The I expresses itself in human blood, but not in animal blood?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the materialistic way of thinking, which had been in preparation since the middle of the 15th century, but which became particularly strong in the 19th century and developed into the 20th, has gradually caused the sense of it to die away, that the external expression [of a thing] is not decisive for the inner structure and for the whole context [in which it stands]. I have to refer to some of this, which of course I cannot explain in detail today. You can find it in the spiritual scientific literature, but I have to say a few words about the question.

We have to distinguish between the physical body, which can be seen with the eyes and which is also considered in ordinary science through anatomy and physiology, for example. We then distinguish the etheric or life body, which we become aware of when we observe something like the release of thinking during the change of teeth; this is how we get to know the life of the etheric body. We must not confuse this with the old, hypothetical life force; it has nothing to do with it. This is the result of direct observation. Then we learn to recognize what part of the soul governs this etheric body, what one can call the soul organism, and the actual I.

These four members, however, express themselves in turn in the physical. For example, the etheric body has a particular effect on the glandular system, the I has a particular effect on the blood system in humans. Now one can raise such a question as the one asked here, but one must first acquire something that I would like to make clear through the following comparison. Imagine someone were to say: a knife is just a knife, it is used to cut meat. You cannot say that. Nor can you say: man has red warm blood, animals have red warm blood – the expression for the I. Suppose someone finds a razor and uses it to cut meat because it is a knife. It is not a matter of how something is outwardly and materially formed, but how it fits into a whole context. For an animal, the red warm blood is the expression of the soul organism; for a human being, the same red blood is the expression of the I, just as the razor is a knife for shaving and the knife on the table is a knife for cutting meat. One should not ask: What is blood as blood? It can be an expression for this in one context and for something else in another context.

Question: Is it also possible in other countries to establish schools like the Waldorf School?

Rudolf Steiner: Whether such schools can be founded in other countries depends on the laws of the country concerned. I have already expressed myself appropriately with regard to the Waldorf School. I said: Before the new democratic, republican school constitution came into being, it was possible to found the Waldorf School. Recent developments have been such that we are gradually forfeiting one freedom after another. And if we in Central Europe were to arrive at Leninism, then the Central Europeans would also get to know what the grave of human freedom means. But it depends everywhere on the laws in question whether you can found schools like the Waldorf School. So it depends entirely on the individual state laws. You can try to go as far as possible. Recently, for example, I was asked to appoint teachers for a kind of initial school in another place, and I said that we would of course have to do a trial first. I initially appointed two very capable teachers for the first class, but they had not taken an exam, so that people could see whether they could implement such teachers. It is certainly not out of the question in a Waldorf school to employ teachers who have not taken the exam. For example, when I was recently asked by a teacher whether it would be possible to employ her even though she had not yet passed her exams, but was on the exam list, I said: That doesn't matter; you will also have the exam one day.

Now, the point is to work towards a real liberation of the spirit and of school life on a large scale. For this, something like a world school association is needed. It must become possible that the question of whether schools like the Waldorf School can be established in different countries will no longer arise, but that this possibility will be created everywhere through the power of conviction of a sufficiently large number of people. We also experienced the same in other areas, as is also beginning today in the area of education. Many people do not agree with conventional medicine, so they turn to those who want to go beyond conventional medicine – not in a quackish way, but in a thoroughly appropriate way. I even met a minister of a Central European state who trumpeted the monopoly of conventional medicine in his parliament with all his might, but then came himself and wanted help in a different way. This is the striving, on the one hand, to leave what the feeling actually wants to overcome, but to leave it and to achieve the other through all possible back doors. We have to get beyond that. We don't have to want to set up private schools, but we have to create the opportunity everywhere to set up a free school in the sense described today. If we do not have the courage to do this, then those who understand these things will not allow themselves to be used to establish private schools or to appoint teachers for them. A great movement should arise in which every person who reflects on the tasks of the time should become a member, so that through the power of such a world federation, what could lead to the creation of such schools everywhere.

But above all, in the case of such a world school association - please allow me to mention this only in passing, in parentheses - a certain idealism in humanity must disappear, I mean the kind that says: Oh, spiritual things, anthroposophy, that's so high, the material must not approach it; it would defile anthroposophy if the material were to approach it. This idealism, which is so idealistic that it uses all kinds of phrases to describe the spiritual and elevates it to heaven, to a cloud-cuckoo-land, while keeping a firm hand on the purse, does not go together with the reasoning of a world school association or the like. Here one must muster an idealism that does not disdain the purse in order to do something for the ideals of humanity. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must think its way into practical life, that is, not just into the clouds, but also into the stock market. There are also nooks and crannies there that belong to practical life. —- That is just a characteristic of what a right worldview is.

Question: Are there contradictions between anthroposophical spiritual science and Protestant Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: There is no need to construct contradictions. Two things must be distinguished: The Mystery of Golgotha is a fact: that a spiritual being from the supermundane worlds descended to earth and united with the man Jesus of Nazareth. This spiritual fact, which alone gives meaning to our earthly development, will be grasped in different ways by each age. Our age needs a new understanding of this fact. We can best grasp this fact if we learn to understand spiritual facts in general. Anyone who believes that some discovery, whether in the physical or spiritual realm, should somehow shake Christianity, thinks little of it. If the official representatives of Christianity, or rather of the traditional denominations, turn so fiercely against anthroposophy today, it only speaks against these official representatives, who do not really have true Christianity in mind, but the rule of their respective church. True Christianity has indeed grasped anthroposophical spiritual science, but only in a supersensible way, through supersensible knowledge. You can read more about this in my book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact' and in other writings.

Question: Does spiritual life have a kind of supremacy over the other two areas in the threefold social organism?

Rudolf Steiner: You can see in my book on “The Core Points of the Social Question” how capital is used in the threefold social organism. It enters into a kind of circulation, like blood in the human organism, and remains with the one who is best qualified to manage it and thus also manages it in the interest of the community. For this, however, spiritual life must constantly interact with the other limbs. This is the peculiar thing about such a natural structure of the social organism as the human organism. The human organism – and this is the result of thirty years of research for me – is tripartite by nature. Firstly, there is the nervous-sensory organism, which is mainly localized in the head; secondly, the rhythmic system, which is localized in the chest as breathing and blood circulation; and thirdly, the metabolic system, which is connected to the limbs. But these three limbs work together in such a way that, in a sense, the head is indeed leading, but in another sense, the other two limbs are leading as well. So one cannot say that something has supremacy, but precisely because of the way the three limbs are structured according to their essence, a harmonious wholeness will arise in the social organism. Question: Should children from seven to fourteen believe what the teacher says, or are they taught freely?

Rudolf Steiner: The nature of the human being demands what I have expressed in the lecture: a certain self-evident authority. This demand for a self-evident authority is based, in turn, on a certain development of human life as a whole. Certainly, no one can develop more feeling for the social rule of human freedom than I, who wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1892, which is intended to provide the foundations for a liberal, social human life. But still, if a person is to face life freely in the right way, he must develop a sense of authority within himself between the ages of seven and fifteen. If one does not learn to recognize others through this self-evident authority, then the later demand for freedom is something that leads precisely to the impossibility of life, not to true freedom. Just as man only comes to a true brotherhood if he is educated in the appropriate way, by being guided in the right way in his imitation in the childhood years until the seventh year, so the sense of authority is necessary if man is to become free. Everything that is said today about governing school communities in a republican form is only asserted out of party considerations. That would destroy human nature. I say this out of a thorough knowledge of the human being. Such a demand for a healthy, authoritative way of teaching between the ages of seven and fifteen must be made. Only objectivity can be considered. Buzzwords should not be the deciding factor. It is precisely those who stand on the ground of freedom who must demand an authoritative education for this age group.

Dear attendees! From a sensitive, unprejudiced assessment of present events, I believe it will be quite natural today to talk about the coming day.

If I may refer to what I took the liberty of saying here the day before yesterday, it may perhaps be said that such descriptions, as given here, of the spiritual state of present-day civilized humanity express very much an evening mood. The results of the development of humanity over the last three to four centuries up to the present had to be described, and it had to be described how, despite the enormous progress and triumphs in the most diverse areas of life – which, as has been emphasized, are also present – the horrific events of the last four to five years have befallen humanity. It is not only possible that these terrible events have befallen humanity, but it has also become possible that today we are in a certain way faced with perplexity, with the question: What should happen? Yes, in many respects we have to admit: If we continue to build only on the results of the emerging developmental forces for our knowledge and our will, then we would have to reckon with hopelessness. There is something of a twilight mood. And this twilight mood suggests that we also speak, so to speak, from the other side of the matter: from the dawn, to speak of the coming day.

But when one speaks today of the coming day, it seems that one thing is not allowed: simply to look at the events as they have unfolded, as they have developed up to the present moment, in order to derive from them reasons for any things that one need only hope for. From the perplexity of the present, few reasons for such hopes can be found. Therefore, anyone who wants to speak of the coming day must start from something other than a description of the possible effects of past events, from a description of what could arise from the general cultural and civilizational conditions and which man can only observe.

No, my dear audience, anyone who wants to speak today of the coming day must speak of what man must do to hasten the coming of that day. Merely pointing to some fate lying outside of humanity will not awaken any hopes today. Attention must be called to man himself, to his possibilities of action, to that which can ignite the deed in him, so that he may be the one who, however the world may be aflame, can bring about the coming day. But the cause for this is not only an observation of the perplexity and hopelessness of the fate of the outer world; it is also caused by a somewhat deeper consideration of the historical development of humanity itself – the historical development of humanity, which one must then, however, consider from the point of view of the spiritual science meant here. Most people today are accustomed, when the historical development of man is mentioned, to follow it only, I might say, by the thread of cause and effect, as if everything that occurs in the subsequent period could be explained by the preceding events, which one then calls causes.

This is no more the case in the historical development of humanity than it is in the case of the individual human being. We cannot possibly be satisfied with a pursuit of human individual development in such a way that we say: Now, we look at the person when he is thirty years old, and we explain what he presents to us as a thirty-year-old as a consequence of what he was as a twenty-nine-year-old, as a twenty-eight-year-old, as a twenty-seven-year-old. Such an explanation would be superficial and abstract, and would not be able to do justice to the real essence of the human being. For if we want to grasp the real essence of the individual human being, then we must look at the individual epochs of his development. We must be clear about how the human being, when he is a child, is subject to certain laws of development, which initially apply until the period when the teeth change. Then we must realize how, after this change of teeth, something lawful takes place in the whole human organism, something that arises from the inner being and cannot be explained by simply tracing the outer facts of human development in about the ninth year back to the outer facts of human development in the fifth or sixth year. Again, we must look at the time when human sexual maturity occurs, at the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Then something arises again from the depths of the human being that must be called upon for help if one is to arrive at an understanding of the human being as a whole. And so it is in the following epochs of the development of the individual human being, even if the changes in human nature are less distinct for these following epochs, but still quite clearly evident to the discerning person.

And just as it is with the development of the individual human being, so it is with the historical development, the historical evolution of all mankind. For its understanding it is not enough to explain the subsequent from the previous, as has become customary. It must be realized that great upheavals also occur in the historical development of humanity, that epochs occur in which laws of development emerge from the depths of humanity, so that the essential way in which this humanity expresses itself changes from that in the previous age.

If we now look at what, I would say, has been working its way up for three to four centuries from below the surface of what was described the day before yesterday – for it initially only wants to work its way up from the depths of the human being – then we have to say that everything, absolutely everything, tends towards and aims at the individual members of humanity developing to full consciousness, to full consciousness in all areas of life. For the student of historical development who does not merely consider external history, as it is taught today, which is basically only a fable convenante, but who delves into the inner workings of human development — as one must delve into the inner being of the individual must enter into the inner life of the individual if we want to understand him. For such a person, the first germ of this new way of being human begins to show up in the 15th century, to grasp in full consciousness what surrounds us in the world. However, there is a fact in the development of humanity that masks, covers up what I have just characterized. From the old epochs, developmental forces always remained behind, which, as a conservative element, intervene in the entire development of humanity – forces that continue to have an effect and that actually not only push into the background what wants to develop from a part of the human being as the actual task of the epoch, but also, so to speak, fight it. And so from the preceding epoch, extending beyond the 15th century into our own age, there remains what I would call unconsciousness in all fields, first and foremost in the field of intellectual life itself.

So strong has this unconsciousness remained in the field of intellectual life that today we have broad intellectual currents that see in the unconscious that which is the deeper, more essential part of the human being. In America, for example, we see the rise of the spiritual movement associated with the name William James, which, in various forms, has many followers precisely among Europe's intellectuals. This spiritual movement says: only part of what man holds in his soul comes fully to his consciousness. From the subconscious, all that is the content of artistic creation rises up; from the unconscious, even ideas rise up, which are then only subjected to the judgment of science. From the subconscious, all that inspires man religiously also rises.

That which spreads as an educated spiritual current, sometimes taking on grotesque forms, as for example in psychoanalysis, has its counter-image in something else. How often do we not still hear today that someone is well-meaning with regard to a supersensible, spiritual world, which he presupposes, but his good opinion comes to an end the moment spiritual science appears, which, with full awareness, wants to penetrate the spiritual world by looking at the signs of the time. A well-meaning person like this often says: There must be something beyond what can be consciously absorbed into the soul from nature and from people. But then he is glad when he can say: That which exists in this way is an unknown, is something that cannot be investigated; it is something that does not enter into full human consciousness. Artists are almost frightened, even afraid, of raising the impulses of their artistry into consciousness. They fear that in so doing they would lose their most elementary powers, their naivete, which they consider necessary for artistic creation. And there are some who do not want to make that which can be brought to full consciousness the driving force of social life, because they would like to point to something unconscious and unknown that should assert itself in the interaction between people. Man should draw the impulses for his social behavior from the unconscious, and that would be destroyed in a certain way if it were raised to full consciousness, as if the dew that refreshes it were taken away.

So in a certain way one offers the unconscious, the unknown, in the most diverse forms, as one does today in enlightened circles. And it is only to be expected that the spiritual science referred to here should be repeatedly criticized for presuming to make definite statements about the spiritual world and its contents, instead of merely pointing to an unknown supersensible realm that lies beyond the bounds of humanity. Instead, it is content to point to spiritual life out of a certain general feeling, out of the most primitive human nature. This belief, which today refuses to listen to the signs of the times, which rejects the specific content of spiritual life that spiritual science strives for, this belief is only the remaining residue of what used to prevail in human development as the unconscious. But what is this unconscious? It was different in earlier epochs of human development than it can be today. This unconscious was an elementary, living force in earlier epochs of human development. The further back we go in this development of humanity, the more we find, as it rises in man - though not by the path of consciousness, which must be ours today, but by the path of unconscious vision - not only the contents of his spiritual life, but also that by which he makes sense of the nature around him.

Just look, dear audience, at the last outposts of this ancient looking of humanity out of the unconscious, and you will find the magnificent myths, the magnificent mythologies, through which the earlier man enlightened himself about himself and the surrounding nature out of his unconscious. We find the source of artistic creation rising from this unconsciousness. And if we really want to educate ourselves and not just educate ourselves according to conventional prejudices, we also find evidence that early man sought the impulses for his social will and social behavior in the circle of his fellow human beings, emerging from the unconscious. Even if not everything, a good part of what connects people socially from the unconscious does lie in human language – in this human language through which we become sister and brother to the other person in whose vicinity we live. We acquire this human language in earliest childhood, at the time when we are still dreaming ourselves into life, when there can be no question of full consciousness. What does that which is born out of the child's life-dream carry into later life?

We are influenced by the genius of language. This language gives us a great deal. It connects us socially with our fellow human beings, but what permeates this language, acting as a social driving force, is hidden in earliest childhood; it is born not out of consciousness but out of the unconscious. And so we can say: the old social life has arisen in many cases out of the unconscious. The unconscious has given the human being something quite different from what it gives him today, up to the time that has occurred for the whole development of humanity around the 15th century. But just as the developmental forces of the individual human being that lie before his or her sexual maturity cannot be present in the same way in man after sexual maturity, and just as completely different abilities and forces must come to the fore, so in human development, in this present age, consciousness must take the place of the earlier unconsciousness. But the element that I had to draw attention to the day before yesterday, which permeates our present civilization, the phrase, is what intensively prevents full consciousness from developing out of the depths of the human being. What used to permeate the human being in all its liveliness from the unconscious is no longer alive today; it has been killed to the point of being a mere phrase.

And I had to point out the day before yesterday that the glorious scientific world view has not found the possibility to educate man about anything other than the non-human, about what is present in inanimate nature. I had to point this out, because anyone who comprehended all the knowledge that science gives him would be at a loss when faced with the question: What is man actually? The science that is still in use today does not provide any information on this question. Why is that? That is because this science has not yet been born out of full consciousness, but that this science, despite its glorious successes, is the continuation of what came to people from very different sources than today's in the age of unconsciousness. Therefore, we see this science in a strange position.

Recently, I came across a brochure about general social concepts and ideas that was by no means worthless. I would like to make it clear that it contains many valuable ideas. But at the end there is something that is extremely characteristic of such a consideration as the one today. It says that the author has considered social conditions purely scientifically, that is, as the scientific customs of the present demand. But because he wants to be scientific, he cannot draw any conclusions from his scientific ideas for moral, artistic, political or cultural life, because science does not have the task of drawing any conclusions for these different branches of life. Whether what he describes in purely scientific terms - so the author believes - whether it heals ulcers or destroys suns, is of no concern to science - that is not what matters to science.

Do we not see, when we consider the expression of such an attitude – which, however, is not an isolated one, but is actually typical of what is often called “science” or “scientific knowledge” today – do we not see how we are confronted with the continuation of a certain asceticism of life that only fails to recognize itself as a continuation. Do we not see there again that asceticism of life which in earlier centuries was connected with a certain disdain for the outer life, which has withdrawn into the human soul, which is unconcerned with what is going on in the outer world of ethical, moral, or social facts, but looks only at the affairs of the soul's interior? This ascetic striving has taken on other forms, but it reappears in this scientific attitude – in this scientific attitude, which, in its kind, is admirably strict and conscientious in its methodology, but which sees its greatness precisely in the fact that it admits: I have nothing to offer from my own resources as an impulse or stimulus for the moral, artistic, political or cultural life. Against this mood, which, however, does not only occur in scientific life but, because scientific life dominates education today, is spreading to all of our public life, against this mood, what wants to present itself here as spiritual science is the most profound protest. At the moment when the great questions for the future arose out of the sad circumstances of our present civilization, it was only natural that an inner vision of social life, of the progress of social life, should arise out of what spiritual science, what real spiritual science, as it is meant here, kindles within the human being. It is not by the whim or arbitrariness of individual personalities that the impulse of the threefold social organism has been added to what has been advocated here for decades as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science – it has arisen as a matter of course. It has turned out that one had to feel that it was inwardly untrue and dishonest of the one who, with his soul, purports to strive for this spiritual science and has no heart for the social question that is shaking and convulsing all of humanity, or at least should be shaking and convulsing it.

I might also mention the other areas of life, but I will mention only this one more thing: in our building in Dornach we have created something that does not rely on any old architectural style, but that deals with the forms of building and the artistic down to the last detail, arising out of the forces that arise out of our spiritual knowledge, out of our spiritual vision. This spiritual science, as it is meant here, protests against the idea that what is effective as art should be left in the unconscious and not raised into the consciousness. Just as spiritual science itself wants to enter the spiritual worlds with full consciousness, so it also wants to bring out of the spiritual worlds that which can lead to new architectural styles, to new artistic creation, here and now. Since spiritual science wants to behold the spirit itself, to which the human being is related in his innermost being, it encounters this innermost human being in such a way that it comes to the core of humanity - where moral will sprouts, where moral will arises. Spiritual science cannot say that it does not concern itself with what takes place in the moral will, but it can claim that by permeating itself with knowledge of the breadth and depth of the human soul, it simultaneously gives birth to the moral impulses from which the human being shapes his will and his actions. This spiritual science cannot say that it is not important to it to do something to heal ulcers or to prevent the suns from going out. It must say that it is important to it that, out of its knowledge, people draw strength to act in a healing way wherever the course of world events has harmful effects. It is important to it to present something that can be a sun for people and that can contribute to the beneficial forces in the development of humanity. Participation and co-action, co-will and co-intention in the whole course of human historical, social development, that is what this spiritual science strives for, not as an abstract goal, but what arises for it through its own nature and essence. It cannot appear otherwise than by continuing in full consciousness that which arose out of unconsciousness in a certain way in an earlier humanity.

From this unconsciousness, in earlier times, one had a very definite perception of the progress of human development. That was that the evolution of humanity, of all humanity, if left to itself, would continually degenerate, would continually be seized by harmfulness, would continually incline towards a kind of dying, would continually fall ill. But there was also an awareness that if man intervenes in this development of humanity, he will become the healer of illnesses and damage by relying on precisely that which, out of the nature of the unconscious, enlightens him. In the times of the unconscious development of humanity, all knowledge, all insight, was felt to be a healing force of human culture, because one did not stop at wanting something in just one corner and not participating in the outer cultural process – on the contrary, one wanted to participate in this cultural process precisely as a healer.

And the word that comes to us from Greek knowledge, characterizing one of the deepest artistic creations, the tragedy, the word “catharsis”, that comes to us from Greek culture and wants to say what the effect of the tragedy is actually based on. This is the basis of this effect: to create images of passions in people, so that these passions can be healed emotionally in the face of the tragic action of the tragedy. The fact that this expression “catharsis” resounds from Greek culture as the dominant element in tragedy suggests to us how the artistic in the Greek way of life, which is so close to life, was also regarded as a healing process of life. For “catharsis” is a word - we can only translate it with the abstract word “cleansing” - which is also used for that phenomenon that leads to a crisis in a person during an illness; and when this crisis leads to the elimination of the harmful, then healing occurs. From the individual human healing process, the Greeks derived the task for tragedy. They did not imagine art to be separate from the rest of culture; they conceived of it as being fully within it.

This is how the humanities, which have been discussed here for a long time and which, in the face of the perplexity that has arisen from the glorious science of modern times in other fields, must now stand as the most serious spiritual challenge of the coming day, want to be in life, in the living will and action. However, in order for it to be recognized as such, many a harsh prejudice still has to be dispelled. As long as people believe that serious science is only that which describes what can be seen through the microscope and telescope, what is stated in the physics cabinet, what happens in clinics, as long as this prejudice will be brought to this spiritual science. But when it is recognized that nothing can be learned about the innermost nature of man himself through all that can be investigated in this external way, however valuable it may be for mankind in other respects, then man will be driven by an inner urge to this spiritual knowledge because he cannot help it if he wants to gain enlightenment about himself. Just as we pay attention to what is stated in the physics cabinet and in the clinics today, we will pay attention to what the spiritual researcher does in his soul by strengthening his thinking to such an extent that this strengthened thinking is no longer dependent on the body, as is ordinary thinking, but makes itself independent of the body.

What most people still sneer at today, what they regard as fantasy, will in the future be seen as a strictly exact method that takes place entirely within the soul itself. It will be recognized that through the so-called meditative life - but now not through the old, mystical meditative life, which only alienates man from the world, but through the inwardly active meditative life - thinking can be strengthened in this way, especially when the strict willpower described in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” is added. Then one is indeed dealing with thinking of which one knows: You are thinking, but you no longer use your brain to help you in your thinking, which has now become a purely spiritual-soul process. - Then one ascends to supersensible knowledge through this inner strengthening of thinking. And just as, from a certain point in time, what was seen through the magnification of the microscope was recognized, so too will it be recognized through the strengthening of thinking and the acknowledgment of the results of research from the supersensible that nature, in which we live, cannot be fully understood through our intellectual soul content, through intellectualism.

This is something that still sounds paradoxical to people today, but which, when the serious demands of the coming day are recognized, will no longer sound paradoxical. For it will be recognized that nature is inwardly infinitely richer in its effectiveness than that which can be grasped by natural laws, which only the human mind can derive from experiment. From our own human inclination, we might say that only that which the human mind can grasp with an intellectual judgment can be seen as something experienced inwardly. But if we want to stop at that, if we want to accept only that as natural law — and everything we are taught today as natural laws is only obtained in this intellectualistic way through experimentation — then we must renounce the real knowledge of nature. For what use is it to keep declaiming: “Clear is only that which comes from the judgment of the intellect, from the intellectualistic judgment” – if all that is the essence of nature cannot be grasped through these natural laws. Nature is such that it does not surrender to natural laws, but only to the images that we recognize in the imaginative when we strengthen our thinking so that it becomes independent of the body and we make it the content of our soul.

However, what is presented in this way as the actual driving force and core of spiritual scientific research, it is not enough to recognize it theoretically. It is not enough to be interested in the results, in the ideas and thoughts of this kind of world view, for the sake of one's own inner soul egoism, but it is necessary that the inner attitude and human soul disposition that can follow from such a view can follow from such a vision, must penetrate our entire public and social life just as the horrors of the last four to five years have gradually - but in preparation - penetrated the merely scientific, intellectualistic way of thinking.

We must begin with the schooling of the human being. This schooling of the human being must finally break with what is still regarded as one of the main purposes of all schooling: that this schooling is dependent on, and supervised by, the state. The state authorities, having the task of organizing the state, will always want to shape the goals of the school system in such a way that the human being becomes an instrument within the state organization. In the future, it will not be a matter of preparing the human being for this or that, but rather of developing in oneself the sense of observing through looking at the spiritual and soul life of the human being, what wants to develop as a spiritual being through the human being's corporeality from the earliest childhood on. It will be essential that the school be founded solely and exclusively on the requirements of spiritual life itself, from the lowest to the highest level.

Today, our public circumstances are such that one can only attempt to implement such an education system in isolated cases, as has been done here under the aegis of Mr. Molt with the Waldorf School. In the Waldorf School, the principle is assumed from the outset that something hidden within the human being is working its way out from childhood on, but that this can be observed through spiritual insight as it develops from week to week, from year to year. The teaching method is designed to help the human being become a whole human being, to develop in the human being from the earliest childhood those powers that will then endure throughout life, that make it possible for the human being at the latest age to bring out of himself what has been developed in him. In many ways, this must be approached differently from the way in which the aims of education have been viewed, due to scientific and materialistic prejudice, especially in recent times. Above all, it must be based on the awareness that If I bring forth from a person everything that is latent in him, he will later integrate himself into social life in such a way that he will make the institutions, not, as is the case today, be made by the institutions, so that he will become only a machine in his occupation, an imprint of the being that his occupation imprints on him. The human being of the future, who is to be

this school is to be aimed at, must stamp his seal on all outer life, but outer life must not stamp its seal on him. When this is stated, it may at first glance seem to be one of those phrases that are often used today to describe educational goals. But they remain empty phrases, like so much of modern life, if they are not linked to the real spiritual insight. This must first be driven out of the depths of the human soul through a strengthening of the thinking, through a self-discipline of the will, until the method of supersensible seeing is attained.

It is an earnest demand of the coming day that, alongside of what is investigated outwardly in laboratories and clinics, there should also be recognized that which can be found through strict inner soul-searching as the revelation of one's own true and real human nature, which at the same time is the supersensible, eternal nature of man. And it is a failure to recognize the signs of the times when religious prejudices dismiss such striving in such a way that what man wants to bring forth out of man's own power is belittled. It is a serious matter that especially from some religious quarters it is repeatedly said that it is a mistake or dangerous when man wants to develop inwardly so that he comes to the contemplation of the supersensible; this supersensible one should accept out of instinctive faith given to the simplest mind. - That sounds very nice to many because it accommodates man's inner egoistic comfort. And it sounds burdensome to many when spiritual science appears to speak about the individual facts of the supersensible world in the same way that external natural science speaks about the external-sensory facts of life. It is burdensome when the claim is made to describe the individual with which the human being is connected as a spiritual-soul being in the same way as one describes this external, sensual world. Out of a very vague feeling, people want to grasp everything possible as “the divine” in the twinkling of an eye; they do not want to embark on the laborious inner path of conquering this divine within themselves. But by not wanting to engage in the laborious process of conquering this divine within himself, by wanting to hold on to it in the abstract of a feeling, the human being will increasingly distance himself from real life. What he will express about nature will be powerless to intervene in social life, in political life, in cultus, even in the moral life. In the end, it will even be powerless to maintain religion itself, because in the present age man is accustomed to striving for the concrete, because man is accustomed to watching natural science cognitively and not merely believing. The education he acquires there will also apply its powers to this area. If man is not given this spiritual science, if he is not told of this spiritual vision, if it is opposed, then he will lose the old traditional religious beliefs that come from the age of unconsciousness. His soul will become desolate. Those religious beliefs that today stand in the way of a living grasp of the spiritual world are the ones that work against the true religiousness of humanity.

And this realization itself is an earnest spiritual demand of the coming day. It is quite out of date to say, as they do today, that religion must arise from the darkest depths of the human soul, that it must remain in the realm of the unconscious, and must not aspire to full consciousness. What I have described to you today as a characteristic of true spiritual striving in this field is intended to reveal how humanity must strive for a conscious experience of the spiritual world. This conscious experience of the spiritual world cannot be achieved for public life other than by making all spiritual striving independent and thus mainly by training all human spiritual forces that are independent of the state-legal forces, that are independent of all economic powers – one can read about this in my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question'. A spiritual life that is self-contained, that works purely from what the innermost soul says about the human spirit, that is independent of all authorities, such a spiritual life alone will awaken in humanity an awareness of the spirit. Man needs this consciousness in order to become aware of the connection between his own spirit within and the spirit that encompasses the whole world. Thus, in the field of knowledge, mankind has actually recognized the necessity of finding the transition from the old unconscious demands to the newer, ever more conscious and aware demands, which must arise ever stronger and stronger.

But in other areas of life, too, serious demands of the coming day arise. If we consider a second area of human life, public human life – that area that arises from the coexistence of person to person, as it develops in the mature adult, as it develops at the same time as a support for the growing up childhood and youth, which is to grow into the following age - when we consider this life and look at earlier epochs of human development, this too goes back to the unconscious; but this life also demands the transition into consciousness.

From what did all right develop? From what has all that developed that has, so to speak, crystallized in state legislation, in legal systems? I can only briefly hint at it here. It has developed from that which arose in older times, in the times of unconscious human development, from the habit that human being developed in relation to human being. Unconsciously, the human being developed a way of looking up to another human being; from this a behavior arose. Unconsciously, man has developed a feeling through the fact that the other person has behaved towards him in a certain way. From this, habits of right and wrong have arisen. Out of unconsciousness, custom and right have arisen. In this area, too, what only had its justification in the age of unconsciousness has survived into the age of consciousness. Into the age of consciousness, clinging to remnants of the old habits has been preserved. Until today, little has been shown of a transition to a different view of the legal and political system, of a transition to the view that, in full consciousness, grasps what the relationship between human beings is in the outer, social life. Just as in pure knowledge the transition from unconsciousness to consciousness must be achieved, so too in the sphere of legal or state life this transition from unconsciousness to consciousness must be found. This must be born out of what man experiences as he inwardly gets to know the spirit through spiritual insight. Out of this knowledge of the supersensible must come the way in which man stands in relation to man in the legal and political order of the social order. Out of man's consciousness of the supersensible must come the earthly consciousness — the consciousness that By standing as a human being and facing another human being, we are both not only what stands as a human body opposite the human body; we are both the bearers of a spiritual-soul. A spiritual-soul is exchanged with a spiritual-soul. This cannot be acquired as soul content through theoretical contemplation. It can only arise as soul content if it is enlivened from earliest childhood by a schooling that links everything natural to the spiritual, that also permeates everything natural from the spiritual. When a person is inwardly grounded in the truth of the spiritual with his innermost feeling, then he will also develop in his dealings with other people those feelings that place him as a spiritual being in relation to another spiritual being. Then, in the state-legal order, he will initially see a result of people's behavior, but he will recognize in it, as a deeper meaning, that which permeates all of humanity as a supersensible reality. Because the remnants of the unconscious from ancient times still extend into our time in this area, what used to be fully animated by the unconscious in people's sense of right and wrong, their sense of state, has been transformed into a mere convention. The convention must in turn absorb into itself that which is living, that which can work elementarily from person to person. But this can only happen if man finds a soil in which - independently of all other human life - only that which develops from human soul to human soul as right takes place. But because the old unconscious, which in a certain respect was justified for our past epoch, has been preserved into our epoch, it has lost its meaning. Right has been preserved according to the outward wording, the outward custom; the inner meaning has been lost. It could therefore not be exercised out of the inner life of the soul; it could only be exercised out of physical power.

And so we see how today, still half unconscious at first, the appeal rises from humanity – but an appeal that today is raised too much from the phrase, that must be stripped of the phrase and clothed with reality – the appeal rises to replace what exists merely under the influence of external power commands with a real right, to transform it into a real right. What lives as power in our external institutions on the legal or state level has come about simply because what previously arose from the unconscious has held on without meaning, so that it cannot now be held on to from the human soul, but is held on to by external power. It must transform itself - on a path that can only be found in the transition from unconscious feeling from person to person to conscious feeling of the individual human being for the real spiritual-soul nature of the other human being.

And just as knowledge developed in the epoch of unconsciousness, just as what was custom and what was right developed out of the elementary, out of what could not be counted among the known and manageable, so too did the customs and rules of conduct for outer life develop. They have developed through man's adaptation to his dealings, through his dealings with external things, through trial and error, through scratching, scraping, grinding in external life; in other words, this is how the skills of economic life have developed. These skills of economic life have developed out of the unconscious. And in the age in which the old, unconscious residue has remained, which has not filled with new, inner soul experience what used to be filled with the soul-unconscious in the treatment of the external world by man, that has become empty, that has become mere routine. But the spirit must seize the human being. The supersensible must enter into consciousness, then the human being will in turn permeate the economic world with what fires him from within. Then he will give meaning to the outer world again. Then he will not do the job, he will do the job. Then it will also be necessary that the human being is not simply placed in some profession and has to adapt to it, but it will be necessary that he is educated out of the demands and forces of human nature. He will place himself in the structure of economic life, in which there will be manageable associations, associations between people of the same and similar professions or related professions, and between those who produce and those who consume. Such associations will attain only such a size that the whole circumstances in them can be overseen by human power, that these overseeable associations can stand in free intercourse of economic exchange with others. There that will develop, what is won in economic life from contemplation, from experience. There it will be impossible - because the

— people are united in manageable associations, it will be impossible for one to offer the other anything that the other does not know about its origin and provenance. In such a case it will be possible to build on what has been formed by the power of the organizations and associations. Then one will know with whom one is dealing, because one will see how the individual comes into being through the economic and social context in associations. Then the spirit will truly prevail in economic life instead of the unspiritual. Thus it may be said that through the associations, and as people get to know each other commercially and economically through these associations, consciousness also enters into economic life. In this way, simply by being part of these associations, conscious economic life will develop.

The transition from unconsciousness to consciousness: this is what people must take hold of in the individual, narrowly defined circles of public, external life, and what people must take hold of on a large scale. We see how the unconscious is working today in one area of the great life of the world. But one could also ask: How few see it there?

We have seen how, under the influence of the events of the last four to five years, a world coalition has risen up against Central Europe, and how the sad events of these years have highlighted the hegemony of the English-speaking population over the earth. And in this respect, humanity still has much to experience. For those who can look at these matters with an unprejudiced mind, a very bitter future lies ahead. If one is able to look straight at the great world events, one must also ask the question from this point of view: What is the character of the public political life of the power that today, as the English-speaking power, is striving for world domination? What is the fundamental character of Anglo-American policy in particular? It is hardly ever stated. This policy is followed almost everywhere in the world today, and it is hardly ever stated. We see how certain phenomena recur again and again in this policy, but we cannot characterize these phenomena correctly. One could have listened to how, in the last third of the 19th century, people in England who were familiar with what was actually being striven for there basically predicted, for example, the fate of today's European East, and predicted, for example, that a great world war would have to come. But this policy has been acted upon under the influence of these impulses.

This is what is so little understood. But it is what must be understood if one is at all to proceed to a practical shaping of life, if one is to gain a practical position in today's public life. But then one must also ask: does this English policy not proceed in such a way that it often seems to take steps forward, then withdraw them again, and so on? We can follow this in English policy towards Egypt and Russia to this day, when we see how Lloyd George behaved a few months ago, how he is behaving today, how he takes steps forward and then withdraws them again. But what is the meaning of all this? One specific goal is to do with the national egoism of the English-speaking population of the earth. This goal is contained in it, as in the earlier epochs of human development, man set himself goals out of the unconscious. Then, in the external, for example in economic life, he began to experiment, to adapt to his surroundings.

If we look at the English political ideal of world domination, which was born out of the unconscious, and observe these steps forward and back, observe what is tried and done in detail, then we find the only really correct description for politics: it has its great goals out of the unconscious, and in relation to the individual actions it is experimental politics. It is so strongly experimental politics, trial politics, politics determined from unconscious goals, that one should not be discouraged if one or the other does not succeed. One then tries another way. One has the unconscious goals, and in consciousness one experiments, one tries, and if one does not get far enough in one way, one tries to get far enough in the other way. In the realm of the great cosmic being and cosmic activity, we have the emergence of the unconscious, which merely tries and experiments. This, too, must be overcome by the demands of the coming day.

Here, my dear audience, you see through and recognize that what is happening today as the main thing in the world, I would like to say, thank God, is not the coming day, but is the dusk of the evening. But the real coming day will arise out of the demand that can only arise out of an inner development of the human soul itself. This development aims to raise to consciousness that which previously ruled in humanity as the unconscious, and rightly so. However, this development must go right to the most intimate, innermost powers of the human soul.

You have been told today that leaflets were distributed after my last lecture. These leaflets contain all sorts of things. Among other things, they reheat the old myth that this spiritual science is an outlook that mocks Christianity and, above all, mocks Christ Himself. Well, my dear audience, that which has come into the evolution of mankind on earth through Christ Jesus is a fact – a fact that is part of the whole evolution of mankind. Each successive age in which humanity progresses must grasp this fact anew in its own way. He is weak-minded who believes that he can only stand on Christian ground if he can accept only the old conceptions and rejects that which arises from a new stage of development of the life of the human soul as a perception of Christianity.

Such people, who condemn precisely what spiritual science has to say about the Christ and about the mystery of Golgotha, do not follow the beautiful Pauline saying: Not I, but the Christ in me. Spiritual science is clear about the fact that the Christ is drawn into this earthly development from transcendental heights and that He is so connected with this earthly development that the human being of today cannot live from passive hope into the coming day, but that he must develop in his own inner being the power as a human being that will bring about this coming day. But because the power of Christ has entered into human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, the one who unites with this power of Christ will not merely have the Christ as the “Saviour of sinful man”, passively counting on his Redeemer. They will be able to say in truth: Not I, but the Christ in me — but the Christ not only as the Redeemer of sins, but the Christ as the inspirer and awakener of all the powers that will be able to emerge in the period to come as the powers of human progress. And those who believe that they have to rebel against something like this out of their beliefs perhaps misunderstand the very serious demands of the coming day, because they understand nothing of the real meaning of this Pauline word. “The Christ in me” is not merely something passively believed, but an active force that moves me forward as a human being. Not I, but the Christ in me – so says spiritual science. But the others, who fight against this spiritual science, they do not say at all: Not I, but the Christ in me – but they say: Not I, but the old opinions that I want to have about the Christ in me. – They do not say: The Christ in me, but: my old accustomed opinions in me; my old accustomed ideas about the Christ in me. — The correct understanding of St. Paul's words, that is what will fulfill a most serious demand of Christian progress.

In this way I have tried to characterize for you today some of the demands of the coming day, and I believe that I may conclude these serious reflections by saying: If humanity is to draw strength from the spirit, then there must also come from the spiritual a new grasp of the true, the genuine Christian essence. And that is truly not the last, not the least serious demand of the coming day.

When I attempted to bring before you the Greek ideal of education, it was with the object that this ideal should stimulate ideas which ought to prevail in our modern system of education. For at the present stage of human life it is, of course, impossible to adopt the same educational methods as the Greeks. In spite of this, however, an all-embracing truth in regard to education can be learned from the Greek ideal, and this we will now-consider.

Up to the seventh year of life, the Greek child was brought up at home. Public education was not concerned with children under the age of seven. They were brought up at home, where the women lived in seclusion, apart from the ordinary pursuits of social life, which were an affair of the men. This in itself is the reinforcement of a truth of education, without knowledge of which one cannot really educate or teach, for the seventh year of life marks an all-important stage of childhood.

The main phenomenon characteristic of the seventh year of human life is the change of teeth. This is an event to which far too little importance is attached nowadays. For think of it, the nature of the human organism is such that it brings the first teeth with it as an inheritance, or, rather, it brings with it the force to produce these first teeth which are discarded at the seventh year. It is incorrect to imagine that the force which pushes up the second teeth at about the seventh year unfolds for the first time at this age. It is developing slowly from birth onwards, and simply reaches its culmination at about the seventh year of life. Then it brings forth the second teeth from the totality of force in the human organization. This event is of the most extraordinary importance in the course of human life as a whole, because it does not occur again. The forces present between birth and the seventh year reach their culmination with the appearance of the second teeth, and they do not act again within the entire course of earthly life. Now this fact should be properly understood, but it can only be understood by an unprejudiced observation of other processes that are being enacted in the human being at about this seventh year of life Up to the seventh year the human being grows and develops according to Nature-principles, as it were. The Nature-forces of growth, the being of soul and the spiritual functions have not yet separated from one another in the child's organization; they form a unity up to the seventh year. While the human being is developing his organs, his nervous system and his blood circulation, this development betokens the evolution of his soul and spirit. The human being is provided with the strong inner impulsive force which brings forth the second teeth because everything in this period of life is still interwoven. With the coming of the second teeth, this impelling force weakens. It withdraws somewhat; it does not work so strongly from out of the inner being. Why is this? Now suppose new teeth were to appear every seven years. (I will take an extreme illustration for the sake of clarity.) If the same organic forces which we bear within us up to the seventh year, if this unity formed of body, soul and spirit were to continue through the whole of life, new teeth would appear approximately every seven years! The old teeth would fall out and be replaced by new ones, but throughout our whole life we should remain children as we are up to the seventh year. We should not unfold the life of soul and spirit that is separated off from the Nature-life. The fact that the physical force decreases in the seventh year and the bodily pressure and impulses to a certain extent grow less—for the body now produces more delicate forces from itself—makes it possible for the subtler forces of soul life to develop. The body grows weaker, the soul stronger, as it were.

A similar process also takes place at puberty, in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. The element of soul now weakens to a certain extent and the spiritual functions make their appearance. So that if we take the course of the first three life-periods: up till the seventh year man is pre-eminently a being of body-soul-spirit in one, from the seventh to the fourteenth years he is a being of body-soul with a separate nature of soul and spirit, and from puberty onwards he is a threefold being, a physical being, a being of soul and a being of spirit.

This truth opens up deep vistas into the whole evolution of the human being. Indeed, without knowledge of it we really ought not to venture upon the education of children. For unless we realise the far-reaching consequences of this truth, all education must necessarily be more or less a dilettante affair.

The Greek—and this is the amazing thing—knew of this truth. To the Greek, it was an irrevocable law that when a boy had reached his seventh year he must be taken away from his parents' house, from the mere Nature-principles, the elementary necessities of upbringing. This knowledge was so deeply rooted in the Greeks that we do well to remind ourselves of it to-day. Later on, in the Middle Ages, traces of this all-important principle of education still existed.

The modern age of rationalism and intellectualism has forgotten all these things, and, indeed, even takes pride in showing that it places no value on such truths, for the child is usually required to go to school at an earlier age, before the end of the seventh year. We may say, indeed, this departure from such eternal principles of human evolution is typical of the chaos obtaining in our modern system of education. We must rise out of this chaos. The Greek placed so high a value on this truth that he based all education upon it. For all that I described yesterday was carried out in order to ground education upon this same truth.

What did the Greek see in the little child from birth to the time of the change of teeth? A being sent down to earth from spiritual heights! He saw in man a being who had lived in a spiritual world before earthly life. And as he observed the child he tried to discover whether its body was rightly expressing the divine life or pre-earthly existence. It was of importance for the Greek that in the child up to the seventh year he should recognize that a physical body is here enclosing a spiritual being who has descended. There was a terribly barbaric custom in certain regions of Greece to expose and thus kill the child who was instinctively believed to be only a sheath, and not expressing a true spiritual being in its physical nature; this was the outcome of rigid regard to the thought that the physical human being in the first seven years of life is the vesture of a divine-spiritual being.

Now when the child passes its seventh year—and this, too, was known in Greece—it descends a second stage lower. During the first seven years the child is released from the heavens, still bearing its own inherited sheaths, which are laid aside at the seventh year, for not only the first teeth but the whole body is cast off every seven years—cast off for the first time, that is to say, in the seventh year. In the first seven years of life the bodily sheaths revealed to the Greek what the forces of pre-earthly life had made out of the child. The child was thought to bear its earthly sheaths proper, its first earthly sheaths, only from about the seventh to the fourteenth years onwards.

I am trying now to express these things as they were conceived of by the highest type of Greek. He thought to himself: I reverence the Divine in the little child, hence there is no need to concern myself with it in the first seven years of life. It can grow up in the family in which the Gods have placed it. Supersensible forces from pre-earthly life are still working in it. When the seventh year is reached it behoves man himself to become responsible for the development of these forces. What must man do, then, when he knows how to pay true reverence to the Divine in the human being? What must he do as regards education? He must develop to the highest extent the human faculties that have unfolded in the child up to the seventh year. The Divine power, the way in which the spiritual expresses itself in the body—this must be developed to the greatest possible extent. Thus the Gymnast had perforce to be convinced of the necessity to understand the Divine power in the human body and to develop it in the body. The same healing, life-sustaining forces which the child possesses from pre-earthly existence, and which have been fostered in an elementary way up to the change of teeth—these must be preserved from the seventh to the fourteenth year by human insight, by human art. Further education must then proceed wholly in accordance with Nature. And so all education was ‘gymnastic’ because the divine education of the human being was seen as a ‘gymnastic.’ Man must continue the ‘divine gymnastic’ by means of education.

This was more or less the attitude of the Greek to the child. He said to himself: If through my intuition I am able to preserve in freshness and health the forces of growth which have developed in the child up to the seventh year, then I am educating in the very best way; I am enabling the forces which are there by nature up to the seventh year to remain throughout the whole of earthly life, right up to death. To see that the “child” in the human being was not lost till death—this was the great and far-reaching maxim of Greek education. The Greek teacher thought: I must see to it that these forces between the seventh and fourteenth years—the forces of childhood—remain living throughout the whole of his earthly life, right up to death. A far-reaching and deeply significant principle of education! And all gymnastic exercises were based on the perception that the forces present up to the seventh year have in no way disappeared, but are merely slumbering within the human being and must be awakened from day to day. To waken the slumbering forces between the seventh and the fourteenth years, to draw forth from the human being in this second period of life what was there by nature in the first period—this constituted Greek gymnastic education. The very glory of his culture and civilization arose from the fact that the Greek, by a right education, was at pains to preserve the ‘child’ in the human being right up to death. And when we wonder at the ‘glory that was Greece,’ we must ask ourselves: Can we imitate this ideal? We cannot, for it rests upon three factors, without which it is unthinkable.

These three factors must be remembered by the modern educationalist when he looks back to Greece. The first thing to remember is the following:—These principles of education were only applied to a small portion of mankind, to a higher class, and they presuppose the existence of slavery. Without slavery it would not have been possible to educate a small class of mankind in this way. For in order to educate thus, part of man's work on the earth fell to the lot of those who were left to their elemental human destiny, without education in the true Greek sense. Greek civilization and Greek education are alike unthinkable without the existence of slavery. And so the delight of those who look back with inner satisfaction on what Greece accomplished in the evolutionary history of mankind is tempered with the tragic realization that it was achieved at the cost of slavery. That is one factor.

The second factor is that of the whole position of woman in Greek social life. The women lived a life withdrawn from the direct impulses at the root of Greek civilization, and it was this secluded life that alone made it possible for the child to be left, up to the seventh year, to the care of the home influences, which were thereby given full scope. Without any actual knowledge, but merely out of human instincts, the child was led on by the elemental forces of growth to the time of the change of teeth. One may say it was necessary that the child's life up to this point, should, despite its different nature, proceed just as unconsciously in the wider environment of the family, detached from the mother's body, as when the embryonic life had proceeded through the forces of Nature. This was the second factor.

The third is really a paradox to modern man, but he must, none the less, grow to understand it. The second point—the position of women in Greece—is easier to understand, for we know from a superficial observation of modern life that between the Greek age and our own time women have sought to take their share in social life. This is a result of what took place during the Middle Ages. And if we still wanted to be as Greek as the Greeks were, with the interest in conscious education confined exclusively to men, I wonder how small this audience would be if it were only made up of the men who were allowed to concern themselves with education!

The third factor lies deeper down, and its nature makes it difficult for modern civilization to acknowledge that we have to attain our spiritual life by human effort, by work. Anyone who observes the spiritual activities of civilized life will be obliged to admit that as regards the most important domain of civilized life, we must count upon what we shall achieve in the future by effort. Observing all the human effort which has to be spent on the attainment of a spiritual life in present-day civilization, we look with some astonishment at the spiritual life of the ancient Greeks and especially of the ancient Orientals. For this spiritual life actually existed. A truth such as that of the part played in human life by the seventh year, a truth which modern man simply does not realise, was deeply rooted in Greece. (Outer symptoms indicate its significance but modern culture is very far from understanding it.) It was one of the mighty truths that flowed through ancient spiritual life. And we stand in wonder before this spiritual life when we learn to know what wisdom, what spiritual knowledge was once possessed by man.

If, without being confused by modern naturalistic and materialistic prejudices, we go back to early civilization, we find, at the beginning of historical life a universal, penetrating wisdom according to which man directed his life. It was not an acquired wisdom, but it flowed to mankind through revelation, through a kind of inspiration. And it is this that modern civilization will not acknowledge. It will not recognize that a primal wisdom was bestowed spiritually upon man, and that he evolved it in such a way that, for instance, even in Greece, care was still taken to preserve the ‘child’ in man until the time of earthly death. Now this revelation of primeval wisdom is no more to be found—a fact deeply connected with the whole evolution of man. Part of man's progress consists in the fact that the primal wisdom no longer comes to him without activity on his part but that he must attain to wisdom through his own efforts. This is connected in an inner sense with the growth of the impulse of human freedom which is at present in its strongest phase. The progress of humanity does not ascend, as is readily imagined, in a straight line from one stage to another. What man has to attain from out of his own being in the present age, he has to attain at the cost of losing revelation from without, revelation which locked within itself the deepest of all wisdom.

The loss of primeval wisdom, the necessity to attain wisdom by man's own labours, this is related to the third factor in Greek education. Thus we may say: Greek education may fill us with admiration but it cannot be dissociated from these three factors •; ancient slavery, the ancient position of woman, and the ancient relationship of spiritual wisdom to spiritual life. None of the three exist to-day nor would they now be considered worthy of true human existence. We are living at a time when the following question arises: How ought we to educate, realizing as we do that these three a priori conditions have been swept away by human progress? We must therefore observe the signs of the times if we desire to discover the true impulse for our modern education from inner depths.

***

The whole of the so-called mediaeval development of man which followed the civilization of Greece and has indeed come right down to modern times, proved by its very nature that in regard to education and methods of teaching, different paths had to be struck from those of Greece, which were so well-fitted to that earlier age. The nature of man had, indeed, changed. The efficacy and reliability of Greek education were an outcome of the fact that it was based upon ‘habit’—upon that which can be built into the very structure of the human body.

Up to the change of teeth in the seventh year, the development of man's being is inwardly connected with the body. The development of the bodily functions, however, proceeds as though unconsciously. Indeed it is only when the faculties work unconsciously that they are right; they are reliable only when what I have to do is implanted into the dexterity of my hands and is accomplished of itself, without need for further reflection.

When practice has become habit, then I have achieved securely what I have to achieve through my body. The real aim of Greek life was to make the whole earthly existence of man a matter of ‘habit’ in this sense. From his education onwards until his death, all man's actions were to become habitual, so habitual that it should be impossible to leave them off. For when education is based on such a principle as this, the forces which are natural to the child up to the change of teeth, up to the seventh year, can be maintained; the child forces can be maintained until earthly life ends with death.

Now what happened when through historical circumstances new peoples pouring over from the East to the West founded a new civilization during the Middle Ages, and established themselves in Middle Europe and in the West, even in America? These peoples assimilated the qualities natural to the Southern regions but their coming brought quite different habits of life to mankind. What was the result of this? It set up the conditions for a totally different kind of development, a development of the individual. In this time, for example, men came to the conscious realization that slavery ought not to be; to the realization that women must be respected. At this time it also became apparent as regards the evolution of the individual, in the period between the seventh and fourteenth year, when development is no longer of a purely bodily nature but when the soul is to a certain degree emancipated from the body that the child in this period was not now susceptible of being treated as in earlier times. In effect, the conservation of the forces of early childhood in the boy between the ages of seven and fourteen that had been practised hitherto was no longer possible.

This is the most significant phenomenon of the Middle Ages and right up to modern times so far as this second period of life is concerned. And only now for the first time do we see the powerful forces of revolt which belong to the period when the fourteenth and fifteenth years have been passed, the period during which human nature rises up most strongly in revolt, when indeed it bears within itself the forces of revolt.

How did this revolt in human nature express itself? The old primeval wisdom which flowed down naturally to the Greeks came to be in Roman and Mediaeval tradition something that was only preserved through books, through writing. Indeed it was only believed on the authority of tradition. The concept of Faith as it developed during the Middle Ages did not exist in very ancient civilizations, nor even in the culture of the Greeks. It would have been nonsense in those times. The concept of Faith only arose when the primeval wisdom no longer flowed directly into man, but was merely preserved. This still applies fundamentally to the greater part of humanity to-day. Everything of a spiritual, super-sensible nature is tradition. It is ‘believed,’ it is no longer immediate and actual. Nature and the perception of Nature this is an actuality, but all that refers to the super-sensible, to super-sensible life, is tradition. Since the Middle Ages man has given himself up to this kind of tradition, thinking at times it is true that he does in fact experience these things. But the truth is that direct spiritual knowledge and revelation came to be preserved in written form, living from generation to generation as a heritage merely on the authority of tradition. This was the outer aspect. And what of the inner aspect? Let us now look back once again to Greece. In Greece, faculties of soul developed as of themselves because the whole human being acquired habits of life whereby the ‘child’ was preserved in man till death. Music proceeded from the breathing and blood circulation, intellect from gymnastic. Without being cultivated, a marvellous memory evolved in the Greeks as a result of the development of the habits of the body. We in our age have no longer any idea of the kind of memory that arose, even among the Greeks, without being cultivated in any way, and in the ancient East this was even more significant. The body was nurtured, habits formed, and then the memory arose from the body itself. A marvellous memory was the outcome of a right culture of the body.

A living proof of the fact that we have no conception of the kind of memory possessed by the Greeks, a memory which made it so easy for the spiritual treasures to be handed down and become a common good, is the fact that shorthand writers have to attend when lectures are given which people want to remember! This would have seemed absurd in Greek civilization, for why should one wish to keep that which one has manifestly thrown away? It was all preserved truly in the memory, by the proficiency of the body. The soul developed itself out of this bodily proficiency. And because of this self-development she stood in contrast to that which had arisen from revelation—the primeval wisdom. And this primal spiritual wisdom disappeared, grew to be mere tradition. It had to be carried from generation to generation by the priesthood who preserved the traditions. And inwardly man was forced to begin to cultivate a faculty which the Greek never thought of as a necessity. In education during the Middle Ages it became more and more, necessary to cultivate the memory. The memory absorbed what had been preserved by tradition.

Thus, historical tradition outwardly and remembrance and memory inwardly, had to be cultivated by education. Memory was the first soul quality to be cultivated when the emancipation of the soul had taken place. And those who know what importance was attached to the memory in schools only a short while ago can form an opinion of how rigidly this cultivation of the memory—which was the result of an historical necessity—has been preserved.

And so through the whole of the Middle Ages education tosses like a ship that cannot balance itself in a storm, for the soul of man is the most hard of access. To the body man can gain access; he can come to terms with the spirit, but the soul is so bound up with the individuality of man that it is the most inaccessible of all.

Whether a man found the inner path to the authorities who preserved the tradition for him, whether his piety was great enough to enable him to receive the words in which the mediaeval priest-teacher inculcated the tradition into humanity, all this was an affair of the individual soul. And to cultivate the memory, without doing violence to another man's individuality, this needs a fine tact. What was necessary for the soul-culture of the Middle Ages was as much heeded by tactful men as it was ignored by the tactless. And mediaeval education swung between that which nourished the human soul and that which harmed it in its deepest being. Although men do not perceive it, very much from this mediaeval education has been preserved on into the present age.

Education during the Middle Ages assumed this character because, in the first place, the soul no longer wished to preserve the ‘child;’ for the soul itself was to be educated. And on account of the conditions of the times the soul could only be educated through tradition and memory. Between the seventh and the fourteenth years the human being is, as it were, in a certain state of flux. But the soul does not work in the same condition of security as is afforded by the bodily constitution up to the seventh year and the direction imparted by the spirit has not yet come into being. Everything is of a very intimate character, calling for piety and delicacy.

All this brought it about that for a long period of human evolution education entered upon an uncertain and indefinite course in which, while tradition and memory had to be cultivated, there were extraordinary difficulties. To-day we are living at a time when, as a result of the natural course of development, man desires a firm foundation in place of the insecurity obtaining in the Middle Ages. And this search for other foundations expresses itself in the innumerable efforts towards educational reform in our time. It is out of recognition of this fact that Waldorf School education has arisen. Waldorf School education is based upon this question: How shall we educate in a time when the revolt in the soul between the seventh and fourteenth years of life against the conservation of ‘childhood’ is still going on? How shall we educate now that man, in addition to that, has in the modern age lost even the old mediaeval connection with tradition? Outwardly man has lost his faith in tradition. Inwardly he strives to be a free being, one who at every moment shall confront life unhampered. He does not wish to stand on a memory foundation all his life long. Such is modern man, who now desires to be inwardly free of tradition and of memory. And however much certain portions of our humanity to-day would like to preserve ancient customs, this is not possible. The very existence of the many efforts for educational reform indicates that a great question is facing us. It was impossible in the Middle Ages to educate in the Greek way, and in our times education can no longer be based on tradition and memory. We have to educate in accordance with the immediate moment of life in which man enters upon earthly existence, when he, as a free being, has to make his decision out of the given factors of the moment. How, then, must we educate free human beings? That is the question which now confronts us for the first time.

***

As the hour is getting late, I will bring these thoughts to a conclusion in a few words and postpone until tomorrow's lecture the consideration of the methods of education that are necessary at the present day.

In Greek education, the Gymnast must be recognized as one who preserved the forces of childhood on into the second period of life between the seventh and the fourteenth or fifteenth years. The ‘child’ must be preserved, so said the Greeks. The forces of childhood must remain in the human being up to the time of earthly death; these forces must be conserved. It was the task of the Greek educator, the Gymnast, to develop the fundamental nature, the inherited fundamental nature of the child in his charge, on into the period between the seventh and the fourteenth years of life. It was his task to understand these forces out of his spiritual wisdom and to conserve them. Evolution in the Middle Ages went beyond this, and, as a result, our present age developed. Only now does the position of a modern man within the social order become a matter of consciousness. This fact of conscious life can only come into being after the age of puberty has been reached, after the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Then there appears in the human being something which I shall have repeatedly to describe in the following lectures as the consciousness of inner freedom in the being of man. Then, indeed, man ‘comes to himself.’ And if, as it sometimes happens to-day, human beings believe themselves to have reached this consciousness before the fourteenth or fifteenth years, before the age of puberty, this is only an aping of later life. It is not a fundamental fact. It was this fundamental fact, which appears after the age of puberty, that the Greek purposely sought to avoid in the development of the individual man. The intensity with which he invoked Nature, the child, into human existence, darkened and obscured full experience of this glimpse of consciousness after puberty. The human being passed in dimmed consciousness through this imprisoned ‘Nature,’ this reality. The historical course of human evolution, however, is such that this is no longer possible. This conscious urge would burst forth with elemental, volcanic force after the age of puberty if attempts were made to hold it back.

During what we call the elementary school age, that is to say, between the seventh and fourteenth years, the Greek had to take into consideration the earliest Nature-life of the child. We in our day have to take account of what follows puberty, of that which will be experienced after puberty in full human consciousness by the boy or girl. We may no longer suppress this into a dreamlike obscurity as did the Greeks, even the highest type of Greek, even Plato and Aristotle, who, in consequence, accepted slavery as a self-evident necessity. Because education was of such a kind that it obscured this all-important phenomenon of human life after puberty, the Greek was able to preserve the forces of early childhood into the period of life between the seventh and fourteenth years.

We must be prophets of future humanity if we would educate in the right way. The Greek could rely upon instinct, for his task was to conserve the foundations laid by Nature. We, as educationalists, must be able to develop intuitions. We must anticipate all human qualities if we would become true educators, true teachers. For the essential thing in our education will be to give the child, between its seventh and fourteenth years something which, when the consciousness characteristic of the human being has set in, it can so remember that with inner satisfaction and assent it looks back upon that which we have implanted within its being. We educate in the wrong way to-day if, later on, when the child has gone out into life, it can no longer look back on us and say, “Yes!”

Thus there must arise teachers with intuition, teachers who enter once again upon the path along which the spiritual world and spiritual life can be attained by man, who can give the child between the seventh and fourteenth years all those things to which it can look back in later life with satisfaction. The Greek teacher was a preserver. He said: All that lived within the child in earlier life slumbers within him after the seventh year, and this I must awaken. Of what nature must our education be to enable us to implant in the age of childhood that which later on will awaken of itself in the free human being? We have to lead an education into the future. This makes it necessary that in our present epoch the whole situation of education must be different from what it was in the past. In Greece, education arose as the result of a surrender to the facts of Nature. It was a fact of Nature which, as it were, played into human life, but as a result of the whole of life up to our time, it has worked itself cut of its natural foundations.

As teachers in schools, this is what we must realize: We must offer to the child before us something to which it may be able to cry “Yes!” when in later life it awakens to independent consciousness. The child must not only love us during schooldays, but afterwards too, finding this love for us justified by mature judgment. Otherwise education is only a half-education—therefore weak and ineffective. When we are conscious of this we shall realize to what a great extent education and instruction from being a fact of Nature that plays into the human being must also become a moral fact.

This is the deep inner struggle waged by those who from their innermost being have some understanding of the form which education must assume. They feel this, and it is expressed in the question: How can we ourselves transform education for the free human being into a free act in the very highest sense, that is to say, into a moral act? How can education become out and out a moral concern of mankind? This is the great problem before us to-day, and it must be solved if the most praiseworthy efforts towards educational reform are to be rightly directed on into the future.

My dear friends! You have come together this Christmas, some of you from distant places, to work in the Goetheanum on some matters in the field of spiritual science. At the outset of our considerations I would like to extend to you—especially the friends who have come from afar—our heartiest Christmas greetings. What I myself, occupied as I am with the most manifold tasks, will be able to offer you at this particular time can only be indications in one or another direction. Such indications as will be offered in my lectures, and in those of others, will, we hope, result in a harmony of feeling and thinking among those gathered together here in the Goetheanum. It is also my hope that those friends who are associated with the Goetheanum and more or less permanently residing here will warmly welcome those who have come from elsewhere. Through our working, thinking and feeling together, there will develop what must be the very soul of all endeavors at the Goetheanum; namely, our perceiving and working out of the spiritual life and essence of the world.

If this ideal increasingly becomes a reality, if the efforts of individuals interested in the anthroposophical world conception flow together in true social cooperation, in mutual give and take, then there will emerge what is intended to emerge at the Goetheanum. In this spirit, I extend the heartiest welcome to those friends who have come here from afar as well as to those residing more permanently in Dornach.

The indication that I shall try to give in this lecture course will not at first sight appear to be related to the thought and feeling of Christmas, yet inwardly, I believe, they are so related. In all that is to be achieved at the Goetheanum, we are striving toward the birth of something new, toward knowledge of the spirit, toward a feeling consecrated to the spirit, toward a will sustained by the spirit. This is in a sense the birth of a super-sensible spiritual element and, in a very real way, symbolizes the Christmas thought, the birth of that spiritual Being who produced a renewal of all human evolution upon earth. Therefore, our present studies are, after all, imbued with the character of a Christmas study.

Our aim in these lectures is to establish the moment in history when the scientific mode of thinking entered mankind's development. This does not conflict with what I have just said. If you remember what I described many years ago in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age,¹ you will perceive my conviction that beneath the external trappings of scientific conceptions one can see the first beginnings of a new spirituality. My opinion, based on objective study, is that the scientific path taken by modern humanity was, if rightly understood, not erroneous but entirely proper. Moreover, if regarded in the right way, it bears within itself the seed of a new perception and a new spiritual activity of will. It is from this point of view that I would like to give these lectures. They will not aim at any kind of opposition to science. The aim and intent is instead to discover the seeds of spiritual life in the highly productive modern methods of scientific research. On many occasions I have pointed this out in various way. In lectures given at various times on various areas of natural scientific thinking,² I have given details of the path that I want to characterize in broader outline during the present lectures.

If we want to acquaint ourselves with the real meaning of scientific research in recent times and the mode of thinking that can and does underlie it, we must go back several centuries into the past. The essence of scientific thinking is easily misunderstood, if we look only at the immediate present. The actual nature of scientific research cannot be understood unless its development is traced through several centuries. We must go back to a point in time that I have often described as very significant in modern evolution; namely, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At that time, an altogether different form of thinking, which was still active through the Middle Ages, was supplanted by the dawn of the present-day mode of thought. As we look back into this dawn of the modern age, in which many memories of the past were still alive, we encounter a man in whom we can see, as it were, the whole transition from an earlier to a later form of thinking. He is Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus,³ (Nicholas of Cusa) a renowned churchman and one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He was born in 1401, the son of a boatman and vinegrower in the Rhine country of Western Germany, and died in 1464, a persecuted ecclesiastic.⁴ Though he may have understood himself quite well, Cusanus was a person who is in some respects extremely difficult for a modern student to comprehend.

Cusanus received his early education in the community that has been called “The Brethren of the Common Life.”⁵ There he absorbed his earliest impressions, which were of a peculiar kind. It is clear that Nicholas already possessed a certain amount of ambition as a boy, but this was tempered by an extraordinary gift for comprehending the needs of the social life of his time. In the community of the Brethren of the Common Life, persons were gathered together who were dissatisfied with the church institutions and with the monastic and religious orders that, though within the church, were to some degree in opposition to it.

In a manner of speaking, the Brethren of the Common Life were mystical revolutionaries. They wanted to attain what they regarded as their ideal purely by intensification of a life spent in peace and human brotherhood. They rejected any rulership based on power, such as was found in a most objectionable form in the official church at that time. They did not want to become estranged from the world as were members of monastic orders. They stressed physical cleanliness; they insisted that each one should faithfully and diligently perform his duty in external life and in his profession. They did not want to withdraw from the world. In a life devoted to genuine work they only wanted to withdraw from time to time into the depths of their souls. Alongside the external reality of life, which they acknowledged fully in a practical sense, they wanted to discover the depths and inwardness of religious and spiritual feeling. Theirs was a community that above all else cultivated human qualities in an atmosphere where a certain intimacy with God and contemplation of the spirit might abide. It was in this community—at Deventer in Holland—that Cusanus was educated. The majority of the members were people who, in rather narrow circles, fulfilled their duties, and sought in their quiet chambers for God and the spiritual world.

Cusanus, on the other hand, was by nature disposed to be active in outer life and, through the strength of will springing from his knowledge, to involve himself in organizing social life. Thus Cusanus soon felt impelled to leave the intimacy of life in the brotherhood and enter the outer world. At first, he accomplished this by studying jurisprudence. It must be borne in mind, however, that at that time—the early Fifteenth Century—the various sciences were less specialized and had many more points of contact than was the case later on.

So for a while Cusanus practiced law. His was an era, however, in which chaotic factors extended into all spheres of social life. He therefore soon wearied of his law practice and had himself ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He always put his whole heart into whatever he did, and so he now became a true priest of the Papal church. He worked in this capacity in the various clerical posts assigned to him, and he was particularly active at the Council of Basle (1431–1449).⁶ There he headed a minority whose ultimate aim it was to uphold the absolute power of the Holy See.⁷ The majority, consisting for the most part of bishops and cardinals from the West, were striving after a more democratic form, so to speak, of church administration. The pope, they thought, should be subordinated to the councils. This led to a schism in the Council. Those who followed Cusanus moved the seat of the Council to the South; the others remained in Basle and set up an anti-pope.⁸ Cusanus remained firm in his defense of an absolute papacy. With a little insight it is easy to imagine the feelings that impelled Cusanus to take this stand. He must have felt that whatever emerged from a majority could at best lead only to a somewhat sublimated form of the same chaos already existing in his day. What he wanted was a firm hand that would bring about law and order, though he did want firmness permeated with insight. When he was sent to Middle Europe later on, he made good this desire by upholding consolidation of the Papal church.⁹ He was therefore, as a matter of course, destined to become a cardinal of the Papal church of that time.

As I said earlier, Nicholas probably understood himself quite well, but a latter-day observer finds him hard to understand. This becomes particularly evident when we see this defender of absolute papal power traveling from place to place and—if the words he then spoke are taken at face value—fanatically upholding the papistical Christianity of the West against the impending danger of a Turkish invasion.¹⁰ On the one hand, Cusanus (who in all likelihood had already been made a cardinal by that time) spoke in flaming words against the infidels. In vehement terms he summoned Europe to unite in resistance to the Turkish threat from Asia. On the other hand, if we study a book that Cusanus probably composed¹¹ in the very midst of his inflammatory campaigns against the Turks, we find something strange. In the first place, Cusanus preaches in the most rousing manner against the imminent danger posed by the Turks, inciting all good men to defend themselves against this peril and thus save European civilization. But then Cusanus sits down at his desk and writes a treatise on how Christians and Jews, pagans and Moslems—provided they are rightly understood—can be brought to peaceful cooperation, to the worship and recognition of the one universal God; how in Christians, Jews, Moslems and heathens there dwells a common element that need only be discovered to create peace among mankind. Thus the most conciliatory sentiments in regard to religions and denominations flow from this man's quiet private chamber, while he publicly calls for war in the most fanatical words.

This is what makes it hard to understand a man like Nicholas Cusanus. Only real insight that age can make him comprehensible but he must be viewed in the context of the inner spiritual development of his time. No criticism is intended. We only want to see the external side of this man, with the furious activity that I have described, and then to see what was living in his soul. We simply want to place the two aspects side by side.

We can best observe what took place in Cusanus's mind if we study the mood he was in while returning from a mission to Constantinople¹² on the behalf of the Holy See. His task was to work for the reconciliation of the Western and Eastern churches. On his return voyage, when he was on the ship and looking at the stars, there arose in him the fundamental thought, the basic feeling, incorporated in the book that he published in 1440 under the title De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance).¹³

What is the mood of this book? Cardinal Cusanus had, of course, long since absorbed all the spiritual knowledge current in the Middle Ages. He was well versed also in what the medieval schools of Neo-Platonism and Neo-Aristotelianism had attained. He was also quite familiar with the way Thomas Aquinas had spoken of the spiritual worlds as though it were the most normal thing for human concepts to rise from sense perception to spirit perception. In addition to his mastery of medieval theology, he had a thorough knowledge of the mathematical conceptions accessible to men of that time. He was an exceptionally good mathematician. His soul, therefore, was filled on the one side with the desire to rise through theological concepts to the world of spirit that reveals itself to man as the divine and, on the other side, with all the inner discipline, rigor and confidence that come to a man who immerses himself in mathematics. Thus he was both a fervent and an accurate thinker.

When he was crossing the sea from Constantinople to the West and looking up at the starlit sky, his twofold soul mood characterized above revolved itself in the following feeling. Thenceforth, Cusanus conceived the deity as something lying outside human knowledge. He told himself: “We can live here on earth with our knowledge, with our concepts and thoughts. By means of these we can take hold of what surrounds us in the kingdom of nature. But these concepts grow ever more lame when we direct our gaze upward to what reveals itself as the divine.”

In Scholasticism, arising from quite another viewpoint, a gap had opened up between knowledge and revelation.¹⁴ This gap now became the deepest problem of Cusanus's soul, the most intimate concern of the heart. Repeatedly he sent through this course of reasoning, repeatedly he saw how thinking extends itself over everything surrounding man in nature; how it then tries to raise itself above this realm to the divinity of thoughts; and how, there, it becomes ever more tenuous until it finally completely dissipates into nothingness as it realizes that the divine lies beyond that void into which thinking has dissipated. Only if a man has developed (apart form this life in thought) sufficient fervent love to be capable of continuing further on this path that his though has traversed, only if love gains the lead over thought, then this love can attain the realm into which knowledge gained only by thinking cannot reach.

It therefore became a matter of deep concern for Cusanus to designate the actual divine realm as the dimension before which human thought grows lame and human knowledge is dispersed into nothingness. This was his docta ignorantia, his learned ignorance. Nicholas Cusanus felt that when erudition, knowledge, assumes in the noblest sense a state of renouncing itself at the instant when it thinks to attain the spirit, then it achieves its highest form, it becomes docta ignorantia. It was in this mood that Cusanus published his De Docta Ignorantia in 1440.

Let us leave Cusanus for the moment, and look into the lonely cell of a medieval mystic who preceded Cusanus. To the extent that this man has significance for spiritual science, I described him in my book on mysticism. He is Meister Eckhart,¹⁵ a man who was declared a heretic by the official church. There are many ways to study the writings of Meister Eckhart and one can delight in the fervor of his mysticism. It is perhaps most profoundly touching if, through repeated study, the reader comes upon a fundamental mood of Eckhart's soul.

I would like to describe it as follows. Though living earlier than Cusanus, Meister Eckhart too was imbued through and through with what medieval Christian theology sought as an ascent to the divine, to the spiritual world. When we study Meister Eckhart's writings, we can recognize Thomistic shades of thought in many of his lines. But each time Meister Eckhart's soul tries to rise from theological thinking to the actual spiritual world (with which it feels united,) it ends

By saying to itself that with all this thinking and theology it cannot penetrate to its innermost essence, to the divine inner spark. It tells itself: This thinking, this theology, these ideas, give me fragments of something here, there, everywhere. But none of these are anything like the spiritual divine spark in my own inner being. Therefore, I am excluded from all thoughts, feelings, and memories that fill my soul, from all knowledge of the world that I can absorb up to the highest level. I am excluded from it all, even though I am seeking the deepest nature of my own being. I am in nothingness when I seek this essence of myself. I have searched and searched. I traveled many paths, and they brought me many ideas and feelings, and on these paths I found much. I searched for my “I,” but before ever I found it, I fell into “nothingness” in this search for the “I,” although all the kingdoms of nature urged me to the search.

So, in his search for the self, Meister Eckhart felt that he had fallen into nothingness. This feeling evoked in this medieval mystic words that profoundly touch the heart and soul. They can be paraphrased thus: “I submerge myself in God's nothingness, and am eternally, through nothingness, through nothing, an I; through nothing, I become an I. In all eternity, I must etch the I from the ‘nothingness’ of God.”¹⁶ These are powerful words. Why did this urge for “nothing,” for finding that I in nothingness, resound in the innermost chamber of this mystic's heart, when he wanted to pass from seeking the world to seeking the I? Why? If we go back into earlier times, we find that in former ages it was possible, when the soul turned its gaze inward into itself, to behold the spirit shining forth within. This was still a heritage of primeval pneumatology, of which we shall speak later on. When Thomas Aquinas, for example, peered into the soul, he found within the soul a weaving, living spiritual element. Thomas Aquinas¹⁷ and his predecessors sought the essential ego not in the soul itself but in the spiritual dwelling in the soul. They looked through the soul into the spirit, and in the spirit they found their God-given I. And they said, or could have said: I penetrate into my inmost soul, gaze into the spirit, and in the spirit I find the I.—In the meantime, however, in humanity's forward development toward the realm of freedom, men had lost the ability to find the spirit when they looked inward into themselves.

An earlier figure such as John Scotus Erigena (810–880) would not have spoken as did Meister Eckhart. He would have said: I gaze into my being. When I have traversed all the paths that led me through the kingdoms of the outer world, then I discover the spirit in my inmost soul. Thereby, I find the “I” weaving and living in the soul. I sink myself as spirit into the Divine and discover “I.”

It was, alas, human destiny that the path that was still accessible to mankind in earlier centuries was no longer open in Meister Eckhart's time. Exploring along the same avenues as John Scotus Erigena or even Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart could not sink himself into God-the-Spirit, but only into the “nothingness” of the Divine, and from this “nothing” he had to take hold of the I. This shows that mankind could no longer see the spirit in inner vision. Meister Eckhart brought the I out of the naught through the deep fervor of his heart. His successor, Nicholas Cusanus,¹⁸ admits with complete candor: All thoughts and ideas that lead us in our exploration of the world become lame, become as nothing, when we would venture into the realm of spirit. The soul has lost the power to find the spirit realm in its inner being. So Cusanus says to himself: When I experience everything that theology can give me, I am led into this naught of human thinking. I must unite myself with what dwells in this nothingness in order to at least gain in the docta ignorantia the experience of the spirit.—Then, however, such knowledge, such perception, cannot be expressed in words. Man is rendered dumb when he has reached the point at which he can experience the spirit only through the docta ignorantia.

Thus Cusanus is the man who in his own personal development experiences the end of medieval theology and is driven to the docta ignorantia. He is, however, at the same time a skillful mathematician. He has the disciplined thinking that derives from the pursuit of mathematics. But he shies away, as it were, from applying his mathematical skills to the docta ignorantia. He approaches the docta ignorantia with all kinds of mathematical symbols and formulas, but he does this timidly, diffidently. He is always conscious of the fact that these are symbols derived from mathematics. He says to himself: Mathematics is the last remnant left to me from ancient knowledge. I cannot doubt its reliability as I can doubt that of theology, because I actually experience its reliability when I apprehend mathematics with my mind.—At the same time, his disappointment with theology is so great he dares not apply his mathematical skills in the field of the docta ignorantia except in the form of symbols.

This is the end of one epoch in human thinking. In his inner mood of soul, Cusanus was almost as much of a mathematician as was Descartes later on, but he dared not try to grasp with mathematics what appeared to him in the manner he described in his Docta Ignorantia He felt as though the spirit realm had withdrawn from mankind, had vanished increasingly into the distance, and was unattainable with human knowledge. Man must become ignorant in the innermost sense in order to unite himself in love with this realm of the spirit.

This mood pervades Cusanus's Docta Ignorantia published in 1440. In the development of Western civilization, men had once believed that they confronted the spirit-realm in close perspective. But then, this spirit realm became more and more remote from those men who observed it, and finally it vanished. The book of 1440 was a frank admission that the ordinary human comprehension of that time could no longer reach the remote perspectives into which the spirit realm has withdrawn. Mathematics, the most reliable of the sciences, dared to approach only with symbolic formulas what was no longer beheld by the soul. It was as though this spirit realm, receding further and further in perspective, had disappeared from European civilization. But from the opposite direction, another realm was coming increasingly into view. This was the realm of the sense world, which European civilization was beginning to observe and like. In 1440, Nicholas Cusanus applied mathematical thinking and mathematical knowledge to the vanishing spirit realm only by a timid use of symbols; but now Nicholas Copernicus boldly and firmly applied them to the outer sense world. In 1440 the Docta Ignorantia appeared with the admission that even with mathematics one can no longer behold the spirit realm. We must conceive the spirit realm as so far removed from human perception that even mathematics can approach it only with halting symbols; this is what Nicholas Cusanus said in 1440. “Conceive of mathematics as so powerful and reliable that it can force the sense world into mathematical formulas that are scientifically understandable.” This is what Nicholas Copernicus said to European civilization in 1543. In 1543 Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Bodies,) where the universe was depicted so boldly and rudely that it had to surrender itself to mathematical treatment.

One century lies between the two. During this century Western science was born. Earlier, it had been in an embryonic state. Whoever wants to understand what led to the birth of Western science, must understand this century that lies between the Docta Ignorantia and the De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. Even today, if we are to understand the true meaning of science, we must study the fructifications that occurred at that time in human soul life and the renunciations it had to experience. We must go back this far in time. If we want to have the right scientific attitude, we must begin there, and we must also briefly consider the embryonic state preceding Nicholas Cusanus. Only then can we really comprehend what science can accomplish for mankind and see how new spiritual life can blossom forth from it.

• 1 . Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age (Blauvelt, NY: Steinerbooks, 1960) (formerly published as Eleven European Mystics).
• 2 . These include the three natural scientific courses held in Stuttgart: First First Scientific Lecture Course: Light Course (Forest Row, England: Steiner Schools Fellowship, 1977); Second Scientific Lecture Course: Warmth Course (Spring Valley, NY: Mercury Press, 1981); and Das Verhältnis der verschiedenen naturwissenschaftlichen Gebiete sur Astronomie. (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag). The relationship between natural science and spiritual science is dealt with in The Boundaries of Natural Science (Spring Valley, NY, Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 3 . Nicholas Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa), 1401–1464. Lawyer, churchman, philosopher, mathematician. Ordained priest between 1436–1440, Cardinal 1448. Bishop of Brixen, 1450. cf. chapter on Cusanus in Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.
• 4 . Nicholas Cusanus was made Cardinal and named Bishop of Brixen in rapid succession. Though a stranger to Brixen he was named Bishop there directly by the Pope. This led to a protracted conflict with his diocese, during which the latter gathered behind the Duke of Tirol. Cusa was ambushed by the Duke, imprisoned, and forced into accepting a demeaning agreement. The Duke was excommunicated by the Pope and attacked by the Swiss Confederation. However, he was supported by German Counts and remained intransigent. Cusa died before the Emperor could resolve the conflict. The battles around him did not rob Cusa of his peace of mind, and he developed his philosophic, mathematical and theological insights, writing fifteen of his works during the time in Brixen.
• 5 . Brethren of Common Life (also of Good Will): Founded by Gerhart Groote around 1376. Brother-houses in Holland, Northern Germany, Italy and Portugal. Brought into the Catholic Church in the Fifteenth Century. Their schools taught under the strict observance of dogma.
• 6 . Council of Basel: 1431–1449. Called by Pope Martin V on July 23, 1431, the year of his death. This was the last of four reformatory councils with the aim of ending the division in the Church. There came a new rift in the Church.
• 7 . In 1437. This summarizes a long process: Cusanus entered the Council 1432 with the task from the Archdiocese of Trier to defend their Archbishop, whom they had chosen against the will of the Pope. Through the treatise De Concordantia Catholica (On Catholic Unity) which he distributed among the Council and which contained an exceptional survey of the decisions of the Councils and Decrees of the Church, he offered the advice welcome by the majority that the Common Council was beyond the Pope. Thus, he immediately became an important figure in the Council.
  
  Later, the Council majority and the history writings accused Cusanus of having changed his conviction. But Cusanus' deep understanding was ignored, which was rooted in his attitude and which comes to expression in the following words: “When a decision is made unanimously, then one can believe that it came from the Holy Spirit. It lies not in men's power to meet somewhere, and although they are so different from each other, they are able to come to a harmonious decision. It is God's work.” (From J.M. Duex, Der Deutsche Cardinal Nicolaus Von Cusa, Regensburg 1874, Bd. 2, s. 262, which has translated some of the most important of the De Concordantia Catholica. Cusanus must have experienced at the Council that his description of the meaning of a Council was not taken with interest, and he must have faced a decision that is mentioned in the lecture.
• 8 . Pope Eugene 4th was put down and Duke Amadeus of Savoy was set up as Pope Felix 5th in 1439. His resignation in 1449 caused the disbandment of the Council.
• 9 . From 1439–1448 Cusanus acted on the order of the Pope as “Hercules of the Eugenians” as an opponent called him. He went to worldly and churchly princes as well as to the “Reichstag,” and he tried to overcome the neutrality of the Germans about the split of churches, with complete success.
• 10. At the meetings of the princes, 1454, in Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Frankfurt after the invasion of Constantinople by the Turkish, Cusanus tried to motivate the princes to a crusade. After J. Hunnyadis' victory over the Turkish Army in front of Belgrade in 1456 Cusanus organized, at the same day he received the message, a festival of thanksgiving, and he spoke the following words: “Because the lower man can only enjoy life animal-like and physical, Satan who wants to destroy the Gospels in a fine way, intended the appearance of Muhammad who knows the Gospel and the Bible, to let him give the Gospel and Bible an animal-like, sensual meaning. In this way Satan taught Muhammad knowledge to let go forth the head of Malignity, the son of Ruin, and to be an enemy of the cross of Christ.” (From a sermon, “Landaus Invocalo Dominum,” partly translated by J.M. Duex A.A.O.S. 165). Further sermons against the Turks are known from October 28, and November 5 of the same year. (E. Varisteenberge, Le Cardinal Nicolas De Cues, Paris 1920, S. 231 F, and index of sermons s. 480), but this sermon seems to be available only in Latin.
  
  Cusanus himself announced his appointment as Cardinal with a short autobiographical note in which is written: Nicolas was made Cardinal secretly by Pope Eugene (Hist. Jahrbuch der Goerrers Gesellschaft 16.S.549).
• 11. De Pace Fidei (On the Peace of the Faiths), written in September 1453. “The horrible days of Constantinople ... had caused a deep feeling of sadness in the breast of a man who once had wandered through this region, and caused him to sink into deep contemplation, and he had a vision. In this sublime state, he particularly thinks about the differences of the religions of the world, and the possibility of their harmony. This harmony is, in his opinion, a basic condition for religious peace.” (Introduction to De Pace Fidei: Nach Duex A.A.O.S. 405).
• 12. Cusanus left Basel in May 1437 together with other representatives of the minority and traveled for the minority with the legation of the Pope to Constantinople to accompany the Greek Emperor and the heads of the Eastern Church to the Union Council in Ferrara. They arrived in February 1438 in Italy.
• 13. De Docta Ignorantia (The Learned Ignorance). Three books finished in February 1440.
• 14. See Rudolf Steiner, The Redemption of Thinking. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 15. Meister Eckhart: Hochheim by Gotha about 1260–before 1328, Cologne. Dominican, schoolmaster, German mystic. Preached in leading posts in orders and churches; taught in Paris, Strasbourg, Cologne. Main work: Opus Tripartius. Based on Scholasticism and writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. Copies of his sermons partly went around without his control. Meister Eckhart died, accused as heretic, during the trial. See chapter, “Meister Eckhart,” in Rudolf Steiner's Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.
• 16. These lines cannot be made clear and simple because the German text plays at length on the words Nicht and Ich.
• 17. Thomas Aquinas: Castle Roccasecca in the Neopolitan region, about 1225–1274 Cloister Fossanuova. Dominican, scholar, churchman. In Cologne, student and friend of Albertus Magnus. Advocated the spiritual reality of general concepts. He directed the theological school in Rome from 1261–1267. There the studies of the Dominican; from 1268 onwards he is teaching in Naples and France. See Rudolf Steiner, The Redemption of Thinking and Riddles of Philosophy (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1973).
• 18. Nicholas Copernicus: Thorn 1473–1543 Frauenburg. Humanist, mathematician, astronomer, physician, lawyer. No publications during his life, with the exception of a translation. Finished his work on the heliocentric planetary system around 1507. Copernicus was already on his deathbed when his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium was published. He dedicated it to Pope Paul III. His friend and publisher introduced it as a purely hypothetical, special scientific method of calculation. It thus slipped past the censor, until the third edition was banned in 1616/17. Not until 1822 was it accepted by the Catholic Church, cf. Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).

It may perhaps seem strange that something like our theme today, which touches so strongly on current everyday issues, could be considered from the world-view of Spiritual Science, from a view of life and the world today which looks to the very greatest enigmas of human existence. In many circles which occupy themselves with Spiritual Science, or in such circles as have heard something of the spirit in this world-outlook, there is the view that Spiritual Science is something that does not concern itself in any way with current questions, with the interests of immediate life. People believe—some as a reproach to the Theosophical movement, and others seeing this as one of its advantages—that Spiritual Science concerns itself only with the great questions of Eternity, that it holds itself aloof from everyday events. People consider it, in both a good and a bad sense, to be something unpractical. But if, in our time, Spiritual Science is to fulfill a task, a mission, then it must take hold of what moves the heart, it must be able to take up a position with regard to those questions which play into our day-to-day thinking and into our day-to-day striving and hope.

It must have something to say about those questions which are a part of our times. For how could it be that questions which come so close to the human soul—like the question concerning women which is to occupy us today—how could it be that these, too, should not be judged from a world-view which looks to the great problems of human existence. And it is just this that is often and rightly said against Spiritual Science; that it has not found the way to life as it is in reality. Nothing would be more wrong than if Spiritual Science were to be led increasingly into asceticism, into a direction hostile to life. It will prove itself far more by building a real foundation for the practice of life. It must not float in Cloud-cuckoo land or lose itself in bare abstractions, but must have something to say to human beings of the present.

Just as we have spoken here about the social question, today we want to speak from a great cultural standpoint, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, of the question regarding women. Of course, no one must imagine that Spiritual Science should speak about this question in the same way as do politics or current printed matter. But then again, one should not believe that what, in effect, is a sort of parochial politics is the only thing that is practical. The individual who has always shown himself to be truly practical is the one who can see beyond the immediate present. And who was the practical individual when in the last century the postage stamp had to be invented and introduced into everyday life, and which since then, has transformed the whole of our life of public commerce, our whole social life? It happened little more than fifty years ago. The idea of this arrangement—the practicality of which is doubted today by no one—came at that time from someone not engaged in practical things. The Englishman, Hill, did not work for the Post Office. But one who did, had the following ingenious comment to make; One could not believe that this arrangement would cause such a great change in commercial or business life, but were that to be the case, the post office buildings would not be large enough to cope with the postal demands!

Another example. When the first railway was to be built from Berlin to Potsdam, the head of the Post Office, Nagler said, ‘Well, if people want to throw their money out of the window they might as well do so directly. I send two post-coaches and nobody travels in them.’ And of course you know the other incident which occurred in the Bavarian college of doctors: the learned gentlemen were asked, purely from a practical, medical point of view, if the nervous system could stand it if railways were built. The learned gentlemen said it was unpractical to the highest degree, because it would cause severe damage to the nervous system.

This is by way of illustration of the relation of the ‘practical people’—in matters of the issues of the day—to those who, with somewhat broader vision, see beyond into the future. These, the disparaged idealists who do not remain attached to what has been the ‘done thing’ since the days of yore, these are the really practical ones. And from this point of view Spiritual Science appears also today as a vehicle which carries the answers to many questions—and also for our question today. For this reason anyone who deals with these questions from a higher point of view can accept such a reproach without feeling uneasy, and can remember other examples where, believing they had a monopoly in practicality, people have judged in a similar way.

Few will deny that the question regarding women is one of the greatest present questions of our culture, for today this is simply a fact. There are opponents to certain views on the question of women, but the fact that this question exists will be denied by no one. Yet if we look back to times that are not so far behind us, we find that even the leading scientific and other great minds have seen in the women's question something absurd, something to be suppressed by all possible means. As an example, we can recall the statements of the anatomist, Albert, a truly significant man, who twenty five years ago, pitted himself with the greatest energy against the admission of women into the learned professions, and who, from the standpoint of his anatomical-physiological knowledge, tried to prove that it would be impossible for women to get into the educated professions or ever be able to fulfill the profession of a doctor. With the great authority of natural science it is hardly surprising that one believes those to be capable of judgment who, in relation to the natural-scientific view of the human being, are supposed to know something. A short while ago a booklet came out in Germany: ‘Uber den Physiollogischen Schachsinn des Weibes’ (Concerning the physiological feeble-mindedness of women). This booklet stems from a man Möbius, who indeed, is not at all an insignificant physiologist, who has said some good things, but who, on the other hand, has exposed not so much himself but the science of Physiology to ridicule by presenting, little by little, all the various great personalities of world-historic development of recent times—Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche—as pathological phenomena. He has done this, furthermore, in such a grotesque and radical manner, that one would have to ask with each genius, ‘Where does the insanity lie?’ Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche—all are dealt with from the standpoint of psychiatry, of psychological pathology.

When one goes more deeply into these things, they all fall into only one category—one that is characterised by the example of the famous naturalist who tried some time ago to attribute the ‘inferior talent’ of women to the lighter weight of the female brain! This is no fable! This man asserted that the greatness of the spirit was dependent on the size of the brain, and that women, on average, have a smaller brain than men. And quite truly it then happened that the methods of this learned professor were applied to himself. After his death, his brain was weighed, and it turned out that he had an abnormally small brain, a much smaller brain than those women whom he held to be of inferior mind because of their lighter brain weight. It would be mischievous if one were to try and examine, from a psyche-pathological standpoint, a booklet like this one on the physiological feeble-mindedness of women, and if one were to try to catch out the writer in question as happened in the case of Professor Bischoff.

So you can see that the women's question does not bear witness to the fact that those who opposed it were particularly discerning The question regarding women includes far more than that of admitting women into the learned professions, and of the question of women's education. The issue concerning women embraces an economic, a social and a psychological side, and many other aspects as well. But it is precisely the question of women's education that has, in fact, borne fruits. Almost all the opinions in this area that have been formed out of theory have been refuted by actual practice. Little by little women have fought for, and won—in spite of the opposition of the opinions of a man's world—admission to most male professions, including that of lawyer, doctor, philologist and so on. Women have taken up these professions under significantly less favourable conditions than men. One has only to consider under what unfavourable circumstances women have recently entered universities. With the normal educational preparation this is really not to difficult, but women had to get there with very much less preparation. Not only through tremendous hard work, but also through a broad spectrum of abilities, they have for the most part overcome all the difficulties. In determination, in hard work, and also in mental ability they are in no way inferior to men, so that reality in practice, has resolved the matter in a completely different way than many, twenty to thirty years ago, had imagined in theory.

Various professors, led by their prejudices, refused women entry into university. And yet today, very many women graduates stand in the world, in no way less able or less perceptive than men.

This however, illustrates the outer situation alone, and only shows us that we must look more deeply into the nature of the human being, into the nature of women, if we want to understand the matter as a whole. For there is no one today who would not be affected in some way by the significance of this question. Although women have won access to the learned professions—and to numerous others—and although, in actual practice a large part of the question concerning women's abilities has been answered, nevertheless, if we wish to progress consciously, clearly, and with insight, if we wish to discuss this question from all sides, then we must look more deeply into the nature of the human being.

What a lot has been said about the difference between man and woman! Everywhere today you can read in short reviews how many different opinions there are concerning the difference between men and women, and how, from these differing opinions people have tried to form a view concerning the question of women. A great deal has been written on the psychological aspect of the women's question. There is no better book on this aspect—in so far as such books are written by non-theosophists—than the one by a gifted woman who is active generally in present day literature: ‘Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit’ (A critique of femininity) by Rosa Meyreder. You can find different views catalogued elsewhere so let us look at a few of them.

Let us take the man Lombroso. He describes Woman by saying that at the centre of her emotional character is the feeling of submissiveness, the feeling of dependence. George Egerton on the other hand says that every woman who looks dispassionately at a man sees him as a big child, and it is precisely from this that the love of power, of domination comes, which is so totally inherent in a woman that it insinuates itself more and more into the central position in the female soul.

A great scientist, Virchov, says that if one studies Woman from an external, physiological standpoint, one finds gentleness, mildness and calmness to be the basis of her being. Havelock Ellis, an expert of equally high standing in these matters, says that the fundamental characteristic of the female soul is quick temperedness, initiative and daredevilry. Mobius finds the basic feature of the female nature to be conservatism: to be conservative, he maintains, is the life-element of the female soul. Against this we can put the judgment of an old and good expert of the psyche, Hippel. He says that the real revolutionary within humanity is Woman.

Go to the vast majority of people and you will find a very strange but fairly common view of the relation between intellect, feelings and passion in men and women. Then, in contrast look at Nietzsche's view. He says that the intellect belongs primarily to Woman, and feelings and passion to Man. Compare this with the common view. It is the exact opposite. Thus we could say a great deal and, on the one side, could list all the views which ascribe to woman all the passive, the weak qualities, and on the other side all those which maintain the opposite. But certainty comes somewhat to a standstill when so many different views are possible.

Science too has occupied itself a great deal with this question, and Science enjoys great authority. But the statements of scientists concerning the real fundamental characteristics of woman immediately start contradicting one another. And if we move on from scientists and psychologists to cultural history and hold to what has always been said—that man is the really creative active one, and woman more the companion, the follower—then such a view would be prejudiced because we have taken too short a time span into consideration, one has only to look at those peoples who still represent what is left of ancient cultures, or at primitive peoples, and one has only to follow the history of humanity's development to see that there were times once, and there are still such peoples today, in which the woman, in the most eminent sense, participated and participates in ‘masculine’ work.

In short, the opinions vary in all directions. Even more noticeable for us is the fact that a woman of one particular people (or nation or tribe) will differ far less from a man of the same people than from a woman of another. From this we can draw the conclusion that we should not talk at all in terms of man and woman, male and female, but that, alongside the characteristics of sexual gender, there is possibly something far more important in human society than the sexual characteristics of gender and which is quite independent of them. If one looks impartially at the human being, it is usually possible to distinguish what is of necessity connected to all that is related to the sexes, and what points beyond these connections into other realms entirely. Of course a materialistic view of the world and of the human being, which recognises only what can be touched and seen, naturally sees in man and woman only the big physiological differences; and anyone who remains with this materialistic view will simply miss, will overlook something that is far greater and more decisive than sexual differences—he will overlook the individuality which goes beyond gender and is independent of it.

To shed light here, to see the human being here in the right way: this must be the task of a world-view oriented towards the spirit.

Before we look at the women's question from this point of view, we will just look at aspects of what this question represents.

People talk about ‘the women's question’ in general, but this also, like the concept of Woman, is an unacceptable generalisation. One should not really speak of the women's question in general at all, because this question must he modified in relation to the different social classes of humanity. Does the question concerning woman exist in the same way in the lower classes, in the manual-worker class, as in the educated classes? The lowest classes, the actual manual workers, try with all means at their disposal to get their women out of the factories and the textile mills, so that they can be with the family. The higher classes strive for exactly the opposite. They strive to make it possible for the woman of the family to work in the world outside. This then is something of the social aspect of the women's question.

Alongside this, of course, there is also the general social question concerning women which demands for them in the political and cultural context the same rights as those enjoyed by men. People have the view today that they are speaking of things which must follow from the very nature of humanity itself. People do not consider, however, that the life of humanity changes far faster than on the surface it may appear to do. A man, Naumann, who from his political standpoint also occupied himself with the women's question, was at pains to study in connection with this the St. Paul's Church discussions of 1848 in which a lot was said concerning human rights. There they debated to and fro the self-evident rights of man. Nowhere, however, is it mentioned that these rights should be the same for women as for men. That never entered anyone's head. The women's question came into this area only in the second half of the 19th century. And it seems fully justified here to throw up the other question: How is it then that this aspect of the women's question has been considered only in our time? Let us be quite clear about this.

In many ways today the women's question is presented, from both the masculine and the feminine side, as though it is only now that women have to struggle to gain a definite and significant influence in all areas of life. In many respects these discussions are characterised by great shortsightedness, for one must ask oneself: In other times, in all earlier times, have women then had no influence at all? Have they always been fettered beings? It would be ignorance if one were to assert such a thing.

We can look at the age of the Renaissance and take one of the most widely-used books about that period—the book by Burckhardt. Here we see what a profound influence women had, for example, on the whole intellectual life of Italy; how woman stood in the foreground of intellectual life, how they were equal to men and played a great part. And finally, had one spoken of women's lack of influence in the first half of the 19th century to such an individual as Rahel Varnhagen, she would have been astonished that such a theme could have been brought up. She would not have understood how anyone could think in such a way. But there is many a man today who exercises his general right to vote, or even debates in Parliament and gives long speeches, who is truly a non-entity when one thinks of the entire cultural progress that has been brought forth by this woman, Rahel Varnhagen. Anyone who studies the intellectual life of the first half of the 19th century and sees what sort of influence this woman had on the men of the 19th century, will no longer be tempted to say that woman was a being without influence on those times. The matter simply rests on the fact that opinions have changed. One did not believe at that time that one needed a simple right to vote, that one had to debate in Parliament, or that one had to study at university in order to have an influence on the course of culture. One looked at it differently in every way. This is not said with any conservative intention, but as evidence that the whole question is a product of our present culture and can be posed only today in the way it is posed at present, and can be posed only today in all areas of life (not only in the area of higher education).

Just take a look at the relation of man and woman in earlier times when quite different economic conditions prevailed. Look at the peasant woman, the female labourer in earlier centuries. One cannot say that the peasant woman had fewer rights than the peasant, or a more limited sphere of influence. She had one particular department to look after and he another. And it was just the same in the crafts. What in the working classes has today become the real women's question has become so because in past centuries and particularly in the last century, our culture has become, in the greatest sense, a male culture (Männerkultur). The age of the machine is a product of the male culture, and it is simply the quality and nature of this culture that renders far more impossible the way a woman can work and be active than was the case in earlier economic life. Woman is not suited to the factory and there are quite different problems there than when she is engaged in the farmyard, in the house or in the old craft-industries as manageress, contractor or co-worker. Also, as regards the academic professions, everything in our world, in our perception, has changed. Our whole estimation of the professions has become something different. It is not so long ago that what today is regarded as a learned profession was really little more than a higher craft. There was a particular way of being active in law, in medicine, and even a relatively short time ago it would never have entered anyone's head to derive a religious world-view from what was presented in medicine, in law or in natural science. Today it is the specialist knowledge of what is researched in the laboratory that has gradually become the domain of men; and it is from this that a higher world-view is extracted. Earlier, however, like a spirit over everything that was studied in the university faculties, there hovered Religion and Philosophy—and it was within these, to begin with, that higher education was to be sought. The truly human element that which spoke to the heart and soul, that which spoke to the human being of his yearnings and hopes of eternity, that which gave him strength and certainty in life—this element was the same for both men and women, it arose from an origin other than from the laboratory or from physiological research. One could attain to the highest heights of philosophical and religious development without any kind of academic education at all. One could do this at any time—even as a woman. Only because the materialistic age has made so-called positive science with its so-called facts and basis of higher problems only because of this is it so that, alongside the general inclination arising from practical life, another inclination, one of the heart, a longing of the soul had to arise and drive women even to look into the mysteries offered us by the microscope, the telescope, and the research of physiology and biology. For, as long as people thought that decisions could not be made by means of a microscope concerning the life and immortality of the human being, so long as people knew that these truths had to be drawn from quite other sources, there could not be such a clamouring for scientific studies as there is today. We must be aware of this: that the trend of our age has generated this desire for academic education and that the women's question itself has come up in our time through the whole nature of our culture.

However, in contrast to everything that this new age has brought, in contrast to everything that rests on a purely materialistic basis, we also meet, in the spiritual-scientific outlook, a movement that is still little heeded. It is the spiritual-scientific world-view which will have to solve the questions of Life and co-operate in all the cultural streams and strivings of the future. But no one can fail to recognise this world-view when one believes it to be nothing but the imaginings of a wild fantasy. Yet it is the outcome of the spiritual research of those best acquainted with the needs and longing of our time, who take it most seriously. Only those who do not wish to know anything about the needs of our time can still remain distant from this world-stream which extends eminently and practically into all questions. Spiritual science is not something that indulges in unfruitful criticism, it is not something conservative. It regards materialism as justified, and takes into account that it arose in the last century. It was necessary that old religious feelings and traditions lost their importance in comparison to the claims of the natural sciences. Spiritual science can see how it has come about that physiology and biology have become deniers of immortality, even if it doesn't agree with them. This had to happen. But humanity will never be able to live without a glimpse of, without knowledge of real super-sensible, spiritual things. Only for a short time will people be able to keep on making do as they do today with specialist knowledge and with what arises in many ways from this direction as religious results or non-results.

But a time will come when people will feel that the wellsprings of the spirit in life must be opened. And Spiritual Science is the advance post of this battle for the opening of the true spiritual wellsprings of humanity. Spiritual Science will, on a much broader basis, be able again to tell humanity how it is related to the being of the soul, to what rises up above the transient and the fleeting. On a far broader basis than was ever formerly the case in the public world, Spiritual Science will proclaim that which gives certainty, strength, courage and endurance in life, that which can shed light into those questions which occupy day-to-day living and which cannot be solved from the material side alone.

It is a strange coincidence—many will understand this that at the beginning of the Theosophical movement there stands a woman, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky—that precisely here we have the unprecedented experience, that here we have a woman with the most all-embracing mind, with the most penetrating force and energy of mind who has written works compared to which all the spirituality which our culture (Geisteskultur) has otherwise produced is but a trifle.

Now, perhaps you believe nothing of the so-called occult teachings, the so-called insights into the spiritual world that are contained in Blavatsky's ‘Isis Unveiled’ or the so-called ‘Secret Doctrine’—perhaps you believe nothing of this; but take a look at these books some time and ask yourself: ‘How many thinkers of today have known more penetratingly about so many things as Blavatsky?’

The two enormous volumes of The Secret doctrine give information on almost all areas of spiritual life, ancient culture, ancient religion; on all possible branches of natural science, social life, astronomy and physiology. Perhaps what is said there is incorrect; but even if it were, I would still ask you: who is in the position today to speak in such a competent way even if incorrectly—about all these areas, and to show thereby that he has acquainted himself deeply with all of them? you need only take into account not solely the correctness, but also the breadth of mind—which cannot be denied—and you have the example of a woman who has shown, not in this or that branch of human thinking, but in the entire range of human mental and spiritual life what the female mind can achieve with regard to a higher world-view. Even if one takes an unbiased view of Max Muller's works on religious history, and compares their content with the all-embracing content of the Secret Doctrine, one will see how far the latter surpasses the former. Thus it is a strange circumstance that a woman stands at the outset of this Theosophical movement. This is perhaps explained precisely through those things which have also shown us the women's question as arising from our present intellectual and spiritual life.

If we look more deeply into the course of human spiritual development, then what otherwise might astound us will perhaps appear as a spiritual-historical necessity. In order, however, to be able to do this fruitfully, we must briefly look once more into the being of Man. We will give a picture, sketching human nature in broad outline.

What materialism, what the everyday world-view of human beings is aware of, is regarded by spiritual-scientific research, by Theosophy, as just one part of the human being. I can only give you a few rough sketches today. They are not mere imaginings or daydreams, but are things that are as certain as mathematical judgments are for mathematicians.

So, what the human being knows in his everyday view, in his usual knowledge of human beings, is just one part of the human being: the physical body. This human physical body has the same physical and chemical forces, laws and substances that are found outside in so-called inanimate nature. Outside are the forces which form the dead stone and are the ‘life’ within the stone and the same forces are also in the physical body of the human being. Beyond this, however, the spiritual-scientific world-view sees a second body in man's nature, to begin with, which man has in common with plants. Present-day science in its speculations already speaks a little of that which Spiritual Science is pointing to, of a particular ‘life-principle’, for the laws of materialism which, fifteen years ago were still valid for many, have been overcome by those with insight. But present day scientific research will only be able to deduce this second body through a kind of speculation. Theosophical, spiritual research, however, has reference to the testimony of those who have a higher faculty of perception, and who have a similar relation to the average person in the street as does a sighted man to a blind one. This research has reference to the testimony of such individuals who know this second body as something real, something actually there. Anyone who knows nothing of this has no more right to judge than a blind person has the right to pass judgment on colours.

All talk of limits to human knowledge is a nonsense. One should rather ask: Is it not possible for the human being to rise to a higher level of knowledge? Are not what one calls the eyes and the ears of the spirit perhaps a reality? There have always been individuals who have worked on certain latent faculties and who can thus see more than others. Their testimony might be just as valid as the testimony of those who look through the microscope. How many people have actually seen what the scientific history of creation teaches? I would like to ask, how many people have seen what they talk about? How many, for example, have in actual fact, proof of the development of the human embryo? If they were to ask themselves such questions they would see what a blind faith it is that governs them. And if it is a justified faith, then the faith based on the testimony of the Initiates who speak from their spiritual experiences is equally justified.

Thus, in a spiritual-scientific sense, we speak of a second body of man's being. It is the same thing which, in the Christian religion, we find designated by St. Paul as the spiritual body. We speak of the etheric or life-body. Any particular sum of chemical and physical forces would never crystallise themselves into a life form if they were not formed principally by that which permeates every living body as its etheric or life-body. Thus we call this second body the etheric or life body. It is that which the human being has in common with the entire plant and animal world.

But the plant does not have what we call urges, desires, passions. A plant has no inner sensation (Empfindung) of pleasure or pain, for one cannot speak of sensation when one observes that a being reacts only to what is external. One can only speak of sensations when the outer stimulus is reflected inwardly, when it is there as an inner experience. This domain of present-day physiology, which speaks of a body of sensations in the plant, only shows a tremendous dilettantism in the comprehension of such concepts.

Where animal life begins, where pleasure, pain, urges, desires and passions begin, one speaks of the third body of the human being, the astral body. Man has this in common with the whole animal world.

Now there is something in the human being which goes over and beyond the animal world and which makes man the crown of creation. We can best bring this before our souls by making a small and subtle observation.

There is in the whole range of the language one name which differs from all others. Everyone can say ‘table’ to a table, or ‘chair’ to a chair. But there is one name which cannot be used in the same way. No one can say ‘I’ to me and mean me. The word ‘I’ can never fall on our ears when it means me. People have always felt this to be something of essential importance. And one found, even in the most popular of ancient religious faiths, that an important point regarding the soul lay here. Where the soul begins to feel the divine in itself, where it begins in this dialogue with itself to say ‘I’ to itself, to converse with itself in such a way that cannot come from outside, then that is where the divine being of the soul begins its path of development in man. The god in the human being is made known here. The secret and ancient teachings of the Hebrews perceived this. Thus this name was called the unutterable Name of God, the name which means: “I am the I-am”.

In the belief of the Old Testament, this name signified the annunciation of the Godhead in the human soul. For this reason tremendously powerful feelings and sensations went through the throng when the priest announced this name of the Godhead in the human soul: Jahve. This is the fourth body in the human being, with which his external nature ends and his divinity begins. And we have seen how man is guided, as it were, by outer forces upwards to the ‘I’. There he stands, and from then onwards he begin to work in himself. This ‘I’ works downwards into the three other parts of the human being. Be quite clear about this difference that exists between human beings from this point of view. Compare a savage with an average European, or with a noble idealist perhaps Schiller or Francis of Assisi.

If the astral body is the bearer of desires and passions, we must say: the astral body of the savage is completely surrounded by the forces of Nature, but the average European has worked something into his astral body. He says to himself of certain passions and desires, ‘you cannot pursue these’—for he has transformed his astral body. And it has been transformed even more by such a personality as Schiller, and still more by a personality who stands in no relation at all to passions—such as Francis of Assisi—and who has completely purified and is master of this astral body, over all urges and desires. Thus one can say of a human being who has worked on himself, that his astral body consists of two parts. One part is that which is given by Nature, by divine powers; and the other is that part which he himself has developed within it. This second part, the part transformed by the ‘I’, we call Spirit-Self or Manas.

Now there are things which go more deeply still into the nature of man, where the ‘I’ works down further than just into the astral body. As long as you check your vices simply by moral and legal maxims, you are working on your astral body. But there are other cultural means whereby the ‘I’ works on itself, and those are the religious impulses of humanity. What stems from religion is a driving force of the spiritual life, is more than external legal maxims or moral tenets. When the ‘I’ works on the basis of religious impulses it works into the etheric body. In just the same way, when the ‘I’ is absorbed in gazing on a work of art and gains an intimation that behind the existence of the senses there can be embodied an eternal, hidden element, then the artistic image works not only into the astral body of the human being but ennobles and purifies the etheric body. If you could only observe, as a practicing occultist, the way in which a Wagner opera works on the different members of the human nature, it would convince you that it is especially music which is able to send its vibrations deep into the etheric body.

The etheric body is also the bearer of everything that is more or less permanent in human nature. One must be quite clear what kind of difference exists between the development of the etheric body and the astral body. Let us recall our own life. Just think of all you have learnt since you were eight; it is a tremendous amount. Consider the content of your souls: principles, mental pictures and so on. These are changes, transformations of your astral body. But now think how little in most people—there has been a change in what we call habits, temperament and general abilities. If someone is short-tempered, this already showed itself early on and has changed little. If someone was a forgetful child, he will still be a forgetful person today. One can show this unequal development by a small example. Think of this development as if the changes in the astral body could be shown by the minute-hand of a clock, and the changes in the etheric body by the hour-hand. What the human being changes in his etheric body, what the ‘I’ has made out of the etheric body, is called Buddhi or, if one wishes to use the term—Life-Spirit.

There is a still higher development which the occult pupil undergoes. This rests on the fact that one becomes a completely different human being in the etheric body. When the ordinary person learns, he learns with the etheric body. When the pupil of Spiritual Science learns, he must become a different person. His habits and temperament must change; for it is this that allows him to see into other worlds. His whole etheric body is gradually transformed.

The most difficult thing for a human being is to learn to work, even into the physical body. One can become master of how the blood circulates; one can gain influence over the nervous system over the process of breathing and so on; one can also learn here. When the human being is able to work into his physical body and learn thereby to enter into a connection with the Cosmos, he develops his Atman. This is the highest member of the being of Man; and because it is connected with the process of breathing (Atmung) it is called Atman. Spirit-Man is then found in physical man.

Thus, just as the rainbow has seven colours and the scale seven notes, so we have seven members of the being of man. The human being, then, consists of: first, the physical body; second, the etheric body; third, the astral body; fourth, the ‘I’; fifth, Manas; sixth, Buddhi; and seventh, Atman. When Man arrives at the highest stage of his development, when he makes his own physical body, then we have true Spirit-Man.

Now with regard to the question concerning us today, we must look more closely at this being, at this nature of Man. A riddle in the relations between man and woman will resolve itself here in a strange way out of human nature itself. It is precisely occultism, or the intimate observation of the human nature, that guides us into the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the ‘I’, and that which the ‘I’ has done.

In every human being—this is a fact—the etheric body consists of two parts; the etheric body of a man, as he lives among us, shows itself to have feminine features, and the etheric body of a woman to have masculine features. Many facts in life become clearer when we recognise that in a man there is something of the feminine nature, and in a woman, a more masculine nature. From this it can be explained why certain character features can arise in Man. In truth we never have before us in the physical, material human body anything other than a physical expression of the totality of the individuality. The human soul forms for itself a body with two poles, just as a magnet does. It forms for itself a masculine and a feminine part, each of which can be either a physical body, or reacts at another time as the etheric body. Hence, with regard to those emotions which are associated with the etheric body—devotion, courage, love—a woman can clearly evince masculine characteristics, and a man womanly characteristics. In contrast, with regard to all those characteristics which depend more on the physical body, the consequences of gender will express themselves in outer life.

Hence it seems clear that in every human being, if we wish to consider him as a totality, we have a phenomenon before us with two parts—one revealed and material, and one hidden and spiritual. And only that man is a complete human being who is capable of combining an external masculinity with a beautiful feminine character within. And it is precisely this that the greatest spirit, namely, those of a mystical nature, have always felt in the spiritual life of the past.

This is an important point. Men have played a greater part because materialism impels itself towards an external culture. This external culture is a man's culture because it was meant to be a material culture. But we must also be aware that in the development of world history one cultural epoch gives way to another, and that this one-sided masculine culture must find its completion through that which lives in every human being. One senses this precisely in the age of this masculine culture. That is why, when the mystics spoke from the innermost depths of their souls, they defined this soul as something feminine. And it is from this that you find everywhere the comparison of the soul, receptive as it is to the world, with Woman; and on this is based Goethe's saying in the ‘Chorus mysticus':

Everything transient
Is but illusion
The inadequate—
Here it becomes event;
The indescribable—
Here it is done;
The Eternal-feminine
Bears us aloft.

It is nonsense to analyse this saying in a trivial way. One can analyse it in a right way, and in the true Goethean sense, when one says: He who knew something of noble spiritual culture also pointed to the feminine character of the soul; and precisely from this masculine culture did the saying: ‘The Eternal feminine bears us aloft’ struggle free. Thus the greater world, the Macrocosm was pictured as a man, and the soul, which was fructified by the wisdom of the Cosmos, as the feminine.

And what then is this peculiar way of thinking which has developed in men over the centuries, this logic? If we wish to look into the depths of its nature, then we must see something feminine—imagination—which must be fructified by the masculine.

Thus, when we consider that which grows over and beyond the differences of gender, we see the higher nature of the human being—that which the ‘I’ creates out of the lower bodies. Man and woman must look on their physical body as an instrument which enables them, in one direction or another, to be active as a totality in the physical world. The more human beings are aware of the spiritual within them, the more does the body become an instrument, and the more do they learn to understand people by looking into the depths of the soul.

This, indeed, will not give you a solution to the Woman's question, but it will give you a perspective. You cannot solve the Woman's question with trends and ideals! In reality you can only solve it by creating that concept, that disposition of soul which enables men and women to understand each other out of the totality of human nature. As long as people are preoccupied with matter, a truly fruitful discussion on the Woman's question will not be possible.

For this reason it should not surprise us that, in an age that has given birth to a masculine culture, the spiritual culture which has begun in the Theosophical movement had to be born from a woman. Thus this Theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement will prove itself to be eminently practical. It will lead humanity to overcome gender in itself and to rise to the level where Spirit-Man or Atman stands which is beyond gender, beyond the personal—to rise to the purely human. Theosophy does not speak of the genesis and development of the human being in general, so that it is gradually recognised. Thus there will gradually awake in woman a consciousness similar to that which, during this masculine culture, has awoken in men. Just as Goethe speaking from the depths of soul, once said, ‘The Eternal-feminine bears us aloft’, so others too who, as women feel in themselves the other side of the human being, and who, in a truly practical sense understand it spiritual-scientifically, will speak of the Eternal-masculine in the feminine nature. Then true understanding and a true solution of soul will be possible for the Women's question.

For external nature is the physiognomy of the soul life. We have nothing in our external culture other than what human beings have created, what human beings have translated from impulses into machines, into industry, into the legal system. In their development, external institutions reflect the development of the soul. An age, however, which clung to the outer physiognomy, was able to erect barriers between men and women. An age that is no longer entrenched in what is material, what is external, but which will receive knowledge of the inner nature of the human being which transcends sex, and will, without wishing to crawl into bleakness or asceticism or to deny sexuality, enable and beautify the sexual and live in that element which is beyond it. And people will then have an understanding for what will bring the true solution to the woman's question, because it will present, at the same time, the true solution to the eternal question of humanity. One will then no longer say: ‘The Eternal-feminine bears us aloft’, or ‘The Eternal-masculine bears us aloft’, but, with deep understanding, with deep spiritual understanding one will say: ‘The Eternal-human bears us aloft’.