The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From our considerations of yesterday you will have seen how easily the whole course of human evolution can be misunderstood and how it is particularly misunderstood from many sides today to the detriment of present knowledge as well as of the present social striving of mankind. (see Z-7.) Today we will for once call up before our souls some results of Spiritual Science of such a nature that they can throw light, it may be said, from another side on what becomes so enigmatical if looked at from the points of view holding good at present. Now I have told you that man can come to terms with this present time only if he makes up his mind to find his real bearings by starting on the path to the spirit. He must decide to look for a new relation to external nature since the old means to this end no longer suffice, and also find his way to a new relation to his fellow men, the old relation no longer being suitable, so that he sees what impulses are necessary for the modern social structure of mankind. If we wish to be successful in this, we must earnestly keep before our souls the following—that as man is placed in the world today, in earthly existence between birth and death, he sees but the outer manifestation of his own essential being and enters into actual relationship with merely the outer manifestation of his fellowmen. Life takes on a different form for the different epochs of mankind's evolution, and we exert ourselves really to study these things just in their relation to men of the present time. For the present age is a very critical one for men on earth. Up to the fifteenth century, and, since things do not change in a flash, one might say on into the present time, man is still actually more or less dominated by inherited concepts and impulses of the past. This fifth post-Atlantean epoch is indeed in a certain sense rather out of the ordinary where the evolution of men is concerned. For you certainly know that taking earthly evolution as a whole it divides itself into seven great successive epochs, of which the fourth was the Atlantean epoch and the fifth, our present one, the post-Atlantean. The sixth and the seventh should then follow.

In the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis. For up to that time the whole of the earth's existence was a recapitulation of the earlier existence of Saturn, Sun and Moon. During the Atlantean period there was a kind of crisis but it is true only the beginning of a crisis. There was merely a preparation of things that were actually to be developed in the following evolution of the earth. So that up to Atlantean times man was really only what he had been in his different forms as man on Saturn, Sun and Moon. In Atlantean times, however, he had only intimations of what he was supposed actually to become as man of the earth; then he continues on, and now we are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the post-Atlantean period, throughout the old Indian end old Persian development, and so on, ever more definite relations were arising. But the Greco-Latin time, the fourth post-Atlantean period, gives us again even though in another form merely a kind of repetition of what existed on another level of existence in Atlantis. It is only now in the fifth post-Atlantean period, in the time since the fifteenth century, that man stands within his whole evolution in such a way that new impulses arise—impulses which are perceptible in his very being. Previously they were not so noticeable; now they appear in his being noticeably, nevertheless there are still only intimations of their presence. The terrible, catastrophic events of our time, the consequences of which—one can already foresee—will be shattering to mankind, are the expression of how new relations are making their way into mankind's evolution. I have already indicated how from a certain aspect these new relations can be described by pointing to the way in which an on-rolling spiritual wave is clearly perceived, arising from, as it were, a surging up into evolution of the Spirits of Personality.

Now we notice it after the manner of Spiritual Science we keep in mind this particular state of soul in which modern man is found here on earth, it is markedly noticeable today, according to the outlook of Spiritual Science, how man when he perceives or is outwardly active in his willing is really surrounded only by manifestations of the being of nature, and the being of his fellow men. He is not surrounded by the real beings into whom he must, as it were, grow in the course of evolution, into whom he will have grown at a later stage of evolution. As you know, man's position in the world is such that—to describe it broadly—he perceives the surrounding world in the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom and in his own human kingdom. This is what is visible around man. And in the visible human kingdom there is played out what comes from the will and what should find a certain ordering for the social structure.

Now people have reflected a great deal about man's attitude to his environment, though insufficient thought has gone into their reflections. But the result of these reflections has been worked into various theories of knowledge. We get very little, however, from these theories of knowledge. And what in schoolmaster fashion is given in these theories today to the young people, who are then supposed to speak to the world as philosophers, is really perfectly inadequate nonsense. For a true insight into what is really revealed in man's surroundings, a real insight, can only be gained when the matter is observed according to the way of Spiritual Science. You see, on one side man can look upon the mineral kingdom and the plant kingdom; on the other side he can look on the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man himself. Both—mineral kingdom and plant kingdom as well as human kingdom and animal kingdom—unveil themselves to him in such a way that if now in a theoretical sense he is honest, in this unveiling, in this revealing, he notices contradictions. He is unable to make anything of the way in which on the one hand the mineral kingdom and plant kingdom, and on the other hand the animal kingdom and human kingdom reveal themselves to him. And when people believe they can succeed in doing so this comes from a certain dullness. Because they take life too easily they are unwilling to go into all the doubts which arise from observing the kingdoms of Nature. But now, when one presses on to knowledge, when one trains oneself in the direction given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, then to a certain extent a change takes place in our contemplation of the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as in our view of the connection with the animal and human kingdoms. Unconsciously men already have, to a high degree today, a feeling for this change, even if it does not enter consciousness. It remains indeed in the unconscious—just as I told you that today in the natural course of evolution man passes by the Guardian of the Threshold unconsciously. It is actually a certain fear of the truth which always unconsciously holds men back from really pressing on so that they come to this change. I am speaking in Imaginations, my dear friends, in Imaginations translated into words. In reality these things cannot be appropriately described in any other way. For when man brings to life within him what can be made living, when he applies himself to what is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms with this transformed power of cognition, he will always experience something like fear. But you should not have to shudder nor get gooseflesh at the description of these conditions. People avoid them because they are afraid. From this you ought to understand that of course when picturing these conditions one can indeed get gooseflesh to a certain degree, and on that account people just get frightened. When such knowledge is acquired, on looking at the mineral and plant kingdoms, one always experiences something like the smell of a corpse; there is a corpse-like smell which characterises as if in a vivid feeling what is living in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On the contrary, When with transformed cognition we look at the animal kingdom and the kingdom of man, there is always a sensation that can be described by saying: actually (you will forgive me, I know, for putting this Imagination into words) actually so long as they are in a physical body men remain—even the most advanced of them—where what in reality is hidden within them is concerned, always children, thorough children. The simple truth is that far more lies hidden in a man between birth and death than he can develop outwardly, can bring to manifestation out of himself.

Therefore, because in supersensible knowledge there is always a gradual ascent from semblance to actual reality, you see that when looking at, observing the outer world as it now is, we actually have to do with semblance alone. For the corpse-like smell of which I have spoken and, forgive me, the childishness of men, are veiled. The corpse-like smell finds, if I may say so, too dull a nose in our physical men, the etheric nose not being sufficiently developed. And the childishness of men does not allow us to confess its presence because , as men, we are too conceited to do so. Yet this is how the matter stands. My explaining what I have just been describing one points at the same time to there being far more hidden in in man than can be given practical proof. The question may now be asked: If man does not perceive the reality in minerals nor plants, if he perceives no reality in animals either—not even in his own being as man, where then is his right setting on earth? Strange as it may seem we find him placed among beings who belong neither to the mineral and plant kingdoms, nor to the animal and human kingdoms, but lie between them. He bases his being upon a kind of plant-animal, or animal-plant. were there a being here on earth neither wholly plant nor wholly animal, but having mere plant nature where their inner organisation is concerned, and having the power to go around, to move about at will like the animals—now this is what I meant were there beings who on being examined anatomically would not be found to have muscles and blood within them but whose anatomy would resemble that of the plants, with only their cells and tissue, but if these beings were able to move at will like the animals, or were there wandering round our earth animals that on dying left plantlike corpses, then man in his whole attitude of soul would really belong among these beings. Here in his earthly existence man would really be able to comprehend such beings. But again the remarkable thing is that for their part these beings could not exist on earth, these beings are only to be found in other worlds. They could not flourish in earth existence. Thus, we may say that man really lacks the faculty for knowledge—and this particularly apparent today's—which enables him to penetrate directly into the being of minerals and plants. and also of animals and men. And the beings he would directly perceive in their whole constitution are just these which could not live on the earth. This is the remarkable position of man where his relation to nature around him is concerned.

But here on earth man stands also in a strange relation to himself. Man is on the one hand a being who has conceptions. When, however, he puts this faculty for conceiving, for having ideas, into action, in the conception he loses his own identity. And he actually has his identity, that is not able to make an appearance in the conception, only when something—his will—works up out of the unconscious. If the will were not to work up and we were to have no trace of it in us, could we have andy ideas about it. The whole world would seem to us ghostly. We should have a ghostly world before us, which about describes the world of scientific concepts; this would actually constitute our world. Imagine the world looking as it is described by natural scientists or zoologists; just think of it being nothing more than what is found in books on Botany and Mineralogy. Real Botany and Mineralogy contain far more than what we find in books. But imagine you were taken into a world described in books, where there was nothing more than what is described in books; it would indeed be a world of mere apparitions, a proper world of ghosts. The world not being one of ghosts is amply due to the will having something to say. Now look! Were you able to fly—I don't mean with a machine but were you able to fly yourself, if you had no need of earth under your feet and were you able to move freely without the earth—then you would come near to perceiving the world in this ghostly fashion. Even if you could only follow the world with your eyes when awake it would appear very ghostly, not so much so as when described by the natural scientist, but all the same it would appear very ghostly. You have a feeling of the solidity of world existence only because you stand with your feet on the ground. And this pressure of your feet against the ground gives you the feeling, akin to the will, but watered-down will, that you are not in a ghostly world but in one that is solid. Were you not to have this feeling, should you only see, the world would appear to you a very ghostly place. You do not tell yourself what is going on in the subconscious; in the subconscious something is going on that makes man say (in the subconscious he does say it): Yes, the world looks very like a ghost! Were it really what is presented by my eyes I should never be able to stand firm, I should have to sink down; and as I do not sink, the world is not as presented by my eyes. This conclusion is constantly being arrived at in the unconscious. The entirely ordinary, most everyday relation to the world is as complicated as this. It is always an unconscious conclusion that to a certain extent originates with the will. Thus in mere conception we actually lack—to use an erudite expression, a pedantic expression—we lack the subject, it drops out. That we have a subject and feel ourselves bound up with the world comes from the will.

Again, when we will, when we develop the will, the object is actually lacking. The object does not come into our consciousness at all as something properly solid. If I want simply to lift this little book from the left side over to the right, and actually do it—the real object of the will does not enter consciousness at all. You can see the passage of the book, the conception which takes its ghostly way into the will, but the actual object of the will does not enter consciousness. So that man when he makes conceptions and also when he wills (this again sounds grotesque because an Imagination is being clothed in words) man as a conceiver as well as a willer is—if you will forgive me—a cripple. He conceives in a ghostly way and wills incompletely. What man is in reality, is actually neither quite within his conception nor his will; once again it is in the centre between the conception and the will. But all this goes on in ordinary life without being able to enter consciousness. In the same way as the plant-animal is unable to enter external nature, what man actually is cannot enter his consciousness. For this reason I have often spoken to you of the fact from another point of view by saying: man perceives the real ego like a hole in life's events. You see we have to be clear that holes can also be perceived. Man knows nothing of sleep, he wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps; wakes, sleeps. But reviewing the course of his life he is faced by empty space in his consciousness, the hole in consciousness, and he sees just as if there were a white surface before him with black holes where really nothing is to be seen. Thus he looks at the holes that, during sleep, are there in consciousness. But it is also the same with our ego in waking life. Our ego is not in reality brought into consciousness: in the consciousness there is only a hole for this ego, and perceiving this hole is the only thing that makes us aware that we really have an ego.

These things, that appear to the insensitive men of today as sophistry, must gradually become an elementary consciousness in man. For in the future man will not be able to found life on dogmatic conceptions, as has been possible for him in the past owing to the still existing remains and after effects of atavistic clairvoyance. In future we shall have to base life on grounds that are easy to detect. It will have to be part of our everyday conceptions that mineral and plant kingdoms are observed after the manner of Goethe. For Goethe only examined the phenomenon, and did not believe that in the phenomenon there was revealed anything but, at best, the basic phenomena, the archetypal phenomena and that phenomena do not reveal in laws of nature which can be put thoughts. Goethe never looked for laws of nature, for this would have seemed to him very fantastic; he wanted to pursue the phenomena because the external world shows us in the mineral and plant kingdoms nothing but perceptions, appearances. Thus man has to look at the external world to become conscious of himself. In the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom I really see only the outer side, and when confronted by the animal and human kingdoms I actually see only something like an embryo of the complete being. That also must be so. For you see, in the mineral and plant kingdoms in reality there exist beings who, when observed by man, reveal only a certain side of themselves because it may be said they cannot reveal themselves in any other way. For in the mineral and plant kingdoms lives something man can only fully recognise if—please understand me, thoroughly he looks back to the world from which he came on entering physical existence through birth. Could you after birth with your thought keep possession of the consciousness that stretches backward before birth, could you, that is, look upon being born as an event in your life like—shall we say—the passing from the fifteenth to the sixteenth year, and were the backward-running thread of consciousness to remain unbroken—the consciousness being quite different before birth, before conception—without more ado you would get a view of mineral and plant kingdoms quite different from the one you get on looking from the standpoint of life between birth and death. For you would then say to yourself the followings I have come from the spiritual world through birth. I have entered this physical realm. Why should I have done this? Why should I not have remained in the spiritual realm? Why have I been enticed down to earth at all? For one may speak here of enticement. Then, if you were able to remember, you might says I have been enticed to earth for the reason that suddenly in the course of my development between death and a new birth, it seemed—I came into a sphere where it seemed—as if certain beings had flown away, as if they really should be there, were missing—and were not there. To put it bluntly, in the time just before birth in the spiritual world one is dogged by the feeling that one misses certain beings which actually belong there and are not there. Everything goes to show that these beings are lacking. And if one comes down through birth, these beings are there in the minerals and in the plants, but as though banished, as if these beings were banished from the world just left, as if they could not really flourish, would half die and thus create the corpse-like smell, would become half dead in the world one has entered. Before birth we long to know certain exiles. We only know there are banished beings, but where are they? Then we go into the physical world and perceive them, but they might be said to be embalmed, mummified. For in the world we have entered it is only possible for them to be embalmed, mummified, dried up. It is perfectly right, on being confronted by the mineral world and the world of the plants, that we should have the feeling we are looking at beings exiled from the spiritual world, from the regions in which we were before having to enter physical life.

And when we look at animals and men end see their childishness, then, if we can develop the power to see more deeply into being, we remember that these animals and men, as they actually are here in the world in which we live between birth and death are never finished, never actually bring to completion the whole of their life which is conditioned by their inner being. Anyone looking at animals in the right way, anyone who can look at them with full inward and living force of knowledge, knows well that animals are not immortal, but knows too that animals experience in their group souls the whole tragedy of this not being immortal. The group souls outlast the individual life of the animal but what there is here on earth of the animals is—as I recently sale—in reality sick (see Lecture 1), and this is so on account of its deterioration through belonging to s world from which it is banished. And in his outer physical form man also is an exile in this world. He therefore remains crippled and a mere child. Man remains a child, the animal in his general being, in his physical form, is dried up. For what belongs to animal and man is found when we go through death and enter directly into the spiritual world, which then after death we observe. For actually a circle is described in the life between death and a new birth. What remains hidden here of animal kingdom and plant kingdom, what causes us to perceive that animals and men—as far as men's physical forms are concerned—are exiles from the spiritual world, banished out of the spiritual world, is first perceived by us when we pass into the spiritual world through the gate of death. There we go through an evolution and as we approach ever nearer the cosmic midnight, described in my mystery play, (see The Soul's Awakening, scene 6) we become clear that something is missing, that what is missing has run away from the spiritual world; we pursue it through birth and find it on the physical earth in the mineral and plant kingdoms. On entering this existence through birth we are never really surprised about the mineral and plant kingdoms because they are what we have been expecting. Finding animals on the physical earth, too, and men with an outer form that recalls that of the animal though it is more perfect, is astonishing to us in some measure after being born with our gift of consciousness. We begin ia understand this, however, when we know that a beginning has been made with this outer form of animal and man, which only develops in the world we enter through the gate of death.

Now it might be said: For the abstract and completely dried up religious conceptions that still persist (these conceptions were once much more full of life and really gave men something) for these abstract, dried up conceptions still remaining in our age of consciousness, all that men perceive here in the physical world, all that they should conceive as underlying the world experienced by man between death and a new birth, comes upon them too abruptly. What man experiences between death and a new birth remains on this account so problematical for men today, and can so easily be denied by the grossly material mind, because men in arriving at the age of the consciousness soul, which means the age of the intellect, lives as I have explained only in what is reflected into his consciousness. Therefore, he is also only able to live in reflected images when he goes out beyond the perceptions to where, if he stands firmly on his feet, the will plays into him in the way I have previously indicated. If no will plays in however—and in the immortal life after death no will does play in—when there is no interplay of the will and man is restricted to placing before his soul, the reflected images of his conceptions of what the world is between death and a new birth, then this world will have no certainty and will be not only ghostly but without certainty. Indeed we can go as far as to say that if men obstinately cling only to science, if they fix, their attention only upon the ghostly world given them by science, then they are quite right in denying any life at all after going through the gate of death. For what is given by science is only pictures, apparitions. And even this comes to an end when we pass the gate of death. Science is unable to contain anything of what we experience in the realm after death and before birth. For, you see, in books on mineralogy, in books on botany, in everything connected with Physiology, Geology end so forth, in any of the conceptions you can absorb about plants and minerals, you can absorb only about beings who are living in banishment here in this physical world. Again, you can also perceive in the bodies of animals and men only what has been banished here—even with all the help of your books on Zoology and Anthropology, and, if you widen the field of your thought you can really put all knowledge in the same category—you are only able to perceive what is living down here in banishment. But when you reflect that before birth you feel the lack because they really are not there of just these beings experienced here after birth, that in animals and men you then experience what does not exist down here, you will understand that into the conceptual life of science nothing at all of immortal life can enter, and that since it lives in images science in its own domain has a perfect right not to trouble itself about immortal life. It in for this reason that, since the fifteenth century, in the epoch when the conceptions of science are dominating the whole of mankind, man has on the one side the robust, crude nature actually representing for him the whole of reality, and on the other side a realm that he wishes to reach with only the weakened mirrored images of the age of the consciousness soul. This comes before him as though he were saying to himself: Now that I come to see (this happens in the subconscious, for it is there he comes to doubt immortality) when I come to see that what I think are only reflected images, then were I to believe these reflected images would still be there after my death, including the images of my self, I should be just as stupid as if I believed that there were coming towards me out of my mirror here on the wall the men who appear to approach me—that they were not simply reflected but were actually coming towards me.

It is simply characteristic of this epoch of the development of the consciousness soul that if man will not advance to a spiritual comprehension of the world, then connection with the world into which he will enter once he has passed through the gate of death will vanish from him more and more. It will also disappear from his thought life, from his conscious life, but he will not cease to long for it. And even the most hardened deniers of immortality have in the depths of their will, where longing is born, the longing to experience something of the world man enters through the gate of death, the world from which he comes on passing through the gate of birth. They have a longing. The present time is sick with this longing. And the many illnesses of the present time are the expression of this longing holding sway in man, and of man's inability to find conscious conceptions for his longing. If anything is living in the sphere of the will which we are unable to master by conception (again one has to develop very fundamental concepts to speaker these things) when man cannot overcome by his conception what is living in the sphere of his will, then he starts to rage. This is the essence of raging, or frenzy, that something is living in the realm of the will that man cannot comprehend with his capacity for conception. And if man refuses to give in and agree to recognise the existence of the spiritual world, so that through the recognition of the spiritual world he comprehends what has already taken shape in the sphere of the will, than this raging will become ever greater and greater in the world; the raging which indeed presents itself today as the next stage for men after the—not forthcoming but always hoped for—conclusion of peace. This is not anything which can be talked about in the way things ere discussed at a bowling club where, according to the usual philistine conceptions, people come to an understanding as to the possibility of getting some kind of relief or redress. No, it is something connected with the deepest reality of human evolution. Man cannot struggle against the development in him of what enters the sphere of his will. He has no power over it. He is able only to make up his mind consciously to penetrate to the sphere of the spirit so that he learns to understand what is permeating the region of his will. By this means an ordered co-operative life for men can be developed in future in place of this raging.

You see, men turning to the spiritual world which will be revealed in our time by a special wave of events, is not an affair only affecting mean subjectively; it is an objective necessity for man to turn to the spiritual world in this age of the consciousness soul. For changes have even now entered human evolution.

Up to the time in the Mystery of Golgotha took place in earthly life, up to that time, everything man needed for standing here in the world with some measure of security came just through sleep. Before the Mystery of Golgotha man slept in a different way from what he now sleeps, whatever the physiologists may say. Those prophetic natures like the Hebrew prophets to whom such sublime things were revealed in dreams, exist no longer, therefore, in the same form. For today these things are not given to men by God in sleep. This used to happen. This is just the great crossing point in evolution. And pictures of the future were not given only to the prophetic natures but in the time of the Greeks men still had their thoughts given them during sleep. On waking, man brought his thoughts back with him. The structure of the human organism was still such that man could bring back his thoughts. For quite a while this went on working, for the fact is that men actually became headless in the fifteenth century—you will forgive mel To become headless means that the head could no longer he used properly, the head could no longer bring back thoughts out of sleep.

One of the results arrived at through Spiritual Science is that we recognise our head as an instrument to have been really of much less use and much more dried up since the fifteenth century than it was before that time. But it is only now that this has become so noticeable; and it will become ever more noticeable if some means is not found to compensate, s0 that the evaporation of the head is made good again by the spiritual world. For up to the present, up to the nineteenth century, the other nature, man's breast nature has always been accustomed to what the head was still getting from sleep during the Greco-Latin period. The breast nature was inured to this, and in their headless condition men were still receiving impulses as an after effect; they were still in the habit—or I might say men still had the gesture of the thought, the shadow of the thought. But this shadow too will pass away and men will have no thoughts at all if they leave their thinking only to their head. And this is really how the matter stands; it is shown by men's reluctance to think. They have less and less will to think. On the one side they want to have thoughts dictated by nature, for what they like best is merely to make experiments and let the experiments say what they themselves should be thinking. But men prefer not to do the thinking themselves. They even have no proper faith in it, for it is their opinion that what they think out lacks true reality. It is true that there is no reality if you take the mere thoughts. We can come to see, however, that thinking, not the thoughts but the thinking, must become active. And when thinking is made active, this means the spiritual world is coming into play. Today when you really begin to think actively, you can do nothing further than let the spiritual world play a part in you. Otherwise you do not think; you think as little as the scientist thinks today who prefers to let his experiments or his investigations dictate everything to him. Or you think so little as the modern students of sociology who, because they have no will to be active, because they do not come to grips with real social impulses which can be grasped only by being active, actually work with what can be discovered in history, what is inherited from the past. Think for once how men, because they themselves no longer have impulses able to create the social structure, have come down to looking back to the time when thoughts were still formed. The matter is then seen from only a false point of view. It was Rousseau who held up to men the natural state, because he had the feeling that in his day nothing could be gained unless men became active in their pursuit of knowledge of the higher worlds. Well, and even modern socialism likes to indulge in a study of mankind's primitive state; it is something that particularly interests the socialists. They study the original conditions of mankind, their primitive conditions, they study the most savage original peoples, primitive peoples, so as to understand how men are meant to live in social co-operation. This is recognised by all who are familiar with these things. Everywhere there is a certain fear of what is making its presence so inevitably felt as the first dawning of connection with the spiritual world, a certain fear of active thinking. This is why there is difficulty in understanding my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for example, which makes such demands on active thinking. In it the thoughts are different from the usual thoughts of today. And people often stop short when reading this book for the simple reason that they would like to read it as any other book is read. But the other books particularly popular today—well, I think you will agree, they are read in a comfortable easy chair where one can just let thoughts go by with as little trouble as possible. Many people do any reading they go in for just like that. Don't delude yourselves into believing that these men often read newspapers in a different way (present company, of course, always excluded); it is true that emotions are mixed up with this reading, and worries too. But even the newspapers that are devoured so sensationally are also read by letting the pictures slip by. Ah, but all one has tried to put into The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity cannot be read just like that. There you have continually to give yourself a shake to prevent the thoughts sending you to sleep, my dear friends! For it was not written with the idea that you would simply sit in an easy chair; naturally you can sit, even rest your back, but then, just because you are physically at rest, you have to try with the whole of you to set the inner being of soul and spirit in motion so that the whole thinking begins to move. Otherwise you get nowhere but go to sleep. Many indeed do go to sleep and they are not always the least sincere; the insincere ones are those who read The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity just like any other book and then believe they have really followed the thoughts. They have not followed them, they have on the contrary just jumped over them as if they were the husks of words; they go on reading the words without taking in what actually follows from the words as the spark should be produced by flint and steel. But this is something that must be required of what has to take hold of the evolution of mankind in the present and the immediate future, for through it man will gradually raise himself to the spiritual world in the right way. By active thinking man's inner relations to the spiritual world will be kindled and then he will make ever greater progress. Today he can already get very far by carrying out such things as are described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But there too it is sufficiently indicated how pre-eminently necessary it is to develop coherent, connected thinking where there is no broken thread—when the thread of the thought is carefully followed.

In this longing, today more or less lacking in clarity and consciousness, to push oneself upward with unconscious thinking to the sphere of the spirit—and it is possible to do this—there is mingled a desire from the past, a weary desire, to go on thinking incoherently. Just recently I have drawn your attention to how contrary it is to men's sense of comfort to have to progress step by step in conscious thinking. They would much prefer to leave things more to the unconscious, and not in thought go on to the next point and then again to make a further step. Isn't it so? You see, Spiritual Science as we understand it here and as in a sane way it reckons with the unbroken sequence of the thoughts in the way you know—well, it is not that this Spiritual Science cannot be understood if thinking is made active, but men simply want to understand Spiritual Science in a different way from how they must understand it; instead of which they would like the thread to be continually broken. When you go deeply into what Spiritual Science gives you, when you plunge into it with real energy (have patience, in the present epoch only faint indications of this can as yet exist) then, already today, by developing the power of thought, by following in thought Saturn, Sun and Moon, as described in my Occult Science, you can follow this evolution up to where man stands there in the world, and you can press on to your own life, penetrate this life of yours with the thought which is thus made vigorous. Then you come to certain conceptions which, although not as you would like them to appear but entirely in the connection, in the coherence, of the thinking, enlighten you about their being, about their nature, about what they are and their character. By bringing to life what is said about Saturn, Sun, Moon and their corresponding details, and then about the evolution of the earth, applying all this to your individual selves, you would be able to progress to your own being; only you have to go on in your thought to the perception of yourself, not letting the thoughts be broken but keeping them coherent and connected. What in this way man begins rightly today enlightens him up to the stage where he should become clear about his own personal being. In this longing, still present more or less unconsciously in men, however, something else is mingled with the broken thread of thought, something calculated! Man would like to find out something of the kind about his being; what does he do? He takes old antiquated knowledge of which, it goes without saying, the venerable nature is certainly not to be disparaged, which, however, has need of explanation when applied in a new epoch—he calculates, reckons, breaks the thread of thought at any point, calculates constellation of the stars, and after that the thread of thought can break, and quite externally without any sequence in the thought this being of man as he appears on earth is supposed to develop without any thinking.

You see, even if the Church, the Roman Catholic Church as I described it to you yesterday, denies what today is most necessary of all, this can be made good just by taking anything like the description of the inner vision of John of the Cross and living today in the sense of the evolution that conforms with Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. What is contained in this book follows on today precisely from what a man such as St. John of the Cross wills; whereas the Catholic Church denies it and wishes even today to see the old way of John of the Cross applied to modern man, as indeed it is to so many people. Because they are too comfort-loving they do not want a life that is active in spirit, a life that has already reached a stage of energetic activity when conceptions are accepted such as those given by Spiritual Science. They would like these to be brought up to date in a more usual form of thought, preferring to remain with what is old and hoping that out of this lack of thought there might spring what should explain present-day mankind. Naturally this is no adverse judgment about what is venerable, but from every point of view it must be indicated that one should not venture to deny what is placed as spiritual necessity into the present evolution of mankind, the evolution beginning with the age of the consciousness soul. The important thing is for man really to understand what today is required of mankind in world-evolution. I believe that out of right feeling for the very things which men find irksome, and do not want, a better attitude towards Spiritual Science will be adopted more and more, and only when this better attitude to Spiritual Science has come about will the social life also be enriched. At this point man will be able to become clear about the life of mankind because he will then have the necessary strength of thought to enlighten himself concerning man's life. For where this enlightenment about man's life is concerned man of today suffers from a very precarious state of affairs. Whether you are a follower of Lenin or Trotsky, whether you are a Marxist or any other kind of thinker about the right form for the social structure of men, in each of these views there lives a state of affairs that is precarious and cannot be understood without the fruitful intervention of Spiritual Science. Doubtless you will admit that man has now entered the epoch of the consciousness soul. He has to develop consciously what arises as social structure. Otherwise nothing will go right. He has to take his place consciously in the world; it is really necessary that man should be conscious. But he should also consciously grasp the relation between men, life in society, the social life. An uncertain state of affairs hinders him in this. The fatal thing is that man can never have a conception of more than one man. And as neither two men (I mean physical men) nor two things (physical things) can be in the same place at the same time—which decides the law of impermeability—two men cannot be in human consciousness at the same time, the actual conception cannot be made of two men! simultaneously. It is very important to take note of this. We cannot live with another man without making a conception of him, neither can we develop any knowledge about the social life in common unless we make conceptions about other men. But today man, because he is able to conceive only of one man, generally prefers to conceive only of himself, to make a conception of himself as man. And social thinking is content to demand a co-operative life in which man's conception is always merely of himself. Man does not get away from the conception of his own self; he often talks of doing so, but in reality today he does not easily get rid of himself. It is only when he makes every effort to fulfil the requirements of Spiritual Science that he gradually finds it possible in some measure to get free of himself. For Spiritual Science sows in the world the seeds of thoughts having a very wide perspective, and this is how man grows into the habit of getting free from himself. As today, if he becomes a spiritualist, man grows more egoistic than he was before, if he would penetrate into the spiritual world on that other path, the path of Spiritual Science, he becomes more selfless. Spiritual Science, therefore, is not simply the handing over of knowledge, but spirit-knowledge is actually something unconditionally necessary for educating modern man in social life. It is for this reason that no cure will be forthcoming if a start is not made in this matter, it men do not really give heed to the necessity for first making a conception. There can be no social reform without schooling to begin with, without men first being instructed. And when this is neglected men miss the possibility of receiving concepts that embrace their longing. And, if I am to get at the root of the matter, men will became more frenzied than ever.

This is the inner connection, my dear friends. But it is desirable that this same inner connection should be perceived. One would wish above all things that this inner connection should be felt by everyone entering upon Spiritual Science and wishing to live in it up to some point or other. This is something that everyone will want to ponder who has the wish to take Spiritual Science and the Movement of Spiritual Science in earnest. It cannot well be overlooked, it cannot well remain unnoticed, that when we enter into relation with Spiritual Science this Spiritual Science makes certain demands on the human heart and mind to widen the interests beyond narrow, personal interests. It is really true that in talking of Spiritual Science one simply speaks of things which, if a right relation is to be established with them, makes it necessary for man to free himself from his most narrow interests! He need have no fear of becoming unpractical on that account: he becomes much more practical. It is just this belief that he is practical which has gradually been arrived at through being unspiritual. In reality the practical man of today is terribly unpractical. And these 'practical' men have actually landed us in the present catastrophe. Herein lies something of tremendous importance which man really must always take for granted if he wishes rightly to understand what has to do with Spiritual Science, namely that he must get free from his narrowest interests. He must rid himself of the immediately personal; for it does not help matters when people carry their narrow personal interests into the Anthroposophical Movement. That is always just the cause of any kind of mischief in the relation taken up towards Spiritual Science. It is also naturally the reason for what is still such a difficulty in our Movement, that people although often abstractly in theory, having the good will to come to Spiritual Science with their own thinking, feeling and willing, nevertheless do not bring all the necessary strength really to enter upon selflessness, which indeed must be called upon for understanding rightly what is said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. Thus a kind of spirit-condition not easily found today in the world, but the opposite of which is prevalent in the modern world, must be demanded for the health of the Anthroposophical Movement, my dear friends! For the difference between the sincere presentation of the knowledge of Spiritual Science and all other knowledge arising at present, lies in this presentation of Spiritual Science being no personal affair, no personal opinion. Were I obliged to hold the view that I should lecture only about merely personal opinions and not concerning what is revealed today and just what is necessary for mankind, I should prefer to remain silent. For to uphold personal opinions and personal aspirations in a Movement that is anthroposophical is something impermissible. That should not be. A Movement such as is striven for here is justified only when there is the will to present merely what one is allowed to observe out of the spiritual world.

When you describe the appearance of any town you may, according to circumstance, make the description either interesting or tedious, but what the town looks like does not depend upon you. You describe something objective. What you yourself want, what is your own opinion, should come just as little to expression in Spiritual Science. What must take effect in Spiritual Science according to modern demands is all that is spiritually observed. Those who are able actually to will merely what is personal can for that reason only imperfectly understand what should hold good in a movement for Spiritual Science. They continually confuse what should hold good in a Movement such as is meant here with something else drawn, more than ever from the personal. How many there are who coming to Anthroposophy would like their own opinion to be justified by Spiritual Science. They are not always equipped with the open mind necessary for the acceptance of Spiritual Science. Very often they come to it with something quite different to this open mind. They would like this or that to be true, then in some way, while admitting that the investigator of Spiritual science may know something about the truth, persuade themselves that what one thinks oneself one says. Then they would be happy. But this fine distinction must be noticed; it is a fine distinction although a tremendously far-reaching one; there is a far reaching and important distinction between the one who wants to accept what is imparted by the spiritual world and the one who actually wishes only to have confirmation of what it pleases him to think. Only by the most punctilious self-examination, by conscientious self-examination, will the distinction be discovered. The distinction is often unnoticed by those who come to Spiritual Science; it must, however, be noticed. If it is noticed it will become apparent that through a Movement for Spiritual Science something of a new stream of life must flow which was not there before. It is really not possible for an Anthroposophical Movement to be like a mere soft current of air blowing towards anyone who brings to Spiritual Science the Philistine tendencies of his earlier life and then believes he will find what he is only too willing to acknowledge in Philistinism corroborated by Spiritual Science.

When we proceed in this matter earnestly, conscientiously, we shall not want merely to find corroboration of our actual individual opinion; and we shall also come to understand many things which might be said to be obliged to arise as new things in a Movement for Spiritual Science of this kind, things that must do harm if left unnoticed. In a movement in the act of arising like this Movement for Spiritual Science much can work harmfully that cannot cause so much harm in old, dried up Movements, no longer of use or of very little use. We have really to go into these fins points, my dear friends! You see, connected with the endeavour merely to see our own opinions, our own aspirations, justified by what is revealed through Spiritual Science, a remarkable technique of 'touching-up' is developed concerning what comes forth and comes forth perfectly naturally, within a movement such as ours. In this movement for Spiritual Science we must be alive to the fact that phenomena with men cannot be taken as if in a bowling club or something of the kind where men can reveal how verbose they have become in the ordinary world where nothing new is required of them. We must recognise in all earnestness that the aims of investigation into what is spiritual cannot find expression through our own conceptions; we must really prepare ourselves to receive the things. We should picture that something is wishing to flow into the world, something that should more and more widen itself out, so that everything should really be received in full consciousness. Many connections not yet perceived will be perceived later. This willingness to receive everything as in some sense a preparation, will certainly not be present in those who carry their personal aspirations into the impulse of Spiritual Science, for at the first possible moment they will get done with things, giving them the bent of their ordinary opinions. They do not mould their opinions in accordance with Spiritual Science, they mould the knowledge gained through Spiritual Science in accordance with their opinions. And so we often have given out the kind of thing I would like to describe in the following way.

Now you know that the Anthroposophist has to judge the world in a certain way, the world of nature as well as the world of human beings. Education in Spiritual Science consists indeed in our learning to judge afresh the surrounding world and our relation to it and in our learning to look more deeply, into the world. People very often remark when, let us say, the relation of three men is in question: The Anthroposophist B. has been criticizing the man A. And, my dear friends, as soon as we overstep the usual Philistine sphere, so largely around us today, two standpoints can be put forward where the formation of judgment between man and man is concerned: one of these standpoints is that of reason, the second being the standpoint of sympathy. Thus B's judgment of A may be in accordance with what arises from an inner necessity at same time to do something or other purely out of his—B's—sympathy for A. Should it now suit C to be antipathetic because he does not reflect sufficiently and does not assume that it may be possible for pure sympathy to come into the matter here, out of necessity, then, basing his judgment simply on reason he will say: whatever can he be doing that for? Or this inner necessity may speak in such a way that it is not sympathy that becomes dominant but, because of certain factors, reason. Yes, and when it suits the other better he lets sympathy have its say and gives as his verdict: what an unsympathetic person! How utterly without feeling the man is and what a prosy rationalist! He judges purely from the standpoint of reason. In this way the crudest misunderstandings arise in the case of just those who bestir themselves to grasp the inner nerve of existence, where they have at one time to do something based on reason, another time something just out of sympathy. And when it suits this other man (C) in accordance with the sympathetic view he condemns what is done from reason, and what is done out of sympathy he condemns from the point of view of reason, and he can always condemn or praise as he likes. By this path we never arrive at what is right, we only arrive at what is right if we begin by saying: I must consider the case, I must look into the causes why sympathy or reason have held sway here. It is things like this out of which the little misunderstandings in life arise which often grow to very destructive proportions in men's life in common. It is just this that our education in Spiritual Science should help us to overcome. For life is such that it expresses itself in a twofold way. And because it expresses itself in a twofold way one can always condemn at pleasure one of the two cases. This is very little taken into account, however, above all not taken into account where the teachings of Spiritual Science itself is concerned. This, too, must be placed in the world with definite intention. In an individual case either one or other of the two standpoints can be chosen according to convenience, if greater attention is not paid to the deeper grounds out of which the spiritual seeker is obliged to act. He may often be misunderstood. And if there is no agreement in what must be done out of inner duty in accordance with the facts, then it is possible to misunderstand everything, since the world has this dual form of expression.

You see we can fall into the following error for example. When anyone is eager to have what suits him substantiated, he may just fall into the worst form of belief in authority. Belief in authority can naturally make its influence felt, and this influence is actually frequent and of wide range in the very sphere where Spiritual Science also would be active, which wishes to make man into a perfectly free, self-reliant being. The other pole of the belief in authority, however, is hatred of authority. And fundamentally the man who does not feel himself drawn to Spiritual Science through entering into the facts revealed from the spiritual world, but wishes to have these truths conveyed to him by authority, wanting to believe in authority because it is easier than going into things—this man is terribly apt to spring over from his belief in authority, that always has in it a certain kind of love of authority, to hatred of authority. And all manifestations that have arisen in our particular movement of this leap from blind worship of authority, which sometimes has even appeared with a certain shamelessness in the moment of passing over to hatred, this passing from blind worship of authority to hate—all this is something inwardly present as a danger. It is very important to keep these connections in mind, for these connections make it terribly difficult today to create an Anthroposophical Movement so that it will prosper. It must be created in a successful way for the sake of mankind's welfare.

Now, my dear friends, in my life I have found quite a number of people who were spiritual people and were seeking in all sincerity away into Spiritual Science, into some kind of Spiritual Science, who were also in a way advanced in their development. A certain type among them was disillusioned, people who had been disillusioned by one or other of the modern spiritual movements and who then in some place or another came across us—how many are disillusioned today by the Blavatsky Movement, the Besant Movement or some other Movement. There we do not see the characteristic phenomenon that takes such curious forms in the Anthroposophical Movement; but there we have people, for example, who are to a certain extent spiritually advanced; then after some time one again comes across them but now they say: You are completely wrong! And these meetings are not infrequent. Spirituality today is not at all common but there are men indeed who say to one after a time: You are actually wrong, for, you see, the things you give out in Spiritual Science—there's no possible sense in publishing them! But men are not in inclined to accept them; they are certainly not sufficiently mature. All this can only serve one purpose to be developed in oneself and then kept to oneself. I have found many such people who say: It is a definite characteristic of the man who is really advanced spiritually that it no longer enters his head to speak about it to his fellowmen; he keeps the matter to himself. There is indeed no lack of such people in the world. I have never been able to come to an understanding with these people about what out of a certain inner ground I learn from the spiritual world. These men do quite useful work in a spiritual community but they have a hermit tendency, even when at the same time they remain in association with others. For it is possible to become a hermit in spite of wearing elegant shoes and leading an Hotel life. This one sees this double life being led by a number of people; they are indeed the modern Hotel dwellers; for all I care they may be well dressed but they lead this life as an outward mask to hide what is within them; they have their inner life of the spirit with no wish to share it with their fellow men. This seems to one to be doing what is not right, to be sinning against mankind. For one is right in saying that such men have en effect on the spiritual life, what they experience goes into the spiritual stream. Man is not a self-contained being, therefore what he experiences has value and its own significance in the spiritual world, but the question of time always plays its part there. Men like this who live in such a way nowadays, as many do whom I have known, bring about something indeed in the spiritual world which however only comes to maturity after a long time, in the later epochs of mankind. Then, however, can, and quite certainly would, were there always only those who as hermits develop their spiritual being, having no wish to teach what knowledge they have gained from the spiritual world, what they have developed in themselves—then by the time the fruits of these men are ripe, people outside would have so deteriorated that they would no longer be able to receive the knowledge! Earth evolution would be endangered: connection would be missed. We live indeed today at a time when certain spiritual truths such as those of which we have been speaking must unconditionally be imparted to mankind. Things will not be helped by the attitude expressed, for example, by one of my acquaintances who in a certain sense was spiritually advanced. He came to Berlin and I asked him whether he would come to hear a lecture of mine, just to see how the Movement was run (this is some time ago). He answered: No, holding lectures and talking to people serves no possible purpose! To sit together for half-an-hour and have a little talk I find very pleasant—but let us leave spiritual things alone when we can; everyone must settle those for himself! To pay a civil visit and pass the time of day is best for just those people who are seeking the spiritual. And this attitude is a prevalent one. It would be more comfortable, my dear friends, to live in accordance with such an attitude. And the word comfortable certainly does not describe what it is nowadays days to get up in front of people to impart what one feels impelled to impart as a duty. In an Anthroposophical Movement it should be borne in mind that work is done out of inner necessity, and what happens is not a matter of choice but the punctual observance of a duty.

I have used these words at the end of our studies today because I have wanted once again to take the opportunity of calling attention to what is necessary if a movement for Spiritual Science is to be taken nowadays as earnestly as it should be taken. For what can be made of an Anthroposophical Movement, if personal aspirations, personal ambition, is brought in, can cause much injury must cause much injury. Besides there is still the shadow side, namely, that whoever thinks to find only what is just personal corroborated through Spiritual Science cannot discern whether the other may not be acting also merely from personal ambition. And a terrible doom is then forthcoming. I wanted to give an indication of these things, my dear friends. We shall be speaking further next Friday.

Dear attendees! If we seek knowledge through spiritual science, then that means that we feel the urge within us to look out into the spiritual world that lies behind our sensual world and in which the solution to the riddle of existence can be better achieved than in our sensual surroundings. If we allow the results of spiritual science to take effect on our soul, then they are not just abstract, theoretical insights, but they are nourishment for our soul and powers that sustain us, that reveal our destiny to us, give us hope and certainty in life and make us realize that we human beings need these spiritual-scientific results in our lives. Through everything that man sees around him and more or less recognizes in his being, he comes to the spirit that is to live into his knowledge.

We stand in relation to the world in a quite different way when we have the task, not only of penetrating the spirit through knowledge, but of drawing the living, real, active spirit out of its hiddenness and onto the surface, or at least of smoothing the way out of its hiddenness and towards its manifestation. In this way we stand in relation to the world and to life when we have before us the spirit of evolution in the developing human being — that indeterminate spirituality with which the human being enters into existence through birth and which at first presents itself to us as indistinct, as if emerging from an impenetrable darkness, in the still indeterminate features of the human face at the beginning of its becoming on earth. We have before us the human spirit, which, as if hidden in the depths, asserts itself from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, permeating the material existence that confronts us from the beginning in the growing child, and which gradually transforms this material existence into an image of itself.

As educators striving for knowledge, we are called upon to seek the spirit that rests in the depths, not only to satisfy our own soul, but precisely as educators we are called upon to translate everything that is still more or less intellectual in the process of knowledge into reality, to lead the spirit itself into life as a real developing force. From this point of view, spiritual science becomes the basis for an immediate practice of life in a completely different sense than if it were only to help us to understand the secrets of existence.

Now, from the lectures that I was privileged to give here earlier, it has already become clear – and this should serve as a prerequisite for us today, since we are dealing with a very specific topic – that, on the basis of spiritual science, we are dealing with an inner spiritual-soul core of the human being, which we now not only follow in his journey between birth and death, but we see him entering physical-sensory existence through birth from another world, a supersensible world, and crossing over again into another world when he passes through the gate of death to live through new stages of development in this other world. Yes, we do not just speak of ascribing to this spiritual-soul core of our being an existence before birth and an existence after death, but we also ascribe to it repeated earthly lives, so that we look back from our present life on many earthly lives that we have gone through before, and look forward to many earthly lives that we will have to go through in the future. In the entire life of a human being, we must therefore distinguish between the times spent in the physical body between birth and death, and the intermediate times, the times between death and a new birth, in which the spiritual-soul essence of the human being has its abode and conditions of existence in purely spiritual-soul worlds. When we look at things in this way, we are also clear about the fact that we must take a different attitude in the physical world towards the developing human being than if we were to see the spiritual-mental in its developmental phases between birth and death as influenced only by the physical-material. When we look at repeated lives on earth and the intermediate stages of human spiritual development, we see something of a sacred enigma in the person who comes into existence through birth. We see how the spiritual element forces its way into existence through the indeterminate nature of the gesture and the physiognomy, through the indeterminate nature of abilities and inclinations, and how it increasingly and more powerfully expresses itself in gestures, physiognomy, talents, movements, and increasingly makes himself master of all the external means of expression and tools of this person, so that we spiritually see in the person — even if we ultimately recognize the unity of his nature — a duality.

We first have what he has inherited in terms of the qualities of his body and soul from his parents and ancestors, in short, from the earlier generations from which he descended. But then we look at the actual spiritual-soul center of the human being, at his spiritual-soul core, which initially has nothing to do with the characteristics and facts that we encounter in our ancestors, but comes from a previous life of the human being and now only acquires the characteristics that are inherited, so to speak envelops itself in them in order to express itself in them. We must therefore distinguish between what a person brings with him from previous lives at the deepest level of his being and what he acquires from the line of inheritance. And we can only gain the right attitude towards the developing human being if we seek this interplay between the forces that pass from one life to another and the forces that are inherited directly from parents and ancestors. If we want to understand this properly, we must first familiarize ourselves with two fundamental characteristics of our soul life, which must come before our spiritual eye in full clarity if we want to grasp the whole essence of the human being.

First of all, we have the important fact that when a person appears before us as a personality in the world, all the powers that he has - the soul abilities, the temperament, the character traits, the will impulses, the affects and so on - interact to form a whole. But alongside this, we must also recognize the other important fact, namely that these fully developed abilities and powers that we encounter in the personality of another person, even when they interact, are nevertheless independent of each other in certain respects in terms of their disposition, so that one is not necessarily the condition of the other.

This becomes immediately clear to us when we look at life and see, for example, how a person has a very special kind of aptitude, perhaps being musical, but not having the slightest talent for mathematics or for practical life. Another person has no musical aptitude at all, but instead a certain aptitude for practical life or for mathematics. This means that people's abilities and aptitudes can arise quite independently of one another, but they can also interact. Now, even to the superficial observer, it is clear that everything a person possesses in the way of abilities, talents, gifts, skills or physical characteristics points to his or her parents and ancestors. And we will soon see the precise way in which a child's characteristics point to their parents and ancestors.

But through birth, something also comes into existence that has nothing to do with inheritance, something that is brought over from previous lives as the human being's actual spiritual-soul core. This essential core, which eludes direct observation, comes to us when we, as true educators, observe the becoming of the human being and see him, as it were, growing out of the indefinite darkness, like a basic coloration, like a fundamental tone of the whole developing personality. We cannot trace back to parents and ancestors alone what comes into existence in such a way that it combines, groups, and plays with a person's abilities, his predispositions, his impulses, and makes a whole out of them. While individual human traits, let us say a predisposition for this or that science or skill, can usually be traced back to these or those traits in the ancestors, we admit right from the start that the way in which these abilities, these various powers of the ancestors are mixed together in the personality, depends on something other than heredity – it depends on the spiritual and soul core of the human being.

We can say, for example, that someone inherits this or that temperament from their father and this or that ability, perhaps the gift of imagination, from their mother. And now they come to us as a person with a particular temperament and the gift of imagination, mixed together in a certain way. We can trace the individual temperament that he has and the gift for imagination back to either the father or the mother. But the way in which these gifts are mixed up, how they are grouped, we have to trace that back to the spiritual and soul core of his being. And now it is evident to us that this spiritual-soul core of our being feels magnetized to a particular pair of parents before birth, so to speak, to take on these qualities from one parent and those from the other, which it needs to get just the right mixture that corresponds to what it brings with it from previous lives. We can indicate very definite laws as to how the spiritual and psychological essence of the human being mixes the inherited traits with each other, how it takes one from the paternal side and the other from the maternal side, and how the mixing ratio is the individual act of the person entering into life.

If we are to point out very definite laws in this direction, then it is necessary to agree that such laws are to be understood in the same way as physical laws. If, for example, a physicist teaches us that a stone thrown through the air falls along a parabola, we can understand this from the corresponding physical conditions. If someone then comes and does not take into account that this general line of throw can change, say, through the friction of the air or other conditions, he could tell us: You have established a false law, because the stone does not fly in a parabola. But it is not important for the physicist to include the external, modifying circumstances in the law, but to find the law from the essential conditions. We must apply the same principle to laws that apply to the spiritual life. We must say to ourselves: the laws that arise in our minds have the same significance as the laws of physics; therefore, they could be refuted just as easily as the laws of physics, but nothing special is achieved by such a refutation.

If now very definite laws of inheritance are developed, then of course a thousand and one circumstances could arise to influence these laws, just as the trajectory of a stone in flight is influenced by the resistance of the air. But these modifying conditions of an incidental nature do not change the validity of the law. And we can only understand the happenings of the world if we can express the essence of things - both in the physical and in the spiritual realm - in laws. Our observation of the spiritual world can be just as faithful as it is to the physical world. You can observe in hundreds and thousands of cases that in the immediate descendants, very specific strengths and talents go back to the paternal line of inheritance and very specific characteristics to the maternal line, that is, that the spiritual-soul essence of the human being takes very specific strengths and talents from the maternal line and very specific characteristics from the paternal line, which then appear mixed in the children.

We can therefore divide the realm of our soul life into two clearly distinguishable parts. In our soul, we first have what we can call the realm of our interest, our attention, our sympathy for this or that. People differ in terms of what their interest, the sympathy of their soul, leads them to. One person is like this, another like that, depending on the basic color of their interest, depending on the basic character traits of their soul. The area of the soul that we have just characterized is clearly distinguished from what we can call the intellectual area, to which we also want to count imagination, which gives us the ability to imagine our environment and human life itself in images. The gift of imagination, the intellectual gift, is the other part.

If we break down the entire soul life of a person in this way, it becomes clear that, in general, the area of interest, the overall character of the personality, goes back to the paternal line of inheritance. This means that the spiritual and mental core of a person's being mainly draws from the paternal line of inheritance what constitutes temperament, affects, and passions. What concerns our intellectuality, namely the mobility of our perceptions, the possibility of bringing the external world into certain images, of visualizing it through ideas, is generally taken from the maternal line of inheritance. The way in which these two areas are mixed up by the spiritual and psychological core of the human being depends on the nature and peculiarity of our personality. But we must not only consider this very general character of inheritance; we must go deeper and more precisely into it. And here it becomes apparent that human traits are not only inherited in a general sense, but that they are transformed in the process of inheritance, that they undergo very specific changes, and essential ones at that. It has been shown – and you can find this proven in hundreds and thousands of cases – that what lives in the mother as intellectuality, as mobility of soul, as the soul's inclination to process ideas, images, concepts and the like, has more of a tendency to pass to the son than to the daughter and usually, in passing to the son, descends, as it were, by one level [into the physical realm]. Thus it happens, for example, that a certain mobility of ideas, a special ability to think up this or that, perhaps to develop it artistically in the field of poetry, is present in the soul of the mother, but it only moves in the narrowest circle of the closest acquaintances and the closest surroundings and does not have or develop the right means to apply these abilities to the outside world. So we can say that the mother does have these qualities, but she does not have the tools tied to the outer body to make full use of what is there and to allow it to have an effect on humanity.

If this is the case with the mother, then these predispositions can be found in the son's personal organ systems, developed to a certain extent and transferred into physical tools. The mother can have this or that psychological predisposition, but not the organ predisposition, that is, the correspondingly developed brain or other organ complexes, in order to actually live out what she is predisposed to to a greater extent and make it visible to the world. In the son, the mother's predisposition moves into the organ system, into the brain and into other organ complexes, so that certain abilities can bear fruit for larger circles of humanity. On the other hand, paternal qualities, which lie more in the outer personality and are rooted in the organ systems, tend to rise to the soul level in the daughters and meet us there in a soul-transformed, soul-transformed way. And so we can express it as a beautiful law of the progression of human generational life: the soul of the mother tends to live on in the personal abilities and skills of the sons, but the predispositions of the father, the whole configuration of the father's personality, ascends and lives on in the soul of the daughters, or at least tends to do so. Thus the father will continue to live in the soul of his daughters, even to the formation of his physical personality in the outer life. The soul life of the mother, who remains in the narrower circle and has little opportunity to live out her soul abilities, will live on in the organ systems of the sons, which come into activity in the outer world.

This law, which is tremendously enlightening for the understanding of life, cannot, of course, be substantiated here in a short hour with hundreds of examples. It can only be explained, as is also done in physics. And I would like to begin by explaining it through the well-known case of Goethe. Who would not know that everything that was present in Goethe as an organ predisposition, that he was able to live out through his brain and other tools of the organism, was traced back by himself to his mother's “desire to tell stories.” In the close circle of the old woman's lively mind, with all her desire to tell stories, she had everything, except for the organ predispositions. But what was living in the soul of the old woman, advice, flowed down and formed the son's organ systems. We can refer not only to Goethe's mother, but also to his father, to the old Frankfurt councilor Caspar Goethe. When we get to know him as an able, ambitious man, we are particularly impressed by his thoroughness, and sometimes also by his quiet resignation. But on the other hand, we must be clear about how all the qualities he had made it possible for him to move up a few rungs on the social ladder, but that they were not nearly enough to give him the influence and scope he sought in Frankfurt, so that in a sense he was condemned to an idle life.

Something of strength and stubbornness lies in the old Goethe's nature, also something of sobriety, but thoroughness in sobriety, even of a certain harmony of these qualities. If we consider these qualities of Goethe's father alongside the qualities of the son, we can easily understand that the two repelled each other in certain respects. They did so, as is well known. But let us imagine this quality of the father “spiritualized” - if we may coin the word - elevated into the soul, let us imagine a certain thoroughness of soul, in turn, with that timidity that the old Goethe had, that did not allow him to achieve anything, coming to life in the soul of his daughter Cornelia: We can easily find in the soul of Cornelia, Goethe's daughter, a certain softness of character, soulfully mixed with a certain stubbornness, a sharp mind mixed with a certain indulgence in feelings, the need to give herself, to nestle up to the world, and yet the inability to really give herself to anyone. The whole situation in the life of old Goethe – who strove to occupy a significant position and yet could not – can arise in the soul of the daughter in such a way that she had the need to nestle to a spouse and yet could not find satisfaction in marriage. We only need to transpose the character traits, which go as far as the organ structure of the old Goethe, into the soul, and we have the soul of Goethe's sister Cornelia. And everything that repelled Goethe, that pushed him back to his father, so to speak, that was what deeply attracted him to his sister, who complemented him so beautifully during their short life together, and whom he loved so much. Everything paternal in this “ensoulment” by his sister had such a beneficial effect on the young Goethe.

Try to look into the same things in Hebbel. Read his diaries. Try to understand from them, which are also a treasure of German literature in themselves, how Hebbel inherited the whole externality of character, that is, the kind of interest in the world, from his father, but that which led him from his earliest youth to strive to be understood points back to the soul of his mother, even if she was only a simple bricklayer's wife. In historical observation we can see everywhere that everything we encounter in the organ-facilities of men can be traced back to their mothers. Look at the mother of Alexander the Great, at the mother of the Maccabees, at the mother of the Gracchi – wherever you want – you see it everywhere. Anyone who has an instinct for really getting to the bottom of human characters will find this confirmed everywhere, just as it is with physical laws.

In spiritual science, we understand such a fact to mean that the spiritual and soul essence of the human being takes on paternal and maternal characteristics, not only mixing them but also transforming them, taking them to a deeper or higher level , that is to say, the qualities that are bound to the organ systems in the father are “soul-like” in the daughters, and the soul qualities that have not yet developed into organ systems in the mothers are transformed into organ systems in the sons. Thus, inheritance does not occur directly, but in such a way that we sometimes see it concealed, covered up, and we only have to discover how the spiritual and soul essence of the human being actually uses the qualities found in the paternal and maternal line in order to shape them plastically according to its individuality and assert them in the world.

Now it could easily be that if someone merely builds their conviction on a few observations of life or on prejudices, it would be very easy to refute individual statements of spiritual science. It must therefore be pointed out that only the full scope of a true observation of life can confirm what is given by spiritual science as a general law of the world for the spiritual life. And here we see in life how this spiritual-soul core of being envelops itself, as it were, with the inherited qualities, which it incorporates and blends. Someone might say: Yes, show us how this spiritual-soul core of being works, how it envelops itself with the inherited traits. The important thing is that we take the right path in such a demonstration. In the individual human being, whom we have before us as a self-contained personality from birth, we see abilities growing. We see a harmonious unity - of course, we do not need to be reminded of this - we see a unity in what gradually develops in this or that ability. And one cannot readily distinguish in the individual human being what and to what extent the spiritual-soul core of his being is at work and what he has acquired from outside as physically inherited tendencies.

But if you broaden the basis of your observations of life, if you look around at life, then you can see how differently people present themselves, depending on the spiritual and psychological core of their being, as it enters into existence through birth , is richer in content, more significant and deeper, or less deep and significant, whether it has a richer content from previous embodiments, through which it is called upon to achieve much for the world in the new embodiment. How will such a core of being fare?

He will have a long way to go before he works his way through all the obstacles that confront him from the outside in the line of inheritance; he will have to carve it out for longer, the external hereditary traits will not immediately fit the core of his being. This is wonderfully confirmed when we see how great minds of humanity, Newton or Humboldt or Leibniz, were actually poor students because their rich spiritual-soul core took a long time to work through, to develop that with which they enveloped themselves and what they incorporated. Therefore, someone who sees life only through prejudiced eyes may consider the greatest people to be dullards or incompetent individuals, because they may even appear stupid at first, for it takes them a long time to carve out the rich spiritual and soul essence. But how someone who does not know life judges it is not what matters; what matters is the truth. In his diaries, Hebbel made the beautiful observation about what it would be like if a teacher were to take on Plato with his students in a high school class, and the re-embodied Plato himself were among the students and could least understand what the high school teacher would present as his correct view and interpretation of Plato, so that the re-embodied Plato would constantly have to repeat it.

Thus we see the spiritual and psychological core of the human being moving into the externally inherited traits; and we see him, especially when he is rich, finding the greatest obstacles through which he has to work his way. Such people sometimes come quite late to properly integrate the externally inherited material. Child prodigies rarely have a rich spiritual-soul core and therefore have less difficulty integrating the externally inherited material. They develop quickly, but we also know that these abilities, which initially appear surprisingly, quickly fade and fade away. If we observe life on a broader basis, we see how what shows itself as a person's entire personality in one person is incorporated into the core of their being in a different way from the inherited traits in another. Yes, we can confirm and test this again with Goethe.

However, I must say something here that could perhaps be misunderstood. But anyone who, like me, has devoted themselves to Goethe intensively and lovingly for over thirty years is entitled to say such a heresy. Our understanding of Goethe and our devotion to Goethe's greatness need not be compromised if we admit to ourselves that Goethe's essential core only very slowly pushed its way into existence through the external physical obstacles. If we want to delve into what Goethe had to accomplish – if we are not afflicted with the prejudices of some Goethe researchers – we can see that his early works are by no means complete; and we can admit with regard to Goethe's first works: This is still the Goethe who is becoming, who has not yet overcome the external obstacles of his essential core; what Goethe was actually to become is still hidden. One does not question the greatness of the first part of the “Faust” work if one points out that this is still the Goethe who is becoming, that his rich essential core is still sitting in the depths and must first work its way out.

Indeed, today it is almost considered a hallmark of truly great minds that they have a certain tendency to favor the youthful works of poets in literature. One finds the tendency: Yes, we must go to the poets in their first period, there we have what gushes directly from the soul, there we have the essential that actually constitutes their greatness. And for Goethe, too, an audience has been found that says: Well, old Goethe has weakened a bit, he's no longer at the top of his game in the second part of Faust, you can't understand him; the first part of Faust, yes, that is of original power. Those who judge in this way certainly do not consider whether it is not perhaps due to themselves, whether they would not do better to endeavor to understand a work of this kind, such as the second part of Faust, which Goethe wrote at the height of his creative powers.

Goethe took a different view of this matter. He pointed to the first part of “Faust” as a youthful work in which his spiritual and intellectual essence had not yet come to the fore. Goethe left behind a few lines in which he expresses himself precisely on this matter, where he says - and he means the first part of “Faust”:

They praise Faust,
And what else
In my writings roars,
In their favor;
The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much;
The pack of ragamuffins thinks,
It would no longer be!

Goethe himself was of this opinion. We see in Goethe how, for almost his entire life, the rich soul core, which we cannot deduce from hereditary traits, fights against the opposing elements of heredity and against external resistance. We can follow year after year how his rich soul core comes out harmoniously, we see how he becomes more and more mature during his Italian journey and how he becomes completely one with the qualities of his spiritual and soul core.

The [character] traits of the human being are expressed in the course of the development of his being in his shells; the abilities, on the other hand, which are mainly bound to the inner being, can indeed emerge strongly in youth. Because there is not much shell yet, the existing talent for music, for mathematics or for poetry must already show itself. But when it comes to skills for practical life, we know that these and everything else needed to cope with the external world must first be acquired in the further course of life. And only at the end comes the real [spiritual] element, mysticism, looking into the spiritual world. It is then important not only to be inflamed for spiritual facts, but to have developed the abilities and trained the organs for spiritual vision, in order to achieve harmony between the knowledge of what is shown on the outside and what the world lives through and trembles through in its innermost being.

One can be a follower of a mystic in mature youth, one can interpret him, but to achieve something in this field is only possible when we have reached middle age. So if one wants to find within oneself the possibility of harmonizing with the universal spirit of the world, one must be about forty years old, since this is not possible earlier. One must give oneself time, one must occupy oneself differently beforehand, and that with the tendency of being a follower of a spiritual world current and thereby creating harmony between one's own inner core and the organs to be developed. He who does not transgress such laws, as they could only be hinted at here, will best find his way into life and increasingly separate himself from the forces that lie in the natural line of inheritance for him, hindering him, and overcome them. On further consideration of the natural conditions of inheritance, we can see that there must be a difference between the children of young spouses and the children from a union that has existed for a longer period of time or has only been entered into at an advanced age. Because a person is in a state of ascending development until a certain point in their life, the consequences of the work that has been done by the inner core of the being become more and more apparent in the gestures, the physiognomy, and thus in the outer personality, as one matures. Around the age of twenty, some of this work has already been done, but you can see that not all of the influence of the spiritual core of being is being exercised, but that part of it is still stuck in the depths. Only gradually does the actual person fully emerge and come to the surface. Only then does he have a stronger power to transfer his inherited traits to his offspring because he has now matured so much. A spiritual-soul core that wants to live as independently as possible out of its own inner strength will therefore feel magnetically attracted to a youthful father who offers less resistance; a weaker individuality, on the other hand, will be attracted to an older father with a fully developed character. Seen from this point of view, some of life's greatest riddles are illuminated. Such relationships can, of course, be most clearly demonstrated in the typical case, although the most diverse variations often occur.

Now we will see how the individual characteristics of the soul can be independent of each other and how they are inherited, but how all the qualities are brought together to form a basic tone and processed by the spiritual-soul core. Thus, for example, arrogance can be inherited from the mother and clumsiness from the father and grouped together by the soul. Soul qualities disregard much of what the parents are able to offer and favor something else. Many a complicated theory of external science is often very illogical. For example, it is claimed that genius can be traced back to its roots in the characteristics of previous generations; what remarkable qualities were already present in the individual ancestors can be seen in the genius that emerged from this line of ancestors, as if collected and intensified in a focal point. This is used to try to demonstrate that there is no such thing as a spiritual-soul core. But it is a mistake to assume that favorable traits can only be accumulated and enhanced through the natural process of inheritance. On the contrary, if there is to be any inheritance in this respect, the circumstances are such that genius stands at the beginning, but not at the end, of a line of inheritance. In its outward personal peculiarities, genius is only colored in its penetration through the physical line of inheritance – just as someone gets wet when they fall into the water.

We can apply all that has been said in practice if we make it the basis of an educational task that confronts us and allow it to become a kind of cognitive problem of life. We have already said that we have to solve a sacred mystery in the human being who strives towards existence, and we must seek to recognize what all that is working its way up holds within itself. We must try to acquire a fine sense of tact in order to observe correctly how the spiritual and soul essence struggles to free itself from dark undercurrents; we must pay careful attention to which qualities of the developing young person relate to the father and which to the mother – in the organ systems, in the soul qualities and in their interaction under the influence of the individuality on the outer shells.

Although individuality is often called for today, all this remains mere rhetoric as long as one cannot go into details and their origin. If one does not do this and, starting from this phrase, wants to judge and state that the child to be educated must now do this or that, one will remain very theoretical. Sometimes the educator will not be equal to the individual core of being that he is to help come into existence. He does not need to be equal to the pupil, but he must be equal to the education. It is necessary to educate the human being in such a way that he can enter life independently and is able to seize everything skillfully. It is not always possible, and depends on the educator, to introduce everything to the pupil bit by bit and always in good time, based on theoretical observations and considerations; often circumstances intervene that arise from within the family itself or from outside in a hindering way. Sometimes the maturing individuality is even better served when this or that is decreed by unavoidable external circumstances, because then – even under such circumstances – the individual riddle is not solved by theoretical education, but everything that comes from the dark depths of the past, from earlier life courses, is guided into harmonious interaction with present circumstances.

In spiritual science, we can find the spiritual not only for our own satisfaction; spiritual science can also be the guide to help the spiritual, which wants to reveal itself in the growing child, to come into existence, so that it can find its way into the living interaction of people. In this way, we can, in our modest way, become saviors of people, that is, of their spiritual essence, which is behind their outer appearance. Thus, spiritual science will become more and more deeply rooted in human life with this approach because it leads to the permeation of life with practical goals. We find this in Goethe, in his steadfastness in standing on a secure, inner foundation of life, in which we perceive a spirit that never remains on what has been achieved, but which also proves to us in the future to be continually effective and creative if we allow his word to have the right effect on us:

If yesterday is clear and open to you,
If you are vigorously free today,
You can also hope for a tomorrow
That may be no less happy.

And we can hope the same for ourselves, but also for the people whose mental content and spiritual health has been entrusted to us as educators.

Preface

[ 1 ] I am convinced that my work, The Philosophy of Freedom, published some five years ago, gives the outline of a world-conception which is in complete harmony with the stupendous results of the natural science of our time. I am also conscious that I did not intentionally bring about this harmony. My road was quite independent of that which natural science follows.

[ 2 ] From this independence of my own way of looking at things in regard to the province of knowledge that is dominant in our day, and from its simultaneous, complete agreement therewith, I believe myself entitled to draw my justification for presenting the position of that monumental representative of the scientific mode of thought, Ernst Haeckel, in the intellectual battle of our time.

[ 3 ] Doubtless there are to-day many who feel the need for clearing up matters with regard to natural science. This need can best be satisfied by penetrating deeply into the ideas of that seeker into Nature who has most unreservedly drawn the full conclusions of scientific premises. I desire to address myself in this little book, to those who share with me a like need in this respect.

Rudolf SteineR
Berlin, January, 1900.

[ 4 ] Goethe has given glorious expression, in his book upon Winkelmann, to the feeling which a man has when he contemplates his position within the world: “When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, worthy, and valuable whole, when harmonious contentment yields him pure, free rapture, then would the universe, could it but feel itself, burst forth into rejoicing at having attained its goal, and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.”

From out of this feeling there arises the most important question that man can ask himself: how is his own becoming and being linked with that of the whole world? Schiller, in a letter to Goethe of 23rd August, 1794, admirably characterises the road by which Goethe sought to come to a knowledge of human nature. “From the simple organism you ascend step by step to the more complex, in order finally to build up the most complex of all, man, genetically from the materials of the entire structure of nature.” Now this road of Goethe's is also that which natural science has been following for the last forty years, in order to solve “the question of questions for humanity.” Huxley sees the problem to be the determination of the position which “man occupies in nature, and his relation to the totality of things.” It is the great merit of Charles Darwin to have created a new scientific basis for reflection upon this question. The facts which he brought forward in 1859 in his work, The Origin of Species, and the principles which he there developed, gave to natural research the possibility of showing, in its own way, how well founded was Goethe's conviction that Nature, “after a thousand animal types, forms a being that contains them all—man.”

To-day we look back upon forty years of scientific development, which stand under the influence of Charles Darwin's line of thought. Rightly could Ernst Haeckel say in his book, On our Present Knowledge of Man's Origin, which reproduces an address delivered by him at the Fourth International Congress of Zoologists in Cambridge on 26th August, 1898: “Forty years of Darwinism! What a huge progress in our knowledge of Nature! And what a revolution in our weightiest views, not only in the more closely affected departments, but also in that of anthropology, and equally in all the so-called psychological sciences.”

Goethe, from his profound insight into Nature, foresaw to its full extent this revolution and its significance for the progress of man's intellectual culture. We see this particularly clearly from a conversation which he had with Soret on 2nd August, 1830. At that time the news of the beginning of the Revolution of July reached Weimar and caused general excitement. When Soret visited Goethe, he was received with the words: “Now, what do you think of this great event? The volcano has burst into eruption; all is in flames, and it is no longer a conference behind closed doors!” Soret naturally could only believe that Goethe was speaking of the July Revolution, and replied that under the known conditions nothing else could be expected than that it would end with the expulsion of the Royal family. But Goethe had something quite different in his mind. “1 am not talking of those people at all; I am concerned with quite other things. I am speaking of the conflict, so momentous for science, between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire that has come to a public outbreak in the Academy.” The conflict concerned the question whether each species in which organic nature finds expression possesses a distinct architectural plan of its own, or whether there is one plan common to them all. Goethe had already settled this question for himself forty years earlier. His eager study of the plant and animal worlds had made him an opponent of the Linnæan view, that we “count as many species as different forms were created in the beginning (in principio).” Anyone holding such an opinion can only strive to discover what are the plans upon which the separate species are organised. He will seek above all carefully to distinguish these separate forms.

Goethe followed another road. “That which Linnaeus strove forcibly to hold apart was bound, according to the innermost need of my being, to strive after reunion.” Thus there grew up in him the view which, in 1796, in the Lectures upon the three first chapters of A General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, he summed up in the sentence: “This, then, we have gained, that we can unhesitatingly maintain that all complete organic natures—among which we see fishes, amphibia, birds, mammals, and, as the head of the last, man—have all been shaped according to one original type, which only inclines more or less to this side or the other in its constant parts, and yet daily develops and transforms itself by reproduction.” The basic type, to which all the manifold plant-forms may be traced back, had already been described by Goethe in 1790 in his Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants. This way of regarding things, by which Goethe endeavoured to recognise the laws of living nature, is exactly similar to that which he demands for the inorganic world in his essay, written in 1793, Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject: “Nothing happens in Nature which is not in some connection with the whole, and if experiences only appear to us as isolated, if we can only regard experiments as isolated facts, that does not imply that they actually are isolated; it is only the question: How shall we find the connection of these phenomena, these occurrences?” Species also appear to us only in isolation. Goethe seeks for their connection. Hence it clearly appears that Goethe's effort was directed to apply the same mode of explanation to the study of living beings as has led to the goal in that of inorganic nature.¹

How far he had run ahead of his time with such conceptions becomes apparent when one reflects that at the same time when Goethe published his Metamorphosis, Kant sought to prove scientifically, in his Critique of Judgment, the impossibility of an explanation of the living according to the same principles as hold for the lifeless. He maintained: “It is quite certain that we cannot even adequately learn to know, far less explain to ourselves, the organised beings and their inner possibility according to purely mechanical principles of nature; and, indeed, it is so certain that we can boldly say it is senseless for man even to conceive such a purpose, or to hope that sometime perhaps a Newton may arise who will make comprehensible the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no purpose has ordered; rather one must simply and flatly deny any such insight to man.” Haeckel repudiates this thought with the words: “Now, however, this impossible Newton really appeared seventy years later in Darwin, and, as a matter of fact, solved the problem whose solution Kant had declared to be absolutely unthinkable!”

That the revolution in scientific views brought about by Darwinism must take place, Goethe knew full well, for it corresponds with his own way of conceiving things. In the view which Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire defended against Cuvier, that all organic forms carry in them a “general plan modified only here and there,” he recognised his own again. Therefore he could say to Soret: “Now, however, Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire is decidedly on our side, and with him all his important disciples and followers in France. This event is for me of quite extraordinary value, and I rejoice rightly over the general victory gained at length by a cause to which I have devoted my life, and which is most especially my very own.” Of still greater value for Goethe's view of Nature are, however, the discoveries of Darwin. Goethe's view of Nature is related to Darwinism in a way similar to that in which the insights of Copernicus and Kepler into the structure and movements of the planetary system are related to the discovery by Newton of the law of the universal attraction of all heavenly bodies. This law reveals the scientific causes, why the planets move in the manner which Copernicus and Kepler had described. And Darwin found the natural causes, why the common original type of all organic beings, which Goethe assumed, makes its appearance in the various species.

[ 5 ] The doubt as to the view that there underlies each distinct organic species a special plan of organisation, unchangeable for all time, took firm hold upon Darwin upon a journey which he undertook to South America and Australia in the summer of 1831 as naturalist on the ship Beagle. As to how his thought ripened, we get an idea in reaching such communications from him as the following: “When, during the voyage of the Beagle, I visited the Galapagos Archipelago, which lies in the Pacific Ocean some five hundred English miles from the South American coast, I saw myself surrounded by peculiar kinds of birds, reptiles, and snakes, which exist nowhere else in the world. Yet they almost all bore upon them an American character. In the song of the mocking thrush, in the sharp cry of the carrion hawk, in the great chandelier-like Opuntico, I clearly perceived the neighbourhood of America; and yet these islands were separated from the mainland by so many miles, and differed widely from it in their geological constitution and their climate. Yet more surprising was the fact that most of the inhabitants of each separate island of this small archipelago were specifically different, although closely related to one another. I often asked myself, then, how these peculiar animals and men had originated. The simplest answer seemed to be that the inhabitants of the different islands descend from one another, and in the course of their descent had undergone modifications, and that all the inhabitants of the archipelago had descended from those of the nearest mainland, viz., America, from which naturally the colonisation would proceed. But it long remained for me an unintelligible problem: how the necessary degree of modification could have been attained.”

As to this “how,” it was the numerous breeding experiments which he tried, after his return home, with pigeons, fowls, dogs, rabbits, and garden plants that enlightened Darwin. He saw from them in how high a degree there lies in organic forms the possibility of continually modifying themselves in the course of their reproduction. It is possible, by creating artificial conditions, to obtain from a given form after a few generations new kinds, which differ much more from each other than do those in Nature, whose difference is regarded as so great that one inclines to ascribe to each a special underlying plan of organisation. As is well known, the breeder utilises this variability of kinds to bring about the development of such forms of domesticated organisms as correspond with his intentions. He endeavours to create the conditions which guide the variation in a direction answering his purpose. If he seeks to breed a kind of sheep with specially fine wool, he seeks out among his flock those individuals which have the finest wool. These he allows to breed. From among their descendants he again selects for further breeding those which have the finest wool. If this is carried on through a series of generations, a species of sheep is obtained which differs materially from its ancestors in the formation of its wool. The same thing can be done with other characteristics of living creatures. From these facts two things become obvious: that organic forms have a tendency to vary, and that they pass on the acquired modifications to their descendants. Owing to this first property of living creatures, the breeder is able to develop in his species certain characteristics that answer his purposes; owing to the second, these new characteristics are handed on from one generation to the next.

[ 6 ] The thought now lies close at hand, that in Nature also, left to itself, the forms continually vary. And the great power of variation of domesticated organisms does not force us to assume that this property of organic forms is confined within certain limits. We may rather presuppose that in the lapse of vast time-periods a certain form transforms itself into a totally different one, which in its formation diverges from the former to the utmost extent imaginable. The most natural inference then, is this, that the organic species have not arisen independently, each according to a special plan of structure, alongside each other; but that in course of time they have evolved the one from the other. This idea gains support from the views at which Lyell arrived in the history of the earth's development, and which he first published in 1830 in his Principles of Geology. The older geological views, according to which the formation of the earth was supposed to have been accomplished in a series of violent catastrophes, were thereby superseded. Through this doctrine of catastrophes it was sought to explain the results to which the investigation of the earth's solid crust had led. The different strata of the earth's crust, and the fossilised organic creatures contained in them, are of course the vestiges of what once took place on the earth's surface.

The followers of the doctrine of violent transformations believed that the development of the earth had been accomplished in successive periods, definitely distinguished from one another. At the end of such a period there occurred a catastrophe. Everything living was destroyed, and its remains preserved in an earth-stratum. On the top of what had been destroyed there arose a completely new world, which must be created afresh. In the place of this doctrine of catastrophes, Lyell set up the view that the crust of the earth has been gradually moulded in the course of very long periods of time, by the same processes which still in our time are going on every day on the earth's surface. It has been the action of the rivers carrying mud away from one spot and depositing it on another; the work of the glaciers, which grind away rocks and stones, forward blocks of stone, and analogous processes, which, in their steady, slow working have given to the earth's surface its present configuration. This view necessarily draws after it the further conclusion that the present-day forms of plants and animals also have gradually developed themselves out of those whose remains are preserved for us in fossils. Now, it results from the processes of artificial breeding that one form can really transform itself into another. There remains only the question, by what means are those conditions for this transformation, which the breeder brings about by artificial means, created in Nature itself?

[ 7 ] In artificial breeding human intelligence chooses the conditions so that the new forms coming into existence answer to the purposes which the breeder is following out. Now, the organic forms living in Nature are in general purposefully adapted to the conditions under which they live. A mere glance into Nature will teach one the truth of this fact. Plant and animal species are so constructed that they can maintain and reproduce themselves in the conditions under which they live.

[ 8 ] It is just this purposeful arrangement which has given rise to the supposition that organic forms cannot be explained in the same way as the facts of inorganic Nature. Kant observes in his Critique of Judgment: “The analogy of the forms, in so far as they seem to be produced in accordance with a common basic plan, despite all differences, strengthens the presumption of a real relationship between them in their generation from a common mother through an approach, step by step, of one animal species to another. ... Here, therefore, it is open to the archaeologist of Nature to cause to arise that great family of creatures (for one would be forced to conceive them thus if the thoroughgoing connected relationship spoken of is to hold good) from the traces left over of her older revolutions, according to all their known and supposed mechanisms. But he must equally for that purpose ascribe to this common mother an organisation purposely fitted to all these creatures, for otherwise the purposive form of the products of the plant and animal kingdoms is unthinkable as to its possibility.”

[ 9 ] If we would explain organic forms after the same manner in which natural science deals with inorganic phenomena, we must demonstrate that the particular arrangement of the organisms—devoid of a purposeful object—comes into being by reason of what is practically natural necessity, even as one elastic ball after having been struck by another is fulfilling a law as it rolls along. This requirement has its fulfilment in Darwin's teachings regarding natural selection. Even in Nature organic forms must, in accordance with their capacity for assimilating modifications which have been brought about by artificial breeding, become transformed. Should there be nothing available for directly bringing about the change, so that none but the forms aimed at should come into existence, there will be, regardless of choice, useless, or less useful, forms called into being. Now, Nature is extremely wasteful in the bringing forth of her germs. So many germs are, indeed, produced upon our earth, that were they all to attain to development we should soon be able to fill several worlds with them.

This great number of germs is confronted with but a comparatively small amount of food and space, the result of this being a universal struggle for existence among organic beings. Only the fit survive and fructify; the unfit have to go under. The fittest, however, will be those who have adapted themselves in the best possible way to the surrounding conditions of life. The absolutely unintentional, and yet—from natural causes—necessary, struggle for existence brings in its train the same results as are attained by the intelligence of the breeder with his cultivated organisms: he creates purposeful (useful) organic forms. This, broadly sketched, is the meaning of Darwin's theory of natural selection in the struggle for existence; or, otherwise, the “selective theory.” By this theory, that which Kant held to be impossible is reached: the thinking out in all its possibilities of a predetermined form in the animal and vegetable kingdom, without assuming the Universal Mother to be dowered with an organism directly productive of all these creatures.

[ 10 ] As Newton by pointing out the general attraction of the heavenly bodies showed why they moved in the set courses determined by Copernicus and Kepler, so did it now become possible to explain with the help of the theory of selection how in Nature the evolution of the living thing takes place, the course of which Goethe, in his Metamorphosis of Plants, has observed: “We can, however, say this, namely, that proceeding from a relationship that is hardly distinguishable between animal and plant, creatures do little by little evolve, carrying on their development in opposite directions—the plant finally reaching its maturity in the form of the tree, and the animal finding its culminating glory in man's freedom and activity.”

Goethe has said of his ancestors: “I shall not rest until I have found a pregnant point from which many deductions may be made; or, rather, one that will forcibly bestow upon me the overflow of its own abundance.” The theory of selection became for Ernst Haeckel the point from which he was able to deduce a conception of the universe entirely in accordance with natural science.

[ 11 ] At the beginning of the last century Jean Lamarck also maintained the view that, at a certain moment in the earth's development, a most simple organic something developed itself, by spontaneous generation, out of the mechanical, physical, and chemical processes. These simplest organisms then produced more perfect ones, and these again others more highly organised, right up to man. “One might therefore quite rightly name this part of the theory of evolution, which asserts the common origin of all plant and animal species from the simplest common root-forms, in honour of its most deserving founder, Lamarckianism” (Haeckel, Natural History of Creation). Haeckel has given in grandiose style an explanation of Lamarckianism by means of Darwinism.

[ 12 ] The key to this explanation Haeckel found by seeking out the evidences in the individual development of the higher organisms—in their ontogeny—showing that they really originated from lower forms of life. When one follows out the form-development of one of the higher organisms from the earliest germ up to its fully developed condition, the different stages are found to present configurations corresponding to the forms of lower organisms.² At the outset of his individual existence man and every other animal is a simple cell. This cell divides itself, and from it arises a germinal vesicle consisting of many cells. From that develops the so-called “cup-germ,” the two-layered gastrula, which has the shape of a cup- or jug-like body. Now, the lower plant-animals (sponges, polyps, and so on) remain throughout their entire existence on a level of development which is equivalent to this cup-germ. Haeckel remarks thereupon: “This fact is of extraordinary importance. For we see that man, and generally every vertebrate, runs rapidly, in passing, through a two-leaved stage of formation, which in these lowest plant-animals is maintained throughout life” (Anthropogenesis). Such a parallelism between the developmental stages of the higher organisms and the developed lower forms may be followed out through the entire evolutionary history. Haeckel clothes this fact in the words: “The brief ontogenesis or development of the individual is a rapid and abbreviated repetition, a condensed recapitulation of the prolonged phylogenesis or development of the species.” This sentence gives expression to the so-called fundamental biogenetic law. Why then do the higher organisms in the course of their development come to forms which resemble lower ones? The natural explanation is that the former have developed themselves out of the latter; that therefore every organism in its individual development shows us one after another the forms which have clung to it as heirlooms from its lower ancestors.

[ 13 ] The simplest organism that once upon a time formed itself on earth, transforms itself in the course of reproduction into new forms. Of these, the best adapted in the struggle for existence survive, and transmit their peculiarities to their descendants. All the formations and qualities which an organism exhibits at the present time have arisen in the lapse of enormous time-periods by adaptation and inheritance. Heredity and adaptation are thus the causes of the world of organic forms.

[ 14 ] Thus, by investigating the relationship of individual developmental history (ontogeny) to the history of the race (phylogeny), Haeckel has given the scientific explanation of the manifold organic forms.³ As a natural philosopher he has satisfied the human demand for knowledge, which Schiller had derived from observation of Goethe's mind; he ascended from the simple organisations step by step to the more complicated, to finally build up genetically the most complex of all, man, from the materials of the whole structure of Nature. He has set forth his view in several grandly designed works—in his General Morphology (1866), in his Natural History of Creation (1868), in his Anthropogenesis (1874)—in which he “undertook the first and hitherto the only attempt to establish critically in detail the zoological family-tree of man, and to discuss at length the entire animal ancestry of our race.” To these works there has been further added in recent years his three-volumed Systematic Phylogeny.

[ 15 ] It is characteristic of Haeckel's deeply philosophical nature that, after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, he at once recognised the full significance for man's entire conception of the Universe, of the principles therein established; and it speaks much for his philosophical enthusiasm that he boldly and tirelessly combated all the prejudices which arose against the acceptance of the new truth by the creed of modern thought. The necessity that all modern scientific thinking should reckon with Darwinism was expounded by Haeckel at the fiftieth meeting of German scientists and doctors on the 22nd September, 1877, in his address, The Present Theory of Evolution in Relation to Science as a Whole. He delivered a widely-embracing Confession of Faith of a Man of Science on the 9th October, 1892, in Altenburg at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society for Natural Science of the Osterland. (This address was printed under the title, Monism as a link between Religion and Science, Bonn, 1892.) What has been yielded by the remodelled doctrine of evolution and our present scientific knowledge towards the answering of the “question of questions,” he has recently expounded in its broad lines in the address mentioned above, On our Present Knowledge as to the Origin of Man. Herein Haeckel handles afresh the conclusion, which follows as a matter of course from Darwinism for every logical thinker, that man has developed out of the lower vertebrates, and further, more immediately from true apes.

It has been, however, this necessary conclusion which has summoned to battle all the old prejudices of theologians, philosophers, and all who are under their spell. Doubtless, people would have accepted the emergence of the single animal and plant forms from one another if only this assumption had not carried with it at once the recognition of the animal descent of man. “It remains,” as Haeckel emphasised in his Natural History of Creation, “an instructive fact that this recognition—after the appearance of the first Darwinian work—was in no sense general, that on the contrary numerous critics of the first Darwinian book (and among them very famous names) declared themselves in complete agreement with Darwinism, but entirely rejected its application to man.” With a certain appearance of justice, people relied in so doing on Darwin's book itself, in which no word is said of this application. Because he drew this conclusion unreservedly, Haeckel was reproached with being “more Darwinian than Darwin.” True, that held good only till the year 1871, in which appeared Darwin's work, The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection, in which Darwin himself maintained that inference with great boldness and clearness.

[ 16 ] It was rightly recognised that with this conclusion must fall a conception belonging to the most treasured among the collection of older human prejudices: the conception that the “soul of man” is a special being all to itself, having quite another, a different, “higher origin” from all other things in Nature. The doctrine of descent must naturally lead to the view that man's soul-activities are only a special form of those physiological functions which are found in his vertebrate ancestors, and that these activities have evolved themselves with the same necessity from the mental activities of the animals, as the brain of man, which is the material condition of his intellect, has evolved out of the vertebrate brain.

[ 17 ] It was not only the men with old conceptions of faith nurtured in the various ecclesiastical religions who rebelled against the new confession, but also all those who had indeed apparently freed themselves from these conceptions of faith, but whose minds nevertheless still thought in the sense of these conceptions. In what follows the proof will be given that to this latter class of minds belong a series of philosophers and scientific scholars of high standing who have combated Haeckel, and who still remain opponents of the views he advocated. To these ally themselves also those who are entirely lacking in the power of drawing the necessary logical conclusions from a series of facts lying before them. I wish here to describe the objections which Haeckel had to combat.

II

[ 18 ] A bright light is thrown upon the relationship of man to the higher vertebrates, by the truth which Huxley, in 1863, expressed in his volume on Man's Place in Nature, and other Anthropological Essays: “Thus whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result—that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes” (see Man and the Lower Animals, p. 144). With the help of this fact it is possible to establish man's animal line of ancestry in the sense of the Darwinian doctrine of descent. Man has common ancestors with the apes in some species of apes that have died out. By a corresponding utilisation of the knowledge which comparative anatomy and physiology, individual developmental history, and palaeontology supply, Haeckel has followed the animal ancestors of man lying still more remotely in the past, through the semi-apes, the marsupials, the earliest fishes, right up to the very earliest animals consisting only of a single cell. He is fully entitled to ask: “Are the phenomena of the individual development of man in any way less wonderful than the palaeontological development from lower organisms? Why should not man have evolved in the course of enormous periods of time from unicellular original forms, since every individual runs through this same development from the cell to the fully developed organism?”

[ 19 ] But it is also by no means easy for the human mind to construct for itself conceptions in accordance with Nature as regards the unfoldment of the single organism from the germ up to the developed condition. We can see this from the ideas which a scientist like Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) and a philosopher like Leibnitz (1646-1716) formed about this development. Haller maintained the view that the germ of an organism already contains in miniature, but fully and completely formed in advance, all the parts which make their appearance during its development. Thus, development is taken to be not the formation of something new in what is already present, but the unfolding of something that was already there but invisible to the eye because of its minuteness. But if this view were correct, then in the first germ of an animal or vegetable form all following generations must be already contained like boxes one inside the other. And Haller actually drew this conclusion. He assumed that in the first human germ of our root-mother, Eve, the entire human race was already present in miniature. And even Leibnitz also can only imagine the development of men as an unfoldment of what already exists: “So I should opine that the souls, which some day will be human souls, were already there in germ, like those of other species, that they existed in man's ancestors up to Adam, therefore from the beginning of things, always in the form of organised bodies.”

[ 20 ] The human understanding has a tendency to imagine to itself that anything coming into existence was somehow already there, in some form or other, before its manifestation. The entire organism is supposed to be already hidden in the germ; the distinct organic classes, orders, families, species, and kinds are supposed to have existed as the thoughts of a creator before they actually came into existence. Now, however, the idea of evolution demands that we should conceive the arising of something new, of something later, from out of something already present, of something earlier. We are called upon to understand that which has become, out of the becoming. That we cannot do, if we regard all that has become as something which has always been there.

[ 21 ] How great the prejudices are that the idea of evolution had to face was clearly shown by the reception which Caspar Friedrich Wolff's Theoria Generationis, which appeared in 1759, met with among the men of science who accepted Haller's views. It was demonstrated in this book that in the human ovum not even a trace of the form of the developed organism is present, but that its development consists in a series of new formations. Wolff defended the idea of a real evolution, an epigenesis, a becoming from what is not present, as against the view of seeming evolution. Haeckel says of Wolff's book that it “belongs, in spite of its small size and awkward language, to the most valuable writings in the whole field of biological literature. ...” Nevertheless, this remarkable book had at first no success whatever. Although scientific studies, as a result of the stimulus imparted by Linnaeus, flourished mightily at that time, although botanists and zoologists were soon counted no longer by dozens but by hundreds, yet no one troubled himself about Wolff's Theory of Generation. The few, however, who had read it, held it to be fundamentally wrong, and especially Haller. Although Wolff proved by the most accurate observations the truth of epigenesis, and disproved the current hypotheses of the preformation doctrine, nevertheless the “exact” physiologist Haller remained the most zealous follower of the latter and rejected the correct teaching of Wolff with his dictatorial edict: “There is no becoming” (Nulla est epigenesis!). With so much power did human thinking set itself against a view, of which Haeckel (in his Anthropogenesis) remarks: “To-day we can hardly any longer call this theory of epigenesis a theory, because we have fully convinced ourselves of the correctness of the fact, and can demonstrate it at any moment with the help of the microscope.”

[ 22 ] How deep-rooted is the prejudice against the idea of evolution can be seen at any moment by the objections which our philosophical contemporaries make against it. Otto Liebmann, who, in his Analysis of Reality and his Thoughts and Facts, has subjected the fundamental views of science to criticism, expresses himself in a remarkable manner about the conception of evolution. In face of the facts, he cannot deny the justice of the conception that higher organisms proceed from lower. He therefore endeavours to represent the range and importance of this conception for the higher need of explanation as being as small as possible. “Accepted, the theory of descent ... granted that it be complete, that the great genealogical register of Nature's organic beings lies open before us; and that, not as an hypothesis, but as historically proven fact, what should we then have? A gallery of ancestors, such as one finds also in princely castles; only not as a fragment, but as a completed whole.” This means that nothing of any consequence has been accomplished towards the real explanation, when one has shown how what appears later proceeds as a new formation from what preceded.

Now it is interesting to see how Liebmann's presuppositions lead him yet again to the assumption that what arises on the road of evolution was there already before its appearance. In the recently published second part of his Thoughts and Facts he maintains: “It is true that for us, to whom the world appears in the form of perception known as time, the seed is there before the plant; begetting and conception come before the animal that arises from them, and the development of the embryo into a full-grown creature is a process of time and drawn out in time to a certain length. In the timeless world-being, on the contrary, which neither becomes nor passes away, but is once and for all, maintaining itself unchangeably amid the stream of happenings, and for which no future, no past, but only an eternal present exists, this before and after, this earlier and later, falls away entirely. ... That which unrolls itself for us in the course of time as the slower or more rapidly passing succession of a series of phases of development, is in the omnipresent, permanent world-being a fixed law, neither coming into existence nor passing away.”

The connection of such philosophical conceptions with the ideas of the various religious doctrines as to the creation may be easily seen. That purposefully devised beings arise in Nature, without there being some fundamental activity or power which infuses that purposefulness into the beings in question, is something that neither these religious doctrines nor such philosophical thinkers as Liebmann will admit. The view that accords with Nature follows out the course of what happens, and sees beings arise which have the quality of purposefulness, without this same purpose having been a co-determinant in their production. The purposefulness came about along with them; but the purpose did not co-operate in their becoming.⁴ The religious mode of conception has recourse to the Creator, who has created the creatures purposefully according to his preconceived plan; Liebmann turns to a timeless world-being, but he still makes that which is purposeful be brought forth by the purpose. “The goal or the purpose is here not later, and also not earlier than the means; but the purpose helps it on in virtue of a timeless necessity.” (Thoughts and Facts, pt. ii, p. 268.) Liebmann is a good example of those philosophers who have apparently freed themselves from the conceptions of faith, but who still think altogether on the lines of such conceptions. They profess that their thoughts are determined purely by reasonable considerations, but none the less it is an innate theological prejudice which gives the direction to their thoughts.

[ 23 ] Reasoned reflection must therefore agree with Haeckel when he says: “Either organisms have naturally developed themselves, and in that case they must all originate from the simplest common ancestral forms—or that is not the case, the various species of organisms have arisen independently of one another, and in that case they can only have been created in a supernatural manner, by a miracle. Natural evolution or supernatural creation of species—we must choose between these two possibilities, for there is no third!” (Free Science and Free Teaching, p. 9.) What has been proffered by philosophers or scientists as such a third alternative against the doctrine of natural evolution shows itself, on closer examination, to be only a belief in creation which more or less veils or denies its origin.

[ 24 ] When we raise the question as to the origin of species in its most important form, in that which concerns the origin of man, there are only two answers possible. Either a consciousness endowed with reason is not present prior to its actual appearance in the world, but evolves as the outcome of the nervous system concentrated in the brain; or else an all-dominating world-reason exists before all other beings, and so shapes matter that in man its own image comes into being. Haeckel (in Monism as the Link between Religion and Science, p. 21) describes the becoming of the human mind as follows: “As our human body has slowly and step by step built itself up from a long series of vertebrate ancestors, so the same thing holds good of our soul: as a function of our brain it has developed itself step by step in interaction with that organ. What we term for short the ‘human soul’ is indeed only the sum-total of our feeling, willing, and thinking—the sum-total of physiological functions whose elementary organs consist of the microscopic ganglionic cells of our brain. Comparative anatomy and ontogeny show us how the marvellous structure of the latter, of our human soul-organ, has built itself upwards gradually in the course of millions of years out of the brain-forms of the higher and lower vertebrates; while comparative psychology shows us how, hand in hand therewith, the very soul itself—as a function of the brain—has evolved itself. The latter shows us also how a lower form of soul activity is already present in the lowest animals, in the unicellular protozoa, infusoria, and rhizopods. Every scientist who, like myself, has observed through long years the life-activity of these unicellular protista, is positively convinced that they also possess a soul; this ‘cell-soul,’ too, consists of a sum of feelings, representations, and volitions; the feeling, thinking, and willing of our human soul is only different therefrom in degree.”

The totality of human soul-activities, which find their highest expression in unitary self-consciousness, corresponds to the complex structure of the human brain,⁵ just as simple feeling and willing do to the organisation of the protozoa. The progress of physiology, which we owe to investigators like Goltz, Münk, Wernicke, Edinger, Paul Flechsig, and others, enables us to-day to assign particular soul-manifestations to definite parts of the brain as their special functions. We recognise in four tracts of the grey matter of the cortex the mediators of four kinds of feeling: the sphere of bodily organic feeling in the meso-cranum lobule, that of smell in the frontal lobule, that of vision in the chief basal lobule, that of hearing in the temple lobule. The thinking which connects and orders the sensations has its apparatus between these four “sense-foci.” Haeckel links the following remark to the discussion of these latest physiological results: “The four thought-foci, distinguished by peculiar and highly complicated nerve-structure from the intervening sense-foci, are the true organs of thought, the only real tools of our mental life” (On our Present Knowledge as to the Origin of Man, P-15).

[ 25 ] Haeckel demands from the psychologists that they shall take such results as these into account in their explanations about the nature of the soul, and not build up a mere pseudo-science composed of a fantastic metaphysic, of one-sided, so-called inner observation of soul-events, uncritical comparison, misunderstood perceptions, incomplete experiences, speculative aberrations and religious dogmas. As against the reproach that is cast by this view at the old-fashioned psychology, we find in some philosophers and also in individual scientists the assertion that there cannot in any case be contained in the material processes of the brain that which we class together as mind and spirit; for the material processes in the areas of sense and thought are in no case representations, feelings, and thoughts, but only material phenomena. We cannot learn to know the real nature of thoughts and feelings through external observation, but only through inner experience, through purely mental self-observation. Gustav Bunge, for instance, in his address Vitalism and Mechanism, p. 12, explains: “In activity—therein lies the riddle of life. But we have not acquired the conception of activity from observation through the senses, but from self-observation, from the observation of willing as it comes into our consciousness, as it reveals itself to our inner sense.” Many thinkers see the mark of a philosophical mind in the ability to rise to the insight that it is a turning upside down of the right relation of things, to endeavour to understand mental processes from material ones.

[ 26 ] Such objections point to a misunderstanding of the view of the world which Haeckel represents. Anyone who has really been saturated with the spirit of this view will never seek to explore the laws of mental life by any other road than by inner experience, by self-observation. The opponents of the scientific mode of thought talk exactly as if its supporters sought to discover the truths of logic, ethics, aesthetics, and so forth, not by means of observing mental phenomena as such, but from the results of brain-anatomy. The caricature of the scientific world-conception thus created by such opponents for themselves is then termed materialism, and they are untiring in ever repeating afresh that this view must be unproductive, because it ignores the mental side of existence, or at least gives it a lower place at the expense of the material. Otto Liebmann, whom we may here cite once more, because his anti-scientific conceptions are typical of the mode of thought of certain philosophers and laymen, observes: “But granting, however, that natural science had attained its goal, it would then be in a position to show me accurately the physico-organic reasons why I hold that the assertion ‘twice two are four’ is true and assert it, and the other assertion ‘twice two are five’ is false and combat it, or why I must, just at this moment, write these very lines on paper the while I am entangled in the subjective belief that this happens because I will to write them down on account of their truth as assumed by me” (Thoughts and Facts, pt. ii, p. 294 et seq.). No scientific thinker will ever be of opinion that bodily-organic reasons can throw any light upon what, in the logical sense, is true or false. Mental connections can only be recognised from the side of the mental life. What is logically justified, must always be decided by logic; what is artistically perfect, by the aesthetic judgment. But it is an altogether different question to inquire: How does logical thinking, or the aesthetic judgment arise as a function of the brain? It is on this question only that comparative physiology and brain-anatomy have anything to say. And these show that the reasoning consciousness does not exist in isolation for itself, only utilising the human brain in order to express itself through it, as the piano-player plays on the piano; but that our mental powers are just as much functions of the form-elements of our brain, as “every force is a function of a material body” (Haeckel, Anthropogenesis, pt. ii, p. 853).

[ 27 ] The essence of Monism consists in the assumption that all occurrences in the world, from the simplest mechanical ones upwards to the highest human intellectual creations, evolve themselves naturally in the same sense, and that everything which is called in for the explanation of appearances, must be sought within that same world. Opposed to this view stands Dualism, which regards the pure operation of natural law as insufficient to explain appearances, and takes refuge in a reasoning being ruling over the appearances from above. Natural science, as has been shown, must reject this dualism.

[ 28 ] Now, however, it is urged from the side of philosophy that the means at the disposal of science are insufficient to establish a world-conception. From its own standpoint science was entirely right in explaining the whole world-process as a chain of causes and effects, in the sense of a purely mechanical conformity to law; but behind these laws, nevertheless, there is hidden the real cause, the universal world-reason, which only avails itself of mechanical means in order to realise higher, purposeful relations. Thus, for instance, Arthur Drews, who follows in the path of Eduard von Hartmann, observes: “Human works of art, too, are produced in a mechanical manner, that is when one looks only at the outward succession of single moments, without reflecting on the fact that after all there is hidden behind all this only the artist's thought; nevertheless one would rightly take that man for a fool who would perchance contend that the work was produced purely mechanically ... that which presents itself as the inevitable effect of a cause, on that lower standpoint which contents itself with merely gazing at the effects and thus contemplates the entire process as it were from behind, that very same thing reveals itself, when seen from the front, in every case as the intended goal of the means employed” (German Speculation since Kant, vol. ii, p. 287 et seq.). And Eduard von Hartmann himself remarks about the struggle for existence which renders it possible to explain living creatures naturally: “The struggle for existence, and therewith the whole of natural selection, is only the servant of the Idea, who is obliged to perform the lower services in its realisation, namely, the rough hewing and fitting of the stones that the master-builder has measured out and typically determined in advance according to their place in the great building. To proclaim this selection in the struggle for existence as the essentially adequate principle of explanation of the evolution of the organic kingdom, would be on a par with a day-labourer, who had worked with others in preparing the stones in the building of Cologne Cathedral, declaring himself to be the architect of that work of art” (Philosophy of the Unconscious, 10th ed., vol. iii, p. 403).

[ 29 ] If these conceptions were justified, it would be the task of philosophy to seek the artist behind the work of art. In fact, philosophers have tried the most various and diverse dualistic explanations to account for Cosmic processes. They have constructed in thought certain entities, supposed to hover behind the phenomena as the spirit of the artist rules behind the work of art.

[ 30 ] No scientific consideration would be able to rob man of the conviction that perceptible phenomena are guided by beings outside the world, if he could find within his own consciousness anything that pointed to such beings. What could anatomy and physiology accomplish with their declaration that soul-activities are functions of the brain, if observation of these activities yielded anything which could be regarded as a higher ground for an explanation? If the philosopher were able to show that a universal world-reason manifests itself in human reason, then all scientific results would be powerless to refute such knowledge.

[ 31 ] Now, however, the dualistic world-conception is disproved by nothing more effectively than by the consideration of the human mind. When I want to explain an external occurrence—for instance, the motion of an elastic ball which has been struck by another, I cannot stop short at the mere observation, but must seek the law which determines the direction of motion and velocity of the one ball from the direction and velocity of the other. Mere observation cannot furnish me with such a law, but only the linking together in thought of what happens. Man, therefore, draws from his mind the means of explaining that which presents itself to him through observation. He must pass beyond the mere observation, if he wants to comprehend it. Observation and thought are the two sources of our knowledge about things; and that holds good for all things and happenings, except only for the thinking consciousness itself. To that we cannot add by any explanation anything that does not lie already in the observation itself. It yields us the laws for all other things; it yields us at the same time its own laws also. If we want to demonstrate the correctness of a natural law, we accomplish this by distinguishing, arranging observations and perceptions, and drawing conclusions—that is, we form conceptions and ideas about the experiences in question with the help of thinking. As to the correctness of the thinking, thought itself alone decides. It is thus thought which, in regard to all that happens in the world, carries us beyond mere observation, though it does not carry us beyond itself.

[ 32 ] This fact is incompatible with the dualistic world-conception. The point which the supporters of this conception so often emphasise, namely, that the manifestations of the thinking consciousness are accessible to us through the inner sense of introspection, while we only comprehend physical and chemical happenings when we bring into the appropriate connections the facts of observation through logical, mathematical combination, and so on; in other words, through the results of the psychological domain: this fact is the very thing which they should never admit. For let us for once draw the right conclusion from the knowledge that observation transforms itself into self-observation when we ascend from the scientific into the psychological domain.

If a universal world-reason underlay the phenomena of nature, or some other spiritual primordial being (for instance, Schopenhauer's will or von Hartmann's unconscious spirit), then it follows that the human thinking spirit must also be created by this world-being. An agreement of the conceptions and ideas which the mind of man forms from phenomena, with the actual laws proper to these occurrences, would only be possible if the ideal world-artist called forth in the human soul the laws according to which he had previously created the entire world. But then man could only know his own mental activity through observation of the root-being by whom he is shaped, and not through self-observation. Indeed, there could be no self-observation, but only observation of the intentions and purposes of the primordial being. Mathematics and logic, for example, ought not to be developed by means of man's investigating the inner, proper nature of mental connections, but by his deducing these psychological truths from the intentions and purposes of the eternal world-reason. If human understanding were only the reflection of an eternal mind, then it could never possibly ascertain its own laws through self-observation, but must needs explain them from out of the eternal reason. But whenever such an explanation has been attempted, it is simply human reason which has been transferred to the world outside. When the mystic believes that he rises to the contemplation of God by sinking down into his own inner being, in reality he merely sees his own spirit, which he makes into God; and when Eduard von Hartmann speaks of ideas which utilise the laws of Nature as their hodmen-helpers in order to shape the building of the world, these ideas are only his own, by means of which he explains the world. Because observation of the manifestations of mind is self-observation, therefore it follows that it is man's own spirit which expresses itself in the mind, and not any external reason.

[ 33 ] The monistic doctrine of evolution, however, is in complete agreement with the fact of self-observation. If the human soul has evolved itself slowly and step by step along with the organs of the soul out of lower conditions, then it is self-evident that we can explain its development from below scientifically, though we can discover the inner nature of that which emerges from the complex structure of the human brain only from the contemplation of this very nature itself. Had spirit been always present in a form resembling the human, and had it at last created its likeness in man alone, then we ought to be able to deduce the human spirit from the All-spirit; but if man's spirit has arisen as a new formation in the course of natural evolution, then we can understand its origin by following out its line of ancestry; we learn to know the stage at which it has at last arrived when we contemplate that spirit itself.

[ 34 ] A philosophy that understands itself, and turns its attention to an unprejudiced contemplation of the human spirit, thus yields a further proof of the correctness of the monistic world-conception. It is, however, quite incompatible with a dualistic natural science. (The further development and detailed proof of a monistic philosophy, the basic ideas of which I can only indicate here, I have given in my =The Philosophy of Freedom, Berlin, 1894, Verlag Emil Felber.)

[ 35 ] For one who understands aright the monistic world-conception, all the objections urged against it from the side of ethics lose all significance. Haeckel has repeatedly pointed out the injustice of such objections, and also called attention to the fact that the assertion that scientific monism must needs lead to ethical materialism, either rests upon a complete misunderstanding of the former, or else aims at nothing more than casting suspicion upon it.

[ 36 ] Naturally monism regards human conduct only as a part of the general happenings of the world.⁶ It makes that conduct just as little dependent upon a so-called higher moral world-order, as it makes the happenings in Nature dependent upon a supernatural order. “The mechanical or monistic philosophy maintains that, everywhere in the phenomena of human life, as in those of the rest of nature, fixed and unalterable laws rule, that everywhere there exists a necessary causal connection, a causal nexus of appearances, and that in accordance therewith the entire world knowable to us constitutes a uniform whole, a 'monon.' It maintains further that all phenomena are produced by mechanical causes, not by preconceived purposive causes. There is no such thing as a ‘free will’ in the ordinary sense. On the contrary, those very phenomena which we have accustomed ourselves to view as the freest and most independent, the manifestations of the human will, appear in the light of the monistic world-conception as subordinated to just as rigid laws as any other phenomenon of nature” (Haeckel, Anthropogenesis, p. 851 et seq.). It is the monistic philosophy which first shows the phenomenon of free will in the right light. As a bit cut out of the general happening of the world, the human will stands under the same laws as all other natural things and processes. It is conditioned according to natural law. But inasmuch as the monistic view denies the presence of higher, purposeful causes in the course of Nature, it at the same time also declares the will independent of such a higher world-order.

The natural course of evolution leads the processes of Nature upwards to human self-consciousness. On that level it leaves man to himself; henceforward he can draw the impulses of his action from his own spirit. If a universal world-reason were ruling, then man also could not draw his goals from within himself, but only from this eternal reason. In the monistic sense man's action is hereafter determined by causal moments; in the ethical sense it is not determined, because Nature as a whole is determined not ethically but in accordance with natural law. The preliminary stages of ethical conduct are already to be found among the lower organisms. “Even though later the moral foundations have in man developed themselves much more highly, nevertheless their most ancient, prehistoric source lies, as Darwin has shown, in the social instincts of the animals” (Haeckel, Monism, p. 29).

Man's moral conduct is a product of evolution. The moral instinct of animals perfects itself, like everything else in Nature, by inheritance and adaptation, until man sets before himself moral purposes and goals from out of his own spirit. Moral goals appear not as predetermined by a supernatural world-order, but as a new formation within the natural process. Regarded ethically, “that only has purpose which man has first endowed therewith, for only through the realisation of an idea does anything purposeful arise. But only in man does the idea become effective in a realistic sense. To the question, What is man's task in life? Monism can only answer, that which he sets himself. My mission in the world is no (ethically) predetermined one; on the contrary, it is, at every moment, that which I elect for myself. I do not enter on life's journey with a fixed, settled line of march” (cp. my The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 172 et seq.). Dualism demands submission to ethical commands derived from somewhere or other. Monism throws man wholly upon himself. Man receives ethical standards from no external world-being, but only from the depths of his own being. The capacity for creating for oneself ethical purposes may be called moral phantasy. Thereby man elevates the ethical instincts of his lower ancestors into moral action, as through his artistic phantasy he reflects on a higher level in his works of art the forms and occurrences of Nature.

[ 37 ] The philosophical considerations which result from the fact of self-observation thus constitute no refutation, but rather an important complement of the means of proof in favour of the monistic world-conception, derived from comparative anatomy and physiology.

III

[ 38 ] The famous pathologist, Rudolf Virchow,⁶ has taken up a quite peculiar position towards the monistic world-conception. After Haeckel had delivered his address on The Present Theory of Evolution in Relation to Science as a Whole at the fiftieth congress of German scientists and doctors, in which he ably expounded the significance of the monistic world-conception for our intellectual culture and also for the whole system of public instruction, Virchow came forward four days later as his opponent with the speech: The Freedom of Science in the Modern State. At first it seemed as if Virchow wanted monism excluded from the schools only, because, according to his view, the new doctrine was only an hypothesis and did not represent a fact established by definite proofs. It certainly seems remarkable that a modern scientist wants to exclude the doctrine of evolution from school-teaching on the ostensible ground of lack of unassailable proofs while at the same time speaking in favour of Church dogma. Does not Virchow even say (on p. 29 of the speech mentioned): “Every attempt to transform our problems into set formula, to introduce our suppositions as the basis of instruction, especially the attempt simply to dispossess the Church and replace its dogmas without more ado by a ‘descent-religion;’ yes, gentlemen, this attempt must fail entirely, and in its frustration this attempt will also bring with it the greatest dangers for the whole position of science!” One must needs, however, here raise the question—meaningless for every reasonable thinker—Have we more certain proofs for the Church's dogmas than for the “descent-religion?” But it results from the whole tone and style in which Virchow spoke that he was much less concerned about warding off the dangers which monism might cause to the teaching of the young than about his opposition on principle to Haeckel's world-conception as a whole. This he has proved by his whole subsequent attitude. He has seized upon every opportunity that seemed to him suitable to combat the natural history of evolution and to repeat his favourite phrase, “It is quite certain that man does not descend from the ape.” At the twenty-fifth anniversary of the German Anthropological Society, on 24th August, 1894, he even went so far as to clothe this dictum in the somewhat tactless words: “On the road of speculation people have come to the ape theory; one might just as well have arrived at an elephant theory or a sheep theory.” Of course, this utterance has not the smallest sense in view of the results of comparative zoology. “No zoologist,” remarks Haeckel, “would consider it possible that man could have descended from the elephant or the sheep. For precisely these two mammals happen to belong to the most specialised branches of hoofed animals, an order of mammalia which stands in no sort of direct connection with that of the apes or primates (excepting their common descent from an ancestral form common to the entire class).” Hard as it may be towards a meritorious scientist, one can only characterise such utterances as Virchow's as empty verbalism.⁷

In combating the theory of descent, Virchow follows quite peculiar tactics. He demands unassailable proofs for this theory. But as soon as natural science discovers anything which is capable of enriching the chain of proofs with a fresh link, he seeks to weaken its probatory force in every way. The theory of descent sees in the famous skulls of Neanderthal, Spy, etc., isolated palaeontological remains of extinct races of lower men, which form a transition-link between the ape-like ancestor of man (Pithecanthropus) and the lower human races of the present day. Virchow declares these skulls to be abnormal, diseased formations, pathological productions. He even developed this contention in the direction of maintaining that all deviations from the fixed organic root-forms must be regarded as pathological formations. If, then, by artificial breeding we produce table-fruit from wild fruit, we have only produced a diseased object in Nature. One cannot prove more effectively the thesis of Virchow (hostile to any theory of evolution), “The plan of organisation is unalterable within the species, kind does not depart from kind,” than by declaring that what shows plainly how kind departs from kind, is not a healthy, natural product of evolution, but a diseased formation. Quite in accord with this attitude of Virchow's to the theory of descent were, further, his assertions in regard to the skeleton remains of the man-ape (Pithecanthropus erectus), which Eugen Dubois found in Java in 1894.

It is true that these remains—the top of the skull, a thigh-bone, and some teeth—were incomplete; and a debate that was most interesting arose about them in the Zoological Congress at Leyden. Out of twelve zoologists, three were of opinion that the remains were those of an ape, three that they were those of a human being, while six defended the view that they belonged to an extinct transition form, between man and ape. Dubois set out in a most lucid manner the relation of this intermediate link between man and ape, on the one hand to the lower races of humanity, on the other to the known anthropoid apes. Virchow declared that the skull and the thigh-bone did not belong together; but that the former came from an ape, the latter from a human being. This assertion was refuted by well-informed palaeontologists, who, on the basis of the conscientious report of the find, expressed themselves as of opinion that not the smallest doubt could exist as to the origin of the bony remains from one and the same individual. Virchow tried to prove that the thigh-bone could only have come from a man, from the presence of a bony outgrowth which could only proceed from an illness that had been cured through careful human nursing. As against that, the palaeontologist Marsh showed that similar bony outgrowths occur also in wild apes. A third assertion of Virchow's, that the deep groove between the upper edge of the eye sockets and the low roof of the skull in Pithecanthropus bore witness to its simian nature, was refuted by the palaeontologist Nehring's showing that the same formation existed in a human skull from Santos in Brazil.

[ 39 ] Virchow's fight against the evolution doctrine appears indeed somewhat of a riddle when one reflects that this investigator, at the beginning of his career, before the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, defended the doctrine of the mechanical basis of all vital activity. In Würzburg, where Virchow taught from 1848 to 1856, Haeckel sat “reverentially at his feet and first heard with enthusiasm from him that clear and simple doctrine.” But Virchow fights against the doctrine of transformation created by Darwin, which furnishes an all-embracing principle of explanation of that doctrine. When, in the face of the facts of palaeontology, of comparative anatomy and physiology, he constantly emphasises that “definite proof” is lacking, one can only point out, on the other side, that knowledge of the facts alone does indeed not suffice for the recognition of the doctrine of evolution, but there is needed in addition—as Haeckel remarks—a “philosophical understanding” as well. “The unshakable structure of true monistic science arises only through the most intimate interaction and mutual penetration of philosophy and experience” (Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, 34, Vortrag). In any case, the campaign which Virchow has carried on for many years past against the doctrine of descent, with the applause of theological and other reactionaries, is more dangerous than all the mischief which a “descent-religion” can cause in unripe heads. A technical discussion on the point with Virchow is made difficult by the fact that, fundamentally, he remains standing on a bare negation, and in general does not bring forward any specific technical objections against the doctrine of evolution.

[ 40 ] Other scientific opponents of Haeckel's make it easier for us to attain clearness in regard to them because they give the reasons for their opposition, and we can thus recognise the mistakes in their inferences. Among these are to be reckoned Wilhelm His and Alexander Goette.

[ 41 ] His made his appearance in the year 1868 with his Researches as to the First Beginnings of the Vertebrate Body. His attack was primarily directed against the doctrine that the form-development of a higher organism from the first germ to the fully-developed condition can be explained from the evolution of the type. We ought not, according to him, to explain this development by regarding it as the outcome of the generations from which the single organism descends through inheritance and adaptation, but we should seek in the individual organism itself the mechanical causes of its becoming, without regard to comparative anatomy and ancestral history. His starts from the view that the germ, conceived as a uniform surface, grows unequally at different spots, and he asserts that in consequence of this unequal growth the complex structure of the organism results in the course of development. He says: “Take a simple layer and imagine that it possesses at different places a different impulse to enlargement. One will then be able to develop from purely mathematical and mechanical laws the condition in which the formation must find itself after a certain time. Its successive forms will accurately correspond to the stages of development which the individual organism runs through from the germ to the perfected condition. Thus we do not need to go beyond the consideration of the individual organism in order to understand its development, but can deduce this from the mechanical law of growth.

“All formation, whether consisting in cleavage, in the formation of folds, or in complete separation, follows as a consequence from this fundamental law.” The law of growth brings into existence the two pairs of limbs as follows: “Their disposition is determined, like the four corners of a letter, by the crossing of four folds which limit and bound the body.” His rejects any help drawn from the history of the species, with the following justification: “When the history of development for any given form has thoroughly fulfilled the task of its physiological deduction, then it may rightly say of itself that it has explained this form as an individual form” (cp. His, Unsere Körperform und das physiologische Problem ihrer Entstehung). In reality, however, nothing whatever has been accomplished by such an explanation. For the question still remains: Why do different forces of growth work at different spots in the germ? They are simply assumed by His to exist. The explanation can only be seen in the fact that the relations of growth of the individual parts of the germ have been transmitted by inheritance from the ancestral animals, that therefore the individual organism runs through the successive stages of its development because the changes which its forefathers have undergone through long ages continue to operate as the cause of its individual becoming.

[ 42 ] To what consequences the view of His leads may best be seen from his theory as to the orbital lobule, by which the so-called “rudimentary organs” of the organism were to be explained. These are parts which are present in the organism without possessing any sort of significance for its life. Thus man has a fold of skin at the inner corner of his eye which is without any purpose for the functions of the organ of sight. He possesses also muscles corresponding to those by which certain animals can move their ears at will. Yet most people cannot move their ears. Some animals possess eyes which are covered over with a skin and thus cannot serve for seeing. His explains these organs as being such, to which “up to the present it has not been possible to assign any physiological role, analogous to the snippets, which, in cutting out a dress, cannot be avoided even with the most economical use of the stuff.” The evolution theory gives the only possible explanation of them. They are inherited from remote ancestors, in whom they subserved a useful purpose. Animals which to-day live underground and have no seeing eyes, descend from such ancestors as once lived in the light and needed eyes. In the course of many generations the conditions of life of such an organic stock have changed. The organisms have adapted themselves to the new conditions in which they can dispense with organs of sight. But these organs remain as heirlooms from an earlier stage of evolution; only in the course of time they have become atrophied, because they have not been used. These rudimentary organs⁸ form one of the strongest means of proof for the natural theory of evolution. If any deliberate intentions whatever had ruled in the building up of an organic form, whence came these purposeless parts? There is no other possible explanation of them, except that in the course of many generations they have gradually fallen into disuse.

[ 43 ] Alexander Goette, also, is of opinion that it is unnecessary to explain the developmental stages of the individual organism by the roundabout road through the history of the species. He deduces the shaping of the organism from a “law of form” which must superadd itself to the physical and chemical processes of matter in order to form the living creature. He endeavoured to defend this standpoint exhaustively in his Entwickelungs-geschichte der Unke (1875). “The essence of development consists in the complete but gradual introduction into the existence of certain natural bodies of a new moment, determined from without, viz., that of the law of form.” Since the law of form is supposed to superadd itself from without to the mechanical and physical properties of matter, and not to develop itself from these properties, it can be nothing else but an immaterial idea, and we have nothing given us therein which is substantially different from the creative thoughts, which, according to the dualistic world-conception, underlie organic forms. It is supposed to be a motive-power existing outside of organised matter and causing its development. That means, it employs the laws of matter as “helpers,” just like Eduard von Hartmann's idea. Goette is forced to call in the help of this “law of form,” because he believes that “the individual developmental history of organisms” alone explains and lies at the basis of their whole shaping. Whoever denies that the true causes of the development of the individual being are an historical result of its ancestral development, will be driven of necessity to have recourse to such ideal causes lying outside of matter.

[ 44 ] Weighty evidence against such attempts to introduce ideal formative forces into the developmental history of the individual, is afforded by the achievements of those investigators who have really explained the forms of higher living creatures on the assumption that these forms are the hereditary repetition of innumerable historical changes in the history of the species, which have occurred during long ages. A striking example in this respect is the “vertebral theory of the skull-bones,” already dimly anticipated by Goethe and Oken, but first set in the right light by Carl Gegenbauer on the basis of the theory of descent. He demonstrated that the skull of the higher vertebrates, and also that of man, has arisen from the gradual transformation of a “root-skull” whose form is still preserved by the “root-fishes,” or primordial gastrea, in the formation of the head. Supported by such results, Gegenbauer therefore remarks rightly: “The descent theory will likewise find a touch-stone in comparative anatomy. Hitherto there existed no observation in comparative anatomy which contradicts it; all observations rather lead us towards it. Thus that theory will receive back from comparative anatomy what it gave to its method: clearness and certainty” (cp. the Introduction to Gegenbauer's Vergleichende Anatomie). The descent theory has directed science to seek for the real causes of the individual development of each organism in its ancestry; and natural science on this road replaces the ideal laws of development which might be supposed to superpose themselves on organic matter, by the actual facts of the ancestral history, which continue to operate in the individual creature as formative forces.

[ 45 ] Under the influence of the theory of descent, science is ever drawing nearer to that great goal which one of the greatest scientists of the century, Karl Ernst von Baer, has depicted in the words: “It is one fundamental thought which runs through all forms and stages of animal evolution and dominates all particular conditions. It is the same fundamental thought which gathered together the scattered masses of the spheres in universal space and formed them into solar systems; the same thought caused the disintegrated dust on the surface of the planet to sprout forth into living forms. But this thought is nothing else but Life itself, and the words and syllables wherein it expresses itself are the various forms of that which lives.” Another utterance of Baer's gives the same conception in another form: “To many another will a prize fall. But the palm will be won by the fortunate man for whom it is reserved to trace back the formative energies of the animal body to the general forces and vital functions of the universe as a whole.”

[ 46 ] It is these same general forces of Nature which cause the stone lying on an inclined plane to roll downwards, which also, through evolution, cause one organic form to arise from another. The characteristics which a given form acquires through many generations by adaptation, it hands on by heredity to its descendants. That which an organism unfolds to-day, from within outwards, from its germinal dispositions, had developed itself outwardly in its ancestors in mechanical struggle with the rest of the forces of Nature. In order to hold this view firmly it is doubtless necessary to assume that the formations acquired in this external struggle should be actually transmitted by heredity. Hence the whole doctrine of evolution is called in question by the view, defended especially by August Weismann, that acquired characteristics are not inherited. He is of opinion that no external change which has occurred in an organism can be transmitted to its offspring, but that only can be inherited which is predetermined by some original disposition in the germ. In the germ-cells of organisms innumerable possibilities of development are held to lie. Accordingly, organic forms can vary in the course of reproduction. A new form arises when among the descendants possibilities of development come to unfoldment other than in the ancestors.

From among the ever new forms arising in this way, those will survive which can best maintain the struggle for existence. Forms unequal to the struggle will perish. When out of a possibility of evolution a form develops itself which is specially effective in the battle of competition, then this form will reproduce itself; when that is not the case, it must perish. One sees that here causes operating on the organism from without are entirely eliminated. The reasons why the forms change lie in the germ. And the struggle for existence selects from among the forms coming into existence from the most diverse germ-dispositions those which are the fittest. The special characteristic of an organism does not lead us up to a change which has occurred in its ancestors as its cause, but to a disposition in the germ of that ancestor. Since, therefore, nothing can be effected from outside in the upbuilding of organic forms, it follows that already in the germ of the root-form, from which a race began its development, there must have lain the dispositions for the succeeding generations.

We find ourselves once more in face of a doctrine of Chinese boxes one within another. Weismann conceives of the progressive process through which the germs bring about evolution, as a material process. When an organism develops, one portion of the germ-mass out of which it evolves is solely employed in forming a fresh germ for the sake of further reproduction. In the germ-mass of a descendant, therefore, a part of that of the parents is present, in the germ-mass of the parents a portion of that of the grandparents, and so on backwards to the root-form. Hence through all organisms developing one from another there is maintained an originally present germ-substance. This is Weismann's theory of the continuity and immortality of the germ-plasm. He believes himself to be forced to this view, because numerous facts appear to him to contradict the assumption of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. As one specially noteworthy fact he cites the presence of the workers, who are incapable of reproduction, among the communal insects—bees, ants, and termites. These workers are not developed from special eggs, but from the same as those from which spring the fruitful individuals. If the female larvae of these animals are very richly and nourishingly fed, they then lay eggs from which queens or males proceed. If the feeding is less generous, the result is the production of sterile workers. Now, it is very easy and obvious to seek the cause of this unfruitfulness simply in the less effective nourishment.

This view is represented among others by Herbert Spencer, the English thinker, who has constructed a philosophical world-conception on the basis of natural evolution. Weismann holds this view to be mistaken. For in the worker-bee the reproductive organs do not merely remain behindhand in their development, but they actually become rudimentary; they do not possess a large proportion of the parts necessary for reproduction. But now, he contends, one can demonstrate in the case of other insects that defective nourishment in no way entails such a degeneration of organs. Flies are insects related to bees. Weismann reared the eggs laid by a female bluebottle in two separate batches, and fed the one plentifully, the other meagrely. The latter grew slowly and remained strikingly small. But they reproduced themselves. Hence it appears that in flies insufficient nourishment does not produce sterility. But then it follows also that in the root-insect, the common ancestral form, which in line with the evolution doctrine must be assumed for the allied species of bees and flies, this peculiarity of being rendered unfruitful by insufficient nourishment cannot have existed. On the contrary, this unfruitfulness must be an acquired characteristic of the bees. But at the same time there can be no question of any inheritance of this peculiarity, for the workers which have acquired it do not reproduce themselves, and accordingly, therefore, can pass on nothing by heredity. Hence the cause must be sought for in the bee-germ itself, why at one time queens and at another workers are developed. The external influence of insufficient nourishment can accomplish nothing, because it is not inherited. It can only act as a stimulus, which brings to development the preformed disposition in the germ.

Through the generalisation of these and similar results, Weismann comes to the conclusion: “The external influence is never the real cause of the difference, but plays the part of the stimulus, which decides which of the available dispositions shall come to development. The real cause, however, always lies in preformed changes of the body itself, and these—since they are constantly purposeful—can be referred in their development only to processes of selection,” to the selection of the fittest in the struggle for existence. The struggle for existence (selection) “alone is the guiding and leading principle in the development of the world of organisms” (Aüssere Einflüsse der Entwickelungsreize, p. 49). The English investigators Francis Galton and Alfred Russel Wallace hold the same view as Weismann as to the non-inheritance of acquired characteristics and the omnipotence of selection.

[ 47 ] The facts which these investigators advance are certainly in need of explanation. But they cannot receive such an explanation in the direction indicated by Weismann without abandoning the entire monistic doctrine of evolution. But the objections urged against the inheritance of acquired characteristics are the least capable of driving us to such a step. For one only needs to consider the development of the instincts in the higher animals to convince oneself of the fact that such inheritance does occur. Look, for instance, at the development of our domestic animals. Some of them, as a consequence of living together with men, have developed mental capacities which cannot even be mentioned in connection with their wild ancestors. Yet these capacities can certainly not proceed from an inner disposition. For human influence, human training, comes to these animals as something wholly external. How could an inner disposition possibly come to meet exactly an arbitrarily determined action of man? And yet training becomes instinct, and this is inherited by the descendants. Such an example cannot be refuted. And countless others of the same kind can be found. Thus the fact of the inheritance of acquired characteristics remains such; and we must hope that further investigations will bring the apparently contradictory observations of Weismann and his followers into harmony with monism.

[ 48 ] Fundamentally, Weismann has only stopped half-way to dualism. His inner causes of evolution only have a meaning when they are ideally conceived. For, if they were material processes in the germ-plasm, it would be unintelligible why these material processes and not those of external happenings should continue to operate in the process of heredity. Another investigator of the present day is more logical than Weismann—namely, J. Reinke, who, in his recently published book, Die Welt als That; Umrisse einer Weltansicht auf naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlage, has taken unreservedly the leap into the dualistic camp. He declares that a living creature can never build itself up from out of the physical and chemical forces of organic substances. “Life does not consist in the chemical properties of a combination, or a number of combinations. Just as from the properties of brass and glass there does not yet emerge the possibility of the production of the microscope, so little does the origination of the cell follow from the properties of albumen, carbohydrates, fats, lecithin, Cholesterin, etc.” (p. 178 of the above-named work). There must be present besides the material forces also spiritual forces, or at least forces of another order, which give the former their direction, and so regulate their combined action that the organism results therefrom. These forces of another order Reinke calls “dominants.” “In the union of the dominants with the energies—the operations of the physical and chemical forces—there unveils itself to us a spiritualisation of Nature; in this mode of conceiving things culminates my scientific confession of faith” (p. 455). It is now only logical that Reinke also assumes a universal world-reason, which originally brought the purely physical and chemical forces into the relation in which they are operative in organic beings.

[ 49 ] Reinke endeavours to escape from the charge that through such a reason working from outside upon the material forces, the laws which hold good in the inorganic kingdom are rendered powerless for the organic world, by saying: “The universal reason, as also the dominants, make use of the mechanical forces; they actualise their creations only by the help of these forces. The attitude of the world-reason coincides with that of a mechanician, who also lets the natural forces do their work after he has imparted to them their direction.” But with this statement the kind of conformity to law which expresses itself in mechanical facts is once more declared to be the helper of a higher kind of law, in the sense of Eduard von Hartmann.

[ 50 ] Goette's law of form, Weismann's inner causes of development, Reinke's dominants are fundamentally just nothing else but derivatives of the thoughts of the world-creator who builds according to plan. As soon as one forsakes the clear and simple mode of explanation of the monistic world-conception, one inevitably falls a victim to mystical-religious conceptions, and of such Haeckel's saying holds good, that “then it is better to assume the mysterious creation of the individual species” (Uber unsere gegenwärtige Kenntniss vom Ursprung des Menschen, p. 30).

[ 51 ] Besides those opponents of monism who are of opinion that the contemplation of the phenomena of the world leads up to spiritual beings, who are independent of material phenomena, there are still others⁹ who seek to save the domain of a supernatural order hovering over the natural one, by denying entirely to man's power of knowing the capacity to understand the ultimate grounds of the world-happenings.¹⁰ The ideas of these opponents have found their most eloquent spokesman in Du Bois-Reymond. His famous “Ignorabimus” speech, delivered at the Forty-fifth Congress of German Scientists and Doctors (1872), is the expression of their confession of faith. In this address Du Bois-Reymond describes as the highest goal of the scientist the explanation of all world-happenings, therefore also of human thinking and feeling, by mechanical processes. If some day we shall succeed in saying how the parts of our brain lie and move when we have a definite thought or feeling, then the goal of natural explanation will have been reached. We can get no further. But, in Du Bois-Reymond's view, we have not therewith understood in what the nature of our spirit consists. “It seems, indeed, on superficial examination, as though, through the knowledge of the material processes in the brain, certain mental processes and dispositions might become intelligible. Among such I reckon memory, the flow and association of ideas, the consequences of practice, the specific talents, and so on. A minimum of reflection, however, shows that this is a delusion. Only with regard to certain inner conditions of the mental life, which are somehow of like significance with the outer ones through sense impressions, shall we thus be instructed, not with regard to the coming about of the mental life through these conditions.

“What thinkable connection exists between the definite movements of definite atoms in my brain on the one hand; and, on the other, those for me primary, not further definable, not to be denied facts: ‘I feel pain, I feel pleasure, I taste something sweet, smell the odour of roses, hear the sound of an organ, see red,’ and the equally immediate certainty flowing therefrom, ‘therefore I am!’? It is just entirely and for ever incomprehensible that it should not be indifferent to a number of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc., atoms, how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they will lie and move.”

But who asked Du Bois-Reymond first to expel mind from matter, in order then to be able to observe that mind is not in matter? The simple attraction and repulsion of the tiniest particle of matter is force, therefore a spiritual cause proceeding from the substance. From the simplest forces we see the complicated human mind building itself up in a series of developments; and we understand it from this its becoming. “The problem of the origin and nature of consciousness is only a special case of the general problem in chief: that of the connection of matter and force” (Haeckel, Freie Wissenschaft and freie Lehre, p. 80). As a matter of fact, the problem is not at all, How does mind arise out of mindless matter? but, How does the more complex mind develop itself out of the simplest mental (or spiritual) actions of matter—out of attraction and repulsion? In the preface which Du Bois-Reymond has written to the reprint of his “Ignorabimus” speech, he recommends to those who are not contented with his declaration of the unknowableness of the ultimate grounds of being, that they should try to get along with the faith-conceptions of the supernatural view of the world. “Let them, then, make a trial of the only other way of escape, that of supernaturalism. Only that where supernaturalism begins, science ceases.” But such a confession as that of Du Bois-Reymond will always open the doors wide to supernaturalism. For whenever one sets a limit to the knowledge of the human mind, there it will surely start the beginning of its belief in the “no longer knowable.”

[ 52 ] There is only one salvation from the belief in a supernatural world-order, and that is the monistic insight that all grounds of explanation for the phenomena of the world lie also within the domain of these phenomena. This insight can only be given by a philosophy which stands in the most intimate harmony with the modern doctrine of evolution.

• 1. I have characterised the contrast that exists between Goethe's and Kant's world-conceptions, in the Introductions to my edition of Goethe's Scientific Writings (in Kürschner, Deutsche National-Literatur) and in my book, Goethe's Conception of the World (p. 37 et seq.). It shows itself also in the attitude of the two personalities towards the explanation of organic nature. Goethe seeks for this explanation along the road which modern science has also trodden. Kant holds such an explanation to be impossible. Only one who penetrates deeply into the nature of Goethe's view of the world can acquire a correct judgment as to its position in regard to the Kantian philosophy. Goethe's own testimony is not conclusive, because he never devoted himself to a closer study of Kant. “The portal (of the Critique of Pure Reason) it was that pleased me, into the labyrinth itself I could not adventure: now it was my poetic gift that hindered me, now my commonsense, and I nowhere found myself any the better.” Single passages in Kant's Critique of Judgment pleased him, because he so interpreted their meaning that they agreed with his own view of the world. It is, therefore, only too easily understood why his conversations with followers of Kant appear somewhat peculiar. “They certainly listened to me, but could give me no answer, nor in any way help me on. More than once it happened to me, that one or the other confessed with smiling admiration: it may be something analogous to the Kantian mode of conception, but a rather strange one.” Karl Vorländer, in his essay Goethe's Verhältnis zu Kant in seiner historischen Entwickelung (Kantstudien, i., ii.), has judged this relationship according to the actual words of Goethe's own testimony, and has reproached me with the fact that my conception thereof is “in contradiction with the clear testimony of Goethe himself,” and, at the very least, “strongly one-sided.” I would have left this objection unanswered, because I saw from the explanations of Herr Karl Vorländer that they proceed from a man who finds it quite impossible to understand a mode of thinking which is strange to him; however, it still seemed to me needful not to leave without answer a remark which he couples thereto. Herr Vorländer belongs to those men who regard their own opinion as absolutely right, and therefore as proceeding from the highest possible insight, and who therefore stamp every other view as a product of ignorance. Because I think otherwise about Kant than he does, he gives me the sage advice to study certain portions of Kant's works. Such a mode of criticising other people's opinions cannot be too strongly repudiated. Who gives anyone the right, not to criticise me for an opinion differing from his own, but to schoolmaster me? I have therefore told Herr Karl Vorländer my opinion as to his school-mastering in the fourth volume of my edition of Goethe's Scientific Writings. Thereupon, in the third volume of Kantstudien, he has discussed my book, Goethe's Conception of the World, in a fashion which not only far surpasses in point of form what he had previously said against me, but which is also full of objective untruths. Thus he speaks of an “isolated and embittered opposition “in which I find myself against the whole of modern philosophy (naturally exclusive of Nietzsche) and science. There at once one has three objective untruths. Anyone who reads my writings—and whoever, like Herr Vorländer, pronounces judgment upon me, should at the least read them—will perceive that I do indeed criticise technically particular views of modern science and endeavour to deepen others philosophically; but that to talk of an embittered opposition is simply absurd. In my Philosophie der Freiheit I have expressed my conviction to the effect that in my views is given the philosophical completion of the structure which “Darwin and Haeckel have erected for Natural Science” (p. 186). That I am the one who has sharply emphasised the fundamental deficiency in the world of Nietzsche's ideas is indeed known to the Frenchman Henri Lichtenberger, who observes in his book La Philosophie de Nietzsche: “R. Steiner is the author of Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Freedom. In the latter work he completes Nietzsche's theory on an important point.” He emphasises the point which I have shown that Nietzsche's Superman is not that which he ought to be. The German philosopher, Karl Vorländer, has either not read my writings, and none the less passes judgment upon me; or else he has done so, and still writes the above and other similar objective untruths. I leave it to the judgment of the competent public to decide whether his contribution, which was found worthy of acceptance in a serious philosophical review, is a proof of his complete lack of judgment or a dubious contribution to the morality of German scholarship.
• 2. Fundamental Biogenetic Law. Haeckel has proved in a series of works the general validity and far-reaching significance of the fundamental biogenetic law. The most important explanations and proofs will be found in his Biology of the Corals (1872) and in his Studies in the Gastrula Theory (1873–84). Since then other zoologists have extended and confirmed this doctrine. In his latest work, Die Welträtsel (1899), Haeckel is able to say of it (p. 72): “Although this doctrine was at the outset almost generally rejected, and for some ten years fiercely combated by numerous authorities, yet, at the present time (for about fifteen years past), it has been accepted by all well-informed specialists in the subject.”
• 3. In his recently published book, Die Welträtsel, Gemeinverständliche Studien über Monistische Philosophie (Bonn, Emil Strauss, 1899), Haeckel has given without reserve the” further development, proof, and completion of the convictions” which throughout a full generation he has represented. To anyone who has absorbed the scientific knowledge of our time, this work must appear as one of the most important manifestos of the end of the nineteenth century. It contains in ripened form a complete analytical discussion of the relations of modern science with philosophical thinking from the mind of the most original, far-sighted investigator of our time.
• 4. Those who would willingly cling in faith to the existence of purposes in Nature, are constantly emphasising the fact that Darwin's views do not by any means exclude the idea of purpose, but rather make full use thereof, inasmuch as they show how the linking of causes and effects of necessity by themselves lead to the arising of the purposeful. The important point, however, is not whether or no one admits the existence of purposeful formations in Nature, but whether one assumes or rejects the idea that the purpose, the goal, co-operates as a cause in the development of these formations. Anyone who makes this assumption defends teleology, or the doctrine of purpose. Whoever says, on the contrary, purpose is in no way whatever operative in the production of the organic world; living creatures come into existence according to necessary laws just as do inorganic phenomena, and purposefulness is only there because that which is not purposeful cannot maintain itself; it is not the cause of what happens, but its consequence: he makes confession of Darwinism. No heed is paid to this by anyone who asserts, like Otto Liebmann, “Charles Darwin is one of the greatest teleologists of the present day” (Thoughts and Facts, pt. i, p. 113). No, he is the greatest anti-teleologist, because he would show to such minds as Liebmann, if they understood him, that the purposeful can be explained without assuming the action of operative purposes.
• 5. Organs of Thought. Quite recently Paul Flechsig has succeeded in proving that in one portion of the human organs of thought, complicated structures are found which are not present in other mammalia. These obviously are the organs of those mental activities by which man is distinguished from the animal.
• 6. Human and Animal Psychology. The merit of having proved that there is no real contrast between the soul of man and that of animals, but that the mental activities of man are linked to those of animals as a higher form thereof in a perfectly natural chain of development, belongs to George Romanes, who, in a comprehensive work, Mental Evolution in Animals (vol. i) and Mental Evolution in Man and the Origin of Human Faculties (vol. ii), has shown, “that the psychological barrier between animal and man has been surmounted.”
• 6. See note on Virchow and Darwin, below.
• 7. On 3rd October, 1898, Virchow delivered the second of the Huxley Lectures in the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, in London, wherein he said: “I venture to assume that such a duty would not have been assigned to me if those who did so had not known how deep the feeling of veneration for Huxley is in my soul, if they had not seen how I have recognised his achievements from the first pioneer publications of the deceased master, and how greatly I have valued the friendship which he bestowed upon me personally.” Now, these pioneer publications of Huxley's mean precisely the first great step towards the building up of the theory of man's descent from the ape, which Virchow combats, and about which, moreover, in his Huxley address, The more recent Advances of Science, he has nothing more to say than a few words, which are wholly meaningless in face of the present position of this question: “One may think as one chooses about the origin of man, the conviction as to the fundamental coincidence of the human and the animal organisation is at present generally accepted ...” etc.
• 8. Purposeless organs. As to these organs Haeckel observes in his book Die Welträtsel, p. 306: “All higher animals and plants, indeed all those organisms whose bodies are not quite simply built, but are composed of several organs working purposefully together, reveal on attentive examination a number of useless or ineffective, yes, even of dangerous and harmful, arrangements. ... The explanation of these purposeless arrangements is quite simply given by the theory of descent. It shows that these rudimentary organs are atrophied, and that by want of use. ... The blind struggle for existence between the organs conditions just as much their historical destruction, as it originally caused their arising and development.”
• 9. Other opponents of Haeckel. Here we can only speak of such objections to Haeckel's doctrines as are, to a certain extent, typical and have their origin in antiquated, although still always influential, circles of thought. The numerous “refutations” of Haeckel, which present themselves merely as variants of the main objections cited, have to be left unnoticed equally with those which Haeckel himself has disposed of in his book on Die Welträtsel, by saying to these valiant warriors, “Acquire by a diligent five years' study of natural science, and in particular of anthropology (especially the anatomy and the physiology of the brain!), that indispensable empirical prior knowledge of the facts, which you still lack entirely.”
• 10. Limits of knowledge. In my Philosophie der Freiheit I have shown the misunderstanding upon which is based the assumption of limits of knowledge.

I have already indicated a few of the symptomatic forces that play a part in the development of contemporary history. I have only time to discuss a few of these impulses. To discuss them all—or even the most significant—would take us too far. I have been asked to give special attention to specific impulses of a symptomatic nature. This can be deferred until next week when I will willingly speak of those symptoms which have special reference to Switzerland and at the same time I will attempt to give a sketch of Swiss history.

Today, however, I propose to continue the studies we have already undertaken. I concluded my lecture yesterday with a picture, albeit a very inadequate picture, of the development in recent times of one of the most significant Symptoms of contemporary history—socialism. Now for many who are earnestly seeking to discover the real motive forces of evolution, this social, or rather socialist movement occupies the focus of attention; apart from socialism they have never really considered the Claims of anything else. Consequently people have failed in recent times to give adequate attention to the very important influence of something which tends to escape their notice. Even where they searched for new motives they paid no attention to those of a spiritual nature. If we ask how far people were aware of the impulses characteristic of modern evolution we can virtually discount from the outset those personalities who in the nineteenth century, and more especially in the twentieth century, were largely oblivious of contemporary evolution, who belonged to those circles which were indifferent to contemporary trends. The historians of the old upper classes were content to plough the old furrows, to record the genealogy of dynasties, the history of wars and perhaps other related material. It is true that studies in the history of civilization have been written, but these studies, from Buckle to Ratzel, take little account of the real driving forces of history. At the same time the proletariat was thirsting for knowledge and felt an ever-increasing desire for education. And this raised the three questions I mentioned yesterday. But the proletariat lacked the will to explore the more subtle interrelations of historical development. Consequently, up to the present, a historical symptom that has not been sufficiently emphasized is the historical significance of the natural scientific mode of thinking.

One can of course speak of the scientific mode of thinking in terms of its content or in relation to the transformation of modern thinking. But it is important to consider in what respect this scientific thinking has become a historical symptom like the others I have mentioned—the national impulse, the accumulation of insoluble political problems, etcetera. In fact, since the beginning of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, the scientific mode of thinking has steadily increased amongst wide sections of the population. It is a mistake to imagine that only those think scientifically who have some acquaintance with natural science. That is quite false; in fact the reverse is true. Natural scientists think scientifically because that is the tendency of the vast majority of people today. People think in this way in the affairs of daily life—the peasant in the fields, the factory worker at his bench, the financier when he undertakes financial transactions. Everywhere we meet with scientific thinking and that is why scientists themselves have gradually adopted this mode of thought. It is necessary to rectify a popular misconception on this subject. It is not the mode of thinking of scientists or even of monistic visionaries that must engage our attention, but the mode of thinking of the general public. For natural science cannot provide a sufficiently powerful counterpoise to the universalist impulse of the church of Rome. What provides this counterpoise is a universal thinking that is in conformity with the laws of nature. And we must study this impulse as symptom in relation to the future evolution of modern man.

Text-books of history, rather thoughtlessly, usually date the birth of modern times from the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and printing, etcetera. If we take the trouble to study the course of recent history we realize that these symptomatic events—the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, and the art of printing, etcetera—did in fact inspire seamen and adventurers to pioneer voyages of exploration, that they popularized and diffused traditional knowledge, but that fundamentally they did not change the substance of European civilization in the ensuing centuries. We realize that the old political impulses which were revived in the different countries nonetheless remained the same as before because they were unable to derive any notable benefit from these voyages of discovery. In the newly discovered countries they simply resorted to conquest as they had formerly done in other territories: they mined and transported gold and so enriched themselves. In the sphere of printing they were able increasingly to control the apparatus of censorship. But the political forces of the past were unable to derive anything in the nature of a decisive impulse from these discoveries which were said to mark the birth of modern times. It was through the fusion of the scientific mode of thinking—after it had achieved certain results—with these earlier inventions and discoveries in which science had played no part that the really significant impulse of modern times arose. The colonizing activities of the various countries in modern times would be unthinkable without the contributions of modern science. The modern urge for colonization was the consequence of the achievements of natural science in the technical field. It was only possible to conquer foreign territories, as colonization was destined to do with the aid of scientific inventions, with the application of scientific techniques. These colonizing activities therefore first arose in the eighteenth century when natural science began to be transformed into technics.

Applied science marks the beginning of the machine age, and with it a new era of colonization which gradually spreads over the whole world. With technics an extremely important impulse of modern evolution is born in the Consciousness Soul. Those who understand the determinative factors here are aware that the impulses behind worldwide colonial expansion, that these colonizing activities and aspirations are directly related to the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. This epoch, as you know, will end in the third millenium, to be followed by the epoch of the Spirit Self, and will as the result of colonization bring about a different configuration of mankind throughout the world. Now the epoch of the Consciousness Soul recognizes that there are so-called civilized and highly civilized men, and others who are extremely primitive—so primitive that Rousseau was captivated by their primitive condition and elaborated his theory of the ‘noble savage.’ In the course of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul this differentiation will cease—how it will cease we cannot now discuss in detail. But it is the function of the Consciousness Soul to end this differentiation which is a heritage from the past.

Armed with this knowledge we see the connection between wars such as the American Civil War and modern colonizing activities in their true light. When we bear in mind the importance of these colonizing activities for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul then we gain insight into the full significance of isolated symptoms in this field. And these colonizing activities are inconceivable without the support of scientific thinking.

We must really give heed to this scientific thinking, if, from the point of view of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, we wish to penetrate to the true reality of human evolution. It is a characteristic of this modern scientific thinking that it can only apprehend the ‘corpse’ of reality, the phantom. We must be quite clear about this, for it is important. The scientific method starts from observation and proceeds to experimentation, and this applies in all spheres. Now there is a vast difference between the observation of nature and the knowledge which is confirmed by experimental proof. Observation of nature—with different nuances—was common to all epochs. But when man observes nature he becomes one with nature and shares in the life of nature. But, strangely enough, this communion with nature blunts the consciousness to some extent. One cannot live the life of nature and at the same time know or cognize in the sense in which the modern Consciousness Soul understands this term. One cannot do both at the same time any more than one can be asleep and awake at the same time. If one wishes to live in communion with nature one must be prepared in a certain sense to surrender one's consciousness to nature. And that is why the observation of nature cannot fathom its secrets, because when man observes nature his consciousness is somewhat dimmed and the secrets of nature escape him. In order to apprehend the secrets of nature he must be alive to the super-sensible.

One cannot develop the Consciousness Soul in a semiconscious state, a state of diminished consciousness, and therefore modern natural science quite instinctively attempts to dispense with observation and to depend upon experimentation for its findings. Experiments have been undertaken even in the fields of biology and anthropology. Now in experimentation the first consideration is to select and assemble the material, to determine the order of procedure. In experimental embryology for example, the order of procedure is determined not by nature but by intellection or human intelligence; it is determined by an intellectual faculty which is detached from nature and is centred in man. ‘We murder to dissect’—our knowledge of nature is derived from experimental investigation. Only what is acquired experimentally can be exploited technically. Knowledge of nature only becomes ripe for technical exploitation when it has passed through the indirect process of experimentation. The knowledge of nature which hitherto had been introduced into social life had not yet reached the stage of technics. It would be monstrous to speak of technics unless it is concerned purely with the application of experimentation to the social order or to what serves the social order.

Thus modern man introduces into the social order the results of experimental knowledge in the form of technics; that is to say, he brings in the forces of death. Let us not forget that we bring forces of death into our colonizing activities; that when we construct machines for industry, or submit the worker to the discipline of the machine we are introducing forces of death. And death permeates our modern historical structure when we extend our monetary economy to larger or smaller territories and when we seek to build a social order on the pattern of modern science as we have instinctively done today. And whenever we introduce natural science into our community life we introduce at all times the forces of death that are self destructive.

This is one of the most important symptoms of our time. We can make honest and sincere pronouncements—I do not mean merely rhetorical pronouncements—about the great scientific achievements of modern times and the benefits they have brought to technics and to our social life. But these are only half truths, for fundamentally all these achievements introduce into contemporary life an unmistakably moribund element which is incapable of developing of itself. The greatest acquisitions of civilization since the fifteenth century are doomed to perish if left to themselves. And this is inescapable. The question then arises: if modern technics is simply a source of death, as it must inevitably be, why did it arise? Certainly not in order to provide mankind with the spectacle of machines and industry, but for a totally different reason. It arose precisely because of the seeds of death it bore within it; for if man is surrounded by a moribund, mechanical civilization it is only by reacting against it that he can develop the Consciousness Soul. So long as man lived in communion with nature, i.e. before the advent of the machine age, he was open to suggestion because he was not fully conscious. He was unable to be fully self-sufficient because he had not yet experienced the forces of death. Ego-consciousness and the forces of death are closely related. I have already tried to show this in a variety of ways: In ideation and cognition, for example, man is no longer in contact with the life-giving, vitalizing forces within him; he is given over to the forces of organic degeneration. I have tried to show that we owe the possibility of conscious thought to the process of organic degeneration, to the processes of destruction and death. If we could not develop in ourselves ‘cerebral hunger’, that is to say, processes of catabolism, of degeneration and disintegration, we could not behave as intelligent beings, we should be vacillating, indecisive creatures living in a semiconscious, dream-like state. We owe our intellection to the degenerative processes of the brain. And the epoch of the Consciousness Soul must provide man with the opportunity to experience disintegration in his environment. We do not owe the development of modern, conscious thinking to a superabundant vitality. This conscious thinking, this very core of man's being grew and developed because it was imbued with the forces of death inherent in modern technology, in modern industry and finance. And that is what the life of the Consciousness Soul demanded.

And this phenomenon is seen in other spheres. Let us recur to the impulses to which I drew attention earlier. Let us consider the case of England where we saw how a specific form of parliamentary government develops as a certain tendency through the centuries, how the self-dependent personality seeks to realize itself. The personality wishes to emancipate itself and to become self-sufficient. It wishes to play a part in the life of the community and at the same time to affirm its independence. The parliamentary system of government is only one means of affirming the personality. But when the individual who participates in parliamentary government asserts himself, the moment he sacrifices his will to the vote he surrenders his personality. And, rightly understood, the rise of parliamentary government in England in the centuries following upon the civil wars of the fifteenth century provides ample evidence of this. In the early years of the democratic system society was based upon a class structure, the various classes or ‘estates’ not only wishing to affirm their class status, but to express their views through the ballot-box. They were free to speak; but people are not satisfied with speeches and mutual agreement, they want to vote. When one votes, when speeches are followed by voting, one kills what lives in the soul even whilst one speaks. Thus every form of parliamentary government ends in levelling down, in egalitarianism. It is born of the affirmation of the personality and ends with the suppression of the personality. This situation is inescapable; affirmation of the personality leads to suppression of the personality. It is a cyclic process like life itself which begins with birth and ends in death. In the life of man birth and death are two distinct moments in time; in the life of history, the one is directly related to the other, birth and death are commixed and commingled. We must never lose sight of this.

I do not wish you to take these remarks as a criticism of parliamentary government. That would be tantamount to insinuating that I said: since man is born only to die he ought never to have been born—which is absurd. One should not impute to the world such foolishness—that it permits man to be born only to die. Please do not accuse me of saying that parliamentary government is absurd because the personality which gives birth to this system proceeds to destroy the system which it has itself created. I simply wish to relate it directly to life, to that which is common to all life—birth and death, thus showing that it is something that is closely associated with reality. At the same time I want to show you the characteristic feature of all external phenomena of a like nature in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, for they are all subject to birth and death.

Now in the inner circles of the occult lodges of the English speaking world it has often been said: let us not reveal to the world the mystery of birth and death, for in so doing we shall betray to the uninitiated the nature of the modern epoch! We shall transmit to them a knowledge that we wish to reserve for ourselves. Therefore it was established as the first rule of the masonic lodges never to speak openly of the mystery of birth and death, to conceal the fact that this mystery is omnipresent, above all in historical phenomena. For to speak of this is to open the eyes of the public to the tragedy of modern life which will gradually be compelled—a compulsion to which it will not easily submit—to divert man's attention from the results of work to the work itself. One must find joy in work, saying to oneself: the external rewards of work in the present epoch serve the purposes of death and not of creative life. If one is unwilling to further the forces of death, one cannot work with modern techniques, for today man is the servant of the machine. He who rejects the machine simply wishes to return to the past.

Study the history of France and the attempts made to thrust inwards the emancipation of the personality, ending in that disastrous suppression of the personality which we observe in the final phase of the French Revolution and in the rise of Napoleonism. Or take the case of Italy. From what hidden springs did modern Italy derive that dynamic energy which inflamed the nationalism to the point of sacro egoismo? One must probe beneath the surface in order to discover the factors underlying world events. Recall for a moment that important moment before the birth of the Consciousness Soul. This dynamic energy peculiar to modern Italy is derived in all its aspects from that which the Papacy had implanted in the Italian soul. The significance of the Papacy for Italy lies in the fact that it has gradually imbued the Italian soul with its own spirit. And, as so often happens to the magician's apprentice, the result was not what was intended—a violent reaction against the Papacy itself in modern Italy. Here we see how that for which one strives provokes its own destruction. Not the thoughts, but the forces of sensibility and enthusiasm, even those which inspired Garibaldi, are relics of the one-time Catholic fervour—but when these forces changed direction they turned against Catholicism.

People will understand the present epoch only if they grasp the right relationship between these things. Europe witnessed those various symptomatic events which I have described to you. And in the East, as if in the Background, we see the configuration of Russia, welded out of the remnants of the Byzantine ecclesiastical framework, out of the Nordic-Slavonic racial impulse and out of Asianism which is diffused in a wide variety of forms over Eastern Europe. But this triad is uncreative; it does not emanate from the Russian soul itself, nor is it characteristic of that which lives in the Russian soul. What is it that offers the greatest imaginable contrast to the emancipation of the personality?—The Byzantine element. A great personality of modern times who is much underrated is Pobjedonoszeff. He was an eminent figure who was steeped in the Byzantine tradition. He could only desire the reverse of what the epoch of the Consciousness Soul seeks to achieve and of what it develops naturally in man. Even if the Byzantine element had made deeper inroads into Russian orthodoxy, even if this element which stifles everything personal and individual had gained an even stronger hold ... the sole consequence nonetheless would have been a powerful age for the emancipation of the personality. If, in the study of modern Russian history, you do not read of those events which it has always been forbidden to record, then you will not have a true picture of Russian history, you will be unaware of the really living element. If however you read the official version, the only version permitted hitherto by the authorities, you will find everything which pervades Russian life as an instrument of death. It appears here in its most characteristic form because Russian life is richest in future promise. And because Russian life bears within it the seeds of the development of the Spirit Self, all the external achievements of the era of the Consciousness Soul hitherto bring only death and destruction. And this had to be, since what seeks to develop as Spirit Self needs the substratum of death.

We must recognize that this is a necessity for the evolution of the Consciousness Soul, otherwise we shall never grasp the real needs of our time. We shall be unable to form a clear picture of the destructive forces which have overtaken mankind if we are unaware that the events of these last four years are simply an epitome of the forces of death that have pervaded the life of mankind since the birth of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

Characteristically the dead hand of scientific thinking has exercised a strange influence upon one of the most prophetic personalities of recent time. In contemporary history the following incident is symptomatic and will always remain memorable. In the year 1830 in Weimar, Soret¹ visited Goethe who received him with some excitement—I mean he betrayed excitement in his demeanour—but not with deep emotion. Goethe said to Soret: ‘At last the controversy has come to a head, everything is in flames’. He made a few additional remarks which led Soret to believe that Goethe was referring to the revolution which had broken out in Paris in 1830 and he answered him accordingly. But Goethe replied: ‘I am not referring to the revolution; that is not particularly important. What is important is the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire in the Academy of Sciences of Paris’—Cuvier was a representative of the old school which simply compares and classifies organisms—a way of looking at nature that is concerned above all with technique—whilst Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire has a living conception of the whole course of evolution. Goethe saw Saint-Hilaire as the leader of a new school of scientific thinking, different from that of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Cuvier belongs to the old school of thought; Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire is the representative of a scientific outlook which sees nature as a living organism. Therefore Goethe saw the dawn of a new epoch when Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire prepared the ground for a new scientific thinking which, when fully developed, must lead to a super-sensible interpretation of nature and ultimately to super-sensible, clairvoyant knowledge. For Goethe this was the revolution of 1830, not the political events in Paris. Thus Goethe showed himself to be one of the most prescient spirits of his time. He showed that he sensed and felt what was the cardinal issue of our time.

Today we must have the courage to look facts squarely in the face, a courage of which earlier epochs had no need. We must have the courage to follow closely the course of events, for it is important that the Consciousness Soul can fulfil its development. In earlier epochs the development of the Consciousness Soul was not important. Because the Consciousness Soul is of paramount importance in the present epoch, everything that man creates in the social sphere must be consciously planned. Consequently his social life can no longer be determined by the old instinctive life; nor can he introduce solely the achievements of natural science into social life for these are forces of death and are unable to quicken life; they are simply dead-sea fruit and sow destruction such as we have seen in the last four years. In the present epoch the following is important.

Sleep, of course, is a necessity for man. In waking life he is in control of his normal free will ... he can make use of this free will for the various things he encounters through Lucifer and Ahriman, in order to develop guide-lines for the future. When he falls asleep this so called free will ceases to function; he continues to think without knowing it, but his thinking is no less efficacious. Thinking does not cease on falling asleep, it continues until the moment of waking. One simply forgets this in the moment of waking up. We are therefore unaware of the power of those thoughts that pour into the human soul from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up. But let us remember that for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul the gods have abandoned the human soul during sleep. In earlier epochs the gods instilled into the human soul between sleeping and waking what they chose to impart. If they had continued to act in this way man would not have become a free being. Consequently he is now open to all kinds of other influences between sleeping and waking. At a pinch we can live our waking life with natural science and its achievements, but they are of no avail in sleep and death. We can only think scientifically during our waking hours. The moment we fall asleep, scientific thinking is meaningless—as meaningless as speaking French in a country where no one understands a word of French. In sleep only that language has significance which one acquires through super-sensible knowledge, the language which has its source in the super-sensible. Supersensible knowledge must take the place of what the gods in former times had implanted in the instinctive life. The purpose of the present epoch of the Consciousness Soul is this: man must open himself to super-sensible impulses and penetrate to a knowledge of reality. To believe that everything that our present age has produced and still produces without the support of super-sensible impulses is something living and creative and not impregnated with the forces of death is to harbour an illusion, just as it is an illusion to believe that a woman can bear a child without fecundation. Without impregnation a woman today remains sterile and dies without issue. Modern civilization in the form it has developed since the beginning of the fifteenth century and especially in respect of its outstanding achievements, is destined to remain sterile unless fertilized henceforth by impulses from the super-sensible world. Everything that is not fertilized by spiritual impulses is doomed to perish. In this epoch of the Consciousness Soul, though you may introduce democracy, parliamentary government, modern finance economy, modern industrialism, though you may introduce the principle of nationality the world over, though you may advocate all those principles on which men Base what they call the new order—a subject on which they descant like drunken men who have no idea what they are talking about—all these things will serve only the forces of death unless they are fructified by spiritual impulses. All that we must inevitably create today, forces that bring death in all domains, will only be of value if we learn how to transform these forces by our insights into the super-sensible.

Let us realize the seriousness of this situation and let us remember—as we have learnt from our study of the symptoms of recent history—that what man considers to be his greatest achievements, natural science, sociology, modern industrial techniques and modern finance economy, all date from the fifteenth century. These are destructive agents unless fructified by spiritual impulses. Only then can they advance the evolution of mankind. Then they have positive value; in themselves they are detrimental. Of all that mankind today extols, not without a certain pride and presumption, as his greatest achievements, nothing is good in itself; it is only of value when permeated with spirit.

This is not an arbitrary expression of opinion, but a lesson we learn from a study of the symptoms of modern history. The time has now come when we must develop individual consciousness. And we must also be aware of what we may demand of this consciousness. The moment we begin to dogmatize, even unwittingly, we impede the development of the consciousness. I must therefore remind you once again of the following incident. I happened to be giving a course of lectures in Hamburg on The Bible and Wisdom.^T1 Amongst the audience were two Catholic priests. Since I had said nothing of a polemical nature which could offend a Catholic priest and since they were not the type of Jesuit who is a watchdog of the Church and whose function is to stick his fingers in every pie, but ordinary parish priests, they approached me after the lecture and said: we too preach purgatory; you also speak of a time of expiation after death. We preach paradise; you speak of the conscious experience of the Spirit; fundamentally there are no objections to the content of your teaching. But they would certainly have found ample grounds for objection if they had gone more deeply into the matter—a single lecture of course did not suffice for this. And they continued: You see the difference between us is this: You address yourself to a certain section of the population which is already familiar with the premises of anthroposophy, people who are educated and are conversant with certain concepts and ideas. We, on the other hand speak to all men, we speak a language which everyone can understand. And that is the right approach—to speak for all men. Whereupon I replied: Reverend fathers (I always believe in respecting titles) what you are saying is beside the point. I do not doubt that you believe you speak for all men, that you can choose your words in such a way as to give the impression that you are speaking for all men. But that is a subjective judgement, is it not? that is what one usually says in self-justification. What is important is not whether we believe we speak for all men, but the facts, the objective reality. And now I should like to ask you, in an abstract, theoretical way: what evidence is there that I do not speak for all men? You claim to speak for all men and no doubt there are arguments that would support your claim. But I ask you for the facts. Do all those for whom you think you are able to speak still attend your church today? That is the real question. Of course my two interlocutors could not claim that everyone attended their church regularly. You see, I continued, that I am concerned with the facts. I speak for those who are outside the church, who also have the right to be led to the Christ. I realize that amongst them there are those who want to hear of the Christ impulse one way or another. That is a reality. And what matters is the reality, not personal opinions.

It is most desirable to base one's opinions on facts and not on subjective impressions; for, in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul nothing is more dangerous than to surrender to, or show a predilection for personal opinions or prejudices. In order to develop the Consciousness Soul we must not allow ourselves to become dogmatists unwittingly; the driving forces of our thoughts and actions must be determined by facts. That is important. Beneath the surface of historical evolution there is a fundamental conflict between the acceptance of what we consider to be right and the compulsion of facts. And this is of particular importance when studying history, for we shall never have a true picture of history unless we see history as a truly great teacher. We must not force the facts to fit history, but allow history to speak for itself. In this respect the whole world has forgotten much in the last four years. Facts are scarcely allowed to speak for themselves; we only hear what we deem to be facts. And this situation will persist for a long time. And it will be equally long before we develop the capacity to apprehend reality objectively. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul what matters in all spheres of life is an objective apprehension of reality; we must strive to acquire an impartial attitude to reality.

What our epoch demands—if we wish gradually to look beyond the Symptoms of history (I will speak more of this in my next lectures)—is that we turn our attention to those spiritual forces which can restore man's creativity. For, as we have seen, the most characteristic feature of all phenomena today is a decline in creativity. Man must open himself to the influences of the super-sensible world so that what his Spirit Self prepares may enter into his ego; otherwise the paths to the Spirit Self would be closed to him. Man therefore must familiarize himself with that which is pure spirit, with that which can penetrate to the centre of his psychic life. The moment he is prepared to turn his attention to this centre of his soul life through a sensible study of the symptoms in history, he will also be prepared to examine more objectively the events at the periphery.

In man there exists a polarity—the psychic centre and the periphery. As he penetrates ever more deeply into his psychic and spiritual life he reaches this centre. In this centre he must open himself to those historical impulses which I have already described to you. Here he will feel an ever increasing urge for the spirit if he wishes to become acquainted with historical reality. In return however, he will also feel a desire to strive towards the opposite pole at the periphery. He will develop an understanding for what is pressing towards the periphery—his somatic nature. If in order to understand history we must look inward, as I have indicated, to the underlying symptoms, then in order to understand medicine, for example, hygiene and medical health services we must look outwards, to cosmic rhythms for the source of pathological symptoms.

Just as modern history fails to penetrate to spiritual realities, so modern medicine, modern hygiene and medical health services fail to penetrate to the symptoms which are of cosmic provenance. I have often emphasized the fact that the individual cannot help his neighbour, however deep his insight into current problems, because today they are in the hands of those who are looking for the wrong solution. They must become the responsibility of those who are moving in the right direction. Clearly, just as the external facts are true that the outward aspect of James I was such and such, as I pointed out earlier, so, from the external point of view it is also true that a certain kind of bacillus is connected with the present influenza epidemic. But if it is true, for example, that rats are carriers of the bubonic plague, one cannot say that rats are responsible for the plague. People have always imagined that the bubonic plague was spread by rats. But bacilli, as such, are of course in no way connected with disease. In phenomena of this kind we must realize that just as behind the symptoms of history we are dealing with psychic and spiritual experiences, so too behind somatic symptoms we are dealing with experiences of a cosmological order. In other cases the situation of course will be different! What is especially important here is the rhythmic course of cosmic events, and it is this that we must study. We must ask ourselves: In what constellation were we living when, in the nineties, the present influenza epidemic appeared in its benign form? In what cosmic constellation are we living at the present time? By virtue of what cosmic rhythm does the influenza epidemic of the nineties appear in a more acute form today? Just as we must look for a rhythm behind a series of historical symptoms, so we must look for a rhythm behind the appearance of certain epidemics.

In the solfatara regions of Italy one need only hold a naked flame over the fango hole and immediately gases and steam escape from the dormant volcano. This Shows that if one performs a certain action above the surface of the earth nature reacts by producing these effects. Do you regard it as impossible that something takes place in the sun—since its rays are directed daily towards the earth—which has significance for the earth emanations and is related to the life of man, and that this reaction varies according to the different geographical localities? Do you think that we shall have any understanding of these matters unless we are prepared to accept a true cosmology founded upon a knowledge of the soul and spirit? The statement that man's inclination to resort to war is connected with the periodic appearance of sun spots is, of course, regarded as absurd. But there comes a point when statements of this kind cease to be absurd, when certain pathological manifestations in the emotional life are seen to be connected with cosmological phenomena such as the periodic appearance of sun spots. And when tiny creatures, these petty tyrants—bacilli or rats—really transmit from one human being to another something that is related to the cosmos, then this transmission is only a secondary phenomenon. This can be easily demonstrated and consequently finds wide public support—but it is not the main issue. And we shall not come to terms with the main issue unless we have the will to study the peripheral symptoms as well.

I do not believe that men will acquire a more reasonable and catholic view of history unless they study historical symptomatology in the light of super-sensible knowledge which is so necessary for mankind today. Men will only achieve results in the sphere of health, hygiene and medicine if they study not historical, but cosmological symptoms. For the diseases we suffer on earth are visitations from heaven. In order to understand this we must abandon the preconceived ideas which are prevalent today. We have an easy explanation: a God is omnipresent ... but whilst recognizing the presence of God in history mankind today is unable to explain the manifold retardative or harmful phenomena in history. And when we are faced with a situation like the last four years (1914–1918), then this business of the single God in history becomes extremely dubious, for this God of history has the curious habit of multiplying, and each nation defends its national God and provokes other nations by claiming the superiority of its own God. And when we are expected to look to cosmology and at the same time remain comfortably attached to this single God, then this same God inflicts disease upon us. But when we can rise to the idea of the trinity, God, Lucifer and Ahriman, when we are aware of this trinity in the super-sensible world behind the historical symptoms, when we know that this trinity is present in the cosmic universe, then there is no need to appeal to the ‘good God’. We then know that heaven visits disease upon us by virtue of its association with the earth, just as I can evoke sulphur fumes by holding a naked flame over a solfatara. We can only advance the cause of progress in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, when men recognize the validity of spiritual realities. Therefore everything depends upon this one aim: the search, the quest for truth.

• 1. Frédéric Jean Soret (1795–1865). Scientist and author. A frequent visitor in Goethe's house. Notes from his journal were used by Eckermann for his ‘Conversations with Goethe’.
• T1. 5th December, 1908. See Bibl. Nr. 68.

Dornach, 29th June, 1924

The day before yesterday I tried to picture for you the cosmic drama, as it were, wherein human beings are shown in their relation to Beings of the spiritual world, so that one can see how there stems from this relationship not only the working out of karma, but also the living out of karma during physical life on earth. To-day I should like to turn to a thought touched upon in that lecture. I said that the present period in human evolution confronts anyone who has the knowledge of Initiation-Science with problems of world-karma in the deepest sense of the words. And before proceeding to consider how knowledge of karma is acquired, we will study its world-historic aspects, which in the nature of things must closely concern the whole of civilised humanity at the present time.

Things are happening in the world to-day which stir even the everyday consciousness of man and the heart that is bound up with this everyday consciousness. A heavy cloud looms over the civilisation of Europe and from one point of view it is amazing to find what little willingness there is on the part of mankind in general to feel and realise what this cloud portends.

Think only of what is emerging as the result of views of life and of the world widely prevalent in humanity to-day. Look at what is being made of Christianity in the East of Europe! Information—not entirely to be discredited—has reached us that the works of Tolstoy are to be banned by the present Government of Soviet Russia with the object of keeping them out of the reach of future generations. Although such things do not always work out exactly as they are announced, we must not blind ourselves to the gravity of the present moment in world-history; we do well to listen to the warning which Initiation-Science would like to repeat day in and day out—that now is the time when the many petty concerns occupying men's minds ought to be silenced and the attention of numbers of souls directed to the great concerns of life. But in point of fact, interest in these great concerns is dwindling rather than increasing.

We see views of life and of the world arising to-day with a certain ‘creative’ force, although this actually takes effect in destruction; these views are the offspring of human passions and emotions, of an element in human nature working entirely in a Luciferic direction. It may truly be said that reality is denied and rejected by a large portion of humanity to-day. The essential nature of matter is not understood by materialistic thinkers. Matter can be understood only when the creative spirit within it is apprehended. Therefore anyone who denies the reality of the creative spirit within matter knows only a false image of matter and the consequent idolatry is a far greater menace than that of the primitive peoples who are said to represent civilisation in the stage of infancy. Fantastic ideas and conceptions of what is, after all, unreality, hold sway in mankind.—This is one side of the picture.

Such things have of course occurred in various forms throughout human history. But spiritual science teaches us to recognise their connections in the whole World-Order, and to realise with what earnestness they must be studied.

And so we must be mindful of what is brought into existence when certain social orders are created under the influence of materialistic, fantastic ideas—ideas which have sprung entirely from human aberrations, have nothing to do with reality and could never have originated elsewhere than in man himself.

Having turned our minds to a phenomenon of history which has, however, immediate bearing upon our present age, let us consider occurrences in elemental nature like those mentioned in the last lecture, when groups of human beings are suddenly snatched away from earthly existence as the result of an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or the like. The news reaches us of a catastrophe of this kind and we hear that a large number of people have met their death or suffered grave disablement.—Again, there are events for which the devices of civilisation are responsible. We hear, for example, of a railway accident, where again the karmic threads of life are abruptly severed, but in this case as the result of man-made institutions.

If we are earnest in our study of karma, we must ask, on the one hand: What form does karma take in the case of adherents of a social order originating from sheer emotionalism, sheer fantasy in man himself and devoid of objective reality? And on the other, we must ask: What form does karma take when the thread of life is suddenly severed by a catastrophe of nature or one that is the outcome of civilisation?

Here is one of the points where Initiation-Science enters deeply into man's life of feeling and perception. Ordinary, everyday consciousness does not ask about the consequences of such happenings in the successive earthly lives of men. In the case of catastrophes of civilisation particularly, the question of human destiny in the wider sense is never asked. The destiny of a man who has been the victim of such a catastrophe is regarded by ordinary consciousness as finished and done with.

Initiation-Science observes on the one side what takes place in the foreground of earth life and, in the background, the deeds of gods in connection with the souls of men. And it is what proceeds in the background that provides Initiation-Science with a criterion for assessing earthly life. For as we shall see in our further studies of karma, a great deal has to be moulded, recast in one way or another in earthly existence in order that the divine things behind it may take effect in the lives of men—in accordance with the will of the gods.

For on looking into the background we perceive the karma that is woven between one human soul and another during the life between death and rebirth; we perceive how human souls work together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. We see, too, the activities of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. Within the living organism of gods behind the organism of the earth we perceive the justification for this intervention by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers; we realise that Lucifer and Ahriman play an essential part in the deeper, spiritual ordering of the world. But although this necessity becomes evident to us, we must nevertheless often stand aghast at the way in which Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences penetrate into the earthly world.

When our vision extends beyond the earthly into the spiritual world, many things must be viewed in the light of their inter-connections, which need not necessarily be the case in ordinary consciousness. If in times when Initiation Science was regarded with the reverence that must prevail once again—if in those ancient times the question arose whether a person was in truth an Initiate, men knew the right attitude with which such a question must be approached. And when a man who took life earnestly met another like him and their opinions differed as to whether a third person was an Initiate, the question was wont to be put to the one who felt uncertain: “Have you looked into his eyes?” For in those olden times, when clairvoyance was a natural gift in civilisation all over the earth, Initiates were recognised by the deep, earnest look in their eyes.—And something similar will come again. Without losing sight of the humour of life, men must again be mindful of its gravity.

Many of these lessons can be learned from what is happening in our present time and has indeed happened in some form through all ages, but they stand before humanity now as a great and mighty riddle ... And now let us think of the facts connected with a certain kind of event.

Numbers of human beings have perished in some region where a terrible earthquake has taken place. Contemplating the event in the light of spiritual science, it cannot be said that the thread of karma belonging to the present earthly lives of these men has in every case come to an end. Think of the thread of karma in those who have met their death: in the case of the aged, whose earthly karma in this incarnation would soon have been completed, the thread of life will be shortened possibly only by months or at most by a few years. Younger people in the prime of life who have thought a great deal about what they wanted to achieve in the time ahead of them for themselves, for their family, or for a wider circle of humanity, are robbed of many years of activity. Children in process of education as a prelude to manhood are torn away from earthly existence together with the elderly and aged. Babies just weaned or still unweaned are snatched away, together with the old and the young.

The great riddle is this: How does karma work in an event of this kind?

And now think of the difference between such an event in elemental nature and an event that is due, fundamentally, to civilisation, for example, a terrible railway accident. There is obviously a difference, a difference that becomes significant and fundamental when studied from the point of view of karma.

As a rule it will be found that when human beings perish together, let us say in an earthquake, there is some kind of karmic connection between them all—just as men who live in a particular district are, broadly speaking, karmically connected or at any rate have some link with one another. These people have a certain common destiny into which they have been impelled through having descended from prenatal existence to a particular locality on the earth, and with this common destiny they are led along their path to the point where the threads of their lives are severed.

On the other hand, in the case of a railway accident it will generally be found that only a few of the victims are karmically connected with one another. What, then, is their situation? As a rule they are human beings between whom there is no definite link, who are brought together without any such connection as invariably exists between victims of a particular earthquake. The victims of a railway accident may be said to have been brought together at a certain spot by destiny. Do we not see karma working quite differently in these two cases?

With the help of Initiation-Science, let us think of a catastrophe like that of a devastating earthquake. We are concerned there with human beings whose karma at birth did not entail the severance of the thread of earthly life by the time the catastrophe occurred. As the result of this event they were torn as it were out of their karma.

How could this be? It is the decree of the gods that karma shall come to fulfilment, shall be lived out to the full. Now upheavals in nature—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods and the like—are not an integral part of the onflowing evolution of the earth; something extraneous—although still under the sway of natural laws—intervenes here in the evolutionary process, something that in times when man was not subject to birth and death as we know them to-day was both necessary and propitious for evolution. To form a clear conception of what this means, we must turn our minds to the epoch of the Old Moon.

In the epoch of the Old Moon which preceded that of the Earth, man was not led into physical existence by a transition as abrupt as birth or conception, nor led out of physical existence by a transition as abrupt as death. The transition in each case was much gentler; it was a transformation, a metamorphosis, rather than a sudden change. The Moon-man was not as densely material as the man of to-day; nor in the spiritual world was he as bereft of spirit as he is to-day.

The beings inhabitating the Old Moon were subject to quite different natural laws, laws under which this Moon-life was involved in constant movement; it was inwardly mobile, in ceaseless, surging flow. This surging, flowing life has become rigid—but only partially so—in the present Moon, our companion in the universe. The rigidification in the Moon—it has really a kind of hornlike quality—points to the past inner mobility of the Moon which takes effect in the earth when elemental catastrophes of nature occur of the kind of which I have been speaking. The ordinary natural laws of the earth are not operating, but the Old Moon is beginning to stir, to rumble in the earth. The Moon revolving out yonder in the universe has the constitution that is proper for it to-day, but after its separation from the earth, forces were left behind; and it is these Moon-forces that rumble and stir in the earth when nature-catastrophes occur.

As you will remember, I told you that the Beings who were once the great primeval Teachers of humanity are connected with man's karma; it was they who brought the ancient wisdom to mankind. They did not live on the earth in physical bodies but in etheric bodies, and at a certain point of time they departed from the earth to establish their abode in the Moon; and there we encounter them during the first phase of our life between death and a new birth. These are the Beings who engrave a record of men's karma into the cosmic ether, in an unerring script of soul-and-spirit.

But in the cosmos a pledge has been taken—if I may put it so—a pledge that use shall be made not only of the relations between the present Moon and the earth but also of the Moon-forces that were left behind and are still astir within the earth. And it is here that the Ahrimanic powers can step in and take hold of the threads of human life. It can actually be seen how from the depths of the earth the Ahrimanic powers present a countenance of gloating satisfaction when such catastrophes of nature befall.

With the help of Initiation-Science we can perceive how up to the moment when the thread of life is abruptly severed, part of the karma of one who perishes in a catastrophe of this kind has been absolved. According to whether death occurred in old age, adult life or babyhood, a longer or shorter portion of life would have remained to him; life might have continued until the completion of its course, but as things are, the events that would otherwise have been spread across this whole span lay their grip in a single, sudden moment upon the physical organisation.

Think of this situation, my dear friends.—Suppose such a catastrophe befalls a man at the age of thirty. If he had not been a victim of the catastrophe he might, in accordance with his karma, have reached the age of sixty-five, living through countless experiences which now are no more than possibilities. But everything is contained in his karma, in the make-up of his etheric and astral bodies and of his ego-organisation. And what would have been happening up to the sixty-fifth year of life? After the culmination of the upbuilding process, the organism would have been involved in a process of slow and steady decline; a subtle, gradual decline would have been taking place until the sixty-fifth year of life. This steady decline which, in the slow tempo corresponding to such a lengthy period, would have lasted for at least thirty-five years, is fulfilled in a single moment, concentrated as it were into a single moment. Such a thing can happen to the physical body but not to the etheric body, the astral body or the ego-organisation.

When the circumstances are as described here, a man enters the spiritual world in quite another way than would have been the case had his karma been lived out to the full. Something is brought into the spiritual world that would otherwise not have been there: an etheric body, an astral body and an ego-organisation which might still have been living on earth. Instead of remaining in earthly existence they are taken into the spiritual world. What was destined for earthly existence is carried into the spiritual world.

And so we see an earthly element streaming into the spiritual world from all such nature-catastrophes.

Such is the situation of human beings who have been turned aside in this way from the karmic course of their life by the working of the Ahrimanic powers; such is their situation when they arrive in the spiritual world.

And now we must ask ourselves a question—for if we take spiritual science earnestly we must learn to put questions from the standpoint of the spiritual world and of the spiritual Beings in that world, just as with our ordinary consciousness we put questions relating to the physical world and its beings. We must ask the question: How do the Beings of the three Hierarchies respond when human beings ascend to their realm bearing with them an earthly element, bearing this earthly element into the spiritual world?

It then becomes the task of these spiritual Beings to re-integrate into the World-Order what seems to have been turned to evil, to run counter to the World-Order. The gods have now to reckon with what confronts them in these circumstances, in order that they may transmute the Ahrimanic evil into a higher good.

This leads to the question: What is the situation within the World-Order of those human beings who are destined after their death to pass into the spiritual world in this way? The Beings of the higher Hierarchies are confronted with a particular state of affairs and have to say to themselves: In the previous incarnation of this human being and through the whole sequence of preceding lives, a world of facts was prepared, a world of experiences belonging, properly speaking, to the incarnation that has just ended. But only the first part of what was thus prepared has been able to come to expression; the second part has remained without fulfilment. Hence there is part of a life which ought, in reality, to correspond in respect of karma, to all that went before. There ought to be complete correspondence, but there is not ... there is only a part which corresponds to some extent with the previous incarnation, but not with the whole of it.

As they survey this previous earthly life the gods must say: There is something that has not taken effect as it should have done. Causes are there which have not been utilised or turned to account.—And now the gods can take hold of these unutilised causes, guide them to the human being and so strengthen him inwardly for his next earthly life. The power of what existed as a cause in a previous incarnation can manifest all the more forcefully in the incarnation following the present one. If such a catastrophe had not befallen the man in question he might have appeared again in the world in his next incarnation with inferior faculties or very possibly with faculties of quite a different kind. A change has been wrought in him to the end that karma may be adjusted. But he also comes into the world endowed with special qualities; his astral body is reinforced, as it were, because unutilised causative forces are membered into it.

Will you then still be astonished by the legend of a philosopher who threw himself deliberately into the crater of a volcano? What can have been the motive of such a resolve on the part of one who was initiated into the secrets of world-existence? The motive could only have been a conscious intention to achieve through the agency of human will something that could otherwise have been achieved only through the agency of elemental nature: the sudden sweeping away of a process that would otherwise have worked itself to an end by slow degrees.

What is thus told of a philosopher may be due to a resolve to appear in the world in the next incarnation endowed with special powers. The world takes on a very different aspect when we enter into the deep problems of karma!

In principle, therefore, this is how things are in the case of nature-catastrophes. Let us think now of a catastrophe due to the institutions of civilisation, where human beings between whom there are no strong karmic links are as it were massed together by the Ahrimanic powers to suffer common destruction.

The situation here is altogether different. Again the Ahrimanic powers are in action; now, however, the human beings concerned are not, to begin with, grouped together by karmic ties, but for all that are led together. The consequences here are essentially different from those of nature-catastrophes.

A nature-catastrophe evokes in a man whom it befalls a vivid, intensified remembrance of what lies in his karma as causation. For when the human being passes through the gate of death he is made mindful of everything that is contained in his karma. And remembrance of karma is intensified, made more vivid in the soul as the result of a fatal nature-catastrophe.

On the other hand a railway accident, any catastrophe due to the institution of civilisation, brings about oblivion of karma. But because of this oblivion a man becomes highly sensitive to the new impressions coming to him in the spiritual world after death. And the result is that such a man is impelled to ask himself: What is to become of the unexhausted karma I bear within me?

Whereas in the case of a nature-catastrophe the intellectual qualities especially are intensified in the astral body of the victim, a catastrophe of civilisation leads to a strengthening, an enhancement of the will.

But now we will turn from these catastrophes and think of a state of affairs arising from fanatical emotionalism in a group of human beings, where the sole source of the impulses is man himself, where he lives in sheer unreality and works, moreover, as a destructive force. Let us think of a structure of civilisation as fantastically distorted as that presented to us to-day in the East of Europe, and ask ourselves what happens when the men who help to produce such conditions pass through the gate of death.

Here too—as in the case of the other catastrophes something is carried into the spiritual world, namely a Luciferic element which begets darkness and devastation.

From catastrophes of nature and of civilisation it is, in the last resort, light that is carried from the physical into the spiritual world. But from aberrations and misguided impulses in cultural life, darkness is brought into the spiritual world. When men pass into that world through the gate of death they must make their way as it were through a dark, dense cloud. For the light which Lucifer kindled in human emotions on earth becomes dense darkness in the spiritual world when man enters it after death. And in this case, forces and passions engendered entirely by man himself and are concerns of his subjective life, are carried into the spiritual world.

These are forces which through Ahriman's power can be changed in the spiritual world in a way that enables use to be made of the Moon-elements still present in the earth. Lucifer is here stretching out a helping hand to Ahriman.

What is carried up into the spiritual world through impulses in civilisation arising from sheer emotionalism, from blind, misguided earthly consciousness—this, in different guise, is what bursts from the earth's interior in the form of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and the like.

With this knowledge as a background we are led to the question of the karma of the earth and its peoples, the karma of individuals too, inasmuch as the karma of individuals is bound up with that of the peoples and of the earth itself. In putting the question we shall seek for the seeds in Luciferic activities at work in some region where ancient culture is cast on the rubbish-heap by the working of human emotions, where wild, misguided instincts set out to create something new but succeed in spreading only destruction. And we must ask ourselves: Where shall we see the forces seething in the wild passions of men burst forth one day on the earth, in flames or convulsive upheavals of the ground beneath us?

In respect of many an event of elemental nature, Initiation-Science may, nay must, put the question: When and where was this event set in train? And the answer is that it derives from the horrors and atrocities of enmity and warfare through the course of the development of civilisation. There you have the connection.—These happenings lie in the background of existence. In the light of such knowledge, events do not appear in isolation but are seen in their great cosmic setting. How do they find their place in the destinies of men? As I said already, of a truth the gods are there, gods who are linked with the evolution of mankind, and it is their unceasing task to transform these happenings into what is propitious and beneficial for human destiny.

In the interworking between the earthly and spiritual worlds the destinies of men are continually being wrenched from the pinions of Lucifer and the claws of Ahriman, for verily the gods are good! The unrighteousness originating from the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman behind the scenes of existence is led by the good gods into the path of righteousness again and the karmic connection is finally lawful and good.

Our gaze, which must of course be full of understanding for human karma, is now deflected from the destiny of men to the destiny of gods. For when we contemplate the horrors of war, the guilt and ugliness of war in their connection with death-dealing elemental catastrophes, we are watching the battle waged by the good gods against the evil gods—in two directions evil. We gaze beyond the life of men into the life of gods, beholding the life of gods as the background of human life. We watch this life of gods—not with dry, theoretical thoughts, but with our hearts, with deep, inner participation; we watch it in its connection with the individual karma of men on earth because we see human destiny inwoven with the destiny of gods.

When we contemplate these things, the world lying behind human life has for the first time drawn really near to us. For something is then revealed which cannot but stir the very fibres of our hearts. It becomes clear to us that the destiny of men lies embedded in the destiny of the gods, and that in a certain sense the gods yearn for what they have to take in hand for men while their own battle is being waged. And in making such conceptions our own we are led again to what is brought into the world through the Mysteries—as it was brought, too, in the days of the old clairvoyance.

One who had attained Initiation in the ancient Mysteries told how he was led, to begin with, into the world of the Elements; there he beheld his inmost being, with its moral attributes, turn outwards. But then—and he spoke of this experience in words of power and solemnity—he came to know the nether gods and the upper gods, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic gods. The good gods, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic gods. The good gods move in the field of equilibrium. And as the pupil of the ancient Mysteries came to know what must be known again by the pupil in our modern age, he was initiated, stage by stage, into the very depths of existence. When this is understood and its implications realised, the strange, yet all-illuminating conception is reached: To what end does calamity exist in the world? To the end that the gods may transmute it into well-being. Ordinary well-being does not lead into the life of worlds. Well-being that springs from calamities befalling man along his path through the physical world of sense—this alone can lead into the depths of existence.

In the study of karma we must never call theoretical concepts alone to our aid; we must call upon the whole man. For knowledge of karma can be acquired only when the heart, the feelings and the will participate. If, however, knowledge of karma is acquired in this, the right way, human life will be deepened and due importance attached to the relationships and circumstances by which human beings are led together.

There will, of course, be moments when karma weighs heavily upon a man who does not lead a superficial life. But all such moments are balanced out by others when karma lends him wings on which his soul can soar out of the earthly realm into the realm of the gods. In our inmost being we must feel the reality of the connection between the divine world and the human world if we are to speak of karma in the right and true way.

What we are of ourselves, what is in us in a single earthly life passes away along the path from death to a new birth. What remains is that wherein the gods, that is to say the Beings of the Hierarchies, hold us by the hand. And no one will be able to cultivate the right attitude to the knowledge of karma who does not perceive in karma the helping hand of the gods.

Thus you must try, my dear friends, to grasp the knowledge of karma in such a way that it calls up the feeling: If I am to approach the holy ground of the spirit where something concerning karma can reveal itself to me, I must take the hand of the gods.

Thus real, thus immediate our experiences must become, if we are to win our way to true knowledge of the spiritual world—which is at the same time knowledge of karma.

In the course of the public lectures lately given in Switzerland I have frequently remarked that knowledge, that way of thinking which prevails among the men of our time and has taken root in human souls, is not adapted to grasp the social-moral life. Present conditions can only be brought to a healthy state if men are able to come again to such a thinking, such a grasp of the universe, as will give what lives in the soul a direct link with reality.

I said that what prevails in the historical, the social, the ethical life is more or less dreamt, slept through by mankind, that in any case abstract ideas are not fitted to take hold of the impulses which must be active in the social life. I stated that in earlier times men were aided through older, what we call atavistic, knowledge, through myths. They brought to expression in the form of a myth what they thought concerning the world, what entered their vision of the world secrets. Myths—the contents of mythology—can be viewed in the most manifold ways, and in fact I pointed in these observations to a positively magnificent materialistic explanation of the myth by Dupuis. In other places we have repeatedly for years examined this or the other myth. However, the myth permits of many points of view and when something has been said about it, its content is far from being exhausted. Again and again from different standpoints different things may be asserted in regard to a myth. It would be very useful for the man of today if he made himself acquainted with the nature of that thinking which underlies the mode of thought found in the concepts of mythology. For the ideas which are formed about the origin of myths, the creation of mythology, belong indeed to the realm of the modern superficial judgment which is so widespread.

Deep truths are embedded in the myths, truths more concerned with reality than those which are expressed through modern natural science about this thing or the other. Physiological, biological truths about man are to be found in the myths, and the origin of what they express rests upon the consciousness of the connection of man as microcosm with the macrocosm. Especially can one realize—and this I shall deal with today and tomorrow—when one has in mind the nature of the thinking employed in the myths, how deeply, or actually how little deeply, one is concerned with reality in ordinary modern concepts. It is therefore useful to recollect sometimes how myths have been formed among neighbouring peoples of the pre-Christian ages. Neighbours to one another and much interconnected in their culture are the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Israelites. Moreover, one can say that a great part of the thinking that still rules in the soul today is connected with the knowledge of the Egyptians, Greeks and Israelites as expressed by them in the form of myth.

The myth which I should first like to discuss—but as already said, from a certain standpoint—is the Osiris-Isis-Myth belonging to the Egyptian culture. I have already called your attention to the fact that the Osiris-Isis-Myth is also conceived by Dupuis as a mere priest lie, that the priests as far as they themselves were concerned, had meant nothing but astronomical, astronomical-astrological events, and had fabricated such a myth for the common people.

One can observe in an interesting way how the Greeks not only have a number of Gods connected with their own life, but how they have whole generations of Gods. The oldest God-generation was linked with Gaia and Uranus, the next generation with Chronos and Rhea, the Titans, and all that is related to them, and the third generation of Gods, the successors of the Titans—Zeus and the whole Zeus circle. We shall see how the construction of such God-myths springs from a special type of soul.

The Greeks, Israelites and Egyptians had different conceptions of their connection with the universe. Nevertheless there prevailed in all, as we shall shortly see, a deep relationship as regards other standpoints, as well as in reference to the one I shall take as a basis today. Of the Egyptians one must say that in the age when the Osiris-Isis-Myth arose as the representative for profounder truths, they developed a knowledge which had a longing to know the deeper foundations of the human soul. The Egyptians desired in this way to turn their gaze to that element in the human soul which lives not only between birth and death, but which passes through birth and death and also leads a life between death and a new birth. Even from external perception one can see how the Egyptians—in their preservation of mummies, in their peculiar death-ceremonies—turned the eye of the soul to that element in the soul which passes through the Gate of Death and in new form experiences new destinies when man treads ways that lie on the other side.

What is it in man that passes through the gate of death and that enters through birth into earthly existence? This question, more or less unconscious and unexpressed, underlay the thought and aspirations of the Egyptians. For it is this eternal-imperishable element—I have often already expressed it in another form—that is united in the Egyptian consciousness with the name of Osiris. Now, in order to have a foundation, let us consider the Osiris-Myth in its most important aspects, let us just consider it, as it has been preserved.

It is related of Osiris that at one time he ruled in Egypt. It is related that above all the Egyptians owed to him the suppression of cannibalism, that they owed to him the plough, agriculture, the preparation of food from the plant kingdom, the building of cities, certain legal ideas, astronomy, rhetoric, even a script and so on. It is then related that Osiris inaugurated not only among the Egyptians such beneficent arts and institutions but that he undertook journeys into other lands and there too spread similar useful arts. And in fact it was expressly stated that Osiris did not spread them by the sword but by persuasion.

Then it is further related that Typhon, the brother of Osiris, wanted to institute new things in opposition to what had proved beneficial for the Egyptians throughout centuries through the influence of Osiris. Typhon wanted to inaugurate all sorts of novelties. We should say today: after the institution of Osiris had existed for hundreds of years, Typhon made a revolution while Osiris was absent extending his institutions among other peoples. This differs a little from the latest example of revolution ... there something happened which newcomers brought about, not while the other was extending beneficent institutions among other nations ... But between Osiris and Typhon there took place what has been stated. Then, however, the myth proceeds:

Isis waited at home in Egypt. Isis, the consort of Osiris, did not permit the innovations to be really sweeping. That, however, had the effect of enraging Typhon, and as Osiris came back from his wanderings Typhon slew him and made away with the dead body. Isis had to search a long time for the corpse. She found the body at last in Phoenicia, and brought it back home to Egypt. Typhon now became angrier and tore the corpse in pieces. Isis collected the pieces and out of each piece, by means of spices and all sorts of other arts she made a being again which had the complete form of Osiris. She then gave to the priests of the land a third of the whole territory of Egypt, so that the tomb of Osiris should be kept a secret, but his service and worship all the more fostered.[See Egyptian Myths and Mysteries.]

The remarkable statement was then added to this myth, that Osiris now came up out of the underworld—when his worship had already been inaugurated in Egypt—and that he then occupied himself with the instruction of Horus, the son whom Isis had borne after the death of Osiris. Then it is related that Isis had the imprudence to release Typhon whom she had succeeded in imprisoning. Thereupon Horus, her son, became angry, tore the crown from her head and set cow-horns there instead and Typhon was defeated in two battles with the assistance of Hermes—that is the Roman Mercury, the Greek Hermes. A kind of Horus-cult, the cult of the son of Osiris and Isis was instituted.

The Greeks in some way or other heard of these Egyptian stories of world-mysteries. It is remarkable how in Greece they often spoke of the same being as was spoken of over in Egypt, or over in Phoenicia or Lydia, etc. These God-conceptions flowed into one another, as it were, and this is very characteristic and significant. When a Greek heard the name Osiris, he could picture something from it, he identified what the Egyptian understood under the name Osiris, with something of which he too had certain concepts. Although the name was different, what the Egyptian conceived of as Osiris was no stranger to the Greek. I ask you to take note of this. It is very significant.

We have the whole thing once more. Read the ‘Germania’ of Tacitus; there Tacitus also describes the Gods that he finds in the North a hundred years after the founding of Christianity, and he describes them with Roman names. He thus gives Roman names to the Gods whom he finds there. In spite of the fact that the Gods whom he found there had of course other names yet he recognized their being and could give them the Roman names. We find in the ‘Germania’ that he knew that in the North men had a God, that was the same God as Hercules and so on. That is very significant and it points to something very deep and of great meaning. It shows that in those ancient times there was a certain common consciousness concerning spiritual things. The Greek knew how to picture something of Osiris, independent of the Osiris-name, because he had something similar. What was concealed behind the name Osiris was not unfamiliar to him.

That is something that one must keep well in mind in order to recognize that in spite of the difference of the separate myths, there existed a certain community of soul! One could sometimes wish that there might be as much common understanding among modern men as, let us say, between the Greeks and the Egyptians, so that the Greeks understood what the Egyptians expressed! A Greek would never have uttered so much nonsense about Egyptian conceptions as Woodrow Wilson is able to think in one week about European conceptions—if one can call it thinking! The Greeks related that Chronos had begotten a son by Rhea in an irregular way. Thus the Greeks speak of Chronos and Rhea—we shall see immediately how they fit into the Greek myth—and this irregular son, who was so begotten, was Osiris. So just think: the Greeks hear that the Egyptians have an Osiris, and the Greeks on their part relate of Osiris that he is the son of Chronos and Rhea, but not begotten in the right way, so incorrectly begotten that Helios, the Sun-God became so angry about the matter that he made Rhea barren.

Thus the Greeks find a certain relationship between their own conception of the Gods and the Egyptian conceptions. But again on the other hand, what the Egyptians in a certain sense formed as their highest concept of a God—the Osiris-concept—is connected among the Greeks with an irregular origin—from the Titan race—from Chronos and Rhea.

One grasps this externally in the first place—we shall have to grasp it much more deeply presently—if we are clear that the Egyptians sought to learn of the eternal part of the human soul. They sought to know about that which goes through births and deaths—but in order to know of this eternal part in life the Egyptians expressly turned the soul's gaze beyond death. To the people of Egypt through whom the Greeks learnt of Osiris, he is no longer the God of the living, but the God of the dead, the God who sits on the Throne of the World and passes judgment when man has gone through the gate of death, that is, the God whom man has to meet after death. At the same time, however, the Egyptian knew: the same God who judges men after death, has at one time ruled over the living.

As soon as one takes these ideas together, one is no longer inclined to agree with the Dupuis verdict that it was only a matter of star-events. These Dupuis judgments have much that is captivating, but on closer inspection they reveal themselves as very superficial. I have said that the Egyptians—in the age when the Greeks received from them the Osiris-concept—directed their mind above all to the human soul after death. This lay far from the Greek mind. To be sure, the Greeks spoke too of the human soul after death, but inasmuch as they spoke of their Gods, they did not really speak of the Osiris-nature of such Gods as primarily give judgment after death. The race to which Zeus belongs is a race of Gods for the living. Man preferably looked up to this world when he turned his mind's eye to the world to which man belongs between birth and death—a race of Gods for the living: Zeus, Hera, Pallas-Athene, Mars, Apollo, etc. But these Gods were, so to say, the last God-race for the Greeks. For the Greeks turned their gaze to three successive generations of Gods.

As you know, the oldest generation of Gods was around Uranus and Gaea or better said: Gaea and Uranus. They were the earliest divine pair with all the brothers and sisters and so on who belonged to them. From this divine pair were descended the Titans, to whom also Chronos and Rhea belonged, but above all Oceanus. As you know, through certain cruel regulations—so says the myth—Uranus had evoked the wrath of his spouse Gaea, so that she prevailed upon Chronos their son, to make his father on the world-throne, impotent, and we then have this rulership of the older Gods succeeded by that of the younger, Chronos and Rhea with all that belongs to it. You know too that in the Greek myth, Chronos had the somewhat unsympathetic, in many respects, characteristic of swallowing all his children as soon as they were born, which was not pleasant for the mother, Rhea. (I am calling attention to various features which we shall particularly need.) And you know too that she saved Zeus and brought him up to overthrow Chronos, just as Chronos overthrew Uranus, only in another way, so that then the new race of Gods arrives. And then we have Hera and Zeus with all that belongs to them with all the brothers and sisters, children and so on.

An important feature in the myth, which I must relate since we shall need it if we wish to regard the myth as foundation for all sorts of world-conceptions, is the following. Zeus, before he overcame the Titans and cast them into Tartarus, had prevailed on the Goddess Metis, the Goddess of cunning, to provide him with an emetic, so that all the children swallowed by Chronos could be brought again to the light of day, and be once more in existence. Thus Zeus could have his brothers and sisters again ... for they had been in the body of Chronos. Zeus himself alone had been rescued by his mother Rhea.

And so we have three successive generations of Gods: Gaea-Uranus; Uranus overthrown through Gaea, because he was cruel, supplanted by the children, Chronos and Rhea; then Chronos overthrown again through Zeus, likewise at the instigation of Rhea. In the Zeus-circle we have the Gods who meet us where actual Greek history makes its appearance.

Now I should like to call special attention to a very significant feature of this. Greek mythology. It is not clearly enough stressed, in spite of being one of the most important features. Three successive races of Gods: these are thus the rulers of the macrocosm. But while Gaea and Uranus, Rhea and Chronos, Hera and Zeus are ruling, the human being, according to the Greek conception is already everywhere in existence. Man is already there without question. When therefore Chronos with Rhea had not yet reigned, when the rulers were still Gaea and Uranus, particularly, however, when Chronos reigned with Rhea and Zeus was not yet in possession of his emetic and so on, there were already men upon the earth, according to the view of the Greeks. And, what is more, as the Greeks related, they lived a happier life than in later times. The later human beings are the descendants of these earlier men. We must say then that the Greeks had this consciousness: up above rules Zeus, but we human beings descend from other forefathers who were not yet ruled over by Zeus. That is an important feature of the Grecian teaching of the Gods: that the Greek venerated his Zeus, his Hera, his Pallas-Athene, but was quite clear that they had not created him, what in general one calls ‘created’, but that men were there much earlier than the reign of these Gods. This is important concerning the Greek Gods.

That this is especially important for the Greek Gods can strike you when you compare the question with the Jewish teaching of the Gods. It is, of course, quite unthinkable that one would find the same feature in the Jewish teaching. You could not possibly imagine that according to the Old Testament men were pointed to ancestors who had not yet come under the rulership of Jahve and the Elohim. This therefore is something which differs radically in the Grecian teaching of the Gods. The Greek looks up to his Gods and knows: they indeed are ruling now, but they have nothing to do with what I call ‘creation’ of the human race.

This was absolutely impossible within the Old Testament conception. In the Old Testament those whom men looked upon as Gods were in the main far more concerned with the creation of man. In observing the course of world events it is very necessary to consider such things. The point is not merely to form concepts, the point is that one is able to form concepts that connect one with reality; the especially characteristic, the especially representative concepts, these are what one must have in mind.

And with this, we have considered an important feature of Greek mythology. Let us just examine it. When the Greek looked up to his Gods, they were not those of whom he had the consciousness: they have created me. For human beings were already there, as we have said, before these Gods had assumed their rulership. What these Gods were able to do was, for the Greeks, quite a respectable amount, but they could not produce for him a human race on a planet. That lay in the Greek consciousness: these Gods could not produce a human race.

Now, what actually were the Gods of the Zeus circle, the Olympian Gods, for the Greek consciousness? To form even an historical concept of what these Gods were—I mean now in the Greek consciousness, we have of course said various things about these Gods, but let us place ourselves into the Greek consciousness—what were they? Well, they were not beings which went about among men under ordinary circumstances. They dwelt in fact on Olympus, they dwelt in the clouds and so on. They paid only at times sympathetic or unsympathetic visits; Zeus in particular, as you know, sometimes paid sympathetic or unsympathetic visits into the human world. They were in a certain respect useful; but they also did things about which the modern man, who is somewhat more narrow-minded than the Greeks, would probably take the law into his own hands and involve such a Zeus in a divorce suit and so on. In any case, these Gods had a half-divine, half-human connection with men, and such beings, so it was thought, are not materialized in the flesh ... When Zeus wanted to conduct his affairs he took on all sorts of forms, did he not—a swan, golden rain, and so on; thus in ordinary life these Gods were not incarnated in the flesh. But on the other hand, if one looks deeper, one finds that the Greeks had the consciousness that these Gods were connected with men who lived in primeval times. Far more than looking up to the connection with the stars, as Dupuis supposed, the Greeks looked up to men of primeval times and brought the concept of the being of Zeus—please note exactly how I form the sentence, for that is the point—into connection with some ancient ruler of a long-past age. Please note that I have not said that the Greeks had the idea that what they meant by Zeus had been an ancient ruler; but I said: that which they pictured as Zeus they brought into connection with an ancient ruler who had once lived in long gone-by ages. For the kind of connection for Zeus and also for the other Gods was a somewhat complicated one.

We will examine the words a little, so that we can form an idea of what really underlies them. Let us suppose that at some time a personality had lived in Thrace, a region in Northern Greece, on whom the Zeus-concept was fastened. Now the Greek, even the quite ordinary Greek was quite clear: I do not, as it were, venerate this ancestor, nor do I venerate the single individuality which has lived in this ancestor, nevertheless I venerate something which had some connection with this ancient forefather, this ancient king in Thrace, or in Epirus. The Greek had in fact this idea: There was once such a king in whose whole being not only his own individuality had lived, but the individuality of a super-sensible being; this had expressed itself, had lived upon the earth, by once descending into a human being. The Zeus-concept was not made earthly in this way, it was brought into connection with an ancient ruler, who at one time had furnished the garment—or let us say—the dwelling place for this Zeus-being. Thus the Greek differentiated essentially that which he conceived of as Zeus from the human individuality which had lived in the body to which the Zeus-concept was referred. But the Zeus-rulership, the rule of Zeus and the Gods, took its starting point, as it were, from the fact that Zeus had descended, had lived in a human being, had found his centre there in order to work in the being of man—but who then went on working no longer as an ordinary man but in fact as an ‘Olympian’. And it was the same in the case of the other Greek Gods.

Why did the Greek form this conception—that there was once a ruler who was possessed, so to say, by Zeus, but that now there is no longer a ruler who can be possessed by Zeus, but that Zeus only rules as a super-sensible being—why did the Greek form this concept? Because the Greek knew that human evolution had progressed, that it had changed. In other words, the Greek knew that there were ancient times when human beings could have Imaginations in a particularly outstanding degree. A certain clairvoyance naturally remained for some few, but the authority of the Imaginations, that disappeared: the beings who can still have real Imaginations, these can only hold sway for the life that man knows between birth and death, in super-sensible worlds.

This is the essence of what the Greeks pictured to themselves concerning their Gods: there were Beings who could imagine. But the time is past when such Beings as can ‘imagine’, can enter into human bodies. For human bodies are no longer adapted to Imaginations. So said the Greeks to themselves: we are governed by a race of Beings who can have Imaginations, while we no longer can have them. The Greek had a quite unsentimental concept of his Gods. It would moreover have been rather difficult to be sentimental over Zeus. Yet the Greek said to himself quietly (I shall again elaborate the matter somewhat, one must add detail when one wants to be quite clear), “We men are going through a definite evolution; we have developed from atavistic clairvoyance in Intuition, Inspiration, Imagination; now we must have ordinary objective thinking. But the Gods have not ventured upon it, they have remained in their imaginative consciousness, otherwise they would have to be men and wander about here in the flesh. It did not suit them (so thought the Greeks in their unsentimental way of regarding the Gods) to pass over to objective thinking, so they have not descended to the earth, but kept to their imaginative consciousness. In this way, however, they rule over us, for they have more power, as it were, since the Imaginative concept, when it is utilized fully, is more powerful than the objective concept.”

From this, however, you see that the Greeks looked back to a time when man's forming of concepts, his observation and perception were different, and that this looking back went hand in hand with the ideas they formed of the Gods. Thus they looked back to Zeus, Hera, and said: These are ruling over us now, at one time we were also as they are, but we have developed further and have become weaker. Therefore they can rule over us, they have remained as it was at that time. A certain Luciferic character, as we should say today, was given to their Gods by the Greeks. And those Beings who had remained at the Imagination stage—this developed in the Greek consciousness—these were themselves successors of these Beings who remained at the Inspiration stage. Hera and Zeus remained behind at Imagination, Rhea and Chronos at Inspiration, Gaea and Uranus at Intuition.

You see, the Greek examined his own soul, and he brought his generations of Gods into connection with the evolution of mankind and the different states of consciousness. This he felt, this he perceived. The eldest Gods, Gaea and Uranus, were Beings whose whole inner relation to the world was ordered by the fact that they had an intuitive consciousness. They wanted to remain at the stage of Intuition; and those at the stage of Inspiration set themselves against them. And again the inspiring Beings wished to remain at Inspiration; and those living in the Imaginative consciousness set themselves against them. The Intuitive were thus overthrown through the Inspiring, the Inspiring through the Imagining. We live as human beings and above us the Imaginings. Now you know that in the Prometheus myth, the Greek already desired to find some kind of instrument against the Imagining.

Gaea-Uranus = Intuition

Rhea-Chronos = Inspiration

Hera-Zeus = Imagination

The Greeks graded their Gods in such a way that in this gradation they showed how they looked back to earlier states of consciousness of that being who has at the same time evolved as humanity. The Greeks showed how they connected this with their retrospect of the Gods. Just think how deeply significant this is for the understanding of the Greek consciousness! Thus the Greek in looking back to his generations of the Gods looked back to the past in the mental life. He connected the ancient Intuitional Beings with Gaea, the Earth, and Uranus, the Heavens, and connected the Inspirational Gods with Rhea and Chronos. They still perceived what Gaea and Uranus were. Rhea and Chronos are described as Titans—What are they actually?

Now for some centuries mankind has lost practically all consciousness of what lies at the foundation of all this.

Let me remind you that you know how a few hundred years ago the human being was brought into connection with three fundamental elements. You can still find this knowledge in Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus, even up to the time of Saint Martin. Jacob Boehme still gives: Sal == Salt; Mercur == Quicksilver; Sulphur == Sulphur. In the Middle Ages one said:

Salt
Mercury
Sulphur.

What was understood was not the same but yet had something to do with what the Greek meant when he spoke of Uranus-Gaea, or Gaea-Uranus; Rhea-Chronos; Hera-Zeus. For you see Chronos drove Uranus from World-rulership, Gaea became—shall we say—as good as widow. For what did she become? She became what is ‘Earth’—not the ordinary earth which we find outside, but the earth that man carries in himself, i.e.—Salt. Could man—this was known to the investigator of nature in the Middle Ages—make use consciously of the salt that existed in him, then he would have Intuition. Thus the process which has sunk down deep into the nature of man was a more living one in the old Gaea-Uranus time.

A younger process which has also entered deep down into human nature is that which can be described as the Rhea-Chronos-process. The Greeks said: the power of Rhea was once widespread, and ‘Chronos’ represented the forces that confronted Rhea. Chronos was overthrown. What has been left? Well, just as from Uranus-Gaea the dead salt has been left, so from Chronos-Rhea, the fluid, Mercury, has been left; the fluid in man that can take a drop formation; that has remained behind. But neither can man make conscious use of this; it has sunk into unconscious depths.

Today, of course, that is long past and in the time of the Greeks it was already gone by, for the Greeks said to themselves: the time of Zeus upon earth was in hoary primeval ages, but at that time man could make use of the Sulphur to be found in him. Were man able to make use consciously of his Salt, he would be able to use Intuition in an atavistic way. If he could consciously make use of his Mercury, his fluid element, he would be able to use Inspiration, and Imagination if he could use his Sulphur—not in that transmitted sense, but in the actual sense as the Alchemists of the Middle Ages still understood it, when they spoke of the ‘philosophical sulphur’. Today there is also a philosophical sulphur¹ Professors of philosophy manufacture it in vast quantities, but this is not what the Alchemists understood by it. They understood an imaginative consciousness, an atavistic Imagining, which was connected with the use of this active sulphur in man. Human beings, so said the Greeks, and their priests of the Mysteries also said so, for the mysteries of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur are ancient; human beings, through their evolution have overcome atavism, making use of sulphur atavistically. But Zeus and his circle have withdrawn into the super-sensible and avail themselves of the Sulphur processes: hence Zeus can hurl his lightning. If man, like Zeus, could hurl lightning, that is, if he could transform the sulphur through Imagination into reality, if he could inwardly and consciously hurl lightning, then he would use Imagination atavistically. That is what the Greeks wished to say when they said of Zeus that he could hurl lightning.

It was known, even by Saint Martin, that with the Sulphur of the Alchemists something different is meant from the ordinary earthly sulphur, of which one could at most say—excuse the plain speaking—it is the excrement of that which was understood by Saint Martin and those before him as the real sulphur, which they also called the ‘philosophical sulphur’. And Saint Martin still speaks of how thunder and lightning are really connected with the processes of the macrocosmic, or one could say the cosmic sulphur. Today, indeed, many a physical-natural scientific explanation creeps into science, which is also a sulphur,² but not exactly a ‘philosophical sulphur’. Yet, remember that the really clever people of today are, of course, far beyond talking of sulphur processes in the cosmos when thunder and lightning arise; for lightning and thunder arise, as you can read in elementary books on physics, through some sort of friction processes in the clouds—don't they? Anything really rational one cannot find in what is said about lightning and thunder; for the wet clouds in their mutual action are supposed to create the electricity which comes about through thunder and lightning! But if an electrical experiment is made in the schoolroom each apparatus is most carefully dried, for the least dampness prevents any electricity from arising. The clouds up there, however, are apparently not wet! The teacher can do nothing with an electric machine which is damp, which indeed is not completely dry, but at the same time he explains that the wet clouds are supposed to be connected with the creation of electricity. Yes, indeed such things get thoroughly mixed up, don't they! I wanted, however, only to say that in Saint Martin there was still a consciousness that this element of which the Greeks dreamt when they spoke of Hera and Zeus, had something to do with lightning and thunder.

You see, even superficial ideas can indicate to us that certain nature processes, the Salt, Mercury, Sulphur-processes, but in their older sense—are connected with what the Greeks possessed in their mythology. Let us hold that fact to begin with. We must have such fundamental concepts in order to pass over in the right way to our own time.

Thus the Greeks looked back to generations of Gods, to conditions that had ceased to exist, but that in earlier ages were also perceptible to man. They connected what lived in their Gods with what we call processes of nature. Mythology was therefore at the same time a sort of natural science. And the more one learns to know mythology, the deeper is the natural science one finds in it, only a different one, which is at the same time a science of the Soul. This is how the Greeks thought, and how the Egyptians too conceived of their Osiris, who once had ruled but who was now in the underworld.

Do you notice how different the things are and yet how they are all to be traced back to a common type? If the Greeks refer to earlier ages when such a being as Zeus, who in their own time could live only supersensibly, could even incorporate in a man, so could the Egyptians also point to an older age when Osiris or Osirises—the number is not the point—ruled, when they had descended into human beings, when they were present. But that time has gone by ... now (in the Egyptian Osiris-culture) one can no longer look to a human being on the physical plane if one wants to find Osiris, one must look to the world which man enters when he goes through the portal of death. Osirises are no more in the world where human beings live, but man meets them after death. Thus the Egyptian too looked back to an ancient time in the sense of the change of human consciousness, when he distinguished between the Osiris who could once wander the Earth, and the Osiris who can now no longer wander the Earth, who only belongs to the Kingdom of death.

If we confine ourselves today to the two mythologies and tomorrow touch briefly upon the Old Testament teachings before we draw any conclusions, we can make the following statement: We observe from the whole way in which Greek and Egyptian stood to their Gods, that at the same time there was expressed in this consciousness a remembrance of the ancient times of atavistic clairvoyance. They have vanished, they are no more there. With the destinies which the human being has gone through together with his Gods—whether with Zeus or Chronos in Greece, or with Osiris in Egypt, man was describing to himself at the same time this knowledge: If I look farther back, I was related as a human being to the macrocosm in a different way from how I am now. This relation has altered.

To look back in this way to earlier ages when the Gods walked among men, had a distinct reality for these ancient peoples, since they knew that the human being stood as microcosm to macrocosm in a different way from in their own time. The old atavistic clairvoyance actually faded away in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This was what it was sought to express through the Greek mythology, what it was also sought to express through the Osiris-mythology of the Egyptians.

• 1. Schwefel (Sulphur) has also a slang meaning of ‘hot air’. Trans.
• 2. See former note. Trans.

I would have liked to follow my usual procedure in lecturing to the kind members of the Anthroposophical Society and to have addressed this gathering on purely anthroposophical matters. The whole course the meetings have taken, however, and the things that have been happening in the past few days have made me decide to confine my comment to questions of immediate interest to this assemblage. I hope there will be other opportunities to speak on more specifically anthroposophical subjects, if not to all of you at once, then at least on several occasions to smaller groups.

The goal of this pair of lectures is to show how anthroposophy can really become wisdom to live by, how it can influence our day-to-day intentions and attitudes. I shall, therefore, devote myself to laying an anthroposophical foundation on which to approach the problems we shall be dealing with here. Yesterday I spoke from that angle about community building in the Anthroposophical Society; today I want to continue and to add something on the subject of the contribution that an anthroposophical view of the world makes to living life in a more adequate way than one could do without it.

In order to show you the opposite side of the matters discussed yesterday, I am taking as my starting point something well-known to everybody familiar with the history of societies built on foundations similar to those on which our own sciety is based. A little later on I will also characterize some of the differences that distinguish the Anthroposophical Society from every other. But for the moment I want to point out that there have been a great many societies that have based their existence on one or another method of attaining insight into the spiritual world, though the level reached was influenced considerably by various historical settings and the particular characteristics and capacities of the groups of people who participated. One finds every shading and level in the wide variety of societies, which covers the whole range from a really serious and significant level down to that of charlatanism.

But one thing is well-known to anyone acquainted with the history of such socities. That is, that a certain moral atmosphere is always created—and indeed, necessarily so—when certain conditions exist. One could describe this atmosphere as being that of a real, genuine striving for brotherliness among the members of such a society. This goal is usually listed among the precepts or in the statutes of these societies, and—as I said—necessarily so, brotherliness being one goal and insight into the spiritual world the other.

Now the thing that people familiar with the history of such societies know is that these societies built on brotherliness and spiritual insight are the worst beset with conflicts. They present the widest opportunities for fighting, for partings-of-the-way, for splitting up into separate factions within the larger group, for group resignations, for sharp attacks on those who stay and those who leave, and so on. In short, human strife is at its most rampant in groups dedicated to brotherhood.

This is a strange phenomenon. But anthroposophical insight enables us to understand it. What I am presenting in these two lectures is also part of the system of anthroposophy, if you will forgive me the pedantic term. So, though this lecture will not be a general discussion, it will still be an anthroposophical one, shaped with special reference to our meetings.

If we return to the matters brought up yesterday, we find three levels of experience among the phenomena of human consciousness. We find people either asleep or dreaming, who, in a state of lowered consciousness, experience a certain world of pictures that they take to be real while they are sleeping. We know that these people are isolated from others inhabiting the physical world in common with them; they are not sharing common experiences. No means exist of conveying what they are experiencing. We know further that a person can go from this state of consciousness to that of everyday awareness, can be awakened to it by external nature, and this includes the natural exterior of other people, as I described yesterday. A certain degree of community feeling is awakened simply as a result of natural drives and the ordinary needs of life, and languages come into being in response to it.

But now let us see what happens when these two states of consciousness get mixed up together. So long as a person continues in completely normal circumstances and is able, by reason of a normal psychic and bodily condition, to keep his isolated dream experience separated from his shared experience with others, he will be living acceptably in his dream world and in the world of reality. But let us assume that, due to some psychological quirk, and it would have to be considered such, a person finds himself in a situation where, though he is in a day-waking state of consciousness involved in a common life with others, he is not having the same feelings and ideas as his companions. Let us assume that the pathological condition he is in causes him to project into his waking consciousness a world of feelings and ideas similar to those of dream life. Instead of developing logically ordered thoughts, he produces a pictorial world like the picture world of dreams. We call such a person mentally ill. But for the moment the thing of chief interest to us is that this person does not understand the others, and unless they are looking at him from a medical pathological angle they cannot understand him either. At the moment when the state of mind prevailing at this lower level of consciousness is carried over to a higher level, a person becomes a crass egotist in his relations with his fellow men. You need only think this over to see that a person of this kind goes entirely by his imaginings. He comes to blows with the others because they cannot follow his reasoning. He can commit the wildest excesses because he does not share a common soul world with other human beings.

Now let us move on from these two states of consciousness to the two others. Let us contrast the everyday state of consciousness, to which we are guided by the natural course of external events, with that higher one that can, as I showed yesterday, awaken through the fact that a person wakes not just in the encounter with the natural aspect of his surrounding but also in the encounter with the inner being of the other person. Though one may not ordinarily be fully and immediately aware of it, one does waken to such a higher level of consciousness. Of course, there are many other ways of entering the higher worlds, as you know from my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. But for the period of time one is privileged to spend with others in that way, one can find oneself in a position to understand and witness things one would otherwise not understand or witness. One is presented with the possibility of living in the element that those who know the spiritual world describe in terms applicable to that world—the possibility of speaking of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego, of repeated earth lives and their karmic aspects.

Now at this point there is a possibility of the whole state of mind of ordinary consciousness being carried over into the spiritual world one thus enters and applied to it. This is the same thing that happens on another level when the state of soul of a person absorbed in dream pictures is projected into ordinary life: one turns into an egotist in the most natural way. This occurs if one fails to realize that everything in the higher worlds of the spirit has to be looked at in an entirely different way than one looks at the sense world. One must learn to think and feel differently. Just as dreamers have to switch over into a totally different state of consciousness if they want to share a life with others in an ordinary state of waking, so must there be similar awareness of the fact that the content of anthroposophy cannot be approached with the attitude of soul one has toward the things of ordinary experience.

That is the root of the problem of reaching any understanding and agreement between the everyday consciousness, which is also that of ordinary science, and the consciousness anthroposophy makes possible. When people come together and talk back and forth, one with the ordinary consciousness exemplified in the usual scientific approach and the other with a consciousness equal to forming judgments that accord with spiritual reality, then it is exactly as though a person recounting his dreams were trying to reach an understanding with someone telling him about external facts. When a number of people meet in an ordinary state of consciousness and fail to lift themselves and their full life of feeling to the super-sensible level, when they meet to listen in a merely ordinary state of mind to what the spiritual world is saying, there is a great—an immeasurably great—chance of their coming to blows, because all such people become egotists as a natural consequence.

There is, to be sure, a powerful remedy for this, but it is available only if the human soul develops it. I am referring to tolerance of a truly heartfelt kind. But we have to educate ourselves to it. In a state of everyday consciousness a little tolerance suffices most people's needs, and social circumstances put many a situation right again. But where the ordinary everyday state of mind prevails, it often happens that people talking together are not even concerned to hear what the other is saying. We all know this from our own personal experience. It has become a habit nowadays to give only scant attention to somebody else's words. When a person is part way through a sentence, someone else starts talking, because he is not the least interested in what is being said. He is interested only in his own opinion. One may be able, after a fashion, to get by with this in the physical world, but it simply cannot be done in the spiritual realm. There, the soul must be imbued with the most perfect tolerance; one must educate oneself to listen with profound inner calm even to things one cannot in the least agree with, listen not in a spirit of supercilious endurance, but with the most positive inner tolerance as one would to well-founded utterances on the other person's part. In the higher worlds there is little sense in making objections to anything. A person with experience in that realm knows that the most opposite views about the same fact can be expressed there by, let us say, oneself and someone else. When he has made himself capable of listening to the other's opposite view with exactly the same tolerance he feels toward his own—and please notice this !—then and then only does he have the social attitude required for experiencing what was formerly merely theoretical knowledge of the higher worlds.

This moral basis is vital to a right relationship to the higher realms. The strife that I have described as so characteristic of the societies we are discussing has its root in the fact that when people hear sensational things, such as that man has an etheric and astral body and an ego as well as a physical body, and so on, they listen for sensation's sake but do not undertake to transform their souls as these must be transformed if they are to experience spiritual reality differently than they would a chair or a table in the physical world, and one experiences even these objects differently in the physical world than one does in dreams. When people apply their ordinary soul habits to what they think they are understanding of teachings about the higher worlds, then this inevitably develops strife and egotism.

Thus it is just by grasping the true nature of the higher worlds that one is led to understand how easily societies with a spiritual content can become involved in conflicts and quarreling, and how necessary it is to educate oneself to participation in such groups by learning to tolerate the other person to an immeasurably greater degree than one is used to doing in situations of the physical world. To become an anthroposophist it is not enough to know anthroposophy from the theoretical side: one's whole approach has to be transformed in certain ways. Some people are unwilling to do this. That resulted in my never being understood when I said that there were two ways of occupying oneself with my book, Theosophy, for example. One way is to read or even study it, but with the usual approach and making the judgments that approach engenders. One might just as well be reading a cookbook as Theosophy for all the qualitative difference there is. The value of the experience is identical in both cases, except that reading Theosophy that way means dreaming rather than living on a higher level. When one thus dreams of higher worlds, the impulses one receives from them do not make for the highest degree of unity or the greatest tolerance. Strife and quarreling take the place of the unity that can be the reward of study of the higher worlds, and they keep on spreading. Here you find the cause of the wrangling in societies based on one or another method of gaining insight into the spiritual world.

I said that the various paths described in part in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds lead into the spiritual world. Now when a person has to concern himself intensively with seeking knowledge of those higher worlds, this requires his developing a certain attitude of soul, as you will understand from what I have been explaining in this pair of lectures, though in quite another connection. A true spiritual investigator has to have a certain attitude of soul. One cannot find one's way to truth in the spiritual realm if one is constantly having to give one's attention to what is going on in the physical world in ways quite proper to that sphere, if one has to occupy oneself with matters requring the kind of thinking suited to the physical realm.

Now you will agree that a person who gives his fellowmen a reliable account of things in the spiritual world, a person justified in calling himself a spiritual investigator in the sense in which the other sciences use that term, needs a lot of time for his research. You will therefore find it natural that I, too, need time to do the research that enables me little by little to present anthroposophy or spiritual science in an ever widening perspective in my lectures.

Now if one goes one's way alone, one can of course make time for this within the framework of one's destiny. For a person who is a genuine spiritual investigator and wants to give his fellowmen a trustworthy account of what he discovers in the spiritual world will, as is natural, form the habit of ignoring his opponents. He knows that he has to have opponents, but he is not bothered by their objections to his statements; he could think up the objections himself. So it is natural for him to take the attitude that he is simply going to go his own positive way without paying much attention to anyone's objections, unless there is some special reason to do so.

But this attitude is no longer tenable when one has joined forces with the Anthroposophical Society. For in addition to the responsibility one feels toward the truth, one has a further responsibility in relation to what the Society, of which it is often said that it makes itself an instrument of that truth, is doing. So one has to help carry the Society's responsibilities. This can be combined to a certain extent with the proper attitude toward opponents. Until 1918 that situation obtained with the Society and myself. I paid as little attention as possible to objections, and did so, paradoxical though this may seem, as a consequence of maintaining the tolerance I have been describing. Why, indeed, should I be so intolerant as to be constantly refuting my opponents? In the natural course of human evolution everything eventually gets back on the right track anyhow. So I can say that up until 1918 this question was justified, to some extent at least.

But when the Society proceeds to take on the activities it has included since 1919, it also takes on the responsibility for them. Their destiny becomes involved with that of the Society, and the Society's destiny becomes involved with that of the spiritual investigator. The spiritual investigator must either assume the burden of defending himself against his opponents—in other words, of occupying himself largely with matters that keep him from his spiritual research, since they cannot be combined with it—or else, to get time for his research, turn over the handling of opponents to those who have accepted a certain responsibility for the peripheral institutions. Thus the situation in our Society has undergone fundamental changes since 1919, and this for deeply anthroposophical reasons. Since the Society, as represented by certain of its members, decided to launch these institutions, and since the foundation on which they are all based is anthroposophy, that foundation must now be defended by people who do not have to carry full responsibility for the inner correctness of the material that genuine research has to keep on adding, day by day, to the previous findings of spiritual investigation.

A large proportion of our opponents consists of people in well-defined callings. They may, for example, have studied in certain professional fields where it is customary to think about things in some particular way. Thinking the way he does, such a person simply has to oppose anthroposophy. He doesn't know why, but he has to be an opponent because he is unconsciously on the leash of the profession in which he has had his training and experience.

That is the situation in its inner aspect. From the external standpoint, the question whether what has been established as the Anthroposophical Society is to flourish or decline requires that these opponents be dealt with.

But the real leaders of the opposition know full well what they are about. For there are some among them who are perfectly familiar with the laws that govern spiritual research, even though their view of those laws and that of anthroposophy may differ. They know that their best means of keeping a person who needs peace to pursue his spiritual research from doing his work is constantly to bombard him with hostile writings and objections. They know very well that he cannot give his attention to both refuting them and carrying on his research. They try to put obstacles in his path with their opposition. The mere fact of their putting these attacks in writing is the hostile act. The people who know what they are doing are not so much concerned with the contents of such books as they are with using them as weapons to hurl at the spiritual investigator, and they are particularly intent on tricking and otherwise forcing him into the necessity of defending himself.

These facts must be looked at completely objectively, and everyone who really wants to be a full member of the Anthroposophical Society ought to know them. A good many people are, of course, already familiar with what I have just been saying. The trouble is that some informed members habitually refrain from mentioning any such matters outside their circle.

Experience has long shown that such a course cannot be maintained in the Society. The Society used to publish lecture cycles labeled, “For members only.” Here in Germany, and probably elsewhere too, one can go to public libraries and borrow these same cycles. All the cycles are available to non-members. One can tell from writings of our opponents that they too have them, though it may sometimes have been difficult to get hold of them. But people of this sort are far less apt to shy away from difficulties than is sometimes the case with anthroposophists.

The secrecy that many societies still find it possible to maintain is simply out of the question in the Anthroposophical Society, due to its special character as an institution based on the most modern concept imaginable. For its members are meant to remain free individuals. They are not bound by any promises; they can simply join the Society as honest searchers after knowledge. I have no desire to make secrecy an aim. If that interested me, I would never suggest setting up a loose confederation of groups alongside the old Anthroposophical Society. For I predict, though without implying condemnation, that a great many more escape channels will be opened to the world at large by such a confederation, allowing egress to material that older members believe should be kept in their own cupboards. But the innermost impulse of anthroposophy cannot be grasped by people unwilling to see it put to work in complete accord with the most modern human thinking and feeling. It is, therefore, the more essential to understand what the prerequisites of such a society are.

Now I want to bring up something that I will illustrate with an example taken from my own experience, though not in a spirit of foolish conceit. Last summer I gave a course of lectures at Oxford on the educational methods of the Waldorf School.¹ An article appeared in an English journal that, though I cannot quote it verbatim, made the following point. It began by saying that a person who attended the lectures at the Oxford educational meetings without prior awareness of who Dr. Steiner was and that he had some connection with anthroposophy would not have noticed that a representative of anthroposophy was speaking. Such a person would simply have thought him to be a man speaking about pedagogy from a different angle than the listener's own.

I was exceedingly delighted by this characterization because it showed that there are people who notice something that is always my goal, namely, to speak in a way that is not instantly recognized as anthroposophical. Of course, the content is anthroposophical, but it cannot be properly absorbed unless it is objective. The anthroposophical standpoint should lead, not to onesidedness, but, on the contrary, to presenting things in such a way that each least detail can be judged on its own merits and its truth be freely recognized.

Once, before the Oxford lecture cycle was delivered and the article about it written, I made an experiment that may not seem to you at all significant. In June of this year I attended the Vienna Congress and gave two cycles comprising twelve lectures.² I undertook to keep the word anthroposophy out of all of them, and it is not to be found there. You will also not find any such phrase as “the anthroposophical world view shows us this or that.” Of course, despite this—and indeed, especially because of it—what was presented was pure anthroposophy.

Now I am not making the philistine, pedantic recommendation that anthroposophists should always avoid using the word “anthroposophy.” That is far from my intention. But the spirit that must inspire us in establishing right relations with the rest of the world can be found by looking in that general direction. That spirit should work freely in leaders active in the Society; otherwise I will again be held responsible for unanthroposophical things that are done in its name. Then the world would have some justification for confusing the one agent with the other.

Here too the objective spirit of anthroposophy needs to be properly grasped and, above all, manifested in what is done. We will first have to undertake some degree of self-education to that end. But self-education is needed in anthroposophical circles; countless mistakes have been made in the past few years for want of it, with the launching of the peripheral institutions contributing to the problem. I state this simply as an objective fact, without meaning to accuse anyone personally.

If the Anthroposophical Society is to flourish, every single one of its members is going to have to become fully aware of these facts. But this cannot happen under present day social conditions unless an effort is made to set up a lively exchange, even if only in the form of some such medium as a news sheet conceived as a link between the Society's various centers of activity. But again, that would require every such circle, even if not every individual member, to develop a living interest in the concerns of the whole Society, and particularly in its ongoing evolution. There has been too little of this. If the Anthroposophical Society did not exist, there would presumably still be a certain number of books on anthroposophy. But one would not have to be concerned, as a society is, with the people who read them. These people would be scattered all over the world, singly or in groups, according to their karma, but one would not have to have any external contact with them. The spiritual investigator is not in any fundamentally different situation, even in a society such as ours was up to 1918. But the situation changed at the moment when the Anthroposophical Society assumed responsibility for things that existed on the physical plane.

I am putting all this in a much more plain spoken way than I have on other occasions. But say them I did, in one form or another, when the peripheral institutions were being launched. I couldn't, of course, whisper them in every member's ear, and I don't know whether it would have helped if I had done that. But the Society existed and had leaders. They should have seen to it that conditions in the Society were such that it could include the various institutions without jeopardizing spiritual research.

I will call this the negative aspect of community building in contrast to the positive aspect I presented yesterday. I would like to add that everyone interested in creating community of the positive kind that I described from the standpoint of the prerequisites of its existence must be aware of the matters discussed today in relation to the Anthroposophical Society's life and progress. They must all be taken into consideration as affecting the various areas of anthroposophical life.

In this connection let me cite the following instructive example. I come back again to the tragic subject of the ruined Goetheanum. In September and October 1920 we held a three week course there, the first of the so-called High School courses. Yesterday, I described how the Goetheanum was built in a definite artistic style that was the product of an anthroposophical approach. How did this style originate? It came into being as a result of the fact that persons to whom we cannot be grateful enough undertook, in 1913, to build a home base for what existed at that time in the way of anthroposophical works in a narrower sense, and what, again in that narrower sense, was still to issue from anthroposophy. They wanted to create a home for the staging of mystery plays, for the still germinal but nevertheless promising art of eurythmy, and, above all, for presentations of anthroposophy itself as these projected cosmic pictures derived from spiritual-scientific research. That was my intention when these persons asked me to take initiatives in this connection. I saw it as my task to erect a building designed in a style artistically consonant with the work that was to go on in it. The Goetheanum was the outcome.

At that time there were no scholars or scientists in our midst. Anthroposophy had indeed taken some steps in a scientific direction. But the development that was to include activity in the various professional fields among the Society's functions had not yet begun. What developed later came into being as a direct outgrowth of anthroposophy, exactly as did the Waldorf School pedagogy, the prime example of such a process.

Now an artistic style had to be found to suit each such development. It was found, as I believe, in the Goetheanum. The war caused some delay in building. Then, in 1920, I gave the course of lectures just referred to. It was given at the behest of the professionals who had meanwhile joined the Society and were such a welcome addition to it. They arranged a program and submitted it to me.

In my belief, complete freedom reigns in the Anthroposophical Society. Many outsiders think that Steiner is the one who decides what is to go on in it. The things that go on most of the time, however, are such as Steiner would never have thought up. But the Society does not exist for my sake; it exists for the members.

Well, I sat there, all attentiveness, at this lecture series of September and October 1920—this is just an aperçu, not a criticism—and let my eyes range over the interior of the Goetheanum. In the Goetheanum Weekly I described how, in eurythmy for example, the lines of the Goetheanum continued over into the eurythmists' motions. But according to the original intention, this should have been the case with everything done there. So I let my inner eye test whether the interior decoration, the architecture, the sculptured forms, the painting, harmonized with what the speakers were saying from the podium. I discovered something that people did not at that time have to be faced with, namely, that everything I may call in the best sense a projection of the anthroposophical outlook, everything that had its origin in pure anthroposophy, harmonized marvellously with the Goetheanum. But in the case of a whole series of lectures, one felt that they should have been delivered only when the Goetheanum reached the point of adding a number of further buildings, each so designed that its style would harmonize with the special studies and activities being carried on inside it. In its destiny of almost ten years, the Goetheanum really shared the destiny of the Anthroposophical Society, and one could readily become aware, by feeling out the way the architectural style harmonized or failed to harmonize with what went on in the building, that an inorganic element had indeed insinuated itself into the pure ongoing stream of the anthroposophical spiritual movement.

Now this is not said to blame anybody or to suggest that things should have been done differently; everything had to happen as it did, naturally. But that brought another necessity with it: The necessity of bringing about a complete rebirth of chemistry, physics, mathematics, and so on, through anthroposophy, to give consciousness the quick forward thrust I described it as needing. For the ordinary way of looking at things simply does not provide a basis for anthroposophical presentations. But that forward thrust was not always in evidence. Its lack could be felt in the testing that the artistic style of the Goetheanum gave it; in the Anthroposophical Society it manifests itself in the phenomenon of the clouds that have gathered and hung over us these past days. Now that a most welcome destiny has brought science into the anthroposophical stream, we face the immediate and future task of bringing it to rebirth through anthroposophy. No purpose is served by losing ourselves in all kinds of meaningless polemics; the urgent task is rather to see to it that the various disciplines are reborn out of anthroposophy.

We had to make do somehow during the period when substitutes were the order of the day. I was often called upon, in response to a need somewhere, to deliver cycles of lectures to this or that group on subjects which, had anthroposophical life been progressing at a normal tempo, might better have waited for future developing. Then these cycles became available. They should have been put to use in the first place as a means of helping the various sciences to rebirth through anthroposophy. That lay in the real interests of anthroposophy, and its interests would have coincided fruitfully indeed with those of the Anthroposophical Society.

People have to know all these facts. You see, my dear friends, in the course of the various seminars held here and there under the auspices of the High School, I repeatedly assigned problems that needed solving. At the last address I gave in the Small Auditorium of the Goetheanum during the scientific course, which was held at the end of 1922 and was to have continued there into 1923, I gave the mathematical physicists an assignment. I discussed how necessary it was to solve the problem of finding a mathematical formula to express the difference between tactual and visual space. There were many other occasions when similar matters were brought up. We were confronted with many urgent problems of the time, but they all needed to be worked out in such a thoroughly anthroposophical way as to have value for every single group of anthroposophists, regardless of whether tactual and visual space and the like meant anything to them. For there are ways in which something that perhaps only one person can actually do can be made fruitful for a great many others when it is clothed in some quite different form.

Thus, the difficulties that have proliferated are a consequence of what I must call the exceedingly premature steps taken since 1919, and, in particular, of the circumstance that people founded all sorts of institutions and then didn't continue sharing responsibility for them—a fact that must be stressed again and again. These difficulties have given rise to the problematical situation now confronting us.

But none of them can be laid at the door of anthroposophy itself. What my kind listeners should be aware of is that it is possible to be quite specific as to how each such difficulty originated. And it must be emphasized that it is most unjust to dismiss anthroposophy on account of the troubles that have arisen.

I would, therefore, like to append to the discussion of just such deeper matters as these a correction of something that was said from this platform yesterday; it disturbed me because of my awareness of the things we have been talking about here. It was stated that people were not aware that the Anthroposophical Movement could be destroyed by our opponents. It cannot be. Our opponents could come to present the gravest danger to the Anthroposophical Society or to me personally, and so on. But the Anthroposophical Movement cannot be harmed; the worst that could happen is that its opponents might slow its progress. I have often pointed out in this and similar connections that we must distinguish between the Anthroposophical Movement and the Anthroposophical Society. My reason for saying this was not that the Society no longer needed to be taken into account, but that the Society is the vessel and the Movement its content. This holds true for the single member as well as for the Society. Here too, full clarity and awareness should reign. Anthroposophy is not to be confused with the Anthroposophical Society. Nor should the fact go unrecognized that developments of the past three or four years have meant, for members, a close interweaving of the unfolding destiny of anthroposophy with the Society's destiny. The two have come to seem almost identical, but they must nevertheless be sharply differentiated.

There could, theoretically, have been a Waldorf School even if the Society had not existed. But that could not have happened in reality, for there would have been no one to found and steer and look after the school. Real logic, the logic of reality, is quite a different thing than abstract logical reasoning. It is important that members of the Society understand this. A member ought to have some rudimentary realization, even if only on the feeling level, that insight into higher worlds has to be built on an awareness that super-sensible experience differs greatly from experience of the ordinary physical world. Something in the physical world can seem just as right as a dream content does to the dreaming person. But the carrying over of things of one's dream life into situations of everyday waking consciousness nevertheless remains an abnormal and harmful phenomenon. It is similarly harmful to carry over into the consciousness needed for understanding the spiritual world convictions and attitudes quite properly adopted in ordinary waking consciousness.

I can give you an instructive example. As a result of the way modern man has become so terribly caught up in intellectuality and a wholly external empiricism, even those people who are not especially at home in the sciences have taken up the slogan: Prove what you are saying! What they are stressing is a certain special way of using thought as a mediator. They know nothing of the immediate relationship the soul of man can have to truth, wherein truth is immediately apprehended in just the way the eye perceives the color red, that is, seeing it, not proving it. But in the realm of reason and intellect, each further conceptual step is developed out of the preceding one. Where the physical plane is concerned, one is well advised to become a bright fellow who can prove everything, and to develop such a good technique in this that it works like greased lightning. That is a good thing where the physical plane is concerned, and a good thing for the sciences that deal with it. It is good for the spiritual investigator to have developed a certain facility in proving matters of the physical world. Those who acquaint themselves closely with the intentions underlying the work of our Research Institute will see that wherever this technique is applicable, we, too, apply it. But if you will permit me the grotesque expression, one becomes stupid in relation to the spiritual world if one approaches it in a proof-oriented state of mind, just as one becomes stupid when one projects a dreamer's orientation into ordinary waking consciousness. For the proving method is as out of place in the spiritual world as is an intrusion of the dream state into the reality of waking consciousness. But in modern times things have reached the point where proving everything is taken as a matter of course. The paralyzing effect this trend has had in some areas is really terrifying.

Religion, which grew out of direct vision, and in neither its modern nor its older forms was founded on anything susceptible of intellectual-rational proof, has now become proof-addicted rationalistic theory, and it is proving, in the persons of its extremer exponents, that everything about it is false. For just as it is inevitable that a person become abnormal when he introduces dream concerns into his waking consciousness, so does a person necessarily become abnormal in his relationship to higher worlds if he approaches them in a way suited to the physical plane. Theology has become either an applied science that just deals practically with whatever confronts it or a proof-minded discipline, better adapted to destroying religion than to establishing it.

These, my dear friends, are the things that must become matters of clear and conscious experience in the Anthroposophical Society. If that is not the case, one takes one's place in life and in human society simply as a person of many-sided interests who functions sensibly at all the various levels, whereas from the moment one concerns oneself with the material contained in innumerable cycles, one cannot exist as a human being without spiritual development.

The spiritual investigator does not need to rely on proof in meeting his opponents. Every objection that they might make to something I have said can be taken from my own writings, for wherever it is indicated I call attention to how things stand with physical proof as applied to super-sensible fact. Somewhere in my books one can always find an approximation of the opponents' comments in my own statements, so that, for the most part, all an opponent need do to refute me is to copy passages out of my writings. But the point is that all these details should become part of the awareness of the members. Then they will find firm footing in the Society. To occupy oneself with the anthroposophical outlook will mean finding firm footing, not only in the physical world but in all the worlds there are.

Then anthroposophical impulses will also be a fountainhead of the capacity to love one's fellowmen and of everything else that leads to social harmony and a truly social way of life. There will no longer be conflict and quarreling, divisions and secedings among anthroposophists; true human unity will reign and overcome all external isolation. Though one accept observations made in higher worlds as truth, one will not wander about like a dreamer in the physical world; one will relate to it as a person with both feet set firmly on the ground. For one will have trained oneself to keep the two things separate, just as dream experience and physical reality must be kept separate in ordinary life.

The key need is for everyone who intends to join with others in really full, genuine participation in the Anthroposophical Movement within the Society to develop a certain attitude of soul, a certain state of consciousness. If we really permeate ourselves with that attitude and that consciousness, we will establish true anthroposophical community. Then the Anthroposophical Society, too, will flourish and bear fruit and live up to its promise.

• 1. Spiritual Ground of Education Oxford, August 16-25, 1922. Rudolf Steiner Press, London.
• 2. The Tension Between East and West, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1963.

[ 1 ] If the thought of the teleological structure of nature was to be reformed in the sense of a naturalistic world conception, the purpose-adjusted formation of the organic world had to be explained in the same fashion as the physicist or the chemist explains the lifeless processes. When a magnet attracts iron shavings, no physicist will assume that there is a force at work in the magnet that aims toward the purpose of the attraction. When hydrogen and oxygen form water as a compound, the chemist does not interpret this process as if something in both substances had been actively striving toward the purpose of forming water. An explanation of living beings that is guided by a similar naturalistic mode of thinking must conclude that organisms become purpose-adjusted without anything in nature planning this purpose-conformity. This conformity comes to pass without being anywhere intended. Such an explanation was given by Charles Darwin. He took the point of view that there is nothing in nature that plans the design. Nature is never in a position to consider whether its products are adequate to a purpose or not. It produces without choosing between what is adequate to a purpose and what is not.

[ 2 ] What is the meaning of this distinction anyhow? When is a thing in conformity with a purpose? Is it not when it is so arranged that the external circumstances correspond to its needs, to its life conditions? A thing is inadequate to purpose when this is not the case. What will happen if, while a complete absence of plan in nature characterizes the situation, formations of all degrees of purpose-conformity, from the most to the least adequately adapted form, come into existence? Every being will attempt to adapt its existence to the given circumstances. A being well-adjusted to life will do so without much difficulty; one less adequately endowed will succeed only to a lesser degree. The fact must be added to this that nature is not a parsimonious housekeeper in regard to the production of living beings. The number of germs is prodigious. The abundant production of germs is backed up by inadequate means for the support of life. The effect of this will be that those beings that are better adapted to the acquisition of food will more easily succeed in their development. A well-adapted organic being will prevail in the strife for existence over a less adequately adjusted one. The latter must perish in this competition. The fit, that is to say, the one adapted to the purpose of life, survives; the unfit, that is, the one not so adapted, does not. This is the “struggle for life.” Thus, the forms adequate to the purpose of life are preserved even if nature itself produces, without choice, the inadequate side by side with the adequate. Through a law, then, that is as objective and as devoid of any wise purpose as any mathematical or mechanical law of nature can be, the course of nature's evolution receives a tendency toward a purpose-conformity that is not originally inherent in it.

[ 3 ] Darwin was led to this thought through the work of the social economist Malthus entitled Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). In this essay the view is advanced that there is a perpetual competition going on in human society because the population grows at a much faster pace than the supply of food. This law that Malthus had stated as valid for the history of mankind, was generalized by Darwin into a comprehensive law of the whole world of life.

[ 4 ] Darwin now set out to show how this struggle for existence becomes the creator of the various forms of living beings and that thereby the old principle of Linnaeus was overthrown, that “we have to count as many species in the animals and vegetable kingdoms as had been principally created.” The doubt against this principle was clearly formed in Darwin's mind when, in the years 1831–36, he was on a journey to South America and Australia. He tells how this doubt took shape in him.

When I visited the Galapagos Archipelago during my journey on H.M.S. Beagle, at a distance of about 500 miles from the shores of South America, I saw myself surrounded by strange species of birds, reptiles and snakes, which exist nowhere else in the world. Almost all of them bore the unmistakable stamp of the American continent. In the song of the mocking-thrush, in the sharp scream of the vultures, in the large candlestick-like opuntias I noticed distinctly the vicinity of America; and yet these islands were separated from the continent by many miles and were very different in their geological constitution and their climate. Even more surprising was the fact that most of the inhabitants of each of the individual islands of the small archipelago were specifically different although closely related. I often asked myself how these strange animals and men had come into being. The simplest way seemed to be that the inhabitants of the various islands were descended from one another and had undergone modifications in the course of their descent, and that all inhabitants of the archipelago were descendants of those of the nearest continent, namely, America, where the colonization naturally would have its origin. But it was for a long time an unexplainable problem to me how the necessary modification could have been obtained.

The answer to this question is contained in the naturalistic conception of the evolution of the living organism. As the physicist subjects a substance to different conditions in order to study its properties, so Darwin, after his return, observed the phenomena that resulted in living beings under different circumstances. He made experiments in breeding pigeons, chickens, dogs, rabbits and plants. Through these experiments it was shown that the living forms continuously change in the course of their propagation. Under certain circumstances some living organisms change so much after a few generations that in comparing the newly bred forms with their ancestors, one could speak of two completely different species, each of which follows its own design of organization. Such a variability of forms is used by the breeder in order to develop organisms through cultivation that answer certain demands. A breeder can produce a species of sheep with an especially fine wool if he allows only those specimens of his flock to be propagated that have the finest wool. The quality of the wool is then improved in the course of the generations. After some time, a species of sheep is obtained which, in the formation of its wool, has progressed far beyond its ancestors. The same is true with other qualities of living organisms. Two conclusions can be drawn from this fact. The first is that nature has the tendency to change living beings; the second, that a quality that has begun to change in a certain direction increases in that direction, if in the process of propagation of organic beings those specimens that do not have this quality are excluded. The organic forms then assume other qualities in the course of time, and continue in the direction of their change once this process has begun. They change and transmit the changed qualities to their descendants.

[ 5 ] The natural conclusion from this observation is that change and hereditary transmission are two driving principles in the evolution of organic beings. If it is to be assumed that in the natural course of events in the world, formations that are adapted to life come into being side by side with those not adapted as well as others, it must also be supposed that the struggle for life takes place in the most diversified forms. This struggle effects, without a plan, what the breeder does with the aid of a preconceived plan. As the breeder excludes the specimen from the process of propagation that would introduce undesired qualities into the development, so the struggle for life eliminates the unfit. Only the fit survive in evolution. The tendency for perpetual perfection enters thus into the evolutionary process like a mechanical law. After Darwin had seen this and after he had thereby laid a firm foundation to a naturalistic world conception, he could write the enthusiastic words at the end of his work, The Origin of Species, which introduced a new epoch of thought:

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.

At the same time one can see from this sentence that Darwin does not derive his conception from any anti-religious sentiment but merely from the conclusions that for him follow from distinctly significant facts. It was not hostility against the needs of religious experience that persuaded him to a rational view of nature, for he tells us distinctly in his book how this newly acquired world of ideas appeals to his heart.

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed in matter by the Creator that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the linear descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. . . . Hence, we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.

[ 6 ] Darwin showed in great detail how the organisms grow and spread, how, in the course of their development, they transmit their properties once they are acquired, how new organs are produced and change through use or through lack of use, how in this way the organic beings are adjusted to their conditions of existence and how finally through the struggle for life a natural selection takes place by means of which an ever increasing variety of more and more perfect forms come into being.

[ 7 ] In this way an explanation of teleologically adjusted beings seems to be found that requires no other method for organic nature than that which is used in inorganic nature. As long as it was impossible to offer an explanation of this kind it had to be admitted, if one wanted to be consistent, that everywhere in nature where a purpose-adjusted being came into existence, the intervention of an extraneous power had to be assumed. In every such case one had to admit a miracle.

[ 8 ] Those who for decades before the appearance of Darwin's work had endeavored to find a naturalistic world and life conception now felt most vividly that a new direction of thought had been given. This feeling is expressed by David Friedrich Strauss in his book, The Old and the New Faith (1872).

One sees this is the way it must go; this is where the new banner is waving sprightly in the wind. It is a real joy in the sense of the loftiest joys of intellectual advance. We philosophers and critical theologians talked and talked to discredit the idea of a miracle. Our decree had no effect whatever, because we did not know how to demonstrate this idea as a superfluous one, because we did not know how to avoid it for we did not know of any energy of nature with which we could replace it where it seemed to be most necessary to be assumed. Darwin has demonstrated this energy of nature, this procedure of nature; he has opened the door through which a fortunate posterity will throw out the miracle once and for all times. Everyone who knows how much depends on miracles will praise him for that deed as one of the greatest benefactors of the human race.

[ 9 ] Through Darwin's idea of fitness it is possible to think the concept of evolution really in the form of a natural law. The old doctrine of involution, which assumes that everything that comes into existence has been there in a hidden form before (compare pages in Part 1 Chapter IX), had been deprived of its last hope with this step. In the process of evolution as conceived by Darwin, the more perfect form is in no way contained in the less perfect one, for the perfection of a higher being comes into existence through processes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ancestors of this being. Let us assume that a certain evolutionary series has arrived at the marsupials. The form of the marsupials contains nothing at all of a higher, more perfect form. It contains only the ability to change at random in the course of its propagation. Certain circumstances then come to pass that are independent of any “inner” latent tendency of development of the form of the marsupials but that are such that of all possible variations (mutations) the pro-simians survive. The forms of the marsupials contained that of the pro-simians no more than the direction of a rolling billiard ball contains the path it will take after it has been deflected from its original course by a second billiard ball.

[ 10 ] Those accustomed to an idealistic mode of thinking had no easy time in comprehending this reformed conception of evolution. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, a man of extraordinary acumen and subtlety of spirit who had come from Hegel's school, writes as late as 1874 in an essay:

Evolution is an unfolding from a germ that proceeds from attempt to attempt until the picture that the germ contained latently as a possibility has become real. But once this is accomplished it stops and holds on to the form that is found, keeping it as a permanent one. Every concept as such would lose its firm outline if we were to consider the types that have existed on our planet for so many thousands of years as forever variable and above all if we were so to consider our own human type. We should then be unable any longer to trust our thoughts, the laws conceived by our thinking, our feelings, the pictures of our imagination, all of which are nothing but the clarifying imitations of forms of nature as it is known to us. Everything becomes questionable.

[ 11 ] In another passage in the same essay he says:

I still find it a little hard, for instance, to believe that we should owe our eye to the process of seeing, our ear to that of hearing. The extraordinary weight that is given to the process of natural selection is something I am not quite satisfied with.

[ 12 ] If Vischer had been asked whether or not he imagined that hydrogen and oxygen contained within themselves in a latent form a picture of water to make it possible for the latter to develop from the former, he would undoubtedly have answered, “No, neither in oxygen nor in hydrogen is there anything contained of the water that is formed; the conditions for the formation of this substance are given only when hydrogen and oxygen are combined under certain circumstances.” Is the situation then necessarily different when, through the two factors of the marsupials and the external conditions, the pro-simians came into being? Why should the pro-simians be contained as a possibility, as a scheme, in the marsupials in order to be capable of being developed from them? What comes into being through evolution is generated as a new formation without having been in existence in any previous form.

[ 13 ] Thoughtful naturalists felt the weight of the new teleological doctrine no less than Strauss. Hermann Helmholtz belongs, without doubt, among those who, in the eighteen-fifties and sixties, could be considered as representatives of such thoughtful naturalists. He stresses the fact that the wonderful purpose-conformity in the structure of living organisms, which becomes increasingly apparent as science progresses, challenges the comparison of all life processes to human actions. For human actions are the only series of phenomena that have a character that is similar to the organic ones. The fitness of the arrangements in the world of organisms does, according to our judgment, in most cases indeed far surpass what human intelligence is capable of creating. It therefore cannot surprise us that it has occurred to people to seek the origin of the structure and function of the world of living beings in an intelligence far superior to that of man. Helmholtz says:

Before Darwin one could admit two kinds of explanations for the fact of organic purpose adjustment, both of which depended on an interference of a free intelligence in the course of natural phenomena. One either considered, according to the vitalistic theory, the life-processes as perpetually guided by a life-soul; or one saw in each species an act of a supernatural intelligence through which it was supposed to have been generated. . . . Darwin's theory contains an essentially new creative thought. It shows that a purpose-adjustment of the form in the organisms can come to pass also without interference of an intelligence through the random effect of a natural law. This is the law of the transmission of individual peculiarities from the parents to the descendants, a law that was long known and recognized but was merely in need of a definite demarcation.

[ 14 ] Helmholtz now is of the opinion that such a demarcation is given by the principle of natural selection in the struggle for existence. A scientist who, like Helmholtz, belongs to the most cautious naturalists of that time, J. Henle, said in a lecture, “If the experiences of artificial breeding were to be applied to the hypothesis of Oken and Lamarck, it would have to be shown how nature proceeds in order to supply the mechanism through which the experimental breeder obtains his result. This is the task Darwin set for himself and that he pursued with admirable industry and acumen.”

[ 15 ] The materialists were the ones who felt the greatest enthusiasm of all from Darwin's accomplishment. They had long been convinced that sooner or later a man like him would have to come along who would throw a philosophical light on the vast field of accumulated facts that was so much in need of a leading thought. In their opinion, the world conception for which they had fought could not fail after Darwin's discovery. Darwin approached his task as a naturalist. At first he moved within the limits reserved to the natural scientist. That his thoughts were capable of throwing a light on the fundamental problems of world conception, on the question of man's relation to nature, was merely touched upon in his book:

[ 16 ] In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation . . ., of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

For the materialists, this question of the origin of man became, in the words of Buechner, a matter of most intimate concern. In lectures he gave in Offenbach during the winter of 1866–67, he says:

Must the theory of transformation also be applied to our own race? Must it be extended to man, to us? Shall we have to submit to an application of the same principles or rules that have caused the life of all other organisms for the explanation of our own genesis and origin? Or are we—the lords of creation—an exception?

[ 17 ] Natural science clearly taught that man could not be an exception. On the basis of exact anatomical investigations the English physiologist, T. H. Huxley, wrote in his book, Man's Place in Nature (1863):

The critical comparison of all organs and their modification in the series of the monkeys leads us to one and the same result, that the anatomical differences that separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not as great as the differences that separate the anthropoid apes from the lower species of monkeys.

Could there still be a doubt in the face of such facts that natural evolution had also produced man—the same evolution that had caused the series of organic beings as far as the monkey through growth, propagation, inheritance, transmutation of forms and the struggle for life?

[ 18 ] During the course of the century this fundamental view penetrated more and more into the mainstream of natural science. Goethe, to be sure, had in his own way been convinced of this, and because of this conviction he had most energetically set out to correct the opinion of his contemporaries, which held that man lacked an intermaxillary bone in his upper jaw. All animals were supposed to have this bone; only man, so one thought, did not have it. In its absence one saw the proof that man was anatomically different from the animals, that the plan of his structure was to be thought along different lines. The naturalistic mode of Goethe's thinking inspired him to undertake elaborate anatomical studies to abolish this error. When he had achieved this goal he wrote in a letter to Herder, convinced that he had made a most important contribution to the knowledge of nature; “I compared the skulls of men and animals and I found the trail, and behold, there it is. Now I ask you not to tell, for it must be treated as a secret. But I want you to enjoy it with me, for it is like the finishing stone in the structure of man; now it is complete and nothing is lacking. Just see how it is!”

[ 19 ] Under the influence of such conceptions the great question of philosophy of man's relation to himself and to the external world led to the task of showing by the method of natural science what actual process had led to the formation of man in the course of evolution. Thereby the viewpoint from which one attempted to explain the phenomena of nature changed. As long as one saw in every organism including man the realization of a purposeful design of structure, one had to consider this purpose also in the explanation of organic beings. One had to consider that in the embryo the later organism is potentially indicated. When this view was extended to the whole universe, it meant that an explanation of nature fulfilled its task best if it showed how the later stages of evolution with man as the climax are prepared in the earlier stages.

[ 20 ] The modern idea of evolution rejected all attempts of science to recognize the potential later phases in the earlier stages. Accordingly, the later phase was in no way contained in the earlier one. Instead, what was gradually developed was the tendency to search in the later phases for traces of the earlier ones. This principle represented one of the laws of inheritance. One can actually speak of a reversal of the tendency of explanation. This reversal became important for ontogenesis, that is, for the formation of the ideas concerning the evolution of the individual being from the egg to maturity. Instead of showing the predisposition of the later organs in the embryo, one set out to compare the various stages that an organism goes through in the course of its individual evolution from the egg to maturity with those of other forms of organisms. Lorenz Oken was already moving in this direction. In the fourth volume of his General History of Nature for All Classes of Readers he wrote:

Years ago, through my physiological investigations, I arrived at the view that the developmental stages of the chicken in the egg have much similarity with different classes of animals. In the beginning it shows only the organs of infusoria, thereupon gradually assuming those of the polyps, jellyfish, shellfish, snails and so forth. Conversely, then, I also had to consider the classes of animals as evolutionary stages that proceeded parallel to the developmental stages of the chicken. This view of nature challenged me to the most minute observation of those organs that are added as new forms to every higher class of animal, as well as of the ones that are developed one after the other during the developmental process. It is, of course, not easy to establish a complete parallelism with such a difficult object as a chick egg because its development is so incompletely known. But to prove that the parallelism actually exists is indeed not difficult. It is most distinctly shown in the transformation of the insects, which is nothing more than the development of the young going on before our eyes outside the egg, and actually in so slow a tempo that we can observe and investigate every embryonic stage at our leisure.

Oken compares the stages of transformation of the insects with the other animals and finds that the caterpillars have a great similarity with worms, and the cocoons with crustaceous animals. From such similarities this ingenious thinker draws the conclusion that “there is, therefore, no doubt that we are here confronted with a conspicuous similarity that justifies the idea that the evolutionary history in the egg is nothing but a repetition of the history of the creation of the animal classes.” It came as a natural gift to this brilliant man to apprehend a great idea for which he did not even need the evidence of supporting facts. But it also lies in the nature of such subtle ideas that they have no great effect on those who work in the field of science. Oken appears like a comet on the firmament of German philosophy. His thought supplies a flood of light. From a rich treasure of ideas he suggests leading concepts for the most divergent facts. His method of formulating factual connections, however, was somewhat forced. He was too much preoccupied with the point he wanted to make. This attitude also prevailed in his treatment of the law of the repetition of certain animal forms in the ontogeny of others mentioned above.

[ 21 ] In contrast to Oken, Karl Ernst von Baer kept to the facts as firmly as possible when he spoke, in his History of the Evolution of Animals (1828), of the observations that had led Oken to his idea:

The embryos of the mammals, birds, lizards and snakes, and probably also those of the turtles, in their earlier stages are extraordinarily similar to one another in their whole formation as well as in their individual parts. These embryos are so similar in fact that they can often only be distinguished by their sizes. I have in my possession two little embryos in alcohol that I forgot to label, and now I cannot possibly determine to what class they belong. They could be lizards, little birds or young mammals, so similar is the head and trunk formation of these animals. The extremities are still completely absent in these embryos and, even if they were there, at the first stages of their development they would not tell us anything because the feet of lizards and mammals, the wings and feet of birds, as well as the hands and feet of men, all develop from the same original form.

Such facts of embryological development excited the greatest interest of those thinkers who tended toward Darwinism. Darwin had proven the possibility of change in organic forms and, through transformation, the species now in existence might possibly be descended from a few original forms, or perhaps only one. Now it was shown that in their first phases of development the various living organisms are so similar to each other that they can scarcely be distinguished from one another, if at all. These two ideas, the facts of comparative embryology and the idea of descent, were organically combined in 1864 by Fritz Müller (1821–97) in his thoughtful essay, Facts and Arguments for Darwin. Müller is one of those high-minded personalities who needs a naturalistic world conception because they cannot breathe spiritually without it. Also, in regard to his own action, he would feel satisfaction only when he could feel that his motivation was as necessary as a force of nature. In 1852 Müller settled in Brazil. For twelve years he was a teacher at the gymnasium in Desterro on the island of Santa Catharina, not far from the coast of Brazil. In 1867 he had to give up this position. The man of the new world conception had to give way to the reaction that, under the influence of the Jesuits, took hold of his school. Ernst Haeckel has described the life and activity of Fritz Müller in the Jenaische Zeitschrift fur Naturwissenschaft (Vol. XXXI N.F. XXIV 1897).

Darwin called Müller the “prince of observers,” and the small but significant booklet, Facts and Arguments for Darwin, is the result of a wealth of observations. It deals with a particular group of organic forms, the crustaceans, which are radically different from one another in their maturity but are perfectly similar at the time when they leave the egg. If one presupposes, in the sense of Darwin's theory of descent, that all crustacean forms have developed from one original type, and if one accepts the similarity in the early stages as an inherited element of the form of their common ancestor, one has thereby combined the ideas of Darwin with those of Oken pertaining to the repetition of the history of the creation of the animal species in the evolution of the individual animal form. This combination was accomplished by Fritz Müller. He thereby brought the earlier forms of an animal class into a certain law-determined connection with the later ones, which, through transformation, have formed out of them. The fact that at an earlier stage the ancestral form of a being now living has had a particular form caused its descendants at a later time to have another particular form. By studying the stages of the development of an organism one becomes acquainted with its ancestors whose nature has caused the characteristics of the embryonic forms. Phylogenesis and ontogenesis are, in Fritz Müller's book, connected as cause and effect. With this step a new element had entered the Darwinian trend of ideas. This fact retains its significance even though Müller's investigations of the crustaceans were modified by the later research of Arnold Lang.

[ 22 ] Only four years had passed since the appearance of Darwin's Origin of the Species when Müller's book was published as its defense and confirmation. Müller had shown how, with one special class of animals, one should work in the spirit of the new ideas. Then, in 1866, seven years after the Origin of the Species, a book appeared that completely absorbed this new spirit. Using the ideas of Darwinism on a high level of scientific discussion, it threw a great deal of light on the problems of the interconnection of all life phenomena. This book was Ernst Haeckel's General Morphology of Organisms. Every page reflected his attempt to arrive at a comprehensive synopsis of the totality of the phenomena of nature with the help of new thoughts. Inspired by Darwinism, Haeckel was in search of a world conception.

[ 23 ] Haeckel did his best in two ways to attempt a new world conception. First, he continually contributed to the accumulation of facts that throw light on the connection of the entities and energies of nature. Second, with unbending consistency he derived from these facts the ideas that were to satisfy the human need for explanation. He held the unshakable conviction that from these facts and ideas man can arrive at a fully satisfactory world explanation. Like Goethe, Haeckel was convinced in his own way that nature proceeds in its work “according to eternal, necessary and thereby divine laws, so that not even the deity could change it.” Because this was clear to him, he worshipped his deity in these eternal and necessary laws of nature and in the substances in which they worked. As the harmony of the natural laws, which are with necessity interconnected, satisfies reason, according to his view, so it also offers to the feeling heart, or to the soul that is ethically or religiously attuned, whatever it may thirst for. In the stone that falls to the ground attracted by gravity there is a manifestation of the same divine order that is expressed in the blossom of a plant and in the human spirit that created the drama of Wilhelm Tell.

[ 24 ] How erroneous is the belief that the feeling for the wonderful beauty of nature is destroyed by the penetration of reason into laws of nature is vividly demonstrated in the work of Ernst Haeckel. A rational explanation of nature had been declared to be incapable of satisfying the needs of the soul. Wherever man is disturbed in his inner life through knowledge of nature, it is not the fault of knowledge but of man himself. His sentiments are developed in a wrong direction. As we follow a naturalist like Haeckel without prejudice on his path as an observer of nature, we feel our hearts beat faster. The anatomical analysis, the microscopic investigation does not detract from natural beauty but reveals a great deal more of it. There is no doubt that there is an antagonism between reason and imagination, between reflection and intuition, in our time. The brilliant essayist, Ellen Key, is without doubt right in considering this antagonism as one of the most important phenomena of our time (compare Ellen Key, Essays, S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin, 1899). Whoever, like Ernst Haeckel, digs deep into the treasure mine of facts, boldly emerges with the thoughts resulting from these facts and climbs to the heights of human knowledge, can see in the explanation of nature only an act of reconciliation between the two contesting forces of reflection and intuition that “alternate in forcing each other into submission” (Ellen Key). Almost simultaneously with the publication of the book in which Haeckel presented with unflinching intellectual honesty his world conception derived from natural science, that is, with the appearance of his Riddles of the Universe in 1899, he began a serial publication called Artforms of Nature. In it he gives pictures of the inexhaustible wealth of wonderful formations that nature produces and that surpass “by far all artistic forms created by man” in beauty and in variety. The same man who introduces our mind to the law-determined order of nature leads our imagination to the beauty of nature.

[ 25 ] The need to bring the great problems of world conception into direct contact with scientific, specialized research led Haeckel to one of the facts concerning which Goethe said that they represent the significant points at which nature yields the fundamental ideas for its explanation of its own accord, meeting us halfway in our search. This was realized by Haeckel as he investigated how Oken's thesis, which Fritz Müller had applied to the crustaceans, could be fruitfully applied to the whole animal kingdom. In all animals except the Protista, which are one-celled organisms, a cup- or jug-shaped body, the gastrula, develops from the zygote with which the organism begins its ontogenesis. This gastrula is an animal form that is to be found in the first stages of development of all animals from the sponges to man. It consists merely of skin, mouth and stomach. There is a low class of zoophytes that possess only these organs during their lives and therefore resemble gastrulae. This fact is interpreted by Haeckel from the point of view of the theory of descent. The gastrula form is an inherited form that the animal owes to the form of its common ancestor. There had been, probably millions of years before, a species of animals, the gastrae, that was built in a way similar to that of the lower zoophytes still living today—the sponges, polyps, etc. From this animal species all the various forms living today, from the polyps, sponges, etc., to man, repeat this original form in the course of their ontogenies.

[ 26 ] In this way an idea of gigantic scope had been obtained. The path leading from the simple to the complicated, to the perfect form in the world of organisms, was thereby indicated in its tentative outline. A simple animal form develops under certain circumstances. One or several individuals of this form change to another form according to the conditions of life to which they are exposed. What has come into existence through this transmutation is again transmitted to descendants. There are then two different forms, the old one that has retained the form of the first stage, and a new one. Both of these forms can develop in different directions and into different degrees of perfection. After long periods of time an abundant wealth of species comes into existence through the transmission of the earlier form and through new formations by means of the process of adaptation to the conditions of life.

[ 27 ] In this manner Haeckel connects today's processes in the world of organisms with the events of primeval times. If we want to explain some organ of an animal of the present age, we look back to the ancestors that had developed this organ under the circumstances in which they lived. What has come into existence through natural causes in earlier times has been handed down to our time through the process of heredity. Through the history of the species the evolution of the individual receives its explanation. The phylogenesis, therefore, contains the causes for the ontogenesis. Haeckel expresses this fact in his fundamental law of biogenetics: “The short ontogenesis or development of the individual is a rapid and brief repetition, an abbreviated recapitulation of the long process of phylogenesis, the development of the species.”

[ 28 ] Through this law every attempt at explanation through special purposes, all teleology in the old sense, has been eliminated. One no longer looks for the purpose of an organ; one looks for the causes through which it has developed. A given form does not point to a goal toward which it strives, but toward the origin from which it sprang. The method of explanation for the organic phenomena has become the same as that for the inorganic. Water is not considered the aim of oxygen, nor is man considered the purpose of creation. Scientific research is directed toward the origin of, and the actual cause for, living beings. The dualistic mode of conception, which declares that the organic and the inorganic has to be explained according to two different principles, gives way to a monistic mode of conception, to a monism that has only one uniform mode of explanation for the whole of nature.

[ 29 ] Haeckel characteristically points out that through his discovery the method has been found through which every dualism in the above-mentioned sense must be overcome.

Phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of ontogenesis. With this statement our basically monistic conception of organic evolution is clearly characterized, and on the truth of this principle depends primarily the truth of the gastraea theory. . . . Every naturalist, who in the field of biogenesis is not satisfied with a mere admiration of strange phenomena but strives for an understanding of their significance, will, in the future, either have to side with or against this principle. It marks at the same time the complete break that separates the older teleological and dualistic morphology from the new mechanical and monistic one. If the physiological functions of inheritance and adaptation have been proven to be the only causes of the process of organic formation, then every kind of teleology, of dualistic and metaphysical mode of conception has thereby been eliminated from the field of biogenesis; the sharp contrast between the leading principles is clearly marked. Either a direct and causal connection between ontogeny and phylogeny exists or it does not. There is no third possibility! Either epigenesis and descent, or pre-formation and creation! (Compare alsoin Part 1 Chapter IX of this book.)

After Haeckel had absorbed Darwin's view of the origin of man he defended forcefully the conclusion that must be drawn from it. It was impossible for him just to hint hesitatingly, like Darwin, at this “problem of all problems.” Anatomically and physiologically man is not distinguishable from the higher animals. Therefore, the same origin must be attributed to him as to them. Haeckel boldly defended this opinion and the consequences that followed from it for the conception of the world. There was no doubt for him that in the future the highest manifestations of man's life, the activities of his spirit, were to be considered under the same viewpoint as the function of the simplest living organism. The observation of the lowest animals, the protozoa, infusoria, rhizopods, taught him that these organisms had a soul. In their motions, in the indications of the sensations they show, he recognized manifestations of life that only had to be increased and perfected in order to develop into man's complicated actions of reason and will.

[ 30 ] Beginning with the gastraea, which lived millions of years ago, what steps does nature take to arrive at man? This was the comprehensive question as stated by Haeckel. He supplied the answer in his Anthropogenesis, which appeared in 1874. In its first part, this book deals with the history of the individual (ontogenesis), in the second part, with that of the species (phylogenesis). He showed point by point how the latter contains the causes of the former. Man's position in nature had thereby been determined according to the principles of the theory of descent. To works like Haeckel's Anthropogenesis, the statement that the great anatomist, Karl Gegenbaur, made in his Comparative Anatomy (1870) can be justly applied. He wrote that in exchange for the method of investigation Darwin gave to science with his theory he received in return clarity and firmness of purpose. In Haeckel's view, the method of Darwinism had also supplied science with the theory of the origin of man.

[ 31 ] What actually was accomplished by this step can be appreciated in its full measure only if one looks at the opposition with which Haeckel's comprehensive application of the principles of Darwinism was received by the followers of idealistic world conceptions. It is not even necessary to quote those who, blindly believing in the traditional opinion, turned against the “monkey theory,” or those who believed that all finer, higher morality would be endangered if men were no longer convinced that they had a “purer, higher origin.” Other thinkers, although quite open-minded with regard to new truths, found it difficult to accept this new truth. They asked themselves the question, [ 32 ] “Do we not deny our own rational thinking if we no longer look for its origin in a general world reason over us, but in the animal kingdom below?” Mentalities of this sort eagerly attacked the points where Haeckel's view seemed to be without support of the facts. They had powerful allies in a number of natural scientists who, through a strange bias, used their factual knowledge to emphasize the points where actual experience was still insufficient to prove the conclusions drawn by Haeckel. The typical, and at the same time the most impressive, representative of this viewpoint of the naturalists was Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). The opposition of Virchow and Haeckel can be characterized as follows. Haeckel puts his trust in the inner consistency of nature, concerning which Goethe is of the opinion that it is sufficient to make up for man's inconsistency. Haeckel, therefore, argues that if a principle of nature has been verified for certain cases, and if we still lack the experience to show its validity in other cases, we have no reason to hold the progress of our knowledge back. What experience denies us today, it may yield tomorrow. Virchow is of the opposite opinion. He wants to yield as little ground as possible to a comprehensive principle. He seems to believe that life for such a principle cannot be made hard enough. The antagonism between these two spirits was brought to a sharp point at the Fiftieth Congress of German naturalists and doctors in 1877. Haeckel read a paper there on the topic, The Theory of Evolution of Today in Its Relation to Science in General.

[ 33 ] In 1894 Virchow felt that he had to state his view in the following way. “Through speculation one has arrived at the monkey theory; one could just as well have ended up with an elephant theory or a sheep theory.” What Virchow demanded was incontestable proof of this theory. As soon as something turned up that fitted as a link in the chain of the argumentation, Virchow attempted to invalidate it with all means at his disposal.

[ 34 ] Such a link in the chain of proof was presented with the bone remnants that Eugen Dubois had found in Java in 1894. They consisted of a skull and thigh bone and several teeth. Concerning this find, an interesting discussion arose at the Congress of Zoologists at Leyden. Of twelve zoologists, three were of the opinion that these bones came from a monkey and three thought they came from a human being; six, however, believed they presented a transitional form between man and monkey. Dubois shows in a convincing manner in what relation the being whose bone remnants were under discussion stood to the present monkey, on the one hand, and to man of today, on the other. The theory of evolution of natural science must claim such intermediary forms. They fill the holes that exist between numerous forms of organisms. Every new intermediary form constitutes a new proof for the kinship of all living organisms. Virchow objected to the view that these bone remnants came from such an intermediary form. At first, he declared that it was the skull of a monkey and the thigh bone of a man. Expert paleontologists, however, firmly pronounced, according to the careful report, on the finding, that the remnants belonged together. Virchow attempted to support his view that the thigh bone could be only that of a human being with the statement that a certain growth in the bone proved that it must have had a disease that could only have been healed through careful human attention. The paleontologist, Marsch, [e.Ed: perhaps American paleontologist, Othniel Charles Marsh (1831–1899)] however, maintained that similar bone extuberances occurred in wild animals as well. A further statement of Virchow's, that the deep incision between the upper rim of the eye socket and the lower skull cover of the alleged intermediary form proved it to be the skull of a monkey was then contradicted by the naturalist Nehring, who claimed that the same formation was found in a human skull from Santos, Brazil. Virchow's objections came from the same turn of mind that also caused him to consider the famous skulls of Neanderthal, Spy, etc., as pathological formations, while Haeckel's followers regarded them as intermediary forms between monkey and man.

[ 35 ] Haeckel did not allow any objections to deprive him of his confidence in his mode of conception. He continued his scientific work without swerving from the viewpoints at which he had arrived, and through popular presentations of his conception of nature, he influenced the public consciousness. In his book, Systematic Phylogenesis, Outline of a Natural System of Organisms on the Basis of the History of Species (1894–96), he attempted to demonstrate the natural kinship of organisms in a strictly scientific method. In his Natural History of Creation, which, from 1868–1908, appeared in eleven editions, he gave a popular explanation of his views. In 1899, in his popular studies on monistic philosophy entitled, The Riddles of the Universe, he gave a survey of his ideas in natural philosophy by demonstrating without reserve the many applications of his basic thoughts. Between all these works he published studies on the most diverse specialized researches, always paying attention at the same time to the philosophical principles and the scientific knowledge of details.

[ 36 ] The light that shines out from the monistic world conception is, according to Haeckel's conviction, to “disperse the heavy clouds of ignorance and superstition that have heretofore spread an impenetrable darkness over the most important one of all problems of human knowledge, that is, the problem concerning man's origin, his true nature and his position in nature.” This is what he said in a speech given August 26, 1898 at the Fourth International Congress of Zoologists in Cambridge, On Our Present Knowledge Concerning the Origin of Man. In what respect his world conception forms a bond between religion and science, Haeckel has shown in an impressive way in his book, Monism as a Bond between Religion and Science, Credo of a Naturalist, which appeared in 1892.

[ 37 ] If one compares Haeckel with Hegel, one can see distinctly the difference in the tendencies of world conception in the two halves of the nineteenth century. Hegel lives completely in the idea and accepts only as much as he needs from the world of facts for the illustration of his idealistic world picture. Haeckel is rooted with every fiber of his being in the world of facts, and he derives from this world only those ideas toward which these facts necessarily tend. Hegel always attempts to show that all beings tend to reach their climax of evolution in the human spirit; Haeckel continuously endeavors to prove that the most complicated human activities point back to the simplest origins of existence. Hegel explains nature from the spirit; Haeckel derives the spirit from nature. We can, therefore, speak of a reversal of the thought direction in the course of the century. Within German intellectual life, Strauss, Feuerbach and others began this process of reversal. In their materialism the new direction found a provisional extreme expression, and in Haeckel's thought world it found a strictly methodical-scientific one. For this is the significant thing in Haeckel, that all his activity as a research worker is permeated by a philosophical spirit. He does not at all work toward results that for some philosophical motivation or other are considered to be the aim of his world conception or of his philosophical thinking. What is philosophical about him is his method. For him, science itself has the character of a world conception. His very way of looking at things predestines him to be a monist. He looks upon spirit and nature with equal love. For this reason he could find spirit in the simplest organism. He goes even further than that. He looks for the traces of spirit in the inorganic particles of matter:

Every atom possesses an inherent quantity of energy and in this sense is animate. Without assuming a soul for the atom, the simplest and most general phenomena of chemistry are unexplainable. Pleasure and displeasure, desire and aversion, attraction and repulsion must be a common property of all material atoms. For the motion of the atoms, which must take place in the formation and dissolution of every chemical compound can only be explained if we assume that they have sensation and will. On this assumption the generally accepted chemical doctrine of affinity is really based.

As he traces spirit down to the atom so he follows the purely material mechanism of events up to the most lofty accomplishments of the spirit:

The spirit and soul of man are also nothing else but energies that are inseparably bound to the material substratum of our bodies. As the motion of our flesh is bound to the form elements of our muscles, so our mind's power of thinking is bound to the form elements of our brains. Our spiritual energies are simply functions of these physical organs just as every energy is a function of a material body.

[ 38 ] One must not confuse this mode of conception with one that dreams souls in a hazy mystical fashion into the entities of nature and then assumes that they are more or less similar to that of man. Haeckel is a strict opponent of a world conception that projects qualities and activities of man into the external world. He has repeatedly expressed his condemnation of the humanization of nature, of anthropomorphism, with a clarity that cannot be misunderstood. If he attributes animation to inorganic matter, or to the simplest organisms, he means by that nothing more than the sum of energy manifestations that we observe in them. He holds strictly to the facts. Sensation and will are for him no mystical soul energies but are nothing more than what we observe as attraction and repulsion. He does not mean to say that attraction and repulsion are really sensation and will. What he means is that attraction and repulsion are on the lowest stage what sensation and will are on a higher one. For evolution is for him not merely an unwrapping of the higher stages of the spiritual out of the lower forms in which they are already contained in a hidden fashion, but a real ascent to new formations, an intensification of attraction and repulsion into sensation and will (compare prior comments in this Chapter).

This fundamental view of Haeckel agrees in a certain way with that of Goethe. He states in this connection that he had arrived at the fulfillment of his view of nature with his insight into the “two great springs of all nature,” namely, polarity and intensification (Polarität und Steigerung), polarity “belonging to matter insofar as we think of it materially, intensification insofar as we think of it spiritually. The former is engaged in the everlasting process of attraction and repulsion, the latter in a continual intensification. As matter can never be and act without spirit, however, nor spirit without matter, so matter can also be intensified and the spirit will never be without attraction and repulsion.”

[ 39 ] A thinker who believes in such a world conception is satisfied to explain by other such things and processes, the things and processes that are actually in the world. The idealistic world conceptions need, for the derivation of a thing or process, entities that cannot be found within the realm of the factual. Haeckel derives the form of the gastrula that occurs in the course of animal evolution from an organism that he assumes really existed at some time. An idealist would look for ideal forces under the influence of which the developing germ becomes the gastrula. Haeckel's monism draws everything he needs for the explanation of the real world from the same real world. He looks around in the world of the real in order to recognize in which way the things and processes explain one another. His theories do not have the purpose for him, as do those of the idealist, to find a higher element in addition to the factual elements, but they merely serve to make the connection of the facts understandable. Fichte, the idealist, asked the question of man's destination. He meant by that something that cannot be completely presented in the form of the real, the factual; something that reason has to produce as an addition to the factually given existence, an element that is to make the real existence of man translucent by showing it in a higher light. Haeckel, the monistic contemplator of the world, asks for the origin of man, and he means by that the factual origin, the lower organism out of which man had developed through actual processes.

[ 40 ] It is characteristic that Haeckel argues for the animation of the lower organisms. An idealist would have resorted to rational conclusions. He would present necessities of thought. Haeckel refers to what he has seen.

Every naturalist, who, like me, has observed for many years the life activities of the one-celled protozoa, is positively convinced that they, too, possess a soul. This cellular soul consists also of a sum of sensations, perceptions and will activities; sensation, thinking and will of our human souls differ from those of the cellular soul only in degree.

The idealist attributes spirit to matter because he cannot accept the thought that spirit can develop from mere matter. He believes that one would have to deny the spirit if one does not assume it to exist before its appearance in forms of existence without organs, without brains. For the monist, such thoughts are not possible. He does not speak of an existence that is not manifested externally as such. He does not attribute two kinds of properties to things: those that are real and manifested in them and those that in a hidden way are latent in them only to be revealed at a higher stage of development. For him, there is what he observes, nothing else, and if the object of observation continues its evolution and reaches a higher stage in the course of its development, then these later forms are there only in the moment when they become visible.

[ 41 ] How easily Haeckel's monism can be misunderstood in this direction is shown by the objections that were made by the brilliant thinker, Bartholomaeus von Carneri (1821–1909), who made lasting contributions for the construction of an ethics of this world conception. In his book, Sensations and Consciousness, Doubts Concerning Monism (1893), he remarks that the principle, “No spirit without matter, but also no matter without spirit,” would justify our extending this question to the plant and even to the next rock we may stumble against, and to attribute spirit also to them. Without doubt such a conclusion would lead to a confusion of distinctions. It should not be overlooked that consciousness arises only through the cell activity in the cerebrum. “The conviction that there is no spirit without matter, that is to say, that all spiritual activity is bound to a material activity, the former terminating with the latter, is based on experience, while there is no experience for the statement that there is always spirit connected with matter.” Somebody who would want to attribute animation to matter that does not show any trace of spirit would be like one who attributed the function to indicate time not to the mechanism of a watch but to the metal out of which it is made.

[ 42 ] Properly understood, Haeckel's view is not touched by Carneri's criticism. It is safe from this criticism because Haeckel holds himself strictly within the bounds of observation. In his Riddles of the Universe, he says, “I, myself, have never defended the theory of atom-consciousness. I have, on the contrary, expressly emphasized that I think the elementary psychic activities of sensation and will, which are attributed to the atoms, as unconscious.” What Haeckel wants is only that one should not allow a break in the explanation of natural phenomena. He insists that one should trace back the complicated mechanism by which spirit appears in the brain, to the simple process of attraction and repulsion of matter.

Haeckel considers the discovery of the organs of thought by Paul Flechsig to be one of the most important accomplishments of modern times. Flechsig had pointed out that in the gray matter of the brain there are to be found the four seats of the central sense organs, or four “inner spheres of sensation,” the spheres of touch, smell, sight and hearing. “Between the sense centers lie thought centers, the ‘real organs of mental life.’ They are the highest organs of psychic activity that produce thought and consciousness. . . . These four thought centers, distinguished from the intermediate sense centers by a peculiar and highly elaborate nerve structure, are the true organs of thought, the only organs of our consciousness. Recently, Flechsig has proved that man has some especially complicated structures in some of these organs that cannot be found in the other mammals and that explain the superiority of human consciousness.” (Riddles of the Universe, Chapt. X.)

[ 43 ] Passages like these show clearly enough that Haeckel does not intend to assume, like the idealistic philosophers, the spirit as implicitly contained in the lower stages of material existence in order to be able to find it again on the higher stages. What he wanted to do was to follow the simplest phenomena to the most complicated ones in his observation, in order to show how the activity of matter, which in the most primitive form is manifested in attraction and repulsion, is intensified in the higher mental operations.

[ 44 ] Haeckel does not look for a general spiritual principle for lack of adequate general laws explaining the phenomena of nature and mind. So far as his need is concerned, his general law is indeed perfectly sufficient. The law that is manifested in the mental activities seems to him to be of the same kind as the one that is apparent in the attraction and repulsion of material particles. If he calls atoms animated, this has not the same meaning that it would have if a believer in an idealistic world conception did so. The latter would proceed from the spirit. He would take the conceptions derived from the contemplation of the spirit down into the simplest functions of the atoms when he thinks of them as animated. He would explain thereby the natural phenomena from entities that he had first projected into them. Haeckel proceeds from the contemplation of the simplest phenomena of nature and follows them up to the highest spiritual activities. This means that he explains the spiritual phenomena from laws that he has observed in the simplest natural phenomena.

[ 45 ] Haeckel's world picture can take shape in a mind whose observation extends exclusively to natural processes and natural entities. A mind of this kind will want to understand the connection within the realm of these events and beings. His ideal would be to see what the processes and beings themselves reveal with respect to their development and interaction, and to reject rigorously everything that might be added in order to obtain an explanation of these processes and activities. For such an ideal one is to approach all nature as one would, for instance, proceed in explaining the mechanism of a watch. It is quite unnecessary to know anything about the watchmaker, about his skill and about his thoughts, if one gains an insight into the mechanical actions of its parts. In obtaining this insight one has, within certain limits, done everything that is admissible for the explanation of the operation of the watch. One ought to be clear about the fact that the watch itself cannot be explained if another method of explanation is admitted, as, for instance, if somebody thought of some special spiritual forces that move the hour and minute hands according to the course of the sun. Every suggestion of a special life force, or of a power that works toward a “purpose” within the organisms, appears to Haeckel as an invented force that is added to the natural processes. He is unwilling to think about the natural processes in any other way than by what they themselves disclose to observation. His thought structure is to be derived directly from nature.

In observing the evolution of world conception, this thought structure strikes us, as it were, as the counter-gift from the side of natural science to the Hegelian world conception, which accepts in its thought picture nothing from nature but wants everything to originate from the soul. If Hegel's world conception said that the self-conscious ego finds itself in the experience of pure thought, Haeckel's view of nature could reply that the thought experience is a result of the nature processes, is, indeed, their highest product. If the Hegelian world conception would not be satisfied with such a reply, Haeckel's naturalistic view could demand to be shown some inner thought experience that does not appear as if it were a mirror reflection of events outside thought life. In answer to this demand, a philosophy would have to show how thought can come to life in the soul and can really produce a world that is not merely the intellectual shadow of the external world. A thought that is merely thought, merely the product of thinking, cannot be used as an effective objection to Haeckel's view. In the comparison mentioned above, he would maintain that the watch contains nothing in itself that allows a conclusion as to the personality, etc., of the watchmaker. Haeckel's naturalistic view tends to show that, as long as one is merely confronted with nature, one cannot make any statement concerning nature except what it records. In this respect this naturalistic conception is significant as it appears in the course of the development of world conception. It proves that philosophy must create a field for itself that lies in the realm of spontaneous creativity of thought life beyond the thoughts that are gained from nature.

Philosophy must take the step beyond Hegel that was pointed out in a previous chapter. It cannot consist of a method that moves in the same field with natural science. Haeckel himself probably felt not the slightest need to pay any attention to such a step of philosophy. His world conception does bring thoughts to life in the soul, but only insofar as their life has been stimulated by the observation of natural processes. The world picture that thought can create when it comes to life in the soul without this stimulus represents the kind of higher world conception that would adequately complement Haeckel's picture of nature. One has to go beyond the facts that are directly contained in the watch if one wants to know, for instance, something about the form of the watchmaker's face. But, for this reason, one has no right to demand that Haeckel's naturalistic view itself should not speak as Haeckel does when he states what positive facts he has observed concerning natural processes and natural beings.

It is an oft-repeated and a justifiable opinion, with regard to all the realms of human spiritual life, that man's greatest riddle here in our physical life is man himself. And we may truly say that a large part of our scientific activity, of our reflection, and of much besides in man's life of thought, is applied to the solving of this human riddle, to discerning a little wherein the essence of human nature consists. Natural science and spiritual science try to solve from different sides this great riddle comprised in the word Man. In the main, all the more profound natural scientific research seeks to attain its final goal by bringing together all the processes of nature, and so forth, in order to comprehend the external laws. And all spiritual science seeks the sources of existence for the sake of comprehending, of fathoming, man's being and destiny. If then, on the one hand, it is unquestioned that in general man's greatest riddle is man himself, we may say that in relation to life this expression may have a still deeper significance, in that it is necessary on the other hand to emphasize what each of us feels upon meeting another person: namely, that fundamentally each single person is in turn an enigma for others and for himself because of his special nature and being. Ordinarily, when we speak of this human enigma, we have in mind man in general, man without distinction regarding this or that individuality; and certainly many problems appear for us when we wish to understand human nature in general. But today we have not to do with the general riddles of existence, but rather with that enigma, not less significant for life, which each person we meet presents to us. For how endlessly varied are human beings in their deepest individual essence!

When we survey human life we shall have to be especially attentive to this riddle which each person presents, for our entire social life, our relation of man to man, must depend more upon how in individual cases we are able to approach with our feeling, with our sensibility, rather than merely with our intelligence, that individual human enigma which stands before us so often each day, with which we have to deal so often. How difficult it is regarding the people we meet to come to a clear knowledge of the various sides of their nature, and how much depends in life upon our coming to such clear knowledge regarding those people with whom we come in touch. We can of course only approach quite gradually the solution of the whole riddle of the human individual, of which each person presents a special phase, for there is a great gap between what is called human nature in general and that which confronts us in each human individual.

Spiritual science, or as we call it more recently, Anthroposophy, will have a special task precisely regarding this individual enigma—man. Not only must it give us information about what man is in general, but it must be, as you know, a knowledge which flows directly into our daily life, into all our sensibilities and feelings. Since our feelings and sensibilities are unfolded in the most beautiful way in our attitude toward our fellow men, the fruit of spiritual science, of spiritual scientific knowledge, will be revealed the most beautifully in the view we take of our fellow men because of this knowledge.

When in life a person stands before us, we must always, in the sense of this spiritual science, or Anthroposophy, take into consideration that what we perceive outwardly of the person is only one part, only one member, of the human being. To be sure, an outer material view of man regards as the whole man what this outer perception and the intellect connected with it are able to give us. Spiritual science shows us, however, that the human being is something very, very complicated. And often, when one goes more deeply into this complexity of human nature, the individual is then also seen in the right light. Spiritual science has the task of showing us what the innermost kernel of the human being is; what we can see with the eyes and grasp with the hands is only the outer expression, the outer shell. And we may hope to come to an understanding of the external also if we are able to penetrate into the spiritual inner part.

In the great gap between what we may call human nature in general and what confronts us in each individual, we see nevertheless many homogeneous characteristics in whole human groups. To these belong those human qualities which today form the subject of our consideration, and which we usually call the temperament. We need only utter the word ‘temperament’ to see that there are as many riddles as men. Within the basic types, the basic colorings, we have such a multiplicity and variety among individuals that we can indeed say that the real enigma, of existence is expressed in the peculiar basic disposition of the human being which we call temperament. And when the riddles intervene directly in practical life, the basic coloring of the human being plays a role. When a person stands before us, we feel that we are confronted by something of this basic disposition. Therefore it is to be hoped that spiritual science is able to give also the necessary information about the nature of the temperaments. For though we must admit that the temperaments spring from within, they nevertheless express themselves in the whole external appearance of the individual. By means of an external observation of nature, however, the riddle of man is not to be solved; we can approach the characteristic coloring of the human being only when we learn what spiritual science has to say about him.

It is of course true that each person confronts us with his own temperament, but we can still distinguish certain groups of temperaments. We speak chiefly of four types, as you know: the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the melancholic temperament. And even though this classification is not entirely correct in so far as we apply it to individuals—in individuals the temperaments are mixed in the most diverse way, so we can only say that one temperament or another predominates in certain traits—still we shall in general classify people in four groups according to their temperaments.

The fact that the temperament is revealed on the one side as something which inclines toward the individual, which makes people different, and on the other side joins them again to groups, proves to us that the temperament must on the one side have something to do with the innermost essence of the human being, and on the other must belong to universal human nature. Man's temperament, then, is something which points in two directions; and therefore it will be necessary, if we wish to solve the mystery, to ask on the one hand: In how far does the temperament point to what belongs to universal human nature? and then again on the other: How does it point to the essential kernel, to the actual inner being of the individual?

If we put the question, it is natural that spiritual science seems called upon to give enlightenment, for spiritual science must lead us to the innermost essential kernel of the human being. As he confronts us on earth, he appears to be placed in a universality, and again on the other side he appears as an independent entity. In the light of spiritual science man stands within two life streams which meet when he enters earth existence. And here we are at the focal point of the consideration of human nature according to the methods of spiritual science. We learn that we have in the human being, first of all, that which places him in his line of heredity. The one stream leads us from the individual man back to his parents, grandparents, and further ancestors. He shows the characteristics inherited from father, mother, grandparents, and all preceding ancestors farther and farther back. And these attributes he transmits again to his descendants. That which flows down from ancestors to the individual man we designate in life and in science as inherited attributes and characteristics. A man is placed in this way within what we may call the line of heredity; and it is known that an individual bears within him, even in the very kernel of his being, qualities which we must certainly trace back to heredity. Very much about an individual is explicable if we know his ancestry, so to speak. How deeply true are the words uttered with regard to his own personality by Goethe, who had such a deep knowledge of the soul:

My father gave my build to me,
Toward life my solemn bearing,
From mother comes my gayety
And my delight in yarning.

Here we see how this great knower of human nature has to point even to moral qualities when he wishes to refer to inherited characteristics. Everything we find as transmitted from ancestors to descendants interprets for us the individual person in a certain respect, but only in a certain respect; for what he has inherited from his ancestors gives us only one side of the human being. Of course the present-day materialistic conception would like to seek in the line of ancestry for everything under the sun, would like even to trace back a man's spiritual being (his spiritual qualities) to ancestry; and it never wearies of declaring that even a man's qualities of genius are explicable if we find signs, indications, of such characteristics in this or that ancestor. Those who hold such a view would like to compile the human personality, so to speak, from what is found scattered among the ancestors. Anyone who penetrates more deeply into human nature will of course be struck by the fact that beside these inherited attributes, in each man something confronts us which we cannot characterize otherwise than by saying: That is his very own; we cannot say, as a result of close observation, that it is transmitted from this or that ancestor. Spiritual science comes in here and tells us what it has to say about it. Today we are able to present only sketchily what is involved in these questions, to indicate only sketchily the findings of spiritual science.

Spiritual science tells us: Certainly it is true that the human being is placed in the stream which we may call the stream of heredity, the stream of inherited attributes. Besides that, however, something else appears in an individual, namely, the innermost spiritual kernel of his being. In this are united what the individual brings with him from the spiritual world and what the father and mother, the ancestors, are able to give to him. With that which flows down in the stream of the generations is united something else which has its origin, not in the immediate ancestors, the parents, and not in the grandparents, but which comes from quite other realms, something which passes from one existence to another. On the one side we may say: A man has this or that from his ancestors. But if we watch an individual develop from childhood on, we see how from the center of his nature something evolves which is the fruit of foregoing lives, something he never can have inherited from his ancestors.

What we see in the individual, when we penetrate to the depths of his soul, we can only explain to ourselves when we know a great comprehensive law, which is really only the consequence of many natural laws. It is the law of repeated earth lives, so greatly tabooed at the present time. This law of re-embodiment, the succession of earth lives, is only a specific case of a general cosmic law.

It will not appear so paradoxical to us when we think the matter over. Let us observe a lifeless mineral, a rock crystal. It has a regular form. If it is destroyed, nothing of its form remains which could pass over to other rock crystals. The new rock crystal receives nothing of its form. Now if we rise from the world of minerals to the world of plants, it becomes clear to us that a plant cannot originate according to the same law as a rock crystal. A plant can originate only when it is derived from the parent plant. Here the form is maintained and passes over to the other entity. If we rise to the animal world, we find that a development of species takes place. We see that the 19th century considered this discovery of the development of the species as among its greatest results. Not only does one form proceed from another, but each animal in the body of the mother repeats the earlier forms, the lower evolutionary phases of his ancestors. Among the animals we have a rising gradation of species. Among human beings, however, we have not only a gradation of species, a development of kinds, but we have a development of the individual. What a man acquires in the course of his life through education, through experience, is just as little lost as the animal's succession of ancestors.

A time will come when a man's essential core is traced back to a previous existence. It will be recognized that the human being is a fruit of an earlier existence. This law will have a peculiar destiny in the world, a destiny similar to that of another law. The opposition against which this teaching has to assert itself will be overcome, just as the opinion of the scientists of earlier centuries was overcome: that the living can originate from the lifeless. Even into the 17th century the learned and the unlearned had no doubt whatever that from ordinary lifeless things not only lower animals could be evolved, but that earthworms, even fish, could originate from ordinary river slime. The first who declared energetically that the living can originate only from the living was the great Italian natural scientist, Francesco Redi (1627 to 1697), who showed that the living derives only from the living. That is a law which is only the forerunner of another: namely, that the soul-spiritual derives from the soul-spiritual. On account of this teaching he was attacked, and only with difficulty escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. Today burning is no longer the custom; but anyone who appears with a new truth today, for instance, anyone who wishes to trace back the soul-spiritual element to the soul-spiritual, would not be burned, to be sure, but would be looked upon as a fool. A time will come when it will be considered nonsense to think that a man lives only once, that there is not something permanent which unites itself with his inherited characteristics.

Spiritual science shows how that which is our own nature unites with what is given to us by heredity. That is the other stream into which the individual is placed, the stream with which the present civilization does not wish to have anything to do. Spiritual science leads us to the great facts of so-called re-embodiment, of reincarnation, and of karma. It shows us that we have to take into consideration the innermost essential kernel of man as that which descends from the spiritual world and unites with something which is given by the line of heredity, unites with what it is possible for the father and mother to give to the individual. For the spiritual scientist that which originates from the line of heredity envelops this essential kernel with outer sheaths. And as we must go back to father and mother and other ancestors for what we see in the physical man as form and stature, and so forth, for the characteristics which belong to his outer being, so we must go back to something entirely different, to an earlier life, if we wish to comprehend a man's innermost being; perhaps far, far back, beyond all hereditary transmission, we may have to seek the human being's spiritual kernel which has existed for thousands of years, and which during these thousands of years has entered again and again into existence, again and again has led an earth-life, and now in the present existence has united itself again to what it is possible for father and mother to give. Every single human being, when he enters into physical life, has a succession of lives behind him. And this has nothing to do with what belongs to the line of heredity. We should have to go back more than centuries if we wished to investigate what was his former life when he passed through the gate of death. After he has passed through the gate of death he lives in other forms of existence in the spiritual world. And when again the time comes to experience a life in the physical world, he seeks his parents. Thus we must go back to the spirit of man and his earlier incarnations, if we wish to explain what in him confronts us now as the soul-spiritual part. We must go back to his earlier incarnations, to what he acquired in course of them. We have to consider how he lived at that time, what he brought with him, as the causes of what the individual possesses today in the new life as tendencies, dispositions, abilities for this or that. For each person brings with him from his former life certain qualities of his life. Certain qualities and his destiny he brings with him to a certain degree. According as he has performed this or that deed, he calls forth the reaction, and feels himself thus to be surrounded by the new life. So he brings with him from earlier incarnations the inner kernel of his being and envelops it with what is given him by heredity.

Certainly this one thing should be mentioned, because it is important, since actually our present time has little inclination to recognize this inner kernel of being, or to look upon the idea of reincarnation as anything but a fantastic thought. It is considered today to be poor logic, and we shall hear materialistic thinkers objecting over and over again that what is in man arises entirely through heredity. Just look at the ancestors, he says, and you will discover that this or that trait, this or that peculiarity, existed in some ancestor, that all the individual traits and qualities can be explained by tracing them in the ancestors. The spiritual scientist can also point to that fact, and he has done so. For example, in a musical family musical talent is inherited, etc. That is all supposed to support the theory of heredity. Indeed, the law is expressed point blank, that seldom does genius appear at the beginning of a generation; genius stands at the end of a line of heredity. And that is supposed to be a proof that genius is inherited. Here one proceeds from the standpoint that some person has a definite characteristic—he is a genius. Someone traces back the peculiar abilities of the genius, seeks in the past among his ancestors, finds in some ancestor signs of a similar characteristic, picks out something here and there, finds this quality in one, that in another, and then shows how they finally flowed together in the genius who appeared at the end of the generation; and he infers from it that genius is transmitted. For anyone whose thinking is direct and logical that could at best prove the opposite. If finding qualities of genius among the ancestors proves anything, what does it prove? Surely nothing else than that man's essential being is able to express itself in life according to the instrument of the body. It proves nothing more than that a man comes out wet if he falls into the water. Really it is no more intelligent than if some one wishes to call our special attention to the fact that if a man falls into the water he gets wet. It is only natural that he takes up something of the element into which he is placed. Surely it is quite self-evident that the qualities of the ancestors would be carried by that which has flowed down through the line of heredity, and has finally been given through father and mother to the particular human being who has descended from the spiritual world. The individual clothes himself in the sheaths which are given to him by his ancestors. What is intended to be presented as proof of heredity could much better be looked upon as proof that it is not heredity. For if genius were inherited, it would have to appear at the beginning of the generations and not stand at the end of a line of heredity. If anyone were to show that a genius has sons and grandchildren to whom the qualities of genius are transmitted, then he would be able to prove that genius is inherited; but that is just not the case. It is limping logic which wishes to trace back man's spiritual qualities to the succession of ancestors. We must trace back spiritual qualities to that which a man has brought with him from his earlier incarnations.

If now we consider the one stream, that which lives in the line of heredity, we find that there the individual is drawn into a stream of existence through which he gets certain qualities: We have before us some one possessing the qualities of his family, his people, his race. The various children of the same parents have characteristics conditioned in this way. If we consider the true individual nature of a human being, we must say that the soul-spiritual essential kernel is born into the family, the people, the race; it envelops itself with what is given by the ancestors, but it brings with it purely individual characteristics. So we must ask ourselves: How is harmony established between a human essence which perhaps has acquired centuries earlier this or that quality and the outer covering with which it is now to envelop itself, and which bears the characteristics of family, people, race, and so forth? Is it possible for harmony to exist here? Is it not something in the highest sense individual which is thus brought into earth life, and is not the inherited part at variance with it? Thus the great question arises: How can that which has its origin in quite other worlds, which must seek father and mother for itself, unite with the physical body? How can it clothe itself with the physical attributes through which the human being is placed within the line of heredity?

We see then in a person confronting us the flowing together of two streams; of these two streams each human being is composed. In him we see on the one side what comes to him from his family, and on the other what has developed from the individual's innermost being; namely, a number of predispositions, characteristics, inner capacities and outer destiny. An agreement must be effected. We find that a man must adapt himself to this union, in accordance with his innermost being on the one side, and on the other in accordance with that which is brought to him from the line of heredity. We see how a man bears to a great degree the physiognomy of his ancestors; we could put him together, so to speak, from the sum of his various ancestors. Since at first the inner essential kernel has nothing to do with what is inherited, but must merely adapt itself to what is most suitable to it, we shall see that it is necessary for a certain mediation to exist for that which has lived perhaps for centuries in an entirely different world and is again transplanted into another world; the spirit being of man must have something here below to which it is related; there must be a bond, a connecting link, between the special individual human being and humanity in general, into which he is born through family, people, race.

Between these two, namely what we bring with us from our earlier life and what our family, ancestors and race imprint upon us, there is a mediation, something which bears more general characteristics, but at the same time is capable of being individualized. That which occupies this position between the line of heredity and the line which represents our individuality is expressed by the word TEMPERAMENT. In that which confronts us in the temperament of a person we have something in a certain way like a physiognomy of his innermost individuality. We understand thus how the individuality colors, by means of the qualities of temperament, the attributes inherited in the succession of generations. Temperament stands right in the middle between what we bring with us as individuals and what originates from the line of heredity. When the two streams unite, the one stream colors the other. They color each other reciprocally. Just as blue and yellow, let us say, unite in green, so do the two streams in man unite in what we call temperament. That which mediates between all inner characteristics which he brings with him from his earlier incarnation, on the one side, and on the other what the line of heredity brings to him, comes under the concept temperament. It now takes its place between the inherited characteristics and what he has absorbed into his inner essential being. It is as if upon its descent to earth this kernel of being were to envelop itself with a spiritual nuance of that which awaits it here below, so that in proportion as this kernel of being is able best to adapt itself to this covering for the human being, the kernel of being colors itself according to that into which it is born and to a quality which it brings with it. Here shine forth the soul qualities of man and his natural inherited attributes. Between the two is the temperament—between that by which a man is connected with his ancestors and that which he brings with him from his earlier incarnations. The temperament balances the eternal with the transitory.

This balancing occurs through the fact that what we have learned to call the members of human nature come into relation with one another in a quite definite way. We understand this in detail, however, only when we place before our mind's eye the complete human nature in the sense of spiritual science. Only from spiritual science is the mystery of the human temperament to be discovered.

This human being as he confronts us in life, formed by the flowing together of these two streams, we know as a four-membered being. So we shall be able to say when we consider the entire individual: This complete human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body or body of formative forces, the astral body, and the ego.

In that part of man perceptible to the outer senses, which is all that materialistic thought is willing to recognize, we have first, according to spiritual science, only a single member of the human being, the physical body, which man has in common with the mineral world. That part which is subject to physical laws, which man has in common with all environing outer nature, the sum of chemical and physical laws, we designate in spiritual science as the physical body.

Beyond this, however, we recognize higher super-sensible members of human nature which are as actual and essential as the outer physical body. As first super-sensible member, man has the etheric body, which becomes part of his organism and remains united with the physical body throughout the entire life; only at death does a separation of the two take place. Even this first super-sensible member of human nature—in spiritual science called the etheric or life body; we might also call it the glandular body—is no more visible to our outer eyes than are colors to those born blind. But it exists, actually and perceptibly exists, for that which Goethe calls the eyes of the spirit, and it is even more real than the outer physical body, for it is the builder, the moulder, of the physical body. During the entire time between birth and death this etheric or life body continuously combats the disintegration of the physical body. Any kind of mineral product of nature—a crystal, for example—is so constituted that it is permanently held together by its own forces, by the forces of its own substance. That is not the case with the physical body of a living being; here the physical forces work in such a way that they destroy the form of life, as we are able to observe after death, when the physical forces destroy the life-form. That this destruction does not occur during life, that the physical body does not conform to the physical and chemical forces and laws, is due to the fact that the etheric or life-body is ceaselessly combating these forces.

The third member of the human being we recognize in the bearer of all pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, impulses, passions, desires, and all that surges to and fro as sensations and ideas, even all concepts of what we designate as moral ideals, and so on. That we call the astral body. Do not take exception to this expression. We could also call it the “nerve-body.” Spiritual science sees in it something real, and knows indeed that this body of impulses and desires is not an effect of the physical body, but the cause of this body. It knows that the soul-spiritual part has built up for itself the physical body.

Thus we already have three members of the human being, and as man's highest member we recognize that by means of which he towers above all other beings, by means of which he is the crown of earth's creation: namely, the bearer of the human ego, which gives him in such a mysterious, but also in such a manifest way, the power of self-consciousness.

Man has the physical body in common with his entire visible environment, the etheric body in common with the plants and animals, the astral body with the animals. The fourth member, however, the ego, he has for himself alone; and by means of it he towers above the other visible creatures. We recognize this fourth member as the ego-bearer, as that in human nature by means of which man is able to say “I” to himself, to come to independence.

Now what we see physically, and what the intellect which is bound to the physical senses can know, is only an expression of these four members of the human being. Thus, the expression of the ego, of the actual ego-bearer, is the blood in its circulation. This “quite special fluid” is the expression of the ego. The physical sense expression of the astral body in man is, for example, among other things, the nervous system. The expression of the etheric body, or a part of this expression, is the glandular system; and the physical body expresses itself in the sense organs.

These four members confront us in the human being. So we shall be able to say, when we observe the complete human being, that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. That which is primarily physical body, which the human being carries in such a way that it is visible to physical eyes, clearly bears, first of all, when viewed from without, the marks of heredity. Also those characteristics which live in man's etheric body, in that fighter against the disintegration of the physical body, are in the line of heredity. Then we come to his astral body, which in its characteristics is much more closely bound to the essential kernel of the human being. If we turn to this innermost kernel, to the actual ego, we find what passes from incarnation to incarnation, and appears as an inner mediator, which rays forth its essential qualities.

Now in the whole human nature all the separate members work into each other; they act reciprocally. Because two streams flow together in man when he enters the physical world, there arises a varied mixture of man's four members, and one, so to speak, gets the mastery over the others, and impresses its color upon them. Now according as one or another of these members comes especially into prominence, the individual confronts us with this or that temperament. The particular coloring of human nature, what we call the actual shade of the temperament, depends upon whether the forces, the different means of power, of one member or of another predominate, have a preponderance over the others. Man's eternal being, that which goes from incarnation to incarnation, so expresses itself in each new embodiment that it calls forth a certain reciprocal action among the four members of human nature: ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body; and from the interaction of these four members arises the nuance of human nature which we characterize as temperament.

When the essential being has tinged the physical and etheric bodies, that which arises because of the coloring thus given will act upon each of the other members; so that the way an individual appears to us with his characteristics depends upon whether the inner kernel acts more strongly upon the physical body, or whether the physical body acts more strongly upon it. According to his nature the human being is able to influence one of the four members, and through the reaction upon the other members the temperament originates. The human essential kernel, when it comes into re-embodiment, is able through this peculiarity to introduce into one or another of its members a certain surplus of activity. Thus it can give to the ego a certain surplus strength; or again, the individual can influence his other members because of having had certain experiences in his former life.

When the ego of the individual has become so strong through its destiny that its forces are noticeably dominant in the fourfold human nature, and it dominates the other members, then the choleric temperament results. If the person is especially subject to the influence of the forces of the astral body, then we attribute to him a sanguine temperament. If the etheric or life-body acts excessively upon the other members, and especially impresses its nature upon the person, the phlegmatic temperament arises. And when the physical body with its laws is especially predominant in the human nature, so that the spiritual essence of being is not able to overcome a certain hardness in the physical body, then we have to do with a melancholic temperament. Just as the eternal and the transitory intermingle, so does the relation of the members to one another appear.

I have already told you how the four members express themselves outwardly in the physical body. Thus, a large part of the physical body is the direct expression of the physical life principle of man. The physical body as such comes to expression only in the physical body; hence it is the physical body which gives the keynote in a melancholic.

We must regard the glandular system as the physical expression of the etheric body. The etheric body expresses itself physically in the glandular system. Hence in a phlegmatic person the glandular system gives the keynote in the physical body.

The nervous system and, of course, what occurs through it we must regard as the physical expression of the astral body. The astral body finds its physical expression in the nervous system; therefore in a sanguine person the nervous system gives the keynote to the physical body.

The blood in its circulation, the force of the pulsation of the blood, is the expression of the actual ego. The ego expresses itself in the circulation of the blood, in the predominating activity of the blood; it shows itself especially in the fiery vehement blood. One must try to penetrate more subtly into the connection which exists between the ego and the other members of the human being. Suppose, for example, that the ego exerts a peculiar force in the life of sensations, ideas, and the nervous system; suppose that in the case of a certain person everything arises from his ego, everything that he feels he feels strongly, because his ego is strong—we call that the choleric temperament. That which has received its character from the ego will make itself felt as the predominating quality. Hence, in a choleric the blood system is predominant.

The choleric temperament will show itself as active in a strongly pulsating blood; in this the element of force in the individual makes its appearance, in the fact that he has a special influence upon his blood. In such a person, in whom spiritually the ego, physically the blood, is particularly active, we see the innermost force vigorously keeping the organization fit. And as he thus confronts the outer world, the force of his ego will wish to make itself felt. That is the effect of this ego. By reason of this, the choleric appears as one who wishes to assert his ego in all circumstances. All the aggressiveness of the choleric, everything connected with his strong will-nature, may be ascribed to the circulation of the blood.

When the astral body predominates in an individual, the physical expression will lie in the functions of the nervous system, that instrument of the rising and falling waves of sensation; and that which the astral body accomplishes is the life of thoughts, of images, so that the person who is gifted with the sanguine temperament will have the predisposition to live in the surging sensations and feelings and in the images of his life of ideas.

We must understand clearly the relation of the astral body to the ego. The astral body functions between the nervous system and the blood system. So it is perfectly clear what this relation is. If only the sanguine temperament were present, if only the nervous system were active, being quite especially prominent as the expression of the astral body, then the person would have a life of shifting images and ideas; in this way a chaos of images would come and go. He would be given over to all the restless flux from sensation to sensation, from image to image, from idea to idea. Something of that sort appears if the astral body predominates, that is, in a sanguine person, who in a certain sense is given over to the tide of sensations, images, etc., since in him the astral body and the nervous system predominate. It is the forces of the ego which prevent the images from darting about in a fantastic way. Only because these images are controlled by the ego does harmony and order enter in. Were man not to check them with his ego, they would surge up and down without any evidence of control by the individual.

In the physical body it is the blood which principally limits, so to speak, the activity of the nervous system. Man's blood circulation, the blood flowing in man, is that which lays fetters, so to speak, upon what has its expression in the nervous system; it is the restrainer of the surging feelings and sensations; it is the tamer of the nerve-life. It would lead too far if I were to show you in all its details how the nervous system and the blood are related, and how the blood is the restrainer of this life of ideas. What occurs if the tamer is not present, if a man is deficient in red blood, is anemic? Well, even if we do not go into the more minute psychological details, from the simple fact that when a person's blood becomes too thin, that is, has a deficiency of red corpuscles, he is easily given over to the unrestrained surging back and forth of all kinds of fantastic images, even to illusion and hallucination—you can still conclude from this simple fact that the blood is the restrainer of the nerve-system. A balance must exist between the ego and the astral body—or speaking physiologically, between the blood and the nervous system—so that one may not become a slave of his nervous system, that is, to the surging life of sensation and feeling.

If now the astral body has a certain excess of activity, if there is a predominance of the astral body and its expression, the nerve-system, which the blood restrains to be sure, but is not completely able to bring to a condition of absolute balance, then that peculiar condition arises in which human life easily arouses the individual's interest in a subject, but he soon drops it and quickly passes to another one; such a person cannot hold himself to an idea, and in consequence his interest can be immediately kindled in everything which meets him in the outer world, but the restraint is not applied to make it inwardly enduring; the interest which has been kindled quickly evaporates. In this quick kindling of interest and quick passing from one subject to another we see the expression of the predominating astral element, the sanguine temperament. The sanguine person cannot linger with an impression, he cannot hold fast to an image, cannot fix his attention upon one subject. He hurries from one life impression to another, from perception to perception, from idea to idea; he shows a fickle disposition. That can be especially observed with sanguine children, and in this case it may cause one anxiety. Interest is easily aroused, a picture begins easily to have an effect, quickly makes an impression, but the impression soon vanishes again.

When there is a strong predominance in an individual of the etheric or life-body—that which inwardly regulates the processes of man's life and growth—and the expression of this etheric body—that system which brings about the feeling of inner well-being or of discomfort—then such a person will be tempted to wish just to remain in this feeling of inner comfort. The etheric body is a body which leads a sort of inner life, while the astral body expresses itself in outer interests, and the ego is the bearer of our activity and will, directed outward. If then this etheric body, which acts as life-body, and maintains the separate functions in equilibrium, an equilibrium which expresses itself in the feeling of life's general comfort—when this self-sustained inner life, which chiefly causes the sense of inner comfort, predominates, then it may occur that an individual lives chiefly in this feeling of inner comfort, that he has such a feeling of well-being, when everything in his organism is in order, that he feels little urgency to direct his inner being toward the outer world, is little inclined to develop a strong will. The more inwardly comfortable he feels, the more harmony will he create between the inner and outer. When this is the case, when it is even carried to excess, we have to do with a phlegmatic person.

In a melancholic we have seen that the physical body, that is, the densest member of the human being, rules the others. A man must be master of his physical body, as he must be master of a machine if he wishes to use it. But when this densest part rules, the person always feels that he is not master of it, that he cannot manage it. For the physical body is the instrument which he should rule completely through his higher members. But now this physical body has dominion and sets up opposition to the others. In this case the person is not able to use his instrument perfectly, so that the other principles experience repression because of it, and disharmony exists between the physical body and the other members. This is the way the hardened physical system appears when it is in excess. The person is not able to bring about flexibility where it should exist. The inner man has no power over his physical system; he feels inner obstacles. They show themselves through the fact that the person is compelled to direct his strength upon these inner obstacles. What cannot be overcome is what causes sorrow and pain; and these make it impossible for the individual to look out upon his contemporary world in an unprejudiced way. This constraint becomes a source of inner grief, which is felt as pain and listlessness, as a sad mood. It is very easy to feel that life is filled with pain and sorrow. Certain thoughts and ideas begin to be enduring; the person becomes gloomy, melancholic. There is a constant arising of pain. This mood is caused by nothing else than that the physical body sets up opposition to the inner ease of the etheric body, to the mobility of the astral body, and to the ego's certainty of its goal.

And if we thus comprehend the nature of the temperaments through sound knowledge, many a thing in life will become clear to us; but it will also become possible to handle in a practical way what we otherwise could not do. Look at much which directly confronts us in life! What we see there as the mixture of the four members of human nature meets us clearly and significantly in the outer picture. We need only observe how the temperament comes to expression externally.

Let us, for instance, take the choleric person, who has a strong firm center in his inner being. If the ego predominates, the person will assert himself against all outer oppositions; he wants to be in evidence. This ego is the restrainer. Those pictures are consciousness-pictures. The physical body is formed according to its etheric body, the etheric body according to its astral body. This astral body would fashion man, so to speak, in the most varied way. But because growth is opposed by the ego in its blood forces, the balance is maintained between abundance and variety of growth. So when there is a surplus of ego, growth can be retarded. It positively retards the growth of the other members; it does not allow the astral body and the etheric body their full rights. In the choleric temperament you are able to recognize clearly in the outer growth, in all that confronts us outwardly, the expression of what is inwardly active, the actual deep inner force-nature of the man, of the complete ego. Choleric persons appear as a rule as if growth had been retarded. You can find in life example after example; for instance, from spiritual history the philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the German choleric. Even in external appearance he is recognizable as such, since in his outer form he gave the impression of being retarded in growth. Thereby he reveals clearly that the other members of his being have been held back by the excess of ego. Not the astral body with its forming capacity is the predominant member, but the ego rules, the restrainer, the limiter of the formative forces. Hence we see as a rule in those who are preeminently men of strong will, where the ego restrains the free formative force of the astral body, a small compact figure. Take another classical example of the choleric: Napoleon, the “little General,” who remained so small because the ego held back the other members of his being. There you have the type of the retarded growth of the choleric. There you can see how this force of the ego works out of the spirit, so that the innermost being is manifest in the outer form. Observe the physiognomy of the choleric! Take in comparison the phlegmatic person! How indefinite are his features; how little reason you have to say that such a form of forehead is suited to the choleric. In one organ it is shown especially clearly whether the astral body or the ego works formatively, that is in the eye, in the steady, assured aspect of the eye of the choleric. As a rule we see how this strongly-kindled inner light, which turns everything luminously inward, sometimes is expressed in a black, a coal-black eye, because, according to a certain law, the choleric does not permit the astral body to color that very thing which his ego-force draws inward, that which is colored in another person. Observe such an individual in his whole bearing. One who is experienced can almost tell from the rear view whether a certain person is a choleric. The firm walk proclaims the choleric, so to speak. Even in the step we see the expression of strong ego-force. In the choleric child we already notice the firm tread; when he walks on the ground, he not only sets his foot on it, but he treads as if he wanted to go a little bit farther, into the ground.

The complete human individual is a copy of this innermost being, which declares itself to us in such a way. But naturally, it is not a question of my maintaining that the choleric person is short and the sanguine tall. We may compare the form of a person only with his own growth. It depends upon the relation of the growth to the entire form.

Notice the sanguine person! Observe what a strange glance even the sanguine child has; it quickly lights upon something, but just as quickly turns to something else; it is a merry glance; an inner joy and gaiety shine in it; in it is expressed what comes from the depths of the human nature, from the mobile astral body, which predominates in the sanguine person. In its mobile inner life this astral body will work upon the members; and it will also make the person's external appearance as flexible as possible. Indeed, we are able to recognize the entire outer physiognomy, the permanent form and also the gestures, as the expression of the mobile, volatile, fluidic astral body. The astral body has the tendency to fashion, to form. The inner reveals itself outwardly; hence the sanguine person is slender and supple. Even in the slender form, the bony structure; we see the inner mobility of the astral body in the whole person. It comes to expression for example in the slim muscles. It is also to be seen in his external expression. Even one who is not clairvoyant can recognize from the rear whether a person is of sanguine or choleric temperament; and to be able to do this one need not be a spiritual scientist. In a sanguine person we have an elastic and springing walk. In the hopping, dancing walk of the sanguine child we see the expression of the mobile astral body. The sanguine temperament manifests itself especially strongly in childhood. See how the formative tendency is expressed there; and even more delicate attributes are to be found in the outer form. If in the choleric person we have sharply-cut facial features, in the sanguine they are mobile, expressive, changeable. And likewise there appears in the sanguine child a certain inner possibility to alter his countenance. Even to the color of the eyes we could confirm the expression of the sanguine person. The inwardness of the ego-nature, the self-sufficient inwardness of the choleric, meets us in his black eye. Look at the sanguine person in whom the ego-nature is not so deep-rooted, in whom the astral body pours forth all its mobility—there the blue eye is predominant. These blue eyes are closely connected with the individual's invisible inner light, the light of the astral body.

Thus many attributes could be pointed out which reveal the temperament in the external appearance. Through the four-membered human nature we learn to understand clearly this soul riddle of the temperaments. And indeed, a knowledge of the four temperaments, springing from a profound perception of human nature, has been handed down to us from ancient times. If we thus understand human nature, and know that the external is only the expression of the spiritual, then we learn to understand man in his relation even to the externalities, to understand him in his whole process of becoming; and we learn to recognize what we must do concerning ourself and the child with regard to temperament. In education especially notice must be taken of the kind of temperament that tends to develop in the child. For life's wisdom, as for pedagogy, an actual living knowledge of the nature of the temperaments is indispensable, and both would profit infinitely from it.

And now let us go further. Again we see how the phlegmatic temperament also is brought to expression in the outer form. In this temperament there predominates the activity of the etheric body, which has its physical expression in the glandular system and its soul expression in a feeling of ease, in inner balance. If in such a person everything is not only normally in order within, but if, beyond this normality, these inner formative forces of ease are especially active, then their products are added to the human body; it becomes corpulent, it expands. In the largeness of the body, in the development of the fatty parts, we see that which the inner formative forces of the etheric body are especially working on. The inner sense of ease of the phlegmatic person meets us in all that. And who would not recognize in this lack of reciprocal action between the inner and the outer the cause of the ofttimes slovenly, dragging gait of the phlegmatic person, whose step will often not adapt itself to the ground; he does not step properly, so to speak; does not put himself in relation to things. That he has little control over the forms of his inner being you can observe in the whole man. The phlegmatic temperament confronts one in the immobile, indifferent countenance, even in the peculiarly dull, colorless appearance of the eye. While the eye of the choleric is fiery and sparkling, we can recognize in that of the phlegmatic the expression of the etheric body, focused only upon inner ease.

The melancholic is one who cannot completely attain mastery over the physical instrument, one to whom the physical instrument offers resistance, one who cannot cope with the use of this instrument. Look at the melancholic, how he generally has a drooping head, has not the force in himself to stiffen his neck. The bowed head shows that the inner forces which adjust the head perpendicularly are never able to unfold freely. The glance is downward, the eye sad, unlike the black gleam of the choleric eye. We see in the peculiar appearance of the eye that the physical instrument makes difficulties for him. The walk, to be sure, is measured, firm, but not like the walk of the choleric, the firm tread of the choleric; it has a certain kind of dragging firmness.

All this can be only indicated here; but the life of the human being will be much, much more understandable to us if we work in this way, if we see the spirit activating the forms in such a way that the external part of the individual can become an expression of his inner being. So you see how significantly spiritual science can contribute to the solution of this riddle; but only if you face the whole reality, to which the spiritual also belongs, and do not stop merely with the physical reality, can this knowledge be practically applied in life. Therefore only from spiritual science can this knowledge flow in such a way as to benefit the whole of humanity as well as the individual.

Now if we know all that, we can also learn to apply it. Particularly it must be of interest to learn how we can handle the temperaments pedagogically in childhood. For in education the kind of temperament must be very carefully observed; with children it is especially important to be able to guide and direct the developing temperament. But later also it is still important, for anyone in self-education. For the person who wishes to train himself it is invaluable that he observe what is expressed in his temperament.

I have pointed out to you here the fundamental types, but naturally in life they do not often appear thus pure. Each person has only the fundamental tone of a temperament, besides which he has something of the others. Napoleon, for example, had in him much of the phlegmatic temperament, although he was a choleric. If we would govern life practically, it is important to be able to allow that which expresses itself physically to work upon our soul.

How important this is we can see best of all if we consider that the temperaments can degenerate, that what may appear to us as one-sidedness can also degenerate. What would the world be without the temperaments—if people had only one temperament? The most tiresome place you could imagine! The world would be dreary without the temperaments, not only in the physical, but also in the higher sense. All variety, beauty, and all the richness of life are possible only through the temperaments. Do we not see how everything great in life can be brought about just through the one-sidedness of the temperaments, but also how these can degenerate in their one-sidedness? Are we not troubled about the child because we see that the choleric temperament can degenerate to malice, the sanguine to fickleness, the melancholic to gloom, etc.?

In the question of education in particular, and also in self-education, will not the knowledge and estimation of the temperaments be of essential value to the educator? We must not be misled into depreciating the value of the temperament because it is a one-sided characteristic. In education the important thing is not to equalize the temperaments, to level them, but to bring them into the right track. We must clearly understand that the temperament leads to one-sidedness, that the most radical phase of the melancholic temperament is madness; of the phlegmatic, imbecility; of the sanguine, insanity; of the choleric, all those explosions of diseased human nature which result in frenzy, and so forth. Much beautiful variety results from the temperaments, because opposites attract each other; nevertheless, the deification of the one-sidedness of temperament very easily causes harm between birth and death. In each temperament there exists a small and a great danger of degeneracy. With the choleric person there is the danger that in youth his ego will be determined by his irascibility, by his lack of self-control. That is the small danger. The great danger is the folly which wishes to pursue, from the impulse of his ego, some kind of individual goal. In the sanguine temperament the small danger is that the person will lapse into fickleness. The great danger is that the rising and falling tide of sensations may result in insanity. The small danger for the phlegmatic is lack of interest in the outer world; the great danger is stupidity or idiocy. The small danger in the melancholic is gloominess, the possibility that he may not be able to extricate himself from what rises up within him. The great danger is madness.

When we contemplate all that, we shall see that a tremendously significant task in practical life lies in the directing and guiding of the temperaments. It is important for the educator to be able to say to himself: What will you do, for example, in the case of a sanguine child? Here one must try to learn from the knowledge of the entire nature of the sanguine temperament how to proceed. If other points of view must be considered concerning the education of the child, it is also necessary that temperament, as a subject in itself, be taken into account. But in order to guide the temperaments the principle to be observed is that we must always reckon with what is there and not with what is not there.

We have a child of sanguine temperament before us, which could easily degenerate into fickleness, lack of interest in important things, and, instead, become quickly interested in other things. The sanguine child is the quickly comprehending, but also the quickly forgetting child, whose interest it is difficult to hold upon anything whatever, just because interest in one subject is quickly lost and passes over to another. This can grow into the most frightful one-sidedness, and it is possible to notice the danger if we look into the depths of human nature. In the case of such a child a material-minded person will immediately come forward with a prescription and say: If you have a sanguine child to bring up, you must bring it into reciprocal activity with other children. But a person who thinks realistically in the right sense says: If you begin with the sanguine child by working upon forces which it does not at all possess, you will accomplish nothing with it. You could exert your powers ever so seriously to develop the other members of human nature, but these simply do not predominate in this child. If a child has a sanguine temperament, we cannot help him along in development by trying to beat interests into him; we cannot pound in something different from what his sanguine temperament is. We should not ask, What does the child lack? What are we to beat into him? But we should ask, What as a rule does a sanguine child possess? And that is what we must reckon with. Then we shall say to ourselves: We do not alter these characteristics by trying to induce any sort of opposite quality in this child. With regard to these things which are rooted in the innermost nature of man we must take into consideration that we can only bend them. Thus we shall not be building upon what the child does not possess, but upon what he does possess. We shall build exactly upon that sanguine nature, upon that mobility of the astral body, and not try to beat into him what belongs to another member of human nature. With a sanguine child who has become one-sided we must just appeal to his sanguine temperament.

If we wish to have the right relation with this child, we must take special notice of something. For from the first it becomes evident to the expert that if the child is ever so sanguine, there is still something or other in which he is interested, that there is one interest, one genuine interest for each sanguine child. It will generally be easy to arouse interest in this or that subject, but it will quickly be lost again. There is one interest, however, which can be enduring even for the sanguine child. Experience shows this; only it must be discovered. And that which is found to hold a special interest must be kept in mind. And whatever it is that the child does not pass by with fickle interest we must try to bring before him as a special fact, so that his temperament extends to something which is not a matter of indifference to him. Whatever he delights in, we must try to place in a special light; the child must learn to use his sanguineness. We can work in such a way that we begin first of all with the one thing that can always be found, with the forces which the child has. He will not be able to become lastingly interested in anything through punishment and remonstrance. For things, subjects, events, he will not easily show anything but a passing, changeable interest; but for one personality, especially suited to a sanguine child—experience will show this—there will be a permanent, continuous interest, even though the child is ever so fickle. If only we are the right personality, or if we are able to bring him into association with the right personality, the interest will appear. It is only necessary to search in the right way. Only by the indirect way of love for one personality, is it possible for interest to appear in the sanguine child. But if that interest, love for one person, is kindled in him, then through this love straightway a miracle happens. This love can cure a child's one-sided temperament. More than any other temperament, the sanguine child needs love for one personality. Everything must be done to awaken love in such a child. Love is the magic word. All education of the sanguine child must take this indirect path of attachment to a certain personality. Therefore parents and teachers must heed the fact that an enduring interest in things cannot be awakened by drumming it into the sanguine child, but they must see to it that this interest is won by the roundabout way of attachment to a personality. The child must develop this personal attachment; one must make himself lovable to the child; that is one's duty to the sanguine child. It is the responsibility of the teacher that such a child shall learn to love the personality.

We can still further build up the education upon the child's sanguine nature itself. The sanguine nature reveals itself, you know, in the inability to find any interest which is lasting. We must observe what is there. We must see that all kinds of things are brought into the environment of the child in which he has shown more than the ordinary interest. We should keep the sanguine child busy at regular intervals with such subjects as warrant a passing interest, concerning which he is permitted to be sanguine, so to speak, subjects not worthy of sustained interest. These things must be permitted to affect the sanguine nature, permitted to work upon the child; then they must be removed so that he will desire them again, and they may again be given to him. We must cause these things to work upon the child as the objects of the ordinary world work upon the temperament. In other words, it is important to seek out for a sanguine child those objects toward which he is permitted to be sanguine.

If we thus appeal to what exists rather than to something which does not exist, we shall see—and practical experience will prove it—that as matter of fact the sanguine force, if it becomes one-sided, actually permits itself to be captured by serious subjects. That is attained as by an indirect path. It is good if the temperament is developed in the right way during childhood, but often the adult himself has to take his education in hand later in life. As long, indeed, as the temperaments are held in normal bounds, they represent that which makes life beautiful, varied, and great. How dull would life be if all people were alike with regard to temperament. But in order to equalize a one-sidedness of temperament, a man must often take his self-education in hand in later life. Here again one should not insist upon pounding into oneself, as it were, a lasting interest in any sort of thing; but he must say to himself: According to my nature I am sanguine; I will now seek subjects in life which my interest may pass over quickly, in which it is right that the interest should not be lasting, and I will just occupy myself with that in which I may with complete justification lose interest in the very next moment.

Let us suppose that a parent should fear that in his child the choleric temperament would express itself in a one-sided way. The same treatment cannot be prescribed as for the sanguine child; the choleric will not be able easily to acquire love for a personality. He must be reached through something else in the influence of person upon person. But in the case of the choleric child also there is an indirect way by which the development may always be guided. What will guide the education here with certainty is: Respect and esteem for an authority. For the choleric child one must be thoroughly worthy of esteem and respect in the highest sense of the word. Here it is not a question of making oneself loved through the personal qualities, as with the sanguine child, but the important thing is that the choleric child shall always have the belief that the teacher understands the matter in hand. The latter must show that he is well informed about the things that take place in the child's environment; he must not show a weak point. He must endeavor never to let the choleric child notice that he might be unable to give information or advice concerning what is to be done. The teacher must see to it that he holds the firm reins of authority in his hands, and never betray the fact that he is perhaps at his wits' end. The child must always keep the belief that the teacher knows. Otherwise he has lost the game. If love for the personality is the magic word for the sanguine child, then respect and esteem for the worth of a person is the magic word for the choleric.

If we have a choleric child to train we must see to it before everything else that this child shall unfold, bring to development, his strong inner forces. It is necessary to acquaint him with what may present difficulties in the outer life. For the choleric child who threatens to degenerate into one-sidedness, it is especially necessary to introduce into the education that which is difficult to overcome, so as to call attention to the difficulties of life by producing serious obstacles for the child. Especially must such things be put in his way as will present opposition to him. Oppositions, difficulties, must be placed in the path of the choleric child. The effort must be put forth not to make life altogether easy for him. Hindrances must be created so that the choleric temperament is not repressed, but is obliged to come to expression through the very fact that certain difficulties are presented which the child must overcome. The teacher must not beat out, educate out, so to speak, a child's choleric temperament, but he must put before him just those things upon which he must use his strength, things in connection with which the choleric temperament is justified. The choleric child must of inner necessity learn to battle with the objective world. The teacher will therefore seek to arrange the environment in such a way that this choleric temperament can work itself out in overcoming obstacles; and it will be especially good if these obstacles pertain to little things, to trifles; if the child is made to do something on which he must expend tremendous strength, so that the choleric temperament is strongly expressed, but actually the facts are victorious, the strength employed is frittered away. In this way the child gains respect for the power of facts which oppose what is expressed in the choleric temperament.

Here again there is another indirect way in which the choleric temperament can be trained. Here it is necessary first of all to awaken reverence, the feeling of awe, to approach the child in such a way as actually to arouse such respect, by showing him that we can overcome difficulties which he himself cannot yet overcome; reverence, esteem, particularly for what the teacher can accomplish, for his ability to overcome objective difficulties. That is the proper means: Respect for the ability of the teacher is the way by which the choleric child in particular may be reached in education.

It is also very difficult to manage the melancholic child. What must we do if we fear the threatened one-sidedness of the melancholic temperament of the child, since we cannot cram in what he does not possess? We must reckon with the fact that it is just repressions and resistance that he has power within himself to cling to. If we wish to turn this peculiarity of his temperament in the right direction, we must divert this force from subjective to objective activity. Here it is of very special importance that we do not build upon the possibility, let us say, of being able to talk him out of his grief and pain, or otherwise educate them out of him; for the child has the tendency to this excessive reserve because the physical instrument presents hindrances. We must particularly build upon what is there, we must cultivate what exists. With the melancholic child it will be especially necessary for the teacher to attach great importance to showing him that there is suffering in the world. If we wish to approach this child as a teacher, we must find here also the point of contact. The melancholic child is capable of suffering, of moroseness; these qualities exist in him and we cannot flog them out, but we can divert them.

For this temperament too there is one important point: Above all we must show the melancholic child how people can suffer. We must cause him to experience justifiable pain and suffering in external life, in order that he may come to know that there are things concerning which he can experience pain. That is the important thing. If you try to entertain him, you drive him back into his own corner. Whatever you do, you must not think you have to entertain such a child, to try to cheer him up. You should not divert him; in that way you harden the gloominess, the inner pain. If you take him where he can find pleasure, he will only become more and more shut up within himself. It is always good if you try to cure the young melancholic, not by giving him gay companionship, but by causing him to experience justifiable pain. Divert his attention from himself by showing him that sorrow exists. He must see that there are things in life which cause suffering. Although it must not be carried too far, the important point is to arouse pain in connection with external things in order to divert him.

The melancholic child is not easy to guide; but here again there is a magic means. As with the sanguine child the magic word is love for a personality, with the choleric, esteem and respect for the worth of the teacher, so with the melancholic child the important thing is for the teachers to be personalities who in some way have been tried by life, who act and speak from a life of trial. The child must feel that the teacher has really experienced suffering. Bring to his attention in all the manifold occurrences of life the trials of your own destiny. Most fortunate is the melancholic child who can grow up beside a person who has much to give because of his own hard experiences; in such a case soul works upon soul in the most fortunate way. If therefore at the side of the melancholic child there stands a person who, in contrast to the child's merely subjective, sorrowful tendencies, knows how to tell in a legitimate way of pain and suffering that the outer world has brought him, then such a child is aroused by this shared experience, this sympathy with justified pain. A person who can show in the tone and feeling of his narration that he has been tried by destiny, is a blessing to such a melancholic child.

Even in arranging the melancholic child's environment, so to speak, we should not leave his predispositions unconsidered. Hence, it is even advantageous if—strange as it may sound—we build up for the child actual hindrances, obstructions, so that he can experience legitimate suffering and pain with regard to certain things. It is the best education for such a child if the existing tendency to subjective suffering and grief can be diverted by being directed to outer hindrances and obstructions. Then the child, the soul of the child, will gradually take a different direction.

In self-education also we can again use this method: we must always allow the existing tendencies, the forces present in us, to work themselves out, and not artificially repress them. If the choleric temperament, for example, expresses itself so strongly in us that it is a hindrance, we must permit this existing inner force to work itself out by seeking those things upon which we can in a certain sense shatter our force, dissipate our forces, preferably upon insignificant, unimportant things. If on the other hand we are melancholic, we shall do well to seek out justifiable pain and suffering in external life, in order that we may have opportunity to work out our melancholy in the external world; then we shall set ourselves right.

Let us pass on to the phlegmatic temperament. With the phlegmatic child it will be very difficult for us if his education presents us with the task of conducting ourselves in an appropriate way toward him. It is difficult to gain any influence over a phlegmatic person. But there is one way in which an indirect approach may be made. Here again it would be wrong, very wrong indeed, if we insisted upon shaking up a person so inwardly at ease, if we thought we could pound in some kind of interests then and there. Again we must take account of what he has.

There is something in each case which will hold the attention of the phlegmatic person, especially the phlegmatic child. If only through wise education we build up around him what he needs, we shall be able to accomplish much. It is necessary for the phlegmatic child to have much association with other children. If it is good for the others also to have playmates, it is especially so for the phlegmatic. He must have playmates with the most varied interests. There is nothing to appeal to in the phlegmatic child. He will not interest himself easily in objects and events. One must therefore bring this child into association with children of like age. He can be trained through the sharing of the interests—as many as possible—of other personalities. If he is indifferent to his environment, his interest can be kindled by the effect upon him of the interests of his playmates. Only by means of that peculiar suggestive effect, only through the interests of others, is it possible to arouse his interest. An awakening of the interest of the phlegmatic child will result through the incidental experiencing of the interest of others, the sharing of the interests of his playmates, just as sympathy, sharing of the experience of another human destiny, is effective for the melancholic. Once more: To be stimulated by the interest of others is the correct means of education for the phlegmatic. As the sanguine child must have attachment for one personality, so must the phlegmatic child have friendship, association with as many children as possible of his own age. That is the only way the slumbering force in him can be aroused. Things as such do not affect the phlegmatic. With a subject connected with the tasks of school and home you will not be able to interest the little phlegmatic; but indirectly, by way of the interests of other souls of similar age you can bring it about. If things are reflected in this way in others, these interests are reflected in the soul of the phlegmatic child.

Then also we should particularly see to it that we surround him with things and cause events to occur near him concerning which apathy is appropriate. One must direct the apathy to the right objects, those toward which one may rightly be phlegmatic. In this way quite wonderful things can sometimes be accomplished in the young child. But also one's self-education may be taken in hand in the same way in later life, if it is noticed that apathy tends to express itself in a one-sided way; that is, by trying to observe people and their interests. One thing more can also be done, so long as we are still in a position to employ intelligence and reason at all: we can seek out the very subjects and events which are of the greatest indifference to us, toward which it is justifiable for us to be phlegmatic.

We have now seen again how, in the methods of education based upon spiritual science, we build upon what one has and not upon what is lacking.

So we may say that it is best for the sanguine child if he may grow up guided by a firm hand, if some one can show him externally aspects of character through which he is able to develop personal love. Love for a personality is the best remedy for the sanguine child. Not merely love, but respect and esteem for what a personality can accomplish is the best for the choleric child. A melancholic child may be considered fortunate if he can grow up beside some one who has a bitter destiny. In the corresponding contrast produced by the new insight, by the sympathy which arises for the person of authority, and in the sharing of the justifiably painful destiny,—in this consists what the melancholic needs. They develop well if they can indulge less in attachment to a personality, less in respect and esteem for the accomplishment of a personality, but can reach out in sympathy with suffering and justifiably painful destinies. The phlegmatic is reached best if we produce in him an inclination towards the interests of other personalities, if he can be stirred by the interests of others.

The sanguine should be able to develop love and attachment for one personality.

The choleric should be able to develop esteem and respect for the accomplishments of the personality.

The melancholic should be able to develop a heartfelt sympathy with another's destiny.

The phlegmatic child should be led to the sharing of the interests of others.

Thus do we see in these principles of education how spiritual science goes right into the practical questions of life; and when we come to speak about the intimate aspects of life, spiritual science shows just in these very things how it works in practice, shows here its eminently practical side. Infinitely much could we possess of the art of living, if we would adopt this realistic knowledge of spiritual science. When it is a case of mastering life, we must listen for life's secrets, and these lie behind the sense perceptible. Only real spiritual science can explain such a thing as the human temperaments, and so thoroughly fathom them that we are able to make this spiritual science serve as a benefit and actual blessing of life, whether in youth or in age.

We can also take self-education in hand here; for when it is a question of self-education, the temperaments can be particularly useful to us. We become aware with our intellect that our sanguineness is playing us all kinds of tricks, and threatens to degenerate to an unstable way of life; we hurry from subject to subject. This condition can be countered if only we go about it in the right way. The sanguine person will not, however, reach his goal by saying to himself: You have a sanguine temperament and you must break yourself of it. The intellect applied directly is often a hindrance in this realm. On the other hand, used indirectly it can accomplish much. Here the intellect is the weakest soul-force of all. In presence of the stronger soul-forces, such as the temperaments, the intellect can do very little; it can work only indirectly. If some one exhorts himself ever so often: “For once now hold fast to one thing”—then the sanguine temperament will again and again play him bad tricks. He can reckon only with a force which he has. Behind the intellect there must be other forces. Can a sanguine person count upon anything at all but his sanguine temperament? And in self-education too it is necessary to try to do also what the intellect can do directly. A man must reckon with his sanguineness; self-exhortations are fruitless. The important thing is to show sanguineness in the right place. One must try to have no interest in certain things in which he is interested. We can with the intellect provide experiences for which the brief interest of the sanguine person is justified. Let him try to place himself artificially in such situations; to put in his way as much as possible what is of no interest to him. If then we bring about such situations in ever such small matters, concerning which a brief interest is warranted, it will call forth what is necessary. Then it will be noticed, if only one works at it long enough, that this temperament develops the force to change itself.

The choleric can likewise cure himself in a particular way, if we consider the matter from the point of view of spiritual science. For the choleric temperament it is good to choose such subjects, to bring about through the intellect such conditions as are not changed if we rage, conditions in which we reduce ourselves ad absurdum by our raging. When the choleric notices that his fuming inner being wishes to express itself, he must try to find as many things as possible which require little force to be overcome; he must try to bring about easily superable outer facts, and must always try to bring his force to expression in the strongest way upon insignificant events and facts. If he thus seeks out insignificant things which offer him no resistance, then he will bring his one-sided choleric temperament again into the right course.

If it is noticed that melancholia is producing one-sidedness, one must try directly to create for himself legitimate outer obstacles, and then will to examine these legitimate outer obstacles in their entire aspect, so that what one possesses of pain and the capacity for suffering is diverted to outer objects. The intellect can accomplish this. Thus the melancholic temperament must not pass by the pain and suffering of life, but must actually seek them, must experience sympathy, in order that his pain may be diverted to the right objects and events.

If we are phlegmatic, have no interests, then it is good for us to occupy ourselves as much as possible with quite uninteresting things, to surround ourselves with many sources of ennui, so that we are thoroughly bored. Then we shall completely cure ourselves of our apathy, completely break ourselves of it. The phlegmatic person therefore does well to decide with his intellect that he must take interest in a certain thing, that he must search for things which are really only worthy to be ignored. He must seek occupations in which apathy is justified, in which he can work out his apathy. In this way he conquers it, even when it threatens to degenerate into one-sidedness.

Thus we reckon with what is there and not with what is lacking. Those however who call themselves realists believe, for example, that the best thing for a melancholic is to produce conditions that are opposed to his temperament. But anyone who actually thinks realistically will appeal to what is already in him.

So you see spiritual science does not divert us from reality and from actual life; but it will illuminate every step of the way to the truth; and it can also guide us everywhere in life to take reality into consideration. For those people are deluded who think they can stick to external sense appearance. We must go deeper if we wish to enter into this reality; and we shall acquire an understanding for the variety of life if we engage in such considerations.

Our sense for the practical will become more and more individual if we are not impelled to apply a general prescription: namely, you must not drive out fickleness with seriousness, but see what kind of characteristics the person has which are to be stimulated. If then man is life's greatest riddle, and if we have hope that this riddle will be solved for us, we must turn to this spiritual science, which alone can solve it for us. Not only is man in general a riddle to us, but each single person who confronts us in life, each new individuality, presents a new riddle, which of course we cannot fathom by considering it with the intellect. We must penetrate to the individuality. And here too we can allow spiritual science to work out of the innermost center of our being; we can make spiritual science the greatest impulse of life. So long as it remains only theory, it is worthless. It must be applied in the life of the human being. The way to this goal is possible, but it is long. It becomes illuminated for us if it leads to reality. Then we become aware that our views are transformed. Knowledge is transformed. It is prejudice to believe that knowledge must remain abstract; on the contrary, when it enters the spiritual realm it permeates our whole life's work; our entire life becomes permeated by it. Then we face life in such a way that we have discernment for the individuality, which enters even into feeling and sensation and expresses itself in these, and which possesses great reverence and esteem. Patterns are easy to recognize; and to wish to govern life according to patterns is easy; but life does not permit itself to be treated as a pattern. Only insight will suffice, insight which is transformed into a feeling one must have toward the individuality of man, toward the individuality in the whole of life. Then will our conscientious spiritual knowledge flow into our feeling, so to speak, in such a way that we shall be able to estimate correctly the riddle which confronts us in each separate human being.

How do we solve the riddle which each individual presents to us? We solve it by approaching each person in such a way that harmony results between him and us. If we thus permeate ourselves with life's wisdom, we shall be able to solve the fundamental riddle of life which is the individual man. It is not solved by setting up abstract ideas and concepts. The general human riddle can be solved in pictures; this individual riddle, however, is not to be solved by this setting up of abstract ideas and concepts; but rather must we approach each individual person in such a way that we bring to him direct understanding.

That is possible, however, only when we know what lies in the depths of the soul. Spiritual science is something which slowly and gradually pours itself into our entire soul so that it renders the soul receptive not only to the large relations but also to the finer details. In spiritual science it is a fact that, when one soul approaches another, and this other requires love, love is given. If it requires something else, that will be given. Thus by means of such true life wisdom we create social foundations, and that means at each moment to solve a riddle. Anthroposophy works not by means of preaching, exhortation, harping on morals, but by creating a social basis on which one man is able to understand another.

Spiritual science is thus the sub-soil of life, and love is the blossom and fruit of such a life, stimulated by spiritual science. Therefore spiritual science may claim that it is establishing something which will provide a base for the most beautiful goal of the mission of man: genuine, true, human love. In our sympathy, in our love, in the manner in which we approach the individual human being, in our conduct, we should learn the art of living through spiritual science. If we would permit life and love to stream into feeling and sensibility, human life would be a beautiful expression of the fruit of this spiritual science.

We learn to know the individual human being in every respect when we perceive him in the light of spiritual science. We learn to perceive even the child in this way; we learn little by little to respect, to value, in the child the peculiarity, the enigmatic quality of the individuality, and we learn also how we must treat this individual in life, because spiritual science gives to us, so to speak, not merely general, theoretical directions, but it guides us in our relation to the individual in the solving of the riddles which are there to be solved: namely, to love him as we must love him if we not merely fathom him with the mind, but let him work upon us completely, let our spiritual scientific insight give wings to our feelings, our love. That is the only proper soil which can yield true, fruitful, genuine human love; and this is the basis from which we discover what we have to seek as the innermost essential kernel in each individual. And if we permeate ourselves thus with spiritual knowledge, our social life will be regulated in such a way that each single person, when he approaches any other in esteem and respect and understanding of the riddle “man,” will learn how to find and to regulate his relation to the individual. Only one who lives in abstractions as a matter of course can speak from prosaic concepts, but he who strives for genuine knowledge will find it, and will find the way to other people; he will find the solution of the riddle of the other person in his own attitude, in his own conduct.

Thus we solve the individual riddle according as we relate ourselves to others. We find the essential being of another only with a view of life which comes from the spirit. Spiritual science must be a life-practice, a spiritual life-factor, entirely practical, entirely living, and not vague theory.

This is knowledge which can work into all the fibers of man's being, which can rule each single act in life. Thus only does spiritual science become the true art of living—and that could be particularly shown in the consideration of those intimate peculiarities of man, the temperaments. Thus the finest relation is engendered between man and man when we look a person in the face and understand not only how to fathom the riddle, but how to love, that is, to let love flow from individuality to individuality. Spiritual science needs no theoretical proofs; life brings the proofs. Spiritual science knows that something can be said “for” and “against” everything, but the true proofs are those which life brings; and only step by step can life show the truth of what we think when we consider the human being in the light of spiritual-scientific knowledge; for this truth exists as a harmonious, life-inspired insight which penetrates into the deepest mysteries of life.

To-day I feel called upon to explain to you a few anthroposophical facts closely connected with the human being.

We are, to begin with, connected with the world through our senses; we are connected with it—and this is clearly evident—from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep. We perceive the various spheres of life through our senses, and a certain soul-activity within us constructs a picture of the world from these perceptions. I only allude to this, in order to draw attention to the way in which we can study our waking life and all that it concerns.

Yet we do not only live in the world during our waking condition, but also when we are asleep. During our sleep, we live outside our body with our Ego and our soul, in an environment, which is, at first, unknown to the ordinary human consciousness.

All that I am telling you now, applies to the present-day human being; that is, to man and the way in which he has developed his soul-life from the time which I have often indicated as an extraordinarily significant moment in the evolution of humanity—from the 15th century onwards. Yet we must ask ourselves: How are we connected with a world which is closed to our ordinary consciousness? How are we connected with it, when we are asleep? When we ask this question, we immediately encounter an obstacle, particularly in the present moment of human evolution, unless we bear in mind the development of humanity, and the fact that its soul-life has passed through many stages.

If we reflect upon the soul-life of modern man, we find that the human being belonging to our so-called civilised world must make the greatest effort to form his ideas and concepts. Nowadays we frequently look back into earlier epochs of human development without any clear thoughts. At that time there was no educational system of the kind required to-day, and we look back without really thinking about it into that ancient culture which developed and flourished in the East, when it was not necessary for man to have the education through childhood upwards, that he has to-day.

In Europe it is almost impossible at this time to imagine how differently the men of earlier epochs regarded education in the Orient. In those times, powerful Eastern teachings were created, which uplifted heart and spirit, such as the Vedas and all that is contained in the wisdom of the East. To-day all that arises through the spirit is judged in accordance with the way in which we have been educated and taught from childhood upwards, and the way in which we have developed through our education, and what we have learned through our life in the external world. At first, it seems obvious to our ordinary way of thinking that we must be educated, for we must learn to form our thoughts on life. If we were unable to do so, we should be helpless in the present-day world. I might say, that at the present time, we have not yet progressed very far in the art of forming thoughts. One of the aims of education should be that of more and more perfecting in us by our own effort this art of forming thoughts about the things in the world.

This was prepared for in the Greek epoch. The Grecian life was to a certain extent completely under the influence of the Orient, and consequently the education there aimed only at a very elementary development of the thinking forces. Oriental influences streamed into Greek cultural life, and these did not encourage thought-efforts, they did not induce man to form ideas himself on the objects around him, if I may express this trivially.

In the spiritual life of the West, we now admire Socrates, and rightly so, as one of the first who stimulated man to form thoughts about surrounding objects. Yet it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that there was no thought-life in the Orient, simply because in Europe man had to develop a thought-life through his own effort. The Orientals had a powerful life of thought, which we find all the more powerful, the further we go back into the cultural life of the East.

A rich spiritual life existed in the East, even before the time of the Vedas and of the Vedanta philosophy. As I have frequently explained, the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy are not the first stages of spiritual life of the East, for these first stages were never recorded in writing. During the last two or three thousand years before Christ, this powerful Oriental life had already reached a decadent stage. What the Oriental now admires, is but the last remnant of this ancient spiritual life.

This life of thought was not like ours, which makes us (please forgive the materialistic expression, which is only used as a comparison) grow hot inwardly and perspire in our efforts to bring it into being. The Oriental life of thought was an inspired one.

For the Oriental, the thoughts ordered themselves, as if of their own accord. He obtained his world-picture in the form of an inspiration. He always had the feeling: “My thoughts are given to me,” and he did not know the inner soul-effort which we must make in order to construct our thoughts. From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, he felt that his thoughts were gifts bestowed upon him. His whole soul-life had a corresponding nuance. When he nurtured thoughts, he felt grateful to the gods who gave him these thoughts. When he was able to say: “Thoughts live in me, who am a human being,” he felt in these thoughts the instreaming of divine-spiritual powers. Thus it was quite a different way of thinking.

For this reason, the Oriental life of thoughts of remoter epochs was not so severed from the life of feeling and from the life of the heart, as it is to-day, for the normal human consciousness. Just because man could feel that thoughts were given to him, he felt uplifted as a human being, and a religious feeling was connected with every one of his thoughts. Man felt that he must meet the divine powers who gave him his thoughts with a kind of religious piety, and he experienced these thoughts more as a united whole, than as single thoughts.

But what was the objective external cause of this? It was caused by the fact that in these ancient times man's sleep was different from ours. When we are asleep now, we are forsaken especially in the head by the Ego and the soul. The metabolic organs and the extremities do not become separated so completely from the human being. Even when we are asleep, our soul and our Ego still penetrate into the extremities of the body and into its metabolic organs. We should not think that during sleep the Ego and the soul forsake our whole being, but instead we should picture to ourselves that the head is the most forsaken part.

I have often explained this, and now I would like to put it before you schematically. In the waking human being, the Ego and the soul permeate the physical and the etheric body. Now it would be wrong to draw the sleeping man so as to indicate here the physical and etheric bodies lying on the bed, and the Ego and the astral body just there, beside them. Instead, they should be so drawn that if the physical organs and the extremities, including the arms, which are also extremities, are indicated here, then the Ego and the soul which are outside the human being would have to be drawn outside it only in the vicinity of the head. Strictly speaking, when we are asleep, the Ego and the soul are outside the physical and the etheric body only as far as the head is concerned.

If we now return to those remoter times to which I have alluded, we find that when the human being was asleep, the organs of the head—that is, principally the nervous-sensory system and a part of the respiration which permeates the head—were the field of action used by the divine-spiritual beings connected with the earth.

If we refer quite seriously to realities, it can indeed be said, without speaking metaphorically, that in the most remote epochs of human evolution the divine-spiritual beings on earth withdrew from the human being when he was awake. But when he was asleep they took up their abode in his head. The human Ego and the human soul abandoned the head: and there, the divine-spiritual beings directed their activities. When the human being woke up in the morning, he once more dived into his head, and there he found the results of all that had taken place under the influence of the deeds of the divine-spiritual beings.

These beings ordered man's nervous processes in accordance with their laws, and they exercised an influence even upon the circulation of the blood and penetrated into the organic processes in the etheric body and in the physical body. Yet this was not clearly realised; only those men who were schooled in the Mysteries had an insight into such things. The great majority of men did hot realise this, yet they could EXPERIENCE it.

On waking up, the human being thus found in his head the deeds of gods. And when he then lived through his waking life and was able to perceive the structure of his thoughts, this was due to the fact that the gods had been active in his head while he was asleep. The ancient Oriental thus discovered within him every morning the heritage of the gods, the results of what they had done in him while he was asleep. He perceived this in thoughts, in the form of an inspiration. The divine-spiritual beings did not inspire him directly, when he was awake.. They inspired him when he was asleep, while they were active in his head.

In those ancient times, everything that led to man behaving socially in this or in that way, was really inspiration. It might be said: At that time, the divine-spiritual beings still had the possibility of ordering earthly affairs in such a way that while human beings were asleep, they arranged the trust men felt in one another, and they brought about the obedience of the large masses to their leaders, etc. etc. In that ancient Oriental epoch there was still cooperation between the divine-spiritual world and the earthly world. But this was only possible, because the whole human organisation was different from the present one

I have often mentioned that now people imagine that everything connected with man as he is to-day has always been the same; that the physical part of his physical organism, the psychic part of his soul, the spiritual element of his Ego, were then as they are now. When a modern historian writes about ancient Egypt and unriddles its documents, he believes that the Egyptians may not have been as clever as he is, but that essentially speaking, they had the same thoughts, feelings and impulses which we have to-day.

One generally thinks that if we go far back into time, man was a kind of higher ape, and that from this stage he passed on to a condition which they only imagine. And when the time began which interests them from the historical standpoint, then they have to admit that man was more or less what he is to-day, with the thoughts, feelings and impulses which he now possesses.

Yet it is not so. Even in the course of history, man underwent considerable changes. You only have to remember how the Greek viewed the world, quite physically. The Greek did not see the colour blue, as we see it now. He only saw the reddish tones of colour. If a modern man contemplates the beautiful blue sky and thinks that the Greek, who was steeped in beauty, must have loved it, he is mistaken. The Greek saw the warm, reddish and yellow tints, and could not distinguish green from blue. He therefore saw the sky quite differently from the way in which we see it, with our normal consciousness. Even the eyes have changed completely in the course of human evolution, although this only applies to the more intimate and finer traits. The whole sense-organisation has changed in the course of history. During those ancient Oriental times of which I have spoken, the organisation of the senses did not prevent man from surrendering to that which came from his organism when he was awake, as the result of what remained to him from the activity of the gods in his body, while he was asleep.

Gradually, man's sense-organs changed; his senses connected him with the external world in so living a way, that when he awoke, this connection prevented him from noticing what might still remain in him as a heritage from the gods, left there while he was asleep.

Even if the gods were still to be active in his head during sleep (they are no longer active in it, for man's organisation has changed, and this would no longer have a meaning for the development of mankind), man's progress and further development would not profit by it. On the contrary, he would not be able to perceive this heritage which comes to him from his sleep, because on waking, his fully developed senses immediately attract him strongly to the external world. What remains from his sleep, would therefore pass over into his body, instead of being taken up by his consciousness. To-day man would not be able to experience himself through the inspiration of the gods in his sleep, and were they still to use his head-organisation as a field for their activities, these inspirations would retreat into his body and prematurely age his organism.

In older times, man's sleep-experiences could be assimilated during his waking condition, because his senses were not directed so strongly towards the external world as they are to-day, and man could at that time live in union with the world of the gods.

This existence was a real LIFE in union with the world of the gods. The gods cannot be perceived through the senses, and in ancient times, man had to rely on being able to experience at least the deeds of the gods. He could do this, because his senses were not yet so strongly turned towards the external world as to-day.

Now, however, a time came—speaking generally, in the thousand years preceding the Mystery of Golgotha—when in the Eastern countries man's senses, especially the eyes, first began to be receptive to the impressions of the outer world; this receptivity developed as time went on. Man gradually developed the sense organisation which he now has, adding it to the nerve organisation, which still remained from former times and which enabled him to experience the divine-spiritual deeds.

Earlier he had experienced these divine-spiritual deeds in their purity, without mingling them with sense experiences. At that time, the human being could still, experience something, because the gods had not as yet completely forsaken him, but these experiences were immediately absorbed by the sense-organisation, with the strange result that among the great majority of men, the gods, the spiritual beings, were, so to speak, drawn into the sense organisation. I might express this by saying that out of the former purely spiritual contemplation of divine-spiritual beings a belief in ghosts arose.

This belief in ghosts does not reach back into very ancient times in man's history, but the contemplation of divine-spiritual beings is very ancient. The belief in ghosts only arose when sense perceptions were intermingled with the contemplation of the divine. When the Mystery-culture of the East came over to Europe and was taken up, for instance, by the wonderful spiritual life of Greece, flowing into Greek art and Greek philosophy, then the great masses of men coming from the East brought with them also the belief in ghosts.

So we may say, that during the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Oriental conception as such was already becoming decadent and a kind of belief in ghosts became widely prevalent among the masses of mankind. This belief came over into Europe from the East, and it was the transformation into sense-perception of the former, purely contemplative spirit of the East. We may therefore say that the belief in ghosts is the last ramification, the end of a lofty, though dreamy spiritual vision, which had once constituted a high stage of culture in the evolution of man.

All that has been described to you, how that during sleep the ancient Oriental felt his head to be the earthly field of action for the world of the gods, this could only be experienced by him as man, but the initiate of the Mysteries knew it. This contrast can already be seen to-day, in the development of a new culture.

This culture is still in its infancy, and the further West we go, the more does it make itself felt. For an ancient Oriental it would have been meaningless to say, for instance, that human thoughts do not pulsate through the human will, for he knew that what lived in his will, and even in his blood, came to him from the gods. The gods made his thoughts and during his sleep condition the gods developed a mighty power in his head. This he felt as inspiration.

Even to-day, when we look across to the East and view the last remnants of Eastern culture, still existing for instance in Solovieff's philosophy, we find, particularly in Solovieff, that he would have been quite unable to understand it, if he had been told that thoughts bring no impulses to man and have no bearing on his will.

Yet Western people, particularly the Americans, have this view. Americans describe what lies immediately before them; even their physiology and biology are represented in this way. If we penetrate into its more intimate fundamental character, we shall find that American science greatly differs from European science. The Westerner portrays how little significance thoughts really have for the human will, for he is far too strongly aware of the fact that it is man who forms the thoughts. Nevertheless he cannot form them out of the blue, and so the modern American declares it to be of far more importance than his actual thoughts, how a man is rooted in a certain family or political party through his social life-conditions, or in the way he has grown into a certain sect. All this, he declares, stirs up emotions in him and determines his will. It is really impossible to influence the will through thought. The will is determined by such life foundations as family, political party, nationality, sect, etc. The American and the Westerner in general argues that thought is not the real ruler in man, but is only the Prime Minister of the ruler, an expensive minister, as Carlyle expressed it. This ruler is the human organism, which is will, instinct, passion, and thought is only the executive organ.

We really have to admit that this is the way of thinking of the great masses of people to-day, who rush forward to assert their own views in the face of old traditions in the world. This is why men like so much to study the ways of primitive man, because they think that he followed his instincts and passions, and that his thoughts were merely a kind of reflexion of these instincts and passions.

Consequently, regarding man in this way, the Westerner says he is driven by his instincts and passions. Why?—Because man is not yet organised in a way which enables him to perceive the spiritual behind these instincts and passions, he can only see an instinct or a passion and nothing spiritual behind them. Yet when an instinct or a passion rises up in man, evil though it may be, and no matter in what form it may appear in this or in that man, the SPIRIT lives behind this instinct or passion, even behind the most brutal ones. But to-day man cannot as yet perceive this spirit, for the human race is still in a state of development. It must gradually approach a spirituality which enables man to perceive the spirit whenever he looks within his own being and beholds his instincts and passions. In the future this will be possible. It is a matter of indifference whether a man has good or evil instincts. When he has evil instincts, then Ahrimanic or Luciferic beings lie hidden within him, but these are spiritual beings!

In advancing the view that instincts and passions are the driving powers, we have before us the same case as that of the ghosts in comparison with the spirituality of the past. You see, an ancient spirituality existed in the Oriental conception. This spirituality continued to develop, and as I have already said, during the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha the final product was the belief in ghosts, in seeing ghosts.

We now stand within the evolution of the world in such a way, that on the one hand we see how the belief in ghosts arose out of an ancient spirituality; but at the same time, we see that in the future a purely spiritual contemplation will once more arise. To-day, however, there is still an inner belief in ghosts. Just as those who believe in ghosts think that ghosts are sensory things and look like something which the eyes can see, so a man of to-day, a Westerner, does not yet discern the spiritual, when he looks into himself; he only sees something spectral, something ghostly.

All passions, instincts and desires are ghostly spectres, which to-day precede the spirituality of the future, whereas the old ghosts in which people believed succeeded the spirituality of the past. It might be said that the old pure spirituality developed from East to West, then came the belief in ghosts, and the last traces of this belief are still among us. From West to East a future spirituality is developing, which is gradually drawing near, and which will become a reality in a distant future. The first traces of this spirituality, however, appear to be just as spectral as the ancient ghosts, namely the instincts, passions, etc, such as we see them to-day. The scholar of to-day must necessarily from his own point of view attribute to man himself his instincts and passions, yet he regards with contempt the general belief in ghosts. He does not realise that this belief of the masses in ghosts has just as much cognitive value and substance as has his own belief in human desires, instincts and impulses. He too is a believer in ghosts, but they are the ghostly spectres which are only now beginning to appear, whereas the great masses believe in ghosts belonging to a time now coming to an end. That is why our European civilisation has become so chaotic, because the old and the new spectres collide with one another.

There is a brief description in one of my “West-East Aphorisms” showing how humanity has been influenced for a long period by an ancient traditional Oriental spirituality on the one hand (a spirituality which had condensed itself into a belief in ghosts), and on the other hand in the belief in the spectres of instincts and passions, which is only now beginning to spring into life and which has not yet lost its sensory character. Ghosts, as they are generally called, are spirits which have acquired a sensory-physical character (or have become tangible) through the human organisation, whereas impulses, instincts, desires and passions are modern spectres pointing towards the future, spectres which have not yet been raised to spirituality.

The inner soul-life of a modern European lives in this particularly chaotic co-operation of old and new spectres and a spiritual conception must be found which throws light on both. These questions are not only connected with man's conception of the world, but with the universal human life upon the earth. How can it be otherwise, seeing that not only the spiritual life, but also the juridical, political and economic life depend on such questions, since they all proceed from the particular constitution of man. What, then, is the origin of this whole development?—we must ask ourselves.

I have said that the divine-spiritual beings have their earthly concerns in the human head. In man we distinguish a threefold being: The nervous-sensory being centred chiefly in the head, the rhythmical being which lives in the middle part, and the metabolic limb being, which is contained in the extremities and in their inner ramifications, that is to say, in the real metabolic organs.

Now we know that the gods ordered their earthly concerns during the sleeping condition of the older type of humanity; that they opened their workshop, as it were, in the head of man while he was asleep. What takes place in the man of to-day?

It happens also at the present time that the gods open their workshop in man while he sleeps, but they no longer work in his head, they work now in his metabolic system. But the limb-metabolic organism—and this is what is now most significant and fundamental—remains unconscious even when the human head is awake. Remember how often I have told you that man is awake in his thoughts and ideas; but when, for instance, the thought comes to him, “Now I will raise my arm, I will move my hand,” he does not really know what takes place below, so that the muscle may carry out these movements. This is not known to the man of to-day through his normal consciousness. The whole way in which his thought-life influences his organism remains in the dark. This leads to an unconscious life even when man is awake. The gods' field of action upon the earth to-day is therefore of such a kind that during his waking life man's own natural development no longer enables him to receive this inheritance of the gods when he wakes up.

However, there is a divine-spiritual activity at work in man to-day, from the time of falling asleep to the moment of his awakening, but his surrounding natural conditions no longer enable him to gain an impression of the gods' activity. In the past, man's organisation was so constituted that he felt inspired by his thoughts. To-day, man forms his own thoughts, but in this activity the divine spiritual deeds do not yet work. This capacity must first be developed in mankind.

This is the task—I might call it a cosmic task—which spiritual science must set itself. It must bring man forward in his development, and even pedagogy must be encompassed within such development, enabling him to recognise out of his own inner being and in full consciousness the divine-spiritual deeds. At the same time it will come about that he will no longer see these inner spectres. Pacing man's real inner being, the instincts and passions, as they are imagined to-day, are nothing but spectres, even as ghosts are seen outwardly, though these ghosts are not merely fragments of :he imagination; they are divine-spiritual forces which have become- delusively perceptible to the senses and which are incorrect, untrue imaginings. Similarly the divine-spiritual forces which are active in man's inner being are. thought of in the wrong way to-day if we think of them as instincts and passions.

External ghosts are now despised, but what is regarded as so-called science is but a collection of spectres, of inner spectres, and these must be transformed with man's co-operation during the course of cosmic development. Our whole culture must be permeated by impulses which go in this direction. Therein will lie the possibility of breaking away from the forces of decay, or from the chaotic interplay of such decadent forces with constructive forces (though mankind still struggles against the latter). Then we can advance to future stages of human development inspired and driven by the spirit. All this is essentially important.

What I wished to explain to you to-day is even a kind of East-West contemplation, but expressed, I might say, more esoterically. These East-West contemplations are to-day quite in harmony with the times, and this is not meant trivially. Only by such thoughts and considerations can humanity attain a certain degree of consciousness.

We must therefore say: In past times of earthly evolution, man was even in sleep (for he is a human being when he is asleep, even though he does not carry his body about with him) connected with the gods in such a way, that he could perceive with his soul's eyes, with spiritual eyes, how the gods took up their abode in his head, but when he woke up, only the echo of these feelings remained. Man gradually withdrew from this divine-spiritual world, although he could still perceive it dreamily.

The gods descended deeper into the human physical form, and man is connected with them at the present time in such a way that they have now chosen his metabolic system and his extremities as a workshop for the earthly being. But man does not completely abandon this earthly being during sleep. And because this abandonment is not complete, he will once more be able to experience, from the world of the gods will-impulses, impulses for his social life, and these he will experience not only in sleep, but also as a complete human being, when he is awake. In other words: Man must acquire mere and more consciously the knowledge of the spiritual world.