The Rudolf Steiner Archive

So far a number of different approaches have been used to consider the effective forces in human evolution which we must know about if we want to arrive at a proper understanding of current events. We must above all understand where the root causes lie that have led to the disastrous situation we are facing today. Only then can we find the right way of taking effective action ourselves, and work for the real progress of humankind. Unfortunately far too little attention is paid to the changes which those forces effective in human evolution have undergone in very recent times, compared to times that relatively speaking were not that long ago.

Perhaps I may again be permitted to take the great disaster that has happened in recent years as my starting point. This will lead us to the event I referred to in just a few words at the end of my last talk, to the specific Christ event that belongs to the first half of the 20th century, as I have mentioned a number of times.

Taking a genuinely unbiased view of the disastrous events and of their consequences that continue into the present and will still make themselves felt for a long time, we cannot fail to notice how much the whole fabric of the destiny of civilized humanity differs from earlier times. Let me point out immediately that large numbers of people, including those in authority, have not yet become fully aware of what has come upon us. They have been, and still are, acting in accord with the demands of earlier times and their actions are not at all in accord with the needs of the present age.

Again let me give an example, just by way of introduction as it were. We have a—well, they call it a ‘war’ behind us; a much greater war than any we know of in historical times. We have seen that at the time when the war started, something like a spectre from prehistoric times lived in the thoughts that were in people's minds, and that this spectre is still there in the minds of people today. We have seen that this spectre of ideas which has continued into the present from prehistoric times has given rise to opinions, all kinds of measures were taken, and people had no idea that really and fundamentallY something quite different was going on to what they imagined the events of the time to be.

Like earlier wars, the last one was a conflict between human beings; human beings were fighting each other. Unlike earlier wars, however, this war involved energies and forces coming from quite different sources than the form of energies used in earlier wars—energies deriving from the particular nature of human beings. We have seen a tremendous development of technology in recent times and the coming of this powerful technology has changed the whole situation, where the destiny fabric of human beings is concerned. This change determined the course of events in recent years. Yet there has been no corresponding change in people's ideas.

Let me present the major aspects of this. During the period preceding this disastrous war the human technology which had evolved in most recent times had reached a significant stage. Although people had no real awareness of this, human work—labour—had taken on quite a different form to what had gone before. You can get an idea of the different forms it took if you consider one of the fundamental aspects of modern technology, let us say coal-mining, in different countries in the civilized world. The amount of coal produced in the mines relates to the amount of energy gained by processing it; energies merely channelled and controlled by human beings that will then work more or less independently. I would say, therefore, that in recent times human work has come to consist more in stepping back and directing the actual work done by machines.

Considering the facts one will find, for instance, that during the period preceding the outbreak of war, 79 million 'horse power years' of that kind of energy were produced in Germany. These were energies controlled by humans, but in fact derived from coal-mining. They did not arise from something that human beings let spontaneously come forth from within them, but from completely external actions and processes. The energies expended in work are measured in units based on the work a horse does in a year. During the time immediately preceding the outbreak of war, Germany was producing '79 million horse power years of coal-derived energy per year.

What does this really mean? A very superficial comparison with the population figure for Germany shows that on average every single individual in Germany had a horse by his side. This means that the inhabitants of Germany did so much work in the field of technology that is was equivalent to every individual having a horse work for him all year long. The population figure was approximately 79 million, and the energy used was 79 million horse power years. The work done by machines, all kinds of machines, therefore had the same effect as if every individual had a horse to work for him. When war broke out, the potential was there for that much work to be done. A large proportion of this work was then used for the purposes of war, with the result that the purely technological effect of 79 million horse power Years was brought into action at the front.

Now let us take some other figures. For a start I will just add the fact that in 1870, a year when another great event⁶⁸ took place the way people see it—and rightly so, as people see it—no 79 million horse Power years were produced. Energy production was then six whole millions and seven-tenths of a million, a very low figure compared to human energy output. Six and a half million in 1870, 79 million in 1912. Clearly this means a complete change in the human situation.

Let me give you some more figures. During the time preceding the disastrous war, France, Russia and Belgium together had 35 million horse power years available. Great Britain on the other hand had 98 million. Due to the geographical position of Great Britain those 98 million horse power years could not immediately be fully brought to bear in the war zone; it took some years until this was achieved. When war broke out, therefore, not only were human beings opposing each other, but 79 million horse power years had been pushed into the front lines by the Germans, or a total of more than 90 million by the Central Powers [Germany and Austria]. A large part of those energies were of course used in the war industries and therefore reached the front lines indirectly. Those energies were opposed by Great Britain's 98 million horse power years that could only be brought to bear gradually, and a to of 35 million available in Belguim, Russia and France. You can see now that it would be quite correct to say that, basically, the contribution made by human beings only gave a preliminary result in the initial stages. The army's general staff could order the troops to march; that could be planned and projected by trained minds. But when the front lines had been established for some years, the actual confrontation was between the horse power Years that technology had produced—and these were quite independent of human beings. Thus the relative size of something that had really been taken out of the sphere of human activity determined the fate of this [part of] human evolution. If you now take the following and add it to what has been already said you will see that forces independent of humanity, particularly the most recent achievements of technology, have been responsible for the events that occurred.

The efforts of human beings were of course limited to a channelling function, or at best to stopping some things from happening. But their directions, or else their failure to stop things from happening' caused forces to enter the field of battle that objectively speaking were not under their control. Some of these were able to overcome the others, as it were, on the basis of objective laws that had nothing to do with human beings. Add to this the fact that the United States intervened in the process. At the time when the other countries were able to field the number of horse power years I have mentioned, the Americans were in a position to mobilize 179 million horse power years. This gives you the relative figures for energies mobilized through technology; energies completely independent of anything human beings are capable of producing. Indirectly they are of course connected with ideas thought up by human individuals and so on. The things people have thought up have however been channelled in this direction, and in the war the situation then was that objective force met objective force and in the final instance this had to decide the issue. In very recent times human beings directed their destinies to such effect that when something occurred that in the past would have taken quite a different course, human actions had caused the forces of destiny to be surrendered to the powers that were active in the objects they themselves had produced. Humans are dependent on the earth's productivity where these forces are concerned. They are dependent on many factors that do not lie within their own skins.

This reveals one of the characteristic features of the present age. I have merely given the most striking example of it. Examples like this can be used to illustrate a point. Yet the things that happened there on a gigantic scale—we cannot merely say on a large scale, because it was gigantic—happen on a smaller scale in every day of the life we are given, for we have been delivered up to the products of technology. In 1912 a point had been reached in Germany where fertile human brains had created something outside themselves that did the same amount of work for every individual as a horse would have done. That is the characteristic feature of modern civilization, and we must take a good look at it.

What is alive in those forces with their own objective activity that human beings have created outside themselves in modern civilization; forces that work for them day by day and determine their destinies? Looking at these forces and the way they influence human destiny we perceive the power that we have come to call the power of Ahriman. Ahrimanic powers are alive in these things. Looking at it like this, you will have to admit that the power of these ahrimainc forces has increased at a tremendous rate. Just consider those two figures I have given: in 1870, six and a half million horse power years were available in Germany; that is not very much per human being. In 1912, 79 million horse power years were produced in Germany. That is the sum total of these things influencing not only economic life but the rest of our life as well. So you see what goes on in a world constructed by human beings, that is quite independent of what really lies in human nature. These forces are completely at odds with everything that came into effect when people faced each other as human beings, in the battles fought in the ancient Orient, for instance. Only luciferic forces were involved in those, and this still held true when the Tartar hordes invaded Europe, for example. We often do not realize how different the world has become for modern humanity and how quickly this has come about, relatively speaking.

Spiritual science working towards Anthroposophy is, moreover, called upon to consider the full implications of such a fact. So far I have merely described the outer aspect. We begin to see the inner aspect when we consider the powers which are active in this. In the past they were luciferic powers and now they are ahrimanic. Human beings find themselves in the middle between the two. First of all, however, we must get a definite idea as to what we mean by ‘ahrimanic’ and ‘luciferic’.

Consider what went on in human soul life in those past times when the great struggles in which human beings were involved were largelY determined by luciferic elements. At that time people looked at the phenomena in the world and, as you know, they looked at them in such a way that they perceived a certain number of elemental beings—let us say demonic spirits. Materialistic scientists call this the ‘age of vitalism’, saying that people introduced all kinds of water sprites, gnomes and so on into the phenomenal world. We know that spirits are indeed active in the phenomena of nature. Today, people see only dry-as-dust, prosaic natural phenomena. In the past, people perceived the spiritual entities, the essential spirit of natural phenomena. This is called superstition, nowadays. That is the view taken by the present age. We know, however, that the people of the past used those names to describe something real, which their minds perceived when they looked at the phenomena of nature. They saw elemental in everything nature presented to them. Thus we may say that however instinctive, dim and dreamlike their conscious awareness may have been, some illumination was received as to the nature of those elemental spirits. spirits

During the times that followed, perception of the spiritual essence of natural phenomena no longer came clearly to awareness when people looked at the natural world around them, that did not depend on them for its existence. The modern intellectual approach that we call a scientific attitude came into being. This only concerns itself with forces that can be abstracted from nature and made comprehensible through abstract ideas, in short, the things that may form the content of the human intellect.

I would say, however, that without people being aware of it a completely new world developed in a relatively short time—just take the time from 1870, when six and seven-tenths million horse power years were used in Germany, to 1912, when 79 million were used. This is a world that did not exist before. These forces are present in the human environment, and in major events like those we have seen in recent years. Human destiny actually depended on them, just as formerly it had depended on natural phenomena. These forces and energies also exist and take effect independent of human beings, just as the forces of nature are independent of human beings. Demons elemental powers—are active in them, but their effects on human beings differ from those of the elemental powers that human beings Perceived in the phenomena of nature in the past. Then, people would look at the phenomena of nature and say: ‘Elemental spirits are at Work in there.’ That had an effect on their conscious awareness; the soul came to an understanding with the phenomena Of nature, and the conscious mind could relate to those phenomena. Today's enlightened' minds consider it superstitious to look for spiritual Powers in natural phenomena. They have not the least idea that demonic spirits are active in the whole world of technology created by the human race. Nor will they find it easy to see this, because those powers are acting on the will—and I have often told you that the will is alseep. They work at an unconscious level, taking hold of the unconscious human mind. The consequence is as follows. In the past human beings had at least some awareness of demonic powers. Today demonic powers are restively stirring in all products of technology;⁶⁹ their activities extend into the sphere of the human will, but human beings are not yet inclined to accept this. In the first place these things are at an unconscious level and in the second place people feel it would be superstitious to say that demonic spirits are active in the machines they have produced. They are active nevertheless. The spirits perceived in the phenomena of nature in older times were luciferic by nature; the spirits active in machines, in all products of technology, are ahrimanic by nature. Human beings are thus surrounding themselves with an ahrimanic world that is growing completely independent of them.

You will perceive the trend in human evolution. From a luciferic world that still influences their conscious minds and there determines their destinies, human beings are drifting into an ahrimanic world. And at present this is happening at quite a fast pace. This ahrimanic world acts on the human will, and the intellectualism of modern science does not enable people to gain immediate conscious awareness of the will. The great danger is that the ahrimanic world will take hold of the human will and human beings will completely lose their bearings among the demonic powers that are present in the products of technology.

In Eastern Europe present-day thinking has led to a desire to militarize the economy and make it into a vast machine. Even human beings are trained to be like machines, with human labour made into something quite separate from the human being. Behind it lies the will to call forth will demons, for it is their sphere into which people are sliding in Eastern Europe.

The road from the luciferic to the ahrimanic sphere—yes, it has to be said that the course of human evolution is going in that direction. Fundamentally speaking we are right in the middle of leaving the luciferic and sliding into the ahrimanic sphere. Luciferic elements are of course still present in many ways. The ahrimanic element is taking hold of people. The luciferic is more alive in feelings. The ahrimanic takes effect through the human intellect and comes to realization as it takes form in the products of technology.

And now the Christ event, which we may expect during the first half of the 20th century, enters into the situation to give human beings their bearings. The nature of this Christ event will be such that more people will be having objective experiences and will then know that the etheric Christ is walking on earth, the Christ who will represent the power that once walked on earth in the physical form of Christ Jesus, but now at the etheric level. If people come to know this Christ power, if they let it enter into them, they will find the right way of dealing with the forces influencing them that come from the ahrimanic powers which are now in the ascendant. The great problem of our time is that people slide into the ahrimanic sphere without having the support of the Christ force.

We are speaking of something very concrete and positive when we refer to this event that is entering into human evolution in the 20th century. In my first mystery [play] I referred to this as the reappearance of the Christ. I would also say that it is possible to perceive what will happen in human souls when they meet this Christ event in a living way.

The other day I was able to indicate in a public lecture⁷⁰ that the scientific thinking of the West, which is totally lacking in cohesive vision, reaches its limits when it comes to perceiving the nature of the human being. Science mostly grasps the non-living world. This is categorized and so on. Theories are developed concerning both the non-living and the living world. Darwinism does not go beyond the evolution of animals, however. The human being is then placed at the top of the tree, but this theory really does not include the human being. It is unable to perceive the nature of the human being.

The same applies to the comprehension of social concepts. I have shown that people really 'run on rails' when working in this field; their approach is ahrimanic, technical, and they do not go beyond this. They have got it all down in their books, where credits and liabilities are recorded. They fail, however, to consider the people involved. Those people want their dignity as human beings to be recognized, but no bridges are built between management and workers. Practical life fails to take account of the nature of the human being.

On one side all this is still more or less theoretical today—though perhaps we should not call it theory but rather the impotence of theory, of perception. On the other side we have something that is much to the fore in the social sphere today. The things that are not written down in the books are today making themselves felt in strikes and revolutionary movements. They show themselves in life and they arise out of the work done in industry, in commerce and so on, just as much as all kinds of goods result from industrial production. It is merely that this element, which is now causing unrest among the people, had not been included in the textbooks. It is therefore making itself felt in real life.

I believe it is true to say that very few people really think about these things—which I also discussed at that recent public lecture. The 19th century has really been clouding the issue where these matters are concerned. During the 18th century some people, certainly the more radical thinkers, did begin to get an idea as to what was coming. The 19th century brought events which caused grand-scale confusion. Pierre Bayle⁷¹ made a very peculiar statement in the 18th century. He was one of the 18th-century materialists who were the forerunners of 19th-century materialism. His statement went as follows: ‘States will know honour and dishonour, ambition, egotism and so forth, but there cannot be a state in which Christian attitudes play an effective role; it is possible to have a state system in which the old heathen virtues and vices play a role, but there can be no such a thing as a Christian state.’ Those were the words of Pierre Bayle, a radical materialist, and there was more truth to his words than to those of the 19th-century idealists. Those idealistic thinkers pretended to themselves that states were Christian. The truth is that they were not. Consider the Christian beliefs of the Middle Ages, for those were foremost in Pierre Bayle's mind. Those beliefs were based on a denial of this earth. It was considered a virtue to rise to a life that was not of this world. The life that developed during the 18th century was largely concerned with earthly matters. ‘There can be no such thing as a Christian state’, Pierre Bayle said, and that in fact was the truth. People were lying when, in the 19th and early 20th century, they pretended to themselves and others that the modern states which had gradually evolved had the Christ spirit in them. They cannot be Christian. Something else emerged from this, however. Whether they stood in the pulpit, or heard the words that were spoken from the people felt utterly convinced that they were true Christians. In the same way people going to their work in government offices, putting on their medals or using the titles conferred on them by the state, imagined themselves to be Christian. They were not in fact Christians, for they held those very positions on account of the fact that they were not Christians. People got into the habit of living a lie; they got out of the habit of seeing the truth when it came to major aspects of life. The result was a nebulous atmosphere where it was not even possible to develop an unbiased view of the progressive ahrimanization of the world.

There has been a lot of talk about the campaign of lies we have had in recent years. Yet in all most important respects people have actually got used to such campaigns of lies. What reason is there to tell the truth now about the lies that were told during that disastrous war? After all, during the 19th century people got into a habit where their souls no longer wanted to know the truth, when it came to the things that are most important in their lives.

It is uncomfortable to face up to these things, and the problem is that people are not facing up to them. Apart from anything else, therefore, modern people are in the difficult position that has arisen because of their inner untruthfulness. This atmosphere will cause a particular mood to develop. Until now it has been mere theory in many respects, merely something we know, that human beings can no longer get through to each other; that the nature of the human being cannot be understood and that this failure to get through to others is also having an effect in the social sphere. All this will become deposited on the human soul. The influence of the external products of technology on the will is going to make the unconscious react with the conscious sphere. There will be no conscious awareness of this, of course, for the whole is at a subconscious level, but a mood will be created. This mood will emerge more and more over the next few decades, or rather years, taking hold of large numbers of people. You will be teaching children in your school and you will note that these children come up with feelings that their elders never had. Something like this has also existed in earlier ages, but it will happen to a much greater degree in the near future. Profound spiritual insight into the present age will be able to judge what is evolving from the depths of the souls of these young people. A great longing is going to come, a kind of longing for something that is lacking. Initially, theories could not be developed that embraced the true nature of the human being, and in the social sphere it proved impossible to include human gifts and talents in business ledgers. All this will condense into feelings and emotions. There will be people—we shall find them among the young in the next generations—who will feel like this: ‘Well, here I am. My form is different from that of other life forms around me. I do not look like an animal, an ox, a donkey, a weasel or an eagle. I look different, but I do not know what it is that looks different. I do not know what a human being is; I do not know what I am.’ Despondency and neurosis will invade the souls of the coming generation. This will be the mood of the age that teachers perceive when they give their lessons. It will be a mood that spreads far and wide. People are so superficial nowadays that is is difficult to talk to them about these things. To show what I mean let me remind you that during the 18th century people who had some perception of the soul of that age were speaking of a ‘Werther fever’. Goethe wrote his Werther⁷²out of the whole mood of that age. Then another novel called Siegwart⁷³ appeared. This had been written out of the Siegwart fever' of the second half of the 18th century. Those were the moods of the times, but they only affected a limited number of people. A mood will however arise in the souls of vast numbers of people that may be brought to expression as follows: ‘Well, what am I as a human being? What kind of life form am I as I walk around on two legs? I have a science that I have taken to great heights; have a life in the social sphere—yet both of them do not touch on the reality of what I am.' This mood will be the great question mark of the age, a question mark as to one's own nature as a human being’ It will prepare the eye of the soul so that it may perceive something that is difficult to describe but will nevertheless come to be the new Christ event. Out of that longing, the power will arise to see the Christ made evident. Outer want will become an inner want for the soul, and out of this inner want is to be born the vision of the Christ who will be walking unseen among human beings, and they will need to hold on to him to stop them from sliding from the luciferic into the ahrimanic sphere, in a way that is quite unthinkable.

What good is the whole of science to us if it cannot help us get a really concrete grasp of human life in its immediacy? It has to be clearly understood that human beings as they are today already have a whole number of earth lives behind them. We live through repeated earth lives. In earlier earth lives we ourselves have seen elemental powers at work in the phenomena of nature. We have brought the fruits of those earlier earth lives into our present life. Then, we knew that nature spirits around us determined our destines, and that we had those spirits within us. Today we consider nature entirely with the intellect, with the head, and the products of technology we ourselves have produced are considered in the same way. All we see are the contents of our intellect. But out of the many earth lives we have lived through—though we refuse to consider them nowadays—something is restlessly astir in us that I have called a great longing, a longing for something that is lacking. We have been human beings who looked at nature and saw the spirit; this enabled us to develop an inner feeling for the true nature of human beings. Now we have a science and a social awareness that do not get as far as the human being. Our past vision of the world around us has given us the potential capacity to feel ourselves to be human beings. Today we look into a nature empty of human beings, we do not penetrate as far as the human being. This will create a great need in the souls of people in the decades to come. This need in the souls of people is a positive power, and out of this positive power will be born the ability to see the Christ.

The old way of approaching the Christ has been destroyed by the theology of most recent times. Our modern theology has made the Christ into the ‘simple man of Nazareth’. Surely it will be impossible for human beings to relate to the Christ event today unless there is a renewal of life in the spirit.

The Catholic Church knew very well why it did not want the masses to have direct access to the Gospels. In theory, catholics are still not permitted to read the Gospels. The Albigenses, Waldenses and others who would not accept this were, of course, declared heretics because the church was only too well aware what would happen if the Gospels became accessible to the masses. In the first place there are four Gospels. The divine spirit reveals itself to humankind in those four forms. You cannot, however, use the intellect to present an event in four different ways the way it has been done in the Gospels, for then contradictions, will arise. The moment you deny the Gospels their reality, considering them to be the products of the human intellect, they inevitably become contradictory, full of contradictions. What has emerged, therefore, is the total destruction of any way in which the Mystery of Golgotha may be perceived.

Again people live with the lie that they are supposed to be Christians, and yet the source has been blocked and brought to nought because modern theology no longer has anything in it that is Christian. To regain Christianity we must acquire a new spiritual vision. Access has to be again gained to the treasure we have gathered in our souls, a treasure we have carried with us through many earth lives.

Our present life, the life we now find ourselves in, is also the starting point for future earth lives. The abstract thinking we use for mathematics, and the various moods of which the soul has concrete experience, are the inheritance of earlier earth lives. Everything we take in of the outside world in this earth life will provide the germ for faculties we shall have in future earth lives. In the past, people came to see elemental spirits active in the world of nature outside. When we were on earth before we looked at nature and gained an Impression of elemental spirits; this is now part of us. Today life is largely determined by what the ‘horse’ beside us is producing, by technical things. This enters into us. Unless we do something about it this will form the basis for future earth lives in us. New demons, the ahrimanic demons, are active in it. What a way of preparing oneself for future earth lives—to allow ahrimanic powers to take over! Machines create something in us that will be the economic life in future earth lives. The roar of cannon fire at the front is something we make part of ourselves, for it is something that was alive in those machines. And so it really is our intention to be quite unconscious when we rise again in our next earth life. But human beings are more than just intellect; they also have feelings and sensibilities. These have to cope with everything entering the soul from the products of technology, from machines.

There arises yet another feeling, one I have not yet described. I was speaking of the longing for something that is lacking. At the unconscious level the soul creates something out of the products of technology, out of the ahrimanic powers, and this acts into higher levels, entering our awareness in form of thoughts and ideas. Yet it arises in a form similar to fear. You will find that children you teach at school in the years and decades ahead will show this longing for something that is lacking, and also an indefinite but nevertheless tangible fear of life. This will show itself as a form of nervousness, in a nervy, fidgety character—you will find this very obvious. The first signs of it are already to be seen today.

The only way to counteract this is to fill your soul with the one thing that will give strength, a strength the earth itself cannot provide. This is the strength that has come to the earth from outside through the essential Christ who is about to appear again. It is a power we cannot gain from the earth. The earth provides technical power, the 79 million horses by our side. We must develop in our souls the strength that comes from the Christ. Otherwise we shall be filled with nothing but the power provided by the products of technology in our next life. The only cure for the nervousness that must show itself in the growing generation is to prepare ourselves for the Christ event that is to come in the first half of the 20th century.

Our age should not be described by the way it presents itself on the outside. We ought to base our description on the feelings that are paramount in human souls. It would be magnificent and important to say of our age that human beings developed an eye for what is alive in human beings. As a rule only external aspects are described. People like Paquet,⁷⁴ for example—a writer who has been travelling in Eastern Europe—are in no position to give a true picture of what goes on in the hearts and minds of people who are already experiencing a great deal of the future; all such writers can do is describe things from the outside.

If spiritual science is to come alive in us it must be able to provide us with insight into the sphere of feelings and sensibilities. You do not know what life really is if you use abstract terms to speak of the Christ event that is to come; you only know what life really is if you speak of human souls moving ahead to meet this Christ event, partly with longing in their heart and partly with fear.

Surely it must be impossible for people, as they are today, to grasp such things as the way the fate of that disastrous war was sealed by ahrimanic forces quite independent of anything human beings were able to do? It was entirely determined by elements thought up in human brains that then became objective forces. It is impossible for modern people to get the right picture and assess the real effects of these things—unless they take account of spiritual science. Just think what it means that there were 79 million horse power years produced in Germany, 98 million in Great Britain, 35 million in Belgium, France and Russia, and finally the 179 million produced in the United States were added to this! We are speaking of something that takes no account of human nature, and those are the factors that truly determine human destiny today. Human beings have totally given themselves over to something that is no longer human. The statement that human insight does not go as far as the human being, now appears in a new light. Human beings remain limited to the non-human realm, even in the social sphere they will be limited to non-human aspects, unless they find the bridge that leads to the nature of the human being. That is how they fulfil their destiny today. They make their destiny partly dependent on elements that are no longer human; they produce elements which will partly determine human destiny, and yet human beings themselves will no longer be able to influence these elements. We ought no longer to be speaking of courage, of the brilliance of the general staff and the like when we want to speak of the way destinies are determined, but of the ratio of horse power years produced in different countries. Human destiny has to be discussed without reference to human beings. People will need tremendous strength to rise and face this human destiny which is determined by non-human elements and to call out: ‘The destiny of the human race must be determined by human beings again!’ That can only happen' of course, if people let the power of Christ enter into them. This power of Christ is approaching and it will restore them to their human powers. We can only become sure of ourselves as human beings if we walk the road created by the whole of technology, but do not let our lives be governed by the products of technology, and grow able to behold the Christ power that can become part of us and overcome all those products of technology.

These are the lessons to be learned today. These are the words that tell us how we can prepare ourselves for the Christ event. All the mediocre stuff that makes up the bulk of modern literature, all the empty talk one hears nowadays, will not help humanity to progress; it will only mean regression. Progress can solely and only be achieved with the things we gain by going down to the spiritual bedrock. And we will make no progress at all unless we become fully aware again of the seriousness of these things. It is necessary for us to understand that humanity has created a completely new world around itself today; human beings themselves have developed the energies and forces that now determine their destinies. This certainly does not merely mean the events of war. Step outside and you will see the factories that determine our destiny, and the same principle is to be found in ordinaly life; it is not limited to the destinies of 1914. Ahrimanic forces are producing those smoking chimneys. The human being no longer counts there.

Walking on past the factory we come to the church. The church still has it traditional message but this has grown abstract. It no longer has relevance in ordinary life. The church concerns itself with things that have no application in practical life. All this is luciferic, just as the things that go on in factories are ahrimanic.

The dreadful thing connected with the destiny of modern humankind is that in the places where people speak of the things of the spirit all ability has been lost to relate to real life. In a public lecture I recently gave⁷⁵ I spoke of American preachers coming to Switzerland and other neutral countries and saying something like this: ‘The League of Nations must be created, for it will be a great blessing for humankind; but it cannot develop from the ideas of statesmen. It will be necessary to win people's hearts instead, so that they will believe in the League of Nations.’ Anyone with an unprejudiced mind will realize that these gentlemen make very fine speeches; yet if that is enough to please us, and we find it sufficient to praise the beauty of those speeches, we fail to understand the signs of the times. Those may be honeyed words, but their sweetness does not penetrate to the hearts of the people. Those hearts are full of worry about the economic situation, and no bridge exists to words that take their origin in old religious persuasions. You cannot use them to create a League of Nations, nor can you do so with the words uttered by Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau⁷⁶ and others. What matters today is that the two must be brought together, life must be imbued with spirit, and life must be taken forward to connect with the spirit. The Christ spirit from outside the earth entered into the flesh in Jesus, a human being, uniting itself with the physical world. The Christ who will be coming during the first half of the 20th century will not use the language of abstract religious confessions—oh no! He will use the language of everyday life. People who are all the time merely looking to unearthly mystical heights for moral uplift will not understand this language. The Christ will however be speaking of the spirit even when He is speaking about everyday life. The spirit will unite with everyday life in the same way as the Christ spirit came from spheres beyond this world, beyond the world of the senses, and united with the physical human being Jesus. Such is the new understanding we must gain for the Christ event; otherwise we shall not be able to appreciate its true value when it comes upon humankind.

A question we may ask even now is the following: ‘What will be the attitude of the people who are preaching official Christianity to the Christ event when it occurs during the first half of the 20th century?’ If we understand the Gospels rightly, they actually provide an example for us. The Gospels speak of ‘scribes and Pharisees’. Our judgement would be wrong if we were to place Adolf Harnack⁷⁷ among those who testify for the Christ; we only judge him rightly if we follow the example of the Gospels and place him among the scribes and Pharisees. And there are others of the same kind who must also be counted among them. It is essential to judge these things in the right way. We must get to the truth! The materialist Pierre Bayle said that a state could not be Christian, that states might know honour and dishonour, ambition and egotism, but that a Christian state was an impossibility. A social community in the name of Christ will however be possible, providing we do not insist on a political state but rather establish an independent life of the spirit. That can be Christian through and through. And this independent life of the spirit will be able to illumine the sphere of life where we have government and states, a sphere that simply cannot be Christian. The result will be that an economic life based on associations can develop; though this, too, cannot be Christian in itself. The people who are involved in it will be Christian, however. They will be filled with the Christ impulse. What we must do is to let people enter into an independent life of the spirit. Then it will be possible to make the whole of social life Christian.

First of all we must have truth, however. We shall not prosper with lies. These are the things we must come to accept today, inscribing them deeply in our hearts. If we fail to do so we will be siding with the people who follow Spengler and believe that we have to become barbarians. Yet it also will not help if we make the facile statement that Spengler is wrong. We would simply be lying to ourselves. We will only base ourselves on the truth if we say: 'The power has to be produced that will get us forward. This, however, can only be produced out of the living spirit, out of the spirit which spiritual science working towards Anthroposophy is seeking. Spiritual science has something that must enter into the impulses of the present age if we are to have a life of the spirit that is Christian again, a political life that once again is human and does not fail to encompass the human being, and an economic life that is controlled by human beings and not by horse power years. Those horse power years that human beings have at their side are an expression of the principle which governs destiny through the products of technology, through something that is outside human beings—something inhuman.

The events of recent years cannot be read as being due to human feelings and emotions. We must read the writing of the horse power years produced by technology, the terrible signs Ahriman is beginning to write into the evolution of humankind. A new understanding of the Christ must be found so that humanity may be led out of this situation.

• 68. TN. The Franco-Prussian War 1870–71.
• 69. TN. Throughout this lecture Rudolf Steiner used an invented word, Technizismen (technicisms) for ‘products of technology’.
• 70. Stuttgart 10 November 1920, ‘Die Geisteskrisis der Gegenwart und die Krafte zum Menschheitsforschritt’ (The spiritual and cultural crisis of the present time and the forces that mean progress for humanity). To be published in GA 335.
• 71. Bayle, Pierre, French philosopher. Statement has not been traced to date.
• 72. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The sorrows of Werther) 1775. Weimarer Ausgabe, 19. Bd.
• 73. Miller, Johann Martin. Siegwart, novel published in 1776 (2 y ears after Werther), very popular for a time.
• 74. Paquet, Alfons, writer. Im korrunzinistischen Ruffland In communist Russia, appeared in 1919.
• 75. See also public lecture referred to in note 69.
• 76. Clemenceau, Georges. French physician and politician.
• 77. Harnack, Adolf von. German theologian.

My dear venerated friends! It is always difficult when you have a serious scientific conscience to translate the traditional expression of “Logos” into some or other younger language. We usually employ “Word” to translate “Logos” as is commonly found in the Bible. However, when we have the word “Logic” in a sentence we don't use “Word” but rather think about “Thought,” as it operates in the human individual and its laws. Yet when we speak about “philology” we are aware that we are developing a science which is derived from words. I would like to say: what we have today in the word “Logos” is basically in everything which is philosophic. When we speak about “philosophy”, we can, even though defined as experience in relation to the Logos, sense how a reflection of these undetermined experiences are contained in all that we feel in “philosophy”.

Philosophy implies that the words—which no doubt came into question when philosophy was created, that only words were implied—indicate a certain inner personal experience; the word philosophy points to a connection of the Logos to “Sophia”; one could call it a particular, if not personal, general interest. The word philosophy is less directly referred to as possessing a scientific nature but rather an inner relationship to the wisdom filled scientific content. Because our feeling regarding philosophy is not as sure as in those cases when philosophy, on the one hand was included with, I'd rather not call it science, but scientific aims, and on the other hand with something which points to inner human relationships; so we have today an extraordinarily undefined experience when we speak about philosophy or involve ourselves with philosophy. This vague experience is extremely difficult to lift out of the depth of our consciousness if we try to do it through mere dialectical or external definitions, without trying to enter into the personal experience which ran its course in the consequential development. To such an examination the present will produce something special.

If we look back a few decades at people in central Europe, the involvement they were looking for with philosophy was quite a different experience, in central Europe, as it is today in the second decade of the twentieth century, where we basically have lived through so much, not only externally in the physical but also spiritually—one can quietly declare this—than what had been experienced for centuries. When one looks back over the experiences, of—if I may use a pedantic and philistine expression—the philosophic zealot of the fifties, sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century, perhaps even later, which the central Europeans could have, it is essentially as follows. Looking at the time of German philosophy's blossoming, you look back at the great philosophic era of the Fichtes, Schellings, and Hegels; surrounding you there had been a world of the educated and the scholars, a world which this philosophic era thoroughly dismisses and which in the rising scientific world view sees what should be taking the place of the earlier philosophic observations. One admires the magnitude of the elevation of thoughts found in a Schelling, one admires the energy and force of Fichte's development of thoughts, one can perhaps also develop a feeling for the pure comprehensive, insightful thoughts of Hegel, but one would more or less consider this classical time of German philosophy as something subdued.

Besides this is the endeavour to develop something out of science which should present a general world view, right from the striving of the “power/force and matter/substance people,” to those who carefully strive to find a philosophic world view out of natural scientific concepts, but who lean towards the former idealistic philosophy. There were all kinds of thoughts and research in this area.

A third kind of thinker appeared in this sphere, who couldn't go along with the purely scientifically based world view but could on the other hand also not dive into solid thought of the Hegel type. For them a big question came about: How can a person create something within his thoughts, which originate in himself, and place this in an objective relationship to the outer world?—There were epistemologists of different nuances who agreed with the call “Back to Kant”, but this way to Kant was aimed in the most varied ways; there were sharp-witted thinkers like Liebman, Volkelt and so on, who basically remained within the epistemological and didn't get to the question: How could someone take the content of his thoughts and imaginative nature from within himself and find a bridge to a trans-subjective reality existing outside human reality?

What I'm sketching for you now as a situation in which the philosophic zealots found themselves in the last third of the nineteenth Century, which didn't lead to any kind of solution. This was to a certain extent in the middle of some or other drama during a time-consuming work of art, to which no finality had been found. These efforts more or less petered out into nothing definite. The efforts ran into a large number of questions and overall, basically failed to acquire the courage to develop a striving for solutions regarding these questions.

Today the situation in the entire world of philosophy is such that one can't sketch it in the same way as I've done for the situation in the last third of the nineteenth century, in its effort to determine reality. Today philosophic viewpoints have appeared which, I might say, have risen out of quite different foundations, and which make it possible for us to characterise it in quite a different way. Today, if we wish to characterise the philosophic situation, our glance which we have homed in the second half of the twentieth century comes clearly before our soul eyes, namely such sharply differentiated philosophic viewpoints of the West, of central Europe and Eastern Europe. Today things appear in quite a different way which not long ago flowed through our experience of the philosophical approach to be found in three names: Herbert Spencer—Hegel—Vladimir Soloviev. By placing these three personalities in front of us we have the representatives who can epitomise our philosophic character of today. Inwardly this had to some extent already been the case for some time, but these characteristics of the philosophic situation only appear today before the eyes of our souls.

Let's look at the West: Herbert Spencer. If I want to be thorough I would have to give an outline of the entire course of philosophic development, how it went from Bacon, Locke over Mill to Spencer, but this can't be my task today. In Herbert Spencer we meet a personality who wanted to base his philosophy on a pure system of concepts, as is determined in natural science. We find in Spencer a personality who totally agrees with science and out of this agreement arrives at a conclusion: ‘This is the way in which all philosophic thought in the world must be won by natural science.’ So we see how Spencer searched in science to determine certain steps to understand concepts, like for example how matter is constantly contracting and expanding, differentiating and consolidating. He saw this for instance in plants, how the leaves spread out and how they drew together in the seed, and he tried to translate such concepts into clear scientific forms with which to create his world view. He even tried to think about the human community, the social organism, only in such a way in which his thoughts would be analogous to the natural organism. Here he suddenly became cornered.

The natural human organism is connected to the confluence of everything relating to it from the surrounding world, through observations, through imagination and so on. Every single organism is bound to what it can develop under the influence of the nervous or sensory system (sensorium). In the human community organism Herbert Spencer couldn't find a sensorium, no kind of centralised nervous system. For this reason, he constructed a kind of community organism, totally based on science, as the crown of his philosophic structure.

What lay ahead for the West with this? It meant that scientific thought could reach its fully entitled, one-sided development. What lay ahead was the finest observational results and experimental talents developing out of folk talents. What came out of it was interest created to observe the world in its outer sensory reality into the smallest detail, without becoming impatient and wanting to rise out of it to some encompassing concepts. What came out of it was also a tendency to remain within this outer sense-world of facts. There was what I could call, a kind of fear of rising up to one encompassing amalgamation. Because they could do nothing else but exist in what the sense world presented to them, simply being pushed directly into the senses here in the West, there appeared the belief that the entire spiritual world should be handed over to the singular faiths of individuals, and that these beliefs should develop free from all scientific influences. Religious content was not to be touched by scientific exploration. So we see with Herbert Spencer, who in his way took up the scientific way of thought consequentially right into sociology, earnestly separated, on the one hand, from science, which would proceed scientifically, and on the other hand with a spiritual content for people who wanted nothing to do with science.

Let's go now from Herbert Spencer to what we meet with Hegel. It doesn't matter that Hegel, who belonged to the first third of the 19th Century, was outwitted during the second third for central European philosophy because what was characteristic for Middle Europe was most meaningful in what exactly had appeared in Hegel. Let's look at Hegel. Already in his, I could call it, emotional predisposition, lies a certain antipathy against this universalist natural scientific way with which to shape the world view as Herbert Spencer had done in the West, but of course had been prepared by predecessors, both by scientific researchers and philosophers as well. We see how Hegel could not stand Newton and was unsympathetic to his unique way by thinking of the world-all as totally mechanical, how he rejected Newton not merely in terms of the colour theory but also in his interpretation of the cosmos. Hegel took the trouble to go back to Kepler's planetary movement formulations, he analysed Kepler's formulations about planetary movements and found out for himself, that Newton had actually not added anything new because Kepler's formulation already contained the laws of gravitation. This he applied from the basis of a scientifically formulated thought, while with Kepler it had resulted more out of a spiritual experience, which he saw as encompassing and that one could try to grasp the outer natural scientific through the spirit. Kepler is for Hegel simply the personality who is capable of penetrating thoughts with the spirit and building a bridge between what is acceptable scientifically, and what simply has to be believed according to the West, and which is also capable of lifting science into the area which for the West is limited to belief.

From this basis Hegel, in tune with Goethe, strongly opposed the Newtonian colour theory. We can see how the Hegelian system had a kind of antipathy against what appeared quite natural in the Newtonian system. For this Hegel had a decisive talent—to live completely in a thought itself. For Hegel Goethe's utterance to Schiller was obvious: “I see my ideas with my eyes.” It appears naive, however, such naivety, when considered correctly, comes out of the deepest philosophic wisdom. Hegel would simply not have understood how one could state that the idea of the triangle is not to be grasped, because Hegel's life went completely—if I might use the expression—according to the plan of thinking. For him there was also a higher world of revelations, a world of higher spirituality, which gradually casts its shadow images on a plane which is filled with thoughts. From up above the spiritual worlds throw their shadow images on the plane of the human soul, on which human thought can develop. Through this the idea of higher spirituality came about for Hegel, that on the plane of the soul it is shadowed as thoughts. Hegel was inclined to experience these thoughts as fully spiritual, and he also experienced natural events not in their elementary present time, but he saw them in mental pictures, thrown on to the plane of the soul.

So it is impossible in Hegel's philosophy to separate, in an outer way, wisdom from belief, which was quite natural in the West. For Hegel his life task was the unification of the spiritual world (which the West wanted to simply refer to as part of the large sphere of belief) with the sensory physical world, into such a world about which one can have knowledge. This means there is no longer knowledge on the one hand and belief on the other; here the human soul faces the great, meaningful problem: How does one find during earthly life the bridge between belief and knowledge, between spirit and nature? To a certain extent it was the tragedy of Hegel that the problem he posed in such a grandiose manner, he wanted to understand actually only on the level of thinking, that he wanted to understand the experience of the inner power, the inner liveliness of thinking, but he could not grasp anything living from the content of thought.

Consider Hegel's logic—he wanted to return repeatedly to the concept of the Logos! He felt that when we actually wanted to attain a true understanding of the Logos, then the Logos must be something which is not merely something thought, but a real activity which floods and works through the world. For him the Logos did not only have an abstract, logical content, but for him it became real world content. If we look at one of the three parts of his philosophy, namely his “logic” we only find abstract concepts! So it is terribly moving for someone who enters on the one side into the Hegelian philosophy, with his whole being, and has the fundamental experience: that which can be grasped through the Logos, must be penetrated with the creative principle of the world. The Logos must be “God before the creation of the world”—to use an expression of Hegel.

This is on the one side. Now how did Hegel develop this idea of the Logos on the other side? He starts with “being” and arrives at “nothing”, goes from “becoming” to “existence.” He arrives at the goal through the causality, to the belief that certain phenomena are best explained in terms of purpose rather than cause. One can look at the all the concepts of Hegel's logic and ask oneself: Is that what, “before the beginning of creation as the content of the divine” could have been there? This is abstract logic, the demand of the creative, the logos as postulate, but as a purely human thought postulate! One finds this tragic. This tragedy goes further, for the Hegelian philosophy is deemed as valid. Yet it contains instances where through action new life can germinate. It contains sprouts. Hegel saw his redemption in this: being—nothing—becoming—existence.

When people are presented with Hegel, they say: ‘This is a dark one, we don't need to be lured into it.’ However, when one makes the effort to allow one's inner soul to enter into it, to experience the concept inwardly, as Hegel tried to experience it, then all the ideas of empiricism and rationalism disappears, then thought experiences and the one who is thinking is directly thought of. Whoever goes along with it finds the impetus of loosening the thoughts from the abstraction, and take Hegel's logic as the sprouts which can become something quite different, when they become alive. For me Hegel's logic looks like the seed of a plant in which one can hardly see what it will become and yet still carries the most varied structures possible within it.

For me it appears that when this seed sprouts, when one lovingly cares for it and plants it into the soul's earth through anthroposophical research, then what emerges is that thought can not only be thought but can be experienced as reality. Here we have the central European aspect.

If we now go to the East, we have in Vladimir Soloviev a man who is able like no other philosopher, to become gradually more the content of our own philosophic striving, who must now become so important to us because we allow the particularities of his character to work in on us. We see in Soloviev both the European-eastern way of thinking, which is of course not Oriental-Asiatic. Soloviev absorbed everything which was European, he only developed it in an Eastern fashion. What do we see being developed in terms of human scientific striving? Here we see how actually this method of thinking, found mostly in the West by Herbert Spencer, which Soloviev basically looked down on, is something against which the truth and knowledge he was seeking, could so to speak be illustrated. In comparison, what he actually presents is a full experience of spirituality itself. It appeared in full consciousness to him, it appeared more atavistically, subconsciously, yet it is an experience in spirituality itself. It was more or less a dreamlike attempt to knowingly experience what in the West—here quite consciously—was transposed into the realm of belief. So we find in the East a discussion which can be experienced in an imprecise way, which looks like a one-sided experience which Hegel wanted to use to cross the bridge out of the natural existence to the spiritual world.

If a person delves into the spiritual development of someone from central Europe, like Soloviev, then he will primarily have an extraordinary uncomfortable feeling. He is reminded of an experience of something misty, mystical; an overheated element in the soul life which doesn't arrive at concepts, which can externally leave him empty completely, but which can only be experienced inwardly. He senses the entirely vague mystical experience, but he also finds that Soloviev makes use of conceptual forms and means of expression which we know, from Hegel, Humes, Mills, even those of Spencer, but only as illustrations. Throughout one can say he doesn't remain stuck in the mist but through the way with which he treats religious aspects as scientific, how he searches for it everywhere and unfolds it as philosophy, he can evermore be measured and criticised according to the philosophic conceptual development of the West.

So we find ourselves today in the following situation. In the West comes the striving to formulate a world view scientifically; science is on the one side and the spiritual on the other side and wrestle in the centre with the problem of how to create a bridge to include both, to express it imprecisely, as Hegel said: “Nature is Spirit in its dissimilarity,” “Spirit is the concept of when it has returned again to itself.” In all these stuttering expressions lie the tragedy that Hegel could only care for abstract ideas, which he strived for. Then in the East, with Soloviev we see how it was somewhat still maintained, how well the church fathers wanted to save it in terms of philosophy, before the Council of Nicaea. It places us completely back in the first three post Christian Centuries of the West.

So we have in the East an experience of the spiritual world, which is not able to soar up into self-owned terminological formulations, formulations and concepts used by the West in which they express themselves, and as a result remain in vague, somewhat extraneous, foreign expressions.

So we see how the threefold nature of the philosophic world view unfolded. By our tracing how the threefold philosophic world view was formed through the characteristics and abilities of humanity in the West, the centre and the East, we can see that we are obliged today—because science as something embracing must spread over all of mankind—to find something which can lift it above these various philosophic aspects which basically still provide elements where philosophy is still a human-personal matter. We see today in different ways in the West, central Europe and the East, how they love wisdom. We understand that in ancient times, philosophy could still be an inner condition of the soul. Now however, in recent times, where people are strongly differentiated, this way of loving wisdom expresses itself in a magnitude of ways. Perhaps we could realise due to this, what we have to do ourselves, particularly what we have to do in Central Europe, where the most tragic and intensified problem is raised even if it is not regarded in the same way by all philosophic minds.

If I want to summarise all of what I have brought into a picture, I would like to express it as follows. Regarded philosophically Soloviev speaks like the old priest who lived in higher worlds and who had developed a kind of inner ability to live in these higher worlds: priestly speech translated philosophically is what one encounters all the time with Soloviev. In the West, with Herbert Spencer, speaks the man of the world who wants to enter practical life—as it has come out of Darwinian theory—to expand science in such a way that it becomes the practical basis of life. In the Middle we have neither the man of the world not the priest: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel have no priestly ways like a Soloviev. In the Middle we have the teacher, the educators of the people and it is also here where the German philosophy emerged, for example, from religious deepening; because the priest became the teacher once again. The educated also adheres to the Hegelian philosophy.

We see recently—as with Oswald Külpe—how it has happened that philosophy, when it was already lost, is no more than a summary of the individual sciences. From inorganic science you can ask—what are the concepts? From organic science you can ask—what are the concepts? Likewise with history, with the science of religion, and so on. One collects these concepts and forms a separate abstract unit. I would like to say that the subject of the teaching in the separate sciences should create the totality of teaching. This is what the science in the Middle must basically come to after the entire assessment.

If we look back at what has happened, we see with Herbert Spencer the unconditional belief in science, the belief for the necessity to cling to observation, experiment and a thinking mind, which can be experienced through the observation and experiment; and one is mistaken about the contradiction which appears here, when the acquired concepts can be applied to the social organism and—although these do not have the most important characteristics of a natural organism, the sensorium—they are nevertheless grasped with the same concepts which arise in natural existence. We see the inclination to the natural sciences so strong that some characters—like Newton—became one-sidedly stuck to the mechanistic and even satisfied their soul-striving with it. It is generally known that Newton had tried in a one-sided mystical way to clarify the Apocalypse; besides his scientific world view he had his own mystical needs.

Let's look, for example, at everything which has arisen from natural science and what it gradually in the course of the 19th Century has subconsciously taken over in Central Europe; because in Central Europe science has simply followed the pattern of the Western scientific way of thinking. There is a tendency not to take notice of it, but still all points of view are modelled on the Western pattern. How wild the people become when someone tries to apply Goethe's way of thinking in physics in contrast to them taking shelter under Newton!

How does the development happen in biology? Goethe created an organism for which the integration into its concepts depended on an understanding of a mathematical nature. Time was short to obtain a biology more appropriate to modern thinking than to that of olden times. The progress in the 19th Century in central Europe however brought about not the Goethean biology but Darwinism, which was interspersed with concepts contrary to those of Goethe, like the concepts of the 16th Century opposed to those of the 18th Century. Only in Central Europe did these concepts develop; in the West people remained with those concepts that sufficed for the understanding of nature. So it happened that certain concepts in the West simply were not available and simply got lost because people in Central Europe had adopted western thinking. For example, that a thought, a lively thought, can form a concept of grasping a reality, quite apart from empiricism, as it had happened with Hegel—this is not present in Central Europe; it got lost because the central European thinking was flooded by western thinking.

So we have the task in Central Europe to look at what scientific thinking can be. Anthroposophists resent it when this scientific way of thinking is cared for with as much love as for the researcher himself. Nothing, absolutely nothing will be said by me in opposition to scientific thinking; if someone believes this then it is a misunderstanding. However, I must understand the scientific way of thinking in its purity and then also try to characterise it in its purity. Now these things are presented to those who confront scientific thinking with impartiality—somewhat like a western researcher will present them, like Haeckel in his genial way did it—these results are presented in a western way of research, when they are thus left and not reinterpreted philosophically, not given as solutions, not as answers, but are presented above all as questions. The totality of natural science does not gradually become an answer to a question for the impartial person, because it turns into the great world question itself. This is experienced everywhere: what is now being researched in the most beautiful way by these researchers—for my sake right up to atomic theory, which I don't negate but only want to put it in its correct place—this comes to a question and out of the West a great question is posed to us. Where does this question come from?

When we link our gaze to the outer world and only turn to the observation of the given elements, we don't fathom its complete reality. We are born as human beings in the world, are constituted as such, as we already were before and take part in the reality by looking at ourselves in our own inner being. As we look then at the outer world, the sense perceptible objects—we find that part which is living in us, is missing in reality, as we can only through human struggle connect to the other half-reality, which observes us from the outside. If we look towards the West, so we see the half-reality is researched with particular devotion; however, it only provides a number of questions because it's only a half-reality. So on the one side there appears only one half of reality as a given; if one really looks at it, it raises questions. In Central Europe you discover examples of questions which Western thinking can answer and one tries to push through to thinking. That is the Hegelian philosophy.

In the East one felt that which lives above the thought, which works down into the thought; but one couldn't come as far as awakening it to life, that so to speak the flesh could also sustain a skeleton. Soloviev was able to develop it in flesh, muscles and even blood in his philosophy—but the skeleton was missing. As a result, he took Hegel's concepts, those of Humes and others, and built in a foreign skeletal system. Only when one is in the position of not using a foreign skeletal system then something comes about which can be lived through spiritually. So, however, as it happened with Soloviev, it leads to a shadowed existence because it didn't manifest into a skeletal system which could as a result be descriptive. If one doesn't want to remain with building only an outer skeletal system, but live spiritually and prepare oneself through strong spiritual work, then one develops for oneself an inner skeleton within spiritual experiences; one develops the necessary concepts. For this, various exercises have been given in my writings, “Occult Science” and “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds” and in others. Here one develops what really can become a conceptual organism. This is then the other side of reality, and this side of reality has its seed in the eastern philosophy of Soloviev.

In central Europe there is always the big problem of striking a bridge between nature and the spiritual. For us it has at the same time become a meaningful historical problem: to strike the bridge between West and East, and this task must stand before us in philosophy. This task also directs itself into Anthroposophy. If Anthroposophy becomes capable of inward thought experiences developing into living form, then it may on the other side experience quite materialistic natural phenomena as they are experienced in the West, because then it will not be through abstract concepts but through living scientific circles that the bridge is built between mere belief and knowledge, between knowing and subjective certainty. Then out of philosophy a real Anthroposophy will develop and philosophy can be fructified from both sides by these living sciences. Only then would Hegel's philosophy be awakened to life, when through the anthroposophical experience you let the blood of life be spiritually added to it. Then there won't be a logical base which is so abstract that it can't be “Spirit on the other side of Nature”, as Hegel wanted it, but that it really can be grasped, not as abstraction but as the living spirituality of philosophy.

This gives Anthroposophy the following task. How must we, according to our present viewpoints, which lie decades behind Hegel, strike the bridge between what we call truth on the one side, which must encompass all of reality, and that which we call science on the other side, which also must encompass the entirety of reality? Briefly, the problem must be raised—and that is the most important philosophic problem in Anthroposophy: what is the relationship between truth and science?

This is the problem I wanted to present in the introduction today at the start of our consideration, which I believe you will now understand.

On the occasion of his hundred and fiftieth birthday: August 28, 1899

[ 1 ] When Johann Gottlieb Fichte sent Goethe the work in which bold intellectual power and the highest ethical seriousness found an incomparable expression, the "Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre", he enclosed a letter containing the words: "I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative of the purest spirituality of feeling at the presently attained stage of humanity. It is to you that philosophy rightly turns: your feeling is the same touchstone." These sentences were written in 1794. Like the great philosopher, the bearers of the most diverse intellectual currents could have written to Goethe at that time. The poet and thinker Goethe was at the height of his life at this time. Albert Bielschowski, the biographer who most lovingly immerses himself in this personality and provides us with the most intimate picture of him, already felt the same way about Goethe's contemporaries in the 1990s: "Goethe had received a dose of everything human and was therefore the 'most human of all men'. His figure had a great typical character. It was a potentized image of humanity itself. Accordingly, everyone who approached him had the impression that they had never seen such a complete human being before."

[ 2 ] This was Goethe's relationship to his spiritual environment when he entered his fiftieth year one hundred years ago. He stood there as an accomplished man. The study of antiquity had given his artistic work the degree of perfection that was demanded by the innermost essence of his personality and beyond which there was no further progress for him; his insight into the workings of nature had come to an end. From then on, all that remained for him was to carry out the ideas of nature that had taken root in his mind. At that time, the "most human of all men" had a completely mature effect on those around him.

[ 3 ] Schiller expressed this in eloquent words in the letter he addressed to Goethe on August 23, 1794: "I have long watched the course of your mind, although from quite a distance, and have noticed the path you have marked out for yourself with ever renewed admiration. You seek what is necessary in nature, but you seek it in the most difficult way, from which any weaker force would be wary. You take the whole of nature together in order to shed light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations you seek the ground of explanation for the individual... If you had been born a Greek, indeed only an Italian, and had been surrounded from the cradle by an exquisite nature and an idealizing art, your path would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps made entirely superfluous. Already in your first view of things you would then have absorbed the form of the necessary, and with your first experiences the great style would have developed in you. Now that you were born a German, since your Greek spirit was thrown into this Nordic creation, you had no choice but either to become a Nordic artist yourself, or to replace your imagination with what reality withheld from it through the help of the power of thought, and thus to give birth to a Greece from within, as it were, and in a rational way." Goethe replied on the 27th: "For my birthday, which comes this week, no more pleasant gift could have been given to me than your letter, in which you, with a friendly hand, draw the sum of my existence and encourage me through your participation to a more diligent and lively use of my powers."

[ 4 ] We can expand on this sentence and say: Goethe could not have received a more meaningful gift in the time of his maturity than Schiller's devoted friendship. The latter's philosophical sense led Goethe's pure spirituality of feeling into new spiritual regions.

[ 5 ] The beautiful similarity between the two spirits that developed is characterized by Schiller in a letter to Körner: "Each could give the other something that he lacked and receive something in return. Goethe now feels the need to join me in order to continue on the path that he had previously taken alone and without encouragement, in community with me."

[ 6 ] Around the time his friendship with Goethe began, Schiller was preoccupied with the ideas expressed in his "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man". He reworked these letters, originally written for the Duke of Augustenburg, for the "Horen" in 1794. What Goethe and Schiller discussed orally at the time and what they wrote to each other was always linked to the ideas in these letters. Schiller's reflections concerned the question: What state of the soul's powers corresponds in the highest sense of the word to an existence worthy of man? "Every individual human being, one can say, carries within himself a pure, ideal human being by disposition and destiny, with whose unchanging unity in all his variations it is the great task of his existence to agree," it says in the fourth letter. A bridge is to be built from the man of everyday reality to the ideal man. There are two instincts that hold man back from ideal perfection if they are developed in a one-sided way: the sensual and the rational instinct. If the sensual instinct has the upper hand, man is subject to his instincts and passions. His actions are the result of a lower compulsion. If the rational instinct predominates, man endeavors to suppress instincts and passions and to pursue a purely spiritual virtue. In both cases, man is subject to compulsion. In the former, his sensual nature forces his spiritual nature into submission, in the latter, his spiritual nature forces his sensual nature into submission. Neither the one nor the other can justify a truly humane existence. Rather, this presupposes a perfect harmony of both basic drives. Sensuality should not be suppressed, but ennobled; instincts and passions should be raised to such a high level that they work in the direction prescribed by reason, the highest morality. And moral reason should not rule like a higher law in man, to which one submits reluctantly, but one should feel its commandments like an unconstrained need. "If we embrace with passion someone who is worthy of our contempt, we feel embarrassed by the compulsion of nature. If we are hostile to another who compels our respect, we feel the compulsion of reason. But as soon as he interests our affections and earns our respect, both the compulsion of feeling and the compulsion of reason disappear, and we begin to love him" (Letter 14). A person who experiences no coercion from either sensuality or reason, who acts out of passion in the spirit of the purest morality, is a free personality. And a society of people in which the natural instinct of the individual is so ennobled that it does not need to be restrained by the power of the whole in order to make harmonious coexistence possible is the ideal state towards which the state of power and coercion must strive. Outer freedom in living together presupposes inner freedom of the individual personalities. In this way, Schiller sought to solve the problem of freedom in human coexistence, which was on everyone's mind at the time and which sought a violent solution in the French Revolution. "To give freedom through freedom is the fundamental law" of a humane empire (27th letter).

[ 7 ] Goethe found himself deeply satisfied by these ideas. He wrote to Schiller about the "Aesthetic Letters" on October 26, 1794: "I immediately read the manuscript sent to me with great pleasure; I slurped it down in one go. Just as a delicious drink, analogous to our nature, slips down willingly and shows its healing effect on the tongue through the good mood of the nervous system, so these letters were pleasant and beneficial to me; and how could it be otherwise, since I found what I had long recognized as right, what I partly lived and partly wished to live, presented in such a coherent and noble way."

[ 8 ] This is the nature of the circle of ideas that Schiller stimulated in Goethe. Out of it has now grown a poem by the former, which, because of its mysterious character, has experienced the most varied interpretations, but which only becomes completely clear and transparent if one understands it from within the circle of imagination described: the enigmatic fairy tale with which Goethe concluded his story "Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten", which appeared in the "Horen" in 1795. -- What Schiller expressed in philosophical form in his "Aesthetic Letters", Goethe portrayed in a lively fairy tale filled with rich poetic content. The humane state that man achieves when he has attained the full possession of freedom is symbolized in this fairy tale by the marriage of a young man to the beautiful lily, the representative of the realm of freedom, the ideal man that the man of everyday life carries within himself as his goal.

[ 9 ] The largest number of attempts at interpretation undertaken to date can be found in the book "Goethes Märchendichtungen" by Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck (Heidelberg 1879, Carl Wintersche Universitätsbuchhandlung). I have found that these attempts at interpretation give nice suggestions and are in many respects correct, but that none of them is completely satisfactory. I have now sought the roots of the explanation in the soil from which Schiller's "Aesthetic Letters" also grew. Although my interpretation has had a convincing effect on many listeners in several oral lectures - the first time on November 27, 1891 at the Goethe-Verein in Vienna - I have so far hesitated to submit it to print. Nor have I yet added it to my book "Goethe's Weltanschauung", published in 1897. I felt the need to allow the conviction of its correctness to mature in me over a longer period of time. It has only strengthened to this day. The following cannot follow the course of the fairy-tale plot, but must be arranged in such a way that the meaning of the poem is revealed most comfortably.¹

[ 10 ] One person who plays an outstanding role in the development of the events in the "fairy tale" is the "old man with the lamp". When he comes into the crevices with his lamp, he is asked which is the most important of the secrets he knows. He replies: "The revealed one." And when asked if he would not reveal this secret, he says: "If he knows the fourth. But the serpent knows this fourth secret and says it in the old man's ear. There can be no doubt that this secret refers to the state that all the characters in the fairy tale long for. This state is described to us at the end of the poem. We must assume that the old man knows this secret, for he is the only person who always stands above the circumstances, who directs and guides everything. So what can the serpent tell the old man? He is the most important being in the whole process. By sacrificing himself, he achieves what ultimately satisfies everyone. The old man obviously knows that he must sacrifice himself in order to bring about this satisfaction. What he does not know is when she will be ready. Because that depends on her. She must come to the realization of her own accord that her sacrifice is necessary for the common good. That she is ready for this sacrifice is the most important secret, and she tells the old man this in his ear. And now he can utter the great word: "It's time!""

[ 11 ] The desired goal is brought about by the revival of the youth, by his union with the beautiful lily and by the fact that both realms, the one on this side and the one on the other side of the river, are connected by the magnificent bridge formed from the sacrificed body of the serpent. Even if the serpent is the author of the happy state, he alone could not bestow on the youth the gifts by which he rules the newly founded kingdom. He receives them from the three kings. From the bronze king he receives the sword with the order: "The sword on the left, the right free!" The silver king gives him the sceptre, saying: "Feed the sheep!" The golden one presses the oak wreath on his head with the words: "Recognize the highest! " The three kings are the symbols for the three basic powers of the human soul, and the words they speak indicate how these three basic powers should be expressed in the perfect human being. The sword denotes will, physical strength and power. Man should not hold it in his right hand, where it signifies readiness for conflict and war, but in his left hand for protection and to ward off evil. The right hand should be free for acts of noble humanity. The handing over of the sceptre is accompanied by the words: "Feed the sheep!" They are reminiscent of Christ's words: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep!" This king is therefore the symbol of piety, of the noble heart. The golden king imparts the gift of knowledge to the young man with the oak wreath. The will, which expresses itself in power, in violence, piety and wisdom in their most perfect form are bestowed on the youth, the representative of a humane existence. These three powers of the soul are symbolized by the three kings. Therefore, when the old man speaks the words: "There are three that reign on earth, Wisdom, Appearance and Violence", the three kings rise up, each at the mention of the soul power of which he is the symbol. There seems to be an ambiguity in the fact that the silver king is presented as the ruler in the realm of appearances, while according to his words he is to signify piety. This contradiction is immediately resolved when one considers the close relationship Goethe establishes between aesthetic feelings - which the beautiful appearance of artistic works creates - and religious feelings. Just think of sentences from him like this: "There are only two true religions: the one that recognizes and worships the sacred that dwells in and around us, completely formless, the other that recognizes and worships it in the most beautiful form." Goethe sees art as just another form of religion. When he was struck by the beauty of Greek works of art, he uttered the sentence: "There is necessity, there is God."

[ 12 ] From the meaning of the kings, we can infer other things in the fairy tale. The king of wisdom is made of gold. Where we usually encounter gold in fairy tales, we will therefore see in it the symbol of wisdom, of knowledge. This is the case with the will-o'-the-wisps and the snake. The former know how to acquire this metal easily and then throw it away lavishly and arrogantly. The serpent comes to it with difficulty, but absorbs it organically, processes it in its body and permeates itself completely with it. In the will-o'-the-wisps we undoubtedly have before us a pictorial representation of personalities who gather their wisdom from all sides and then give it away proudly and carelessly without having sufficiently imbued themselves with it. Unproductive spirits are the will-o'-the-wisps who spread undigested knowledge. If their words fall on fertile ground, they can bring about the very best. A person can impart teachings that he himself has no deep understanding of to another, and this other person can recognize a deep meaning in them. The serpent represents the solid human endeavor, the honest striding along the path of knowledge. For her, the gold squandered by the will-o'-the-wisps becomes a precious commodity that she keeps within herself. For Goethe, the thought of someone giving away the wisdom he had absorbed as a teacher was an uncomfortable one. In his opinion, teaching easily leads to appropriating science in order to be able to spend it again. He therefore considers himself fortunate that he can devote himself to research without having to hold a professorship at the same time. Only those who are in the latter position - apart from exceptions, of course - will truly immerse themselves selflessly in things and serve true humanity. Those who acquire wisdom for the sake of teaching easily become false prophets or sophists. The false lights are reminiscent of these. But only selfless knowledge, which is completely absorbed in things and which is visualized in the serpent, can come to the insight that the highest can only be reached through selfless devotion. The man who lets his everyday personality die in order to awaken the ideal man within himself reaches this highest. What a mystic like Jakob Böhme expressed with the words: death is the root of all life, Goethe expressed with the sacrificing snake. In Goethe's view, those who cannot free themselves from their small ego, who are unable to develop the higher ego within themselves, cannot reach perfection. Man must die as an individual in order to revive as a higher personality. The new life is then only the most humane, the same life that, to use Schiller's words, feels no coercion from either reason or sensuality. In "Divan" we read Goethe's beautiful words: "And as long as you do not have this, this: Die and become! You are but a dreary guest on the dark earth." And one of the "Proverbs in Prose" reads: "One must give up one's existence in order to exist." The snake gives up its existence in order to form the bridge that connects the two realms, that of sensuality and that of spirituality. The temple, with its colorful bustle, is the serpent's higher life, which it has purchased through the death of its lower nature. Her words that she wants to sacrifice herself voluntarily in order not to be sacrificed are just another expression of Jakob Böhme's sentence: "He who does not die before he dies, corrupts when he dies"; in other words, he who lives without killing off the lower nature within him, dies in the end without having any idea of the ideal man within him.

[ 13 ] The youth is driven by an indomitable desire for the realm of the beautiful lily. Consider the characteristics of this realm. Although people have the deepest longing for the realm of the lily, they can only enter it at certain times. At midday, when the serpent forms a bridge over the river; then in the evening and morning, when the giant's shadow spreads across the river. Anyone who approaches the ruler of this realm, the beautiful lily, without having the inner aptitude for it, can damage his life in the most serious way. Furthermore, the lily itself has a desire for the other realm. Finally, the ferryman can take anyone across, but no one across. So what does the realm of the beautiful lily mean? Goethe says in "Proverbs in Prose": "Everything that liberates our spirit without giving us dominion over ourselves is pernicious." Only those people who are allowed to abandon themselves unreservedly to their inclinations have mastery over themselves, because these are only effective in a moral sense. "Duty, where one loves what one commands oneself", is a saying by Goethe. Those who seize freedom without having control over themselves are like the young man who was paralyzed by the touch of the lily. The realm of the one-sidedly acting instinct of reason, of purely spiritual morality, is that of the lily. That of one-sided sensuality is on the other side of the river. In the still imperfect human being the harmony between sensual instinct and rational instinct is generally not established. Only at certain moments does he act out of passion in such a way that this action is also moral in itself. This is symbolized by the fact that the snake can only form a bridge over the river at certain moments, at midday. The fact that the lily longs for the other realm expresses the fact that the rational instinct only fulfills its nature when it does not act like a strict legislator beyond the desires and instincts and restrains them, but when it penetrates them, connects with them. The ferryman can bring everyone across, but no one across. Men come from the realm of reason without having done anything themselves, but they do not return from the realm of the passions to their true homeland without their intervention. Except in those moments when man reaches the ideal state of life by balancing reason and sensuality, he also seeks to attain it by force, by arbitrariness, which finds expression in political revolutions. Goethe brings the giant and his shadow for this kind of combination of both realms. In revolutions, the urge for the ideal state lives itself out dully, just as the shadow of the giant lies across the river at dusk. There is also historical evidence that this interpretation of the giant is correct. On October 16, 1795, Schiller wrote to Goethe, who was on a journey that was to extend to Frankfurt a. M.: "It is indeed dear to me to know that you are still far away from the Main River. The shadow of the giant could easily touch you a little roughly." What the arbitrariness, the lawless course of historical events has in its wake is thus meant by the shadow of the giant.

[ 14 ] Reason and sensuality interpose themselves so that the still imperfect human being is prevented from destroying morality through his passions: Custom, all that is social order of the present. This order finds its symbol in the river. In the third of the "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" Schiller says of the state: "The compulsion of needs threw man into it before he could choose this state in his freedom; necessity arranged him according to mere natural laws before he could do so according to the laws of reason." The river separates the two realms until the serpent sacrifices itself. The ferryman wants to be rewarded by every wanderer with the fruits of the earth; the state and society impose real duties on man; they can no more use the phrase-like chatter of false prophets and people who merely pay with words than the ferryman can use the gold pieces of the will-o'-the-wisps. The old woman confesses herself a debtor to the river and clings to it with her body; her form disappears because she is a debtor. Thus the individual confesses himself a debtor to the state; he is absorbed in the state, surrenders a part of his self to it. As long as man is not at such a height that he acts freely out of himself morally, he must renounce to determine a part of his self of his own accord; he must commit himself to the state.

[ 15 ] The lamp of the old has the property of shining only where another light is already present. We must remember the saying of an old mystic repeated by Goethe: "If the eye were not sunny, how could we see the light? If God's own power did not live in us, how could the divine delight us?" Just as the lamp does not shine in the dark, so the light of truth and knowledge does not shine for those who do not have the appropriate organs, the inner light, to meet it. But it is this light of wisdom that leads man to his goal; it brings him to establish the harmony of his instincts. This light allows him to recognize the laws of things. What for him is dead matter is transformed through knowledge into a living thing that is transparent to our spirit. The world stands differently before him who has recognized it than before him who lives without knowledge. The transformation that all things undergo for our spirit when they are illuminated by the light of knowledge is symbolized by the transformation that things undergo through the light of the lamp. This light transforms stones into gold, wood into silver and dead animals into precious stones.

[ 16 ] Through the sacrifice of the serpent, the realm of the fourth king, who chaotically carried gold, silver and ore, comes to an end. The harmonious interaction of the three metals that make up the other three kings begins. Through the awakening of the ideal man, the forces of the soul cease to work chaotically and one-sidedly, they achieve perfect harmony. The will-o'-the-wisps lick up the gold of the fourth king. Once the humane state has been reached, the unproductive spirits have the business of scientifically processing the past, in which the imperfect still prevailed, as history. The figure of the pug also sheds light on the nature of the will-o'-the-wisps. They throw him their gold and he dies from eating it. Thus perishes he to whom false prophets and sophists teach their indigestible doctrines.

[ 17 ] The temple is erected on the river in which the marriage of the young man with the beautiful lily takes place. The free society will grow out of the coercive state, in which everyone can abandon himself to his inclinations, because they only work in the sense that noble coexistence of people is possible. Then man will no longer experience the satisfying state only in moments, he will no longer seek to attain it by revolutionary force, it will be present for him in every moment. At the end of the fairy tale we find the poetic image for this truth: "The bridge is built; all the people continually cross over and over, to this day the bridge teems with wanderers, and the temple is the most visited on the whole earth."

[ 18 ] If one accepts this basis of interpretation, then every event, every person in the fairy tale is self-explanatory. Take the hawk, for example. It catches the sun's rays in order to reflect them back to the earth before the sun itself is able to send its light directly onto the earth. In this way, human intuition can also predict the events of a not-too-distant future. In the servants of the beautiful lily one can see representatives of those happily inclined human beings to whom the harmony of sensuality and reason is given by their nature. They will live on into the new realm without noticing the transition, just as the servants slumber during the moment of transformation. - The fact that the symbol of brute force, the giant, finally plays a role as an hour hand, I would like to interpret as meaning that unreason can also fill its place in the workings of the world, if it is not used for activities that befit the free human spirit, but is brought to unfold its power within strict natural regularity.

[ 19 ] So Goethe was inspired by Schiller to express his ethical creed in his own poetic way, as Schiller himself did in a different way in the "Aesthetic Letters". In the letter in which he announces the receipt of the manuscript, Schiller refers to the discussions that took place about these ideas in the period in question: "The "fairy tale" is colorful and funny enough, and I find the idea you once mentioned: "the mutual assistance of forces and the rejection of each other, quite well executed."

• 1. In my lectures I have often been asked by listeners whether the "Fairy Tale" is included in the Goethe editions. I therefore expressly note that it is included in every Goethe edition and that it forms the conclusion of the stories "Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten".

Anthroposophy and Threefolding: Their Nature and Their Defense

Dear attendees! It has not been my custom to say a special word of thanks after greetings. Today I want to do it because I really thank you very much for this greeting in the interest of the matter. Anyone who is attached to the matter I represent here may also express his thanks when he sees that it has retained its old sympathies despite the attacks it has suffered here. For almost two decades I have been giving lectures here in Stuttgart every year on the anthroposophical worldview, and in these lectures everything has been mentioned that makes it possible to form an opinion about the anthroposophical movement. More recently, I have also spoken about things that are more loosely connected with what I represent as the anthroposophical worldview: the so-called threefold social order. And I do not believe that any of the words I have spoken in the latter context have in any way violated the spirit and content of what, as I said, I have been advocating for almost two decades as an anthroposophical worldview.

Today, however, I face the outside world as if before a caricature of what I myself have to describe as the anthroposophical worldview. From all sides, I am confronted with descriptions of what this anthroposophical worldview is supposed to be. I must confess that most of these descriptions are such that I do not recognize the picture of the anthroposophical world view that I have drawn here. Everything seems so alien to me, just as what has been said in numerous personal attacks from all sides seems alien to me. It will therefore be forgiven if today I depart from the custom I have otherwise almost always observed here of speaking purely impersonally about the anthroposophical world view, and that I also take into account in a few places the personal attacks that have been made against me. But I promise you that I will not go into these things any further than they are related to the matter in hand in any direction.

First of all, dear ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the origin and starting point of the anthroposophical world view. This origin and starting point lies entirely in the scientific world view of modern times. Anyone who goes through the somewhat long series of my writings will be able to see that my starting point never lies in any religious problems, even though, of course, anthroposophy, by its very nature, as we shall see, must lead to religious feeling and religious views. The starting point was not religious views, the starting point was the scientific world view that I grew into in my younger years. Anyone who grows into this scientific worldview of the present day will initially feel an extraordinary respect for what science has achieved in modern times, and above all, they will gain an even greater respect for both the experimental and observational methods of scientific research and for the training in thinking and methodical schooling that contemporary science can introduce to people. And I must confess that, for me, since I entered the natural sciences, the most valuable thing about them was this training of thought, this conscientious discipline of thinking and researching. And more than from individual results of natural science, I have always started from what natural science research brings up in you as a training in thinking. But in doing so, one thing became clearer and clearer to me. When I — and I believe that what I am about to say is sufficiently clear from my 'Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings', which appeared in the 1880s — when I repeatedly looked at what lives in the human soul in terms of yearning for the spiritual world, what views of a spiritual world live in the human soul, then the fundamental question arose for me: How can that which undoubtedly forms the great triumph of modern times, scientific research, be reconciled with these longings, with these justified impulses of the human soul?

Dear attendees! This question has brought me together with personalities in particular who, familiar with the scientific way of thinking of modern times, led a tragic inner life of the soul in dealing with the same question. An example: In my early youth, I encountered a person who, I might say, was completely infiltrated by the scientific way of thinking - a way of thinking that is fully justified in its field and points to the origin of our planet Earth, our entire world system, as a purely material primeval nebula, through whose inner forces all being has gradually formed, ultimately including man. But in man, so this personality said to himself, the processes of this concentrated nebula world took on very special forms; ideals arise in man, religious convictions, the longing arises in man to know something about that which lies beyond birth and death, because a life that only covers the period between birth and death seems so meaningless. But everything that appears in the so-called life of the soul in a human being is, as this personality put it, just smoke and fog, something that arises like a haze from what alone can be scientifically accepted. And the mental life of this personality was tragic, for it said to itself: It must be a mere deception, a mere illusion, what emerges from material life and presents itself to man as a mirage.

One may find such a way of thinking more or less justified, more or less opposed, it was there in numerous cases, and it was there in such personalities, for whom it was in vain to object: Yes, natural science on the one hand is an exact science, on the other hand the world of faith is the subjective world. Our ideals arise from this subjective world, our religious convictions arise from this subjective world. One must know the one, believe the other. There were just so many such personalities who could not do this, who said to themselves: If it is the case that the human being has arisen from what science presents to us, then ethical ideals and religious convictions are illusions. I could cite many examples along these lines. But what I want to say with it is sufficiently indicated. And so the question arose for me more and more out of life itself: Is there not a possibility, between what lives inside of man in terms of spiritual aspirations and what natural science has established, is there not a connection in between, is there not a bridge from one to the other?

And now, what offered me above all the possibility of finding such a bridge, that was not, at first, looking at inner, subjective visions; that had become clear to me from the beginning. No matter how convincingly or intensely subjective visions may present themselves to the soul, one has no right to accept them as objective on account of their subjective appearance, if one is not in a position to build a bridge from the scientifically established to the spiritual world. I have already tried to build this bridge in my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings”. I then devoted special attention to this in the elaboration of my small work “Truth and Science” and my larger book “The Philosophy of Freedom”.

It is quite certain that if the scientific world view alone is right, then we as human beings are the works of a necessity, then the idea of freedom is impossible, then even in this so convincing experience of our inner life, the fact that we have free will seems to stand only as a deception before our soul. And so for me the question of the justification of freedom became one of those problems, one of those riddles that occupied me intensely as a young man, and I saw that it is impossible to find a foundation for the question of freedom without a foundation for all of philosophical thinking. That was therefore the task I set myself at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s: to find a foundation for philosophical thinking. I first put aside everything that might arise to me as visions of a spiritual world. Above all, I wanted to have a secure philosophical foundation that was in harmony with the scientific research of modern times. And starting from this point of view, I examined above all the nature of human thinking. I tried all possible ways of arriving at the answer to the question: What is human thinking essentially according to its nature?

Anyone who reads my “Philosophy of Freedom” will find how these paths to fathoming the nature of human thinking were sought. And for me it turned out that only someone who sees something in the highest expressions of this thinking that takes place independently of our physicality, of our bodily organization, can understand human thinking correctly. And I believe I succeeded in demonstrating that the processes of pure thinking in man take place independently of bodily processes. In bodily processes, natural necessities prevail. What emerges from these bodily processes in the way of dark instincts, will impulses and so on is, in a certain respect, determined by natural necessity. What a person accomplishes in his thinking ultimately turns out to be a process that takes place independently of the physical organization of the person. And I believe that through this “Philosophy of Freedom” nothing less has emerged than the supersensible nature of human thinking. And once this supersensible nature of human thinking had been recognized, then the proof was provided that in the most ordinary everyday life, when man rises to real thinking, through which he is determined by nothing other than the motives of thinking itself, then he has a supersensible element in this thinking. If he then directs his life by this thinking, develops himself in this way, is educated in this way, that he goes beyond the motives of his physical organization, beyond drives, emotions, instincts, and bases his actions on motives of pure thinking, then he may be called a free being. To explain the connection between supersensible pure thinking and freedom was my task at that time.

One can stop at this point and pursue such a train of thought merely in theory. But if such a train of thought is not pursued merely in theory, but becomes a fulfillment of one's whole life, if one sees in it a revelation of human nature itself, then one pursues it not merely in theory, but in practice. What is this practical pursuit? Well, once one has grasped the supersensible nature of thinking, one learns to recognize that the human being is capable of becoming independent of his bodily organization in a certain activity. One can now try whether, in addition to pure thinking, the human being is also capable of developing an activity that is modeled on this pure thinking. Anyone who calls the method of research that I use to underpin my anthroposophical spiritual science clairvoyance must also call ordinary pure thinking, which flows from everyday life into human consciousness and into human action, clairvoyance. I myself see no qualitative difference between pure thinking and what I call clairvoyance. My view is that through the process of pure thinking, man can first develop a practice of how to become independent of one's physical organization in one's inner processes, how to accomplish something in pure thinking in which the body has no part. In 1911, at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna, I explained in a very philosophical way that pure thinking is something that is carried out in man without the physical organization having any part in it. And here, in a large number of lectures, I have confirmed this from the most diverse points of view.

But then, when one knows the process by which one arrives at such pure thinking, something can be developed through what true, deeper philosophy gives, which I then presented in the most diverse ways as a method of knowledge for the higher worlds in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Secret Science”. Just as pure thinking ultimately emerges from the ordinary everyday activities of the human soul, for which no special training is needed, so, by further developing this process, one can arrive at what I have called in the above-mentioned book and in the second part of my “Occult Science” the stages of higher knowledge — that is, imagination, inspiration, intuition. What is expressed in pure thinking becomes our own simply by virtue of being born; it is inherited by us in our present stage of human development. That which, in accordance with the pattern of pure thinking, can appear as imagination, inspiration, or intuition, must likewise be cultivated in the adult, just as certain abilities are cultivated naturally in the child.

If some people find it astonishing, some paradoxical, and some even curious, what I describe as methods in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then it must be clear that when a person tries to develop an inner life within himself, he needs something other than what is available in everyday life. Therefore, other terms are needed. Anyone who penetrates the meaning of these terms without being malicious from the outset will see that the only intention of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is to show people how to develop certain abilities that are latent, that is, dormant, in every soul: the ability to have certain images present in consciousness. The fact of the matter is that through those methods – which I will not describe again today, I have described them here very often – that through those methods, which I have described in the books mentioned, the human being makes himself capable not only of attaining such abstract concepts as are contained in pure thinking, but that he makes himself capable of presenting to his soul fully substantial, if I may use the expression, more saturated contents of consciousness, which are as full of content as otherwise only sensual impressions. What is called for here is essentially a strengthening of ordinary thinking power, and if one wishes to call it clairvoyant power, so be it. Certain exercises must be done to develop such abilities, just as certain exercises must be done by the child to develop certain abilities.

Professor Wilhelm Bruhn, who lectured on anthroposophy and related subjects in Kiel for a semester, has observed that the preparations to be made in order to arrive at such imaginative and then at an inspired knowledge are, in a certain respect, of an ethical nature, that certain ethical forces must be applied, must be trained if man is to penetrate to the knowledge of the higher worlds. And this Wilhelm Bruhn, who is an opponent of the anthroposophical world view in the strongest possible terms, emphasizes the ethical seriousness of these preparations, which is unmistakable. Bruhn alone – and I may well base myself on him here precisely because in his small work, which appeared in the collection 'Aus Natur und Geisteswelt' (From Nature and the Spiritual World), he has a kind of compendium of everything that can be said against anthroposophy – he particularly asserts that by encouraging people to develop their inner soul abilities, I am in fact leading them to initially have pictorial representations that are expressed in colors, lines or figures. This is one of the gross misunderstandings that must be corrected if Anthroposophy is not to be completely misunderstood.

In my “Theosophy” I expressly pointed out what is important here. I said: It is not important that the one who, as a spiritual researcher, seeks the way into the higher worlds, sees exactly the same thing that is described in the sensual life as yellow and red, as pointed or blunt, but rather, said: the person who has a somewhat finer perception does not simply gaze at yellow, at green, at red, but has an inner experience of the yellow, of the green, of the red. You can read about these interesting inner experiences of colors in Goethe's Theory of Colors in the chapter “Sensual-moral Effect of Colors.” When you have this experience, this particular specific experience of yellow, green, red, blue, then you know something that is purely spiritual. And you get this experience when you rise to imaginative knowledge. By soaring to imaginative knowledge, one has, as I say in my Theosophy, an experience such as one has with yellow, an experience such as one has with blue; the experience is a purely soul process. If one wants to have designations for it, then one expresses oneself in such a way that one experiences something that is illustrated by yellow, by blue, and one speaks just as little of this color yellow and blue as one speaks of a reality, as one, when one draws a triangle or a square on the blackboard, which is to depict something, confuses this triangle or square with the reality that is to be depicted.

Everything that is striven for in this anthroposophical schooling is striven for in full consciousness; nothing unconscious or subconscious prevails in it. Everything is striven for in such a way that one emulates those inner soul processes that one has acquired through mathematical schooling. In such consciousness, in such inner development of the will, one strives for that which is to lead up into the higher worlds. One simply comes to a visualization that one depicts through colors. And when one has progressed so far in a certain way that one can have a new world, a completely new world before oneself, a world that one is urged to represent by colors or by other sensualizations, then one is ripe to advance to inspired knowledge. When one develops the element of love, which is present even in ordinary life, to its highest expression as an inner soul power, then one is given the opportunity not only to have such images arising in one's consciousness, but also to be able to remove them from one's consciousness. One is not a slave to these images, nor is one a mere psychic; one is in full command of them. But just as one knows when one puts one's finger on a hot iron that one is not just dealing with the idea of the hot, but with a reality, as one can only state this through life, through the context of life, it turns out that what one experiences inwardly in this way in imaginative experience refers to an objectively spiritual reality. And if one develops the ability to love in the appropriate way, then one comes to erase these images from one's consciousness, so to speak, and then one has spiritual substance in one's pure, inner experience.

This spiritual essence, as far as it is accessible to me, I have described in my books, and at the same time I have followed the method that on the one hand, through books like my “Theosophy” and my “Secret Science”, I have described what arises from such research. And on the other hand, in such a book and in some other books, such as 'How to Know Higher Worlds', I have described exactly the path by which every human being can come to such knowledge. And I have expressly made it clear that every person can come to such realizations; but I have also made it clear that the one who handles the inner essence of pure thinking does not need schooling of the mind, but he can, when the knowledge gained by such schooling of the mind is communicated to him and he receives it without prejudice, he can receive it inwardly as a conviction, just as he receives what astronomy gives, without becoming an astronomer himself.

This, esteemed attendees, is the method for entering the spiritual world. One enters the spiritual world as into a reality, which one then knows to be a reality as that which is handed down to us by science. If we now turn back to the method of natural science, we say to ourselves: After all, we do not really apply any other method, any other inner soul activity, to the supersensible world than the one we have already applied in natural science, but adapted to things outside ourselves that can be perceived by the senses. Yes, one finally realizes that natural science has become great precisely because, I would say, the same inner training of thought was used in the first stage, which can then be applied to supersensible knowledge.

That is why I said that what interested me most about science was what emerged from it as a training in thinking. I have wrestled with such problems as those presented by Du Bois-Reymond in his “Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis” (The Limits of Natural Knowledge), where he comes to the conclusion that one can only arrive at the supersensible by going beyond science. But I have seen that one can only make such a statement as Du Bois-Reymond does here if one believes that the way in which one masters scientific facts, brings them into laws, is not already dominated by thinking, which is similar to the supersensible capacity for knowledge.

As for how the world judges such things, there are only a few hints. I must start by saying that Wilhelm Bruhn fundamentally misunderstands much of anthroposophy. He reproaches me, for example, with offering nothing more than a kind of filtered sensuality in supersensible knowledge. What I say in the passages quoted in my Theosophy and what I say in my Occult Science cannot be applied to words such as Bruhn utters. He says:

In any case, Steiner also teaches a sufficient knowledge of reality in some sensory form.

No, I have never taught that. Every such statement as Bruhn's is simply a misunderstanding of what I have always said as the most essential thing. When someone misunderstands so thoroughly, it seems understandable that he should make the strange statement: 'What I am giving as exercises to get up into the supersensible worlds is exactly the same as the spiritual exercises that Jesuit pupils have to do. Now, yet another Protestant theologian has found a similarity between what I write in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and the Jesuit spiritual exercises. But a Catholic theologian, Canon Laun, firmly rejects this and says that anyone who claims that my exercises are similar to those of the Jesuits does not know the exercises of the Jesuits.

Dear attendees! In this case, I must absolutely agree with Canon Laun, even though I do not agree with him on anything else, but what I have now explained to you in principle has truly nothing to do with the Jesuit retreats. No wonder that when something is misunderstood in the way I have indicated, people are led to believe that I am describing the content of the spiritual world as a series of cinematic images – that is how Bruhn expresses himself. Now, it is true that Whoever rises to the spiritual world, as I have described, also grasps his own spiritual soul, grasps this spiritual soul as it is as eternal. Through contemplation, he penetrates the riddles of death and immortality, for whom a scientific path to the eternal forces of that which lives in man reveals itself.

But if we consider the temporal forces that live in man between birth and death, what do we find? Well, we do not just have a consciousness of the moment. In our ordinary life, we look back to a very early point in our childhood, and we know that the human soul would be ill if one could not look back to this point in childhood in a continuous stream of memory. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, fundamentally, we are nothing more at this moment than what we have become through our experiences, which can be brought up again through the memory stream. If one delves into one's temporal existence between birth and the present moment and reveals to oneself, not cinematically but in inner experience, the recent past of one's own self, then, if one sees through this process in the right way, it will no longer wonderful that if you now familiarize yourself with the eternal, with the immortality of the soul, which was present in all processes that preceded even our formation on earth, you can also familiarize yourself with what this eternal part of the soul has experienced. If you familiarize yourself with what the soul has experienced eternally, then you have the cosmic environment around you, just as you have your personal environment around you through ordinary memory. This supersensible ability to read is in the so-called Akashic Chronicle, that is, in what one surveys through the experiences of the soul in relation to the soul's eternal; it is nothing other than that the soul these experiences are presented and revealed, so that one's ordinary memory, which otherwise reaches back to birth – or at least to a point near birth – is expanded to cosmic vision.

That, my dear audience, people who listen to ordinary mystics cannot see through in its true essence. These ordinary mystics usually take what has been seen by others and embellish it with all kinds of nebulous things. And in this way, what I would like to call the justified rejection or even the justified caution towards everything that appears as spiritual-scientific results has also come about. Nebulous mystics have brought too much all kinds of number symbolism and the like to that which is observed just as accurately, only by applying the developed soul abilities of man, as for example in physics the rainbow or the seven-color spectrum. The true spiritual researcher, when speaking of the sevenfold human being, can only speak as one speaks of the seven-coloured rainbow, and he means nothing mysterious by it, any more than the physicist means anything mysterious when he speaks of the seven-coloured spectrum. But then come the mystics, the nebulous ones, who attach all kinds of stuff to these things; as a result, much of honest spiritual research has been discredited. And if one is forced to use the number seven or the number nine somewhere, it is resented.

You see, Bruhn, as I said, provided the compendium for the opposition. Bruhn, the Kiel professor, finds a kind of mythology in what I present and finds, affirms what he says about mythology by the fact that I have to use such numbers as 7 and 9 and the like. I find this strange in a gentleman who, for his part, admits: there is intuitive knowledge, there are intuitive truths, supersensible truths – and who now lists what he calls supersensible truths in this way, and he numbers them : 1. one's own ego, 2. the ego of others, 3. the existence of things in space, 4. events in time, 5. beauty, 6. morality, 7. the divine.

Yes, my dear audience, it does not occur to me to accuse Mr. Bruhn of some nebulous number mysticism just because he mentions seven truths. However, these truths are, I would say, very meager. And even though he admits that the content of these seven truths was attained intuitively, that is, in a way that signifies a purely inner vision, he must also admit the possibility that this path, which leads to these simple, meager truths, can perhaps be developed as a very exact path like the mathematical one, and that one can then also come to other, richer, more substantial truths. Instead, such seven truths are nailed up, and what is basically drawn from the same sources – only after these sources have first been sought in the right way – is called mythology.

In a peculiar way, one relates to what appears here as an anthroposophical worldview. Recently, a newspaper here turned to an authority so that this authority, which belongs to a neighboring university, would give an authoritative judgment on anthroposophy. Now, among the many things – and you really can't read them all – that now appear to be opposed, I just got this article and read it. I came across a passage where the author objects to my statement about supersensible facts and supersensible beings. He says that in my spiritual realm, supersensible beings move just as tables and chairs move in the physical realm! Now, ladies and gentlemen, just imagine the logic that leads to saying that tables and chairs move by themselves in physical space. I am aware of states of human life in which there is a subjective appearance of tables and chairs moving by themselves, but I do not believe that the good theologian meant to refer to such a state. Now, Bruhn also betrays himself through a similar kind of logic, but I would like to say explicitly, just so that I am not misunderstood, that the earnest way in which he approaches anthroposophy is thoroughly commendable. You have to take Bruhn seriously, so I take him seriously. But now he also says that I am clinging to the gross-sensual and that I only present the supersensible, the spiritual, as a sensual, which is why one has to object that one does not get closer to the unknown spiritual through such a method. You get just as little close to this unknown spiritual as a mountaineer – so says Bruhn – who moves away from the earth and climbs up a mountain; he may move away from what is below, but the sky is still just as far above him.

Now, my dear audience, the sky that arches above us is, as is well known, not there at all; one looks out into the infinite space of the universe. One can see from the sensualizations that these people give when they want to hit something that comes from spiritual science that their logic is in a strange way ordered. And so I would like to point out right away that it is said that in the account I give of the course of the world through supersensible knowledge, one could understand Christ in the same way as any other particularly distinguished personality, such as Socrates, Plato or Buddha. — This is simply an objective untruth compared to what I have presented in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. There I showed how everything in the pre-Christian era was directed towards the mystery of Golgotha, but how nothing in the pre-Christian era can be compared with what appears in the being of Christ Jesus. I have characterized it concretely in the course of spiritual history, and I have further shown how everything that has happened since the mystery of Golgotha is thoroughly impelled by this event. I have expressly shown that anthroposophy leads to the placing of this event of Golgotha in the center of the becoming of the earth. But this is what must be taken into account, what must not and should not be criticized by simply applying quite different, alien thoughts to the same.

And so a critic like Bruhn also finds that what I present as supersensible intuitions I actually only get through my thoughts operating in some way unknown to me, that I construct them out of thoughts without knowing, however, that what then becomes an image only proceeds in the unconscious, that thus, so to speak, the intuitions are only ideas after all. In his essay on Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Bruhn says that Schiller had already objected to Goethe's Urpflanze, saying that Goethe's image of the Urpflanze was an idea and not a vision. In my books and lectures, I have often described how Goethe defended himself against Schiller's statement, and Bruhn says that I must accept the same objection. Well, I am happy to do so! But I would like to point out that such an objection arises from the fact that the objector does not recognize how imaginative knowledge, how beholding, rises from the abstract idea to something more saturated, to something more fully substantial, and only in this way can that which is still a formal element in the abstract become a visualization of higher spiritual realities.

If one misunderstands in such a way what is expressed by the spiritual science meant here, then one can also very easily come to the conclusion that this spiritual science wants to be a substitute for religion. And then one says, as Bruhn has often said, that religion must not be something that one grasps in clear recognition, but that religion must be something irrational. Bruhn expresses it, I admit, very beautifully. He says it should be a blissful enjoyment as a closeness to God and a homesickness as a distance from God. It should not be a supersensible knowledge, but it should be a touch of the divine.

Now, the error lies in the fact that anthroposophy does not want to be a substitute for religion. Religion is formed, however, through a personal relationship with the founder of the religion. This personal relationship to the founder of the religion is irrational, just as, on a smaller scale, every relationship we have with any human being is irrational. The relationship we have with any human being is something we naturally refrain from reducing to any kind of idea, however supersensible, because we would accept any tittle-tattle from him. Thus the relationship one has to the Christ Jesus is something irrational, something that should not be conceptualized, not even in supersensible concepts, but should become a fact in the inner, fully human experience alone. On the other hand, especially for those who have knowledge of nature, there is the necessity to strive for supersensible knowledge in order to have the possibility of penetrating to the soul and spiritual as something real. Once one is familiar with supersensible knowledge, one will seek to find through this supersensible knowledge that which is most valuable to one in the world. And so many people have the urge to understand that which they have as an irrational nature, which they blissfully enjoy as being close to God, which they feel homesick for as being far from God, in terms of its historical and cosmic reality. It can be understood in a philological way; this has been achieved through external science. It can also be approached through supersensible knowledge; this has been achieved through anthroposophy. The aim is not to shake people out of their irrational relationship with religion, but to seek a path of knowledge to Christ Jesus. The human being who needs it - and many people already need it today, and more and more will need it - must, on the one hand, form his view of the world of the senses and of the spirit, and on the other hand, of that which has become religiously valuable to him, in order to then find harmony between the two.

This is what tears the soul apart if one is not able to bring one's knowledge to what has become religiously valuable to one. Anthroposophy is not intended to found a religion. Anthroposophy is neither a sect nor the founding of a religion, but rather the realization of the supersensible. And since that which has embodied itself through Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha is a supersensible being, and since the event of Golgotha itself is a process in which the supersensible lives, there must be a path from supersensible knowledge to this Mystery of Golgotha. The aim is not to create a substitute for religion, but to expand our knowledge so that we can also understand what we experience religiously. This does not make religious experience more superficial, nor does it strip religious experience of its piety. Rather, it allows us to turn our inner gaze to what is religiously valuable to us in the mystery of Golgotha through contemplation, with firm inner strength.

Dearly beloved attendees, I can only give examples of what I have to say about the nature of spiritual science, of anthroposophy, and what I have to say in its defense. But just as the points I have touched on, others could be presented here if I were able to give many lectures and did not have to content myself with one lecture. Therefore, I will now move on to what has been added in recent years to what I have previously presented here over many years as the anthroposophical worldview: the idea of social threefolding.

The fact that this social threefolding exists at all can be traced back to the fact that a number of people came to me during the sad days of the war and afterwards and wanted to know my thoughts on how social life could progress from these tragic events of the war. I was asked, people came to me, ladies and gentlemen. I mention this explicitly for the reason that it is far too little seen, because usually things are presented as if I were some kind of fanatical agitator who would forcefully bring things to people. I have never done anything else in the anthroposophical worldview, except give lectures, dear attendees. I appealed to those people who wanted to come to these lectures; they came – whether they were from the aristocracy or the proletariat, they were always equally welcome to me. And those who then became my so-called followers became so because they heard me. I did not go after anyone – I would not say such a thing if I were not compelled to do so. And if anyone presents these things as if I, as a fanatical agitator, had followed one person one time and another person another time, then it must be said that I have never followed anyone with any idea. The social threefolding is even used today to cast suspicion on that aspect of the anthroposophical world view from which it actually draws its very best roots. And here I would like to come back to Bruhn, who at least is to be taken more seriously than other critics.

Bruhn says: No matter how much he may have to fight it, something like anthroposophy has its origin in the “bankruptcy of our intellectual culture”. One has to get out of this intellectual culture, and he attributes to me that I did not strive to get out of this intellectual culture in the same way as those whom I 97 as the nebulous Theosophists, but that I had gone through Goethe and Haeckel, had struggled through German idealism, that I was “occidentally” oriented, that the roots of my view would rest in “western-Germanic culture” and in “scientific training.

I am not saying this out of immodesty – you can read it in Bruhn's small writing, and you will find that this can be important to me in the face of the various hostilities that are now coming from all sides. As a young man, I was among those who, in Austria in the 1880s, had to fight a difficult battle in defense of Germanness against the other nationalities. I edited the Viennese “Deutsche Wochenschrift” for a short time. I got to know all the difficult struggles that one had to go through, especially in Austria, if one wanted to make the German character and German abilities, which are considered valuable for humanity, part of the content of the whole of human culture.

Dear attendees, I only refer to such small episodes in a spirit of urgency: when I was once asked to speak at a Bismarck Commers in Weimar, where I was in the 1890s, I concluded with the words of our Austrian poet Robert Hamerling – one only needs to know his works to know that his Germanness could not be doubted – I concluded at the time, when I spoke in Weimar, in Germany, as an Austrian at the Bismarck Commers, with the words of Hamerling: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland!”

Dearly beloved, in all my life I have never for a moment deviated from this view. And those who approached me in 1918 to ask me what Anthroposophy thought about how to proceed from there knew full well that my answer was rooted in German spirituality. I have – I make no boast of this, but in the face of the fierce attacks it must be said – I have given lectures from Bergen to Palermo, from Paris to Helsinki; I have given them everywhere in German. In May 1914 – please note the date – I gave a public lecture in Paris in German, based on German spirituality, not to a German colony but to the French. Every sentence had to be translated afterwards.

Now, out of the same spirit, what was then called the “threefold social order” has emerged. I would like to start by quoting something, again from an opponent, so that one can see how opponents think about the threefold order, which actually does not even belong to the most serious ones, because they overlook something, although they are nevertheless trained in thinking, as for example the Jena professor Rein. To begin with, he is preaching to the converted when he says: All ideas are sterile when the concept of humanity plays a decisive role in them. I quite agree, because the abstract, nebulous, mystical concept of humanity makes no sense. Humanity consists of people, of nations, and anyone who wants to work for humanity must, of course, move out of the national and into the general human. How one can do that, everyone who has any impartiality at all should admit that one can have a definite opinion based on one's own assumptions. And now Professor Rein goes on to say that the state cannot be overcome without further ado, because the state has already developed to such an extent among us Germans that one cannot go back to earlier conditions. Again, I agree! Yes, one can even completely agree with what Rein now cites as individual state demands. He says: The state must, first of all, be responsible for the care of art and science, morality and religion. Secondly, it must advocate the equalization and reconciliation of contradictions, the cooperation of the estates and professions, of employees and employers. All this, says Rein, must work together in the state as the three limbs work together in the human organism, of which Rein says - in a discussion of threefolding - that it is also threefold.

Now, just to make it clear how the three limbs should work together in the threefold social organism, I used the comparison with the threefold human being. It never occurred to me to speak of a “tripartite division”. Just as one cannot have the head separately from the human being, one cannot have the circulatory system separately, one cannot have the metabolic system separately, so one cannot have spiritual life, economic life and legal life separately in the social organism. Just as the blood supplies everything in the human organism, so within the state there are impulses that supply everything in all three limbs. And the opinion was that the three limbs of the social organism – spiritual life, legal life, economic life – work together in the right way when they exist in relative independence, just as the three limbs of the human organism are characterized by relative independence.

What, for example, does someone like Professor Rein want, who admits all this but then says that he must nevertheless fight the threefold order? He says, for example, that the state cannot be creative, but only regulatory and controlling. So what does he demand for spiritual life? A cultural parliament! And Professor Rein imagines this cultural parliament to consist of school chambers, state school chambers and so on; he imagines it to a certain extent as self-governing. And if I examine objectively how this cultural parliament of Professor Rein differs from what I have stated as the self-government of the spiritual member of the social organism, I find no difference other than that Professor Rein - and and this is open to discussion - wants to have the parents elected to his cultural parliament, but I would like to hand over the self-administration to those who are experts in this field, to the teachers and educators themselves. I do not want a cultural parliament, but something that arises without parliamentary chatter as a proper administrative organism made up of experts.

It is indeed strange that people like Professor Rein should fight against the threefold order. I really must ask myself why Professor Rein fights against the threefold order and describes it as dangerous to the state. Well, one may well ask why he does so. For in the same article in which he does so, he says: We Germans have every need to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. – So says Professor Rein, and then he says: Threefolding, rightly conceived, shows the way in which this can be done – namely, to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. And further: This way will be especially welcome to those who aim to eliminate the political parties, together with parliamentarism, which they repeatedly present as a corrupting institution.

I asked: What does Professor Rein want more than for threefolding to fulfill this ideal task of his? I cannot find any reason why he opposes it, since he says that, properly understood, threefolding points the way for what he wants to happen. I cannot find any other explanation than the one that emerges from a few words of Professor Rein: He says that he has explained his understanding of this threefold order in the new edition of his “Ethics”, which will be published soon. I am very interested to see when this threefold division appears in his Ethics, but I could not help speaking of this threefold division earlier, since I was asked about it earlier. And it seems to me that gentlemen like Rein are only angry because I forestalled them. I cannot help that.

Now, there is one more point I must mention: I have spoken here again today - and as I said, for 15 to 16 years - about supersensible knowledge. I have not only spoken of these supersensible insights as something that is, so to speak, shot from a pistol, but I have spoken of them in such a way that I have given precise details of the paths by which one comes to such insights. And with that, everyone is given the opportunity to verify it. Anyone who wants to go this way can come to the verification. And it is therefore quite unjustified when, today, out of the thought habits of the present — the thought habits that I have to fight against in many respects — the demand arises that what I call clairvoyant knowledge should be examined in a different way than the way I have indicated. I have said in my book “Theosophy”: For everything that I present in this book, I advocate that it be presented as a fact to me, as external sensory facts are. The one who has written them down does not want to present anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to how an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

Dear attendees, through such a method, the way is to be found to create a bridge from one human inner being to another. Above all, a pedagogical path is to be sought, the pedagogical path on which we base our teaching at the Freie Waldorfschule, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, the path without which a truly free spiritual life in the three-part social organism is not possible. We must seek such a path for the child too. But such a path is far removed from today's materialistic age; it is so far removed that it seeks the path to the child in a completely different way. And this has given rise to a strange psychology of the soul, which, according to many people, should also find its way into education. Because it is no longer possible to find the way to the child's soul through inner experience, the child is to be subjected to all kinds of procedures according to the methods of experimental psychology, whereby one determines what abilities the child has, for example, from the speed with which it absorbs certain words or with which it forgets words — quite externally, as if one were experimenting on an object because one can no longer do it inwardly. This examination of abilities is applied in a particular way in that area of Europe that has reached the extreme development of social materialism in social terms; this principle of examining children externally - as one examines external apparatus - is applied in a particular way in Bolshevik Russia. This has already been officially introduced there as a method of testing children's abilities – basically a terrible procedure, an indictment of the ability of the human soul to build a bridge to a person's mental abilities. And it is quite characteristic that it is precisely Bolshevism, this destructive worldview that destroys everything human, that is advancing to this pedagogical practice.

Now there are certain people who would like to apply this method to spiritual vision as well. They demand that I or one of my students should submit to such tests as one examines external apparatus. My dear audience, I have presented to humanity for decades what is created through my methods. I have indicated the methods by which it can be tested. I have shown how people who think of such tests, such as Professor Dessoir, who now even wants to form a society for such tests, approaches the anthroposophical spiritual science that I mean. I have shown in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' how he has presented objective untruth about objective untruth about anthroposophy. Well, anyone who wants to test any kind of fortune teller, card reader or sorcerer may demand such methods. I have never presented fortune telling, sorcery or such so-called soul abilities or clairvoyance, which Professor Dessoir or Professor Oesterreich or similar people speak of, who might also want to test mathematical abilities in such an external way. I can only say: anyone who demands such tests does not understand the slightest thing about what lives in anthroposophical spiritual science. And it would not occur to me to engage in what arises from a Bolshevist attitude. No, my dear audience, people may behave as German national as they like – but they shall be recognized by their fruits! If they make such demands as these, then it is not worth discussing their Germanness with them, and I will not engage in any further discussion. I have given my answer.

Now I come to something else. And there I would have to demand that the gentleman who asked the question, “What evidence can you give for your clairvoyant abilities?” First explain who “Mr. Winter” was, by whom I was supposedly converted to anthroposophy in 1900, before he acquires the right to ask me such questions. Dear attendees, the gentleman who wants to ask me questions today once spun his audience a yarn about how I was converted to anthroposophy by lectures given by a “Mr. Winter” in Berlin in 1900. He has probably read as closely as one reads when one only reads the first words of my writing about these winter lectures. In fact, I myself gave these lectures in Berlin in the winter of 1900/1901, through which I am said to have been converted. These, my winter lectures, became “Mr. Winter's” lectures in this gentleman's mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I further demand that my Jewishness not be mentioned again and again in any insidious allusion, after I have spoken here in sufficient detail about my family tree. And I further demand that I not be slandered by saying that I worked under the tutelage of Mr. Liebknecht. What I experienced at the beginning of this century, however, is that I was thrown out of the proletarian schools where I taught because of my representation of a spiritual conception of history by the satellites of old Liebknecht; I was thrown out of the workers' training schools because I never bought into [the materialist conception of history] and the like.

And I demand that the claim of any kind of suggestive influence or even of post-hypnotic suggestion, as it has been raised by this side, be retracted. And I further demand that the first thing to be done is to clarify what has been stated by this side about my relationship with the late Chief of Staff, Field Marshal von Moltke. My dear audience, I have no need to entertain you this evening with these matters, but I do want to say something about some of the things that have been said here. I have, as I have already said this evening, never followed anyone. I never appeared at Mr. von Moltke's house without having been invited, without having been requested to do so; and so I have been a guest at Mr. von Moltke's house almost every week since 1904. I have learned to respect Mr. von Moltke, I have learned to respect him so much that I may describe him as one of the noblest of men; I want to leave no doubt about that. I have never been to his house without having been invited. Before the outbreak of the war, I never had a conversation with Mr. von Moltke about anything military or political. Whatever was discussed arose from Mr. von Moltke's need to get to know spiritual science. That was his personal matter; I accommodated him.

I was asked to come to Berlin in the first few days of August, as I was not in Berlin when the war broke out. I refused, in anticipation of what might come from a malicious source about these things. For only once, on August 27 [correctly: 26] of 1914, was I in Koblenz, but not at headquarters, but with a family of friends. Herr von Moltke visited me there for half an hour. My dear attendees, there was truly no reason to talk about war at the time. We were in the midst of the triumphal march; it was still relatively far to the Battle of the Marne. Not a word was spoken about military or political matters during that half-hour conversation that Herr von Moltke had with me back then, certainly not at a time when he could have missed something, because the triumphal march continued even afterwards. I did not see Herr von Moltke again until October, long after the Battle of the Marne. There is no way to place anything I discussed with Herr von Moltke before his dismissal in a political or military context. But what was said between Mr. von Moltke and me is one of those personal matters that no one should allow another to prohibit; and it would be sad if we had come to a point where snooping into such matters were considered justified today. From this, the objective untruth arose that some kind of theosophical events in Luxembourg had a paralyzing effect on Mr. von Moltke's health. Mrs. von Moltke herself has now stated that this is an objective untruth. None of this really concerns me; I have no business to speak about it.

Other untrue things have come to light in connection with the threefold social order. And it will be considered justified that, after I have been personally insulted in this way – I do not usually need the word personally – after I have been personally insulted in this way, I would not find it dignified to enter into a discussion with these people before these things are not taken back – despite the fact that I am open to any other discussion.

That is why I sent a registered letter that arrived a few days ago, with “General von Gleich” as the sender, back unopened by return of post. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how individuals would behave in such a case; I know how I behave. General von Gleich then wrote an open postcard – which of course I could not return because it was put in the letterbox – in which he repeated what he had said in his letter and in which he expressly confirmed that he had received the letter I had returned. Well, my dear attendees, with my understanding of the mutual relationship between people, I cannot understand such intrusiveness.

My dear attendees, it has been said at this time, and even in a well-known German weekly magazine, that the former minister Simons is supposed to be my student, that he was inspired by me for all the horrible things he did in London. Now, it seems to me necessary to look at this matter a little more closely. Some time ago I came across an interview with a French journalist. This French journalist said that he had just had an interview with Minister Simons. Minister Simons had spoken to him about the threefold order and said that he found something agreeable in it, just as he did in the views of the Italian minister Giolitti. It seemed to me that there was something fishy about it – I had never got to know Minister Simons very well before – and for me there was only one thing, and I said it in front of many people at the time, even in public meetings, long before the accusations against Simons started here. I said that a German minister would be more likely to know about the threefold order than a French journalist. You see, perhaps out of a prejudice that comes from national backgrounds, I had more sympathy for a German minister than for a French journalist. Then, however, I was urged to talk to Mr. Simons, and lo and behold, Mr. Simons told me that he had not known about the threefold order, that the French journalist had only just told him about it. Well, then I saw Mr. Simons again when he spoke here in Stuttgart about the politics of the time. He wanted to see the Waldorf School. How this visit went has been presented here in a public announcement.

No one who is familiar with what happened at the time will be able to deny that I did anything other than be courteous to the German Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs. Politeness, especially in such a case, does not seem to me to be particularly punishable. And anyone who claims that a different relationship existed is claiming an objective untruth. In this case, however, I am not surprised at this objective untruth. For when this public notice was posted, a letter was produced that was said to have been written in Cologne and which stated that I had boasted in Cologne that I had spoken to Minister Simons here in Stuttgart about the threefold order before his London mission. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been to Cologne for many years, and I have not been to Cologne at all recently.

Bruno Roos: Here is the letter!

That may be. The letter can only be a forgery! And that is no wonder, because a lot of work has been done here with forged letters. I don't care what the letter says. The truth is that there was never any relationship between me and Minister Simons other than the one I have described here, and that I have not been to Cologne at all in the last few years, I don't think I've been there for four or five years. So it is a lie that I could have said anything in Cologne. Someone may read or show you a letter – if it says what appeared in the newspaper, then the content of the letter is a blatant forgery. There is no need to engage with people who use such letters to wage a fight.

Dear attendees, many other things have been brought up recently. It is late, and I will only be able to address a few of them. The aim of all these opposing arguments is to distort the essence of threefolding and to present it as questionable by slandering me. For example, there is repeated mention of certain changes that I am supposed to have undergone in my world view. Now, anyone who reads what is contained in my first “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings” about my engagement with Haeckel will see that I was not a blind admirer of Haeckel in my entire life, but that I did struggle with it in the nineties, trying to come to terms with the things said, even in the details, by such a brilliant naturalist as Haeckel. At that time, it was around the time when Haeckel's “Welträtsel” had not yet been published, but his Altenburg speech on “Monism as a bond between religion and science” had been published. At that time, I gave a speech against this monism at the Vienna Scientific Club about my spiritual monism. And at that time I wrote an essay on ethical questions in the “Zukunft”, and it was Haeckel who approached me at that time, at the beginning of the nineties. I answered his letter and later sent him a copy of the lecture I gave on spiritual monism. Then Haeckel developed the material that became his one-sided book 'The World Riddles'. This led to a fierce battle against Haeckel, especially on the part of philosophers. And I still admit today: the one who was the greater at that time, on whose side the principal right was, was not Haeckel's opponents, it was Haeckel. And I stood up for the one who was relatively more in the right. And from this point of view one must understand what I have often said. Anyone who wants to do spiritual scientific research must be able to immerse himself in everything. This must not be just a phrase; one must also be able to immerse oneself in foreign worldviews. That was always my endeavor: to be able to be objective about foreign worldviews. This may have justified the view of those who from the outset held malicious opinions that I somehow stood in the position myself, in which I found myself; no one who cannot find themselves in foreign points of view can come to spiritual-scientific views. This reproach regarding “changes” is settled by what I presented in an issue of Das Reich, where I showed how what I represent as spiritual science grows out of my original epistemological views in a completely consistent way.

However, I only want to point out these things. It has even been claimed – and this shows how everything is dug up today that can somehow lead to the disparagement of the bearer of the threefold idea – that I was connected with an occult society that practices some evil practices. Dearly beloved, whatever I have advocated, internally or externally, is contained in what I have said in my “Theosophy”: the person who has written it down - and I must say, who has spoken it - does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to which an experience of the external world is a fact for the eye and ear and the ordinary mind. The fact that a gentleman, who later in Berlin even became the director of a larger theater, once introduced me to a person as being in need of support does not change that, and that person then received support from me for years through a kind of, I would like to say foolish, good-naturedness. No other relationship than that I supported this person, who would otherwise have had nothing to eat, has led to the assertion that worthless things, which were spoken and agreed between me and this person, have led to the assertion that I had some kind of occult relationship with this person or with an order he represented. I never had a single spiritual scientific conversation with this personality, not least because this personality understood nothing of spiritual science. And when the brazen claim is now made that I received something of the content of my spiritual science from that side, it means that one has understood nothing of what courses through my writings and my speeches.

When such things are stated, one need not be surprised if the claim has also been made that the un-German, the un-national nature of anthroposophy has been revealed in its position on the Upper Silesian question. No one who has sought advice from us in any way has been given any advice other than that those who stand in our ranks should vote for Germany when it comes to the vote. No one was ever given any other advice. What was said in addition to this was, however, that one should not only bring about this vote, but that one should bring about such a relationship for Upper Silesia as an integral country, so that it would be united internally with the German spirit. The idea was not just to call for a plebiscite, but at the same time to introduce a nuance into the agitation that would not only result in a worthless yes-saying in the face of the terrible will of the Entente, but would also lead to something being established that would show Upper Oberschlesien as a region turns out to be, which, through its inner structure, through what it can develop in terms of German spiritual impulses precisely in these difficult struggles, can, I would say, establish its inner affiliation with Germany in the germ. That, my dear attendees, I say in response to all those variously nuanced and from all sorts of dark backgrounds emerging accusations regarding the Upper Silesian question.

This question has been used particularly as a slander because one knows how it works, even by those who then added: One does not get the impression that Steiner's mother tongue is German. - Well, my dear attendees, I have not yet shown anyone outside of this room a document that I have here right now. Those who know me are aware that I do not use such documents to boast about myself or to engage in any kind of self-aggrandizement, but I may read out a sentence here from a letter I received many years ago, immediately after the publication of my first independent work, 'The Epistemology of the Goethean Worldview':

I can only say here that your struggle to gain a firm point of view between idealism and realism is extremely interesting to me, that your booklet has revealed a meaningful life of thought to me, that so many fine and pretty remarks have spoken to me from it and that the tone and style of the whole - despite some content-related suggestions for objections - has touched me sympathetically from beginning to end.

Dear attendees, I have only ever made use of this document in my thoughts when people complained about my style. I have not yet responded to it, but I have remembered that what I have read to you was written to me from Graz on January 30, 1887 by the German poet Robert Hamerling, who probably also understands something about the German style and the German mother tongue. So when the threefold social order emerged here, it was born out of German idealism, oriented towards the West, and it is born out of the longing to present to the world what has emerged from the world forces in Goethe, Schiller, in German Romanticism, in German philosophy, as a German creation, as German power.

Dear attendees, do you think it was easy to work on an eminently German construction in the northwestern corner of Switzerland during the entire war, in a highly visible location? Do you think it was easy to be labeled a Pan-German, that is, an All-German, by the French and the English throughout the entire period? That is what happened to me: across the border I am an Alldeutsche, within Germany I am an enemy of the Alldeutsche and their like-minded people, a traitor to Germanness. Well, that is how the views face each other, just as the views of the Protestant and Catholic priests face each other. Whether I give people Jesuit or anti-Jesuit exercises, both are essentially a distortion and have nothing to do with what threefolding really wants to be. It wants to bring to independent existence that which is genuine German spiritual life. Therefore, it wants the self-administration of spiritual life. In order that man may rightly relate to man, everything that can exist among equals and that can sustain the other two members of the social organism, which must shape themselves out of their own specialized activities in self-government, must unfold in the state. The threefold social organism in Germany will certainly be a vital organism, arising out of the genuine German spiritual life, and if it is only understood, it will bear its fruits. It will work in such a way that German spiritual power will become for the whole world what it can be by its very nature. Much of this German spiritual power has now been shaken, and much of it is slandered, which wants to work precisely from the deepest German essence.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they go to great lengths in this regard. And I would like to share the latest product of such processes with you at the end. Just a few days ago, an article appeared in the Chicago Daily News with the following content:

Chicago Daily News

The Germans have a pale pink theory about losing the war. The Battle of the Marne was lost because Moltke was studying science.

By Georg Witte. Spezial Kabel: Chicago Daily News, field service. Copyright. 1921. By the Chicago Daily News Co.

Berlin, Germany, May 4. – “Anthroposophy”, a new communist theory of the pale pink variety, is directing the fortunes of Germany according to the enemies of Foreign Secretary Simon. Yesterday they came out with the confirmation that he was only a puppet in the hands of his anthroposophical directors. The Vossische Zeitung, which has continually attacked Dr. Simon during the past week, prints the following:

"Dr. Steiner, creator of a new theory.

Recently, during a meeting of opponents of the new theory, it was confirmed that the influence of Dr. Steiner, the creator of the Theosophical theory, extended as far as Wilhelmstrasse and Dr. Simons, who, before leaving for the London conference, visited Dr. Steiner in Stuttgart and also had lunch with Director Molt, the founder of the Waldorf-Astoria School, where Anthroposophy is taught.

It has also been established that Dr. Simons is in constant touch with the exponents of the new theory, who are never refused entry to his house, even at this critical time.

Was General von Moltke a victim?

The anthroposophical theory was first widely noticed when its enemies claimed that the Battle of the Marne was lost because General Moltke, the chief of staff, neglected to go to the front because he was too absorbed in studying the new theory, which completely governed all his actions. General von Gleich, who makes this accusation, describes Anthroposophy as a “very dangerous idea, destined to have a pernicious influence on both the individual and family life, undermining the authority of the state and dissolving national unity.”

Dr. Steiner's theory, according to the Vossische Zeitung, provides for a division of national strength into three parts, with a communist system under anthroposophical auspices as the ultimate goal.

Now, you see, when someone spreads such a slander that General von Moltke lost the Battle of the Marne because of anthroposophy, and then makes a weak retraction of this claim, this does not prevent this disparagement of General von Moltke's personality from crossing the ocean to America, and that as a result of this slander, General von Moltke's good name is dragged through the mud across the sea.

I also had to mention this fact here, because I was asked by a certain party whether I had inspired a writing that was written against General von Moltke by a person close to him. Just as Hofrat Seiling once became an enemy and wrote a book full of objective untruths against me – because a book by him could not be accepted by our publishing house and was returned to him – so, basically, all of General von Gleich's hostility stems from the fact that a person close to him married someone whom he probably does not consider to be his equal. I am supposed to be responsible for this fact. Well, I can only say that the lady to whom that personality married spoke to me only once, long before the marriage; if she were introduced to me today, I would first have to get to know her again. I knew so little about this connection, and so far I have not been notified of the marriage by an announcement in the papers. I believe that in those circles where such outward appearances are highly valued, one could even argue that I know nothing about this marriage at all, because it has never been objectively indicated to me. And when the writing in question was composed, it was sent to me in Dornach. But I forgot about it. And when I was asked on the telephone about this writing - there are witnesses for it - I said: I completely forgot to read this writing. - That was just before it appeared in print. I have no connection whatsoever with this writing, and I am very far from infringing on anyone's freedom.

My Philosophy of Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is meant seriously and honestly, and therefore do not count it as immodesty on my part if I - to affirm that threefolding originated in the attitude I have described to you today, I quote here the judgment of an opponent of my Philosophy of Freedom, for ultimately the idea of threefolding rests on my Philosophy of Freedom. I will read to you at the end, because time is already so short and I do not want to bother you any longer with going into all kinds of details - perhaps this will come up in the question - I will therefore read to you at the end the judgment of a fierce opponent of my “Philosophy of Freedom.” In this judgment, it says right at the beginning:

These lines are addressed exclusively to the philosopher, not to the anthroposophist Steiner. And in the main, to his by far most important book, 'Philosophy of Freedom', which the later work 'The Riddles of Philosophy' does not come close to. It goes without saying that Steiner the person is not considered here. I count myself among Steiner's most outspoken opponents and have also publicly expressed this opposition (in my writing “The Thinker”). But the form in which the polemic against Steiner often degenerates into wild agitation is more than unpleasant. And there it must be said...

— Please do not accuse me of immodesty, here it is written:

... that a man capable of a book like “The Philosophy of Freedom” could not possibly have the small and lowly character that is made out of him. In their clarity and noble calm, Steiner's philosophical and anthroposophical writings are among the most formally noble products of our new philosophical literature.

Dear attendees, in no other situation than the one in which anthroposophy and threefolding find themselves today would I somehow bother you with reading such a passage, which might seem immodest; but today it seems to me to be a duty to point out how someone can be an opponent but at the same time a decent person.

It has been said that I do not expose myself to scientific discussions. My dear audience, take the long series of my writings; they are available to the world. It is not my fault that the internal lectures are only now beginning to appear in public. They were urgently requested, but I did not have time to review them. It is not because of the slanderous intentions that they state that they have not been reviewed by me – for my sake they could always have been published for the greatest possible public after I had reviewed them – but I really have not had the time to review them, just as I really do not have the time to deal with all the possible hostile writings that have sprung up from all sides in recent times.

After today's allusions and after what a large number of you have heard in my many lectures over the past years, allow me to say: I stand for what I stand for because, from the innermost strength of my soul, I cannot stand for anything else, and because what I stand for lives in me in such a way that I must stand for it. If it is the truth, it will work its way through despite all opposition. If it is not the truth, which is, however, quite unlikely, then it will be replaced by the truth, because that which is truth will find its way through even the greatest obstacles. But anyone who believes that they can represent the truth from any side must do so. I have always stood before you from these underground bases, I stand before you today from these underground bases, and I will work from these underground bases as long as it is granted to me. No matter how many attacks are made, I will always use honorable means against honorable opponents. But what has emerged in recent times cannot claim that it can be dealt with by means of personal vilification, because it tries to attack the cause indirectly.

But I have to think in terms of standing up for this cause. I will stand up for it. That is what I must express to you today at the end of this discussion, and I have the confidence that if what I have to advocate is the truth, it will prevail because truth itself is something spiritual, something divine, and that which must triumph over all hostile powers is, after all, divine, spiritual truth.

After the previous great unrest in the hall.

Dear attendees, after this heated discussion, I would now like to answer the questions put to me in peace.

How is it possible, if, as you quite rightly noted, our thoughts are a resultant of previous impressions in the cerebral cortex, i.e. changes in a part of our body, that one can free oneself from the influence of the body with one's thoughts, as you explained at the beginning of your lecture. Do you have the ability to free your thoughts in this way?

Now, I have already spoken quite clearly about this matter; I now want to state here some more that follows from spiritual science itself for this question. We humans have in us, in a physical sense, an ascending life and also a descending life. This, I might say two-fold current of our life is usually not sufficiently taken into account. All ascending life consists in our developing growth forces and those forces that drive the absorbed nutrients to all, even the finest, organizational links in our organism. Now, alongside these processes, which are thoroughly constructive, others take place that are destructive, so that we constantly have destructive processes within us. This too is something that can only be established through spiritual science, which is not yet sufficiently known to ordinary materialistic physiology today. Now, all those phenomena that dampen our consciousness and put us into a state of partial or complete sleep are connected with the organic anabolic processes. The processes of our thoughts now go hand in hand with the catabolic processes in our organism, and all the other mental processes, such as instinctive perceptions, perceptions of drives, which actually always put us in a down-tuned state of consciousness, are connected with the organic ascending processes; the actual life of thinking is connected with the catabolic processes. This thinking life is already so in every single person that it develops independently of the organism; there must only be a process of degradation, that is, a process of dissociation in the brain, if thinking is to take hold in us.

If you consider this, my dear audience, you will say to yourself: Our organic building processes extend as far as thinking, then they recede, and thinking is precisely tied to the organic processes limiting themselves. So one becomes free of the organic processes through thinking, and one then continues this freedom by rising from thinking to higher spiritual knowledge. It is therefore absolutely the case – as is explained in more detail in my “Philosophy of Freedom” – that thinking, when it is practiced as pure thinking, is already a clairvoyant process. Even if people do not recognize it in ordinary life, we learn to know the peculiar true nature of higher knowledge precisely when we grasp ordinary thinking in terms of its essential being.

Why were you in a neutral country during the war and not in your homeland?

Dear attendees, I have had my work in Dornach. During the war, I was really, I may say it, more in Germany here than in neutral foreign countries, and I have done what could be done by me as a job, which has been recognized from various sides, during the war. And those who want to know about it, look at the events. It is not true that I did not work for the German people during this time.

Is it true that the ideas of threefolding are partly based on extrasensory knowledge and insights gained through it? And what are these extrasensory experiences and insights?

Dear attendees, I have specifically said that the idea of threefolding has loosely connected to the anthroposophical worldview because what appears in the anthroposophical worldview is a result of supersensible knowledge. For threefolding and for everything that I have presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, one does not need clairvoyance. Look through the entire Kernpunkte and see if at any point it appeals to anything other than common sense. Any association of clairvoyance with the threefold order is pure nonsense and malicious slander.

Anyone who follows the method according to your books “Geheimwissenschaft” and “Erkenntnisse höherer Welten” and so on, you claim that he will achieve supersensory knowledge or vision. As a master of this method, I can demand of you that you can do this. And so I ask you, tell me the feeling, not the physical one, that I have gained from you through your lecture: the feeling is, I ask you, is...

The rest cannot be read. Well, what the questioner asks on this piece of paper cannot be brought out, cannot be read.

Why does a doctrine, if it is good, have to defend itself? Good never needs to defend itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, no one would be happier than I if I did not need to defend myself in any way. And to the one who asks why the good must defend itself – if he regards what I have just presented as the good – I refer him to the address of my opponents, because what one clings to with all the fibers of one's soul must, when it is attacked, be defended.

If anthroposophy has nothing to do with Buddhism and Theosophy, then why are the Sanskrit words karma, reincarnation and so on used?

Reincarnation is not a Sanskrit word. And I use the word karma only because — and not even I always use it, those who have heard my lectures often will know this — because in an old, instinctive spiritual vision, the word “karma” was used. However, I very often replace it by saying: fate as it unfolds through successive earthly lives. I do not attach any importance to these words, but they are often used by others and by myself for the reason that our modern world view is intimately connected with our coinages and therefore one often has to go a long way for the words one has to form.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Steiner said that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion. Why then does anthroposophy not remain neutral?

Dear attendees, I did not say that. I said: Anthroposophy, as I represent it, has arisen from natural science; it has its sources in natural science. — I said: It is not a substitute for religion. —- And I have said: It leads from the side of knowledge to that which is irrationally as a religious experience in the human soul. — And there I can say nothing other than: Just as external philology leads to the dissection of the Bible, so does a supersensible knowledge lead to the knowledge of the spiritual that underlies world development in a religious way. I did not say that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, I only said that it did not arise from it and that it does not want to be a substitute for religion.

Why is the neutrality of true and pure theosophy and Christianity not more sharply outlined and clearly presented?

Well, I have never lacked clarity in this respect in the various lectures I have given here, for those who are at all able to grasp the fundamentals of the anthroposophical worldview. And to anyone who demands that anthroposophy should relate to some religion in some subjective way, I can say nothing other than that, according to what I can discern, Christianity is at the center of earthly evolution , that all the other religions of antiquity are moving towards Christianity, culminating in the Mystery of Golgotha, and that everything we have in the way of civilization since then comes from the Christ impulse and is influenced by it. If someone wants a different neutrality, I cannot offer a different neutrality. It is not out of some subjective wish that I place Christianity at the center of earthly development, but out of what I believe I can support as objective knowledge.

I distinguish between what lives irrationally in man as Christianity, as a religion, and what then leads to the spiritual interpretation of the content of this religion. Anthroposophy is concerned with the latter in the sense in which I have expressed it. I will not allow myself to be influenced by the fact that non-Christians may not take kindly to my placing Christianity at the center of attention. For me, this is not a subjective fact, but an objective one. Those who disagree in any direction may be willing to go along with Anthroposophy as far as the discussion of religious questions; after that, they can leave.

But I believe I have presented the relationship between my anthroposophical worldview and the Christian religion very conscientiously in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. And in addition to all that I have said, I will only add this: When a malicious source says that I have taken something from Anglo-Indian Theosophy, the fact is that I wrote “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” entirely on my own, before I had any relationship to Anglo-Indian Theosophy before I had read any book that had emerged from the Theosophical Society, I wrote my “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” and that I was invited to give lectures to Theosophists.

I said in the lecture: I did not follow anyone; I did not follow the Theosophists either. They came to me because they wanted to hear me. I did not tell you anything that I learned from the Theosophical Society; I said what came from me, and I will defend that in the future everywhere where people want to hear it. I will not ask what views or what kind of societies prevail among those who want to hear me, but I will take it as my right to speak whenever I am wanted in any circle.

If you were in the Cathedral last night you could have seen written there in illuminated lettering: C. M. B. As you will all know, these letters represent the names of the so-called Three Holy Kings, according to the tradition of the Christian Church: Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar. These names awaken quite special memories for Cologne. An old legend tells us that some time after they had become bishops and died their bones had been brought here. Another legend relates that a Danish king had once come to Cologne, bringing with him three crowns for the Three Holy Kings. After he had returned home he had a dream; in his dream the three kings appeared to him and offered him three chalices: the first chalice contained gold, the second frankincense, and the third one myrrh. When the Danish king awoke the three kings had vanished, but the chalices remained; they stood before him; the three gifts which he had retained from his dream.

In this legend there is profound meaning. We are to understand that the king in his dream attained a certain insight into the spiritual world by which he learnt the symbolic meaning of these three kings, these three wise men of the East who brought offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh at the birth of Christ Jesus. And from this realisation he retained a lasting possession: those three human virtues which are symbolised in the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh: self-knowledge in the gold; self-piety, that is the piety of the innermost self—which we can call self-surrender—in the frankincense; and in the myrrh self-consummation and self-development, or the preservation of the eternal in the self.

It was possible for the king to receive these three virtues as gifts from another world because he had endeavoured to penetrate with his whole soul into the profound symbol lying concealed in the three kings who brought their offerings to Christ Jesus.

There are many features in this legend which lead us a long way towards understanding the Christ-principle, and what it is to bring about in the world. Among its profound features are the Adoration and the Presentation by the three Magi, the three Oriental Kings, and only with the deepest understanding may we approach this fundamental symbolism of the Christian tradition. Later the idea was formed that the first king was the representative of the Asiatic races; the second, the representative of the European peoples; and the third, the representative of the African races. Wherever people wanted to understand Christianity as the religion of earthly harmony they saw in the three kings and their homage a union of the different lines of thought and religious movements in the world into the One principle, the Christian principle. When this legend received this form those who had penetrated into the principles of esoteric Christianity saw in Christianity not only a force which had affected the course of human development, but they saw in the Being embodied in Jesus of Nazareth a cosmic world-force—a force far transcending the merely human that prevails in this present age. They saw in the Christ-principle a force that indeed represents for mankind a human ideal lying in a far distant future, an ideal which can only be approached by our understanding the whole world more and more in the spirit. They saw in man, in the first place, a miniature being, a miniature world, a microcosm, an image of the macrocosm, the great, all-embracing world. This macrocosm comprises all that man can perceive with his external senses, see with his eyes, hear with his ears, but comprises, besides, all that the spirit could perceive from the perceptions of the least developed human spirit up to perceptions in the spiritual world. This was how the esoteric Christian of the earliest times regarded the world. All he saw in the firmament or on our earth, all he saw as thunder and lightning, as storm and rain, as sunshine, as the course of the stars, as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and the setting of the moon—all this was for him a gesture, something like a mimicry, an external expression of inner spiritual processes. The esoteric Christian looks on the universe as he looks on the human body. When he looks on the human body he sees it as consisting of different limbs: the head, arms, hands, and so on. When he looks on the human body and sees the movements of hand, eye, etc., these are for him the expression of the inner spiritual and psychic experiences. In the same way as he looked through the human limbs, and their movements, into that which is eternal, spiritual in man, the esoteric Christian regarded the movements of the stars, the light that streams down from the stars to humanity, the rising and setting of the sun, the rising and setting of the moon, as the external expression of divine-spiritual Beings pervading all space. All these natural phenomena were to him deeds of the gods, gestures of the gods, expressions in mime of those divine-spiritual Beings, as also was everything that occurs among mankind, when people establish social communities, when they submit to moral commandments and regulate their dealings through laws, when from the forces of nature they create instruments for themselves. These implements, indeed, they make with the help of the forces of nature, but in a form in which they are not to be found directly. All that was done in humanity, more or less unconsciously, was for the esoteric Christian the external expression of inner divine-spiritual sway. But the esoteric Christian did not confine himself to such general forms, he pointed to quite definite single gestures, single parts of the physiognomy of the universe, of the mimes of the universe, in order to see in these single parts quite definite expressions of the spiritual. When he pointed to the sun he said: The sun is not merely an external, physical body; this external, physical solar body is the body of a spiritual-psychic Being; one of those psychic-spiritual Beings who are the rulers, the leaders of all earthly fate, the leaders of all natural occurrences on the earth, but also of all that happens in human, social life, in the relationship of men among each other as determined by laws. When the esoteric Christian looked up to the sun he revered in the sun the external revelation of his Christ. In the first place the Christ was for him the sun's soul, and the esoteric Christian said: “From the beginning the sun was the body of the Christ, but men on earth and the earth itself were not yet matured for receiving the spiritual light, the Christ-light, which streams from the sun. Men had, therefore, to be prepared for the Christ-light.”

Then the esoteric Christian looked up at the moon and saw that the moon reflects the light of the sun, but more feebly than the sun's light itself; and he said to himself: “If I look with my physical eyes into the sun I am dazzled by its shining light; if I look into the moon I am not dazzled; it reflects in a feebler degree the shining light of the sun.” In this subdued sunlight, in this moonlight, pouring down on the earth, the esoteric Christian saw the physiognomical expression of the old Jehovah-principle, the expression of the religion of the old law. And he said: “Before the Christ-principle, the Sun of Righteousness, could appear on earth, the Jahve-principle had to send down on earth this light of righteousness, toned down in the Law, to prepare the way.” And so what lay in the old Jehovah-principle, in the old Law—the spiritual light of the moon—was for the esoteric Christian the reflected spiritual light of the higher Christ-principle. And with the pupils of the ancient Mysteries the esoteric Christian—until far into the Middle Ages—saw in the sun the expression of the spiritual light ruling the earth, the Christ-light, and in the moon the expression of the reflected Christ-light, which would blind man in its full strength. And in the earth itself the esoteric Christian saw with the pupils of the ancient mysteries that which at times disguised, and veiled for him, the blinding sunlight of the spirit. And for him the earth was just as much the physical expression of a spirit as was every other bodily form an expression of something spiritual. He imagined that when the sun looked visibly down on the earth, when it sent down its rays, beginning in the Spring and continuing through the summer, and called forth from the earth all the budding and sprouting life, and when it had culminated in the long summer days—then the esoteric Christian imagined that the sun cherished and maintained the external, up-shooting life, the physical life. In the plants, springing from the soil, in the animals unfolding their fertility in these seasons, the esoteric Christian saw the same principle, in an external, physical form, that he saw in the Beings whose external expression the sun was. But when the days became shorter, when autumn and winter approached, the esoteric Christian said: the sun withdraws its physical power more and more from the earth. But in the same degree as the sun's physical power is withdrawn from the earth, its spiritual power increases and flows to the earth most intensively when the shortest days come, with the long nights, in the season afterwards fixed by the Christmas festival. Man cannot see this spiritual power of the sun. He would see it, said the esoteric

Christian, if he possessed the inner power of spiritual vision. And the esoteric Christian had still a consciousness of what was a fundamental conviction and experience of the Mystery-pupils from the earliest times into the newer age.

In those nights, now fixed by the festival of Christmas, the Mystery-pupils were prepared for the experience of inner spiritual vision, so that they could see inwardly, spiritually, that which at this time withdrew its physical power from the earth most completely. In the long Christmas winter night the novice was far enough advanced to have a vision at midnight. The earth was then no longer a veil for the sun, which stood behind the earth. It became transparent for him. Through the transparent earth he saw the spiritual light of the sun, the Christ-light. This fact, which marks a profound experience for the mystery-novice, was recorded in the expression: To see the sun at midnight.

There are places where the churches, otherwise open all day, are closed at noon. This is a fact which connects Christianity with the traditions of ancient religious faiths. In ancient religious faiths the Mystery-pupils said, on the strength of their experience: “At noon, when the sun stands highest, when it unfolds the strongest physical power, the gods are asleep, and they sleep the deepest sleep in summer, when the sun develops its strongest physical power. But they are widest awake on Christmas night, when the external physical power of the sun is weakest.”

We see that all forms of life which desire to unfold their external physical power look up to the sun when the sun rises in the sky in Spring and strive to receive the external physical power of the sun. But when, on a summer noon, the sun's physical power pours most lavishly on to the earth, its spiritual power is weakest. In the winter midnight, however, when the sun rays the least physical power down to the earth, man can see the sun's spirit through the earth, which has become transparent for him. The esoteric Christian felt that through absorption in Christian Esotericism he approached more and more that power of inward vision through which he could imbue his feeling, thinking and his will-impulses in gazing into this spiritual sun. Then the Mystery-novice was led to a vision of the greatest importance: As long as the earth is opaque the separate parts appear inhabited by people of different confessions, but the unifying bond is not there. Human races are as scattered as the climates. Human opinions are scattered all over the earth and there is no connecting link. But in the degree in which men begin to look through the earth into the sun by their inner power of vision, in the degree in which the “star” appears to them through the earth, their confessions will flow together to one great united Brotherhood. And those who guided the great separated human masses in the truth of the higher planes, towards their initiation into the higher worlds, were known as “Magi.” They were three in number, as in the various parts of the earth various powers express themselves. Humanity had, therefore, to be led in different ways. But as a unifying power there appears the star, rising beyond the earth. It leads the scattered individuals together, and then they bring offerings to the physical embodiment of the solar star, appearing as the star of peace. Thus was the religion of peace, of harmony, of universal peace, of human brotherhood, connected cosmically and humanly with the ancient Magi, who laid the best gifts that they had in store for humanity before the cradle of the Son of Man incarnate.

The legend has retained this beautifully, for it says: The Danish king attained an understanding of the Wise Men, of the three Kings, and because he had attained it they bestowed on him their three gifts: first the gift of wisdom, in self-knowledge; secondly, the gift of pious devotion, in self-surrender; and, thirdly, the gift of the victory of life over death, in the power and development of the eternal in the self.

All those who have understood Christianity in this way have seen in it the profound idea in spiritual science of the unification of religions. For they had the firm conviction that whoever understands Christianity thus can rise to the highest grade of human development.

One of the last of the Germans to understand Christianity in this way is Goethe, and Goethe has laid down for us this kind of Christianity, this kind of religious reconciliation, this kind of theosophy, in the profound poem, The Mysteries, which has, indeed, remained a fragment but which shows us in a deeply significant way the inner spiritual development of one who is penetrated and convinced by the feelings and ideas that I have just described. Goethe first invites us to follow the pilgrim-path of such a man, but indicates that this pilgrim-path may lead us far astray, that it is not easy to find it, and that one must have patience and devotion to reach the goal. Whoever possesses these will find the light that he seeks. Let us hear the beginning of the poem:—

A wondrous song is here prepared for many.
Hear it with joy! Tell all from far and near!
The way will lead you out o'er mount and valley;
Now is the view obscured, now wide and clear,
And if the path should glide into the bushes,
That you have gone astray, you need not fear,
For by a persevering, patient climb
We shall draw near our goal, when it is time.

But no one will, despite profound reflection,
Unravel all the wonders hidden here:
Our mother earth brings forth so many flowers,
And many shall find something to revere;
Maybe that one will gloomily forsake us,
Another stays with gestures full of cheer:
For many wand'ring pilgrims flows the spring,
To each a different pleasure it will bring.

This is the situation to which we are introduced. We are shown; a pilgrim who, if we were to ask him, would not be able to say in formal words what we have just seen to be the esoteric Christian idea—but a pilgrim in whose heart and soul these ideas live, transformed into feeling. It is not easy to discover everything that has been secreted into this poem called The Mysteries. Goethe has clearly indicated a process occurring in human life, in which the highest ideas, thoughts and conceptions are transformed into feelings and perceptions. How does this transformation take place?

We live through many embodiments, from incarnation to incarnation. In each one we learn things of many kinds; each one is full of opportunities for gathering new experiences. It is impossible for us to carry over from one incarnation to the other everything in every detail. When we are born again it is not necessary for everything that we have once learnt to come to life in every detail. But if we have learnt a great deal in one incarnation, and die and are born anew, although there is no need for all our ideas to live again, we come to life with the fruits of our former life, with the fruits of what we have learnt. The powers of perception and feeling are in accord with our earlier incarnations.

In this poem of Goethe's we have a wonderful phenomenon: a man who, in the simplest words—as a child might speak, not in definite intellectual or abstract terms—shows us the highest wisdom, which is a fruit of former knowledge. He has transformed this knowledge into feeling and experience and is thereby qualified to lead others who have perhaps learnt more in the form of concepts. Such a pilgrim, with a ripe soul, which has transformed into direct feeling and experience much of the knowledge which it has gathered in earlier incarnations—such a pilgrim we have before us in Brother Mark. As a member of a secret Brotherhood he is sent out on an important mission to another secret Brotherhood. He wanders through many different districts, and when he is getting tired he comes to a mountain. He journeys up the path at last—(every feature in this poem has a deep significance)—and when he has climbed the mountain he finds himself before a monastery. This monastery here indicates the other Brotherhood to which he has been sent. Over the gate of the jnonastery he sees something unusual. He sees the Cross, but in unusual guise; the cross is garlanded with roses! And at this point he utters a significant word that only he can understand who knows how again and again that motto has been spoken in secret Brotherhoods: “Who added to the Cross the wreath of Roses?” And round the Cross he sees the Triangle shine, radiating beams like the sun. There is no need for him to understand in ideas the meaning of this profound symbol. The experience and understanding of it live already in his soul, in his ripe soul. His ripe soul knows its inner meaning. What is the meaning of the Cross? He knows that the Cross is a symbol for many things; among many others, for the threefold lower nature of man; the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. In him the “I,” the Self is-born. In the Rose-Cross we have the fourfold man: in the Cross the physical man, the etheric man and the astral man, and in the roses the Self. Why roses for the Self?—the esoteric Christian added roses to the Cross because by the Christ principle he felt called upon to develop the Self more and more from the state in which it is born in the three bodies, to an ever higher Self. In the Christ-principle he saw the power to develop this Self higher and higher. The Cross is the symbol of death in a quite particular sense. This, too, Goethe expresses in another beautiful passage when he says:

And until thou truly hast
This “dying and becoming,”
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

“Die and be re-born”—overcome what you have first been given in the three lower bodies: deaden it, not out of a desire for death, but purify what is in these three bodies so as to attain in your Self the power to receive an ever greater perfection. If you overcome what is given you in the three lower bodies, the power of consummation will live in the Self. In the Self must the Christian absorb in the Christ-principle this power of consummation down to the very blood. Right into the blood this power must work.

Blood is the expression of the Self, the “I.” In the red roses the esoteric Christian saw the power of the Christ-principle purifying and cleansing the blood, thus purifying the Self, and so guiding man upwards to his higher being—he saw the power that transforms the astral body into the Spirit Self, the etheric body into the Life-Spirit, the physical body into Spirit Man. Thus the Rose-Cross in its connection with the triangle shows us the Christ-principle in profound symbolism. The pilgrim, Brother Mark, who arrives here, knows that he is at a place where the profoundest meaning of Christianity is understood.

Full weary by a long and tiring journey,
With a sublimest motive underta'en,
A pilgrim, brother Mark, came through the thicket,
With staff in hand, his footsteps to sustain,
And longing for a little food and drinking,
One beauteous eve he reached a quiet plain.
Its wooded gorges soothing hope bestowed
Beneath a friendly roof to find abode.

But lo! a path he scarcely can distinguish,
High up a mountain steep before him wending.
He follows it, as more and more it rises,
In curvings in and out the boulders bending,
Until again by sunlight warm enveloped,
He turns and sees how fast he is ascending.
At last the summit comes within his sight,
Inspiring him with heart-felt, deep delight.

Next it the sun, majestic in its setting,
Enthroned 'mong clouds within the dark'ning sky.
Now for the peak! For all his weary toiling
He hopes to be rewarded there on high.
O'erlooking all the country 'fore him spreading,
A human home he will perchance espy.
And while he climbs, oh sound how full of cheer!
The chime of bells is wafted to his ear.

And as at length he has attained the summit,
Below a softly sloping valley lies.
His quiet look with inward pleasure brightens;
Before the forest full of joy he spies
A stately building in a greening field,
Which the departing sun with lustre dyes.
E'er long he nears through meadows dewy damp
A monastery lit with gleaming lamp.

He soon arrives outside the quiet homestead,
With hope and peacefulness his soul enfolding,
And on the arch above the closed portal
A symbol full of mystery beholding.
He stands and ponders, whispers words of prayer,
The deep devotion of his heart unfolding;
He ponders long: What does this sign convey?
The sun has set, the chiming dies away.

The sign he sees erected here on high
That brings consoling hope to all mankind,
Which many thousands pledged their lives to shield,
To which in fervour prayed the human mind,
That has destroyed the bitter powers of death,
On victors' banners fluttered in the wind:
A stream of comfort permeates his being,
He sees the cross and bows his head in seeing.

He feels anew the faith of all on earth,
The power of salvation streaming thence;
But as he looks, he feels his very soul
Pervaded by a new and unknown sense:
Who added to the cross the wreath of roses?
It is entwined by blooming, clusters dense,
Profusely spreading just as though they could
Endow with softness e'en the rigid wood.

While light and silv'ry clouds, around it soaring,
Seem heavenward with cross and roses flowing,
And from the midst like living waters streaming
A threefold ray from out one core is glowing;
But not a word surrounds the holy token,
The meaning of the symbol clearly showing.
And while the dusk is gath'ring grey and greyer,
He stands and ponders and is lost in prayer.

The spirit of deepest Christianity which pervades this dwelling is expressed in the cross entwined by roses, and as the pilgrim enters he is actually received in this spirit. When he enters he becomes aware that in this house not this or that religion holds sway—but that there rules here the higher Oneness of the religions of the world. Within this house he tells an old member of the Brotherhood that lives there at whose behest and on what mission he has come. He is made welcome and hears that in this house there lives in perfect seclusion a Brotherhood of twelve Brothers. These twelve Brothers are representatives of different human races from all over the earth; every one of the Brothers is the representative of a religious faith. None is accepted here in the un-ripeness of youth, but only when he has explored the world, when he has struggled with the joys and sorrows of the world, when he has “worked and been active in the world and won his way to a free survey beyond his narrowly confined domain. Only then is he placed and accepted in the circle of the Twelve. And these Twelve, of whom each one represents one of the world religions, live here in peace and harmony together. For they are led by a thirteenth who surpasses them all in the perfection of his human Self, who surpasses them all in his wide survey of human circumstances. And how does Goethe indicate that he is the representative of true Esotericism? Goethe indicates, by the words the Brother speaks, that he is the bearer of the religion of the Rosy Cross. He said: “He was among us; now we are in deepest sorrow because he is about to leave us; he wishes to part from us. But he finds it right to part from us even now; he desires to rise to higher regions, where he no longer needs to reveal himself in an earthly body.”

He is worthy to rise. For he has risen to the point that Goethe describes with the words: “In every religion there is the possibility of attaining the highest purity.” When each of the twelve religions is ripe to form a basis of harmony, the Thirteenth, who has before brought about this harmony externally, can pass away. And we are beautifully told how we can achieve this consummation of the Self. First, the life-story of the Thirteenth is related; but the Brother who has received Mark knows many details, which the great Leader of the Twelve cannot tell himself. Several features of profound esoteric significance are now recounted by one of the Twelve to Brother Mark. He learns that when the Thirteenth was born a star appeared to herald his life on earth. Here there is a direct connection with the star which guided the three holy kings, and with its inner meaning. This star has an enduring significance: it shows the way to self-knowledge, self-surrender and self-consummation. It is the star which opens the mind for the gifts which the Danish king received from the vision in his dream, the star which appears at the birth of anyone ripe enough to absorb the Christ-principle. And there were other signs. There were signs showing that he had developed to that height of religious harmony which brings the peace and harmony of the soul. Profoundly symbolical in this sense is the vulture which swoops down at the birth of the Thirteenth, but instead of destroying it spreads peace around it among the doves. We are told still more. While his little sister is lying in the cradle a viper winds itself round her. The Thirteenth, still a child, kills the viper. Hereby is wonderfully indicated how a ripe soul—for only a ripe soul can achieve such a thing after many incarnations—kills the viper in early childhood: that is to say he overcomes the lower astral nature. The viper is the symbol for the lower astral nature; the sister is his own etheric body, round which the astral body winds itself. He kills the viper to save his sister. Then we are told how he submitted obediently to every demand of his parents. He obeyed his stern father. The soul transforms its knowledge into ideas and thoughts; then healing-powers develop in the soul and can bring healing into the world. Miraculous powers develop: they are represented by the sword with which he strikes a spring out of the rock. We are here definitely shown how his soul follows the path of the Scriptures. Thus gradually there develops the higher man, the representative of humanity, the Chosen one, who works as the Thirteenth here, in the society of the Twelve, the great secret Brotherhood which, under the sign of the Rose-Cross has taken upon itself for all mankind the mission of harmonising the religions scattered in the world. This is how we are made acquainted, in a profound, manner, with the soul-nature of that one who has until now guided the Brotherhood of the Twelve.

At last he knocks. The myriad stars above him
Look down with shining eyes as they appear.
The portal opes, and he is bidden welcome
By brethren wont to comfort and to cheer.
So he relates how far by hill and valley
The will of higher Beings led him here.
They stand amazed, for well they see their guest
Was sent to them by heavenly behest.

They crowd around him, and their inmost being
They feel by a mysterious power stirred,
Their breath they hold to listen, for he rouses
An echo in their hearts with ev'ry word.
Like deepest lore, yet uttered by a child,
The wisdom flowing from his lips is heard:
He seems so innocent, like crystal clear,
As though descended from another sphere.

At last an aged brother cries: Oh welcome,
If with consoling hope thy path is blessed!
Thou seest us, our souls are moved within us
By thee, and yet we can but stand oppressed:
Our greatest bliss from us is being taken,
Anxiety and dread disturb our rest.
Thou comest as a stranger, yet to share
Portentous hours of mourning and of care:

For he, alas! who all of us united,
To whom as father and as friend we bow,
Who light and fortitude within us kindled—
Our leader—is prepared to leave us now.
Yea, he himself his passing has predicted,
Refusing though to tell us when and how:
The mystery of what must needs befall
Brings bitter tribulation to us all.

Thou seest us grey and aged ev'ry one,
By nature destined for repose and rest:
Not one was here admitted who, a youth,
Desired to fly from wordly joy and zest.
Each one has met with life's vicissitudes,
Its burdens, pleasures and its anxious quest,
Until, matured, too old to longer roam,
Within these walls we found a shelt'ring home.

The noble man who led us to this haven,
Within his heart the peace of God does dwell;
Along the path of life we walked together,
His ev'ry action I remember well;
But now his fervent praying, his seclusion,
The hour of his departing must foretell.
How small is man! Oh would that he could give
His life, so that a greater one might live!

This is my heart's profound and only wish!
Fulfilment is denied to my desire.
How many have preceded me in death!
How bitter is the thought he must expire.
Had he been here, with hearty welcome's warmth
He would have given all thou didst require;
But now in spirit-regions dwells his mind,
Already far from those he leaves behind.

Each day one hour he lingers in our midst
And speaks to us, by strange emotion stirred:
The wondrous paths that Providence has led
Within his life he lauds with ev'ry word;
We hark and heed, for after-ages hoarding
With care the merest trifle that occurred,
While one writes down his words to make us sure
His memory shall live both true and pure.

I hear him speak, but oh, how much there is
That I would rather far myself relate,
For all is still alive within my mind,
The least of circumstances I would state;
Impatiently I list, can scarce conceal
How sore it is thus silently to wait:
One day I shall no more restrain my zeal,
The splendours of this beauteous life reveal.

I should disclose how first an angel's voice
His coming to his mother prophesied,
And how, when he was christened, in the sky
A star with brilliant lustre was descried,
How down a vulture swooped with mighty wings
To settle by the gentle pigeons' side,
But not to pounce on them in greedy wildness,
A harbinger he seemed of peace and mildness.

How as a child a viper he destroyed,
This is a miracle he ne'er has told.
He found his sister peacefully asleep,
The clinging reptile round her arm was rolled.
The nurse had fled and left the babe alone,
He killed the pois'nous snake, resolved and bold;
His mother came and saw the daring deed
And thrilled with joy she found her daughter freed.

He ne'er related that a spring arose
From out the barren rock before his sword,
And as a brook, with rippling waves alive,
Its plenteous waters down the hill-side poured;
E'en now, as quick as forth it gushed at first,
It bickers silver sparkling o'er the sward.
But those who saw the wondrous stream appear,
Dared not to drink, o'ercome by solemn fear.

For when a man excels by gifts of nature,
It is no wonder if his life is blessed;
In him we worship the Creator's power,
Through feeble human clay made manifest;
But he who overcomes himself has gained
The greatest triumph, stood the hardest test,
And well may he to all the world be shown:
Yea, this is he, this deed is his alone!

With all our strength we strive to live and labour,
Where'er by fate our twisting paths be wended;
Whereas the world oppresses, e'er impeding,
And seeks to tear us from the way intended;
Within this inner storm and outer struggle
Our spirit hears a word scarce comprehended:
The power that holds constrained all humankind
The victor o'er himself no more can bind.

This man who had overcome himself, that is, who had overcome that ego which is man's portion at first, has become the Head of the chosen Brotherhood. And thus he leads the Twelve. He has led them to a point at which they are matured enough for him to leave them. Our Brother Mark is then conducted further to the rooms where the Twelve work. How do they work? Their activity is of an unusual kind, and we are told that it is an activity in the spiritual world. A man whose eyes observe only physically, whose senses experience only the physical plane, and only what is done by people in the physical world, cannot easily imagine that there is still another task which may even be far more vital and important than what is done externally on the physical plane. Work from the higher planes is far more important for mankind. Naturally, whoever wishes to work on the higher planes can only do so on condition that he has first completed the tasks of the physical plane. These Twelve had done so. For this reason their combined activity is of great importance as a service to mankind.

Our Brother Mark is led into the hall where the Twelve were accustomed to assemble, and there he sees in deep symbolic guise the nature of their combined activity. The individual contribution of each of the Brothers to this combined activity is expressed by an individual symbol above the seat of each one of the Twelve. Symbols of many kinds are to be seen there, expressing profoundly and in very different ways the contribution of each to the common task, which consists in spiritual activity, so that these streams flow together into a current of spiritual life which flows through the world and invigorates the rest of mankind. There are such brotherhoods, such centres from which such streams emanate and have their effect on the rest of mankind.

Above the seat of the Thirteenth, Brother Mark again sees the sign: the cross entwined with roses; this sign, which is at the same time a symbol for the four-fold nature of man, and in the red roses the symbol of the purified Blood or ego-principle, the principle of the higher man. And then we see what is to be overcome by this sign of the Rose-Cross, portrayed in a symbol of its own, to the right and left of the seat of the Thirteenth. On the right Mark sees the fiery-coloured dragon, representing the astral nature of man. It was well known in Christian Esotericism that man's soul can surrender to the three lower bodies. If it succumbs to them it is dominated by the lower life of the threefold bodily nature. This is expressed in astral experience by the dragon. It is no mere symbol but a very real sign. The dragon represents what has first to be overcome. In the passions, in those forces of astral fire, which are part of man's physical nature, in this dragon, Christian Esotericism, which has inspired this poem and which has spread through Europe, saw what mankind has received from the torrid zone, from the South. It is the South that has bestowed on mankind the fierce passion, tending chiefly towards the lower senses. The first impulse to fight and overcome it was divined in the influences streaming from the cooler North. The influence of the cooler North, the descent of the Ego into the threefold physical nature of man, is expressed according to the old symbol taken from the Constellation of the Bear and shows a hand thrust into the jaws of a bear. The lower physical nature expressed by the fiery dragon is overcome; and what has been preserved, represented by the higher rank of animal life, was expressed in the bear; and the Ego, which has developed beyond the dragon nature, was represented with profound appropriateness by the thrusting of a human hand into the bear's jaws. On both sides of the Rose-Cross there appears what must be overcome by the Rose-Cross, and it is the Rose-Cross which calls upon man to purify and raise himself more and more.

Thus the poem really describes the principle of Christianity in the profoundest manner and, above all, shows us what we ought to have before our mind's eye, particularly at a festival such as we are keeping to-day.

The eldest of the Brothers living here, and belonging to the Brotherhood, tells the Pilgrim Mark expressly that their combined activity is of the spirit, that it is spiritual life. This work for mankind on the spiritual plane has a particular meaning. The Brothers have experienced life's joys and sorrows; they have passed through conflicts outside these walls; they have accomplished tasks in the world; now they are here, but that does not mean that their work is at an end; the further development of mankind is their unending task. He is told: “You have seen as much now as can be shown to a novice to whom the first portal is opened. You have been shown in profound symbols what man's ascent should be. But the second portal hides greater mysteries: those of the influence of higher worlds on mankind. You can only learn these greater mysteries after lengthy preparation, only then can you enter through the other gate.” Profound secrets are expressed in this poem.

In him I scarce as virtue may denote
The power of good which e'en his youth inspired
And taught him to respect his father's word,
When harshly he his services required,
With duties burdening his leisure hours;
The son obeyed with ardour, never tired,
Like some poor boy who, friendless and astray,
Is glad to work for but a trifling pay.

On foot he joined the warriors in the field,
In lowering tempest and in dazzling light,
The horses he did tend, the meals prepare,
And armed the soldiers ready for the fight.
Oft as a messenger, both keen and fleet,
He hastened through the woods by day and night;
To live for others both in thought and action
Seemed but to give him joy and satisfaction.

And brave and cheerful always, in the strife
He sought the arrows scattered on the ground;
Then hastily he gathered curing herbs,
With which the burning wounds he cooled and bound;
And just as if his very touch were healing,
Ere long the sufferers were strong and sound;
How all regarded him with joy and pride!
Alone his father seemed not satisfied.

E'en as a ship, despite its heavy load
From port to port with speedy lightness sailing,
He bore the burden of his parents' word
That in obedience ne'er he should be failing;
As pleasure is for boys, for youths distinction,
For him his father's will was all-prevailing,
So that he might demand whate'er he would,
Each task was soon fulfilled, each test was stood.

At last the father yielded and acknowledged
The merit of his son in word and deed;
While of a sudden all his sternness vanished,
He gave the youth a swift and precious steed;
Henceforth a sword replaced the shorter #8224,
And from his lesser duties he was freed:
Thus, destined by his birth and well acquitted,
Into an Order he was now admitted.

Ah, well could I report for many days
Amazing things to every one who hears;
And higher than the most delightful tales
His life will be esteemed in coming years;
For what in poetry and fiction charms,
Yet to our mind incredible appears,
Will here with greater pleasure still be heard,
Because it has in real event occurred.

The name of him whom Providence has chosen
That wondrous things on earth he should achieve,
Whom I may often praise, though ne'er sufficing
Whose destiny we scarcely can believe,
His name—it is Humanus, Saint and wise one,
The best of men whom I did e'er perceive:
By origin another name he bears,
Which with illustrious ancestors he shares.

The aged brother would have spoken on.
Filled with the miracles that he did know,
And he shall gladden us for many weeks
With all the stirring facts he still can show;
But he was interrupted, just as now
His heart was pouring forth in fervent flow.
The others softly in and out had passed
And deemed it time to intervene at last.

When Mark had bowed before his hosts and prayed
In gratitude for the sustaining meal,
A bowl of crystal water he requested.
They brought what he had craved with friendly zeal.
Hereafter led him to their festive hall,
Therein a sight unwonted to reveal.
Of what he saw you soon will be aware,
For everything shall be described with care.

No ornament was here, the eye deluding,
A cross-arched vault rose sternly from the ground,
And thirteen chairs against the walls, he noticed.
Were like a pious chorus ranged around,
By clever hands full delicately carven;
In front of each a little desk he found.
Devotion seemed to fill the very air,
Fraternity and restfulness and prayer.

Above each chair was hung a special shield,
Thirteen in all the number he espied.
They seemed to be important, purposeful,
No boast of ancestors in shallow pride.
And brother Mark, with longing all aglow,
Desired to learn what secret they did hide:
Lo, in the middle one the mystic sign,
The cross which clustring roses do entwine.

Each object will arouse to life and action
The soul which to its inspiration yields;
Some places are adorned by swords and lances,
While helmets hang above these other shields;
Here battered weapons are to be discovered,
Such as one may collect on battle-fields:
There spears and banners, come from distant lands,
And even fetters here and iron bands!

Each brother sinking down before his chair,
In silent prayer profoundly wrapt they rested;
Then softly chanted fervent hymns of thanks,
By cheerfulness and piety suggested;
With mutual blessing they retired to sleep,
A short repose, by fancies unmolested:
But Mark remains, surrounded by a few,
Still wishing more attentively to view.

Though tired in body, full awake his mind,
Preoccupied by many hidden things:
For here, his thirst in raging flames appeasing,
A dragon is enthroned with fiery wings;
And here between his jaws a bear is holding
An arm from which the blood it loses springs,
Both shields, in distance corresponding quite,
Hung next the Rosy-Cross to left and right.

The paths were wonderful that led thee here,
The aged brother speaks unto his guest:
Oh let these symbols bid thee stay until
The many heroes' deeds we manifest;
Our mysteries we will confide to thee,
For what is here concealed, can ne'er be guessed;
Although thou wilt divine what here was done,
Endured and lost, and last what triumph won.

Do not believe that but of times gone by
The brother spake. Here wonders never fail;
And more and ever more thou shalt behold,
Until withdrawn is the enshrouding veil.
One portal only 'tis that thou hast passed:
And if thou feelst the call, O friend, prevail!
The foremost court as yet thou didst attain,
But worthy art the very core to gain.

After a short sleep our Brother Mark next learns to divine something at least of the inner mysteries; in the powerful symbols he has let the ascent of the human Self work upon his soul, and when he is awakened by a sign from his short rest he comes to a window, a kind of lattice, and hears a strange threefold harmony sounding thrice, and the whole as if intermingled with the playing of a flute. He cannot look in, cannot see what is happening there in the room. We do not need to be told more than these few words as an indication of what awaits the man who approaches the spiritual worlds, when he is so far purified and perfected by his endeavours to develop his Self, that he has passed through the astral world and approaches the higher worlds—those worlds in which are to be found the spiritual archetypes of the things here on earth. When he approaches what is called in esoteric Christianity the world of heaven, he approaches it through a world of flowing colour; he enters into a world of sound, into the harmony of the universe, the music of the spheres. The spiritual world is a world of sound. He who has developed his higher Self to the level of the higher worlds must become at home in this spiritual world. It is indeed Goethe who clearly expressed the higher experience of a world of spiritual sound in his Faust when he lets him be carried up to heaven and the world of heaven is revealed to him through sound.

The sun-orb sings, in emulation
'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:

The physical sun does not sing, but the spiritual sun sings. Goethe retains this image when, after long wanderings, Faust is exalted into the spiritual worlds (Faust, Second Part): “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, see the new-born day appearing.” “Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes—eye is blinded, ear amazes: The Unheard can no one hear!”

Through the symbolic world of the astral, man, if he evolves higher, approaches the world of the harmony of the spheres, the Devachanic domain, the spiritual music. Only softly, softly, does Brother Mark, after passing through the first portal, the astral portal, hear floating out to him the sound of the inner world behind our external world, of that world which transforms the lower astral world into that higher world which is pervaded by the triple harmony. And in reaching the higher world man's lower nature is transformed into the higher triad: our astral body is changed into the spirit-self, the etheric body into the life-spirit, the physical body into the spirit-man. In the music of the spheres he first senses the triple harmony of the higher nature, and in becoming one with this music of the spheres he has the first glimpse of the rejuvenation of man when he enters into union with the spiritual world. He sees, as in a dream, rejuvenated mankind float through the garden in the form of the three youths bearing three torches. This is the moment when Mark's soul has awakened in the morning from darkness, and when some darkness still remains; his soul has not yet penetrated it. But precisely at such a time the soul can gradually look into the spiritual world. It can look into the spiritual worlds as it can look when the summer noon is past, when the sun is losing in power and winter has come, and then at midnight the Christ-principle shines through the earth in the night of Christmas. Through the Christ-principle man is exalted to the higher trinity, represented for Brother Mark by the three youths who are the rejuvenated soul of man. This is the meaning of Goethe's lines:

And until thou truly hast
This “dying and becoming,”
Thou art but a troubled guest
O'er the dark earth roaming.

Every year anew Christmas will indicate to the one who understands esoteric Christianity that what happens in the external world is the mimicry, the gestures, of inner spiritual processes. The external power of the sun lives in the spring and summer sunshine. In the Scriptures this external power of the sun, which is only the forerunner of the inner spiritual power of the sun, is represented by John the Baptist, but the inner, spiritual power by Christ. And while the physical power of the sun slowly abates, the spiritual power rises and grows in strength until it reaches its zenith at Christmas time. This is the meaning underlying the words in the gospel of S. John: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” And he increases until he appears where the sunforce has again attained the outer physical power. So that man may henceforth revere and worship in this external physical power the spiritual power of the sun, he must learn the meaning of the Christmas festival. For those who do not know this meaning the new power of the sun is nothing but the old physical power returning. But whoever has become familiar with the impulses which esoteric Christianity, and especially the Christmas festival, should give him will see in the growing power of the solar body the external body of the inner Christ which shines through the earth, which gives it life and fruitfulness, so that the earth itself becomes the bearer of the Christ-power, of the Earth-Spirit. Thus what is born in every Christmas night will be born for us each time anew. Through Christ we shall experience inwardly the microcosm in the macrocosm, and this realisation will lead us higher and higher.

The festivals, which have long ago become something external to men, will again appear in their deep significance for mankind if they are led by this profound Esotericism to the knowledge that the occurrences of external nature, such as thunder and lightning, sunrise and sunset, moonrise and the setting of the moon, are the gestures and physiognomy of spiritual existence. And at the turning-points which are marked by our festivals we should realise that these are also times of important happenings in the spiritual world. Then we shall be led on to the rejuvenating spiritual power represented by the three youths, which the ego can only win by devoting itself to the outer world and not egotistically shutting itself away from it. But there is no devotion to the outer world if this external world is not permeated by the Spirit. That this Spirit shall appear every year anew for all men, even for the feeblest, as Light in the darkness, must be written every year afresh in the heart and soul of man.

This is what Goethe wished to express in this poem, The Mysteries. It is at once a Christmas poem and an Easter poem. It would indicate profound secrets of esoteric Christianity. If what he wished to indicate of the deep mysteries of Rosicrucian Christianity is allowed to work upon our souls, if we absorb its power even in part, then for some few at least in our environment we shall become missionaries; we shall succeed in fashioning this Festival once more into something filled with spirit and with life.

When after short repose within his cell
A deep resounding bell awakes our guest,
His soul is filled with longing for devotion,
He rises quickly with unwearied zest
And hastens to the church, with all his heart
Responding to the gladly heard behest,
Obedient, peaceful and by prayer bestirred;
Alas! The door is locked, he stands deterred.

But hark! a blow on dull resounding ore
Three times in equal intervals renewed,
No chime it seems to be of clock or bells,
From time to time with tones of flute imbued;
The floating music fills the heart with joy,
Mysterious 'tis and scarce to be construed,
It sounds like singing, solemn and entrancing,
To which the couples interlace in dancing.

Bewildered and by strange emotion moved,
He hastens to the window there to gaze;
The day is dawning in the distant east,
The sky o'erflown by lucent streaks of haze.
And may he trust his eyes? A mystic light
Is fleeting through the garden's winding ways;
Three youths with torches in their hands he sees
Who haste along the paths between the trees.

He clearly sees their wonderful apparel,
The white resplendent garments which they wear,
Their girdles made of intertwining roses,
The wreaths of flowers in their curly hair;
They seem to come from some nocturnal dances,
With joy of movement thrilled, enlived and fair.
But as the stars will fade, when day is near,
Extinguishing their torch, they disappear.

Ladies and gentlemen! From the viewpoints the Waldorf School takes as its points of departure, there is not one path but many that lead away from the unnatural things that have been imposed on humanity, and especially on our public life, toward something natural that is being demanded by human nature in its broadest sense, so to speak. I intend to outline one such path, the path between the teacher and the parents” house, in the remarks I am going to present to you today.

You may say that this path can be taken for granted, and yet, ladies and gentlemen, not only has the path teachers and educators take to the parents” house been found to be very difficult at times, but there are many, many significant views on education that pay no attention to it at all. I need only remind you of something that was experienced as a great event in the course of German cultural development—the appearance of Johann Gottlieb Fichte in all fields. Today, however, we will only mention his appearance in the field of education. During one of the most difficult times in German history, he gave his penetrating “Speeches to the German Nation” in which he pointed out that healing and re-enlivening German life after the humiliation of 1806 would have to happen through education.¹ We can say that Johann Gottlieb Fichte, one of the noblest of all Germans, found the most beautiful and most significant words to say about education. However, he regarded it as a fundamental prerequisite for carrying out his pedagogical intentions that children be taken from their parents homes and cooped up together in special educational institutions that would be run according to strict principles and only by a unified state. After his time, we also witnessed a great variety of educational experiments in which children from certain circumstances were brought together in special places to be educated appropriately. In the course of humanity’s evolution we have seen numerous examples that necessitated the removal of children from their homes.

Although Waldorf education and its spirit work with at least as much urgency and at least as much out-of-the-depths of the human soul as the educational experiments sketched briefly above, this spirit of Waldorf education took a very different direction from the very beginning. It did not take superficialities as its starting point. It did not say that this or that social provision had to be made for the sake of the children. It did not say that children needed to be removed from their normal situations and placed in different ones. From the very beginning the spirit of Waldorf education was a purely pedagogical and methodological one. The social situation and the circumstances of the children’s lives are accepted for what they are, and everything that is to be accomplished through Waldorf education is striven for on the basis of the inner spiritual foundations of pedagogy itself. We can thus say, in effect, that wherever educational difficulties arise because of a childs social situation or other circumstances, these are accepted as destiny by the spirit of Waldorf education, and methods are put into effect that will allow the difficulties to be overcome out of the spirit and out of teaching practices that are individualized for the child in question to the greatest possible extent. This means, however, that a school like the Waldorf School stands in the midst of actual life. In actual life, if we are dealing with a school that takes children at age six or seven, they are coming from home, and since we have no boarding facility they remain at home and in the care of their parents during the time when they are not in school. Thus the entire thrust of education in the Waldorf School is to work together with the parents. In particular, as we shall see, we must feel, sense, and think together with the parents.

No doubt many of you have often been presented with the idea of the significance of the stages of life for the life of a child.

There are two or three of life’s stages that are of concern to our theory of education. The first begins at birth and ends at the change of teeth, the second begins at the change of teeth and ends at puberty, and the third continues from there until approximately the twenty-first year of life. If we have an unprejudiced sense of how things are, each of these stages in the life of a child shows us the child in a totally different constitution of soul and of body. Let us first consider the child’s soul constitution.

Until the change of teeth, the child is definitely dependent on imitation for learning what is taught. What you demonstrate to the child works like an outer stimulus that calls upon the child’s entire bodily organization—in some places more visibly, in others less visibly—to imitate the impression. To substantiate this, we need only keep in mind the decisive fact that children acquire their native language wholly through imitation, which works deeply into the organization of their bodies and souls. We must take into account that the vibration, the waves of movement, of any spoken sound is experienced much more intensely in childhood than it is later on in life. Even in speaking, when it is a person’s native language that is in question, any adjusting of the larynx, any inner ensouling of the organs, is based on imitation. This is how it is with everything in the child’s life until the change of teeth.

Nowadays, when a misunderstanding, or rather numerous misunderstandings, generate great errors in our otherwise so admirable scientific world-view, we often talk about the hereditary basis of one or the other thing a child acquires in the first stage of life up to the change of teeth. But as far as the child is concerned, the only basis for this talk of heredity is the fact that the people who are talking about it have no real sense of observation. Otherwise they would find out that basically much of what we attribute today to this dark and mysterious heredity must actually be looked for in the child’s clearly comprehensible tendency to imitate.

However, consider how close the child’s soul life, which arises out of this imitative activity, is to the life of the parents simply because the child is a being who imitates. If we really grasp how strong the tendency toward imitation is in the child, we come to have a holy awe and a profound respect for the child/parent relationship. And if we then look at the basis for all this in spiritual cosmic connections, then we are truly able to say that since a human being is a spiritual being prior to embarking on a physical existence, this person—in spite of being a free being—enters earthly existence with a very specific destiny with regard to the forms, if not the routines, of life. If we look on the one hand at how this destiny unrolls with an inner regularity from the smallest experiences of childhood to a ripe old age, and on the other hand at how the child grows close to the parents by being an imitative being, if we really see all this in the context of all the underlying spiritual connections, we begin to have sensations that are religious in character, you might say, about what is given to us as teachers and educators when a child is entrusted to us. And these almost religious sensations make us strongly inclined to want to understand, when a child is entrusted to us on entering school, precisely how this child is connected to his or her parents.

It may be said that theoretical pedagogical considerations or abstract principles are truly not what determine how the spirit of Waldorf education sets out to meet the parents of the children. Rather, it is something living, just as everything else in the Waldorf school is meant to be something living. It is a living thing; it is the Waldorf teacher’s active need to be able not only to approach the child in spirit but also to find a way from the child to the parents through every expression of soul the child presents, through every motivating force, through every type of childish impulsiveness, and even through every gesture and every hand movement. This confirms our understanding of the child, which we Waldorf teachers need above all else if we are to teach by deriving our educational impulses from the very nature of the child in question. First and foremost, we can confirm that we are looking at a child in the right way by turning to the parents standing behind him or her. This is the case even when the parent/child relationship is not absolutely harmonious. In actual life what grows out of children and parents living together can manifest in the greatest possible variety of ways. Of course we have an inner feeling of happiness when we look at the destiny of a child who has the possibility of living in fully harmonious circumstances with exemplary parents. But may we not pose a counterquestion to this? If we observe life, either contemporary or historical life, without bias, do we not find that the greatest spirits, not only intellectual geniuses but also geniuses of virtue and moral action, have often sprung from grave disharmonies between child and parents? Waldorf teachers must acquire the habit of not criticizing the child/parent relationship, but of accepting it objectively, because their acquaintance with the parents can shed light on the child’s idiosyncrasies.

Thus it is not some pedagogical principle that challenges the Waldorf teacher to find a way to get to know the parents, but rather an inner heartfelt need, just as Waldorf education in general is essentially a pedagogy of the heart.

Let us now look at something else, namely the fact that teachers are now obliged to take on part of what used to be provided solely by the parents of children of elementary-school age. On entering elementary school, a child is going through the change of teeth. Nowadays children are sent to school somewhat too early; elementary-school age actually only begins with the change of teeth, but that is not the main point here.

When a child is sent to school and entrusted to a teacher, the teacher must take on a part of education or child-rearing that acquires its specific character from the fact that the child’s entire soul life, the child’s entire constitution of soul and spirit, is also transformed at the change of teeth. After that, the child is no longer an imitative being, although the principle of imitation does persist for several years into the child’s time in elementary school. Fundamentally, however, the child is now no longer an imitative being, but a being who is stimulated by what it meets in the form of images, through our structuring what we present in an appropriate and artistic way, you might say. At this age, children no longer tend to apply themselves imitatively and with their entire constitution to what is presented to them. Instead, they shift to the principle of natural authority. Whereas earlier it was the children’s will that imitatively traced what was demonstrated to them in their entire constitution, now it is their feeling that likes or dislikes what their teacher presents to them in images, including the images of his or her entire personality and actions, of the composition of his or her speech, and so forth. And the authority that prevails in school between the change of teeth and puberty must not be arbitrarily imposed. It must be a matter of course. Without admitting this, it is impossible to look at how human life unfolds as a whole. It is so easy to say that we should always use visual aids in our lessons. I do not mean to say anything against visual aids, but they should not become a means of trivializing instruction. We cannot take it as a principle to reduce everything to the level the children are already on. The point is that only those things that directly nurture the children through visualization need to be cloaked in a visual representation. But take a circumstance from religious or moral life—how are we supposed to use visual aids in this case? Aside from that, however, the inner soul nature of the children is such that something is true because a teacher to whom they feel sympathetic, who is an authority to them as a matter of course, has pronounced it true. They feel something to be beautiful because a natural authority finds it beautiful; they find something good because this authority finds it good. The authority figure incorporates the true, the beautiful and the good. It is bad for a person to have to acquire a feeling for the true, the good, and the beautiful as a matter of principle, on the basis of abstract commandments or all kinds of rational rules, before having acquired it at the right age—the age between the change of teeth and puberty—by having it confront him or her in the person of another human being. We should first learn that something is true because a respected person declares it true, and only later recognize the inner abstract laws of truth, which actually can have an effect on us only after we achieve sexual maturity.

Surely you do not expect someone who wrote 7he Philosophy of Freedom over thirty years ago to go to bat for the principle of authority in a place where it does not belong. However, the authoritative principle that children demand by their very nature absolutely does belong in the elementary school. Teachers themselves, with their rationality, their hearts and feelings, and their whole nature as human beings, are guidelines with regard to the true, the good, and the beautiful as the children are meant to embrace them. The human relationship that comes about reaches right into how the children construe the true, the good, and the beautiful. All this is presented in greater detail in various pedagogical writings on Waldorf education which are available for you to read.²

But let us now consider the position Waldorf teachers are in as a result of acknowledging this principle of natural authority and trying to apply it to its fullest extent. They depend on not having this natural authority undermined in any way. We must keep in mind that at the age when the change of teeth is taking place, even in families in which a lack of harmony prevails between the child and the parents, the child is inwardly close to the parents. This closeness is so strong that it basically outshines anything else that comes under consideration with regard to the being of the child at this age. This means that even if a child confronts his or her parents with antipathy, to use a severe term, a totally unshakable authoritative relationship to the parents is present subconsciously. I can present this only briefly here, but the matter can be verified in all its details. A true psychology, a true study of the soul, teaches us that even when children come into conflict with their parents and home when they are losing their baby teeth or in the years just after that, they are actually totally under the authority of the parents in the subtle, subconscious psychological layers of their being. And who would wish it otherwise? This is simply the relationship nature provides. If I were to depict the course that humanity’s evolution would follow if this were not the case, it would make a horrible picture. This means, however, that in their now completely different field of activity, where teachers are no longer examples to imitate but speakers who use their authority to present what enters the child, teachers must take a more subtle approach in influencing what the child has become in his or her inmost being as a result of parents and home. There is no other way of responding to the individuality of a child with your authority than by being able to link up fully consciously with what the child has become as a result of parents and home. The instinctive result of this in the Waldorf teacher is an inner urge to establish a connection to the parents.

There is a very specific reason why this urge develops. The spirit of Waldorf education is not a one-sided one; it encompasses the spirit, the soul, and the body equally. It would be a total misunderstanding of the spirit of Waldorf Education to believe that the physical aspect, whether in a healthy or an unhealthy state, is in any way underestimated in comparison to the spiritual aspect. The spirit of Waldorf education takes into account the whole human being in a child. But because it takes the whole human being into account without actually having the whole human being—it only has the child during school hours and perhaps for a short time before and after—it must experience an inner need to be in the closest possible contact with the parents, with the home in which the child spends the rest of his or her time.

It really is true with us—and I have often said this, particularly within the Waldorf School itself—that an educator does not need to be afraid of large classes. To set up small classes for pedagogical reasons means to count on a pedagogical weakness. That is not what is going on here. If it were desirable to work toward having smaller classes in the Waldorf school, the reason for it would be so that the teacher would have more possibility of establishing a connection to the parents of all the students in the class. That is what the teacher must do, out of the whole spirit of the Waldorf school.

But let us consider something else, since I am only trying to highlight a few of life’s stages. Those who can observe children in real life find that there is an extremely important point in life between the ages of nine and ten, approximately. You can see this point approaching; a certain inner crisis makes its presence known. It is not that the children start asking especially rational questions, but this crisis becomes evident when otherwise lively children start to hang their heads, when quiet ones become loud, when they give evidence of all sorts of unhealthy conditions, and so on. What is going on here is that in the child’s subconscious—and a great deal in the being of a child is in the subconscious rather than in consciousness—a question appears, a question that is not formulated rationally, but is active only in perception: Is the natural authority that has given me what is true, good, and beautiful up to now, is the natural authority that is the personification of truth, goodness and beauty, actually that? The doubt need not be expressed out loud, but it is there; it infuses the life of the child in the way I have described.

At this stage in a child's life, it is important for the teacher to have a healthy, independent gift of observation in order to find the right word and the right way of acting. Many things are needed—tact, instinct, intuition. Then you will be able to do something at this point in the child’s life that will be of wideranging significance for the entire earthly life that follows. If you find the comments, the actions and the relationship that can confirm for the child in an individually appropriate way that he or she was right in seeing a natural authority in you, then you have done something out of your inmost soul to become a true benefactor of that child.

Lucky the person who after this point around the ninth or tenth year can continue to look up to and respect an authority as a matter of course! No individual can become a free being in the course of his or her life without first learning, before entering puberty, to arrange life in accordance with how a highly respected person acts. To submit out of inner instinctive freedom in this way, to face such a person, recognizing that it is right to do as he or she does—that is what starts to make something out of the potentials for freedom that are concealed in a person.

In short, we as Waldorf teachers must maintain our natural authority in all respects and in the most subtle way. How can we do this? It is possible if our interaction with parents arouses the feeling in them that it is all right for them to influence their children to see the natural authority in the teacher. This may sound trivial, but it is true: Waldorf teachers should never pass up the opportunity to show themselves to the children’s parents in their true colors, so that the parents know who they are dealing with. This can sometimes be done in five minutes. The parent’s tone of voice, the nuance of each sentence they speak about the school, should be directed toward supporting natural authority in school. The connection between school and home cannot be close enough.

Still a third thing: If you have in front of you two, three or four sets of curricula and school regulations, all of them very cleverly thought out, then you know what you have to do. You have the curriculum, you have the regulations; that is what you have to do. But that is not how things are in the Waldorf School. If we are thinking in the spirit of the Waldorf School, it is right to think that some things must be different than they are in public education. Many people today cannot grasp that. And cleverness is so prevalent in our times. I cannot emphasize enough how clever people in our times are in comparison to other times. But it is just this rational cleverness—and I mean this quite seriously.

I am not being ironic—that commits the greatest stupidities. Nevertheless, people are clever, and this is expressed in a great variety of ways. If thirty people sit together and plan a school reform, it can be so clever that it cannot be disputed. And then lay thinkers can say, “That’s brilliant, it would be impossible to create better schools than these people have done with their points 1, 2, 3, and 4.” But just try to take it further, and look at the schools that have been created through those points 1, 2, 3, and 4. The principles are very clever, the statutes and paragraphs are very clever, but you cannot do anything with them in real life. The only way to do anything in real life is to feel life itself pulsing within you and to create out of this pulsing life.

This is where Waldorf teachers stand: They have no statutes and paragraphs, but only advice and suggestions which they must shape according to their own individualities. If you prescribe strictly what teachers have to do in school, then they should all be just alike. Just think of the consequences of that. If the regulations were seriously enforced, if we were to put into effect these very well-meaning abstract pedagogical principles that hold that there is only one way of teaching, then you would no longer be able to tell one teacher from another. You would meet one teacher and think it was some other one, because they would both be teaching according to the same abstract principles. But teachers are human beings. They are individuals. And they can only work if they can put themselves into it with the full independence of their being. Only then can they be really effective. But then they have to know life. You can only work in real live if you allow life to affect you. But what kind of life do you encounter in school? The parents’ life as it continues to work in the children. Our teachers are steered away from paragraphs and principles toward the real, immediate life of the children. This must flow into our methodology, into how we arrange all of our teaching.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you could be a fly on the wall and listen in on our teachers’ meetings sometimes, you would hear how all the details of home are actually being taken into account and how intimately they are discussed with regard to how they shed light on the children. And if you were that fly on the wall, you would also find out that these teachers’ meetings are an ongoing learning process, that our educational practices are constantly evolving toward higher and more subtle effectiveness. It cannot be different if the school is meant to be a living organism, rather than a dead one. This means that the Waldorf School, because it calls itself an independent school, is an institution whose innermost being points to parents and home with regard to understanding the child as a total being.

Let us say that we get to know a child who is lacking in intellectual ability. That can happen. And there are many ways in which a lack of intellectual ability can be corrected, can be developed into something better. But we need a point of departure. Let us say that we get to know the child’s father and mother, and they are very intelligent. It does sometimes happen that children who are not intellectually gifted have very intelligent parents. It can also be just the opposite, that parents who are not intellectually gifted have highly gifted children. In any case, we will learn a very great deal about alleviating the child’s lack of intellectual ability if we look at the parents whom the child imitated up to the change of teeth. If we do so, we will find not only a theoretical explanation, but also suggestions for implementing what we have to do about it. The emotional life plays a very significant role in children of school age. It even plays into morality in that it receives the good only through sympathy for the good in the teacher. Children’s emotional life becomes transparent when we can see through their feeling into their parents’ particular variety of feeling life. This applies equally to the life of the will.

People whose intelligence tells them that an individual must be like this and such because that is average and proper human nature need not consider the parents. However, if we know that things and beings have origins, if we look to the source rather than to something abstract, then we must consider the child’s parents and home.

Waldorf education leads us along the path toward reality because it tries to live and breathe the spirit of reality, a spirit that is in accordance with nature and in accordance with the soul. And this path toward reality leads away from school and toward the parents’ home. This is the reason behind everything that can awaken the teacher’s interest in the parents and the parents’ interest in the teachers in the school. The parents’ evenings that are organized by the Waldorf School are there in order to create a bond between school and home. What we do in these parents’ evenings is meant to allow the parents to see the attitude and soul-constitution of the faculty.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the practical implementation of what is ultimately present as the highest—I cannot say principle, but the highest view in the spirit of Waldorf education. Out of the depths of their inner soul life and out of this spirit of Waldorf education, Waldorf teachers must realize that the parents are entrusting the school with the most precious thing they have when they send their children to us. These parents have had many experiences in life; perhaps they have been tested by life. This does not mean that they wish their children to remain untested, but they do wish them to be spared some of the difficult experiences that they themselves had to go through. For this and many other reasons, parents attach a great deal of hope to the moment when they entrust their child to a school. Out of the whole spirit of Waldorf education, our teachers know what is being entrusted to them. On the basis of views such as those I have characterized, they would like their effect on the children to be such that when the children are released from school and return to their parents, the parents can say, “We knew it all the time, ever since we first saw the school, that our hopes would be fulfilled.” However, this is not a conclusion they can come to at the last minute when their children graduate. It can mature gradually only through the interaction between school and home.

Thus, we can turn our backs on many different educational experiments, and even on well-intentioned pedagogical ideals, and turn to the spirit of Waldorf education, realizing that there is an extremely healthy instinct at work in children being together with their parents, and that it must therefore also be healthy for the school to grow close to this relationship by finding the right way to approach the parents.

Among the many things that the Waldorf School aspires to, which can all be characterized by saying that this school wants to rise above abstract principles and cleverness to a reality that is full of life, the main thing is that the Waldorf School wants to find a way to the most life-filled reality in the child’s existence. And in the existence of the small child, the child of school age, this reality is the parents.

This school with its spirit wants to be, not a school of theories, abstractions, and inflexible theoretical principles, but one full of life and reality. That is why it tries to find its way into the reality of the parents’ home.

• 1. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762-1814, Reden an die deutsche Nation [“Speeches to the German Nation”] given in Berlin during the Napoleonic occupation of 1807-08.
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner’s 7The Renewal of Education, Kolisko Archive Publications for Rudolf Steiner Schools Fellowship Publications, Forest Row, Sussex, England, 1980 [Die Erneuerung der padagogisch-didaktischen Kunst durch Geisteswissenschaft, Dornach, 1977], 14 lectures given in Basel, 1920, GA 301; Education and Modern Spiritual Life, Garber Publications, Blauvelt, NY, 1989 [Gegenwärtiges Geistesleben und Erziehung, Dornach, 1923], 14 lectures given in Ilkley, 1923, GA 307; The Roots of Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996 [Anthroposophische Pädagogik und ihre Voraussetzungen, Dornach, 1972], 5 lectures given in Bern, 1924, GA 309; Human Values in Education, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1971 [Der pädagogische Wert der Menschenerkenntnis und der Kulturwert der Pädagogik, Dornach 1965], 10 lectures given in Arnheim, 1924, GA 310; The Kingdom of Childhood, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995 [Die Kunst des Erziehens aus dem Erfassen der Menschenwesenheit, Dornach, 1979], 7 lectures given in Torquay, 1924, GA 311; The Education of the Child and Early Lectures on Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1996 [Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft, Dornach, 1978].

Periodical Re-Births

Enq. You mean, then, that we have all lived on earth before, in many past incarnations, and shall go on so living?

Theo. I do. The life-cycle, or rather the cycle of conscious life, begins with the separation of the mortal animal-man into sexes, and will end with the close of the last generation of men, in the seventh round and seventh race of mankind. Considering we are only in the fourth round and fifth race, its duration is more easily imagined than expressed.

Enq. And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?

Theo. Most assuredly so; because this life-cycle or period of incarnation may be best compared to human life. As each such life is composed of days of activity separated by nights of sleep or of inaction, so, in the incarnation-cycle, an active life is followed by a Devachanic rest.

Enq. And it is this succession of births that is generally defined as re-incarnation?

Theo. Just so. It is only through these births that the perpetual progress of the countless millions of Egos toward final perfection and final rest (as long as was the period of activity) can be achieved.

Enq. And what is it that regulates the duration, or special qualities of these incarnations?

Theo. Karma, the universal law of retributive justice.

Enq. Is it an intelligent law?

Theo. For the Materialist, who calls the law of periodicity which regulates the marshalling of the several bodies, and all the other laws in nature, blind forces and mechanical laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of chance and no more. For us, no adjective or qualification could describe that which is impersonal and no entity, but a universal operative law. If you question me about the causative intelligence in it, I must answer you I do not know. But if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense, "no respecter of persons," though, on the other hand, it can neither be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. This is a belief common to Hindus and Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.

Enq. In this Christian dogmas contradict both, and I doubt whether any Christian will accept the teaching.

Theo. No; and Inman gave the reason for it many years ago. As he puts it, while "the Christians will accept any nonsense, if promulgated by the Church as a matter of faith . . . the Buddhists hold that nothing which is contradicted by sound reason can be a true doctrine of Buddha." They do not believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate and just punishment for each evil deed or thought in a future incarnation, and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.

Enq. Where is it so stated?

Theo. In most of their sacred works. In the "Wheel of the Law" (p. 57) you may find the following Theosophical tenet: -"Buddhists believe that every act, word or thought has its consequence, which will appear sooner or later in the present or in the future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences, good acts will produce good consequences: prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven (Devachan). . . in the future state."

Enq. Christians believe the same thing, don't they?

Theo. Oh, no; they believe in the pardon and the remission of all sins. They are promised that if they only believe in the blood of Christ (an innocent victim!), in the blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the whole of mankind, it will atone for every mortal sin. And we believe neither in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the smallest sin by any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite," if such a thing could have any existence. What we believe in, is strict and impartial justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal Deity, represented by Karma, is that it is a Power which cannot fail, and can, therefore, have neither wrath nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which leaves every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. The saying of Jesus: "With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again" (Matth. vii., 2), neither by expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. This is why, recognising as we do in our philosophy the justice of this statement, we cannot recommend too strongly mercy, charity, and forgiveness of mutual offences. Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious presumption. Human Law may use restrictive not punitive measures; but a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and refuses to forgive every injury, thereby rendering good for evil, is a criminal and only hurts himself. As Karma is sure to punish the man who wronged him, by seeking to inflict an additional punishment on his enemy, he, who instead of leaving that punishment to the great Law adds to it his own mite, only begets thereby a cause for the future reward of his own enemy and a future punishment for himself. The unfailing Regulator affects in each incarnation the quality of its successor; and the sum of the merit or demerit in preceding ones determines it.

Enq. Are we then to infer a man's past from his present?

Theo. Only so far as to believe that his present life is what it justly should be, to atone for the sins of the past life. Of course — seers and great adepts excepted — we cannot as average mortals know what those sins were. From our paucity of data, it is impossible for us even to determine what an old man's youth must have been; neither can we, for like reasons, draw final conclusions merely from what we see in the life of some man, as to what his past life may have been.

WHAT IS KARMA?

Enq. But what is Karma?

Theo. As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature. Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. Though itself unknowable, its action is perceivable.

Enq. Then it is the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much value as an explanation of the problems of life?

Theo. On the contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in its essence, we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its mode of action with accuracy. We only do not know its ultimate Cause, just as modern philosophy universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything is "unknowable."

Enq. And what has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more practical needs of humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in reference to the awful suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the so-called "lower classes."

Theo. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour — all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

Enq. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

Theo. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.

Enq. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

Theo. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.

Enq. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be concentred or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate fulfilment without all this protracted suffering?

Theo. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfilment. But of this I am certain, the point of possibility in either of these directions has never yet been touched. Listen to the following recital of one phase of national suffering, and then ask yourself whether, admitting the working power of individual, relative, and distributive Karma, these evils are not capable of extensive modification and general relief. What I am about to read to you is from the pen of a National Saviour, one who, having overcome Self, and being free to choose, has elected to serve Humanity, in bearing at least as much as a woman's shoulders can possibly bear of National Karma. This is what she says: —

"Yes, Nature always does speak, don't you think? only sometimes we make so much noise that we drown her voice. That is why it is so restful to go out of the town and nestle awhile in the Mother's arms. I am thinking of the evening on Hampstead Heath when we watched the sun go down; but oh! upon what suffering and misery that sun had set! A lady brought me yesterday a big hamper of wild flowers. I thought some of my East-end family had a better right to it than I, and so I took it down to a very poor school in Whitechapel this morning. You should have seen the pallid little faces brighten! Thence I went to pay for some dinners at a little cookshop for some children. It was in a back street, narrow, full of jostling people; stench indescribable, from fish, meat, and other comestibles, all reeking in a sun that, in Whitechapel, festers instead of purifying. The cookshop was the quintessence of all the smells. Indescribable meat-pies at 1d., loathsome lumps of 'food' and swarms of flies, a very altar of Beelzebub! All about, babies on the prowl for scraps, one, with the face of an angel, gathering up cherrystones as a light and nutritious form of diet. I came westward with every nerve shuddering and jarred, wondering whether anything can be done with some parts of London save swallowing them up in an earthquake and starting their inhabitants afresh, after a plunge into some purifying Lethe, out of which not a memory might emerge! And then I thought of Hampstead Heath, and — pondered. If by any sacrifice one could win the power to save these people, the cost would not be worth counting; but, you see, THEY must be changed — and how can that be wrought? In the condition they now are, they would not profit by any environment in which they might be placed; and yet, in their present surroundings they must continue to putrefy. It breaks my heart, this endless, hopeless misery, and the brutish degradation that is at once its outgrowth and its root. It is like the banyan tree; every branch roots itself and sends out new shoots. What a difference between these feelings and the peaceful scene at Hampstead! and yet we, who are the brothers and sisters of these poor creatures, have only a right to use Hampstead Heaths to gain strength to save Whitechapels." (Signed by a name too respected and too well known to be given to scoffers.)

Enq. That is a sad but beautiful letter, and I think it presents with painful conspicuity the terrible workings of what you have called "Relative and Distributive Karma." But alas! there seems no immediate hope of any relief short of an earthquake, or some such general ingulfment!

Theo. What right have we to think so while one-half of humanity is in a position to effect an immediate relief of the privations which are suffered by their fellows? When every individual has contributed to the general good what he can of money, of labour, and of ennobling thought, then, and only then, will the balance of National Karma be struck, and until then we have no right nor any reasons for saying that there is more life on the earth than Nature can support. It is reserved for the heroic souls, the Saviours of our Race and Nation, to find out the cause of this unequal pressure of retributive Karma, and by a supreme effort to re-adjust the balance of power, and save the people from a moral ingulfment a thousand times more disastrous and more permanently evil than the like physical catastrophe, in which you seem to see the only possible outlet for this accumulated misery.

Enq. Well, then, tell me generally how you describe this law of Karma?

Theo. We describe Karma as that Law of re-adjustment which ever tends to restore disturbed equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral world. We say that Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the Universe exists.

Enq. Give me an illustration.

Theo. Later on I will give you a full illustration. Think now of a pond. A stone falls into the water and creates disturbing waves. These waves oscillate backwards and forwards till at last, owing to the operation of what physicists call the law of the dissipation of energy, they are brought to rest, and the water returns to its condition of calm tranquillity. Similarly all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced harmony of the Universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backwards and forwards, if its area is limited, till equilibrium is restored. But since each such disturbance starts from some particular point, it is clear that equilibrium and harmony can only be restored by the reconverging to that same point of all the forces which were set in motion from it. And here you have proof that the consequences of a man's deeds, thoughts, etc. must all react upon himself with the same force with which they were set in motion.

Enq. But I see nothing of a moral character about this law. It looks to me like the simple physical law that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Theo. I am not surprised to hear you say that. Europeans have got so much into the ingrained habit of considering right and wrong, good and evil, as matters of an arbitrary code of law laid down either by men, or imposed upon them by a Personal God. We Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and "Harmony," and "Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce. I can do no better than quote for your benefit certain passages from books and articles written by our Theosophists — those who have a correct idea of Karma.

Enq. I wish you would, as your literature seems to be very sparing on this subject?

Theo. Because it is the most difficult of all our tenets.

Some short time ago there appeared the following objection from a Christian pen: —

"Granting that the teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that 'man must be his own saviour, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in his dual nature, to obtain the emancipation of his soul,' what is man to do after he has been awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness? How is he to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of the evil or wickedness he has already done?"

To this Mr. J. H. Conelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to "make the theosophical engine run on the theological track." As he has it: —

"The possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the concepts of Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or 'blotting out of evil or wickedness already done,' otherwise than by the adequate punishment therefor of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the harmony in the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The evil has been his own, and while others must suffer its consequences, atonement can be made by nobody but himself.

"The condition contemplated . . . . in which a man shall have been 'awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness,' is that in which a man shall have realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment. In that realization a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and just in proportion to the extent of his awakening or 'converting' must be the sense of that awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the time when he is urged to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.

"He is told that be must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would show us that that which we regret is rather the necessity that seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil itself."

"Attractive as this prospect of casting our burden of sins 'at the foot of the cross' may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a suspension in his favour of the universal law of relation between cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of wickedness upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims.

"Evil is an infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the penalty thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ uttered the warning, 'Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,' and St. Paul said, 'Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' That, by the way, is a fine metaphoric rendering of the sentence of the Puranas far antedating him — that 'every man reaps the consequences of his own acts.'

"This is the principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy. Sinnett, in his 'Esoteric Buddhism,' rendered Karma as 'the law of ethical causation.' 'The law of retribution,' as Mdme. Blavatsky translates its meaning, is better. It is the power which

"'Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring /Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.'

"But it is more. It rewards merit as unerringly and amply as it punishes demerit. It is the outcome of every act, of thought, word and deed, and by it men mould themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of a newly created soul for every baby born. It believes in a limited number of monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive personalities. Those personalities are the product of Karma and it is by Karma and re-incarnation that the human monad in time returns to its source — absolute deity."

E. D. Walker, in his "Re-incarnation," offers the following explanation: —

"Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about. . . . Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercession, forgiveness and death-bed conversions. . . . In the domain of eternal justice the offence and the punishment are inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its outcome. . . . It is Karma, or our old acts, that draws us back into earthly life. The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical re-births. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the goal of mankind."

And then the writer quotes from the Secret Doctrine:

"Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cobweb, and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. . . . An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that, nevertheless, it guards the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer — aye, even to his seventh re-birth — so long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony has not been finally re-adjusted. For the only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or — break them. Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways — which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism; and a third simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them — would surely disappear if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. . . . We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident of our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. . . . . The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of reincarnation. . . . . It is only this doctrine that can explain to us the mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues — far more deserving in every way — perishing for want and for lack of sympathy — when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him — that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as their supposed Creator. . . . . This law, whether conscious or unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coequal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which broke our arm or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as one Eternal, ever-present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world."

Another able Theosophic writer says (Purpose of Theosophy, by Mrs. P. Sinnett): —

"Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in each action and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments it may be safely assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by themselves in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the Ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by which it is re-embodied, but it is drawn by the affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the development of those tendencies. . . . . This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated to guide and assist those who realize its truth to a higher and better mode of life, for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions but our thoughts also are most assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future, and, what is still more important, the future of many of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case be only self-regarding, the fact on the sinner's Karma would be a matter of minor consequence. The effect that every thought and act through life carries with it for good or evil a corresponding influence on other members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness or progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall — no amount of repentance can wipe out their results in the future. Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced, which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next re-birth."

Mr. J. H. Conelly proceeds —

"The believers in a religion based upon such doctrine are willing it should be compared with one in which man's destiny for eternity is determined by the accidents of a single, brief earthly existence, during which he is cheered by the promise that 'as the tree falls so shall it lie'; in which his brightest hope, when he wakes up to a knowledge of his wickedness, is the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and in which even that is handicapped, according to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

"By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death.

"These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. . . . As God hath appointed the elect unto glory. . . . . Neither are any other redeemed by Christ effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

"The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice."

This is what the able defender says. Nor can we do any better than wind up the subject as he does, by a quotation from a magnificent poem. As he says: —

"The exquisite beauty of Edwin Arnold's exposition of Karma in 'The Light of Asia' tempts to its reproduction here, but it is too long for quotation in full. Here is a portion of it: —

Karma — all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The 'self' it wove with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.
* * * * *
Before beginning and without an end,
As space eternal and as surety sure,
Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,
Only its laws endure.
It will not be contemned of anyone;
Who thwarts it loses, and who serves it gains;
The hidden good it pays with peace and bliss,
The hidden ill with pains.
It seeth everywhere and marketh all;
Do right — it recompenseth! Do one wrong —
The equal retribution must be made,
Though Dharma tarry long.
It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true,
Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;
Times are as naught, to-morrow it will judge
Or after many days.
* * * * *
Such is the law which moves to righteousness,
Which none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is love, the end of it
Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey."

And now I advise you to compare our Theosophic views upon Karma, the law of Retribution, and say whether they are not both more philosophical and just than this cruel and idiotic dogma which makes of "God" a senseless fiend; the tenet, namely, that the "elect only" will be saved, and the rest doomed to eternal perdition!

Enq. Yes, I see what you mean generally; but I wish you could give some concrete example of the action of Karma?

Theo. That I cannot do. We can only feel sure, as I said before, that our present lives and circumstances are the direct results of our own deeds and thoughts in lives that are past. But we, who are not Seers or Initiates, cannot know anything about the details of the working of the law of Karma.

Enq. Can anyone, even an Adept or Seer, follow out this Karmic process of re-adjustment in detail?

Theo. Certainly: "Those who know"can do so by the exercise of powers which are latent even in all men.

Who Are Those Who Know?

Enq. Does this hold equally of ourselves as of others?

Theo. Equally. As just said, the same limited vision exists for all, save those who have reached in the present incarnation the acme of spiritual vision and clairvoyance. We can only perceive that, if things with us ought to have been different, they would have been different; that we are what we have made ourselves, and have only what we have earned for ourselves.

Enq. I am afraid such a conception would only embitter us.

Theo. I believe it is precisely the reverse. It is disbelief in the just law of retribution that is more likely to awaken every combative feeling in man. A child, as much as a man, resents a punishment, or even a reproof he believes to be unmerited, far more than he does a severer punishment, if he feels that it is merited. Belief in Karma is the highest reason for reconcilement to one's lot in this life, and the very strongest incentive towards effort to better the succeeding re-birth. Both of these, indeed, would be destroyed if we supposed that our lot was the result of anything but strict Law, or that destiny was in any other hands than our own.

Enq. You have just asserted that this system of Re-incarnation under Karmic law commended itself to reason, justice, and the moral sense. But, if so, is it not at some sacrifice of the gentler qualities of sympathy and pity, and thus a hardening of the finer instincts of human nature?

Theo. Only apparently, not really. No man can receive more or less than his deserts without a corresponding injustice or partiality to others; and a law which could be averted through compassion would bring about more misery than it saved, more irritation and curses than thanks. Remember also, that we do not administer the law, if we do create causes for its effects; it administers itself; and again, that the most copious provision for the manifestation of provision for the manifestation of just compassion and mercy is shown in the state of Devachan.

Enq. You speak of Adepts as being an exception to the rule of our general ignorance. Do they really know more than we do of Re-incarnation and after states?

Theo. They do, indeed. By the training of faculties we all possess, but which they alone have developed to perfection, they have entered in spirit these various planes and states we have been discussing. For long ages, one generation of Adepts after another has studied the mysteries of being, of life, death, and re-birth, and all have taught in their turn some of the facts so learned.

Enq. And is the production of Adepts the aim of Theosophy?

Theo. Theosophy considers humanity as an emanation from divinity on its return path thereto. At an advanced point upon the path, Adeptship is reached by those who have devoted several incarnations to its achievement. For, remember well, no man has ever reached Adeptship in the Secret Sciences in one life; but many incarnations are necessary for it after the formation of a conscious purpose and the beginning of the needful training. Many may be the men and women in the very midst of our Society who have begun this uphill work toward illumination several incarnations ago, and who yet, owing to the personal illusions of the present life, are either ignorant of the fact, or on the road to losing every chance in this existence of progressing any farther. They feel an irresistible attraction toward occultism and the Higher Life, and yet are too personal and self-opinionated, too much in love with the deceptive allurements of mundane life and the world's ephemeral pleasures, to give them up; and so lose their chance in their present birth. But, for ordinary men, for the practical duties of daily life, such a far-off result is inappropriate as an aim and quite ineffective as a motive.

Enq. What, then, may be their object or distinct purpose in joining the Theosophical Society?

Theo. Many are interested in our doctrines and feel instinctively that they are truer than those of any dogmatic religion. Others have formed a fixed resolve to attain the highest ideal of man's duty.

The Difference Between Faith and Knowledge; Or, Blind And Reasoned Faith

Enq. You say that they accept and believe in the doctrines of Theosophy. But, as they do not belong to those Adepts you have just mentioned, then they must accept your teachings on blind faith. In what does this differ from that of conventional religions?

Theo. As it differs on almost all the other points, so it differs on this one. What you call "faith," and that which is blind faith, in reality, and with regard to the dogmas of the Christian religions, becomes with us "knowledge," the logical sequence of things we know, about facts in nature. Your Doctrines are based upon interpretation, therefore, upon the second-hand testimony of Seers; ours upon the invariable and unvarying testimony of Seers. The ordinary Christian theology, for instance, holds that man is a creature of God, of three component parts — body, soul, and spirit — all essential to his integrity, and all, either in the gross form of physical earthly existence or in the etherealized form of post-resurrection experience, needed to so constitute him for ever, each man having thus a permanent existence separate from other men, and from the Divine. Theosophy, on the other hand, holds that man, being an emanation from the Unknown, yet ever present and infinite Divine Essence, his body and everything else is impermanent, hence an illusion; Spirit alone in him being the one enduring substance, and even that losing its separated individuality at the moment of its complete re-union with the Universal Spirit.

Enq. If we lose even our individuality, then it becomes simply annihilation.

Theo. I say it does not, since I speak of separate, not of universal individuality. The latter becomes as a part transformed into the whole; the dewdrop is not evaporated, but becomes the sea. Is physical man annihilated, when from a foetus he becomes an old man? What kind of Satanic pride must be ours if we place our infinitesimally small consciousness and individuality higher than the universal and infinite consciousness!

Enq. It follows, then, that there is, de facto, no man, but all is Spirit?

Theo. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance — that Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of differentiation. To believe otherwise is blind faith.

Enq. Thus it is on knowledge, not on faith, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?

Theo. I would put it otherwise and say — we assert that the appearance of the permanent and one principle, Spirit, as matter is transient, and, therefore, no better than an illusion.

Enq. Very well; and this, given out on knowledge not faith?

Theo. Just so. But as I see very well what you are driving at, I may just as well tell you that we hold faith, such as you advocate, to be a mental disease, and real faith, i.e., the pistis of the Greeks, as "belief based on knowledge," whether supplied by the evidence of physical or spiritual senses.

Enq. What do you mean?

Theo. I mean, if it is the difference between the two that you want to know, then I can tell you that between faith on authority and faith on one's spiritual intuition, there is a very great difference.

Enq. What is it?

Theo. One is human credulity and superstition, the other human belief and intuition. As Professor Alexander Wilder says in his "Introduction to the Eleusinian Mysteries," "It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand. . . . The undercurrent of this world is set towards one goal; and inside of human credulity . . is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all existence." Those who limit that "credulity" to human authoritative dogmas alone, will never fathom that power nor even perceive it in their natures. It is stuck fast to the external plane and is unable to bring forth into play the essence that rules it; for to do this they have to claim their right of private judgment, and this they never dare to do.

Enq. And is it that "intuition" which forces you to reject God as a personal Father, Ruler and Governor of the Universe?

Theo. Precisely. We believe in an ever unknowable Principle, because blind aberration alone can make one maintain that the Universe, thinking man, and all the marvels contained even in the world of matter, could have grown without some intelligent powers to bring about the extraordinarily wise arrangement of all its parts. Nature may err, and often does, in its details and the external manifestations of its materials, never in its inner causes and results. Ancient pagans held on this question far more philosophical views than modern philosophers, whether Agnostics, Materialists or Christians; and no pagan writer has ever yet advanced the proposition that cruelty and mercy are not finite feelings, and can therefore be made the attributes of an infinite god. Their gods, therefore, were all finite. The Siamese author of the Wheel of the Law, expresses the same idea about your personal god as we do; he says (p. 25) —

"A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a god, sublime above all human qualities and attributes — a perfect god, above love, and hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a quietude that nothing could disturb, and of such a god he would speak no disparagement, not from a desire to please him or fear to offend him, but from natural veneration; but he cannot understand a god with the attributes and qualities of men, a god who loves and hates, and shows anger; a Deity who, whether described as by Christian Missionaries or by Mahometans or Brahmins,* or Jews, falls below his standard of even an ordinary good man."

*Sectarian Brahmins are here meant. The Parabrahm of the Vedantins is the Deity we accept and believe in.

Enq. Faith for faith, is not the faith of the Christian who believes, in his human helplessness and humility, that there is a merciful Father in Heaven who will protect him from temptation, help him in life, and forgive him his transgressions, better than the cold and proud, almost fatalistic faith of the Buddhists, Vedantins, and Theosophists?

Theo. Persist in calling our belief "faith" if you will. But once we are again on this ever-recurring question, I ask in my turn: faith for faith, is not the one based on strict logic and reason better than the one which is based simply on human authority or — hero-worship? Our "faith" has all the logical force of the arithmetical truism that 2 and 2 will produce 4. Your faith is like the logic of some emotional women, of whom Tourgenyeff said that for them 2 and 2 were generally 5, and a tallow candle into the bargain. Yours is a faith, moreover, which clashes not only with every conceivable view of justice and logic, but which, if analysed, leads man to his moral perdition, checks the progress of mankind, and positively making of might, right — transforms every second man into a Cain to his brother Abel.

Enq. What do you allude to?

HAS GOD THE RIGHT TO FORGIVE?

Theo. To the Doctrine of Atonement; I allude to that dangerous dogma in which you believe, and which teaches us that no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and his blood will wash out every stain. It is twenty years that I preach against it, and I may now draw your attention to a paragraph from Isis Unveiled, written in 1875. This is what Christianity teaches, and what we combat: —

"God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And furthermore, it is never too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church, and of the Clergy; assumptions banged at the heads of your countrymen by England's favourite preachers, right in the 'light of the XIXth century,'" this most paradoxical age of all. Now to what does it lead?

Enq. Does it not make the Christian happier than the Buddhist or Brahmin?

Theo. No; not the educated man, at any rate, since the majority of these have long since virtually lost all belief in this cruel dogma. But it leads those who still believe in it more easily to the threshold of every conceivable crime, than any other I know of. Let me quote to you from Isis once more (vide Vol. II. pp. 542 and 543) —

"If we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of justice, revolts against this Vicarious Atonement! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity — not even the Supremest of the Supreme — can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society and the natural order of things, and then — through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, it matters not — be forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt — this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into calm water. The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it. The eddying circles are greater and swifter as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every direction — outward and downward — drop pushes drop until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! . . .

"So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement,"

and — cease to believe in Karmic Law. As it now stands, we call upon the whole world to decide, which of our two doctrines is the most appreciative of deific justice, and which is more reasonable, even on simple human evidence and logic.

Enq. Yet millions believe in the Christian dogma and are happy.

Theo. Pure sentimentalism overpowering their thinking faculties, which no true philanthropist or Altruist will ever accept. It is not even a dream of selfishness, but a nightmare of the human intellect. Look where it leads to, and tell me the name of that pagan country where crimes are more easily committed or more numerous than in Christian lands. Look at the long and ghastly annual records of crimes committed in European countries; and behold Protestant and Biblical America. There, conversions effected in prisons are more numerous than those made by public revivals and preaching. See how the ledger-balance of Christian justice (!) stands: Red-handed murderers, urged on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal thirst for blood, who kill their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent or call on Jesus. These, perhaps, died sinful, and, of course — consistently with theological logic — met the reward of their greater or lesser offences. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed, pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal happiness! And how about the victim, and his, or her family, relatives, dependents, social relations; has justice no recompense for them? Must they suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the "holy thief" of Calvary, and is for ever blessed? On this question the clergy keep a prudent silence. (Isis Unveiled.) And now you know why Theosophists — whose fundamental belief and hope is justice for all, in Heaven as on earth, and in Karma — reject this dogma.

Enq. The ultimate destiny of man, then, is not a Heaven presided over by God, but the gradual transformation of matter into its primordial element, Spirit?

Theo. It is to that final goal to which all tends in nature.

Enq. Do not some of you regard this association or "fall of spirit into matter" as evil, and re-birth as a sorrow?

Theo. Some do, and therefore strive to shorten their period of probation on earth. It is not an unmixed evil, however, since it ensures the experience upon which we mount to knowledge and wisdom. I mean that experience which teaches that the needs of our spiritual nature can never be met by other than spiritual happiness. As long as we are in the body, we are subjected to pain, suffering and all the disappointing incidents occurring during life. Therefore, and to palliate this, we finally acquire knowledge which alone can afford us relief and hope of a better future.

In order to reach the goal of our discussions, we shall have to endeavour to comprehend the whole nature of the fifth post-Atlantean period in all its deepest significance. It is impossible to come to an understanding of events as deeply important as those of the present day by refusing to enter into concrete matters, and by insisting on considering only general aspects of the universe and man in the way that can be done when one is not concerned with specific circumstances. Unfortunately, I have to stress that an understanding for the deeply important nature of these events is largely lacking today.

For certain quite definite reasons which will become apparent, I yesterday spoke to you about two matters. First of all I told you how the book by Brooks Adams had been launched on mankind, a kite flown to gauge the scale on which such things are understood, at least by a few individuals. This book describes how a nation should be seen as a living organism which comes into being and passes through phases of childhood, youth, maturity and decline in a similar way to a human being, though of course only similar, not identical. Furthermore it is pointed out that at certain stages of their development nations evolve two characteristics which belong together, namely, at one stage those of an imaginative and a warlike nature, and at another those of a scientific and an industrial or commercial nature. So it is assumed that nations which are imaginative and warlike by nature, and others which are scientific and industrial or commercial, live side by side and that in the mutual interplay of such nations the universal development of mankind proceeds.

I told you that this was a one-sided view. How do such views surface in the first place? What does it signify that they are launched on the public?

Views of this kind have made an impression on individuals of a certain standing and therefore have become part of the impulses working today. In such matters it is always a question of disconnecting portions of the overall spiritual knowledge of man's evolution and planting them in the world when needed or wanted. By taking a portion of the total occult picture of mankind's development it is possible to achieve definite things in the service of a particular group and its particular egoism. Knowledge of the whole picture always serves the whole of mankind. Portions taken out of context always serve the egoism of individual groups. It is significant and important to take into account that much that is launched on the public from occult sources is not untrue, but half true, a quarter true, an eighth true, and just because it bears within it a part of the truth it can be used to achieve one aim or another in a one-sided way. That is why those who see through these things gain a significant impression from the fact that, on the part of America, the twentieth century is introduced by the launching of certain ideas in the world via some channels of the bookselling trade serving certain movements which make use of occult means.

The second matter about which I spoke was the remarkable treatise by the noble Thomas More on the best form of public adminstration in the state and on the island of Utopia. Out of this treatise by Thomas More I quoted to you yesterday the passage in which More says through the mouth of a stranger what he wants to say about Utopia. This stranger is presented as a fictitious person; perhaps we shall get to know him better today, but he is not fictitious, as you will see. Out of a certain mood of his time, which I described yesterday, he develops the theme of his feelings and then describes Utopia itself.

This description of Utopia by Thomas More, who flings these particular ideas into the midst of human development at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, is indeed quite remarkable. I have found a number of people who have read Utopia, but not a single one who has read it carefully enough to become even partly aware of all the extraordinary ins and outs and unlikely details the book describes. People simply take the description of the island of Utopia as that of an imaginary island and just read on, page after page. This is understandable in the present age, which is void of all spirituality. But at least one should notice either that Thomas More is describing something incomprehensible, even if it is only meant to be imaginary, or that he must have been a complete idiot, an absolute fool. But such logical conclusions are not drawn in our time; people far prefer to pass over things by means of superficial judgements. I shall now call up before our souls an outline of the content of this work. If you want all the details, you must read Utopia yourselves.

It is significant that Utopia is described as having reached a certain maturity in its institutions. It is expressly stated that the situation being described did not exist in the beginning but has taken 1,760 years to achieve, so that we are now presented with a kind of finished product of some maturity.

The first point to be particularly stressed is that property is common, nobody owns anything. The state is divided into certain families who, if we can put it like this, elect elders, and from among the elders a prince is elected. From time to time a council is called at which public matters are discussed in accordance with the instructions of the different sections of the population. Here we immediately come to an extraordinary arrangement: Public affairs may only be discussed in the prescribed manner. Anybody who privately discusses public affairs is liable to be condemned to death. Further, we discover a highly sensible arrangement: When a suggestion is made during the council meeting it may never be discussed immediately; people must first go home and think about it and it is then brought up again on a subsequent occasion. The one who is telling us the story says that in this way people have an opportunity to think about things, and do not make hasty judgements which they would naturally defend with stubbornness and egoism, just because they have become attached to their own judgement instead of thinking carefully and coming to the right conclusion.

In Utopia everyone has to learn farming while still a child. Later they also learn a trade, usually that pursued by their parents, though they may choose another if they have the skill for it. Work is strictly regulated and nobody need labour for more than six hours a day.

Everything else is also arranged in the best way; there are three hours of work in the morning but, before this, at sunrise, those who wish may gather to learn about spiritual and similar things. Games such as those we know outside Utopia do not exist there. They have, however, a competitive game something like chess, a kind of arithmetical battle, and also another competitive game, again similar to chess, in which the vices and the virtues compete with one another.

Under the supervision of the elected representatives those who are suitable are declared scholars. From among their number the ambassadors and the priests are elected. The dirtiest work is performed by slaves who are either recruited from amongst conquered peoples or else are criminals. Every true Utopian is free. There is another arrangement in Utopia which we, who are not from Utopia, have only just come to enjoy: no journey may be made without permission from the appropriate authority. A passport is necessary for even the shortest journey. Money does not exist. Anything available for consumption is taken to the markets where anybody can help himself. Since this is so well arranged that no one takes more than he needs, there is no necessity to pay anything, for everyone receives what he requires. Money or anything like it is simply not necessary.

The only metal of any value is iron. Please take note of this, for it is very significant. Silver is valued less and gold least of all. Gold is not fashioned into the articles non-Utopians would use it for, but mainly into chains for criminals, and for similar objects. Gold is forged into chains for criminals; they have to wear them as a symbol of their shame. Certain receptacles which one does not mention in polite company are also made of gold, and so on. This had a curious consequence once, when some foreign diplomats visited Utopia and sought to impress the Utopians by festooning themselves in gold chains and jewellery. The Utopians thought them to be of very lowly origin, since such things were only used as toys for children, who discarded them as they grew older. When the diplomats came, the children watched them pass by in the street and said: Look at those old fogeys still wearing children's playthings!

No value is attached in Utopia to the wearing of fine clothes, for they say: How can anyone fancy it matters whether his clothes are made from this wool or that wool? The sheep were the first to wear them. How can you fancy there is anything special in wearing what the sheep first wore naturally!

In Utopia there is also another peculiarity; good and evil, virtue and vice are only judged in connection with religious ideas. A goal to be striven for in life is a kind of epicureanism in the pleasures one enjoys. The more fun one has in life, the more virtuous one is considered to be. The Utopians believe in the immortal soul of man and have a kind of religion of reason. They consider that everybody may use his common sense to see that God rules the world like an overseer, that man has an immortal soul and that after death this will enter into a spiritual world where there will be reward and punishment for virtue and vice.

The Utopians think nothing of jewels for they say: When somebody buys a jewel he has to seek the assurance of the seller that it is genuine; why on earth should something be valuable if you cannot see with your own eyes whether it is a genuine or a counterfeit jewel? This could only happen in Utopia. Hunting is also scorned as something undignified. Only butchers are allowed to hunt, and theirs is not an esteemed profession.

The man who tells all these things explains that he himself introduced the Utopians to Greek literature and art and that they proved to be extraordinarily intelligent. Indeed their language seems to have affinities with Greek, and their culture is unusual in that it seems to remind one of that of Greece mingled with something of Persia. The manner in which husband and wife are selected I shall not describe for reasons which you will understand if you read the book. There are no lawyers in Utopia; they are considered to be the most harmful people. Contracts are not entered into because the Utopians believe that if someone wants to keep an agreement he can do so without a contract, whereas if he does not, he can break it even if he has a contract.

In war, they avoid bloodletting if at all possible; it is considered the most shameful thing. They say: If one spills blood in war, one is no better than wolves and tigers. Other methods must be sought, for man has intelligence. Only in absolute extremity, if there is no other hope, will they spill blood. They set about the matter of making war on another nation by sending out scouts whose task it is either to bring about confusion among the enemy so that they start to quarrel among themselves, or to murder one or another member of the enemy force, or something similar. In other words they seek to use ‘love and good sense’ to bring about discord and dissension as well as mutual irritation among those on whom they wish to make war, and only if this fails will they decide to shed blood. And even then they use quite special methods which show that they intend to cease the bloodletting at the first possible opportunity.

Another point is that religious tolerance is a fundamental characteristic of the Utopians. So long as he does not break the law, anybody may belong to any sect or represent any religious view he likes. This was instituted by the founder of Utopia, Utopus himself. However, all must believe in a highest being, whom they call Mythra. The one who tells us this has himself attempted to introduce Christianity there. The A-94-Utopians proved to be most open to it and recognized it as being indeed the best religion. The utmost religious tolerance prevails, and all may believe whatever they will, except that someone who is a materialist or who does not believe in the immortality of the soul forfeits all civil and other rights, indeed is declared to be without rights.

There is a sect which holds animals to be creatures who have souls like people. There are priests who teach in special mystery churches and perform cultic rites. Festivals are celebrated at the end and the beginning of each year. Musical instruments differ somewhat from those in other countries, for they are particularly suited to expressing in music what the human soul feels in its various moods. And so on.

I have told you all this just as it is described in the book. You will have noticed I said on the one hand that the Utopians have a religion of good sense, in which each individual believes what his good sense tells him is right; and yet, on the other hand, we are told that Christianity has been introduced and that all believe in a kind of Mythra. Further, it is said that tolerance prevails, and yet those who are materialists forfeit their rights as citizens. In short, you will find in the book one contradiction after another.

So what is this book really about? What is it describing? We can indeed only understand it on the basis of spiritual science. We must understand that Thomas More, like Pico della Mirandola and others, is a man who stands with part of his being in the fourth post-Atlantean period while another part already projects into the fifth. But he is also a man who knows that this is so and develops it in full consciousness because he possesses a certain spiritual life.

Thomas More spent many hours every day in meditation, and with his meditations he achieved certain quite definite results. But these results came about because, as I said, part of his being still lived in the fourth post-Atlantean period, so that atavistic elements joined in him with a conscious raising of his soul into the life of the spiritual world. Yet he lived a whole century after the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period and in his soul everything lived which was characteristic of that fifth period: intellectuality and reasoning as we know them today—which did not yet exist during the fourth period, contrary to the opinion of those whose view of history is utterly fantastic. All this worked and mingled in his soul. You can discover what must have gone on in such a soul if you study Pico della Mirandola and also the relationship of Pico della Mirandola to Savonarola.

We have, then, a man into whose soul we must penetrate a little if we are to understand what he meant with his description of Utopia. Such a man as this knew that occult impulses work and weave in the evolution of mankind, and also that at the turn of the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period it was necessary to provide the right impulse for many people. Whether they then make use of it is another question. What did such people know? We have often discussed that things are different nowadays, but this is what it was like then; so what did such people know? They knew that mankind must grow decadent if only those things were developed which were, let me say, unspiritual, thought-out, merely reasoned. Such people know that human beings must become desiccated even down to their physical bodies—of course not during the course of a few centuries but over a long period—if only dry reasoning, if only that spiritual element is developed on which materialistic views are founded. Such people have quite a different concept of the truth from that which gradually evolved during the fifth post-Atlantean period. They know that thoughts must be thought which do not relate to the physical plane, because, quite apart from the truth of such matters, human beings, if they do not wish to wither, must think thoughts which do not relate to the physical plane. These are the thoughts which bring life, which make life possible and help it to make progress. This is why what is spiritual is so important, quite apart from the aspect of truth.

Through his meditations Thomas More had come to experience pictures of the higher worlds in a partly atavistic and partly conscious way, but these were mingled with the material aspect of the dream worlds. Out of these actual experiences arose what he relates in Utopia. It is not something he has thought out, it is not fantasy, but something he really experienced as the fruit of his meditation. He placed it before us just as he experienced it, in order to say: Behold! A man who lives in England under King Henry VIII, a man who is even a servant of Henry's state, a man who bears in his soul the feelings, the desires, the intimate goals of England at this time—when his visions stir up his inner being, he experiences what is here described to be a kind of ideal state. He wanted to express what are the wishes, the goals, the ideas lurking in the subconscious of those who are dissatisfied with the external world. This is what he wanted to express.

So it can be said: this is the astral self-knowledge of a man of that time. A wise man such as Thomas More does not simply set before his contemporaries a fantastic ideal for the future. He sets before them what he himself experiences because, through this, in his own way and in keeping with his own time, he wants to present them with the great truth that the external world perceived by the senses is maya and that this external world of the senses must be seen in conjunction with the super-sensible world. But if one sees them in conjunction in this way—so that all the desires, all the wishes which belong to a particular age and are in keeping with that age, are allowed to play their part—then the outcome is something which, if looked at closely, is by no means a proposition that could be considered ideal. For I must admit, if I were to be born in Utopia I would probably see it as my primary task to overcome the prevailing conditions as quickly as possible and replace them with others. I might even consider the conditions prevailing here or there on our earth—apart from those of the immediate present—to be more ideal than those in Utopia. But it was not Thomas More's aim to describe ideal conditions. His intention was to show what he really experienced under the conditions as I have described them. He wanted to say to people: If you could see your wishes, if you could see before your eyes what you imagine to be ideal conditions, you would find that you were not in agreement with them at all.

Now we have made the acquaintance of the stranger who describes Utopia: he is the astral self of Thomas More. These things must be seen as being much more real than is usually supposed. At certain points of human evolution the fundamental facts must be sought out if one wants to understand this human evolution. A judgement cannot be made simply by taking the few facts closest to hand. A valid judgement cannot be based on these, for it would merely relate to sympathies and antipathies. These are valid, of course, but they take us no further, and mankind cannot be served by them.

My purpose here—and we shall return to these things later—has been to place before you a man who is particularly typical of the turning point between two ages, namely, between the fourth and the fifth post-Atlantean ages: one who is able to bring to the surface what is characteristic of his deeper soul life in such a way that he has an experience of self. Let me just leave this as a fact for the moment.

In order to gain an understanding of the kind for which a number of our friends here have expressed a wish, we must now also work on achieving a comprehension of the concrete reality of a folk soul. For our materialistic age and way of feeling tends to make us confuse the folk soul with the individual soul. I mean, when we speak of a people, a nation, we believe that this has something to do with the individuals who constitute this nation. To use a rather rough-and-ready, though graphic comparison: To say that an Englishman or a German can be identified with the folk soul of his nation is, for the spiritual scientist, as nonsensical as saying that a son or daughter can be identified with father or mother.

This is a rough-and-ready comparison, as I said, because on the one hand we are dealing with two physical people, whereas on the other we mean one physical and one non-physical being, which differ totally from one another when examined concretely. Not until there is an understanding of the mysteries of repeated earth lives and of the karma which these involve will there really be a comprehension of what underlies all this, which it is highly necessary to understand if one wants to speak on a firm basis about these things. An immensely important truth lies in the fact that one lives within a certain folk spirit only for a single incarnation, whereas one bears within one's own individual being something quite different, something immeasurably greater and yet also immeasurably smaller than that which lives within a folk soul. To identify oneself with a folk soul is, in reality, totally devoid of meaning once one goes beyond what is described by such words as love of the fatherland, love of the homeland, patriotism and so on. We shall only understand these things properly, once we can look earnestly and deeply at the truths of reincarnation and karma.

I have spoken recently in various places about the connection between the human soul between death and rebirth and what comes into being when man enters a new existence through birth. I pointed out that between death and rebirth man is linked with the forces which bring people together over many generations. Through the ever-repeated union of different pairs of parents and all that leads to descendants, as well as other aspects of the succession of generations, it comes about that the human being between death and rebirth finds himself within a whole stream which, in the end, leads him to the parents through whom he can incarnate. Just as in physical life one is linked with one's physical body, so between death and rebirth is one linked with the conditions which prepare for birth through a particular pair of parents. One is immersed in the forces which bring one to particular parents, and which brought father and mother to their parents, and so on back through the generations, in all their offshoots and ramifications, and whatever works together here in the most varied ways—in all this one is immersed for centuries!

Consider the imposing number of centuries one would remain within all this in order to pass through a mere thirty generations. The period from Charlemagne to the present day encompasses approximately thirty generations, and over all that time, in all that has taken place in the way of meeting, falling in love and begetting descendants which at last led to our own parents—in all this we have ourselves been involved, all this we have ourselves prepared.

I am repeating this because in connection with those personalities one calls leaders, those who can be recognized as leading personalities in some respects, it is important to understand that what makes them significant for mankind comes about through all that I have just described. I shall draw your attention now to a leading personality, and the climax of what I have to say about him will be expressed in the words of another. You will see in a moment why this is so.

We see in Dante a most eminent personality who lived at the end of the fourth post-Atlantean period. We may juxtapose such an eminent personality with those personalities who gained a certain eminence after the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, such as, for instance, Thomas More. Let us look closely at what may be recognized in general in a personality such as Dante. A personality such as Dante is of far-reaching significance, gives far-reaching impulses. It is therefore interesting to consider, or at least to guess, how such a soul before entering through birth into a physical existence that is to be significant for mankind, puts together—excuse this rather peculiar expression—what he is to become, in order to be born in the right way through the right parents. Obviously these conditions are brought about out of the spiritual world, but they are realized with the help of the physical tools. In a certain sense the spiritual world guides this blood to that blood, and so on.

As a rule, a personality like Dante cannot be born of homogeneous blood. To belong to a single nation is impossible for such a soul. It needs a mysterious alchemy; various blood streams must flow together. Whatever those over-patriotic people might say who claim great personalities for a single people, there is no great reality behind it!

As regards Dante, so that you do not think I am taking sides I shall now let another, who knows him intimately, describe what is clearly apparent in his being. It would be easy to imagine that I might be carrying on politically, which is actually furthest from my intentions. So for this reason I have made enquiries of Carducci, the great Italian poet of today, who is an expert on Dante. Behind Carducci—and this is why I am quoting him—stand what are called ‘Massonieri’ in Italy, and what is connected with all those secret brotherhoods to whom I have drawn your attention. Because of this, Carducci's theoretical arguments about the actualities of life are, to a certain extent, based on some deeper knowledge. I would not maintain that he has flaunted this deeper knowlege all over the market place or that he is in any way an occultist. But what he says does contain a certain amount of what has come to him via all kinds of secret channels.

Carducci says: Three elements work in Dante, and it is only because these three elements work together that Dante's being was able to become what it was. First, through certain branches of his lineage, there was an ancient Etruscan element. This gave Dante whatever it was that opened the super-sensible worlds to him; because of this he was able to speak so profoundly about the super-sensible worlds. Secondly, there was in him a Roman element which gave him a proper relationship to the life of his time and a basis of certain legal concepts from which to proceed. And thirdly, says Carducci, there was a Germanic element in Dante. From this he gained the boldness and freshness of his views, a certain candour, and the courage of his convictions in what he had set himself. These three elements, says Carducci, made up the soul life of Dante.

The first element points to the ancient Celtic influence which pulses through him like blood in a certain way, leading him back to the third post-Atlantean period; for the Celtic element in the North leads back to what we have come to know as the third post-Atlantean period. After this we find the fourth post-Atlantean period in the Roman, and the fifth in the Germanic element. Carducci maintains that the elements in Dante's soul are composed of these three periods and their impulses, so that we really have three layers lying side by side—or rather one above the other—the third, fourth and fifth post-Atlantean periods: Celtic, Roman, Germanic. Dante experts of some stature have gone to great pains to discover how, from the spiritual world, Dante managed to mingle his blood in such a way as to obtain the final composition with which he was born. Of course, they did not express this in these words, but they went to great pains and came to believe that much may be put down to the fact that a great many of Dante's ancestors are to be found in the Grisons area of present-day Switzerland. This is borne out to some extent by history. The chain of Dante's predecessors points in every direction of the compass, including this district, where so much mixing of blood streams took place.

We now see how, in a single personality, the remarkable working together of the three layers of European human evolution is revealed. We also see how a man like Carducci, whose judgement is based on a certain objectivity and not on present-day nationalistic madness, points to the foundation on which Dante stands.

Herewith we touch on conditions which are well-known in circles familiar with the realities of life, conditions which may be reckoned with and which may be used as forces if one wants to do certain things. These conditions are by no means unknown to the secret brotherhoods, neither in their rightful use, nor in that other direction which uses secret knowledge in one way or another in the service of some group egoism. For the secret of how the three consecutive layers—which are exceedingly meaningful, mainly for Europe—work together, is discussed most carefully in all secret brotherhoods worthy of the name, though naturally in some cases in a manner which deflects from what might be termed the good direction.

Please be sure not to forget that knowledge about such things exists, and that it is taught—even though, in the external, clever world no one wants to know much about it—very systematically and with great care, especially in the western and American secret brotherhoods.

Having now prepared the way and brought to your attention the teaching about what is, in a certain way, a mystery of evolution and which is taught, albeit with the most varying aims, I shall now point to some further teachings simply by describing them to you. These teachings formed the content of the instruction given in certain occult schools, particularly towards the end of the nineteenth century. They continued into the twentieth century, but it was particularly in the nineteenth century that they were taken up, at which time they gained a considerable degree of influence. Efforts were made to bring them into all kinds of situations in which it was felt necessary to use them for certain ends. So to start with I shall simply report, quite uncritically, on certain teachings from the secret brotherhoods of England, whereby I shall be alluding to what I have prepared.

The following was taught and is still taught: The evolution of Europe can be comprehended if, to start with, one looks at the transition from the Roman, the fourth post-Atlantean period, to the fifth post-Atlantean period. The teaching was—please remember that I am merely reporting—that the mystery of the transition from the fourth to the fifth period or, as was said in these brotherhoods, from the fourth to the fifth sub-race, must be understood. You know that we cannot use the term ‘sub-race’ for the reasons I have frequently expressed, for to use this term means to pursue one-sided group aims, whereas group aims can never be our concern, but solely the general aims of mankind. So the teaching was that the fourth sub-race is represented mainly by the Roman, the Latin peoples. Throughout human evolution it is the case that when things develop in sequence it is not a question of what comes after taking its place behind what came before. What came before remains and takes its place side by side with what comes afterwards, so that they remain side by side in space. Thus, the stragglers of the fourth sub-race, consisting chiefly of the Roman and Latin elements, have remained during the period of the fifth sub-race.

The fifth sub-race, which began at the start of the fifteenth century, is composed of those peoples who are called upon to speak English in the world. The English-speaking peoples represent the fifth sub-race, and the whole task of the fifth post-Atlantean period consists in conquering the world for the English-speaking peoples. It will be evident that the stragglers of the fourth sub-race, the peoples touched by the Latin element, will fall more and more into a certain materialism. They bear within themselves the element of their own inner dissolution, and even in the physical sense bear their own decadence within them. As I said, I am merely reporting and not saying anything which I myself maintain to be true. Further, it is said that the fifth sub-race bears within it a germ of spirituality, of a capacity to comprehend the spiritual world. It is necessary, it is said, to understand how the fourth sub-race affected the fifth, and for this purpose one must look back to where the Nordic peoples, who later became the Britons, the Gauls, the Germans, came towards the Roman Empire. The question was asked: What were these peoples at the time when the Roman Empire was making war on them; in other words, when the conflict between the fourth and the fifth sub-race began? As peoples they were at the stage of infancy! The important point is that the Romans, the Roman element, the fourth sub-race, came in order to be their wet-nurse. These expressions are needed to enable us to draw the analogy between the folk element and the element of the individual human being. So the Romans became wet-nurses and they remained so for approximately as long as they maintained their dominance over the peoples of the North who were going through their infancy.

Infants grow to be children. This is the age in which the Papacy is founded in Rome and in which the Pope in his reign becomes the guardian of the child, just as the Roman Empire was the wet-nurse of the infant. Again, I am merely reporting, and not maintaining that this is the case. So now we have the interplay between the Papacy and what is going on in the North, what developed through Central Europe right out as far as Britain. This is the education of these people under the guardianship of the Papacy, out of which the Roman element from the fourth post-Atlantean period is still working. Round about the twelfth century, when the Papacy began to be no longer what it had been, the youth of these various people commenced, this being characterized by the awakening of their own intelligence. The guardian now withdraws. The youth of these peoples continues until roughly the end of the eighteenth century. As a rule, when such things are taught the present is omitted, because for certain reasons this is thought to be a good thing to do. People must not be told too clearly what one thinks about the present time; they learn about this more through suggestion.

Thus, in the course of time in the North, under the rule of the wet-nurse, the guardian, and so on, the present mature condition grew. This bears within it the germ of rendering Britain the ruling nation of the fifth post-Atlantean period, in the same way as were not only the Romans but also the Roman element in the form of the Papacy, which was derived from them. So, according to this doctrine, while the remains of the Latin element crumble away from the human race, a new fruitful element expands from the factor in which lives the British element. Now it is hinted that all external actions and measures which are to serve any purpose and be fruitful, must be made under the sign of these views. Anything that is undertaken without these views, anything that does not take into account that the Latin element is in decline and the British element ascending, is doomed to wither. Of course such things may be undertaken, say these people, but they are condemned to remain meaningless, they will not grow. It is like sowing seeds in the wrong soil.

In the doctrine I have sketched for you we have a foundation which seeped into all the brotherhoods, even the more esoteric ones—those who worked in the West as so-called high grade Freemasons and suchlike. These things were insinuated into public affairs by people who had either close or loose connections with these brotherhoods, often in such a veiled way that those concerned had no idea how they had come by their knowledge. Particularly since the sixteenth century these things have been carried from the West into much that can be experienced in human evolution.

Other things are also taught. It is said: Just as those people in the North during the time of the Roman element were preparing themselves to be the fifth sub-race, so today, in a similar way, the Slav people are coming towards the West as the developing sixth sub-race; in the same way the Germanic peoples came out of the North to meet the Roman element. Thus it is said that living in the East, under a despotic rule that is doomed to destruction, are a number of individual peoples who, like the Germanic peoples when the Roman Empire started to spread northwards, are not yet nations as such but still tribal peoples. These tribal peoples constitute the separate elements of the so-called Slav people, which for the moment is only held together in an external way by a despotic government which is to be swept away. I am using the terms which are customary within these secret brotherhoods.

After saying so many positive things about the Slavs, let me just add in parentheses: It is true that these peoples are still tribal in a certain way. This became evident at the Slav Congress in Prague in 1848. Each group wanted to speak in their own language, but this proved impossible because they were then incomprehensible to the others; so they were forced to use standard German instead. I do not say this to amuse you but in order to show that what is taught in the West about the Slavs does have a certain basis of truth.

It is said further in the English brotherhoods that the Poles have evolved ahead of the other Slavs, for they have developed a homogeneous cultural and religious life of a relatively high calibre. The destinies of the Poles are described to some extent, but it is then maintained that they really belong to the Russian Empire. Then the Balkan Slavs are discussed. Of them it is said that they have thrown off the yoke of Turkish oppression and formed themselves into individual Slav states which, however—and this is repeated over and over again—are destined to remain as they are only until the next great European war. In the nineties particularly, these brotherhoods held this great European war to be imminent, and it was linked especially to evolutionary impulses which were to emanate from the Balkan Slavs, born of the fact that these states, which had come into being as a result of their disengagement from the Turkish Empire, had to undergo a transition to new forms. Only until the next great European war, it was said, would these Balkan Slavs be able to maintain their independence. After that they would meet with quite other destinies.

These peoples are at present, so it is taught, in their infancy. So it is hinted that since they are the future sixth sub-race, while the Britons are the present fifth sub-race, the Britons will have to play a role towards them similar to that played by the Romans towards the northern Germanic peoples, namely that of wet-nurse; to be a wet-nurse to these peoples is their primary task. This role of wet-nurse will cease to be necessary, it is said, at the moment when these peoples will have reached a point when the Russian Empire no longer exists and they have succeeded in creating their own forms out of their own dawning intelligence. But gradually the wet-nurse must be replaced by the guardian. This means that in the West a kind of papacy must develop out of those who form the fifth sub-race. For this, a strong spirituality must develop and, just as the Papacy stood in relation to Central Europe, so a configuration will have to come about which works comprehensively from the West over towards the East. This must result in the East being used as a place where certain institutions can be created in a manner similar to that in which the Papacy created its institutions in Europe.

Of course we have now progressed by one sub-race. The Papacy created churches and religious communities of all sorts. But now the western ‘papacy’, which is to develop out of the British element, will have the task of carrying out certain quite definite economic experiments, that is, of instituting a certain form of economic society of a socialist nature which, it is assumed, cannot be founded in the West because there the fifth and not the sixth sub-race has its being. The East, experimentally at first, must be used for such experiments for the future. Political, cultural and economic experiments must be carried out.

Of course these people are not so stupid as to maintain that the dominance of the West will last forever, for no serious student of spiritual matters would believe that. But they are quite clear about the fact that just as at first the services of the wet-nurse were offered, so must these be metamorphosed into the role of the guardian—in other words a kind of future ‘papacy’ on the part of western culture.

I have been reporting, my dear friends! These things are buried deeply in the teachings of western Freemasonry and it is a matter of recognizing whether the ones I have mentioned, which are very influential, are really justified as being for the good of mankind in general in its evolution, or whether it is necessary to think of them as needing correction in some way. This is what we are concerned with. We shall return to all this again.

Now I want to point out that certain stages of evolution are really not mere fantasy, but that the more deeply one enters into the real facts, the more does it become possible to prove in the external world what was found at first by spiritual means. External science, even today, is occupied with the search for theories which prove that evolution takes place in stages which follow one another. That there is really something correct in what the spiritual scientist says can today be confirmed in some of the symptoms of ordinary science, if only one has the good will to search for them.

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Let me mention in this connection something of which I have repeatedly spoken already. Although external culture cannot comprehend these things there is, in spiritual development, something which is expressed in laws which are as definite as the laws of nature. I once drew your attention to a linguistic law. Human evolution from the fourth post-Atlantean period up to the present shows that Greek and Latin represent a particular stage of linguistic development; the next stage was then Gothic, and the one after that New High German. Evolution takes place here in a perfectly regular manner. I can only sketch this for you, but these things follow laws which are every bit as absolute as those of nature, and exceptions merely seem to be so.

The sound D in Greek or Latin is transmuted into T and this again into Th which, because of certain language laws, can also be Z. A Greek Th or Z becomes a Gothic D, and this becomes T in New High German. A Gothic Th or Z becomes a New High German T, and so the circle continues. Similarly, a Graeco-Roman B becomes a Gothic P, and this in turn a New High German F or Pf. A Greek F or Pf would be a Gothic B and a New High German P. There is another circle which goes from G to K to Ch. Take for example treis, three, drei: T / Greek; Th / Gothic; D / New High German. This is so in every case and exceptions can be explained by special laws which complement the main laws.

We have three stages, one above the other: Greek-Latin, Gothic—which corresponds to the time when the Roman Empire was coming up against the Germanic tribes—and the further stage of New High German. The strange thing is, as I have said before, that English has remained behind at the Gothic stage. So if you want to find the English for a New High German word, you have to go back a stage. Take ‘Tag’; to find the English for this you have to go, not forwards, but backwards: ‘day’. Take ‘tief’; again you have to go backwards to ‘deep’; take New High German ‘zehn’; if you want the English you have to go backwards: ‘ten’. Take ‘Zahn’; you have to go backwards if you want the English: ‘tooth’; take ‘Dieb’, here too you have to go backwards: ‘thief’. New High German ‘dick’, if you go backwards, becomes ‘thick’. So, to go from New High German to English, the direction is opposite to the normal.

So we can say quite objectively: If we seek to find the evolution of language as a folk element in respect of English, we have to go back to the Gothic stage. New High German has risen in evolution to become a special element. This is not said out of any patriotic or nationalistic feeling but simply because it is true, just as there is no need to say the polar bear is white out of any sympathy or antipathy for him. The law I have demonstrated to you is a well-known linguistic law, Grimm's law. I have only demonstrated it with regard to some voiced and unvoiced plosives and some aspirated sounds, but it can be done for the whole system of sounds. The evolution of language proceeds in accordance with strict laws and it corresponds to the impulses that rule in human evolution. Little by little natural science discovers these things, though sometimes only sporadically. In spiritual science you may find the deeper foundations for all these things.

We shall come to other aspects of spiritual and cultural life which will show that what applies to the realm of language holds sway in other fields as well. Something unconscious, when it is brought to light, bears witness to objective laws. This cannot be turned and twisted according to sympathy or antipathy!

Do not imagine that this Grimm's law on sound-shifts is unknown to those secret brotherhoods of whom we have spoken. Tomorrow we shall see how they come to terms with such matters and how they have relevant things to say about them too. What they have to say is not foolish but perfectly in keeping with a certain kind of occultism. It will be up to you to decide, when you know more about it, how you want to judge it and whether it is something legitimate or not. Through the karma of human evolution it will come about that certain things are made more easily accessible to the public at large, in particular as a result of the circumstance that a certain amount of confusion has entered into the Masonic orders. Because of these circumstances a variety of things are coming to light for the outside world. We, however, want to understand, above all, the deeper foundations of all this.

Some quite bizarre symptoms are indeed coming to light. For instance there exists today an interesting dissertation by a man who met his death—this too is a remarkable karmic circumstance—on the battlefield of the present war. It is about the parallelism that exists between French politics and French secret societies, and it shows how the two run entirely parallel, how the same forces live in both. Much more intimate and concealed are the circumstances of English politics which are totally under the influence of what lies hidden behind them in this way. Here the main concern is to find ways of placing suitable people in the right places. The people in the background who are involved in occult manipulations are often like a number one; they do not amount to much on their own. They need something else: a nought. Noughts are not ones, but the two together make ten. If more noughts are added, so long as there is a one somewhere as well, a great deal can result—for instance a thousand—though every nought remains a nought. And if the one remains hidden, then only the noughts are visible. So the aim is to combine the noughts in a suitable way with the ones, whereby the noughts have no need to know much about the way in which they are combined with the ones.

There is, for instance, a certain man who is a perfectly honest fellow. I have often said that I in no way look on him as the wicked ogre—for which many in Central Europe want to take him. I think he is an honest, nice man who, in his own way, longs to speak the truth. Yet this does not prevent him from being a nought. This man's education began at Winchester public school, whence he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. Then he won something very important, the Marlylebone Cricket Prize, followed by the Queen Anne Tennis Prize. At the age of twenty-three he became a member of parliament. At that age one is susceptible to all kinds of influences. At thirty he became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He had long been Foreign Minister when he set foot outside England for the first time in order to accompany the King of England on a journey to Africa. He also wrote a little book on angling entitled Fly Fishing. Sir Edward Grey then ascended the social ladder before sinking into obscurity. A fellow student at Oxford, ten years his senior, was Asquith, with whom he spent his years there.

This is how those appear who are the visible accomplices. We shall proceed thus far today and carry on tomorrow.

Before I move on to the actual topic, please allow me to just note that in today's lecture all sorts of things have to be said for which even the scientific justification cannot be presented today, for the reason that in the last lecture here weeks ago, the dispute between anthroposophy and science was attempted in such a way that the anthroposophy I mean here neither shies away from this dispute nor wants to oppose the scientific methods of the present day. But still, since I assume that a large part of the audience who were present at the time have already heard the things, I may refrain from repeating them today.

Now, when we speak of the great mysteries that confront the human soul when it looks to the spiritual world or wants to feel something, the questions that arise cannot, in principle, relate to the fact that at any given moment a person might doubt that he is dealing with spiritual beings in his own life. Indeed, one could almost say that questions about the nature of the spiritual world arise precisely because the human being knows that, by engaging with the world, he is dealing with the activity of that which is spirit in him. But on the other hand, he cannot get to grips with the question: What is the nature of this spiritual that he himself is dealing with? Actually, all questions relating to the spiritual world must ultimately come down to this: What is the nature of the spiritual that we know well? It is precisely the fate of that which we know well that is at stake in these riddle-like questions of existence. Even those who seriously, not merely out of coquetry, deny the spirit, they only deny that what they regard as spirit has an independent significance in relation to material existence. So their denial refers to the essence of the spiritual, not to the spiritual itself.

But why, since man does possess a spirit, does he encounter difficulties in this area? That is the question that actually arises more or less unconsciously in the human soul. Special people experience these questions consciously, the majority unconsciously, but one cannot say that they experience them any less meaningfully for the soul's mood and disposition. They also experience that these questions take place in the depths of the soul's life and play their way up into the daily state of mind through all kinds of states of happiness or suffering, so that one can indeed say that a person is more or less suitable or unsuitable for himself and the world, depending on how he comes to terms with such fundamental questions of existence.

Now, one could cite much that leads a person to ask these questions. From the whole abundance of that which torments, fills with doubt and the like in the human soul, I want to emphasize something that can illustrate how such riddle-questions, as they are meant here, present themselves to the human being.

We see every day, when we pass from the waking state into sleep, we see that which we carry within us in the waking state as our surging, fulfilling spiritual life, we see it sink down into the sphere of unconsciousness. And we feel, consciously or unconsciously, we feel in this descent of our conscious spiritual life into the unconscious the powerlessness of that which we actually consciously carry within us as our daily, cognizing spiritual life from waking to sleeping. And even if we only feel it, this feeling becomes the soul mood for what can be experienced when that which is most valuable in life, our conscious mental life, descends into the unconscious state. And we then ask ourselves: Does this spiritual life, for the sake of which we actually want to be human, also have to somehow descend into that fate, without it being connected with an inherent, supporting, sustaining, as we say, eternal existence?

That is one side of the question, which is so meaningful and powerful. But this question also exists in contrast. We wake up, perhaps through the transition of the dream life, which we must, however, see as illusory, compared to what we call reality in ordinary life. We grasp, so to speak, corporeality with our soul; we pass over into that state in which we make use of our body in every moment that develops our healthy bodily life. But even here there is something that seems mysterious to us, for we see that which we actually address as spirit sinking down into the body. We make use of the organs as they appear to us, of our body. But how the spiritual works through our arms and legs, how it works through our senses, how it makes use of the body, is something that initially eludes our ordinary consciousness. And one can say: While one becomes aware of the powerlessness of the spiritual through the moment of falling asleep, one can become aware upon waking up of how that which we call spiritual sinks into a kind of unknown world. We do not know how that which we would like to address as spiritual plunges into our physical organism. Fainting on the one hand, and sinking into darkness on the other, are the two poles that arise as such deeply heart-wrenching riddles of man, but which man cannot avoid.

And how does humanity as a whole stand today, in that it perceives these questions as the real riddles of existence? One might say that two things arise for the spiritual world, to which man seeks a relationship for the reasons already mentioned, two things arise precisely for the man of the present day. One is filled with illusions about the spiritual world, the other is filled with pains and torments whose origin remains unfathomable. One is superstition, the other is doubt. Those who have not yet familiarized themselves with the great results of the modern scientific world view, those who have not yet been touched by the conscientious method used by one part of the world, fall into superstition to a greater or lesser extent. They take what comes to them of their own accord or overcomes them from the anthroposophical world view and knowledge, they take that and fill their minds with what can arise in the human interior without it being justified in a faithful, honest way towards themselves. They fill the world, so to speak, with all kinds of thoughts and emotional constructs, and in doing so they feel satisfied in a certain way. But the moment they want to cope with the world, what they have absorbed in this way through superstition shows itself everywhere, coming up against all possible corners of the world. The events and things that confront us from the outside world do not correspond to what we draw from within as illusions. One ends up as a person who is disoriented in this world and unfit for action, because the powers on which he relies fail after all; they are just powers that are born out of his will and desire. This is the situation that the one, less scientifically minded part of humanity encounters in relation to these questions.

The other part of humanity, which has in turn immersed itself in the conscientious, scientific methods of the present day, so that it is able to recognize what significance science has for the overall culture of the present day, has often trained its thinking to seek out connections in the external world of the senses. It has felt how far one can go, which ideals still need to be resolved, for example in the field of natural science. But he has also learned, or at least believes he has learned, that when he engages his thinking with what is presented to him externally through the senses, for which he can find a certain kind of law through thinking, which then satisfies him for the sensory world, then this thinking is no longer sufficient to rise to a spiritual level. The very strength of spirit in modern science leads one too much to despair of the strength of this thinking when it comes to penetrating beyond the sensory realm into the spiritual realm through one's own human research. And so it is that the one who is still sincerely touched by science comes into doubt.

But—dear attendees—just as the superstitious person must become disoriented because their illusions do not prove to be forces for action, the honest person, who doubts with their heart, can no longer cope with themselves. For that which arises out of doubt penetrates deeply into the human mind with such strength that it moves in those ways, which today are still little understood in science, which lead from the human mind, from joy and suffering, of joy and pain, into the health of our nerves, of our entire organic system, that it puts itself into what we have in our minds, and that we, also physically, gradually become weak through doubt. I would like to say: The mental consumption that we have to acquire through doubt continues in the human physical fitness. And so, when doubt gnaws at us, we also become weak in life and, above all, we become shy and recoil from everything that, after all, should turn out to be a necessary relationship with the spiritual world, according to our assumptions or even our healthy sense. This is why a large proportion of those who have experienced these doubts seek a refuge in an area where anthroposophy will certainly not seek them, because it starts from a healthy soul life and seeks to develop higher powers of cognition in the human being through the further development of a healthy soul life, through which he can see into the spiritual world. But those who are often seized by doubt today do not turn to their own healthy nature, which above all needs to be developed; they turn to that which must be regarded as more or less pathological, to visions, to that which often arises in the waking consciousness like dream images. And we can say: all these phenomena are actually ultimately based on a detuning of the human organism.

There is no medium in whom the human organism as a whole is not tuned down, so that precisely because the human organism is not functioning properly, the abnormal spiritual phenomena that are admired in mediums come to light. Even extremely learned people cannot see that there must be an enormous insecurity when one allows oneself to be guided by paths that lead to the pathological for the sake of knowledge. Furthermore, one can also say: All of this must always be based on the fact that something in the human organism is not functioning in the normal way, so that there is always something present in all these ways that can only come before humanity if the human organism itself deviates from the healthy path.

This proves, in principle, how today's human beings will grasp at anything to come to the necessary knowledge of the spiritual world. Anthroposophy, as I mean it here, has to do with a path into the spiritual world — this should be particularly clear from my last lecture — that, above all, starts from a healthy human soul life and body life. Please read up on it. I cannot repeat all of that today, what I have indicated as soul exercises that are to be carried out, suitable for modern man and for the whole of culture, that are to be carried out so that the higher faculties of cognition and will develop from the ordinary soul forces, just as the higher faculties develop from the unconscious forces in the child. Read up on it, you will find all of this in the first preparatory part of my writings, in the part that refers to the fact that everything that is present in the soul and body life of a person in the way of restlessness, rashness, unconsciousness, and so on, and so on, must first be subjected to careful self-discipline. This first part of my books is often said, even by opponents of anthroposophy, to be taken into account, because it gives more or less moral instructions to the simple person who knows nothing about anthroposophy.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it cannot be denied that this is the case, but on the other hand, these efforts are aimed at developing powers of cognition in the healthy human soul, in the whole healthy human being, through which the spiritual world can become visible. And if, proceeding from these views and by means of such powers of knowledge, we look back into the course of human history, we find in this way the means of understanding what the modern soul requires in the sense of anthroposophy in relation to spiritual knowledge.

As I said, since people today often refuse to penetrate into the spiritual world on their own paths, they seek out among the paths already mentioned that which is there in the form of venerable traditions and religious creeds. They accept it, and even carefully select what they accept because it is there, because they were born into it, were raised in it. They accept it and then, to justify themselves a little to themselves, they say: Yes, these things must be based on faith, whereas real science is to be distinguished from faith, but it actually only refers to the external, the sensual. But if one looks not only with an external historical eye, but with the eye that is sharpened by higher, supersensible powers of knowledge — as described in my books and in my last lecture — if one investigates the historical in spiritual life, it presents itself differently than it is seen through today's science. Above all, we see where the world views that people are born into and educated in today actually come from.

Anyone who is able to research this area will find that everything we hold as traditional beliefs today, which has become convincing through its age, was acquired in older epochs of human development through the path of knowledge, not of faith, but through the path of knowledge as it was appropriate for older times. We live in the time that has educated itself to have concepts for what can be considered scientific. And we cannot help but take the view that we take into account what has been incorporated into human spiritual life through modern cultural development.

If we then look back at older spiritual cultures, we see that great and powerful things have emerged from them, but they have emerged through the path of human knowledge. Today, we only have the knowledge that is handed down to our will impulses. We accept them without looking for their sources. But these lie in older insights, and if we communicate with them, we will be able to gain clarity about what anthroposophy can do for today's, for modern man, through the relationship of the spiritual world.

Let us look, for example, at two examples of older knowledge, through the effect of which we can actually find the life into which we are born and educated today in terms of faith. I could pick out other examples from the abundance, but I would like to pick out two characteristic examples that have led people to the old knowledge. I would like to highlight a certain type of ancient, oriental, so-called yoga system, through which people in ancient times tried to strengthen their thought system in such a way that they could not only see the sensory world through the strengthened thought system, but that they could see the spiritual world through it. That is one side of the older insights. We can no longer go there, but by delving into them, one gains an understanding, so to speak, of what modern man needs in this area.

What did the yogi achieve when he did certain exercises that were supposed to lead him to a strengthened thinking? He shared with humanity in general that the inner life was much more soul-filled than our present life. One must only understand what actually lived in the souls of the older human race. They could not help it, but, by observing the outer nature, they added to what they heard in a tone, in their contemplation, what was born in their soul as a spiritual being, and what transformed the whole of nature for them into something that manifested itself spiritually and soulfully everywhere.

The one who lived as the yogi scholar over there in distant Asia was now also in the same situation as general humanity. He was in the same condition as general humanity that I have just described. The man of that time longed to get out if he wanted to gain knowledge, and he longed to get out by wanting to strengthen his thinking.

Now there is a certain method that is regarded by many who understand it as something particularly pernicious, but it goes back to what was quite appropriate for older times, and I would like to describe it in the oldest form in order to make it quite understandable.

The original scholar of yoga, in his quest for knowledge, developed exercises related to human breathing. He performed a breathing process through certain, more or less shorter or longer periods of time, which did not proceed in the same way as the ordinary one. For example, he chose different times for inhaling, holding his breath and exhaling. He thus entered into a completely different kind of breathing rhythm, lived in it and felt so transformed in his thinking powers that he now perceived thinking as a much stronger, much more powerful force than he had felt in everyday life. Through this, he looked into that other world into which he had longed to look. And if we ask ourselves what all this is based on, We can answer: Yes, in ordinary life the breathing process actually takes place in such a way that we do not pay attention to it, that it floats in the unconscious. At most, we become aware of it. Otherwise, it can only enter the human soul life in a semi-conscious or quarter-conscious state. But what lives as unconsciousness for the ordinary consciousness was raised into consciousness by the ancient yoga scholar in such a way that it was modified. He became aware of breathing.

A further consequence of this is that when we draw in our breath, it and its effect permeate our entire organism. What the breathing rhythm is, is thoroughly continued in the brain; what the brain performs is permeated by the breathing process. In our brain activity, we are always dealing with something that is permeated by the inner breathing process, we just do not notice it. Let us learn to look at the musical experience in a psychologically healthy way! I would like to say that the truth would become obvious to us that we are dealing with a thought process that is related to a continuous flow through the organs. The yogi brought to consciousness that which takes place inwardly, but which is a completely unconscious state. Through the different breathing that he practiced, thinking became something completely different for him.

He did not do it in his head, he did not do the thinking according to logical rules alone, but in such a way that it took on a musical character. But this also allows thinking to grasp something completely different than it can grasp with mere logical forms. The old Indian yoga teacher felt through this, his way, how he could enter into another world, which he sought, through such an energization of his bodily organism and thus of the soul-spiritual. But now, what is attained in this way leads one so much back to one's own being, it leads one away from the external, robust world that we as modern people are confronted with, that we as modern people not only must not go this way, but cannot go it either. It leads people so far back into themselves that they must come back to a spiritual hermitage. Such a method of knowledge comes from people who, after all, have separated themselves from the rest of human life. That was one way. We must not imitate them, because such hermits do not fit into our modern culture. We can only trust people who are able to fully immerse themselves in the life that is the task for all of humanity. This must be taken into account for the highest realms of knowledge, otherwise something will be lost that belongs to older times.

Now, that is one thing – esteemed attendees – that I would like to present to you. The other is what has been developed for those forms that are understood by the name of asceticism. Asceticism goes back to forms that were appropriate in the past. It is based on the fact that certain functions that would otherwise occur are now artificially toned down, so that the organism is not as energetically active as it would otherwise have to be when a person is involved in ordinary life. But in this way, the person has very specific experiences, and by getting to know these, what he recognizes on the other hand is complemented. And this asceticism, which is a lowering of the life of the body, is based on something that has been observed since ancient times, that it is a fact for the world that surrounds us here between birth and death. For this world, our organism is absolutely the means by which we can gain knowledge and energy in and for this world. We just have to realize that it is based on the fact that we have the other senses, we experience ourselves together with the rest of the world.

But this organism is, because it is active in the energetic sense for this physical-sensual world, therefore it is an obstacle to the knowledge of the spirit. If one subjects it to ascesis, then it does not function in such a way that we are fully immersed in the sensual world, then it becomes less and less an obstacle to penetrating into the spiritual world. That is why in the past people sought to place themselves in the spiritual background of the world by lowering the degrees of the obstacle. And, my dear audience, that too is not a path that we can follow today. Because by tuning down his organism in this way, man also makes himself unsuitable for the kind of life that is demanded of us today. But anyone who is familiar with the historical development of human spiritual life knows that today's human being, who is placed in this life with its demands of the outside world, has as a traditional creed that which was once found on these paths. Today, through faith, we take in much of what has been achieved in this way, as I have described. We are not aware that it has been achieved in this way; we do not know that it is based on an ancient form of knowledge, and we construct the concept of faith for that which is venerable today.

Anthroposophy now stands before modern spiritual life in such a way that it follows paths that are appropriate for today's people, that are thoroughly compatible with what we otherwise seek as science. While the yoga scholar strengthened his thought process by taking a detour through the breathing process, you will find in my writings “How to Know Higher Worlds” and “Occult Science” instructions that do not aim to do this. Instead, you will find descriptions of exercises that relate only to the life of the soul, that remain purely in the soul, just as we remain in the soul when we are working on a mathematical task. Through these exercises, thinking is now directly strengthened and one then notices, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those other exercises, of which you can read in the books, when one treats thinking more and more through that concentration, those Well, in order to understand what I have to say about it, one must already ascend to these intimacies of the soul life.

I would like to start from something that is often the subject of our world view today. One seeks — Goethe did it on his way, modern people try it on their own paths, I myself tried it in my older writings — one seeks today to compare what, for example, the outer forms of living beings are. Let us say that today the modern human being seeks to understand the form of a higher animal, he gains an insight into the form of the higher animal. As a result, he has the higher animal in front of him as long as he is doing his research. Then he carries an inner view of this higher animal with him. He keeps in his soul a kind of mental counter-image of what he has experienced out there. But then the modern human being must look, for example, at the human form. He now also gains an insight into this human form, let us assume that he has achieved the same thing as he did with regard to the form of a higher animal. He then compares these two and draws up a kind of developmental theory. He does all this with the concepts into which we are simply born today, into which we are educated through our ordinary mental life. But now we ask ourselves about something very important, which, however, is little felt by modern people today. Let us imagine a modern person with a very precise inner concept of a higher mammal based on their current scientific education. Now ask: If you have this concept, can you grasp the life force from this thought through an inner, living transformation of the thought? Can you get from what nature presents to you to the transition into the living human form? Do your thoughts undergo the same metamorphosis as nature outside, from the idea of the animal to the idea of the human being?

Now, my dear audience, get an overview of the juxtaposed concepts and thoughts about animals and humans, and then compare these thoughts. You will come to something admirable, but it is not living thinking, not a living world of thoughts. Man stands there with his world of thoughts, which is his inner counter-image of what lives outside; but he turns to the higher animal form with abstract, lifeless thoughts.

But when the exercises I have indicated are carried out, these exercises are carried out, then something is indeed accomplished for the human soul life that can already be compared to when a corpse becomes a living being through some process. We actually come to say to ourselves: the animal, for example, has the salient feature that the direction of its head is horizontal; the human being differs in that it transitions from the horizontal to the vertical direction, and so on.

We look at the magnetic needle and align it with the different directions in space. Everywhere it behaves differently than when we place it in an axis that goes from the magnetic north pole to the south pole. We say to ourselves: This is a special direction that has something to do with the inner nature of the forces that live in the magnetic needle. The human being acquires such a view for an outer world, but he then also acquires it for the higher worlds. He acquires knowledge that consists in knowing that the animal has its main direction horizontally, while the human being has a different direction in the whole cosmic space, with its direction vertical. When he has it vertically, that the spinal cord is thereby in the vertical direction, one inwardly becomes acquainted with the living concept of how the outer world takes on a living concept through and through. Space ceases to be merely indeterminate, extending into the void; space is inwardly filled with directions and essences of force. And once one has recognized the animal form within oneself, one develops the possibility within oneself. One learns to experience how the mere thought of the animal form is transformed into the human form; one learns to recognize an inwardly moving thought life. But one learns to recognize it as a human being who does not come to a hermitage, as the old yoga scholar does, but who, precisely through this, can really enter into the present life, because we come to the living concepts that bring people more than anything else to connect with the innermost essences of the outer world.

But now, my dear audience, you may object: yes, there have always been philosophers who have come to certain living concepts, but who nevertheless give the impression of standing in something unfounded. One cannot have confidence that what takes place in the living thought shows itself in the same way out there in the real world.

Yes, if things remain as they were with Schelling or Oken, if they remain so, then one is not protected from simply grasping something fantastic in an unreal way. Rather, the thought can give a kind of inner voluptuousness, which one brings forth in a living way, like the flower structure of a plant grows out of the leaf structure. But in this path of knowledge, reality is attained through something else. The person who brings thinking to life in the right way begins to experience something from which, however, modern man often shrinks back. And because he shrinks back from this, he also shrinks back from the whole of anthroposophy, which seeks the real spiritual world through these paths of knowledge. The moment one enters into these particular areas of life through these exercises, it becomes clear that each such living concept does not work in the soul in the same way as the dead concept that we otherwise have, but rather each of the living concepts that we gradually acquire initially affects us in such a way that it pains us, causing us mental suffering that affects us no less than any physical ailment. This is where we have to go through and where the gates of the spiritual world should open, that every living concept, which in turn leads him a little deeper into the spiritual world, that every such living thought causes suffering and pain in the soul.

Why is that? For the reason, dear listeners, that we must not only develop a living thinking, but we must also experience reality in this living thinking. But we can only experience reality when an effect is exerted on ourselves.

Let us consider our senses, the eye. What goes on in the eye is, among other things, also purely chemical decomposition processes. If these processes were not so quiet, we would feel pain there as well, but for those of us who have already reached a certain stage of development, this is overcome. What once had to be felt in other phases of human development is now brought about by painless perception.

We have to experience this state of pain so that it appears to us as permeated by the soul and spirit itself, because the entire human being must become a comprehensive sense organ. One cannot see into the spiritual world until the human organism has become a spiritual and soul eye. We must go through that state of suffering, which transforms our whole human organism into a sense organ for the spiritual world. Our whole organism, by overcoming this suffering, becomes a sense organ for the spiritual world. Only then, when one experiences this, does one know that one is standing in a real spiritual world. Then you will say to yourself: I am very grateful to my fate for my joys, but what I have acquired as knowledge, I owe to what I have lived through painfully, and that is what actually led me first to the special essence of what knowledge is. That is what pushed me to pursue this essence further. Without going through the tragedy of life, but also overcoming it, the doors to the spiritual world do not open in reality.

But when they do open, then something completely different arises from the living thinking, then what really arises is that we look – just as we look with our eyes and ears at colors and sounds – we look at the concrete spiritual world to which we ourselves belong with the eternal part of our human life, that we are rooted in the spiritual world around us. And once we have managed to ascend from the individual animal form as described, we find that a further step arises: we now have a human being before us, and we can examine him differently than in the clinic or in the dissecting room, when the life has left him. We can fathom the essence of the human being differently. Just as one surrenders to the thought of the animal form that has now been brought to life, the inner form of growth of the animal, so one also sees in the person standing before one, not just the physical form; now, from a purely spiritual perspective, one can see something that can truly be regarded as a spiritual-soul aura of the person. And when one looks into this spiritual-soul aura – this seeing is a result of the living of thought – then one sees what the person standing before one is as a spiritual-soul being before the person was, before he descended from the spiritual-soul; one sees the person in relation to what lives in him from his pre-earthly existence. The living thought helps us to do this when we follow it in the physical world.

In this way, anthroposophy seeks to arrive at a true understanding of the spiritual-soul entity in the life that precedes this earthly life. And by looking at the human being in his essence, which can also exist without him already having a body, one then also gets to know more precisely what the essence of the spiritual-soul is; one sees in this spiritual vision how a completely different world stands before our spiritual vision during the time that preceded our birth.

Here on earth, as human beings, we cannot see into ourselves. What anatomy provides us with is an exterior. When, for example, a finger is moved only by the impulse of the will, what does the human being know about what is going on in his organism to make the finger move.

Modern anthroposophy recognizes the same scientific foundations as the other exact science in its field. And if we had fathomed all the laws of the starry heavens to their end, everything that shows clouds and sunbeams their way, we would have fathomed everything that is otherwise around us in earthly life, in here in man, who has been called the microcosm, there would still be a richer number of riddles for world views than there are out there in space. What is outside in space, man surveys in his life between birth and death. More wonderful than everything that makes up solar systems in the world is that which can be found in the microcosm.

In the world from which we descended before we united with our physical body, at that time when we lived as spiritual-soul entities in the spiritual-soul world itself, we looked at what we carry within us as human beings. Every attention, every thought is directed towards what the human being can experience in the time just before he descends: How do I connect with that which is connected to me in the line of inheritance? The child experiences the transformation of its brain, how this takes place in accordance with inner laws. We experience the incarnation before we descend to this incarnation. That is the one side that we achieve as our living thinking.

The other side is that we are now learning to look at what the human being does. We see how a person encounters another person in a particular year of life, we see how this encounter gives rise to something extraordinarily meaningful, which then gives their own existence in this physical life on earth a completely different direction. We see this and say to ourselves: this is a matter of chance.

But the one who is able to look in the right way, sees how a person, even before he enters this earthly life, already has certain likes and dislikes and how these consist of rejecting the one and accepting the other. If one denies this, then it is the same as the world of colors is for someone who is born blind and has an operation; he could also deny the colored world. So it appears as something fantastic when the one whose spiritual eye has been opened looks, as from childhood, the antipathy and sympathy pave the way for wisdom or also that which initially appears in life as un-wisdom. One only comes to know through living, suffering-overcoming thinking, this activity of man, interspersed with sympathy and antipathy, how brief the result of antipathy and sympathy itself is. Then one looks at fate and how it was earned in earlier earthly lives. One learns to look into repeated earthly lives.

Here the connecting element of humanity can be found in a spiritual and soulful way. It unites real, deep religious feeling, it unites that which seeks only the education of that which is present in our minds, it unites with that which is the demand of our deepest heart life. By engaging with this spiritual knowledge, the human being gains the possibility of also having knowledge of how to find those with whom he has formed a community here in the spiritual life.

Thus I have again shown a step of that — my dear audience — which leads out of the sensual-physical into the spiritual world through anthroposophy.

What is gained in this way are purely spiritual-soul processes that the ancient Indian yoga teacher found through his breathing process. We do not kill the human physical organism, but we approach the soul life, we let the soul life undergo an inner suffering, which at the same time, however, places the human being externally as an agent, a volition, in today's world and does not destine him to be a hermit. This is what needs to be reappropriated in modern culture: to openly confront the person who presents his research to humanity in this way, to confront him by agreeing with him.

He can do nothing but show again and again, by describing the methods and the results, how what he does is only a continuation of what man can find justified in ordinary life. And if it were said that this concerns only those who already look into the spiritual world, then it must be answered: It is not the case that man, by virtue of his organization, is not capable of error and doubt, but he is predisposed to truth. Therefore, anyone who is not a painter can stand in front of a picture that is painted in truth and beauty and feel it that way.

With this healthy human sense, a person can stand before what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher has to say and recognize the truth for themselves, even if they are not yet a researcher themselves. Those who are not can judge the truth through the healthy powers of humanity. But what Anthroposophy strives to accomplish, it believes, is not just a goal of individual hermits, but what modern man really needs.

What do we have in today's intellectual life? The ancient man had an inner soul life that he even carried into the outer worlds. We can see into the external worlds, but we have lost this inner spiritual life. We have abstract concepts, which are excellent for doing everything that does not require living inner powers of knowledge. But this admonishes us to emphasize again and again: with your thoughts, which are so magnificent,

you have nothing but something dead at bottom; you have thought-ideas from the mind, and although we certainly do not want to conjure up the old days in which spiritual knowledge was sought in such ways, in such old days a living spiritual view was found in a way that was appropriate at the time, the people of that time had achieved an inner soul life, something that realized the living spirit in the inner soul life.

If we turn again to that living thinking as anthroposophy understands it, then knowledge will not only provide us with vivid concepts, but knowledge will provide us with the living spirit that walks among us. In this way we will also experience physical plants and animals, and we will connect our own human feelings with these spiritual beings, the living spiritual world itself, which in turn is to be introduced into physical, sensory existence through that which is now a living knowledge in contrast to dead knowledge.

We must first make it quite clear to ourselves: we want knowledge that does not merely call our world in with thoughts, but that calls in the spirit itself. It is effective wherever the human being works out of the spirit. And particularly today, when social life is in such a terrible state, one feels that one needs something that must be present in social life as a spiritual element. One sees in particular in social life that it cannot continue without the spirit being involved. In short, anthroposophy would like to find understanding among those people who, so to speak, feel the pulse of contemporary culture. Anthroposophy wants us to enter the present day with the living spirit, instead of with mere thoughts and ideas of the spirit, because we have to realize that only with this living spirit will we be able to solve the tasks that are set for all of humanity. Only by solving them in a living way can we grow into a culture in the future that will sustain people at their spiritual and physical peak.

We have attempted so far to throw light from many different points of view upon the characteristic features of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in which we are now living and which began in the early fifteenth century (1413) and will end in the middle of the fourth millennium. Now many of the symptomatic events of today are closely associated with the events which occurred at the beginning of this epoch. For reasons which will become evident in the course of the following lectures and which are connected with the whole of human evolution, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can be subdivided into five stages. We have now reached a moment of particular importance, the decisive turning point when the first fifth of this epoch passes over into the second fifth.

I propose to give you a general survey of the impulses which have determined the history of religions, in so far as they are symptomatic of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Many things which I shall say in the course of this survey cannot be more than pointers or indications. For when we embark upon a serious study of the religious impulses of mankind the facts we have to consider are so difficult to convey owing to the limitations of language that we can only discuss them approximately; we can only hint at them. And you must therefore endeavour to read between the lines of what I shall say today and tomorrow, not because I wish to be a mystery monger, but because language is too powerless to express adequately the multiplicity and variety of impulses of spiritual reality. Above all I must call your attention today to the fact that he who studies these things from the standpoint of spiritual science must really be prepared to think and reflect. Today mankind has more or less lost the habit of thinking. I do not mean, of course, the thinking that is the proud boast of modern science, but the thinking which is capable of distinguishing precisely between different forms of reality. In order to be able to study what we are now called upon to examine, I must remind you that I have already spoken of the two currents in the evolution of mankind. I do not know whether all those present here listened so carefully to the expressions I coined in the course of my previous lectures that they have already noticed what I wish to underline especially today, so that no misunderstanding shall arise in the following observations.

In the evolution of post-Atlantean humanity I emphasized one thing in particular, namely that mankind of the postAtlantean epoch matures progressively at an ever earlier age. In the first post-Atlantean epoch, that of ancient India, men remained capable of developing physically up to the age of fifty; in the ancient Persian epoch development ceased at an earlier age, and in the Egypto-Chaldaean epoch at an even earlier age. In the Graeco-Latin epoch development was only possible up to the age of thirty-five and in our present epoch, as a consequence of natural development, men cease to develop beyond the age of twenty-eight. Any further development must be derived from spiritual impulses. Then, in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, mankind will be unable to develop after the age of twenty-one—and so on. With the passage of time, therefore, mankind matures physically at an ever earlier age.

It is important to bear in mind that this evolution I have just mentioned involves the whole of mankind. In relation to this first current of evolution, as I shall call it, we can say that mankind is at the stage of development which the individual experiences between the ages of twenty-eight and twenty-one. These are the years when the Sentient Soul especially is developed. We are therefore at a stage in evolution when mankind as a whole is in process of developing especially the Sentient Soul. Such is the one current of evolution.

Now I have already spoken of another current of evolution. In this second evolution, in the first post-Atlantean epoch, that of ancient India, the individual developed his etheric body; in the second post-Atlantean epoch, that of ancient Persia, he developed the sentient body; in the Egypto-Chaldaean epoch the sentient soul, in the Graeco-Latin epoch the intellectual or mind soul, and in the present epoch the consciousness soul. Such is the second current of evolution. The first current of evolution which concerns the whole of mankind runs its course concurrently with the second evolution which concerns the isolated individual within the body of mankind. To repeat, the isolated individual develops the Consciousness Soul in the present epoch.

The third current of evolution to be considered is that which shows the development of the different peoples over the whole earth. In this context I have already pointed out that the Italian people, for example, develops in particular the Sentient Soul, the French people the Intellectual or Mind Soul and the English speaking peoples the Consciousness Soul. This is the third current of evolution. These currents are loosely intermingled and I am unable to point to any particular principle that is characteristic of our present epoch.

These three currents of evolution meet and cross in every human being; they invade every individual soul. The world order is by no means simple! If, for your benefit, you want the world order to be explained in the simplest terms, then you must become either professor or King of Spain. You will recall the legend of the King of Spain who declared, when a much less complicated cosmic system than the one envisaged here was explained to him: had God entrusted the ordering of the world to him he would not have made it so complicated, he would have simplified things. And certain textbooks or other popular encyclopaedias have always followed the principle that truth of necessity must be simple! This principle is not adopted of course on rational grounds, but solely for reasons of convenience, I might even say, out of general human indolence. By systematic arrangement where everything is classified or catalogued one comes no nearer to reality. And those facile, I might even say, slick concepts much favoured today in the domain of the official sciences are light-years away from true reality.

If we wish to understand all that plays into the souls of men of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch we must bear in mind the part-evolution that intervenes in the total evolution of mankind. For this part-evolution proceeds slowly and gradually. In order to examine briefly the religious development of this epoch it will be necessary to keep this threefold evolution to some extent in the background. About the time when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, not only many things, but also the religious life of mankind was caught up in a movement that has repercussions, a movement that is by no means concluded today. We must have a profound understanding of this movement if men really wish to make use of the Consciousness Soul. For only when men arrive at a clear insight and understanding of what is happening in evolution will they be able to participate in the further development of mankind on earth.

Towards the beginning of the fifteenth century the first stirrings of the religious impulses are perceptible. Let us first look at these religious impulses in Europe for having seen them at work in Europe we shall also have a picture of their impact upon the rest of the world. The first religious stirrings had long been prepared—since the tenth century or even the ninth century in the spiritual life of Europe and the near East. And this was due to the fact that the after effect of the Christ impulse manifested itself in the civilized world in a very special way. This Christ impulse, as we know, is a continuous process. But this abstract statement—that the Christ impulse is a continuous process—says in reality very little. We must also ascertain in what way it acquires a distinct and separate character, in what way, in its differentiations, it is then modified, or better still, in what way it is metamorphosed and assumes widely different forms.

That which began to awaken at the beginning of the fifteenth century and which still exercises a profound influence on men today—often unconsciously and without their suspecting it—is related to the catastrophic events of the present time. And this is explained by the fact that from the ninth and tenth centuries onwards it was possible for the ‘people of the Christ’ to emerge in a certain territory within the civilized world, a people that was endowed with the special inborn capacity to become the vehicle of the Christ revelation for future generations. We express a profound truth when we say that in this epoch and in readiness for later times a people had been specially prepared by world events to become the People of the Christ.

This situation arose because, in the ninth century, that which continued to operate as the Christ impulse acquired, to some extent, a separate character in Europe and this differentiation is seen in the fact that certain souls showed themselves capable of receiving directly the revelation of the Christ impulse (i.e. this particular form of the Christ impulse), and that these souls were diverted towards Eastern Europe. And the consequence of the controversy between the Patriarch Photius¹ and Pope Nicholas I was that the Christ impulse in its particular intensity was diverted to the East of Europe.

As you know this led to the famous filioque controversy—the question whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, or from the Father only. But I do not wish to enter into disputes over dogma. I want to discuss that which has a lasting influence—that differentiation, that metamorphosis of the Christ impulse which is characterized by the fact that the inhabitants of Eastern Europe were receptive to the continual influx of the Christ impulse, to the continuous presence of the ‘breath’ of Christ. This particular form (or metamorphosis) of the Christ impulse was diverted to the East and in consequence, the Russian people, in the widest sense of the term, became, within the framework of European civilization, the People of the Christ.

It is particularly important to know this at the present time. Do not say in face of present events^T1 that such a truth seems strange, for that would be to misunderstand the fundamental principle of spiritual wisdom, namely, that, paradoxically, external events often contradict their inner truth. That this contradiction may occur here and there is not important; what is important is that we recognize which are the inner processes, the true spiritual realities. For example, we have here the map of Europe (points to a diagram on the blackboard); we see sweeping eastwards since the ninth century that spiritual wave which led to the birth of the People of the Christ.

What do we mean by saying that the People of the Christ arose in the East? We mean by this—and it can be verified by studying the symptoms in external history; you will find, if you bear in mind the inner processes and not the external facts which often contradict reality that this statement is fully confirmed—we mean by this that a territory has been set apart in the East of Europe where lived men who were directly united with the Christ impulse. The Christ is ever present as an inner aura impregnating the thinking and feeling of this people.

One cannot find perhaps any clearer or more direct proof for what I have said here than the personality of Solovieff, the most outstanding Russian philosopher of modern times. Read him and you will feel—despite the peculiar characteristics of Solovieff which I have already discussed from other points of view—you will feel how there streams into him directly what could be called the Christ inspiration. This inspiration acts so powerfully within him that he cannot imagine the entire structure of social life otherwise than ordained by Christ the King, the Invisible Christ as sovereign of the social community. To Solovieff everything is imbued with the Christ, every single action performed by man is permeated with the Christ impulse which penetrates even into the muscular system. The philosopher Solovieff is the purest and finest representative of the People of the Christ.

Here is the source of the entire Russian evolution up to the present day. And when we know that the Russian people is the People of the Christ we shall also be able to understand, as we shall see later, the present evolution in its present form. That is the one metamorphosis prepared by the People of the Christ one example of the differentiations of the Christ impulse.

The second differentiation of the Christ impulse was the work of Rome which, having diverted the authentic and continuous metamorphosis of the Christ impulse towards the East, transformed the spiritual sovereignty of Christ into the temporal sovereignty of the Church and decreed that everything relating to Christ had been revealed once and for all at the beginning of our era, that it had been a unique revelation never to be repeated. And this revelation had been entrusted to the Church and the task of the church was to bear witness to this revelation before the world. As a consequence, the Christian revelation became at the same time a question of temporal power and was taken over by the ecclesiastical authorities. It is important to bear this in mind because it meant no less than that the Christ impulse was thereby in part emasculated. The Christ impulse in its totality resides in the People of the Christ who transmit it in such a way that the Christ impulse actually continues to exercise a direct influence at the present time. The Church of Rome has interrupted this continuity, it has concentrated the Christ impulse upon a historical event at the beginning of our era and has attributed everything of a later date to tradition or written records, so that henceforth everything will be administered by the Church.

Thus, amongst the peoples over whom the Church of Rome extended its influence, the Christ impulse was dragged down from the spiritual heights (in the East it had always remained at this level) and was put at the service of political intrigue and was caught up in that tangled relationship between politics and the Church which, as I have already described to you from other points of view, was characteristic of the Middle Ages. In Russia, although the Czar had been nominated ‘father’ of the Russian Orthodox Church, this troubled alliance between politics and the Church did not really exist, it was only apparent in external events. An important secret of European evolution is here concealed. The real confusion of questions of power and problems of ecclesiastical administration originated in Rome.

This confusion of Power politics and ecclesiastical administration, by reason of inner grounds of historical evolution, had reached a critical stage for the Christ impulse towards the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. As you already know this epoch is the epoch of the Consciousness Soul when the personality asserts itself and seeks to become self-reliant. Consequently it is particularly difficult, after the birth of the autonomous personality, to come to terms with the question of the personality of Christ Jesus himself. Throughout the Middle Ages and up to the fifteenth century the Church had maintained its dogmas concerning the union of the divine and spiritual with the human and physical in the person of Christ. These dogmas of course had assumed different forms without provoking hitherto deepseated spiritual conflicts. In those countries where Roman Catholicism had spread, these conflicts arose at a time when the personality, seeking to arrive at inner understanding of itself, also sought enlightenment upon the personality of Christ Jesus. In reality the controversies of Hus, Wyclif, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, of the Anabaptists Kaspar Schwenkfeld, Sebastian Frank and others revolved round this question. They wanted clarification upon the relationship between the divine and spiritual nature of Christ and the human and physical nature of Jesus. This was the central question and of course it created a great stir. It raised many doubts about that current of evolution which had blunted the unbroken influence of the Christ impulse to such an extent that the Christ impulse was limited to a single event at the beginning of our era and was to be transmitted henceforth only by the Church authorities. And so we can say: ‘all those who came under the influence of Rome became the People of the Church.’ Churches and sects, etcetera, were founded which had a certain importance.

But sects were also founded in Russia you will reply. Now to employ the same word which has different connotations in different areas is to lose all sense of reality. A study of Russian sects shows that they do not bear the slightest resemblance to the religious sects in the territories which at one time had been under the influence of the Church of Rome. It is not a question of designating things by the same term; what matters is the reality pulsating through them.

For reasons I have already mentioned, the life and aspirations of men at the beginning of the fifteenth century are characterized by a spirit of Opposition to the uniformity of the Roman Church which operated through suggestionism.

This assault of personality again provokes a reaction—the counter-thrust of Jesuitism which comes to the support of the Romanism of the Church. Jesuitism in its original sense (though everything today, if you will forgive the brutal expression, is reduced to idle gossip and Jesuitism is on everyone's lips) is only possible within the Roman Catholic Church. For fundamentally Jesuitism is based on the following: whilst in the true People of the Christ the revelation of the Christ impulse remains in the super-sensible world and does not descend into the physical world (Solovieff wishes to spiritualize the material world, not to materialize the spiritual world), the aim of Jesuitism is to drag down the Kingdom of God into the temporal world and to awaken impulses in the souls of men so that the Kingdom of God operates on the physical plane in the same way as the laws of the physical world. Jesuitism, therefore, aspires to establish a temporal sovereignty in the form of a temporal kingdom of the Christ. It wishes to achieve this by training the members of the Jesuit order after the fashion of an army. The individual Jesuit feels himself to be a spiritual soldier. He feels Christ, not as the spiritual Christ who acts upon the world through the medium of the Spirit, but he feels Him—and to this end he must direct his thoughts and feelings—as a temporal sovereign whom he serves as one serves an earthly King, or as a soldier serves his generalissimo. The ecclesiastical administration, since it is concerned with spiritual matters, will, of course, be different from that of a secular military regime; but the spiritual order must be subject to strict military discipline. Everything must be so ordained that the true Christian becomes a soldier of the generalissimo Jesus. In essence this is the purpose of those exercises which every Jesuit practises in order to develop in himself that vast power which the Jesuit order has long possessed and which will still be felt in its decadent forms in the chaotic times that lie ahead. The purpose of the meditations prescribed by Ignatius Loyola² and which are faithfully observed by Jesuits is to make the Jesuit first and foremost a soldier of the generalissimo Jesus Christ.

Here are a few samples. Let us take, for example, the spiritual exercise of the second week. The exercitant must always begin with a preliminary meditation in which he evokes in imagination ‘the Kingdom of Christ.’ He must visualize this Kingdom with Christ as supreme commander in the vanguard leading his legions, whose mission is to conquer the world. Then follows a preliminary prayer; then the first preamble.

‘1. It consists in a clear representation of the place; here I must see with the eyes of imagination the synagogues, towns and villages which Christ our Lord passed through on His mission.’

All this must be visualized in a complete picture so that the novice sees the situation and all the separate representations as something which is visibly present to him.

‘2. I ask for the grace which I desire. Here I must ask of our Lord the grace that I should not be deaf to His call, but should be prompt and diligent to fulfil His most holy will.’

Then follows the actual exercise. (What I have quoted so far were preparatory exercises.) The first part again includes several points. The soul is very carefully prepared.

‘ Point 1. I conjure up a picture of a terrestrial King chosen by God our Lord Himself to whom all Christians and all princes render homage and obedience.’

The exercitant must hold this before him in his imagination with the same intensity as a sensory representation.

‘Point 2. I observe how the King addresses all his subjects and says to them: “It is my will to conquer all the territories of the infidels. Therefore whosoever would go forth with me must be content with the same food as myself, the same drink and clothing, etcetera. He must also toil with me by day and keep watch with me by night so that he may share in the victory with me, even as he shared in the toil.”’

This strengthens the will, in that sensible images penetrate directly into this will, illuminate it and spiritualize it.

‘Point 3. I consider how his faithful subjects must answer a King so kind and so generous, and consequently how the man who would refuse the appeal of such a King would be deserving of censure by the whole world and would be regarded as an ignoble Knight.’

The exercitant must clearly recognize that if he is not a true soldier, a warrior of this generalissimo, then the whole world will look upon him as unworthy.

Then follows the second part of this exercise of the ‘second week.’

‘The second part of this exercise consists in applying the previous example of the terrestrial King to Christ our Lord in accordance with the three points mentioned above.

‘Point 1. If we regard an appeal of the terrestrial King to his subjects as deserving of our consideration, then how much more deserving of our consideration is it to see Christ our Lord, the Eternal King, and the whole world assembled before Hirn, to see how He appeals to all and each one in particular saying:

“It is my will to conquer the whole world and to subjugate my enemies and thus enter into the glory of my Father. Whoever therefore will follow me must be prepared to labour with me, so that, by following me in suffering, he may also follow me in glory.”’

‘Point 2 To consider that all who are endowed with judgement and reason will offer themselves entirely for this arduous service.’

‘Point 3 Those who are animated by the desire to show still greater devotion and to distinguish themselves in the total service of their eternal King and universal Lord will not only offer themselves wholly for such arduous service, but will also fight against their own sensuality, their carnal lusts and their attachment to the world and thus make sacrifices of higher value and greater importance, saying:

“Eternal Lord of all things, with Thy favour and help, in the presence of Thy infinite Goodness and of Thy glorious Mother and of all the saints of the heavenly Court, I present my body as a living sacrifice and swear that it is my wish and desire and my firm resolve, provided it is for Thy greater service and praise, to imitate Thee in enduring all injustice, all humiliation and all poverty, both actual and spiritual, if it shall please Thy most holy Majesty to choose me and admit me to this life and to this state.”

‘This exercise should be practised twice a day, in the morning on rising and one hour before lunch or dinner.’

‘For the second week and the following weeks it is very beneficial at times to read passages from The Imitation of Christ or from the Gospels and lives of the Saints’ to be read in conjunction with those meditations which train especially the will through visualization. One must know how the will develops when it is under the influence of these Imaginations—this martial will in the realm of the Spirit which makes Christ Jesus its generalissimo! The exercise speaks of the ‘heavenly Court which one serves in all forms of submission and humility.’ With these exercises, which through the imagination train especially the will, is associated something which exercises a powerful influence upon the will when it is continually repeated. For the schooling of Jesuits is above all a schooling of the will. It is recommended to repeat daily the above meditation in the following weeks as a basic meditation and where possible in the same form, before the selected daily meditation, before the ‘contemplation.’ Let us take, for example, the fourth day. We have the normal preliminary prayer then a first preamble.

‘We visualize the historical event—Christ summons and assembles all men under His standard, and Lucifer, on the other hand, under his standard.’

One must have an exact visual picture of the standard. And one must also visualize two armies, each preceded by its standard, the standard of Lucifer and the standard of Christ.

‘2. You form a clear picture of the place; here a vast plain round about Jerusalem, where stands Christ our Lord, the sole and supreme commander of the just and good, with His army in battle order; and another plain round about Babylon where stands Lucifer, chief of the enemy forces.’

The two armies now face each other—the standard of Lucifer and the standard of Christ.

‘3. I ask for what I desire: here I ask for knowledge of the lures of the evil adversary and for help to preserve myself from them; also for knowledge of the true life of which our sovereign and true commander is the exemplar, and for grace to imitate Him.’

Now follows the first part of the actual exercise: the standard of Lucifer; the exercitant therefore directs his spiritual eye of imagination upon the army which follows the standard of Lucifer.

‘Point 1. Imagine you see the chief of all the adversaries in the vast plain around Babylon seated on a high throne of fire and smoke, a figure inspiring terror and fear.’

‘Point 2. Consider how he summons innumerable demons, scattering them abroad, some to one City, some to another and thus over the whole earth without overlooking any province, place, station in life or any single individual.’

This despatch of demons must be visualized concretely and in detail.

‘Point 3. Consider the address he makes to them, how he enjoins upon them to prepare snares and fetters to bind men. First, they are to tempt men to covet riches, as he (Lucifer) is accustomed to do in most cases, so that they may the more easily attain the vain approbation of the world and then develop an overweening pride.’

‘Accordingly, the first step will be riches, the second fame, the third pride. And from these three steps Lucifer seduces man to all the other vices.’

Second Part. The standard of Christ

‘In the same way we must picture to ourselves on the opposing side, the sovereign and true commander, Christ our Lord.

‘Point 1. Consider Christ our Lord, beautiful and gracious to behold, standing in a lowly place, in a vast plain about the region of Jerusalem.’

‘Point 2. Consider how the Lord of the whole world chooses so many persons, apostles, disciples, etcetera, and sends them forth into all lands to preach the Gospel to men of all stations in life and of every condition.’

‘Point 3. Consider the address which Christ our Lord holds in the presence of all His servants and friends whom He sends on this crusade, recommending them to endeavour to help all, first urging upon them to accept the highest spiritual poverty, and, if it should find favour in the eyes of His divine Majesty and if, should he deign to choose them, to accept also actual poverty; secondly to desire humiliation and contempt, for from these two things, poverty and humiliation, springs humility.’

‘Accordingly there are three steps: first, poverty as opposed to riches, secondly, humiliation and contempt as opposed to worldly fame, thirdly, humility as opposed to pride. And from these three steps the ambassadors of Christ shall lead men to the other virtues.’

The spiritual exercises are practised in this way. As I have already said, what matters is that a temporal kingdom, and organized as such, must be represented as the army of Christ Jesus. Jesuitism is the most consistent, the best, and moreover extremely well organized expression, of what I referred to as the second current—the impulse of the People of the Church. We shall find in effect that fundamentally this impulse of the People of the Church is to reduce the unique revelation which occurred at Jerusalem to the level of a temporal Kingdom. For the end and object of the exercises is ultimately to bring the exercitant to choose himself as soldier serving under the banner of Christ and to feel himself to be a true soldier of Christ. That was the message entrusted to Ignatius Loyola through a revelation of a special kind. He first performed heroic deeds as a soldier, then as he lay on a sick bed recovering from his wounds was led as a result of meditations (I will not say by what power) to transform the martial impulse which formerly inspired him into the impulse to become a soldier of Christ. It is one of the most interesting phenomena of world history to observe how the martial qualities of an outstandingly brave soldier are transformed through meditations into spiritual qualities.

Where the continuous influence which the Christ impulse had exercised within the People of the Christ had been blunted, it is clear that Jesuitism had to assume this extreme form. And the question arises: is there not another form of Christianity diametrically opposed to that of Jesuitism? In that event a force would have to emerge in the territory occupied by the People of the Church. From the different reactions of Lutheranism, Zwinglianism,³ Calvinism, Schwenkfeldism and the Anabaptists, from this chaos and fragmentation, a force would have to emerge which not only follows the line of Jesuit thought (for Jesuitism is only an extreme expression of Catholic dogma)—but which is diametrically opposed to Jesuitism, something which seeks to break away from this community of the People of the Church, whilst Jesuitism seeks to be ever more deeply involved in it. Jesuitism wishes to transform the Christ impulse into a purely temporal sovereignty, to found a terrestrial state which is at the same time a Jesuit state, and which is governed in accordance with the principles of those who have volunteered to become soldiers of the generalissimo Christ. What could be the force which is the antithesis of Jesuitism?

The counter-impulse would be that which seeks, not to materialize the spiritual, but to spiritualize the material world. This impulse is a natural endowment amongst the true People of the Christ and finds expression in Solovieff⁴ though often tentatively. Within the territory of the true People of the Church there exists something which is radically opposed to Jesuitism, something which rejects any direct intervention of the spiritual in power politics and external affairs, and wishes the Christ impulse to penetrate into the souls of men, and indirectly through these souls to operate in the external world. Such an impulse might well appear in the People of the Church—because, in the meantime, much might tend in this direction; but it would seek to direct evolution in such a way that the spiritual Christ impulse penetrates only into the souls and remains to some extent esoteric, esoteric in the best and noblest sense of the term. Whilst Jesuitism wishes to tranform everything into a temporal kingdom, this other current would simply regard the temporal kingdom as something which, if need be, must exist on the physical plane, something, however, which unites men so that they can lift up their souls to higher realms. This current which is the polar opposite of Jesuitism is Goetheanism.

The aim of Goetheanism is the exact opposite of that of Jesuitism. And you will understand Goetheanism from a different angle if you consider it as by nature diametrically opposed to Jesuitism. That is why Jesuitism is, and ever will be the sworn foe of Goetheanism. They cannot coexist; they know each other too well and Jesuitism is well informed on Goethe. The best book on Goethe, from the Jesuit standpoint of course, is that of the Jesuit father, Baumgartner.⁵ What the various German professors and the Englishman, G. H. Lewes,⁶ have written about Goethe is pure dilettantism compared with the three volumes by Baumgartner. He knows what he is about! As an adversary he sees Goethe with a more critical eye. Nor does he write like a German Professor of average intelligente or like the Englishman, Lewes, who depicts a man who was indeed born in Frankfurt in 1749; he is said to have lived through the same experiences as Goethe, but the man he depicts is not Goethe. But Baumgartner's portrait is reinforced with the forces of will derived from his meditations. Thus Goetheanism, which is destined to play a part in the future, is linked to something which is directly associated with the epoch beginning with the fifteenth century and leading via the Reformation to Jesuitism.

I will discuss the third current tomorrow. I have described to you today the People of the Christ, the People of the Church and the third current which interpenetrates them and then the reciprocal action of these currents, in order to give you an insight into recent religious developments through a study of their symptoms. I will say more of this tomorrow.

• 1. Photius (815–869). Patriarch of Constantinople and author of the great schism between the Orthodox Church and the Church of Rome. This schism finally centred on the ‘filioque’ controversy. The Western Church added filioque (‘and the Son’) to the Constantinopolitan Creed, the so called double Procession of the Holy Ghost. Photius refused the insertion of filioque in the Nicene Creed. The Orthodox Church sees in Photius the champion of their cause against Rome. The addition of filioque became a dogma of the Roman Church in the fourth Lateran Council 1215.
• T1. i.e. the Russian Revolution.
• 2. Ignatius Loyola(1491–1556). Wounded at siege of Pamplona 1521 and during convalescence read devotional books. 1522 retired to Manresa, devoted himself to prayer and meditation. Sketched the fundamentals of the Spiritual Exercises. Took the monastic vows, gathered a few companions (e.g. Francis Xavier, Peter Favre) who became nucleus of the Society of Jesus. The Spiritual Exercises is a book of devotion and a training manual. Approved by Pope Paul 1540. Loyola beatified 1609, canonized 1622. See R. Fülop Müller, Power and Secrets of the Jesuits, 1930; Father J. Brodrick, The Origin of the Jesuits, 1940; and Ignatius Loyola, the Pilgrim rears, 1956.
• 3. Zwingli and Calvin—see notes to Lecture VI.
  
  Kaspar von Schwenkfeld (1489–1561). An Evangelical sectarian. His followers formed communities in Silesia and Pennsylvania.
  
  Anabaptists. A Christian sect of the Reformation which rejected infant baptism and believed in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Associated with the peasant revolts in Saxony 1521. Leaders executed, banished or expelled.
• 4. Vladimir Solovieff (1853–1900). Russian theologian, philosopher and poet. His philosophy has a profound mystical quality. Opposed to Slavophil nationalism and the despotic state. See N. Berdyaev, The Russian Idea, 1947. (This book useful on the interpretation of the Russian make-up, cf. Lecture I of this course); N. L. Lossky, History of Russian Philosophy, 1953.
• 5. Alexander Baumgartner (1841–1910). Catholic literary historian. Member of the Jesuit Order. His book Goethe 1885 emphasizes the Catholic point of view.
• 6. George Henry Lewes (1871–78). Best known for the Life and Works of Goethe, 2 voll, 1855.