The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In our study of Spiritual Science there is a great deal that we cannot, perhaps, directly apply in everyday life, and we may at times feel that it is all rather remote. But the remoteness is only apparent. What we receive into the sphere of our knowledge concerning the secrets of the spiritual world is at every hour, at every moment, of vital and profound significance for our souls; what seems to be remote from us personally is often what the soul inwardly needs. In order to know the physical world we must make ourselves acquainted with it. But to know the spiritual world it is essential that we ourselves shall think through and master the thoughts and conceptions imparted by that world. These thoughts then often work quite unconsciously within the soul. Many things may seem to be remote, whereas in reality they are very near indeed to the higher realms of the soul's life.

And so again today we will think of the life that takes its course between death and a new birth—the life that seems so far removed from the human being in the physical world. I will begin by simply narrating what is found by spiritual investigation. These things can be understood if sufficient thought is applied to them; through their own power they make themselves comprehensible to the soul. Anyone who does not understand them should realize that he has not thought about them deeply enough. They must be investigated by means of Spiritual Science, but they can be understood through constant study. They will then be confirmed by the facts with which life itself confronts us, provided life is rightly observed.

You will have realized from many of the lecture-courses that study of the life between death and rebirth is fraught with difficulty, because its conditions are so entirely different from those of the life that can be pictured by the organs of the physical body here in the physical world. We have to become acquainted with utterly different conceptions.

When we enter into relationship with the things in our physical environment we know that only a small proportion of the beings around us in the physical world react to our deeds, to the manifestations of our will, in such a way that pleasure or pain is caused by these deeds of ours. Reaction of this kind takes place in the case of the animal kingdom and the human kingdom; but we are justified in the conviction that the mineral world (including what is contained in air and water), and also, in essentials, the world of plants, are insensitive to what we call pleasure or pain as the result of deeds performed by us. (Spiritually considered, of course, the matter is a little different, but that need not concern us at this point.) In the environment of the Dead all this is changed. Conditions in the environment of the so-called Dead are such that everything—including what is done by the Dead themselves—causes either pleasure or pain. The Dead can do no single thing, they cannot—if I may speak pictorially—move a single limb without pleasure or pain being caused by what is done. We must try to think our way into these conditions of existence. We must assimilate the thought that life between death and a new birth is so constituted that everything we do awakens an echo in the environment. Through the whole period between death and a new birth we can do nothing, we cannot even move, metaphorically speaking, without causing pleasure or pain in our environment. The mineral kingdom as we have it around us on the physical plane does not exist for the Dead, neither does the world of plants. As you can gather from the book Theosophy, these kingdoms are present in an entirely different form. They are not present in the spiritual world in the form in which we know them here, namely, as realms devoid of feeling.

The first kingdom of those familiar to us on the physical plane which has significance for the Dead because it is comparable with what the Dead has in his environment, is the animal kingdom. I do not, of course, mean individual animals as we know them on the physical plane, but the whole environment is such that its effects and influences are as if animals were there. The reaction of the environment is such that pleasure or pain proceeds from what is done. On the physical plane we stand upon mineral soil; the Dead stands upon a ‘soil,’ lives in an environment which may be compared with the animal nature in this sense. The Dead, therefore, starts his life two kingdoms higher. On the earth we know the animal kingdom only from outside. The most external activity of the life between death and a new birth consists in acquiring a more and more intimate and exact knowledge of the animal world. For in this life between death and a new birth we must prepare all those forces which, working in from the Cosmos, organize our own body. In the physical world we know nothing of these forces. Between death and a new birth we know that our body, down to its smallest particles, is formed out of the Cosmos. For we ourselves prepare this physical body, bringing together in it the whole of animal nature; we ourselves build it.

To make the picture more exact, we must acquaint ourselves with an idea that is rather remote from present-day mentality. Modern man knows quite well that when a magnetic needle lies with one end pointing towards the North and the other towards the South, this is not caused by the needle itself, but that the earth as a whole is a cosmic magnet of which one end points towards the North and the other towards the South. It would be considered sheer nonsense to say that the direction is determined by forces contained in the magnetic needle itself. In the case of a seed or germinating entity which develops in an animal or in a human being, all the sciences and schools of thought deny the factor of cosmic influence. What would be described as nonsense in the case of the magnetic needle is accepted without further thought in the case of an egg forming inside the hen. But when the egg is forming inside the hen, the whole Cosmos is, in fact, participating; what happens on earth merely provides the stimulus for the operation of cosmic forces. Everything that takes shape in the egg is an imprint of cosmic forces and the hen herself is only a place, an abode, in which the Cosmos, the whole World-System, is working in this way. And it is the same in the case of the human being. This is a thought with which we must become familiar.

Between death and a new birth, in communion with Beings of the higher Hierarchies, a man is working at this whole system of forces permeating the Cosmos. For between death and a new birth he is not inactive; he is perpetually at work—in the Spiritual. The animal kingdom is the first realm with which he makes acquaintance, and in the following way:—If he commits some error he immediately becomes aware of pain, of suffering, in the environment; if he does something right, he becomes aware of pleasure, of joy, in the environment. He works on and on, calling forth pleasure or pain, until finally the soul-nature is such that it can descend and unite with what will live on earth as a physical body. The being of soul could never descend if it had not itself worked at the physical form.

It is the animal kingdom, then, with which acquaintance is made in the first place. The next is the human kingdom. Mineral nature and the plant kingdom are absent. The Dead's acquaintance with the human kingdom is limited—to use a familiar phrase. Between death and a new birth—and this begins immediately or soon after death—the Dead has contact and can make links only with those human souls, whether still living on earth or in yonder world, with whom he has already been karmically connected on earth in the last or in an earlier incarnation. Other souls pass him by; they do not come within his ken. He becomes aware of the animal realm as a totality; only those human souls come within his ken with whom he has had some karmic connection here on earth and with these he becomes more and more closely acquainted. You must not imagine that their number is small, for individual human beings have already passed through many lives on the earth. In every life numbers of karmic connections have been formed and of these is spun the web which then, in the spiritual world, extends over all the souls whom the Dead has known in life; only those with whom no acquaintance has been made remain outside the circle.

This indicates a truth which must be emphasized, namely, the supreme importance of earthly life for the individual human being. If there had been no earthly life we should be unable to form links with human souls in the spiritual world. The links are formed karmically on the earth and then continue between death and a new birth. Those who are able to see into the spiritual world perceive how the Dead gradually makes more and more links—all of which are the outcome of karmic connections formed on earth.

Just as concerning the first kingdom with which the Dead comes into contact—the animal kingdom—we can say that everything the Dead does, even when he simply moves, causes either pleasure or pain in his environment, so we can say about everything experienced in the human realm in yonder world that it is much more intimately connected with the life of soul. When the Dead becomes acquainted with a soul, he gets to know this soul as if he himself were within it. After death, knowledge of another soul is intimate as knowledge here on earth of our own finger, head or ear—we feel ourselves within the other soul. The connection is much more intimate than it can ever be on earth.

There are two basic experiences in the community among human souls between death and a new birth; we are either within the other souls, or outside them. Even in the case of souls with whom we are already acquainted, we are sometimes within and sometimes outside them. Meeting with them consists in feeling at one with them, being within them; to be outside them means that we do not notice them, do not become aware of them. If we look at some object here on earth, we perceive it; if we look away from it, we no longer perceive it. In yonder world we are actually within human souls when we are able to turn our attention to them; and we are outside them when we are not in a position to do so.

What I have now said is an indication of the fundamental form of the soul's communion with other souls during the period between death and a new birth. Similarly, the human being is also within or outside the Beings of the Hierarchies, the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so on. The higher the kingdoms, the more intensely does man feel bound to them after death; he feels as though they were bearing him, sustaining him with great power. The Archangeloi are a mightier support than the Angeloi, the Archai again mightier than the Archangeloi, and so on.

People today still find difficulties in acquiring knowledge of the spiritual world. The difficulties would soon solve themselves if a little more trouble were taken to become acquainted with its secrets. There are two ways of approach. One way leads to complete certainty of the Eternal in one's own being. This knowledge, that in human nature there is an eternal core of being which passes through birth and death—this knowledge, remote as it is to the modern mind, is comparatively easy to attain; and it will certainly be attained by those who have enough perseverance, along the path described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and in other writings. It is attained by treading the path there described. That is one form of knowledge of the spiritual world. The other is what may be called direct intercourse with beings of the spiritual world, and we will now speak of the intercourse that is possible between those still living on earth and the so-called Dead.

Such intercourse is most certainly possible but it presents greater difficulties than the first form of knowledge, which is easy to attain. Actual intercourse with an individual who has died is possible, but difficult, because it demands scrupulous vigilance on the part of the one who seeks to establish it. Control and discipline are necessary for this kind of intercourse with the spiritual world, because it is connected with a very significant law. Impulses recognized as lower impulses in men on earth are, from the spiritual side, higher life; and it may therefore easily happen that when the human being has not achieved true control of himself, he experiences the rising of lower impulses as the result of direct intercourse with the Dead. When we make contact with the spiritual world in the general sense, when we acquire knowledge about our own immortality as beings of soul and spirit, there can be no question of the ingress of anything impure. But when it is a matter of contact with individuals who have died, the relation of the individual Dead—strange as it seems—is always a relation with the blood and nervous system. The Dead enters into those impulses which live themselves out in the system of blood and nerves, and in this way lower impulses may be aroused. Naturally, there is only danger for those who have not purified their natures through discipline and control. This must be said, for it is the reason why in the Old Testament it is forbidden to have intercourse with the Dead. Such intercourse is not sinful when it happens in the right way. The methods of modern spiritualism must, of course, be avoided. When the intercourse is of a spiritual nature it is not sinful, but when it is not accompanied by pure thoughts it can easily lead to the stimulation of lower passions. It is not the Dead who arouse these passions but the element in which the Dead live. For consider this: what we feel here as ‘animal’ in quality and nature is the basic element in which the Dead live. The kingdom in which the Dead live can easily be changed when it enters into us; what is higher life in yonder world can become lower impulses when it is within us on earth. It is very important to remember this, and it must be emphasized when we are speaking of intercourse between the Living and the so-called Dead, for it is an occult fact. We shall find that precisely when we are speaking about this intercourse, the spiritual world can be described as it really is, for such experiences reveal that the spiritual world is completely different from the physical world.

To begin with, I will tell you something that may seem to have no meaning for man as long as he has not developed faculties of clairvoyance; but when we think it over we shall realize that it concerns us closely. Those who are able to commune with the Dead as the result of developed clairvoyance, realize why it is so difficult for human beings to know anything about the Dead through direct perception. Strange as it may seem, the whole form of intercourse to which we are accustomed in the physical world has to be reversed when intercourse is established between the earth and the Dead. In the physical world, when we speak to a human being from physical body to physical body, we know that the words come from ourselves; when the other person speaks to us, we know that the words come from him. The whole relationship is reversed when we are speaking with one who has died. The expression ‘when we are speaking’ can truthfully be used, but the relationship is reversed. When we put a question to the Dead, or say something to him, what we say comes from him, comes to us from him. He inspires into our soul what we ask him, what we say to him. And when he answers us or says something to us, this comes out of our own soul. It is a process with which a human being in the physical world is quite unfamiliar. He feels that what he says comes out of his own being. In order to establish intercourse with those who have died, we must adapt ourselves to hear from them what we ourselves say, and to receive from our own soul what they answer.

Thus abstractly described, the nature of the process is easy to grasp; but to become accustomed to the total reversal of the familiar form of intercourse is exceedingly difficult. The Dead are always there, always among us and around us, and the fact that they are not perceived is largely due to lack of understanding of this reversed form of intercourse. On the physical plane we think that when anything comes out of our soul, it comes from us. And we are far from being able to pay intimate enough attention to whether it is not, after all, being inspired into us from the spiritual environment. We prefer to connect it with experiences familiar on the physical plane, where, if something comes to us from the environment, we ascribe it at once to the other person. This is the greatest error when it is a matter of intercourse with the Dead.

I have here been telling you of one of the fundamental principles of intercourse between the so-called Living and the so-called Dead. If this example helps you to realise one thing only, namely, that conditions are entirely reversed in the spiritual world, then you will have grasped a very significant concept and one that is constantly needed by those who aspire to become conscious of the spiritual world. The concept is extremely difficult to apply in an actual, individual case. For instance, in order to understand even the physical world, permeated as it is with the spiritual, it is essential to grasp this idea of complete reversal. And because modern science fails to grasp it and it is altogether unknown to the general consciousness, for this reason there is today no spiritual understanding of the physical world. One experiences this even with people who try very hard indeed to comprehend the world and one is often obliged simply to accept the situation and leave it as it is. Some years ago I was speaking to a large number of friends at a meeting in Berlin about the physical organism of man, with special reference to certain ideas of Goethe. I tried to explain how the head, in respect of its physical structure, can only be rightly understood when it is conceived as a complete transformation of the other part of the organism. No one was able to understand at all that a bone in the arm would have to be turned inside out like a glove, in order that a head-bone might be produced from it. It is a difficult concept, but one cannot really understand anatomy without such pictures. I mention this in parenthesis only. What I have said today about intercourse with the Dead is easier to understand.

The happenings I have described to you are going on all the time. All of you sitting here now are in constant intercourse with the Dead, only the ordinary consciousness knows nothing of it because it lies in the subconsciousness. Clairvoyant consciousness does not evoke anything new into being; it merely brings up into consciousness what is present all the time in the spiritual world. All of you are in constant intercourse with the Dead.

And now we will consider how this intercourse takes place in individual cases. When someone has died and we are left behind, we may ask: How do I approach the one who has died, so that he is aware of me? How does he come near me again so that I can live in him?—These questions may well be asked but they cannot be answered if we have recourse only to concepts familiar on the physical plane. On the physical plane, ordinary consciousness functions only from the time of waking until the time of falling asleep; but the other part of consciousness which remains dim in ordinary life between falling asleep and waking is just as important. The human being is not, properly speaking, unconscious when he is asleep; his consciousness is merely so dim that he experiences nothing. But the whole man—in waking and sleeping life—must be held in mind when we are studying the connections of the human being with the spiritual world. Think of your own biography. You reflect upon the course of your life always with interruptions; you describe only what has happened in your waking hours. Life is broken: waking-sleeping; waking-sleeping. But you are also present while you sleep: and in studying the whole human being, both waking life and sleeping life must be taken into consideration.

A third thing must also be held in mind in connection with man's intercourse with the spiritual world. For besides waking life and sleeping life there is a third state, even more important for intercourse with the spiritual world than waking and sleeping life as such. I mean the state connected with the act of waking and the act of going to sleep, which last only for brief seconds, for we immediately pass on into other conditions. If we develop a delicate sensitivity for these moments of waking and going to sleep we shall find that they shed great light on the spiritual world. In remote country places—although such customs are gradually disappearing—when we who are older were still young, people were wont to say: When you wake from sleep it is not good immediately to go to the window through which light is streaming; you should stay a little while in the dark. Country folk used to have some knowledge about intercourse with the spiritual world and at this moment of waking they preferred not to come at once into the bright daylight but to remain inwardly collected, in order to preserve something of what sweeps with such power through the human soul at the moment of waking. The sudden brightness of daylight is disturbing. In the cities, of course, this is hardly to be avoided; there we are disturbed not only by the daylight but also even before waking by the noise from the streets, the clanging of tramcar bells and so forth. The whole of civilized life seems to conspire to hinder man's intercourse with the spiritual world. This is not said in order to decry material civilization, but the facts must be remembered. Again at the moment of going to sleep the spiritual world approaches us with power, but we immediately fall asleep, losing consciousness of what has passed through the soul. Exceptions do, of course, occur.

These moments of waking and of going to sleep are of the utmost significance for intercourse with the so-called Dead—and with other spiritual Beings of the higher worlds. But in order to understand what I have to say about this you must familiarize yourselves with an idea which it is not easy to apply on the physical plane and which is therefore practically unknown. It is this:

In the spiritual sense, what is ‘past’ has not really vanished but is still there. In physical life men have this conception in regard to Space only. If you stand in front of a tree, then go away and look back at it later on, the tree has not disappeared; it is still there. In the spiritual world the same is true in regard to Time. If you experience something at one moment, it has passed away the next as far as physical consciousness is concerned; spiritually conceived, it has not passed away. You can look back at it just as you looked back at the tree. Richard Wagner showed that he had knowledge of this by the remarkable words: ‘Time here becomes Space.’ It is an occult fact that in the spiritual world there are distances which do not come to expression on the physical plane. That an event is past simply means that it is farther away from us. I beg you to remember this. For man on earth in the physical body, the moment of going to sleep is ‘past’ when the moment of waking arrives. In the spiritual world, however, the moment of falling asleep has not gone; we are only, at the moment of waking, a little farther distant from it. We encounter our Dead at the moment of going to sleep and again at the moment of waking. (As I said, this is perpetually happening, only it usually remains in the subconsciousness.) As far as physical consciousness is concerned, these are two quite different moments in time; for spiritual consciousness the one is only a little farther distant than the other. I want you to remember this in connection with what I am now going to say: otherwise you may find it difficult to understand.

As I told you, the moments of waking and going to sleep are particularly important for intercourse with those who have died. Through the whole of our life there are no such moments when we do not come into relation with the Dead.

The moment of going to sleep is especially favourable for us to turn to the Dead. Suppose we want to ask the Dead something. We can carry it in our soul, holding it until the moment of going to sleep, for that is the time to bring our questions to the Dead. Other opportunities exist, but this moment is the most favourable. When, for instance, we read to the Dead we certainly draw near to them, but for direct intercourse it is best of all if we put our questions to them at the moment of going to sleep.

On the other hand, the moment of waking is the most favourable for what the Dead have to communicate to us. And again there is no one—did people but know it—who at the moment of waking does not bring with him countless tidings from the Dead. In the unconscious region of the soul we are speaking continually with the Dead. At the moment of going to sleep we put our questions to them, we say to them what, in the depths of the soul, we have to say. At the moment of waking the Dead speak with us, give us the answers. But we must realize that these are only two different points and that in the higher sense, these things that happen after each other are really simultaneous, just as on the physical plane two places are there simultaneously.

Some factors in life are favourable for intercourse with the Dead, others are less so. And we may ask: What can really help us to establish intercourse with the Dead? The manner of our converse cannot be the same as it is with those who are alive, for the Dead neither hears nor takes in this kind of speech. There is no question of being able to chatter with one who has died as we chatter with one another at tea or in cafés. What makes it possible to put questions to the Dead or to communicate something to him is that we unite the life of feeling with our thoughts and ideas. Suppose a person has passed through the gate of death and you want your subconsciousness to communicate something to him in the evening. It need not to be communicated consciously; you can prepare it at some time during the day. Then, if you go to bed at ten o'clock at night having prepared it, say, at noon, it passes over to the Dead when you go to sleep. The question must, however, be put in a particular way; it must not merely be a thought or an idea, it must be imbued with feeling and with will. Your relationship with the Dead must be one of the heart, of inner interest. You must remind yourself of your love for the person when he was alive and address yourself to him with real warmth of heart, not abstractly. This feeling can take such firm root in the soul that in the evening, at the moment of going to sleep, it becomes a question to the Dead without your knowing it. Or you may try to realize vividly what was the nature of your particular interest in the one who has died. Think about your experiences with him; visualize actual moments when you were together with him, and then ask yourself: What was it about him that particularly interested me, that attracted me to him? When was it that I was so deeply impressed, liked what he said, found it helpful and valuable? If you remind yourself of moments when you were strongly connected with the Dead and were deeply interested in him, and then turn this into a desire to speak to him, to say something to him—if you develop the feeling with purity of heart and let the question arise out of the interest you took in him, then the question of the communication remains in your soul, and when you go to sleep it passes over to him. Ordinary consciousness as a rule will know little of the happening, because sleep ensues immediately. But what has thus passed over often remains present in dreams.

In the case of most dreams—although in respect of actual content they are misleading—in the case of most dreams we have of the Dead, all that happens is that we interpret them incorrectly. We interpret them as messages from the Dead, whereas they are nothing but the echoing of the questions or communications we have ourselves directed to the Dead. We should not think that the Dead is saying something to us in our dream, but we should see in the dream something that goes out from our own soul to the Dead. The dream is the echo of this. If we were sufficiently developed to be conscious of our question or communication to the Dead at the moment of going to sleep, it would seem to us as though the Dead himself were speaking—hence the echo in the dream seems as if it were a message from him. In reality it comes from ourselves. This becomes intelligible only when we understand the nature of clairvoyant connection with the Dead. What the Dead seems to say to us is really what we are saying to him.

The moment of waking is especially favourable for the Dead to approach us. At the moment of waking, very much comes from the Dead to every human being. A great deal of what we undertake in life is really inspired into us by the Dead or by Beings of the higher Hierarchies, although we attribute it to ourselves, imagining that it comes from our own soul. The life of day draws near, the moment of waking passes quickly by, and we seldom pay heed to the intimate indications that arise out of our soul. And when we do, we are vain enough to attribute them to ourselves. Yet in all this—and in much else that comes out of our soul—there lives what the Dead have to say to us. It is indeed so: what the Dead say to us seems as if it arises out of our own soul. If men knew what life truly is, this knowledge would engender a feeling of reverence and piety towards the spiritual world in which we are always living, together with the Dead with whom we are connected. We should realize that in much of what we do, the Dead are working. The knowledge that around us, like the very air we breathe, there is a spiritual world, the knowledge that the Dead are round about us only we are not able to perceive them—this knowledge must be unfolded in Spiritual Science not as theory but permeating the soul as inner life. The Dead speak to us inwardly but we interpret our own inner life incorrectly. If we were to understand it aright, we should know that in our inmost being we are united with the souls who are the so-called Dead.

Now it is not at all the same when a soul passes through the gate of death in relatively early years or later in life. The death of young children who have loved us, is a very different thing from the death of people older than ourselves. Experience of the spiritual world discovers that the secret of communion with children who have died can be expressed by saying that in the spiritual sense we do not lose them, they remain with us. When children die in early life they continue to be with us—spiritually with us. I should like to give it to you as a theme for meditation, that when little children die they are not lost to us; we do not lose them, they stay with us spiritually. Of older people who die, the opposite may be said. Those who are older do not lose us. We do not lose little children; elderly people do not lose us. When elderly people die they are strongly drawn to the spiritual world, but this also gives them the power so to work into the physical world that it is easier for them to approach us. True, they withdraw much farther from the physical world than do children who remain near us, but they are endowed with higher faculties of perception than children who die young. Knowledge of different souls in the spiritual world reveals that those who died in old age are able to enter easily into souls on earth; they do not lose the souls on earth. And we do not lose little children, for they remain more or less within the sphere of earthly man. The meaning of the difference can also be considered in another respect.

We have not always sufficiently deep insight into the experiences of the soul on the physical plane. When friends die, we mourn and feel pain. When good friends pass away, I have often said that it is not the task of Anthroposophy to offer people shallow consolation for their pain or try to talk them out of their sorrow One should grow strong enough to bear sorrow; not allow oneself to be talked out of it. But people make no distinction as to whether the sorrow is caused by the death of a child or of one who is elderly. Spiritually perceived, there is a very great difference. When little children have died, the pain of those who have remained behind is really a kind of compassion—no matter whether such children were their own or other children whom they loved. Children remain with us and because we have been united with them they convey their pain to our souls; we feel their pain—that they would fain still be here! Their pain is eased when we bear it with them. The child feels in us, shares his feeling with us, and it is good that it should be so; his pain is thereby ameliorated.

On the other hand, the pain we feel at the death of elderly people—whether relatives or friends—can be called egotistical pain. An elderly person who has died does not lose us and the feeling he has is therefore different from the feeling present in a child. One who dies in later life does not lose us. We here in life feel that we have lost him—the pain is therefore ours; it is egotistical pain. We do not share his feeling as we do in the case of children; we feel the pain for ourselves.

A clear distinction can therefore be made between these two forms of pain: egotistical pain in connection with the elderly; pain fraught with compassion in connection with little children. The child lives on in us and we actually feel what he feels. In reality, our own soul mourns only for those who died in the later years of their life.

It is a matter such as this that can show us the immense significance of knowledge of the spiritual world. For you see, Divine Service for the Dead can be adapted in accordance with these truths. In the case of a child who has died, it will not be altogether appropriate to emphasize the individual aspect. Because the child lives on in us and remains with us, the Service of Remembrance should take a more universal form, giving the child, who is still near us, something that is wide and universal. Therefore in the case of a child, ceremonial in the Service is preferable to a special funeral oration. The Catholic ritual is better here in one respect, the Protestant in the other. The Catholic Service includes no funeral oration but consists in ceremony, in ritual. It is general, universal, alike for all. And what can be alike for all is especially good for children. But in the case of one who has died in later years, the individual aspect is more important. The best funeral Service here will be one in which the life of the individual is remembered. The Protestant Service, with the oration referring to the life of the one who has died, will have great significance for the soul; the Catholic ritual will mean less in such a case.

The same distinction holds good for all our thought about those who have died. It is best for a child when we induce a mood of feeling connected with him; we try to turn our thoughts to him and these thoughts will draw near to him when we sleep. Such thoughts may be of a more general kind—such for example as may be directed to all those who have passed through the gate of death. In the case of an elderly person, we must direct our thoughts of remembrance to him as an individual, thinking about his life on earth and of experiences we shared with him. In order to establish the right intercourse with an older person it is very important to visualize him as he actually was, to make his being come to life in ourselves—not only by remembering things he said which meant a great deal to us but by thinking of what he was as an individual and what his value was for the world. If we make these things inwardly alive, they will enable us to come into connection with an older person who has died and to have the right thoughts of remembrance for him. So you see, for the unfolding of true piety it is important to know what attitude should be taken to those who have died in childhood and to those who have died in the later years of life.

Just think what it means at the present time when so many human beings are dying in comparatively early years, to be able to say to oneself: They are really always present, they are not lost to the world. (I have spoken of this from other points of view, for such matters must always be considered from different angles.) If we succeed in becoming conscious of the spiritual world, one realisation at least will light up in us out of the deep sorrow with which the present days are fraught. It is that because those who die young remain with us, a living spiritual life can arise through community with the Dead. A living spiritual life can and will arise, if only materialism is not allowed to become so strong that Ahriman is able to stretch out his claws and gain the victory over all human powers.

Many people may say, speaking purely of conditions on the physical plane, that indications such as I have been giving seem very remote; they would prefer to be told definitely what they can do in the morning and evening in order to bring themselves into a right relation with the spiritual world. But this is not quite correct thinking. Where the spiritual world is concerned, the first essential is that we should develop thoughts about it. And even if it seems as though the Dead are far away, while immediate life is close at hand, the very fact that we have such thoughts as have been described today and that we allow our minds to dwell on things seemingly remote from external life—this very fact uplifts the soul, imparts to it spiritual strength and spiritual nourishment. Do not, therefore, be afraid of thinking these thoughts through again and again, continually bringing them to new life with the soul. There is nothing more important for life, even for material life, than the strong and sure realization of communion with the spiritual world.

If modern men had not lost their relationship with spiritual things to such an extent, these grave times would not have come upon us. Only a very few today have insight into this connection, although it will certainly be recognized in the future. Today men think: When a human being has passed through the gate of death, his activity ceases as far as the physical world is concerned. But indeed it is not so! There is a living and perpetual intercourse between the so called Dead and the so-called Living. Those who have passed through the gate of death have not ceased to be present; it is only that our eyes have ceased to see them. They are there in very truth.

Our thoughts, our feelings, our impulses of will, are all concerned with the Dead. The words of the Gospel hold good for the Dead as well; ‘The Kingdom of the Spirit cometh not with observation’ (that is to say, external observation); ‘neither shall they say, Lo here, lo there, for behold, the Kingdom of the Spirit is within you.’ We should not seek for the Dead through externalities but become conscious that they are always present. All historical life, all social life, all ethical life, proceed by virtue of co-operation between the so-called Living and the so-called Dead. The whole being of man can be infinitely strengthened when he is conscious not only of his firm stand here in the physical world but is filled with the inner realization of being able to say of the Dead whom he has loved: They are with us, they are in our midst.

This too is part of a true knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world, which have as it were, to be woven together from many different threads. We cannot say that we know the spiritual world until the way in which we think and speak about it comes from that world itself.

The Dead are in our midst—these words in themselves are an affirmation of the spiritual world; and only the spiritual world itself can awaken within us the consciousness that in very truth the Dead are with us.

My lecture today will be, in a certain respect, the opposite of yesterday's, since I shall have something to say about what can be seen supernaturally in the way I characterized it yesterday. However, I will have to ask for your indulgence, since I can naturally only highlight a few aphorisms from the unlimited fields of anthroposophical research. So today's lecture will be a kind of collection of details picked out as examples.

What is achieved for the human being through the three supersensible levels of knowledge that I characterized yesterday is that he can step before the soul's eye as a complete human being. I have already mentioned the first supersensible level of knowledge, the level of imaginative knowledge. And I already indicated yesterday how, through this imaginative knowledge, the organism of time can be seen, which is found in us human beings as the first supersensible entity, the formative forces body that exists in time and that organizes us, but as a supersensible organism organizes us in the time between our birth or conception and death. But I have also noticed that the moment imaginative knowledge begins to take effect, the difference between subjective and objective ceases to a certain extent, so that at the same time as we are spiritually contemplating our formative body, we are also standing in the midst of the entire etheric activity of the world; that we become, as it were, a member of the etheric cosmic organism and then stand out less, secrete less out of this cosmic etheric organism than we do in our physical organism in relation to the other natural facts and beings that surround us in the physical-sensual world.

When we then ascend to the inspired knowledge characterized yesterday, we extend our vision beyond what is in us between birth and death. We expand our vision to include what can be called the actual soul being of the human being, and we learn to recognize this soul being in the development in which it stood within a spiritual-soul environment before it descended into a physical human body.

By further developing this inspired knowledge into what I characterized yesterday as intuitive knowledge, one comes to know in the image the fact of death, the transition of our soul organism through the gate of death into a spiritual-soul world. So that the knowledge of the eternal nature of the human soul is joined by the knowledge of immortality and the unborn. At the same time, however, in this moment, by rising to intuitive knowledge, we see the true form of our ego, of our self. I will speak about this vision of the self again, preferably also in tomorrow's lecture. But you can see from what I have characterized that we come to the vision of a purely spiritual world, first of all of our own spiritual-soul being with its surroundings. Now, during our life on earth, we already have a definite share in this spiritual-soul world. It is always there. It is always around us, as already emerged from what was characterized yesterday. We have a share in it through our total human experience. This total experience breaks down into the waking state and the sleeping state, with the dream states in between.

When one speaks of waking and sleeping, one is actually touching on a very significant riddle of existence, especially in human life. This riddle has been tackled in many ways, including by purely physical research. And as in other fields, in this too, no amateurish opposition should be made against what is put forward by natural science with a certain right. But these scientific hypotheses (and they are mostly hypotheses that have been put forward in this regard; I do not need to list them, because today I will stick more to the positive anthroposophical results in my presentation) these scientific hypotheses always start from certain assumptions that, one might say, can be partially, but not totally, held even in the simplest, unbiased observations of life. For example, when explaining the transition from wakefulness to sleep, fatigue is usually given the greatest importance. And one often sees in fatigue - not always, because there is also a correct insight in science - a kind of cause for the transition to sleep. Now, I have known reindeer that, without having acquired any reason to be particularly tired during the day, fell asleep at the first words of my evening lecture, and not only on this, indeed more understandable occasion, but also fell asleep during many an extraordinarily stimulating sonata. So that just a simple, unbiased observation of life can tell you that fatigue is not necessarily the only reason, the only cause for the state of sleep. I think that anyone who takes even a little time to observe the phenomena of life, quite apart from any extrasensory research, as I will characterize it later, must observe how there is something in sleeping and waking that is connected with the human being, as it is in the physical world, in such a way that sleeping and waking belong to this being as a rhythm of life. Just as the pendulum swings to one side and then to the other, so we must assume that the human being's overall experience in these two states, waking and sleeping, is like a pendulum-like rhythm. I am not offering this as proof, but as something that one might come up with as a possible interpretation. But this will lead us to the next stage, if I now, from the direct view that can be acquired with the help of the three levels of knowledge that I characterized yesterday, first of all present the state of sleep and wakefulness in a soul-spiritual way.

When we are in imaginative knowledge, we get to know the etheric body, the formative forces of the human being. That is, we learn to look at what is in us as the first supersensible being. We then get to know the actual soul that flows into our physical body through birth or conception and also into this formative forces body. We get to know this soul-like quality as it flows out through death into a spiritual world again. We get to know this through inspired knowledge. And we then get to know the actual I-being, I would like to say, the deepest center of our human being through intuitive knowledge.

If we now apply these three insights to our observations of sleeping and waking, it becomes clear to us that the human being is only fully awake during the waking state, when he is fully aware of his mental life, so to speak, and that he is normally the physical body, the spatial body, the etheric body, the temporal body, the actual soul-being, which I referred to yesterday as the astral body, and the I. As a physical being, the sleeping person still has only the body of formative forces within them. Essentially, the soul, the astral body and the I have emerged from the physical body and the body of formative forces, which can now be observed through ordinary external sensory perception and imaginative perception. And from falling asleep to waking up, they are in the same sphere in which they were before the human being descended from the spiritual-soul realm into a physical embodiment on earth. So that the four members of the human being, that is, the physical body, the temporal formative forces body, then the ego and the astral body, the actual soul, are separated from each other in twos.

But now, if we want to understand how the state of sleep relates to the state of wakefulness, we must gain an inner vision, also to be attained through the stages of knowledge that are characterized, of what is actually present during sleep, let us say for the time being. The physical body of space only carries out what the body of time is. All the processes that the physical body carries out in this ether body, from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, can continue. These are all the processes that are connected with the plastic development of the human being, for example during childhood, and that are connected with nutrition and metabolism. But those processes that are connected with imagination, thinking, feeling and willing cannot be carried out. Man falls asleep into a state in which the life of imagination is dimmed, in which feelings are silent, where his will becomes powerless to somehow carry out something in the physical world through the physical body and etheric body.

If we now observe through supersensible knowledge that which has gone out of the physical body and etheric body, as I, as an astral body, that is, as a vehicle of thinking, feeling and willing, we find, above all, that the conscious activity of waking has sunk into an unconscious one, and that the human being is in an unconscious state. Therefore, one can only see through supersensible knowledge from the outside what has gone out of the physical body and the etheric body.

If one wants to characterize what is actually outside of the physical man, then one must compare it with something else. When a person is in a completely dreamless sleep, it can only be compared to the same activity that is present in the waking person's will, in the impulses of the will. The impulses of the will — I characterized this yesterday — also run in the waking person in such a way that the consciousness, the consciousness living in thoughts, has no knowledge of the inner nature of this will. I said yesterday that we plan to do something, for example, to raise our arm. We have the thought. How the thought then flows down into our organism, how the will takes hold of the arm – if I may express myself trivially – is something of which one also has no idea in waking life for the ordinary consciousness. The arm is raised. We only see the result again. The mental image of the result is a new mental image. During waking hours, we have as little idea of what lies between the mental image of the result and the mental image of the intention as a volitional impulse as we have no idea in our ordinary consciousness of what goes on in deep, dreamless sleep. But for supersensible observation, what is present as I and astral body, in addition to the physical body and the etheric body, is in sleep exactly in the same activity as will is during waking. A decided volition expresses itself. The activity of imagination is subdued. We shall explain shortly why this activity of imagination is subdued. That for which we already sleep while awake is quite active, only it is outside the body. It cannot move the arms or legs, cannot use the body as a tool for the will, but this will is powerfully present. And what then is the most important characteristic of this will? It is desire, which can then increase to become the wish and the other various nuances that one is familiar with. From the moment one falls asleep until one wakes up, desire is active in that which is outside of the physical body. And one must ask oneself: What is desire directed towards? When one can observe this streaming and swirling and surging of desire in the soul-being outside of the physical body through supersensible knowledge, then one is led to the question: What is this desire, this longing directed towards? It is directed towards nothing other than the physical body, towards regaining possession of the physical body. From the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up, the human being unconsciously wants to get back into his physical body and into his etheric body because he is outside of it. And then another question arises. These questions only arise, of course, when one applies imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. The other question that arises is: Why does this soul-filled person not immediately satisfy the desire to return to his physical body when he is outside of it? The reason for this, and this is explained to us in the moment of falling asleep, is that the human being, when awake, when he has taken hold of his physical body as a being of soul, as I and astral body, becomes tired of this physical body, which, after all, connects him to the outside world; because in a certain sense he is saturated with this possession after a certain time. Not just the possession of the interior of the physical body. This physical body carries the sense organs. Through them one comes into contact with the outside world. One's self and the astral body merge with sounds and colors, one's self merges with the words one hears from other people. If you do not want to be absorbed and have no possibility to escape in any other way from the impressions coming from the outside world, then you withdraw from the impressions of the outside world by falling asleep, just like the reindeer I was talking about. So that from falling asleep to waking up, in the human being as a spiritual being, satiation with the physical body and desire for the physical body pulsate together. And only when the satiation has completely disappeared can desire triumph over satiation, and the person wakes up and returns to the physical body. There is not enough time to describe why you wake up when the alarm clock goes off, for example, and the like, or why some people cannot sleep. These things can also be experienced, but I can only describe the principles and the generalities.

When we consider the alternating states of sleeping and waking, we are actually dealing with an oscillation between an inner inclination of the human soul to be in the physical body and no longer to be in it; we are dealing with a feeling of being oversaturated, hence the going out of the physical body, and with a renewed desire for the physical body. This desire for the physical body is particularly interesting for supersensible research to study. For this desire for the physical body is also discovered to a particularly intense degree at the time when the soul, bending down from the spiritual-soul world to earth, is again approaching a physical embodiment. Between death and a new birth, that is, on the way to a birth, the soul develops in such a way that, out of all the states it has gone through before, it develops, above all, a certain emptiness towards its spiritual environment and an intensely strong will element, namely the desire for the physical earth. So that we can study the last states that the soul goes through when it draws to an earth life, in a sense between falling asleep and waking up.

So we have an explanation that simply arises for supersensible research, which does not start from the physical of the alternating state of sleeping and waking, but rather recurs to the soul; which explains waking up above all as the satisfaction of the desire for the physical body, which explains falling asleep from a soul oversaturation of the physical body. We arrive at soul qualities and explain the change between sleeping and waking from the soul.

If we then look at dreaming – initially one-sidedly, because, as I said, we cannot explain everything today – we look at dreaming when waking up. As we observe the human soul with its swirling will-being from falling asleep to waking up, we see that thoughts begin to flash to the same extent that the human being returns to his etheric body and his spatial body, his physical body. During normal waking up, it is the case that the person relatively quickly slips into their etheric body and their physical body. In these he has the tools for his thinking, feeling and willing. Thinking, which is subdued during sleep, makes use, when the person returns to his physical body, primarily of the senses and nervous system as external tools. Feeling, which is also dampened during sleep, is submerged upon awakening in everything that is rhythm in the physical organism, for example, the rhythm of breathing, blood circulation, and also the rhythm of metabolism. There is rhythm there too. In fact, the rhythm of metabolism already plays a part in the circulation. So that one can observe how that which is thinking disposition, thinking power in the soul, submerges into the nervous system, and that which is feeling nature submerges into the rhythmic system. And with regard to the will nature, which is thus mainly active during sleep and is connected with the metabolic activity, I would like to say that there is no boundary between inside and outside. During sleep, the human being is indeed outside of his physical body, and everything outside is will, but this will passes through the boundary of the body with regard to the metabolism, also striking into the body through the boundary of the body, and during sleep the activity of the will also encompasses the metabolic system. It is only out of sensory activity and thinking, but with its will nature, the human being is completely immersed in its metabolic system.

Now one can observe how, so to speak, the human being with his soul essence descends into his etheric and physical body. If it happens that, due to some abnormality – although they coincide spatially, this can be the case – the etheric body is seized before the spatial body, then the human being does not immediately enter his body completely. He only submerges into the etheric body. The etheric body then takes up the liquid components of the body, and only the soul, which comes from the solid components, really remains outside. But the moment when the human being has not yet fully taken hold of the physical body, but has only taken hold of the etheric body, that moment is when the soul, emerging from the state of sleep, can only make partial use of the physical and etheric bodies, and that is when dreaming arises. Full waking only arises when the physical body is fully seized, that is, when all the organs of will and especially the sense organs are fully seized. So it is a partial seizure of the physical body when dreaming occurs.

But precisely when one observes this coming over through dreaming in supersensible research - and one can observe this dreaming very particularly through imaginative knowledge; it is not itself dreaming, it is a more fully conscious knowledge than the ordinary day-knowledge of normal consciousness, but one can observe particularly what actually takes place objectively in the dream – one can observe how the human soul takes hold of the physical apparatus, because in the present human life, when the soul is removed from the physical apparatus, it is not strong enough to carry out the thinking activity. It needs, so to speak, the physical tool as a support to carry out the thinking activity. So that in the moment when the human being submerges into the physical tool, thinking is really carried out through the physical tool.

But then, when one also observes feeling through inspired knowledge, both the feeling that is completely subdued during sleep and the feeling in the waking state, which is also a kind of dream-like state – feelings are not as fully conscious as mental images – then one does indeed come to significant differences between thinking and feeling. Only now do you notice these differences. When thinking, it is the case that, when one observes the thinking person with imaginative knowledge in a waking state, the nervous system is continually active during the thinking. The nervous system is in a mobile plastic state, so that basically, for the most part, everything of the soul sinks into the nervous system. When passing from sleep to wakefulness, that part of the soul that becomes a thinker in man disappears. It disappears into the sensory nervous system. This is not the case with feeling human beings. The part of the soul that constitutes the feeling human being submerges into everything that is a rhythmic organism in man, but not completely. One can even say, although this is only an approximation, that just as much of the soul remains outside the physical and etheric bodies as submerges. There is a continuous back and forth between the soul and the body in this feeling activity. And this continuous back and forth is expressed in the rhythmic system.

And the part that makes up the will of the human soul also submerges into the physical body during waking, but it does not submerge in the same way that thinking submerges into the nervous system. It submerges into the physical organism and into the formative forces, but it does not connect with them. Although it slips into the physical body, it remains separate and is a distinct being. Thus one can say that in the waking state, the human being has a remarkable polarity. If we look primarily at the nervous sensory organism, we find that it is developed in such a way that in the waking person the soul is completely submerged. It has almost completely disappeared into the organism as a thinking soul. And when we look at the workings of the will in the waking person, we actually see this will as something separate, alongside the physical processes in the physical organism. These then take place as two activities, although in the same space, but as strictly separate activities. So that it is only through such research methods that we actually gain an insight into how the human being, as a being of will, is involved in his body in a completely different way than he is involved as a thinking being.

This, however, becomes particularly clear when we approach the observation of the waking person with truly developed imaginative and intuitive knowledge. Once you have completed the exercises I mentioned yesterday, you are able to observe yourself from the outside. The thinking is strengthened. This makes it independent of the physical body. In ordinary consciousness, the human being must completely immerse himself in his physical body, that is, in the nervous sensory apparatus. But the achievement of supersensible knowledge consists in learning to think without this physical apparatus. That is the essential thing. We are too weak as sleeping human beings in our normal consciousness to be able to gather up in our sleep that which is soul-like, so that it develops in itself the activity of thinking without the support of the body. The success of the exercises described yesterday consists precisely in the soul becoming so strong that it can think without the body. But in this state, in which it can think without the body, it can see the body. Just as one sees something that is outside of oneself, as one knows that one sees the table with one's eyes, so for imaginative and inspired and intuitive knowledge one looks back to the physical and etheric bodies. As a being of soul, one is only within oneself, one is now conscious of what one is otherwise unconscious of in sleep. And now something very peculiar occurs. It occurs that one does not see everything of this physical body, but only the nervous system can be objectively seen, or rather seen by the soul. The human being, seen entirely from the outside, is a nervous-sensory being. Its nervous system, together with the senses, becomes visible from the outside. I emphasize this because it has played a role - not in these evening lectures, but in many of the daytime lectures - I emphasize that not only the so-called sensitive nerves become visible, but also the so-called motor nerves, and that it is precisely at this stage of knowledge that direct observation leads to the research result: there is no fundamental difference between the so-called sensitive and the so-called motor nerves. The sensitive nerves are there to mediate our perception of the external world through our senses; the motor nerves, which are also sensitive nerves, are there so that we can perceive the position and presence of our limbs within ourselves. The fact that we have an inner perception of ourselves is conveyed by the motor nerves, which are actually sensitive nerves in this respect. Such research results arise from the path of soul research.

So we have now come to the point where we have what belongs to the human nervous system in the broadest sense as an objective thing. On the other hand, everything that belongs to the metabolic system is not present as an objective. It is present in intuition as a purely spiritual being. There the material disappears, and one now learns to recognize this peculiar process in the waking human being, this total process that actually takes place there. One learns to recognize it in this way: if one first gradually orientates oneself through imaginative knowledge, one comes to understand how one moves out of the physical body, now not unconsciously as when falling asleep, but consciously, as one feels this lifting out, especially from the brain. Then, by passing over to inspired knowledge, one arrives at a point where, in addition to this lifting out of the brain, one still notices how the brain now becomes something outside of one. And then one arrives at intuition, one really arrives at objectively seeing what one has before one as the human sensory-neural apparatus. But now one also sees the whole process of ordinary thinking.

Yesterday I emphasized the importance of the person's common sense remaining intact while they develop the second personality, the observing personality, in anthroposophical research. The ordinary personality remains intact, otherwise the person does not become a supersensory cognizer, but a hallucinator. By observing how one comes out of it, logical thinking, which otherwise adheres to the sensory world, remains in the brain. One rises out of the brain only with what one is as a higher, soul-filled being. That is why we see in the entire nervous-sensory apparatus not a lump that lies there, but a process, something that is constantly happening, that is constantly a process. You see that when you look back. Something very strange then emerges, which fundamentally illuminates our entire knowledge of the world. It turns out that in our nervous-sensory being – I apologize if I now say something terribly heretical, it only appears so; it also arises directly from the consistent continuation of scientific thinking into the spiritual world – out of the spirit, which also comes across when we wake up in the morning, when the soul enters the physical body, material-spiritual particles are stored between the parts that only relate to the material, which are deposited and generated directly from the spirit itself. One witnesses the emergence of matter, even the plastic formation of matter in the human sensory apparatus. Matter arises out of spirit. According to his spiritual soul, man not only becomes an inhabitant of his nerve-sense apparatus, but, by storing matter that forms directly out of spirit, he becomes creative of matter. This is heretical because it goes against a principle of today's natural science, which only does not go to its ultimate consequences, those that extend to all beings - and the world consists of all beings, not just of inanimate facts and inanimate beings. This natural science has abstracted from the processes of the inorganic world and, at most, from the plant world, the so-called law of the conservation of energy and matter. As if the substance were there once and for all and would only be rearranged in this way. In a sense, this is the case in all other natural kingdoms. In man, however, there is actually a real creation of matter through the nerve-sense apparatus. But we can state - read the first pages of psychologies that are written today out of incomplete knowledge - that the law of the conservation of matter also applies to man. This is based on an illusion. The law applies, but how? If we look with intuitive knowledge at the workings of the will in the human organism, that is, in the metabolic organism, the part of the organism that consists of metabolism, then matter is continually being destroyed through a process that I would call an organic combustion process. And so, while man develops thinking in normal consciousness, matter creation takes place; while man develops will, matter destruction takes place. The healthy human life is based on the fact that, as it were, the left balance beam corresponds to the right, in the human being it constantly balances itself in the whole of life – matter is created during the thinking, and matter is destroyed, used up, hurled back into nothingness through the will process. And so it seems as though the law of conservation of matter also applies to the human organism, because as much matter is created and formed as is plasticized. By extrapolating such a law as the law of conservation of matter, which is quite correct, and applying it to the human being, we are able to gain a true insight into the very specific nature of the human being in its connection with the physical and with the soul-spiritual. In a sense, the human being becomes transparent in this way. But what path does one actually follow?

If one follows today's physiology, whose methods in external relationships are not at all to be challenged by me – they have their great merits and results, but these results are for the most part questions again, and in turn pose riddles – if one merely these external methods of research to follow the human organism, then one has only one side of the human being, and then one must put forward hypotheses as to the actual cause of what happens in the metabolism, as to the cause of what happens in the nervous process. These hypotheses actually tend to presuppose something unknown, which perhaps only exists in a lawful connection. That is what materialists believe. But in reality, one does not arrive at what the metabolism and the nervous process depend on through such hypotheses, but only through direct observation of the spiritual and soul-like itself.

And so you see that with regard to man, only total research, which does not sin against natural science but simply continues natural science, is able to put into perspective what otherwise only physiology and biology bring to light, by starting with the whole person. And this research does indeed lead to the extraordinarily important result that I presented in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul) a few years ago, after it had been the subject of thirty years of intensive research: the result is that the human being is a threefold creature. The being, which is mostly a nervous-sensory apparatus, is the carrier of the thought life in the waking state. Then the human being is a rhythmic being - breathing, circulation rhythm, other rhythms - and that is the carrier of the emotional life. Finally, the human being is a metabolic being, but the limbs are also part of the metabolic organism. Metabolism is only an inward continuation of what takes place in the limbs. Metabolism is the carrier of the will element. This has nothing to do with the nervous system, but only with the processes of metabolism.

Thus we come to recognize the human being as a threefold creature. The actual inner essence of the human being is based precisely on the fact that he is such a threefold creature, in that he has in his nervous-sensory apparatus that into which the thinking part of the soul is completely immersed, so that in terms of thinking we may actually be the greatest materialists. And today's psychology also comes to see in the brain, the various structures of the brain, true images of the thought life. It does not succeed in this for the emotional and will life, as she herself admits. One sees that one can be the most materialist with regard to the life of ideas, but one does not get along with pure materialism. It is not possible to do so if one imagines the brain in such a way that on the one hand one has the brain as a finished organ and on the other hand one has somehow the soul, which now uses the brain to shape thoughts. It is not like that at all. Rather, it is the case that thoughts have an existence of their own. It is just too weak to be active, for example, when the soul's part of the soul does not have the brain, as in sleep. But when the soul seizes the brain, it does not use it as a finished organ, but it is constantly developing in this brain what is happening in the brain as a process. These furrows are a perpetual process. This is at the same time the activity of the soul. Therefore, when we examine the brain, we can only do so if we have a mental image of the brain as a reflection of the soul, insofar as the soul is a thinking being. This is more important than one might think. This is immediately confirmed when you open up any brain physiology today and see how things have already been researched. And when you see the effects of these different brain areas, they are not at all such that you can see how the soul could make use of them, but they are such that they actually reflect the life of the soul: they are images of the life of the soul.

So that one can say: the brain is actually like an imagination of the soul's life that has been realized, that has become matter. It is an image, whereas the rhythmic organism has not brought it to the point of an image. The metabolic organism has brought it least of all to this, being something entirely unplastic, something unpictorial. We can understand the brain in the way it is constructed if we grasp it as an image of the soul life. And only then will brain physiology be on a healthy foundation, when we are able to understand the brain in this way, as materialized imaginations. On the other hand, one will not be allowed to understand the rhythmic organism, for example, as a materialized imagination, but here one has an inspiration that takes place externally in the process, in the process, where the spiritual and the material continually interact in rhythm. And in the metabolism, we have a continuous transition from matter to spirit, from spirit to matter, towards one pole and then the other.

It must be said that even today it is somewhat awkward to express these things. For naturally, if one is only within the field of biology and physiology, which have not yet become consistent with themselves, one sees such things as fantasies, or even worse. But when these things are known, one has the obligation to stand up for the known truths.

And from the human being, the other parts of our entire world being can then be reached. Let us go down from man to animal, for example. First of all, we need to really get to know the animal, not just talk about it from the outside, but really get to know it. If we want to truly recognize the human being in terms of his or her essence, we have to speak of a threefold being, but the three parts do not exist side by side. An unspiritual professor wanted to ridicule the threefold nature of the human being by saying: Steiner differentiates between the head, chest and stomach human. – As if these three members were juxtaposed like three boxes or cabinets standing on top of each other! That is not the case at all. The head is primarily a nervous-sensory organ, but the rhythmic and metabolic systems play into it; the chest is primarily a rhythmic organism, but the other parts of the body play into it; and so does the metabolism. The three members are interrelated, not separate. Those who characterize them as separate, whether as supporters or opponents, do not get it right.

Now, the situation changes immediately when we move from humans to animals. The animal is not a three-part organism. This is particularly evident when we look at it with imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Strictly speaking, the animal is a two-part organism. In the animal, the rhythmic organism continually plays a role in the nerve-sense organism, on the one hand. So that? at the head pole of the animal, there is not such a differentiated sense organism as in humans. There is less differentiation, less separation of the nerve-sense apparatus from the rhythmic apparatus. It is a nerve-sense organ that is constantly pulsed by the rhythmic life. And the metabolic organism is in turn pulsed by the rhythmic organism. The rhythmic organism is not as distinct from the other two systems as it is in humans. The human being has the thinking organism, the nerve-sense organism, then the rhythmic organism and the metabolic organism. The three organ systems are relatively distinct from each other. In animals, the nervous-sense organism and the metabolic organism are present, but they form direct polarities. The rhythmic organism is not so strictly separated, but is more absorbed in the other two systems, so that in animals one has a kind of twofold organism.

What is essential in the formation of the human being is not that his head tends to have a special formation, but that which tends to have a special formation in the human being is his rhythmic organism. This becomes independent. As a result, it expels, on the one hand, the head organism in a more differentiated way than in the animal, and, on the other hand, the metabolic organism. So that in turn, there is a more intensive metabolism in man than in the animal, where the rhythmic organism continually plays into the metabolism.

When we study the animal and human organizations in this way, we come to the conclusion that the human being is a different being as a metabolic organism than as a nervous-sensory organism. In the nervous-sensory organism, the soul is completely submerged. So what do we have in our consciousness? Our mental images, our thoughts. Yes, we feel a certain unreality towards thoughts. Thoughts are only images. The most perfect part of the human being is the head organism, but the soul-spiritual is most deeply submerged in the physical. We can be most materialistic in relation to the organization of thinking, the nerve sense organism. For what remains of the spirit in us are only images. In thoughts we have images of reality. He who understands how the spirit is completely diluted to the point of images – if I may say so – and thus lives as spirit in the waking person, will indeed see in the thought life of man a clear proof that there is spirit in man, but he will not address the thoughts themselves as spirit, but will address the thoughts as images that the spirit produces by mostly immersing itself in the nervous sensory apparatus and only reflecting back what remains as an image and arises in consciousness as a thought. One learns to see right through human nature and, accordingly, animal nature as well.

But then, when one has come to know the human being in this way, through imaginative, inspired, intuitive knowledge, when one has come to see the human being as a spiritual-soul being, when he is outside of his organism, when he is asleep ; if one can achieve self-knowledge through imagination, inspiration, intuition, that is, self-knowledge for the human being when he is outside of his physical body, then the difference between subjectivity and objectivity ceases to exist. Outside of the body, we then belong to the cosmos. If we can recognize ourselves by looking back at ourselves, then we can also observe in the cosmos. And then such observations arise that provide us with a real cosmology, a cosmosophy, as I have tried to give in my book “The Secret Science”. These are direct results of observations made by imagination, inspiration and intuition outside the physical human body. And the correlate to this is the complete knowledge of the human being.

It would now be interesting to extend this observation to the plant and mineral kingdoms. However, there is no time for that today. I would just like to point out a few other areas. I can only give examples. I would like to start from how we can follow the metamorphosis of the human organism in this way, how we can see how, on the one hand, the human being, in his material organization as a nerve-sense human being, is a result of the soul-spiritual life, and how, on the other hand, as a metabolic organism, he is not such a result. For the spiritual life continually burns matter, especially when it is most active as a spiritual life. We see how man metamorphoses, and in such a way that he materializes, spiritualizes, spiritualizes. When one is able, through supersensible knowledge, to follow this transformation of the organs through metamorphosis, then one learns to follow it not only with regard to their healthy state, but also with regard to their diseased state. In this regard, I would like to point you in just one direction.

In the moment when, through the empty consciousness mentioned yesterday, one gets to know the spiritual world around oneself, everything that was previously only the object of sensory observation becomes the object of spiritual observation. As the human being appears spiritualized when viewed in this way, so the whole world, the cosmos, is ensouled, spiritualized before the spiritual gaze of the human being. Then, for example, the sun, which we see through ordinary observation and also through ordinary science as this firmly defined, sharply contoured body, appears in what it presents to us physically, to the eye, as a physical organism. On the other hand, there is a spiritual solar element that is not confined to this part of space that we see with our physical organs, but that, as a solar element, fills the entire cosmos that is accessible to us. This solar element permeates all realms of nature, including the human being. It is something that works in the human being. And just as we otherwise study in physics, how the ethereal sunlight penetrates through the eye, how we study the effects of light through what is similar to the physical apparatus of the eye or to the eye itself, so we can now also study the spiritual part, the solar, the spiritual part of the solar activity. But we encounter this again in all the inner organs of the human being. And we become aware that a large part of the organs – actually all organs, but the different organs to a greater or lesser extent – have a life that springs, sprouts and pushes towards growth, a life that ascends towards a single pole. This begins with a lesser sprouting and sprouting power and increases with sprouting and sprouting power in the formation of growth, in promoting nutrition, also in digestion, consumption and so on.

On the other hand, there is a descending life in all organs, a degenerative one. Every evolution is opposed by a devolution or involution. The ascending life of the organs we have within us is worked on by the sun-like element spreading through the cosmos. The descending life can be observed particularly in the brain. Because brain matter is continually being molded through the activity of thinking, there must also be a continual breaking down, precisely from the brain. And the moon-like has to do with these degenerative forces. For the moon is not only that which it appears to us physically, but the physical is only the physical embodiment of that which, as a moon-like quality, permeates the entire cosmos accessible to us. This penetrates into us and into all realms of nature. But by being able to study, we say, in the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, in every single organ, the solar process and the lunar process, the ascending and the descending, the fruitful, growing and the degenerating, by this we understand the individual organ from the cosmos. There will be no complete, total physiology until we understand all the organs of the human being in their ascending and descending life from the spirit of the cosmos.

And in the same way as from the solar and lunar, we can also understand the inner organs of the human being from other impulses of the cosmos. That which is healthy belongs to the ascending life, that which is diseased to the descending life. Centripetal and centrifugal forces depend on other impulses in the cosmos than the solar and lunar ones. I just wanted to mention this as an example. These solar and lunar influences also creep into the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, into all realms of nature. This leads to the study that culminates in the following: I study a human organ in a particular metamorphosis. I find that it is not in a normal state. For example, the human respiratory organs are not in a normal state, but rather as in the case of hoarseness, of a cold. I study this state. In layman's terms, I would say that I study the state of a cold. What is present in the human being? It is actually that which should otherwise be limited to the human senses, which should only prevail as forces in them, so to speak, has slipped down into the respiratory organs. They metamorphose pathologically so that they become too much like sensory organs. The sensuality that should otherwise only be in the sensory organs slips down into the respiratory organs. They sporadically become sensory organs, which makes them ill. Why is this? It is because that which can otherwise have a particularly strong effect in the sensory organs, the moon-like or sun-like, predominates. This is then transferred from the cosmos to the air, to other climatic conditions, so that such pathological metamorphoses arise from the human being's environment.

And now I observe something in the outer world of nature. For example, I look at the lilac, a violet flower with special petals. When one studies this plant, gets to know it inwardly, one finds that in it are active those forces which have an effect in precisely the opposite sense to the solar and lunar, as that which has a morbid effect in the interior of man when he has a cold, in the case I have described. And one learns to recognize how the peculiar interaction of sulfur-like forces with etheric oils in the lilac plant is in a polar opposite relationship to that which develops pathologically in the organism.

If we learn to recognize the metamorphosis of the human organs through the spirit, and if we learn to recognize the particular effects of the forces of the environment through the spirit of the cosmos, then we arrive at a rational materia medica and a rational therapy. We can now state, just as in other sciences, where we really have an overview of things, not just trial and error, which remedy may be suitable for this or that disease. I can only sketch the process. But in this respect, anthroposophy can shine a light everywhere. It does not have to rely on mere trial and error of this or that remedy for this or that disease, but one can see the connection between the remedy and the disease from the spirit of the cosmos. This is a very simple case. But it can be applied to the whole of pathology and therapy. Today I can only hint at the axiomatic, but in this direction, in anthroposophy, we already have a fully developed pathology and therapy. There are also institutes where things can be empirically verified and where one can be convinced that those remedies that are drawn from knowledge of spirit and nature prove to be effective, if, on the other hand, one is only able to diagnose the diseases correctly. Anthroposophy does not find such things in a botched, dilettantish, lay manner. It recognizes what medicine has achieved, and only builds further. But it is possible to build further, and much can be gained for the benefit of sick and healthy humanity if we continue to build on medicine in this way. In this way, as in so many other areas that I cannot touch on today, anthroposophy leads directly into the most important areas of life.

Now, finally, just a few examples of how to arrive at anthroposophical research results. I regret that I cannot cite more, but I would like to give at least a few disparate examples so that you can see how our scientific spirit can actually become universal by being shaped anthroposophically.

History, for example, is usually viewed in such a way that one records external facts or takes what is available in the way of documents about external facts, and perhaps draws a few conclusions about the spirit of the age from these. After all, it comes down to this: “What you call the spirit of the times is the lords' own spirit, which is reflected in the times”. But one believes oneself to be quite objective in history when one puts together a course of history from external documents. But when one ascends to such a realization, as I characterized it yesterday and as I have shown today with individual examples of its application, then one also comes to really observe from the other, the spiritual side. After all, we have perceptions of the natural side. We do not need to search for them. We have to strengthen our thinking to such an extent that it can organize and master the perceptions, so that through observation and experimentation the perceptions reveal their laws. But on the side of the spirit! Yes, since the old, intuitive insights, which were not fully conscious, as are today's anthroposophical insights, since they have only become traditional and can no longer be handled by people, the spiritual has basically lost its entire content, however little one wants to admit it today. It is interesting, though, that within German intellectual life, where one always draws the final consequences in this direction, on the side of intellectualism, there is a philosopher, Fritz Mauthner, who has taken Kant even further than Kant by writing a “critique of language” in which he attempts to prove that we actually have no spiritual content, that in what we say about things we can only say words. Critique of language - not critique of reason! And that is not even so unfounded. Fritz Mauthner, however repulsive his “criticism of language” may be, is only more honest than the others for the person who sees something in the real world. The others just do not admit to themselves that they only have words when they speak of thinking, feeling and willing. For these words must first be given a content again through supersensible knowledge. They have no content in the psychologists either. Take a modern psychology and read an explanation of what a thought is. They talk about thoughts because they have the word “thought” from ancient times, but there is nothing more in it in terms of the spiritual. We must first come to an understanding of this. And we will only come to that when we develop the slumbering powers in the human soul as I have described it yesterday. Then one will be able to follow the laws of spiritual development of humanity in a similar way to the way one follows the physical laws in natural science.

For example, there is the biogenetic law, which Haeckel strongly emphasized. Certainly, this has undergone various corrections. I am familiar with the current state of research regarding the biogenetic law. But essentially one can say that in the morphological stages that the human embryo goes through from conception to birth, until it is a fully formed human being, the formation of the individual animal forms is repeated. When the human germ is three weeks old, it resembles a fish, then it becomes more and more similar to other animal forms. It is an approximate law. The ontogeny, the development of the individual being, is an abbreviated repetition of the phylogeny, the development of the whole tribe, it is said.

Now, even if this law has to be corrected to a certain extent, it still provides a suggestion for establishing a certain connection between external physical perception and organic beings. But on the other hand, the aspect of human development in its historical becoming can be similarly arrived at through such a lawful connection. Anyone who has reached a certain age will indeed come to this - but human life as a whole belongs to the human being. Therefore, what can be observed in oneself only in later old age is also peculiar to the human being; one can see something very remarkable through unbiased observation, which is then confirmed and made clear through supersensible knowledge, if one is capable of it. One notices that, as a person approaches old age, all kinds of abilities may be present. These abilities actually want to develop inwardly, but they cannot come out. In today's human being, there is such a strong calcifying tendency that certain formative powers of the inner being cannot come out. They only hint at themselves. That is why people who are truly suited to self-knowledge inwardly today feel that, as they age, certain abilities slip away from them, abilities that actually want to develop but are overgrown by the hardening organism and cannot come out. And if we pursue this further, we go back in the development of humanity to times when these abilities could still emerge, when the human organism was still different from what it is today. Today, superficial views of nature believe that the human organism is quite the same as it has always been, as it was, for example, in ancient Egypt and before. No one considers that even in historical and prehistoric times, the human organism in its inner, deeper structure, its histology, is constantly changing, becoming stiffer and more sclerotic. So that if we go back to older times and follow what people in later ages have produced in literature, poetry and art, we also find empirical confirmation of what I am saying now. If we go back in time, we find that people in fact went through a certain development into a much older age, where their physical and mental development went hand in hand. Today, this is actually only present in youth. With children, we see very clearly: mental abilities develop in parallel with physical abilities. When the child changes teeth, a strong psychological change takes place. This happens again at puberty. Those who still have a sense of observation for such things will also find, at the beginning of the 1920s, that psychological changes still occur in parallel with physical changes in people. But then it all becomes very blurred. Towards the end of the twenties, it stops altogether for today's human being. In a sense, the human being becomes stationary in terms of his intellect and his capacity for feeling. He develops a spiritual life, and he can even perfect it, but the body no longer supports him in it. He no longer undergoes the same development.

If we go back to the Greeks – and with the methods I have described, we can also observe the past of historical life spiritually and directly, just as we can observe our own psychological past before birth or conception – by observing Greek life back in our imagination, actually produced a Aeskulap, a Sophocles, a Phidias, then one comes to the conclusion: the whole soul-body life of man must have been different, there must have been a different way of feeling and living into the world. But this can be traced back to the fact that in Greece, until the mid-thirties, the physical body was as it is with us only in youth. A person today, at the end of the twenties, who stops receiving support for their spiritual life from their physical body, had something during the Greek era until the mid-thirties, in the whole ascending life, whereby the physical body supported them. And if we go back further, two or three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find people - anthroposophical research can recognize this through direct observation - who, well into their forties, are as dependent on their bodies as a child is on his or her parents until sexual maturity. We find that in prehistoric times, people experienced their bodies into old age.

But what does that mean? It means that we experience our body as it grows, up to the age of thirty-five. When it is in decline, in degeneration, it no longer participates with the soul. We perceive nothing through the power of the body. Precisely when the body decays, we no longer perceive through it. At that point we have already become independent of the body. Yes, anyone who studies the Vedas with their wonderful flow, with what lives in them, and who finds their way into their remarkable spirituality, which also lives in similar spiritual creations, will also find external confirmation of what anthroposophical research can say.

There were times, ancient times in the evolution of humanity, when man, in his body, not only had an entity in the ascending life that worked in parallel with his soul. In the ascending life we are half-stunned by the sprouting, sprouting life, so that we do not look into the spiritual world, while, as the body decays, we see all the more spiritually in the decaying body with the soul. There were times when man still experienced his disintegrating body, and by looking in the disintegrating body, he saw with the soul all the more spiritually. In that world period – one would like to describe it today as prehistoric, as if it had been primitive, but it was not – people still lived in their fifties and sixties in such a way that their spiritual life was dependent on the participation of physical development, and now of descending development. As a result, there was a certain mood in these old people. When one was young, when one was still a child or a youth or a maiden, one looked up to the old people and said to oneself: Oh, these old people, they experience through growing old something that one can only know as an old person. They grow into a spiritual world while their body decays. In the most ancient patriarchal times, people looked up to the elderly and said to themselves: They grow into a divine spiritual world simply by virtue of their physical development. Oh, they also approached old age quite differently, knowing: If I grow old, I will become a wise man. There were exceptions, of course, but there are exceptions among the young today as well. Imagine the mood that pervades a society when you look up to the patriarchs in this way because they can have something that you cannot have in your youth.

Thus we see epochs in historical humanity, where humanity becomes younger and younger, if I may express it that way. First, people went through the physical up to their old age. Then we see people who experienced physical exertion into their forties, then the Greeks, who experienced it into their thirties, and thus only just avoided the cliff, that great turning point, where they could see into the decaying body and thus express that wonderful harmony of body and soul in their works of art.

Now humanity has become even younger. This expression is not used quite correctly. What I mean is that they consciously experience physical conditions up to the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Humanity will become ever younger and younger in this respect.

So while we say, with regard to our physical development as an embryo, that we repeatedly carry within us the physical tribal development from the simplest to the most perfect living being — the embryo goes through this from beginning to end — the reverse development takes place for the life of the soul. We as humanity experienced life into old age in earlier times. Then it recedes. People become mobile, inwardly and spiritually alive through their bodies only in their youth. This is what one notices as one grows older and actually wants to shape out what once really shaped out when the physical organization was still different. And just as the human embryo in the third week is like an earlier state, so is the soul development of humanity in its present state as if earlier states had degenerated, been lost. It is a retrogression. While the development of the embryo, now in the physical sense, is an upward development, the spiritual development is a retrogression. This is connected with the whole development of mankind. Whereas man was formerly dependent on the body in the historical development, he is more and more dependent on emancipating the soul from the body. The bodily element works in him more and more only as a youthful bodily element. This means that he is instructed to do that which he used to develop in himself through the powers of the body, now through spiritual-soul development from within, so that what the body does not give us in old age, the soul must carry us into old age.

In this way, pedagogy must be transformed, all human development must be transformed. Yes, when we get to know such laws – and there are many such laws that act as impulses in the development of humanity and of history – then we also have the opportunity to learn something very profound for human life from the study of history, which is now spiritualized. The necessity for the present-day organization of pedagogy and didactics in relation to pedagogy and didactics in earlier epochs of human development arises simply from the fact that humanity draws less and less from the physical development of the body in old age and more and more from the physical development of youth. and more and more on the physical development of young people; that it must therefore replace what no longer comes naturally by working into the body through the development of the spirit. If we find the right pedagogy, the right methodology to bring the soul to life, then we educate and teach in such a way that, for example, we do not simply receive concepts at school that are ready-made, with ready-made contours. That would be like keeping one's hands and arms as small as when one was a child throughout one's entire life. If we want to teach a child ready-made definitions and concepts, it is as if we wanted to keep the limbs of a human being fixed so that they cannot grow. We have to teach children such concepts, mental images and feelings that live and grow, so that by the fortieth or sixtieth year they are no longer the same as they were in their early years, through their own inner growth. This possibility exists. This is the aim of the pedagogy of the Waldorf school. It is not just about the child, but about the whole human being; it asks how the child must be educated so that it can benefit from the education throughout its life; so that the child does not have to say to itself when it is thirty years old: Now you have learned, but your concepts have remained childish dwarfs; they do not grow. One must convey such vivid mental images, concepts and impulses to the child that they are in a state of growth and will only be properly developed at a later age. In this way, one can learn intensively for life, directly from real, spiritualized historical observation. And when it is said today that people do not learn from history, it is because there is not much to learn from it, since it does not say much except for the compilation of data given for earlier epochs, which, however, are composed only of external appearances. Anthroposophically oriented observation also leads into the interior here, in that it provides perceptions in which the spiritual entities are not merely words, but also have spiritual substance.

So I could only show you in sketchy examples how the research results of anthroposophy look. They are such that we first get to know the human being, that we get to know the universe from the human being, that we also arrive at a corresponding practice of life through the correct application of the higher insights to the human being, a practice of life that extends into social life, as I tried to show with the example of education. So we may think in a similar way with regard to this reflection, as I have already said at the end of another reflection: Anthroposophy does not want to be a theory, does not want to be a one-sided teaching, but wants to be something that is drawn from life and can therefore, because it is drawn from the full life, from the bodily, soul and spiritual life, in turn serve the full life of man. For only then will a worldview truly serve life, when it is life itself. For this must be kept in mind: not abstract thoughts, which are inwardly dead in themselves – tomorrow I will have more to say about the deadness of thoughts – not thoughts that are dead, but only thoughts that are pulsating with life can also serve life. Only a worldview that does not live in dead thoughts, but is itself life, can serve life, because only life itself can be the true servant of life.

We ventured on rather unusual ground in our last lecture when we turned our attention to certain beings who definitely exist amongst us. They are spiritual beings who in a certain way fall out of the regular course of evolution, and it is just this fact that gives them their significance. We were considering the elemental beings whose existence is naturally viewed by the enlightened mind of today as the utmost superstition, but who will play a significant rôle in a not very far distant time of our spiritual evolution, precisely through the position they occupy in the cosmos. We have seen how such elemental beings come into existence as a sort of irregularly severed parts of group souls. We need only remember what was said at the end of the lecture and we shall have placed the nature of such elemental creatures before our spiritual eyes. We were considering one of the last formed species of these elementary beings. We pointed to the fact that each animal form—or to put it differently—a totality of similarly formed animals is represented by a group soul. We have said that these group souls play the same rôle in the astral world as our human soul—in so far as it is I-endowed—in the physical world. The human ego is really a group ego which has descended from the astral plane to the physical plane, and thus becomes an individual ego. The animal egos are still normally on the astral plane, and what is here on the physical plane as the separate animal possesses only physical body, etheric body, and astral body. The ego is in the astral world, similarly formed animals being members of their group ego. We can realize from this fact how birth and death in human life have not the same significance in the life of the animal. For when an individual animal dies, the group soul or group ego remains alive. It is just the same as if—assuming that it were possible—a man lost a hand and was capable of replacing it. His ego would not say: ‘I have died through the loss of my hand’; it would feel that it had renewed a limb. So the group ego of the lions renews a limb when a lion dies and is replaced by another. Thus we can understand that birth and death have not at all the significance for the animal group souls as they have for the human being of the present cycle of evolution. The group soul of the animals knows changes, metamorphoses; knows, so to speak, the severing of the members which then extend into the physical world, the loss of these members and their renewal.

We have said, however, that there are certain animal forms which go too far in the process of severing, which are no longer in a position to send back to the astral plane what they bring down to the physical plane. When an animal dies what falls away must be entirely exhausted in the surrounding world, while the soul and spirit nature of the animal must stream back into the group soul, to be ex-tended afresh and grow to a new individual entity. There are in fact certain animal forms which cannot send everything back into the group soul; and these parts which re-main over, which are cut loose, torn loose from the group soul, then lead an isolated life as elemental beings. Our evolution has gone through the most varied stages and at each stage such elemental beings have been separated off, so you can well imagine that we have a fairly large number of such elementals around us in what we call the super-sensible world.

When, for instance, the enlightened person says that people talk of elemental beings and call them Sylphs, Lemures, but that such things do not exist—then you must reply that he does not see these things because he has not troubled to develop the organs of cognition which would enable him to recognize them. But just ask the bees, or rather, the soul of the beehive. They could not close themselves to the existence of Sylphs or Lemures! For the elemental beings which are denoted by these names are to be found at quite definite places, namely, where there is a certain contact of the animal kingdom with the plant kingdom. This has not a general application, however; they are to be found only at spots where the contact takes place under certain circumstances. When the ox eats grass there is a contact between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom, but that is a common-place, normal proceeding; it lies in the regular course of evolution. The contact that occurs between the bee and the blossom stands on quite a different page of cosmic evolution. Bees and blossoms are much farther apart in organization and they come together again in a special way—moreover a quite remarkable force is unfolded in their contact. The peculiar auric sheath which always arises when a bee or similar insect sucks at a flower belongs to the “interesting” observations of the spiritual-super-sensible worlds—if one may use the expression, but we have so few appropriate expressions for these subtle things. The peculiar, unique experience which the little bee has when it sucks at the flower is present not only in the masticators or in the bee's body, but the exchange of taste between bee and blossom spreads out a sort of tiny etheric aura. Every time that the bee sucks there is this aura, and always when something like this arises in the super-sensible world the beings which need it arrive at the spot. They are attracted by it, for there they find their food—to express it crudely again.

I said on another occasion that we should not be concerned with the question: Whence come all the beings of which we have spoken? Wherever the opportunity is given for definite beings, then they are always there. If a person sends out wrong, evil feelings, these live around him and attract beings which are there waiting, just as some physical being waits for food. I once compared this with the fact that there are no flies in a clean room; if there are all sorts of food-remains in the room, then there are flies. So it is with the super-sensible beings: one need only provide them with the means of nourishment. The bee which sucks at the blossom spreads a little etheric aura and then such beings approach, especially when a whole swarm of bees settles on a tree and then moves away with the sensation of taste in the body. Then the whole swarm is ensheathed in this etheric aura and also entirely interpenetrated by the spiritual beings which one calls Sylphs or Lemures. In border-regions where different kingdoms come in touch with one another these beings are present and they really play a role. In fact they are not only to be found where this fine etheric aura arises, they not only approach to satisfy themselves, but they are hungry and they bring the hunger to expression by guiding the particular creatures to the particular places. In a certain way they are little guides.

So we see that beings who, we may say, have severed their connection with other worlds to which they were formerly united, have taken in exchange a strange role. They are beings which can well be used in other worlds. At any rate, when they are so used a kind of organization is established, they come under higher beings.

It was said at the beginning of today's lecture that at a by no means very distant time it will be fully necessary for humanity to know of these things. In a not very distant future, science will take an extraordinary course. Science will become increasingly materialistic, will confine itself simply to a description of external facts of the physical senses. Science will confine itself to the crudely material, although a strange transitional state still prevails today. A time of sheer undiluted materialism in science lies not very far behind us. This crude materialism is at the most still seen as a possibility by people of a purely amateur outlook, though few thinkers trouble to set something else in its place. We see a whole number of abstract theories appear in which a timid reference is made to the super-sensible, the superbodily. The course of events, however, and the power of external physical facts will utterly overthrow these strange, fantastic theories which are set up by those who are dissatisfied today with physical science. And one day the learned will find themselves in a peculiar situation as regards these theories. All that they have spun out about All-Being and All-Ensouledness of this or that world, all their speculations will be overthrown and men will have nothing more in the hand than sheer sense-perceptible facts in the fields of geology, biology, astronomy, and so forth. The theories set up today will be very short-lived, and to the one who is able to look into the special course of science, an absolute desolation of the purely physical horizon is presented.

Then, however, the time will also have come when a fairly great number of representatives of humanity will be ripe to acknowledge the super-sensible worlds of which the spiritual-science world-conception speaks today. Such a phenomenon as that of the bee-life in connection with what can be known of the super-sensible worlds offers a wonderful answer to the great riddle of existence. These things are of great importance from yet another side. It will become increasingly indispensable to grasp the nature of the group souls, and such knowledge will play a great role even in the purely external evolution of humanity. If we go back thousands and thousands of years we find man himself as a being still belonging to a group soul. Human evolution on our Earth is from the group soul nature to the individual soul. Man advances through the gradual descent of his ego-endowed soul into physical conditions, there having the opportunity of becoming individual. We can observe different stages in the evolution of mankind and see how the group soul gradually becomes individual.

Let us go back to the time of the first third of the Atlantean culture epoch. There the life of man was quite different; in the bodies in which we were incorporated at that time our souls had quite different experiences. There is one experience which plays a role in man's life today—whether as individual or member of social group—that has undergone a great change since that time, namely, the alternation of waking and sleeping.

In ancient Atlantean times you would not have experienced the same alternation of waking and sleeping as exists today. What is then the characteristic difference in comparison with present humanity?

When the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, the astral body with the ego lifts itself out and what one calls the modern consciousness sinks into an indefinite darkness. In the morning when the astral body and the ego draw again into the other members they make use of the physical organs and consciousness lights up. This condition of daily waking in consciousness, nightly sleeping in unconsciousness, did not exist formerly. When it was daytime and man dipped down into his physical body, as far as was the case then, he by no means saw physical beings and objects in definite boundaries as he does today. He saw everything with vague outlines just as you do when you go along the streets on a foggy evening and see the lamps surrounded with a misty aura. That was the way the human being of that time saw everything.

If that was the day condition, what was the night condition? When the human being passed out of the physical and etheric bodies during the night, no absolute unconsciousness came over him, it was only a different kind of consciousness. At that time man was still aware of the spiritual processes and spiritual beings around him, not clearly and exactly as in true clairvoyance, but with a last relic of ancient clairvoyant sight. Man lived by day in a world of hazy, nebulous outlines, in the night he lived among spiritual beings who were around him as we have the various objects around us today. There was thus no sharp division between day and night, and what is contained in saga and myths is not some folk-fantasy but memories of the experiences which early man had in the super-sensible world in his then state of consciousness. Wotan or Zeus or other super-sensible spiritual divinities who were known to various peoples are not fabrications of fantasy as is asserted at the council-board of erudition. Such assertions can only be made by someone who knows nothing of the nature of folk-fantasy. It does not in the least occur to early peoples to personify in that way. Those were experiences in ancient times. Wotan and Thor were beings with whom man went about as today he goes about with his fellow-men, and myths and sagas are memories of the ages of ancient clairvoyance.

We must be clear, however, that something else was united with this living into the spiritual super-sensible worlds. In these worlds man felt himself not as an individual being but as a sort of limb of spiritual beings. He belonged to higher spiritual beings as our hands belong to us. The faint feeling of individuality which man possessed at that time he acquired when he dipped down into his physical body and emancipated himself from the “dance” of the divine spiritual beings. That was the beginning of his feeling of individuality. At that time man was absolutely clear about his group soul, he felt himself immersed in the group soul when he left his physical body and entered the super-sensible consciousness. That was an ancient time when the human being had a vivid consciousness of belonging to a group soul, a group ego.

Let us look at a second stage of human evolution—we will omit intermediate stages—, the stage referred to in the history of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. What really underlies this we have already related. We have given the reason why the Patriarchs Adam, Noah, and so on, had such a long life time. It was because the memory of early mankind was quite different from that of contemporary man. The memory of modern man has in fact become individual, too. He remembers what he has experienced since birth—many actually from a much later point of time. This was not the case in ancient times. At that time what the father had experienced between birth and death, what had been experienced by the grandfather, the great-grandfather, were as much an object of memory as a man's own experiences. Strange as it seems to the modern man there was a time when memory went beyond the individual and back through the whole blood relationship. The external sign for the existence of such a memory is precisely such names as Noah, Adam, and so on. These names do not denote single individuals between birth and death. Today a name is given to the one individual whose memory is enclosed between birth and death. Formerly the giving of a name went as far as the memory reached back into the generations, as far as the blood flowed through the generations.

“Adam” is merely a name that lasted as long as the memory lasted. One who does not know that the giving of names in former times was quite different from what it is today will not be able to understand the nature of these things at all. A fundamental consciousness mediating quite differently existed in ancient times. Imagine that the ancestor had had two children, each of these two again, the next generation again two, and so forth. In all of them the memory reached up to the ancestor and they felt themselves one in the memory which meets up above, so to speak, in a common point. The people of the Old Testament expressed this by saying—and this applies to each single adherent of the Old Testament—“I and Father Abraham are one.” Each individual felt himself hidden in the consciousness of the group-soul, in the “Father Abraham.”

The consciousness with which the Christ has endowed mankind surpasses that. The ego through its consciousness is connected directly with the spiritual world, and this comes to expression in: “Before Abraham was, was the I—or the I am.” Here the impulse to stimulate the “I am” comes fully into the separate individual.

So we see a second stage of the evolution of mankind: the group-soul age which finds its external expression in the blood relationship of the generations. A people which has particularly developed this lays very special value on continually emphasizing: As folk we have a folk-groupsoul in common.—That was particularly the case for the people of the Old Testament, and the conservatives among them strongly opposed therefore the emphasis of the “I am” of the individual ego. Whoever reads St. John's Gospel can grasp with spiritual hands, so to speak, that that is true. One need only read the story of the conversation of Jesus with the woman of Samaria at the well. Here it is expressly pointed out that Christ Jesus goes to those also who are not related by blood. Read how remarkably it is indicated: “For the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.” One who can experience this gradually, meditatively, will see how humanity has advanced from the group soul to the individual soul.

History has become an entirely external matter, very much a “fable convenue,” for it is written from documents. Suppose that something had to be written today from documents and the most important documents are lost! Then whatever documents are accidentally available are thrown together and reports are made. For matters of spiritual reality one needs no documents; they are inscribed in the Akashic Record which is a faithful record and effaces nothing. It is difficult, however, to read in the Akashic Record because the external documents are even a hindrance to the reader of spiritual “scripts.” But we can see how the advance from group soul to individual soul has taken place in times lying very near to our own.

One who observes history from a spiritual aspect will have to recognize a most important period of time in the early Middle Ages. Previously man was still enclosed in various groups if only externally. To a much greater extent than is dreamt of by modern man, people at the beginning of the Middle Ages still received their significance and value even as regards their work, from relationship and other connections. It was a natural consequence for the son to do what the father did. Then came the time of the great inventions and discoveries. The world began to demand more from the purely personal proficiency, and man was increasingly torn out of the old connections. We can see the expression of this throughout the Middle Ages when cities of the same type were founded over the whole of Europe. We can still distinguish today the cities built on this type from those built on other foundations.

In the middle of the Middle Ages there was again an advance from the group soul to the individual soul. If we look into the future we must say: More and more man emancipates himself from the old group soul element and individualizes himself. If you could look back to earlier phases of man's evolution you would see how those cultures were cast in the same mold—as, for instance, Egypt and Rome. This is only in a very slight degree true of today. Humanity has now descended to the point where not only manners and customs are individual but even opinions and faiths as well. There are people among us already who look on it as a lofty ideal for everyone to have his own religion. The idea floats before quite a number that a time must come when there are as many religions and truths as persons.

This will not be the course of human evolution. It would take this course if men were to continue to follow the impulse coming today from materialism. That would lead to disharmony, to the splitting of humanity into separate individuals. Mankind, however, will only not take this course if such a spiritual movement as Spiritual Science is accepted. What will enter then? The great truth, the great law, will be realized that the most individual truths, those that are found in the most inward way, are at the same time those that hold good for all.

I have already commented on the fact that today there is really general agreement upon the truths of mathematics alone, for these are the most trivial of all. No one can say that he finds mathematical truths through external experience; we find them through inwardly realizing them. If one wants to show that the three angles of a triangle make 180°, then one draws a line through the apex which is parallel to the base and lays the three angles together fan-wise; then angle a = d, b = e, c = itself, and so the three angles are equal to a straight line, that is, 180°. Anyone who has once grasped this knows that it must be so, once and for all, just as one knows that 3 x 3 = 9 after it has once been grasped. I do not think one would expect to discover that by induction.

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These most trivial of all truths, the arithmetical, geometrical, are found inwardly, and yet people do not dispute about them. They are in absolute agreement about them because man is far enough advanced to grasp them. Agreement of opinion prevails only as long as pure truth is not clouded by passions, sympathy and antipathy. A time will come, though it is still far distant, when mankind will be laid hold of increasingly by the knowledge of the inner world of truth. Then in spite of all individualism, in spite of truth being found by everyone for himself inwardly, harmony will prevail. If mathematical truths were not so simple and obvious then the passions aroused in acknowledging them would lead to many difficulties. For if covetousness entered in then perhaps many housewives would determine that 2 x 2 = 5 and not 4. These things are only so obvious and simple that they can no longer be clouded by sympathy and antipathy. Continually wider regions will be grasped by this form of truth and more peace can come to mankind if truth is grasped in this manner. The human being has grown out of the group soul condition and emancipates himself from it increasingly. If we look at groups instead of the souls, we have family connections, connections of tribe and nation, and finally connected races. The race corresponds to a group soul. All these group connections of early humanity are what man outgrows and the more we advance the more the race conception loses its meaning.

We stand today at a transitional point; race will gradually disappear entirely and something else will take its place. Those who will again grasp spiritual truth as it has been described will be led together of their own free will. Those will be the connections of a later age. The human beings of earlier times were born into connections, born into the tribe, the race. Later we shall live in the connections and associations which men create for themselves, uniting in groups with those of similar ideas while retaining their complete freedom and individuality. To realize this is necessary for a right understanding of something like the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society is intended to be a first example of such a voluntary association, although we may be well aware that it has not yet reached very far. The attempt had to be made to create a group in which men find themselves together without the differentiation of the ancient group soul's nature and there will be many such associations in the future. Then we shall no longer have to speak of racial connections but of intellectual-ethical-moral aspects with regard to the associations that are formed. The individuals voluntarily allow their feelings to stream together and this again causes the forming of something which goes beyond the merely emancipated man. An emancipated human being possesses his individual soul which is never lost when it has once been attained. But when men find themselves together in voluntary associations they group themselves round centres. The feelings streaming in this way to a centre once more give beings the opportunity of working as a kind of group soul, though in quite a different sense from the early group souls. All the earlier group souls were beings who made man unfree. These new beings, however, are compatible with man's complete freedom and individuality. Indeed, in a certain respect we may say that they support their existence on human harmony; it will lie in the souls of men themselves whether or not they give as many as possible of such higher souls the opportunity of descending to man. The more that men are divided, the fewer lofty souls will descend into the human sphere. The more that associations are formed where feelings of fellowship are developed with complete freedom, the more lofty beings will descend and the more rapidly the earthly planet will be spiritualized.

So we see that if man is to acquire any idea of future evolution, he must have a thorough understanding of the character of the group soul element. For otherwise, if his individual soul keeps itself aloof too long on the earth, and does not find the link of companionship, it could come about that it lets the chance of union go by. It would then itself become a sort of elemental being, and the elemental beings originating from man would be of quite an evil nature. Whereas those which have arisen from the earlier kingdoms are very useful for our orderly course of nature, the human elemental beings will by no means possess this quality.

We have seen that such severed beings arise in certain border regions, and they arise also on the boundary made by the transition from the group soul nature to the independent group associations where the connections are of an aesthetic, moral, intellectual character. Wherever such connections arise, group beings are there.

If you could observe certain spots, as, for instance, springs where underneath there is stone overgrown with moss, thus forming a kind of partition between plant and stone, and then water trickles over it—that too is essential—then you would see that what are called Nymphs and Undines are very real, an actuality. Again, where metals come in contact with the rest of the earthy realm there lie whole bundles of the beings we call Gnomes. A fourth species are the Salamanders which form, so to say, the youngest generation in the ranks of elemental beings. They nevertheless exist in large numbers. To a great extent they owe their existence to a process of separating off from animal group souls. These beings too seek opportunities for finding nourishment, and they find it in particular where not quite normal relations sometimes exist between the human and the animal kingdoms. Those who know something about these things are aware that elemental beings—and definitely good beings—develop through the intimate relationship of the rider and his steed. Through the warm connection of certain men with animal groups, feelings, thoughts and impulses arise which provide good nourishment for these elemental beings of a Salamander nature. That can be particularly observed in the united life of the shepherd and his flock, in the case of herdsmen in general who live in close connection with their animals. Certain Salamander-like elemental beings can find their nourishment in the feelings which develop through this intimacy between man and beast, and they remain where this food is to be found. They are quite shrewd too, full of a natural wisdom. Faculties develop in the shepherd through which these elemental beings can whisper to him what they know, and many of the recipes or prescriptions coming from such sources have originated in this way. A man among such conditions may well be surrounded as if by fine spiritual beings who furnish him with a knowledge of which our modern intellectuals have not the slightest idea. All these things are founded on good grounds and can definitely be observed through the methods which occult wisdom can perfect.

I should like to conclude by pointing to yet another phenomenon which can show you how certain things which are explained quite abstractly today have often sprung from a deep wisdom. I have already spoken of Atlantean times and how when men left their bodies in the night, they lived among the spiritual beings whom they called the Gods. These men were descending deeper into a physical corporeality; but the beings whom they revered as the Gods, that is, Zeus, Wotan, are on another path of evolution. They do not descend as far as the physical body, they do not touch the physical world. But even there we find certain transitional states. Man has come into existence through his whole soul and spirit being having hardened to his physical body. In the case of man the group souls in their entirety have come down to the physical plane, and man's physical body became an imprint of the group soul. Let us suppose a being like Zeus—who is a positive reality—has just slightly contacted the physical plane, just projected into it a very little. That is rather as if you dip a ball into water and it is wet underneath. In the same way certain beings in Atlantean times have only been grazed by the physical world. Physical eyes do not see what remains in the spiritual world as astral-etheric. Only the part which projects into the physical world is visible. From such projections arose symbolism in mythology. If Zeus has the eagle as symbol that is because his eagle-nature is the little projection where a being of the higher worlds touched the physical world. A great part of the bird world is severed portions of such evolving beings of the super-sensible world. As with the ravens of Wotan and the eagle of Zeus so is it everywhere where symbolism goes back to occult facts. Much will become clearer to you if you take into account like this the nature and activity and evolution of the group souls in the most varied fields.

I have told you how at the present epoch in the history of human evolution men are confronted with great tests, though for the most part what these tests bring goes on in sub­conscious experience.

Men, as I said, can know, and must know what it means "to pass over the Threshold of the invisible world," when they go: through some kind of initiation and enter it consciously; but something like it—naturally not to-day or tomorrow but in course of a longer period of time—happens with humanity itself, in that it has to experience separation of the hitherto-interwoven forces of thinking, feeling and willing, when they fall apart, just as they become independent in the individual who passes the Threshold of the supersensible world. All this is bound up with significant changes in the depths of human nature, and it is one of the tasks of our age to make these changes part of our consciousness. The great obstacle to be overcome is the desire for comfort in man to-day, the unwillingness to know what is going on in humanity, the continued living in illusions and, in fact, dreaming about life.

We shall get the best understanding of my subject to-day by calling to mind some of the facts of supersensible life which have long been known to us. Let us recollect how the human ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies as we fall asleep and return to them as we awake. That is a general description, a sort of sketch of the process. We can say in a general way that on waking man returns to his physical and etheric bodies, but then this return takes place in varying degrees. For instance, it can never be said of a little child that the ego and the astral body plunge fully into the physical and etheric bodies and become completely one with them as to activity. There is always something in his astral and ego which does not so unite. Yes, and if we look back into earlier times of human development, to the important dividing line which occurs in the middle of the fifteenth century, we must admit that, until that definite point, in human life as a whole there existed no complete immersion of the ego and astral body during the conscious waking hours.

The really important feature of our post­Atlantean age is that soul and spirit—the ego and astral body—have only recently been able to plunge entirely into the physical and etheric, and even so, not until after the 27th or 28th year. Conditions will change again with time. This is a significant mystery, in the evolution of mankind. What is the meaning of this complete immersion in the physical body? It signifies that by means of it we are able to develop thoughts and unfold ideas of the scientific, materialistic type prevalent since the days of Galileo and Copernicus. For these ideas and this scientific view of the world the physical body is the right instrument. The identification had not been achieved in earlier centuries, therefore there was no scientific thinking which is wholly bound up with the physical body. With this fact is connected everything else I have mentioned about the activity men must unfold in their spiritual-scientific attitude in order to regain the interest of the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies standing nearest to mankind. We owe it to them that we have the power to plunge completely into the physical body and therewith learn of the dead mineral external world through natural science.

It is man's duty to-day to become aware of these things. At our present stage of culture, without such a consciousness men live in a kind of sleep. That is why events happening around them do not penetrate into their drowsy minds. We simply must let these concrete facts work upon our souls in order to acquire a consciousness of what forces are dominant and active in our particular phase of evolution. In the extended span of time which we may call "the present," much must be made new—above all, the aims of education. I have already spoken of this from our own point of view. We must educate people from childhood onwards so that they can rightly enter. into an age marked by this complete plunging into the physical body, educate them to be able to take the complete plunge. Wherein will consist the success of our efforts towards a renewal of educational methods? In giving man, who is entering a new stage of development, preparation for the experience it brings. Anyone observing life to-day will know that at the present time there are a remarkable number of "broken” natures to be met with, natures unfitted to cope with life. Why are they not equal to it? Because, they cannot look back, as I have described, to the experiences of their education. Certain forces can only be developed in childhood. Once developed they remain throughout life; we have them, and can cope with it. If we have them not, we lack that power. It is in this sense that we must understand the feeling of responsibility we ought to foster with regard to education.

Further, we must fully realize that the Christ-Impulse entered into humanity in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in, the eighth century B.C. and lasted until the fifteenth century A.D. When about a third of this period had elapsed, there entered into human evolution what gives meaning to the whole Earth-development—the Christ-Impulse, the Mystery of Golgotha. Man was then in process of developing the Rational or Mind soul, Gemüt-Seele, in which human thought and experience were more instinctive than they are to-day: this development was superseded in the fifteenth century by that of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul, the period in which we live. The way in which the Event of Golgotha appeared as an impulse in world-history and human- evolution was suited, in the first instance, to the instinctive conditions of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and was thus understood by the men of that time. It was natural for this instinctive understanding to believe that in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ Being lived, He Who had descended from cosmic heights in order to unite Himself with that body for earthly activity. Through feeling, everyone could realize that a great, important and super­sensible occurrence had, in the Event of Golgotha, entered human life. With the passage of time the capacities of the Rational Soul became less and less. The understanding of the Event of Golgotha which existed in the first Christian centuries could not last: it was bound to vanish with the altered soul­ constitution of civilized man. In consequence, with the uprising of the Consciousness Soul, the Event of Golgotha itself came to be regarded more materially. We see that the evolution of civilized mankind in the course of the last four or five hundred years so proceeded that the understanding of what really happened on Golgotha—the indwelling of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth—became fainter and fainter. This great Mystery, perceived instinctively through the first centuries, was less and less understood, more and more materialistically regarded, until in our times it has become possible to take as a sign of progress that men no longer desire to know anything of the supersensible, cosmic Christ, but talk of Jesus of Nazareth simply as a man, an extraordinary man perhaps, but constituted exactly like other men.

Here, too, we stand at a turning-point. A new understanding of Christ must arise. It can only come if sought by the means provided by Spiritual Science, so sought that super­sensible means may discover what can only be accomplished within the supersensible and reveal itself in the sensible. The new understanding of Christ must arise from such depths in human nature that, confronted with these depths, differences of creeds, hitherto dominant amongst civilized mankind, will be as wreaths of vapour. These differences lie in a part of the soul more on the surface than that which to-day, out of the depths of Spiritual Science, must lead to a new understanding of Christ Jesus. Nor will understanding be complete, really satisfying the needs of man's soul to-day, unless it can bridge the differences among men imposed on humanity by the various creeds. Some­thing there is as a hope from this new Christ-Impulse, something we must all long for if we are serious and worthy in our wishes for humanity, something which is actually being sought in other spheres though very unintelligently.

Nowadays men talk of the so-called “League of Nations " and hope for something from it. It is remarkable how they long to understand reality by means of abstractions. Whence is to come the impulse, working through the peoples, which can evoke a unity such as this "League of Nations" is supposed to represent? Look at everything which has been produced in the way of spiritual impulses towards its establishment—nothing but a few abstractions. Yet men sleep through such things—how soundly, we may see from a fact like the following:

Woodrow Wilson, discoverer or at least rediscoverer of the League, announced at a time when America was not taking part in world-events as she does now, that the League could only be properly established if as a result of the catastrophe of the war there were no "victors" and no "vanquished."  That was an essential condition. Taken as earnest, that makes it impossible to take seriously what is said about the League now; the two cannot be reconciled, but that is not noticed. Here is a thing which militates against' a healthy development of mankind;  men are willing to accept the most impossible contradictions if only an interval of time separates them. It is as though present-day man in no way partakes with his soul in what is really happening.

The League is a nonentity, for what has to be established in humanity must well up from the depths of man's being to the surface. New comprehension of the Christ-Impulse alone can develop what is needed to-day in the whole civilized world, from human impulses suited to the times, on a basis which will not rest on the differences between peoples. The civilized nations, torn asunder by hatred and misunderstanding, can only be united by the Christ-Impulse, as presented by Spiritual Science. This f act must sink deeply, deeply as a conviction into the soul. All else, which does not lead in this direction, is only hindering the evolution of mankind. The needs of human evolution must be dealt with from its depths, not by any trivial speech. The Earth acquired its own meaning in relation to that evolution through the Event of Golgotha, and now the time has come when this meaning must be grasped in a different way. Until men realize the duty of this understanding there will be no remedy for the wounds of our times. What is designed can no longer be brought to fruition by nations side by side, but by nations as one. It is impossible: to establish a League of Nations by outside political arrangement. These things must come from within, arising from the deepest impulse, the Christ-Impulse in man.

Anthroposophical  Spiritual Science has the duty of pointing out what each man, merely as a personal individual being, can awaken in himself—but which simply must be awakened. Directly we touch on these things, the seriousness of our times strikes us with full force. It is tragic to see how little it is felt, how men avoid approaching the great knowledge or recognition that must be definitely incorporated in human conscious­ness. The epoch through which we have passed has led us away from that inner urge which could bring us to the knowledge necessary to-day. Suppose you asked a natural scientist of the day, what the evolution of the Earth would be if man had taken no part in it. Thinking logically on the basis of his hypotheses and opinions, he could but reply that even if man were absent, the Earth would develop without him, bring forth its minerals, plants and animals: things would go on more or less as they do now, except that man would not be there, and no cities or houses would be built. Therefore, from the standpoint of natural science, we should have to say that the Earth would have developed without man, just as it has done with him.

Yet this is a complete error. If you put together the various things to be found in our twenty years of lecturing, you will feel what I am saying as a self-evident fact, but attention must be drawn to it. The physical body of man is permeated during his existence be­tween birth and death by the soul; and in this present epoch it is so interwoven in a particular way: the ego and astral body plunge completely into the physical. Again, when either by cremation or burial, we give over the corpse of the physical body to the earth, it means to present-day science no more than that the body has consisted of various substances which at death are added to the earth and go their way according to the various principles established by organic and, more especially, by inorganic, chemistry. But that is all pure nonsense. It is emphatically not without significance, that from birth to death this human body is inhabited by a human soul-spirit being. We give the corpse over to the earth in a form and condition which it has only acquired from this fact—the indwelling from birth to death of a being, man's soul and spirit, which before birth (or conception) lived in the spiritual world. The Earth in its evolution would long ago have fallen into decay and desolation if it had not received as a ferment—whether through burial or fire-the human bodies which have been the dwellings of souls, though now deserted by them. In olden days when bread was baked (nowadays the thing is more artificial) a little of the dough was kept back, to be added as yeast at the next baking that was a necessary part of the process. In the same way the Earth would not be able to develop unless it received human bodies (not the animal body !) as a sort of ferment. By their means the Earth, which would otherwise long ago have turned to dust, is enabled to bring to completion what lies within its evolution. Man does have a share, and especially just now, in the whole evolution of the Earth, and even what we relinquish to the Earth at our death is important for it.

The other thing which happens to man, especially at this epoch of his evolution, is that when he passes a certain age of maturity, 27 to 28, he is in his waking life, as regards his physical body, in a relationship which works in a particular way on the spiritual, super-earthly world. This is a remarkable polarity in man's evolution. If he passes through the gate of death and leaves his body behind him, he releases something from the body which serves the Earth as a ferment in its develop­ment, whereas if he lives through the period from 28 to 35 on Earth, he gives the spiritual world something which it needs. (Things are somewhat modified in the case of people who die before 28—to consider this to-day would take us too far.) What we give to the spiritual world is the most important thing that we come upon-again when in the spiritual world we live our life backwards. We really do give something to the super-earthly world, just as we relinquish our body to the earthly world at death.

This is one of the secrets bound up with evolution, and nowadays it is essential that men should absorb them into their conscious­ness. These are certainly not sensational bits of knowledge—much more than that. To take them seriously and experience them in, the soul with full import brings an unusual earnestness of outlook on life, a deepened seriousness which is necessary to-day. The external understanding of what is included in our idea of the Threefold Commonwealth can and must be given to the outer, exoteric world, but the real, fundamental understanding which will lead to conscious co-operation in social evolution must begin with the seriousness based on the view of life gained through anthroposophical spiritual science. Otherwise we do not understand things deeply enough. All that is connected , with the Threefold Commonwealth must be proclaimed in the external world. In our movement we should awaken the needful enthusiasm and fire, so that the necessary understanding may be given to others through the personal conviction of those who can attain the right; comprehension from the standpoint of spiritual science. The ordinary superficial knowledge possessed by people in the external world, of the kind which leads, for instance, to the belief that the Earth could evolve even if man were not concerned in it, cannot produce the necessary understanding for our time. So it is that as we pass through our cities our heart bleeds when we realize the complete lack of contact with what is really going on in the evolution of humanity.

The immediate culmination, led up to by all these facts, was what we called the World War, that whirlpool into which were poured all the results of the superficial views which had begun to gather force. To-day it is man's duty to reach the triple deepening of which I spoke in the last lecture, concerning the beings of the three Hierarchies next above us. We must learn to see that we live and move among such a complex of facts. Humanity, and we as part of it, must go through the epoch in which, the ego and astral body plunge their deepest into the physical and etheric bodies and are exposed to the strongest temptations, which have their origin in the fact that as human beings we are so closely united with the physical. There are two forms in which this temptation can arise; one I would call the "Western," the other the "Eastern." We carry the Western form with peculiar strength in our own nature, but we see it more and more definitely the further West we turn our gaze. It lies in the fact that, as we plunge more and more deeply into the physical body, we come into inner connection with the earth forces with which it is associated. Our physical body is connected with these forces, and is only released from them when we consciously overcome the force of gravity and all the kindred forces which bind it to the Earth. People do not really know how, through their organization, they overcome the forces which are active in them. I once mentioned an illustration of this in the human brain, which is so heavy that if it exerted its full weight it would crush the blood­-vessels immediately below it: there is, how­ever, a remarkable arrangement in the human organization whereby the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. Now according to ' the principle of Archimedes, a body floating in water loses as much weight as that of the water it displaces; therefore the pressure on the blood-vessels is reduced, because the brain floats in the brain water and the weight of the brain is overcome. Thus we overcome much.

The same thing may be noticed in other parts of the body. Forces which are but little noticed show, even in the physical frame, what a cosmic wonder exists in the organization of man. We are necessarily connected with the forces of the earth, but we must not come into immediate contact with them. The temptation to make too close a connection with these forces is to be found in the Western world, in all the Western attitude towards life. This temptation is an Ahrimanic one. We can only combat it by gradually so deepening our knowledge as to become able to survey humanity's historical development and understand the Event of Golgotha as a real fact in the centre of it—just as we comprehend the position of Caesar Augustus or Socrates in history. For the Western world the only safeguard against this temptation and its consequences is to take the Christ into its scientific, exact view of things, that He should penetrate the entire Western view of the world. The Eastern view is exactly the opposite. The Oriental remains, in a sense, at the level of childhood, not allowing his astral body and ego to plunge down into the physical and etheric bodies although  at the present epoch it is fore-ordained that humanity should do so. The Oriental shuns this immersion. It is interesting to see the most important features of the day from this point of view. A number of Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful speeches have been translated. Read them and you will find in them an atmosphere quite different from anything spoken by a Westerner. An entirely different spirit speaks. Just as the perspective in an Eastern drawing or painting differs from a Western one, so the entire soul-mood of Rabindranath Tagore differs from that of a European or an American. This is due to the fact that even the educated Easterner of to-day, if rooted in Eastern culture, shuns the connection with the physical body. In this case the temptation is Luciferic—not to make proper use of the physical body, but to leave it unused. While the American strives to use the body to excess, the Oriental strives to make as little use of it as possible.

In this sense we must come to understand race-psychology. In the same sense, too, we ought for decades to have perceived the relation between the Eastern and Western peoples of Europe if the World War was to be avoided. It was not for nothing, but of purpose, that in 1910 I lectured in Christiania on the Folk-spirits. If you read those lectures you will find many indications of what has happened in the catastrophe of the last five years. The great thing in all these things is to prepare, earnestly and fully, not to shun reality, but to comprehend it in such a way that men can take their place in the development of the world, not selfishly subsisting alone, or bounded by their own immediate interests. We cannot fulfill our task to-day unless we develop the good will to take part in the whole development of humanity—at least in our consciousness. None of this is intended as a criticism of the past, for I have often said that such criticism is useless from the point of view of spiritual science. What matters is that we should act and think differently in the future from the past and be prepared to trans­fer into the future what we have gained from spiritual knowledge.

I have shown you during these few days how man should regard his entire life between birth and death. At birth we take over the forces of the supersensible world from our super­sensible existence into the physical sense-world. These forces continue their effect—a fact which is very hard for men of to-day to understand. How do they work? They work in all that man develops as spiritual life in this, world. There would be no possibility of poets being born among us, of philosophy or science, or of impulses towards the education of men—in fact, no possibility of developing any spiritual life at all, if we did not carry with us through birth those impulses which come from our pre-natal life. All that belongs to our spiritual life is of pre-natal origin. On the other hand, what we ourselves develop within the economic life, through our will-impulses, brotherliness love for humanity, thought and work for others, rather than for ourselves, what in a sense we do "on our own" because we are part of the economic life, all that provides the most important impulses, for what we carry over into the spiritual world. Just as we carry with us out of that world the forces which above all build our spiritual life here, so we take the forces developed in the economic life by human love and brotherliness back into the spiritual world at death.. There they accompany us and are our most important impulses. Looking at what emerges in a child's life from year to year, we see the inheritance of what is given from the spiritual world to enable man to unfold all that is spiritual on earth; and looking, in the economic life, at the results of our will to work for others, there presents itself the fruit we carry through the gate of death into the spiritual world. To the view of one who can see the spiritual world, these are the two opposite poles of development. In my book Theosophy, in the account of the soul-land and spirit-land, you will find this expressed in ideas which spring entirely from a living view of these conditions. We build up our own spiritual life with forces derived before birth or conception; the economic life we develop so that we can convey the forces belonging to it into the spiritual world; but the State, what constitutes the sphere of "rights" is the opposite of the impulses existing between death and a new birth; what is developed here on earth and belongs to the earth only is the life of polities, law, the State. That has no relation to the spiritual world.

We simplify matters by interpreting things of this kind as we find convenient. There are plenty of people who apply to the present day (perhaps with the idea of showing a little monarchical tendency in these republican times) the Biblical saying, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's "—but it is a misapplication. The saying cannot be understood apart from the circumstances belonging to it. In those days the Roman Caesar was held to be "God" and demanded divine honours. Caligula enacted such worship for the statues of the Greek Gods which he trans­ported to Rome, beheaded, and adorned with his own head in exchange, as he deemed fit and proper. (The Zeus statue alone escaped this fate.) Even at the time when Jesus of Nazareth spoke them, these words meant "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and reserve something for the God Whom you must seek in another being than Caesar." In many passages of the Gospels it is necessary in our time that they are correctly interpreted, and not as they usually are; so that we may be able thereby to struggle nearer to the conception of reality needed by our times.

During these few days it has been my task to show you, from various points of view, that the problem confronting mankind to-day is how to conduct this struggle, how to reach this view of reality, which can only be attained by grasping spiritual reality as something concrete, as concrete as sense-reality. Nothing does so much harm in the present day as shutting our eyes to reality. Men have gone on long enough with the policy of ignoring the truth, shutting their eyes to it. Anthroposophical spiritual science aims in seriousness at opening eyes to reality. To-day they are all but closed. Man's defective sense of reality is witnessed by the amazing things that are given out. I am obliged to draw attention to such things because they throw light on our times. A number of people, closely associated with the events which have brought such misery over Mid-Europe (misery not at its end, but only just beginning) have only disclosed their real countenances when the awful events of the summer, and particularly the autumn, of 1918, occurred. It was then that many men showed themselves in their true colours. They had arrived at remarkable positions, remark­able because so very different from their  earlier ones. I have known people who look with a sort of pity at personalities bearing such responsibility and yet never ask whether millions in the world are not worse off, in body and soul, than these responsible men who now hold a position so different from their former one. In these things it is important to have our eyes open and to have a sense of reality in our knowledge of the present. It is perverse fantasy to cling to our own pet ideas because they please us, without listening to the voice of truth. It is not pleasant to speak the truth about these things, but when we see with bitterness of soul how, these things have developed, how perverted fantasy appears where one hoped for practical help for life; how this fantasy asserted itself with shattering force while those who faced reality were called Utopian idealists, we are compelled to speak. No pity should prevent us, now that things are clear and we have their own confessions, from speaking our mind about such fanatics, in this tormented Central Europe, who have never deigned to see reality as it is but wish to mould it according to their own comfortable ideas. In this sphere, also, reality must be seen in the true light, for it is no small reckoning we have to make. All the miserable endeavours to justify themselves before the world are the strongest accusations against them. There will be no healing, no peace, until the necessity for earnestness is realized and for a serious recognition of reality. I did not come here to say these things from any desire to be clever: rather, as being associated with a serious spiritual movement, I feel it a duty—a necessity—to speak. We have seen (but could not talk of what we saw, for our lips were sealed) that men of absolute incompetence were called to positions of authority—standing like shadows beside the great truths destined to stream through mankind. I know many people still feel offended when told the truth, but this shutting of the eyes to facts must have an end; it is only by looking honestly at these things that the force can arise which is needed for human progress.

We need such a force. We must grasp something essentially different from the mental outfit of the men to whom we owe our present position. We must have the courage to lay hold of something new.

It is with a view to preparing this new out­look, even in outer reality, that I have spoken here and in other gatherings of the Anthroposophical Movement, not to give a kind of superior Sunday-evening sermon, but to emphasize the gravity of the times. He alone is an Anthroposophist, in the real sense of the word, who is gripped by the central purpose of his time and wills the truth, rejecting the lies which have entangled us so terribly in the conditions of to-day. I could wish that the few words in which I have given an outline of what is necessary might penetrate your hearts—it is not your minds only that I would reach, for it is from hearts that must arise the deep understanding so necessary for the times. We have to discover the impulse which will set humanity upright again, and to do that we must first of all learn how thoroughly we are ensnared by mere phrases and by untruth in all directions. From the spirit the truth will come. Wisdom lies in truth and truth alone—that should be graven deeply into our souls.

I have said a little about what is characteristic of our epoch of evolution from a spiritual standpoint. I have laid these matters before you because I believe that through them the most essential need of the present can be brought near to the human heart—the mood of soul from which that earnestness comes which is necessary in order to live in the service of humanity to-day. My aim this time has been to arouse such earnestness.

Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond and Owen Barfield

Many years ago, when I was working in Berlin, the news filtered into a theatre during the performance that the Empress of Austria had been assassinated at Geneva by one of the “Propagandists by Action”—so they were being called at that time. [1] During one of the intervals I happened to be standing near a man who was then a literary critic in Berlin and has since written philosophical books which have gained a certain reputation. This man voiced his astonishment at the news in a way that still lingers in my memory. He said: “One can understand many things that happen in the world without in the least justifying or approving of them ... one can understand many things that happen ... but that a revolutionary movement should instigate the murder of a sick woman whose continued existence could have made no real difference, whose death anyhow can have no clear connection with any political idea, this”—said the man—“is incomprehensible; it just doesn't make sense.”

I am sure this man was expressing what must be the opinion of every right-minded, educated person in the modern world. We are reminded that in the life of men and the course of history, things do happen which seem senseless and purposeless not only when judged by the normal standards but even when they are attributed to some form of aberration.

But events of this very nature—and many, many others might be cited—show that what appears outwardly incomprehensible must inevitably do so because behind the scenes of world affairs—if I may use this expression—spiritual forces and spiritual deeds are playing to and fro [a phrase meaning back and forth – e.Ed], both in the good and in the bad sense. These spiritual deeds and happenings are only to be understood when the light of Spiritual Science can be shed into those regions that lie behind the scenes of life in the ordinary world of the senses. Things happen which become intelligible only when they can be illumined by ideas derived from the spiritual world and which, if viewed merely in their connection with the world of the senses, inevitably seem devoid of meaning and purpose—either good or bad. And if by what may be called chance but may also possibly have been a matter of karma in symbolic garb, one has an experience of this kind in a theatre, then it prompts the reaction that what is going on “behind the scenes” looks very different from what is happening on the stage.

I have made these preliminary remarks because I propose today to speak about matters which will be further elaborated when we are next together—matters which it is important for men at the present time to know about and which are connected with events behind the scenes of the physical plane. These things cannot be understood if we give way to the easy-going modern habit of merely generalising about the facts of the spiritual world and their connection with human affairs on the Earth; they become intelligible only when we penetrate as deeply as possible into the concrete realities of the spiritual world.

You know from many passages in the Lecture-Courses that the evolution of mankind is to be divided into certain periods: the vast periods of the Saturn-, Sun-, Moon-evolutions; the shorter periods of the Lemurian, Atlantean and our own Post-Atlantean epochs; and again within these shorter periods which, however, extend over long stretches of time, we speak of certain epochs of culture within the Post-Atlantean period: the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin and our own Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch.

The reason for speaking of these periods is that the faculties of humanity as a whole—in this case more particularly the faculties of soul—change fundamentally from one period to another; they change because a very real evolution takes place in every such period—I am speaking now of the shortest. Every such period contains something which mankind is obliged to undergo, something which may cause either happiness or unhappiness, which has to be realised and understood, which is the source of impulses of will leading to deeds, and so forth. The tasks devolving upon the Egypto-Chaldean epoch of civilisation differed from those of the Greco-Latin epoch—and our own age, too, faces its own specific tasks.

A really true idea of the distinct tasks of the several epochs in regard to the development of certain qualities—especially those of which we shall speak today—cannot be formed without taking into account the experiences contributed by human life as a whole to the external development of which history speaks and to which the materialistic thought of today prefers to confine itself. No really adequate characterisation of the successive epochs can, however, be drawn from these experiences on the physical plane, for they, after all, constitute only one part of that cycle of human life which stretches from birth to death and from death onwards to a new birth. For in what actually happens, there is a constant interplay and interaction between the forces that come down from the world in which man lives between death and a new birth and those which are unfolded in his life here, on the physical plane. There is an unceasing interplay between the forces unfolded by human beings after death and those operating on the physical plane.

Conditions throughout the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch were such that certain things might safely be withheld from the consciousness of man. Many things in respect of which men of the Greco-Latin epoch might without harm be kept unconscious must, however, enter more and more into the consciousness of those living in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. During this Fifth epoch, human beings must become conscious of much that in earlier times could remain in the unconscious.

These things unfold according to certain spiritual laws, under a kind of spiritual necessity. It is part of the destiny of the human race that certain faculties of comprehension and also certain forces of will, shall unfold in a particular epoch. In this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch humanity becomes ripe for the knowledge of certain things, just as in earlier epochs men became ripe in other respects. One thing in respect of which humanity has become sufficiently mature in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch seems highly paradoxical to the modern mind, because public opinion moves for the most part in exactly the opposite direction, would prefer, as it were, to lead men in the opposite direction. But this will be of no avail. The spiritual forces with which men are, if I may put it so, inoculated, in the course of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, will be stronger than the wishes of certain people, stronger than the dictates of public opinion.

One of these things—and it will assert itself most powerfully—is the guiding or directing of men more deeply in line with occult principles than has ever before been possible. It lies in the general character of evolution that during this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, certain conditions connected with the exercise of power, of influence, must pass into the hands of small groups who will wield great power over other, large masses of people.

A certain section of public opinion vehemently resists this trend; nevertheless it will assert itself and for the following reason. During the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, simply because of inner maturity and evolutionary necessity, a large portion of humanity will unfold certain spiritual faculties, a certain natural capacity to see into the spiritual world. This portion of humanity, which will indeed provide the best foundation for the future Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch—this portion of humanity, while in process of preparation during the Fifth epoch, will show little inclination to be actively concerned with the affairs of the physical plane. Such men will have little interest in physical affairs and will be engrossed in ennobling the life of soul, in regulating certain matters connected with the spiritual life. And because of this, others less spiritually inclined will be able to seize for themselves certain factors connected with the exercise of power—to get them into their own hands.

This is something that arises with a kind of necessity. Among men who were cognisant of these things it was the subject of much discussion throughout the last third of the nineteenth century, and they always stressed the vital necessity that this potential should be directed - not into evil but into good channels. During the last third of the nineteenth century, especially just before its turn, one could hear occultists on every hand insisting that precautions must be taken to ensure that such means of power come into the hands of worthy men. Naturally, with the exception of a very few groups, opinions differed as to who were really worthy; each group championed the claims of those with whom the world had brought it into contact. But the whole matter was the subject of almost day-to-day conversation among occultists and, in a certain sense, has remained so to this day.

Simply because man attains the requisite degree of maturity, other things, too, will emerge in the course of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, will become known to men and also pass into the sphere of the will. These are things which lead still further, so far indeed that they cannot but cause grave anxiety to everybody who is cognisant of them.

This Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch confronts the fact that the physical apparatus of human thinking becomes capable of understanding certain factors relating to illness and processes of healing, connections of Nature-processes with illnesses. This causes anxiety to those possessing real knowledge of these matters because their aim now must be to ensure that those who will be chosen to bring the relevant teachings and impulses to men will do so in the right and worthy way. For two possibilities exist: information about these things will either be conveyed to men in a form which does harm, or it may be imparted in a way which is for the good of the world. These things are connected with the most intimate depths of certain conditions relating to human propagation, with circumstances connected with illnesses and with the onset of death, and when knowledge concerning them spreads among mankind they give rise to thoughts and impulses of deep import and significance. And the purpose of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that men shall become free enough to be enlightened about certain truths hitherto kept in the more unconscious region of the human soul, and to master them.

Those who knew, concerned themselves deeply with all the implications of these things and with the steps that could be taken in one direction or the other. For everything that can arise in this way bestows a certain power, enables a hand to be taken to a very far-reaching extent in the shaping of human affairs. All these considerations, as I said, occupied an important place in spiritual-scientific movements during the nineteenth century, and still do so, to this day, in connection with the evolution of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch.

Another fact must here be considered, a fact that to anyone cognisant of it, is very significant, and must therefore be brought into relation with many others. I have mentioned it here and there in the Lecture-Courses. When, having crossed the threshold of the spiritual world, a man begins to make observations there, peculiar facts, essentially individual facts come before his soul's eye. And then a deeper scrutiny of things which at first sight seem to have nothing to do with each other, reveals that they are indeed connected, that they mutually illumine and explain each other and in doing so greatly facilitate penetration into the nature of the spiritual world.

The other fact, of which I am now going to speak, will, at first, certainly not give you the impression of being connected with what I have just said, yet the very contrary proves to be the case. This other fact is the following: When one turns to the souls of human beings who have died in our present age and learns the circumstances of their existence, one perceives souls among them who feel grave apprehension at the prospect of coming into contact with those human souls who, here on Earth, met their death as did the Empress of Austria at that time in Geneva. One discovers that human beings sent through the Gate of Death by, let us say, the “Propagandists by Action,” are a cause of grave anxiety to certain human beings who passed through death in a normal way and then have further experiences in the spiritual world. One notices, as it were, that those who died in the normal way and who may have occasion to contact these other souls, are fearful of such contact after death, and shrink from it.

I beg you, in such a case, to ignore the emotional paradox. Such innumerable possibilities of association and contact are open to souls that it would be out of place to allow oneself here to be swayed by feelings of compassion, however natural and justifiable they may be. A case like this must be viewed quite objectively. It is a fact that souls who have passed through the Gate of Death normally, feel a certain dread of those whose death was brought about by violent means resembling those adopted by anarchist propaganda.

Now there is a certain very strange connection between this last fact and the other of which I spoke previously. Closer scrutiny reveals that these souls who met their death by violent means come into possession of certain knowledge in the spiritual world after death, which the other souls do not wish to receive from them prematurely, before it is right and healthy to do so. For the very reason that here, on the physical plane, they were deprived of life in this way and sent with such violence through the Gate of Death, these souls retain a certain possibility of turning to account the powers and forces they possessed on Earth, for example, the power of intellect. From the other side, from the spiritual world, such souls can make use of the powers which were bound up with the physical body here on Earth and achieve with them something quite other than it is possible to achieve during life in the physical body. Thereby these souls are able to acquire knowledge of certain things earlier than is really conducive to the progress of human evolution.

It is very remarkable that both meaning and purpose are revealed in this way in a number of deeds hitherto seeming to lack all rhyme or reason. These deeds assume a strange aspect to one who sees things as they really are. In the physical world, all kinds of nonsense is talked; it may sound plausible but is, well just nonsense to closer observation. Here, in the physical world, it is said: people like these “Propagandists by Action” who murder others, are simply out to draw attention to misery in the world; it is a means of active agitation, etc., etc.. But one who analyses the matter and tries to bring it into line with the laws of social life will realise at once that, although such deeds appear to be senseless, their meaning suddenly becomes clear in the light of the knowledge that souls sent into the spiritual world in this violent way, acquire knowledge which they really ought not yet to possess and of which souls who died a normal death have a positive dread.

To investigate the causes underlying assassinations committed at various times, like that of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, to discover the position of these souls who come into the spiritual world with certain secrets in their keeping—with consequences of which we shall speak—to investigate these things occultly was of course the important thing. A merely external view of the series of such assassinations may ascribe them all to chance; but if one analyses the matter, if one considers who the individuals thus sent to their death really are, it becomes clear that they have been selected, as it were—not, of course from the standpoint of the physical world but from that of the spiritual world. Investigation of this aspect of many of the well-known assassinations reveals something very remarkable. In the cases of Carnot, [2] the Empress Elizabeth of Austria and certain others, the remarkable fact is revealed that although the possibility of achieving something by their assassinations certainly existed, it was, as a matter of fact, not achieved at all. It would have been achieved if souls had been found to be their “customers,” if I may put it so. If that had happened, both sides would have incurred transcendental, super-sensible guilt: those who had passed through death in the normal way would have had experiences which would have driven them into blameworthy paths, and those whose deaths had been caused by violence, by assassination, would have been guilty of divulging knowledge before the proper time.

Higher Spiritual Beings, Higher Hierarchies, prevented this from happening because of certain consequences which would have ensued and which it was necessary to frustrate for the sake of the well-being of a certain part of mankind. By the intervention of higher Spiritual Beings, the harm that might have resulted was prevented. And so there was evidence here of an attempt made with ineffective means, or rather, with means that had been deprived of their effectiveness. It was an attempt made in the spiritual world, behind the scenes of the physical world.

Probing into the deeper foundations of such matters, we discover the source of the impulses underlying them. And in the case of many of the assassinations which were news in Europe and will be known to you, the impulses—they were spiritual impulses, remember—were not really primary and original but were derivatives; they were “defence measures,” if this rather trivial expression is permissible. The purpose of these deeds was to put a stop to something else, to frustrate other deeds, or, better said, to prevent the consequences of other deeds tending in the same direction.

This is a very mysterious matter and can only be understood by scrutinising what, exactly, it was proposed to prevent, against what, exactly, these defence measures were taken. Spiritual Science penetrates here into things deeply connected with the impulses of human life in the present and in the future and of which it is extremely difficult to speak because they everywhere run counter to certain naive and even justifiable interests of men. The matter becomes comprehensible only when we take into consideration the fact that all these attempts by means of assassinations of which I have spoken up to now, were amateurishly directed, were not under “expert” guidance. They were attempts made without thorough knowledge of the occult connections; they were defence measures born of fear, and they were not under united leadership. They become intelligible only when we study the plan which they were actually intended to avert, and which was itself being pursued and staged with much greater insight. In the nineteenth century, a remarkable Order was still in existence over in the East: the Order of the “Thugs.” This Order, which flourished in a certain region of Asia, did not arise out of mere desire—the desire, I mean, of its members—to gain their ends. The members of this Order were charged with the task of murdering certain persons named by very secret and unknown superiors. It was an Order of murderers, so to speak, with the task of putting certain individuals to death. Evidence of its activity filtered through from time to time in news announcing the murder of such and such a person. The murder was committed on the orders of unknown superiors who had charged some member of this Order of the Thugs to carry it out.

In the places where this was undertaken, the aim was well understood. By arranging circumstances of the physical plane in such a way that the establishment of this Order of the Thugs was possible, and then by directing its activities as required, the plan was to bring about the violent death of such persons as would be equipped after their death with the faculty for learning certain secrets. The individuals who managed all this also organised corresponding conditions here, on the physical plane, to act as “mirrors”—“mirror events” as they are called in occultism. Such was the intention: to organise the appropriate “mirror events.” Certain events of this kind—if only a few—have actually been organised on the physical plane. It is done in this way: certain suitable personalities are trained to be mediums, put into a mediumistic condition and by certain machinations the currents from the spiritual world are directed to the medium. The medium then divulges certain secrets which can only be disclosed by this means, namely, that in yonder world a person killed by a deed of violence, turns to account here, on the Earth, those forces which owing to his violent death can still be made use of; as souls, they fathom certain secrets and then instill them into the medium. And it is possible for those interested in such research here, on the Earth, to investigate what these souls are instilling by such means.

What is investigated in this way is a sort of “premature spiritual birth”—if I may use this expression. The souls who passed through the Gate of Death in the normal way and are concerned with such things, know that they must be preparing themselves now—and they make it plain that they are engaged in this preparation—in order, later on, when humanity has sufficiently matured, to bring down many things to the Earth and inject them into the Earth by rightful means. This, indeed, is an important task devolving upon a number of human beings now passing through the Gate of Death. Having attained the requisite maturity for certain secrets at the right time—not prematurely, as is the case when forces generated by violent deaths are put into operation—the task of these souls is to use and apply the normal forces. It is actually the task of these human beings to acquire control of these forces and then to inspire them into men living on the Earth who are not mediums at all but who should experience them in the normal, legitimate way—through genuine Inspiration.

In normal life this would be a matter of waiting. But because, as the result of occult crime, these things which ought to come much later are sent as premature spiritual births along the path indicated—because of this, individuals intending evil to humanity and who in this sense are “black” or “grey” magicians, capture such secrets for their own ends.

Behind the scenes of outer happenings, such things have been proceeding during our own decades. The intention was this: to place in the hands of a certain group of men, firstly, the secret of the control of masses—I spoke of this to begin with. It is the secret of how to gain extensive control over those masses who concern themselves little with external affairs, yet possess spiritual capacities and are especially qualified to assist in the preparation of the Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch—it is the secret, too, of how the art of controlling these masses can be placed in the hands of a few individuals.

That was the one aim. The other is something that will play an important role in the future: it is a matter of acquiring the secret means whereby factors connected with processes of disease, with the process of propagation, may be given a particular turn.

Among a few friends, I have already spoken of these things. The age of materialism is striving, through the work of certain circles, to paralyse, to eliminate all spiritual development in mankind, to bring human beings to a point where simply by temperament and character they reject everything that is spiritual and regard it as folly.

This trend—and it is already perceptible in some individuals today—will intensify. People will actually long for the time when the Spiritual is universally deemed to be insanity, craziness! Attempts will be made to achieve this end by inoculations; just as viruses ¹ have been discovered as means of protection against illnesses, so certain inoculations will be used to influence the human body in such a way that it provides no place for the spiritual proclivities of the soul. Human beings will be immunised against any predisposition for spiritual ideas ... such, at least, will be the endeavour. They will try by inoculation to bring it about that even in childhood, human beings lose the urge towards the spiritual life. This is only one of the aspects of that more intimate knowledge, relating to the connection of Nature-processes and Nature-specifics with the human organism, which must arise during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. These things will certainly find their way into the life of mankind when the time comes. The only question is whether success will have attended those previous attempts—by means of such premature spiritual births as I have mentioned—to put knowledge into the hands of individuals who will use it for their own ends ... or whether the knowledge of these things will come in the right way, at the right time, and thus promote the well-being of humanity.

There was nothing amateurish about the methods of the organisation designed for promoting these premature spiritual births; with the help of the Order of murderers known as the Thugs, it worked very systematically, albeit in a way which horrifies anyone who has the good of humanity at heart. It worked systematically, not amateurishly, with full knowledge of the means required.

Because the effort was being made through instruments acquired prematurely from the spiritual world to place part of mankind in the egotistical possession of knowledge which, as humanity matures will be acquired in any case during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch ... because this was being striven for, there arose in other groups of men the uneasiness and anxiety which staged this “Propaganda by Action” as a counter-blast, so to speak; it was intended to be a help but, being the child of fear, it was an amateurish attempt, a provisional attempt made with ineffective means.

These things that proceed behind the scenes of external happenings, are of deep import. Nor would they be mentioned here if it were not a necessity and a duty to bring them to the attention of people trained to some extent in Spiritual Science. It is a necessity for such things to pass into the consciousness of humanity in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. Only so can the goal of earthly evolution be attained.

Human beings must embark upon the unpleasant task of abandoning the mode of thinking which the universities produce in the so-called educated classes today; a time must come when a number of human beings declare themselves ready to accept this uncomfortable world-conception which takes its direction, its concepts, its ideas, from the spiritual world. For men must not, dare not, linger in the condition of sleep that is so congenial to those abstract concepts for which the age of materialism strives and then calls “noble.”

Thinking over what I have thus indicated, you will realise that a whole number of possibilities exist for making use of currents emanating from the spiritual world in order to bring evil things to pass on the Earth during this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. There are many, many such possibilities—today I have told you of one. And the obligation to stress the necessity that such knowledge should reach the consciousness of a certain number of souls—this is bound up with the fundamental character of our age. The second half of the nineteenth century was an extremely important period. I have often indicated to circles of friends here and there that the year 1841 was a critical time, a year of decision and crisis. This, of course, is not discovered by looking merely at the events that happened in the physical world, but only by studying these events in connection with what was going on in the spiritual world. The year 1841 was, in truth, the critical year in respect of the onset of the age of materialism, for at that time a very definite battle began in the spiritual worlds—a battle waged by certain Spirits, Spirits of Darkness as we may call them, belonging to the hierarchical rank of the Angeloi. In the spiritual worlds they fought out this battle until the autumn of 1879. They were striving for many and definite aims, only one of which shall be mentioned today. Between the years 1841 and 1879, decision was to be taken as to whether a certain store of spiritual wisdom could be made sufficiently mature to trickle gradually down to the Earth from the last third of the nineteenth century onwards, that is to say, to enter into the souls of men as a stimulus to spiritual knowledge, to the knowledge described today as that of Spiritual Science, which has only been possible since that time.

The aim of these Angeloi-Spirits between the years 1841 and 1879 was to prevent what was thus to flow down to the Earth, from coming to maturity in the spiritual world. But these Spirits of Darkness were defeated in the war they waged against the Spirits of Light during this period. In the year 1879, on a smaller scale, an event came to pass of the kind that has several times come to pass in the course of evolution, and has always been pictured symbolically as the victory of Michael, or St. George, over the Dragon. In the year 1879, too, the Dragon was overcome in a certain realm. This time the “Dragon” was the Angeloi-Spirits who were striving for but could not achieve the aim I have indicated. In 1879, therefore, they were cast out of the spiritual world into the world of men—and here, in this world, they wander among humanity. They are present here, sending their forces into men's thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, egging them on to this undertaking or another. They have not been able to prevent the onset of the age when the spiritual knowledge flows down—their defeat in the battle lies precisely in this—for the spiritual knowledge is here and will unfold increasingly; human beings will be able to acquire the faculty of seeing into the spiritual world.

But having been cast down to the Earth, these Angeloi-Spirits are intent upon doing harm with the down-flowing knowledge; they want to guide it into wrongful channels, to rob it of its power for good and lead it into paths of evil. In short, having been cast down since the year 1879, their aim is to achieve here, with the help of men, what they were unable to achieve with the help of the Spirits in yonder world. Their aim is to bring ruin to that part of the good plan for world-evolution which consists in causing the knowledge of the control of masses, the knowledge concerning birth, illness and death, among other things, to spread among men when the time is ripe. These Spirits of Darkness want to spread such knowledge too soon, by means of the premature spiritual births. Among their other objects and activities, these Spirits operate in the manner I have just indicated.

The only way to combat the influence of these Ahrimanic Beings is to realise that against certain aims of Ahriman nothing avails except to see through him, to know that he is there. I have indicated this repeatedly in the Mystery Plays; think only of the end of the last Play. The Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch must evolve to the stage where many human beings address the Ahrimanic Powers and Beings as Faust addresses Mephistopheles: “In thy Nothingness I hope to find the All.” Men must be resolved to look into that realm where materialism sees the “Nothingness” and there see ... the spiritual world! Ahriman-Mephistopheles is then obliged to speak to such men as he speaks to Faust when sending him to the “Mothers”:

“I will not grudge my praise before thou goest, For well I see that thou the Devil knowest.”

The other day, I said, jokingly, in Dornach: “Mephistopheles would not have made such a remark to Woodrow Wilson! To Woodrow Wilson he would have said: ‘The little fellows never notice the Devil, even when he has them by the collar!’” Truly, it is of the greatest importance that men shall learn to see into the realities of the spiritual world. And, believe me, it is simply the fact, that when, on the one side, there is some special necessity, the opposing forces are also especially strong—and so, today, men put up strong resistance to these things, struggle against them.

I beg you here in Zurich, in your laudable and welcome efforts to bring Spiritual Science to certain still very hostile circles, to be under no illusions! Many disappointments—and at first, nothing but disappointments—await all efforts to direct things that must come to pass, into the right paths. This, of course, should never deter us. We must be so imbued with the impulse needed for the present age, that we do what has to be done without regard to results—whether they fall out one way or the other.

This attitude alone makes achievement possible—and then it is often reached by an entirely unexpected route. I beg you to remember, too, that a great deal must often be done that yields no gratifying results. For the propaganda of Spiritual Science is a different matter from other current forms of propaganda. In these other domains, people are for the most part told things with which they are as familiar as devout ladies sitting in church are familiar with what the clergyman says from the pulpit. The programmes of most leagues and societies contain subject matter that can be imbibed very light-heartedly and superficially—it usually is, and remains, pure abstraction. Fine programmes are made—but these programmes are unrelated to and incapable of penetrating into reality. If it is our desire to cultivate spiritual strivings in this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, we must regard them as we regard the Living. What is the nature of the Living? The Living, the Life, in the realm of Spirit has its image in the realm of the Living in Nature. I ask you: is a fish in the sea afraid of laying a number of eggs that come to nothing? Ask yourselves how many of the eggs that are actually laid, turn into fish? How many come to nothing? As it is in life, so, too, it is in the spiritual life. You may speak for long years, on countless occasions, to vast numbers of people ... and you must be satisfied if interest, at most, is awakened in a few among them—for that inheres in the nature of the Living. Achievement in any degree is only possible when one proceeds as Nature proceeds—Nature being the image of the Spirit. What would happen if Nature hesitated to allow living beings to lay the eggs that come to nothing, because a number obviously perish in the course of a year? The Nature-process continues and, moreover, achieves evolution. Considerations as to whether any particular thing can be achieved, whether it is in line with this or with that—are of no moment. What is of moment is that in the thing itself we see the impulse and that we simply cannot do otherwise than carry this impulse into the world.

And looking at the reasons—a few of which have been indicated today—why this impulse must be carried out into the world during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch ... truly they are serious enough! Where necessity is greatest, remember, there the opposition is strongest. Men will have to learn to view all these things that come to pass here, on the physical plane, and in our time present a truly terrible aspect, in their connection with happenings behind the scenes. Only then do they become intelligible. But the historians, the sociologists, the economists, the politicians of today, who derive their rules and laws exclusively from the physical plane well, as far as the actual necessities are concerned, they act like persons who begin some important task by stretching themselves on a chaise lounge and going to sleep, believing they can achieve it in the world of dream. The majority of those who belong to the world of culture, to the several branches of science today, really do set to work like this; in their state of dream they let reality pass them by. How do men write treatises on history, on sociology? They write without a single inkling of the real forces at play behind the subject of their dreamings. The realities underlying such deeply decisive events as we are witnessing nowadays, lie around modern men of science like the walls of a room into which they have been carried during sleep, have never seen and in which they go on sleeping. This is how materialistic science acquaints itself with the world.

In my book Vom Menschenratsel (The Riddle of Man) I have described a mode of consciousness that is at the same time a “seeing” (Schauendes Bewusstsein). This must, to a certain degree, become a faculty in humanity of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch for the following reason. Certain secrets must come into the open because otherwise they would be spread among humanity by unlawful means such as those of which I have told you today. As I said, it is not easy to speak of these things, but in duty bound it is necessary to do so. Men must acquire for many things a gift of observation very different from the clumsy faculty of observation in vogue today.

In connection with what has been said, I want to add the following. Firstly, men can acquire something, even today, by trying to take things normally ascribed to chance seriously and regard them as hints for deepening the life of soul. Suppose you read that at one place or another, on this or that date, a certain man died. A great deal may light up if one asks oneself: “How would it have been if that man had died three months earlier or three months later?” reckoning, of course, merely with possibilities. But you may be sure that if such a question is put, forces are released whereby you will discern other things. Or again, while traveling in a train you may have a conversation that means a great deal to you. A materialist, naturally, would regard such a thing as a lucky stroke of chance. But those who are trying to penetrate behind the scenes of outer existence will be alert to such incidents; without forcing ideas too far but feeling that there is something in these “accidents”, they pay attention, because these things point to forces playing into and between the events—forces whose origin is neither mechanical nor mathematical. That is one of the things I wanted to say.

The other is this, and I want to reiterate it with emphasis. In spite of the materialism of our time, much that is spiritual is revealing itself to men. But it goes against the grain to speak about these spiritual experiences. When someone becomes communicative, because he trusts you, he will often speak of what he, or some other person, has done ... If he tells you honestly and genuinely why, for example, he founded some newspaper, why he did this or that, he relates a dream, or what seemed to be a dream; he tells you of an impulse from the spiritual world. Such things happen at every turn nowadays—far more often than people think. Far more deeds are prompted by spiritual impulses than is usually imagined. But people hesitate to admit such things because they are as a rule not taken seriously.

It is well to deepen contemplation in both these directions, to be alert, in these days, to any sign or experience which strikes one's attention; and also to observe—for the opportunities are there—how in the good and in the bad sense, things are revealed from the spiritual world, which impel men to act. Nowadays, above all, this is more often the case than people think.

That is what I wanted to put before you today. Next Tuesday we will continue the subject.

[1] Note by Translator: The date of the assassination was 10^th September, 1898. “Propagandisten der Tat” seems to have been a phrase in current use at that time. In modern books of reference, this assassination and that of Carnot, of which mention is made later, are attributed to revolutionary anarchists.

[2] Carnot was the fourth President of the Third French Republic. He was assassinated at Lyons on 24^th June, 1894.

• 1. This word translated as ‘viruses’ is Impfmittel, the same word which was translated in the previous and following sentences as 'innoculations'. —rsarchive.org

Before proceeding to draw conclusions from our recent considerations, I am going to bring forward something which links them up—there is really a close connection, though it may not seen so—with the character of our building at Dornach.

Through its special character this building has a part to play in what we have come to recognise as the Spiritual evolution of humanity, leading on from the present into the future. This period in human development has a characteristic feature, until now existing only in germ, which we have tried to illuminate from many different points of view. To-day let us consider how particular aims of Spiritual Science can come to expression through the building devoted to it.

The developments of the present day can be surveyed, to some extent from outside, as is done by those who base all their knowledge, all their view of the world, on purely outward considerations; yet there are cogent reasons to-day for regarding current events from an inner, Spiritual point of view. We can get a correct picture of these events which have been maturing through long ages, and in another form will have a sequel in the future, if we observe them Spiritually. I will start from something apparently quite material, and try to make it a living example of how such impulses as are always with us, working in the present, can also be viewed spiritually.

Among those who in the last few decades have occasionally—not very often—taken a comprehensive view of events, some technicians can be found. One such was Reuleaux who from his own materialistic point of view threw out in 1884 some thoughts regarding certain characteristic features of contemporary culture. He divided present-day mankind into two groups. In one group he placed those who are entirely restricted to a “natural” way of life; in the other, those who pursued, as he said, a “manganistic” way. Manganistic he derived from “magic”,—that which endeavours to bring the forces of the universe into connection with human living. I will briefly go into the basis of this grouping of mankind, is a present-day standpoint.

In earlier times all mankind was “natural”; in a certain sense, and the greater part still is so. The rest, in Europe—especially in the Middle and West—and in America, are “manganistic” mankind. Keep in mind that this “naturalistic” civilisation is still predominant in the world. It is significant that the so-called “manganistic” civilisation has fully developed only during the last century. The most paradoxical result of this new civilisation one might say, is that it has hurried on to the earth many more “hands” than there are men on the globe. This is due to the prodigious expansion during the last few decades of mechanism, machines among the minority of mankind. It is obvious that a large portion of the work of to-day is-done by machinery; but it is rather astonishing to calculate, as can be done, how great this machine-work, replacing human toil, really is. One can reckon how many million tons of coal are turned annually into machine power. Then, translating this coal- output into terms of man-power, one can calculate how many men would be necessary to carry out the work. We find that to accomplish what the machines do would take no less than 540 million men working twelve hours a day. It is therefore not quite correct to say that there are only 1500 million inhabitants on the earth, for machines have added 540 millions to the population. Thus there are present many more “hands” than those of flesh and blood, because for a minority of mankind all this “manganistic” ,work is done by machines. Indeed, during the last century, the human race has not merely increased to the extent shown by statistics, for the working-power of 540 million more men must be taken into account. Truly we European and American peoples—leaving out Eastern Europe are surrounded by a form of labour which continually extends its influence over our daily life more than we think, and takes the place of human strength.

The people of the West are extremely proud of this accomplishment, especially the following aspect of it. By simply comparing the output of machinery with that of the numerous peoples who live more on a natural level and make little use of machines, we find that Europe and America produce significantly more than all the rest of mankind. Here we can say that to do the work accomplished by the machines, 540 million men would have to work twelve hours a day. That means a great deal. There we have the proud achievement of the new world-civilisation, and it has a variety of consequences.

To get an insight into the underlying meaning of this, we need only look at a case where “natural” civilisation projects deeply into the “magical”—for instance, with matches.

The oldest among us may still remember the time when matches were scarce, and flint and steel were used to produce a spark and so to ignite tinder, when fire was wanted. That leads us back to a much older way of producing: fire—where a great deal of human energy was used in twisting a burning stick in another piece of wood, to produce the equivalent of the fire now engendered by a box of matches. If we compare this “natural” method with that of to-day, another aspect of it comes into view, and we can say: The entire “magical” civilisation has another special peculiarity: it puts out of sight, banishes to a distance, the laws with which man was formerly in touch. To take the example of the primitive way of producing fire—see how this labour was inwardly connected with the man himself and his personal achievement. The fire which resulted directly from his work was intimately bound up with the personal deed. All this is pushed into the background. Because to-day a physical, mechanical or chemical process takes its place, nature's own process, in which the Spiritual plays its part, has become remote from the direct human action.

We constantly hear the statement: “Through this new application of science, man has compelled the forces of Nature to serve him”—a statement which is quite justified from one point of view, but is extremely one-sided and incomplete. For in everything done by machine-power (taking this in a wider sense, to include its use in the form of chemical energy) not only is natural energy pressed into the service of man, but the natural event in its deep connections with the essential impulses of the world is thrust out. In machinery it is gradually withdrawn from man's ken—and this means a robbery from man himself. Through technology, something deathly spreads over nature's living face; the living thrill which formerly passed directly from nature into man's labour is banished. When we consider how man extracts death out of nature, to incorporate is into his “magical” civilisation, it will not seem very surprising if I now bring Spiritual Science into connection with what the purely natural scientist says.

Reuleaux from his point of view rightly asserts that man's latest advance consists in harnessing nature's forces to his service; but we must, above all, keep in view the fact that machines literally replace human strength. It is not simply a question of a process provoking visible results; that is very important from a spiritual point of view in the creation of 540,000,000 imaginary people. Human energy is crystallised in all this; human intellect has been poured into it and works in it, but only the intellect. We are surrounded by intellect detached from man. Directly we set free what should be bound up with man, the forces known to us in Spiritual Science as Ahrimanic take possession of it. The 540,000,000 imaginary people on the earth are just so many receptacles for Ahrimanic forces; and this must not be overlooked. Linked up with the purely external advance of our civilisation are the Ahrimanic forces—the sane which are found in the Mephistopheles-nature, for this is closely allied to the Ahrimanic. Moreover, nothing exists in the universe without its opposite; never one pole without the other. The Ahrimanic in the mechanical forms of industry, etc., on the earth, is exactly balanced in the spiritual realm by a Luciferic element. The purely Ahrimanic is never found alone; but to the same degree as it takes visible form on earth, as just described, appears the Luciferic element, woven through this entire civilisation, already saturated with the Ahrimanic. To the same extent as the imaginary “hands” are brought into existence, and the Ahrimanic civilisation hardens on earth, spiritual correlations work into the human will, human intentions, impulses, passions and dispositions. Here on earth the Ahrimanic machines—in the spiritual stream enfolding us, for each machine a Luciferic spiritual being! As we produce our machines, we descend into the realm of death, which in this Ahrimanic civilisation has for the first tine become outwardly visible. Invisible to this Ahriman-civilisation arises a Luciferic one, like a reflection. This means that to the same degree as machines are made, man on earth is saturated in his morality, his ethics, his social impulses, with Lucifer's mode of thought. One cannot arise without the other. That is the pattern of the world.

We can see from this that the point is not to “flee from Ahriman” or to “avoid Lucifer”. A condition of which they are the opposite poles is necessarily bound up with the development of modern civilisation. Regarded spiritually, that is what is active in our culture, and this is the point of view from which things will need to be looked at increasingly from now onwards.

Now it is very remarkable that Reuleaux, the engineer, waxing enthusiastic over the “magical advance” of mankind, (from his standpoint a fully justified enthusiasm—for as always emphasise afresh; Spiritual Science has no reason for being reactionary—when he has brought it into bold relief, at the same time he refers to various other things. Especially he remarks on the fact that the man of to-day, especially in the European and American civilisations, placed as he is in a new world, urgently needs stronger forces for the cultivation of spiritual life than did the man of old, who with his “natural” culture, stood so much nearer in his personal workmanship to the intimacies of nature. (Of course Reuleaux does not say “Luciferic” and “Ahrimanic”; he describes only what I mentioned at the beginning-of this lecture. It is quite easy to discriminate between what I have added and what the scientist of the present-day materialistic world has to say.) For instance, Reuleaux points out how Art, for further Growth, needs stronger aesthetic impulses than were required in times of more instinctive development. A remarkable belief lies at the back of his mind—the naive belief, as he puts it, that in face of the assault of machinery, which destroys art (he readily admits that), the soul will need to attain to a more intensive experience of aesthetic laws. The naivety consists in his having no inkling that before this can happen, stronger artistic forces than those of the past will have to inspire the human soul. The misconception lies in supposing that although mechanical science battles against everything hitherto wrested by man out of the spiritual, this can be compensated for purely through an ‘intensive’ experience of the spiritual forces of the past. That is impossible, quite impossible. What is really necessary is that with the emergence of human civilisation on to the physical plane, other, stronger, and more spiritual forces should play into spiritual life; failing that, men will inevitably fall victim to materialism in practice, even though in theory they may strive against it.

Thus you can see that if one starts from the impulses of contemporary culture and reflects on the inner nature of present developments, one can reach this conclusion: Art must receive a new impetus; a new impulse must flow into it. If we are firmly convinced that our anthroposophical Spiritual Science, rightly directed, will bring a new impulse into the old spiritual culture of humanity, we are bound to conclude that art, too, will share in this stimulus.

This was the aim of the project, obviously very imperfect, for our Building at Dornach. As a matter of course its imperfections must be admitted; it is just a first effort. But perhaps we are justified in believing that it is a first step along a path which must continue. Others who follow us in the work, when we ourselves are no longer in the physical body, will perhaps do it better; but the impulse for the Dornach Bau had to be given at the present time. The Bau will be rightly understood only by someone who, instead of applying an absolute standard to it, familiarises himself a little with its history, and this I will relate to-day, because we are always being confronted with antiquated misconceptions.

You are aware that in Munich, since 1909, our work has included the presentation of certain Mystery Plays, the aim of which is to reveal through dramatic art the forces operative in our view of the world. Courses and Lectures, always strongly attended, were grouped about these artistic presentations in Munich, and so among our friends the idea arose of providing an appropriate home for our spiritual endeavours. This suggestion came from them—not from me, please remember. The Bau really started from the shortage of space observed by a number of our friends, and obviously, once such a building had been thought of, it was bound to be fashioned according to our view of the world. In Munich they had in view, properly speaking, only an interior structure, for it was to be surrounded by a number of houses, inhabited by friends able to, settle there. These houses would have so shut in the building that it would have been as plain as possible, for it would have been hidden from sight among the houses. The whole building was conceived of as a piece of inner architecture. “Inner architecture”, in such a case, has only a meaning when it provides an enclosure, a frame, for what goes on inside. But it was to be artistic, genuinely so—not a copying, but an artistic expression of the activities within. I have always compared, perhaps trivially but not inappropriately, the architectural idea of our building with that of a cake-mould. This is made for the sake of the cake inside, and the outer shape is correct only if it encloses and moulds the cake rightly. The “cake-mould” is in this case the free for the whole activity of our Spiritual Science, for the art which belongs to it, and for all that is spoken, heard, experienced within it. All that is the cake—everything else is the mould; and this must be expressed in the interior architecture. That was the first idea.—After much trouble to arrange the building on the site already acquired in Munich we discovered that we were opposed, not by the police or local authorities, but by the Munich Society of Arts, and indeed in such a way that we felt these worthies objected to our establishing ourselves in Munich, but would not tell us what they wanted. We were thus continually obliged to make changes in our plan, and this really night have gone on for a decade. At last the day came when we were driven to give up the idea of realising our hopes in Munich and to make use of a building-site in Solothurn, available through the kind offices of one of our friends. So it came to pass that in the Canton of Solothurn, on a hill in Dornach, near Basle, we set about building. The idea of the encircling houses was given up; the building had to be visible from all sides. The impulse arose; and the zeal was there to carry the matter through quickly. And without fundamentally re-casting the scheme already sketched out for the interior, all I could do was to try to combine the exterior with the already existing plans for the inside. From this arose many defects, of which no one is so conscious as I, but that is not the chief point. The great thing is that, as I have said, a beginning was made with such an enterprise.

I would like now to draw attention to a few thoughts which will make clear what constitutes the peculiar characteristic of this Building, so that you may see the connection between it and our entire movement—scientific as well as spiritual.

The first thing that will strike an unprejudiced observer is that the partition walls are quite evidently, conceived differently from those of ordinary public buildings. Walls enclosing a building, generally speaking, have hitherto always been considered, from an artistic point of view, as a “shutting off” of space. Walls, boundary walls, are always so considered and all architectural and ornamental work on walls has been in connection with this idea, that the function of the outer wall is to enclose. This canon is transgressed in the case of the Dornach building!—not physically, of course, but artistically. The conception of the outer wall, as it appears there, is not that it shuts off space, but that it opens the space to the universe, the macrocosm. Whoever stands within this space, should have the feeling, through the very walls themselves, that the building expands into the universe, the macrocosm. Everything should represent connections with the universe. What is the conception in the fashioning of the wall itself; the same with the pillars, accessory in their several ways to the walls—so also with the entire carved work, the bases of the pillars, the architraves, capitols. The conception is of a wall which is transparent for the soul—the very opposite of a space-enclosing wall. Anyone standing inside should feel that he has the freedom of the infinite universe. Naturally, if anything has to be done within this space, physically the enclosing is there; but the forms of the physical enclosure can be so taken that, abrogating themselves, they are annulled through their artistic fashioning.

Everything else is related to this. The laws of symmetrical proportion, usually followed in buildings, have to be disregarded under the influence of this main conception. The Dornach Building has, properly speaking, only one axis of symmetry, which goes straight from West to East; and everything is ordered upon this single axis. The pillars, at a certain distance from the walls, are not all furnished with the same capitols; only by twos, right and left, the capitols and mouldings are alike. Starting at the principal entrance, the first two pillars are the same, in capitol, base, and architrave. In the second pair, pillar, capitol, architrave design, are different, and so through the whole length of the building. Thus in the subjects of the capitols and bases it becomes possible to depict Evolution. The capitol of each pillar always evolves from the one before it, just as the organically complete form develops from the incomplete. The ordinary symmetrical equality is dissolved into a progressive development.

The whole Building consists of two principal parts; they have an essentially circular ground-plan, and are closed above with domes; but the domes are so cut as to link into one another, so that the bases form incomplete circles. One circle is short of a small segment in the front, and the other, the larger circle, is joined on just there.

The whole is so erected as to form two circular spaces, a larger and a smaller. The larger space is the auditorium, the lesser is for the presentation of the Mystery Plays, and kindred things. Where the two circles unite, are the rostrum and curtain. It was a very interesting piece of work, technically, to make the two domes intersect and cut into one another.

The Building, wholly of wood, rests on a concrete sub-structure which contains only the cloakrooms, with concrete steps leading up to the Building itself.

Along each wall of the greater space, under the large dome, there are seven pillars; in the smaller, six; so that in the latter, which forms a kind of platform, there are twelve, as against fourteen in the former. The sculptured designs of the pillars develop progressively, in a fashion which amazed me myself, as I worked at them. While I was making the model, shaping the pillars and their capitols, I was astonished at one thing in particular. There is no question here of something “symbolical”. People who have spoken and written about the Building, saying that all sorts of symbols are introduced, and that Anthroposophists work by means of symbols, are wrong. No symbol, such as they have in mind, is to be found in the whole Building; each part of the whole springs out of the conception in its entirety. Neither does the smallest part signify (I an using “signify” in its worst sense) anything unconnected with the artistic conception. This unbroken development of the designs on the capitols and architraves has been the outcome of artistic perception, one form out of its predecessor; and while, I developed one from the other, there arose, as of itself, a reflection of evolution, of the true evolution of nature, not as understood by Darwinism. That was not intended, but it arose spontaneously, in such a way that I could recognise, with amazement, how, for instance, certain human organs are simpler than those of certain species of lower animals. I have often pointed out that evolution does not consist in complication; the human eye is more perfect because it is simpler than the eye of an animal, reverting to simplicity.—I noticed that after the fourth of these designs a simplification was necessary. The more perfect one emerged precisely as the simpler.

This was not the only thing which struck me. Comparing the first pillar with the seventh, the second with the sixth, the third with the fifth, I was surprised to see that a remarkable correspondence came to light. In the carvings there are, of course, some raised surfaces and others hollowed out; these were elaborated purely from intuitive feeling and visual sense. Yet, taking the capitol and base of the seventh, and thinking of the whole and its separate parts, one could superimpose the high surfaces of the seventh on the hollow surfaces of the first, and vice versa. The raised surfaces of the first exactly fitted the hollow surfaces of the seventh. I mean this as a matter of convex and concave, of course. Symmetry, not merely external, but from within, was the result. Really, in this interchange and the working of it out in sculpture, something arose that was like bringing architecture into movement and sculpture into repose. It was all at the same time wood-carving and architecture.

The whole Building has a concrete foundation, with inner motives which will surprise visitors when they first come there. Of course they come with preconceived notions, compare it with what they have seen elsewhere, and are astonished. Many, not knowing what to make of it, have called it a “futurist Building”. The lines of the concrete part are designed in accordance with the capacities of concrete, the new material, to express artistic form; but within the concrete frame an attempt is made to construct pillar-like supports. These came of themselves to look like elementary beings, gnome-like, growing up out of the fissured earth, while at the same time they support the weight above—so that it can be seen that they are for support but bear the heavier part, push it, throw it back, and do this in a different way f or the lighter parts. Such is the substructure of the wooden part.

In Munich it would have been a case of inner architecture only; windows were necessary for the Dornach Building. To understand these, I would ask you first to make the effort to grasp the whole idea of the wooden building. As it stands, it has really no claim to be artistic; it is not a work of art. As regards pillars, walls, and windows, it is so. The entire Building, which is to have no decorative character, to be constructed with no decorative purpose, is meant to arouse, through every line and every surface-shape, certain experiences and thoughts in those who behold it. The eye, the sensitive eye, must trace the direction of the lines and the surface-shape. What is experienced in the soul, when one's gaze takes in works of art, this is first aroused by a “work of art” in the wood-carving. It arises first in human feeling. The concrete foundation and the wooden part are the preparation for it. Man himself must bring into being a work of art through his appreciation of the forms. What has been worked into the wood is so to speak, the more “Spiritual” part of the Building. A work of art really comes into existence only when the soul of the listener or speaker is inwardly receptive.

Then it was necessary to provide windows for the space between each pair of pillars. If the windows were to carry out the idea of the Building, a distinctive workmanship in glass was needed. Sheets of glass in plain colour were taken and the appropriate designs etched into them, so that here we have etchings in glass. With an enlarged form of dentist's drill, enough was ground out of the thick sheet of glass to give varying thicknesses to it—and this produced the design. Each sheet of glass is of one colour only; the colours are so placed as to yield a harmony in their sequence. Viewed from the entrance, the Building shows a window of the same colour on each side of the axis of symmetry, so that there is colour harmony in evolution. Still the window, as a “work of art”, is not complete. It becomes complete only when the sun shines through it so that in the scheme of the windows something is created which forms a work of art with the co-operation of living nature from outside. Etched on these sheets of glass you will find much of the content of our Spiritual Sciences imaginatively perceived—the dreaming man, the waking man in his real being, various mysteries of creation, and so on. All this in terms of perception, not in symbols; all artistically intended, but complete only with the sunlight. Hence, through yet another means, we have tried here also to surmount the feeling of an enclosed space. In the wood-carving, architecture and sculptures the pure forms are used to give the soul an impression of overcoming the enclosed space and going out beyond it. This effect is first conveyed directly to the senses through the windows. The union with the sunlight which shines through, streaming from the universe through the visible world, is something belonging to these windows. Between these two parts of the whole there is a certain correspondence. Through the conjunction of light and glass-etching there arises for the soul an external work of art; while the wood-carving provides a spiritual element which is experienced as a work of art within the human soul itself.

The third part consists of the paintings in the domes. The subjects of these too, are taken from our Spiritual Science. The paintings express the content of our conception of the world, with regard at least to a great macrocosmic stretch of time. Here we have, so to say, the physical “part” of the thing, because in painting, for certain inner reasons, (to go into them would take us too far) whatever one wants to present must be presented directly. Colour must itself express what it has to express, and so with the lines. Only through the content can the endeavour be made to go out beyond the borders of the dome into the macrocosm; that is how one arrives at it. All that is painted there really belongs to the macrocosm, its meaning presented directly to the eye—We tried, by using colours derived from pure vegetable substances which have their own light-force, to produce the light-force necessary for the painting, of these designs. Of course, we might have succeeded better, but for the war. However, it is only a beginning. Naturally the whole style of painting had to conform to our conception. To paint the spiritual content of the world means that we have to do, not with forms thought of as illuminated from an outside source, but with forms that are self-luminous. Quite a different approach to painting is necessary. For instance, the human aura cannot be painted in the same way as a physical shape, which is drawn with light and shade, according to the source of light. In the aura we have to do with a self-illumined object, and the character of the painting must therefore be quite different.

So now I have given you, with a few rough strokes, as far as it can be done without a model, some idea of what the Bau is meant to be. As a whole it is oriented from West to East, the axis of symmetry lying in that direction, between the and it cuts into the small circular space, containing the stage, at its eastern end. At this eastern end, between the sixth pillar on either hand, stands a group of figures carved in wood. Its intention is to present in ,artistic form something—I might say—which lies at the heart of the world-conception which we hold through Spiritual Science; something which must, by necessity enter into man's spiritual outlook now and in the future. Man must learn to grasp the fact that everything of importance for the shaping of world-destiny and for human life runs its course in these three streams: the normal spiritual stream in which his life is set, the Luciferic, and the Ahrimanic. In everything, as much in the foundation of the physical world as in the manifestations of spiritual events, divine evolution is interwoven with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic evolution. This is expressed in our carved group, again not symbolically, but artistically. A group carved in wood! The idea of it came to me, for I believe I have grasped as thought what is not yet clear to me so far as its occult basis is concerned: it may well be that future occult investigation will reveal this. Still, it seems to me certainly right that the ancient themes are better portrayed in stone or metal, and all Christian ones—ours being in the most eminent sense Christian—better in wood. I cannot help confessing that I have always been obliged to think of the group in St. Peter's at Rome, the “Pieta” of Michael Angelo, as being made of wood: only so, I believe can it represent what it ought to express, and the same applies to other Christian sculpture I have seen. There is doubtless something behind this feeling; but I have not yet arrived at the reason of it. Therefore our group has been conceived and carried out in wood.

The leading figure is a kind of representative of humanity, a Being expressing Man in his divine manifestation. I am glad when anyone, looking at this figure, has the feeling that it is a representation of Christ Jesus. It seemed to me inartistic to take as the underlying impulse: “I will carve a figure of Christ Jesus”. I wanted to produce just what I did. The result may be a feeling in the beholder that it is Christ Jesus. I should be most glad if that were so; but the artistic idea was not to produce a representation of Him. The idea rests purely in the artistic form, in its manner of expression; to set out to carve a figure of Christ Jesus—that would have been merely a descriptive, programmatic idea. The artistic thought must rest in the form, at any rate in sculpture.

The whole group is about eight and a half metres high, and the chief figure is raised, with rocks behind and below it. From the rocks below, which are a little hollowed, grows an Ahriman-figure. It half lies within a hole of the rock, its head above it. On the slightly hollowed rock stands the chief figure. Above the Ahriman-figure and to the left of the beholder, a second Ahriman-figure rears itself from the rocks, so that the Ahriman-figure is repeated. Above the one to the left is a Lucifer-figure. A sort of artistic connection exists between the Lucifer above and the Ahriman below. A short distance away, over the chief figure, and on the right of the onlooker, is another Lucifer-figure, so that Lucifer is also twice represented. This other Lucifer is marred, and falls headlong owing to his injury. The right hand of the central figure points downwards, the left upwards, and this upward pointing left hand indicates exactly the point of the fracture suffered by Lucifer, through which he is shattered and falls headlong. The right hand and arm point to the Ahriman below and bring him to despair. The whole group is so designed—I hope it will convey this experience—,that this central figure is in no way aggressive, but intended by its gesture t0 express only love. However, neither Lucifer nor Ahriman can endure this love. The Christ does not “fight against” Ahriman, but radiates love. Lucifer and Ahriman cannot endure this love near them. It comes near them; Ahriman feels despair, the destruction of his very being, and Lucifer falls headlong. Their inner nature is revealed in their gestures.

The figures were naturally not easy to create, for the reason that, in the case of the chief figure partly, and in that of Lucifer and Ahriman wholly, the Spiritual had to be depicted, and of all things it is most difficult to express the Spirit in carving. The endeavour was made, however, to achieve what is especially necessary for our purpose—to bring out the significance of the form (although it must remain an artistically conceived form), in gesture and in mien. Human beings are really able to make use of gesture and mien only in a very restricted sense. Lucifer and Ahriman are entirely gesture and mien. Spiritual figures have not got a limited form; there is no such thing as a complete spiritual figure. To try to model the Spirit is just like trying to model lightning. The form of a spiritual being chances from moment to moment. That must be taken into account. Try to hold a Spiritual shape fast even for a moment, as might be done in representing a form at rest, and you will not succeed; the result will be only a frozen figure. Hence, in such a case, gesture alone must be reproduced. This is so with Lucifer and Ahriman entirely, and it had to be partially attempted also in the central figure, which is of course a physical form—Christ-Jesus.

Now I want to show you a few pictures, to give you an idea of the principal group. [Here some lantern slides were shown. The description follows.]

The first is of Ahriman's head, exactly as the figure first came to me; as a man (remember the threefold division of man into head, breast, and limb-being) who is all head, and therefore an instrument for the most consummate cleverness, intellectuality and craft. The Ahriman figure is meant to express this: his head, as you see it here, is true “spirit”, to use a paradox; but you know how often a paradox results from a spiritual description. He is actually like the model, faithful in spirit, artistically true to nature: he had to sit for his portrait!

The next is Lucifer, as seen on the left. To understand him, we must picture what appears as his form in a very peculiar way. The most Ahrimanic characteristic in man must be eliminated: the head vanishes; but the ears and ear-muscles, the outer ear, substantially enlarged and of course spiritualised are depicted as wings and formed into an organ entwined round the body with wings at the some time spreading from the larynx, so that the head, wings and ears form one organ. These wings, this head-organ, present themselves as the figure of Lucifer. Lucifer is an extended larynx—the larynx becomes a whole figure out of which develops, through a sort of wine, a connection with the ear; so that we must imagine Lucifer as a being who receives the music of the spheres, takes it in through this organ of ear combined with wine. Without any help from the individuality, the cosmos, the music of the spheres itself, speaks through this same organ, of which the extension in front is the larynx; another metamorphosis of the human form, an organ composed of larynx-ear-wing. Therefore the head is only indicated. As to Ahriman, you will find, when you see the figure at Dornach, that it is developed out of what one imagines as form; but what appears as Lucifer's head (although you can hardly picture your own as being like his) is something in the highest decree “beautiful”. The Ahrimanic nature is intellectual, clever—but appears as ugly in the world; the Luciferic appears as beautiful in the world. Between them they comprise everything in the world. Youth and childhood are more Luciferic, old age is more Ahrimanic; the impulses of the past lean to the Luciferic, those of the future to the Ahrimanic; women are more inclined to Lucifer, men to Ahriman; the two streams embrace everything.

Above Lucifer an elemental being arises as it were out of the rock. The group was complete, but when it was released from its framework, the curious fact was noticed that the centre of gravity (naturally as viewed) seemed too far to the right, and something had to be added to redress the balance—evidently so brought about by karma. It was not a case of merely introducing a mass of rocks, but of following out the idea of the carving; therefore this elemental being sprang into existence, in a sense crowing out of the rocks. There is a noticeable thing about this being, although expressed only in slight indications; in it one can see how an asymmetry comes into play, directly spiritual forms are in question. It finds only limited expression in the physical, the left eye is not very different from the right; the same with the ear and the nostril; but directly we enter the spiritual realm, the etheric body is seen to work absolutely differently on the two sides. The left side of the etheric body is quite different from the right: a fact which immediately becomes evident in trying to portray spiritual forms. If you walk round this being, you will get a different view from every point. But in the asymmetry you will see a kind of necessity; it expresses the demeanour with which the being peeps over the rocks and looks down with a certain humour at the group below. This looking down over the rocks with a humorous air has a good reason. The right attitude for raising oneself into the higher world is never a sentimental one. Mere sentimentality is of no use for the man who wants to toil up the spiritual heights, in the right way, for it always smacks of egoism. You know how often, when the highest spiritual subjects are being discussed, I mix with our considerations something not designed to take you out of the mood, but simply to banish any egoistic sentimentality from it. A genuine ascent to the spiritual must be undertaken in purity of soul (which is never destitute of humour), not from a motive of egoistic sentimentality.

Then, as to the head of the central figure in profile, as of necessity it revealed itself. The head also had to be asymmetrical, because in this figure the intention was to show how not only the right hand, the left hand, the right arm and so on reflect the inner being of the soul, but how in a being living entirely in the soul, as Christ-Jesus did, this reflection is seen also in the very shape of the brow and in the whole figure, far more than can be the case in the mien of the ordinary man. We made a trial by reversing the lantern-slide, (although this was contrary to reality) to see whether the view thus obtained was quite different. It proved to be so. The impression made Was different. The artistic intention of the asymmetry will be apparent only when the head of the central figure is complete.

It may well be said that in working out such a subject all artistic questions have to be considered; the smallest has its connection with the far-reaching., whole. For instance, the handling of surface. Life has to be engendered specially through this. The surface curved once and the curve curved again—this particular handling of it, the doubling of the curve, thus drawing life out of the surface itself, is perceived only in fashioning these things. What we were aiming at, therefore, consisted not only in what was represented but in a certain artistic treatment of the subject. To achieve a representation of the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic, or of human nature by means of a copy, in a kind of narrative style, was not the intention; rather must it be seized through the fingertips, in the chiselling of the surface, in the entire artistic moulding. The expansion which man feels when he extends his view into the Spiritual, widens out again on the other side into the artistic.

This group is placed at the eastern end of the building, in the space provided for the stage. Above it is spread the vault of the smaller dome, decorated as I have described, in such a way as to continue in painting; the theme of the croup. The Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman are all there, and we have tried to make the colours artistically expressive in themselves. The variety of treatment shows how all these things can be brought out purely by artistic means.

All this could be achieved only because a number of our friends worked on the Building with the greatest devotion. Most curious things have been said about the Building, but some day, perhaps, due credit will be given to tag way in which the friends in our Movement, especially the artists, gave themselves with selfless devotion to it, and found their way wonderfully into this clothing of a cosmic conception in artistic form.

The Building is of course not complete; it might very probably have been so—except for the group—if these catastrophic world-events had not hindered it.

I wanted to bring before you, in these brief, disjointed sentences, an idea of what is intended, and I hope that you have at least acquired some small notion of the Building which, we may expect, will one day stand complete in Dornach. The aim of it all is this: to insert an artistic rendering of our cosmic conception into the spiritual life of the present and the future. People will see that this conception is no mere theory, but is made up of real, living forces. If we had produced something symbolical, people could have said: “That is a theory.” But as the conception is capable of giving birth to art, it is something different, something vital. It will give birth to yet other things; it must fructify other domains of life. There is widespread longing for a spiritual life suitable to the present day, but in this realm we encounter a good deal of visionary, irrational and barren stuff. My hope is that people will learn to distinguish between what is born out of the demands of the present spiritual age, and what arises from confusion and the like. We see spiritual movements, so-called, sprinting up everywhere like mushrooms. But one must learn to distinguish between what springs truly from the real forces of human spiritual development, and mistaken talk about spiritual things. There are many forms of this to-day. Naturally we notice it, for it shows that men are striving towards the spirit. If we keep our eyes open, we shall everywhere see this desire for Spiritual things. A metaphysical novel by a certain Herr Korf has just appeared—dreadful stuff; it is really more a mischievous piece of propagands for the “Star in the East”. I hope that such things, which express in their own way a perversion of man's metaphysical aspirations, will be distinguished from those created out of she fundamental strivings of his being, adapted precisely for our time.

First, I would like to thank the Vice Chancellor of this University, and you yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, for your friendly welcome. I hope that I can make myself understood, despite my inability to speak your language. Indeed, I apologize for my lack in that respect.

The theme that I shall present tonight and tomorrow night is the educational principles and methods based on anthroposophy. And so, here, right at the beginning, I must ask you not to look on the aims of anthroposophy as wishing to be in any way subversive or revolutionary—with respect either to scientific matters or any of the other many aspects of life where anthroposophy seeks to be productive.

On the contrary, anthroposophy seeks only to deepen and develop what has already been prepared by the recent spiritual culture of humanity. However, because of anthroposophy’s deepened insight into human life and knowledge of the universe, it necessarily looks for a corresponding deepening and insight in contemporary scientific thinking. Likewise, it also looks for different ways of working practically in life—different from more accustomed and conventional ways.

Because of this, anthroposophy has found itself opposed by representatives of the spirit of the day. But it does not want to become involved in hostilities of this kind, nor does it wish to engage in controversy. Rather, it aims to guide the fundamental achievements of modern civilization toward a fruitful goal. This is the case, above all, in the field of education. Apart from my small publication, The Education of the Child from the Viewpoint of Spiritual Science, published several years ago, I had no particular reason to publish a more detailed account of our educational views until, with the help of Emil Molt, the Waldorf school in Stuttgart was founded.

With the founding of the Waldorf school, anthroposophy’s contribution to the field of education entered the public domain. The Free Waldorf school itself is the outcome of longings that made themselves felt in many different parts of Central Europe after the end of the last, catastrophic war. One of the many topics discussed during that time was the realization that perhaps the most important of all social questions was about education. And, prompted by purely practical considerations, Emil Molt founded the Free Waldorf school, originally for the children of the employees of his Waldorf Astoria Factory. At first, therefore, we only had children whose parents were directly connected with Molt’s factory. During the last two years, however, children from different backgrounds have also entered the school. Hence, the Waldorf school in Stuttgart today educates children from a wide range of backgrounds and classes. All of these children can benefit from an education based on anthroposophy. In education, above all, anthroposophy does not wish to introduce revolutionary ideas, but seeks only to extend and supplement already existing achievements. To appreciate those, one need only draw attention to the contribution of the great educators of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Anyone with education at heart can feel only enthusiasm for their comprehensive ideas and powerful principles. Yet, despite all of this, there remain urgent problems in our present education. As a result, not a year passes in which a longing for the renewal of education does not make itself felt in society.

Why should it be that, on one hand, we can be enthusiastic about the convincing educational ideas expressed by the great educators of our times, while, on the other, we experience a certain disenchantment and dissatisfaction in how education is carried out?

Let me give just one example. Pestalozzi has become world famous. He certainly belongs among the great educators of our time. Nevertheless, thinkers of Herbert Spencer’s caliber have pointed out in the strongest terms that, although one might be in full agreement with Pestalozzi’s educational principles, one cannot help realizing that the great expectations raised by them have not been fulfilled with their practical application. Decades ago, Spencer already concluded that despite Pestalozzi’s sound and even excellent pedagogical ideas, we are unable at present to apply his general principles in practical classroom situations. I wish to repeat, ladies and gentlemen, that it is not new ideas that anthroposophy wants to introduce. Anthroposophy is mainly concerned with actual teaching practice.

Just as the Waldorf school in Stuttgart grew out of the immediate needs of a given life situation, what exists today as anthroposophical pedagogy and the anthroposophical method of education is not a product of theories or abstract principles but grows out of the need to deal practically with human affairs. Anthroposophy feels confident of being able to offer specific contributions for solution of human problems, particularly in the realm of education. What, then, are the fundamentals of this anthroposophy?

Anthroposophy has frequently drawn hostility and opposition, not because of an understanding of what it seeks to accomplish for the world, but rather because of misconceptions regarding it. Those within anthroposophy fully understand such hostility. For, on the basis of natural science and the cultural achievements of our times, modern humanity generally believes itself to have found a unified conception of the world. Anthroposophy then steps in with a call to our contemporaries to think about themselves and the world in an apparently quite different way. The contradiction, however, is only apparent. But people think initially that the insights provided by anthroposophy cannot be reconciled with the claims made by natural science.

Today, the human physical and bodily constitution is being thoroughly studied, on solid grounds, following the admirable and exact methods of modern natural science. And, as far as the human soul is concerned, its existence is no longer generally denied. On the contrary, the number of those who deny the existence of the soul and speak of “human psychology without a soul,” as many did for a time, has already dwindled. Yet the soul itself is only observed by means of research into its physical aspects and by guesswork done on the basis of physical manifestations. Under such conditions, it is impossible to derive an educational practice, even with the best of theories and premises.

Thus, Herbert Spencer profoundly regrets the lack of a proper psychology for modern educational principles. But a true child psychology cannot possibly grow from the modern natural-scientific view of life. Anthroposophy, on the other had, believes that it is able to offer the basis for a true psychology, for real care of the human soul. However, it is a psychology, a care of the soul, that admittedly requires an approach very different from that of other contemporary psychological investigations.

It is all too easy to poke fun at anthroposophists who speak of other supersensible bodies, or sheaths, in addition to the physical body. It is often said that anthroposophy, when it speaks of the etheric body, which I also call the “body of formative forces,” has invented or built up some strange fantasy, vision, or illusion. What anthroposophy says, however, is simply that a human being possesses not only a sense-perceptible, physical body (that can be examined according to established medical practice and whose underlying natural laws can be grasped by our intellectual capacity to systematize manifold phenomena) but also an etheric body, or a body of formative forces, that is of a more refined nature than the physical body and—apart from the etheric body—a still higher and more refined member of the human being, called the astral body. In anthroposophy, furthermore, we also speak of a very special aspect of the human being, which is summarized only by each individual’s own self-awareness and is expressed by the word “I.”

At first, there seems to be little justification for speaking of these higher aspects of the human being. By way of introduction, however, I would like to show how in actual and practical life situations—which are the basis of our educational views—anthroposophy speaks about, for example, the human etheric body.

This etheric body is not a nebulous cloud that is somehow membered into the physical body and perhaps extends a little beyond it here and there. Initially, of course, it is possible to imagine it like this but in reality it appears quite differently to anyone using anthroposophical methods of observation. The etheric body, in fact, is primarily a kind of regulatory agency and points to something that belongs, not so much to the human spatial organization, but to something of the nature of a “time organism.”

When we study the human physical body, according to present day natural-scientific methods, we know that we can do so by studying its various organic parts—such as the liver, the stomach, or the heart—as separate entities. But we can also study those same organs from the viewpoint of their various functions and interrelationships within the whole human organism. We cannot understand certain areas of the human brain, for example, without knowing how they affect other organs, such as the liver, the stomach, and so on, effects that are instrumental in regulating the nourishment of those organs. We thus look upon the spatial, physical organism as having its own specific interrelationships. We see the physical organism as something in which single members affect each other in definite and determined ways.

Anthroposophy sees what it calls the human etheric body in the same way. It assigns to it an existence in time, but not in space as in the case of the physical body. What we call the human etheric body manifests itself at birth or, rather, conception and continues to develop through life until the point of death.

Disregarding the fact that a person can die before his or her natural life span has been reached, let us for the moment consider the normal course of a human life—in which case we may say that the etheric body continues its development through old age until the moment of death.

In what develops in this way, anthroposophical investigation sees an organic wholeness. Indeed, as the human spatial body is composed of various members—such as the head as the carrier of the brain, the chest organs as carriers of speech and breathing, and so on—so what manifests as the human etheric organization is likewise composed of various life periods, one following the other in the flow of time. We thus distinguish between the various component parts of the etheric body—which, as already stated, must be observed as existing in time and as consisting of spatially separated parts—by first considering the period from approximately a child’s birth to its change of teeth. We can see an important part of the etheric body in this life period, just as we can see the head or the lungs in the physical body. Thereafter, we see its second member lasting from the second dentition until puberty and, though less clearly differentiated, we can also distinguish further life periods during the subsequent course of life. Thus, for instance, at the twentieth year, a completely new quality in a person’s psychic and physical life begins to manifest. But, just as, for example, the cause of certain headaches can be traced to malfunctioning of the stomach or the liver, so can certain processes undergone in one’s twenties or even during later life be traced back to definite happenings during the time between birth and the change of teeth. Just as it is possible to see processes of digestion affecting processes occurring in the brain, so is it possible to see the effects of what happened during a child’s first seven years of life up, to the second dentition, expressed in the latest period of adult life.

When studying psychology, we generally find that only the present situation of a person’s soul life is observed. Characteristics of a child’s capacity of comprehension, memory, and so on are observed. Without wishing to neglect those aspects, students of anthroposophy must also ask themselves the following kind of question. If a child becomes subject to certain influences, say in the ninth year, how does that affect the deeper regions of his or her etheric psychic life and in what form will it re-emerge later on? I would like to illustrate this in more detail by giving you a practical example.

By means of our pedagogical approach, we can convey to a child still at a tender age a feeling of reverence and respect for what is sublime in the world. We can enhance that feeling into a religious mood through which a child can learn how to pray. I am purposely choosing a somewhat radical example of a moral nature. Thus, let us suppose that we guide a child so that it can let such a mood of soul flow into a sincere prayer. This mood will take possession of the child, entering the deeper regions of its consciousness. And, if we observe not only the present state of a person’s soul life but his or her whole psychic constitution as it develops up to the moment of death, we will find that what came into existence through the reverence felt by the praying child goes “underground” to be transmuted in the depths of the soul. At a certain point, perhaps not before the person’s thirties or forties, what was present in the devotional attitude of a praying child resurfaces as a power of blessing, emanating from the words spoken by such a person—especially when he or she addresses children.

In this way, we can study the whole human being in relation to his or her soul development. As we relate the physical to the spatial—for example, the stomach to the head—so can we relate and study through the course of a life what the power of prayer might have planted in a child, perhaps in the eighth or ninth year. We may see it re-emerge in older age as the power to bless, as a force of blessing, particularly when meeting the young. One could put this into the following words—unless one has learned to pray in childhood in a true and honest manner, one cannot spread an air of blessing in one’s forties or fifties.

I have purposely chosen this somewhat radical example and those among you who are not of a religious disposition will have to take it more in its formal meaning. Namely, what I wanted to point out was that, according to anthroposophical pedagogy, it is not just the present situation of a child’s soul life that must be considered; rather, the entire course of a human life must be included in one’s considerations. How such an attitude affects one’s pedagogical work will become plainly visible. Whatever a teacher or educator might be planning or preparing regarding any educational activity, there will always be the question in mind, what will be the consequences in later life of what I am doing now with the child? Such an attitude will stimulate an organic, that is, a living pedagogy.

It is so easy to feel tempted to teach children clearly defined and sharply contoured concepts representing strict and fixed definitions. If one does so, it is as if one were putting a young child’s arms or legs, which are destined to continue their growth freely until a certain age, into rigid fetters. Apart from looking after a child’s other physical needs, we must also ensure that its limbs grow naturally, unconstricted, especially while it is still at the growing stage. Similarly, we must plant into a child’s soul only concepts, ideas, feelings, and will impulses that, because they are not fixed into sharp and final contours, are capable of further development. Rigid concepts would have the effect of fettering a child’s soul life instead of allowing it to evolve freely and flexibly. Only by avoiding rigidity can we hope that what we plant into a child’s heart will emerge during later life in the right way.

What, then, are the essentials of an anthroposophically based education? They have to do with real insight into human nature. This is something that has become almost impossible on the basis of contemporary natural science and the scientific conception of the world. In saying this, I do not wish to imply any disregard for the achievements of psychology and pedagogy. These sciences are the necessary outcome of the spirit of our times. Within certain limits, they have their blessings. Anthroposophy has no wish to become embroiled in controversy here either. It seeks only to further the benefits that these sciences have created. On the other hand, we must also ask what the longing for scientific experimentation with children means. What does one seek to discover through experiments in children’s powers of comprehension, receptivity to sense impressions, memory, and even will? All of this shows only that, in our present civilization, the direct and elementary relationship of one soul to another has been weakened. For we resort today increasingly to external physical experimentation rather than to a natural and immediate rapport with the child, as was the case in earlier times. To counterbalance such experimental studies, we must create new awareness and knowledge of the child’s soul. This must be the basis of a healthy pedagogy. But, to do so, we must become thoroughly familiar with what I have already said about the course of an individual’s life. This means that we must have a clear perception of the first life period, which begins at birth or conception, and reaches a certain conclusion when the child exchanges its milk teeth.

To anyone with an unbiased sense of observation, a child appears completely changed at the time of the change of teeth—the child appears different, another being. Only if we can observe such a phenomenon, however, can we reach a real knowledge of human beings.

Our understanding of the higher principles of the world has not kept pace with what natural science demands of our understanding of the lower principles. I need only remind you of what science says about “latent heat.” This is heat contained by a physical substance without being outwardly detectable. But, when such a substance is subjected to certain outer conditions, the heat radiates outward, emitting what is then called “liberated heat.” Science today speaks of forces and interrelationships of substances in the inorganic realm, but scientists do not yet dare to use such exact methods to deal with phenomena in the human realm. Consequently, what is said of body, soul, and spirit remains abstract and leaves those three aspects of the human being standing beside one another, as it were, with no real interconnection. We can observe the child growing up until the change of teeth and, if we do so without preconceptions, we can detect how, just after this event, the child’s memory assumes a different character; how certain faculties and abilities of thinking begin to manifest; how memory works through more sharply delineated concepts, and so on. We can observe that the inner soul condition of the child undergoes a definite change after the second dentition. But what exactly happened in the child?

Today, I can only point in certain directions. Further details can be found with the help of natural science. When observing a child growing up from the earliest stage until the second teeth appear, one can discern the gradual manifestation of an inner quality, emerging from the depths and surfacing in the outer organization. One can see above all how, during those years, the head system develops. If we observe this development without preconceptions, we can detect a current flowing through the child, from below upward. At first, a young baby, in a state of helplessness, is unable to walk. It has to lie all the time and be carried everywhere. Then, as months pass, we observe a strong force of will, expressed in uncoordinated, jerky movements of the limbs, that gradually leads to the faculty of walking. That powerful force, working upward from the limb system, also works back upon the entire organization of the child.

And, if we make a proper investigation of the metamorphosis of the head, from the stage when the child has to lie all the time and be carried everywhere to the time when it is able to stand on its own legs and walk—which contemporary science also clearly shows us and is obvious physiologically, if we learn to look in the right direction—then we find how what manifests in the child’s limb system as the impulse for walking is related to the area of the brain that represents the will organization. We can put this into words as follows. As young children are learning to walk, they are developing in their brains—from below upward, from the lower limbs and in a certain way from the periphery toward the center—their will organization.

In other words: when learning to walk, a child develops the will organization of the brain through the will activity of its lower limbs.

If we now continue our observation of the growing child, we see the next important phase occur in the strengthening of the breathing organization. The breathing assumes what I should like to call a more individual constitution, just as the limb system did through the activity of walking. And this transformation and strengthening of the breathing—which one can observe physiologically—is expressed in the whole activity of speaking.

In this instance, there is again a streaming in the human organization from below upward. We can follow quite clearly what a young person integrates into the nervous system by means of language. We can see how, in learning to speak, ever greater inwardness of feeling begins to radiate outward. As a human being, learning to walk becomes integrated into the will sphere of the nervous system, so, in learning to speak, the child’s feeling life likewise becomes integrated.

A last stage can be seen in an occurrence that is least observable outwardly and that happens during the second dentition. Certain forces that had been active in the child’s organism, indwelling it, come to completion, for the child will not have another change of teeth. The coming of the second teeth reveals that forces that have been at work in the entire organism have come to the end of their task. And so, just as we see that a child’s will life is inwardly established through the ability to walk, and that a child’s feeling life is inwardly established by its learning to speak so, at the time of the change of teeth, around the seventh year, we see the faculty of mental picturing or thinking develop in a more or less individualized form that is no longer bound to the entire bodily organization, as previously.

These are interesting interrelationships that need to be studied more closely. They show how what I earlier called the etheric body works back into the physical body. What happens is that, with the change of teeth, a child integrates the rest of its organization into the head and the nerves.

We can talk about these things theoretically, but nothing is gained by that. Lately, we have become too accustomed to a kind of intellectualism, to certain forces of abstraction, when talking about scientific matters. What I described just now helps you to look at the growing human being not just intellectually: I have been trying to guide you to a more artistic way of observing growing human beings. This involves experiencing how every movement of a child’s limbs is integrated into its will organization and how feeling is integrated as the child learns to speak. It is wonderful to see, for example, what happens when someone—perhaps the mother or another—is with the child when it learns to speak the vowels. A quality corresponding to the soul being of the adult who is in the child’s presence flows into the child’s feeling through these vowels. On the other hand, everything that stimulates the child to perform its own movements in relation to the external world—such as finding the right relationship to warmth or coldness—leads to the speaking of consonants. It is wonderful to see how one part of the human organism, say moving of limbs or language, works back into another part. As teachers, we meet a child of school age when his or her second teeth are gradually appearing. Just at this time we can see how a force (not unlike latent heat) is liberated from the general growth process of the organism: what previously was at work within the organism is now active in the child’s soul life. When we experience all of this, we cannot but feel inspired by what is happening before our eyes.

But these things must not be grasped with the intellect; they must be absorbed with one’s whole being. If we do this, then a concrete, artistic sense will pervade our observations of the growing child. Anthroposophy offers practical guidance in recognizing the spirit as it manifests in outer, material processes. Anthroposophy does not want to lead people into any kind of mystical “cloud cuckoo land.” It wants to follow the spirit working in matter. In order to be able to do this—to follow the spirit in its creativity, its effectiveness—anthroposophy must stand on firm ground and requires the involvement of whole human beings. In bringing anthroposophy into the field of education, we do not wish to be dogmatic. The Waldorf school is not meant to be an ideological school. It is meant to be a school where what we can gain through anthroposophy with living inwardness can flow into practical teaching methods and actual teaching skills.

What anthroposophy gives as a conception of the world and an understanding of life assigns a special role to the teachers and educators in our school.

Here and there, a certain faith in life beyond death has remained alive in our present culture and civilization. On the other hand, knowledge of human life beyond death up to a new birth on earth has become completely lost.

Anthroposophical research makes it clear that we must speak of human pre-existence, of a soul-spiritual existence before birth. It shows how this can rightly illumine embryology. Today, one considers embryology as if what a human being brought with him into earthly life were merely a matter of heredity, of the physical effects of forces stemming from the child’s ancestors. This is quite understandable and we do not wish to remonstrate against such an attitude. In accordance with accepted modern methods, research is done into how the human germ develops in the maternal body. Researchers try to trace in the bodies of the mother and the father, in the parents’ bodies, the forces that manifest in the child and so on. But things are just not like that. What is actually happening in the parents’ bodies is not a process of construction but, to begin with, one of destruction. Initially, there is a return of the material processes to a state of chaos. And what plays into the body of an expectant mother is the entire cosmos itself.

If one has the necessary basis of observation, one can perceive how the embryo, especially during the first months of pregnancy, is formed not only by the forces of heredity, but by the entire cosmos. The maternal body is in truth the matrix for what is formed through cosmic forces, out of a state of chaos, into the human embryo.

It is quite possible to study these things on the basis of the existing knowledge in physiology, but we will in time regard them from an entirely different viewpoint. We would consider it sheer folly if a physicist claimed, “Here is a magnetic needle, one end of which points north while the opposite end points south: we must look for the force activating the needle within the space of the compass needle itself.” That would be considered nonsense in physics. To explain the phenomenon, we must consider the whole earth. We say that the whole earth acts as a kind of magnet, attracting one end of the needle from its north pole and the other from its south pole. In the direction seeking of the compass needle, we observe only one part of a whole complex phenomenon; to understand the whole phenomenon, we must go far beyond the physical boundary of the needle itself. The exact sciences have not yet shown a similar attitude in their investigations of human beings. When studying a most important process, such as the formation of the embryo, the attitude is as limited as if one were to seek the motivating force of a compass needle within the needle itself. That would be considered folly in physics. When we try to discover the forces forming the embryo within the physical boundaries of human beings, we behave just as if we were trying to find the forces moving a compass needle within the physical needle itself. To find the forces forming the human embryo, we must look into the entire cosmos. What works in this way into the embryo is directly linked to the soul-spiritual being of the one to be born as it descends from the soul-spiritual worlds into physical existence.

Here, anthroposophy shows us—however paradoxical it might sound—that, at first, the soul-spiritual part of the human being has least connection with the organization of the head. As a baby begins its earthly existence, its prenatal spirit and soul are linked to the rest of the organism excluding the head. The head is a kind of picture of the cosmos but, at the same time, it is the most material part of the body. One could say that at the beginning of human life, the head is least the carrier of the prenatal soul-spiritual life that has come down to begin life on earth.

Those who observe what takes place in a growing child from an anthroposophical point of view see that soul-spiritual qualities, at first concealed in the child, come to the surface in every facial expression, in the entire physiognomy, and in the expression of the child’s eyes. They also see how those soul-spiritual elements manifest initially in the development of the limb movements—from crawling to the child’s free walking—and next in the impulse to speak, which is closely connected with the respiratory system. They then see how these elements work in the child’s organism to bring forth the second teeth. They see, too, how the forces of spirit and soul work upward from below, importing from the outer world what must be taken in unconsciously at first, in order to integrate it then into the most material part of the human being—the organization of the head in thinking, feeling, and willing.

To observe the growing human being in this way, with a scientific artistic eye, indicates the kind of relationship to children that is required if we, their teachers, are to fulfill our tasks adequately as full human beings. A very special inner feeling is engendered when teachers believe that their task is to assist in charming from the child what divine and spiritual beings have sent down from the spiritual world. This task is indeed something that can be brought to new life through anthroposophy.

In our languages, we have a word, an important word, closely allied to the hopes and longings of many people. The word is “immortality.” But we will see human life in the right way only after we have a word as fitting for life’s beginning as we have for its ending—a word that can become as generally accepted and as commonly used as the word “immortality” (undyingness)—perhaps something like “unbornness.” Only if we have such a word will we be able to grasp the full, eternal nature of the human being. Only then will we experience a holy awe and reverence for what lives in the child through the ever creating and working spirit, streaming from below upward. During the first seven years, from birth to the second dentition, the child’s soul, together with the spiritual counterpart received from the life before birth, shapes and develops the physical body. At this time, too, the child is most directly linked to its environment.

There is only one word that adequately conveys the mutual relationship of the child to its surroundings at this delicate time of life when thinking, feeling and willing become integrated into the organs—and that word is: imitation. During the first period of life, a human being is an imitator par excellence. With regard to a child’s upbringing, this calls forth one all-important principle: when you are around a child, only behave in ways that that child can safely imitate. The impulse to imitate depends on the child’s close relationship to its surroundings in which imponderables of soul and spirit play their part.

One cannot communicate with children during these first seven years with admonitions or reprimands. A child of that age cannot learn simply on the authority of a grownup. It learns through imitation. Only if we understand that can we understand a child properly.

Strange things happen—of which I shall give an example that I have given before—when one does not understand this. One day, a father comes saying, “I am so unhappy. My boy, who was always such a good boy, has committed a theft.” How should such a case be considered? One asks the worried parent, “How old is your boy and what has he stolen?” The answer comes, “Oh, he is five years old. Until now, he has been such a good child, but yesterday he stole money from his mother. He took it out of the cupboard and bought sweets with it. He did not even eat them himself, but shared them with other boys and girls in the street.”

In a case like this, one’s response should probably go as follows. “Your boy has not stolen. Most likely, what happened was that he saw his mother every morning taking money from her cupboard to do the shopping for the household. The child’s nature is to imitate others, and so the boy did what he had seen his mother do. The concept of stealing is not appropriate in this case. What is appropriate is that—whenever we are in the presence of our children—we do only what they can safely imitate (whether in deeds, gestures, language, or even thought).”

If one knows how to observe such things, one knows that a child imitates in the most subtle, intimate ways. Anyone who acts pedagogically in the manner I have indicated discovers that whatever a child of that age does is based on imitation—even facial expressions. Such imitation continues until a child sheds its milk teeth. Until then, a child’s relationship to the surrounding world is extremely direct and real. Children of this age are not yet capable of perceiving with their senses and then judging their perceptions. All of this still remains an undifferentiated process. The child perceives with its senses and, simultaneously, this perception becomes a judgment; and the judgment simultaneously passes into a feeling and a will impulse. They are all one and the same process.

In other words, the child is entirely immersed in the currents of life and has not yet extracted itself from them.

The shedding of the milk teeth marks the first occurrence of this. The forces that had been active in the lower regions of the organism and—following the appearance of the second teeth—are no longer needed there, then manifest as forces in the child’s soul-spiritual sphere. At this point, the child enters the second period of life, which begins with the second dentition and ends in puberty. During this second period, the soul and spiritual life of the child becomes liberated, as—under given outer conditions previously cited—latent warmth is liberated. Before this period, we must look in the inner organism, in the organic forming of the physical organism, for the child’s soul and spirit.

This is the right way to explore the relationship between body and soul. Principles and relationships of all kinds are being expounded today in theory. According to one, the soul affects the body; according to another, everything that happens in the soul is only an effect of the body. The most frequently held opinion is so-called “psychophysical parallelism,” meaning that both types of process—soul-spiritual as well as physical-bodily ones—may be observed side by side. We can speculate at length about the relationship of spirit to body and body to spirit but, if we only speculate and do not engage in careful observation, we will not get beyond mere abstractions. We must not limit our observations to present conditions alone. We must say to ourselves, the forces that we witness as the child’s soul spiritual element during the period from the seventh to about the fourteenth year are the same ones that worked before in the lower organism in a hidden or latent way. We must seek in the child’s soul and spirit what is at work in the child from birth to the change of teeth and between the change of teeth and puberty. If we do this, we will gain a realistic idea of the relationship between soul and spirit on one side and the physical-bodily processes on the other.

Observe physical processes up to the second dentition and you will find the effects of soul and spirit. But, if you wish to observe the soul and spirit in its own right, then observe a child from the change of teeth until the coming of puberty. Do not proceed by saying, “Here is the body and the soul is somewhere within it; now I wish to find its effects.” No, we must now leave the spatial element altogether and enter the dimension of time. If we do so, we shall find a true, realistic relationship between body and soul, a relationship that leads to fruitful ideas for life. We shall learn, from a deeper point of view, how to care for a child’s physical health before the change of teeth, so that the child’s psychic and spiritual health can manifest appropriately afterward, during the second life period, from the change of teeth to puberty. Similarly, the health of the stomach reveals itself—in the time organism; that is, the etheric or body of formative forces—in the healthy condition of the head. That is the point.

And, if we want to study how to deal with the forces that are released from the physical organism between the change of teeth and puberty—and we are here dealing with one of the most important periods of a child’s life, let us call it the time of school duties—I must say, first of all, that they are formative forces, liberated formative forces, that have been building up the human organism, plastically and musically. We must treat them accordingly. Hence, initially, we must not treat them intellectually. To treat the formerly formative forces, which are now soul-spiritual forces, artistically, not intellectually, is the basic demand of anthroposophical pedagogy.

The essence of Waldorf education is to make education into an art—the art of the right treatment of children, if I may use the expression. A teacher must be an artist, for it is the teacher’s task to deal in the right way with the forces that previously shaped the child’s organism. Such forces need to be treated artistically—no matter which subject the teacher is to introduce to children entering the Waldorf school. Practically, this means that we begin not with reading but with writing—but learning to write must in no way be an intellectual pursuit. We begin by letting our young pupils draw and paint patterns and forms that are attuned to their will lives. Indeed, watching these lessons, many people would feel them to be rather a strange approach to this fundamental subject!

Each teacher is given complete freedom. We do not insist on a fixed pedagogical dogma but, instead, we introduce our teachers to the whole spirit of anthroposophical pedagogical principles and methods. For instance, if you were to enter a first grade class, you might see how one teacher has his or her pupils move their arms in the air to given rhythms. Eventually each pupil will then draw these on paper in the simplest form. Hence, out of the configuration of the physical organism—that is, out of the sphere of the children’s will—we elicit something that quite naturally assumes an artistic form and we gradually transform such patterns into the forms of letters. In this way, learning to write avoids all abstraction. Rather, writing arises in the same way as it originally entered human evolution. First, there was picture-writing, which was a direct result of outer reality. Then, gradually, this changed into our written symbols, which have become completely abstract. Thus, beginning with a pictorial element, we lead into the modern alphabet, which speaks to the intellect. Only after having first taught writing out of such artistic activities do we introduce reading. If teachers approach writing and reading in this way, working from an artistic realm and meeting the child with artistic intentions, they are able to appeal above all to a child’s forces of will. It is out of the will forces that, fundamentally speaking, all psychological and intellectual development must unfold. But, moving from writing to reading, a teacher is aware of moving from what is primarily a willing activity to one that has more of a feeling quality. The children’s thinking, for its part, can be trained by dealing with numbers in arithmetic.

If teachers are able to follow a child’s whole soul-spiritual configuration in detail as each child first draws single figures, which leads to formation of letters and then to writing words that are also read—and if they are able to pursue this whole process with anthroposophical insight and observation of growing human beings—then a true practice of teaching will emerge.

Only now can we see the importance of applying an artistic approach during the first years of school. Everything that is brought to a child through music in a sensible and appropriate way will show itself later as initiative. If we restrict a child’s assimilation of the musical element appropriate to the seventh to eighth year, we are laming the development of that child’s initiative, especially in later life. A true teacher of our time must never lose sight of the whole complex of such interconnections. There are many other things—we shall have to say more about them later—that must be observed not only year by year but week by week during the life period from the change of teeth to puberty.

There is one moment of special importance, approximately halfway through the second life period; that is, roughly between the ninth and tenth years. This is a point in a child’s development that teachers need to observe particularly carefully. If one has attained real insight into human development and is able to observe the time organism or etheric body, as I have described it, throughout the course of human life, one knows how, in old age, when a person is inclined to look back over his or her life down to early childhood days, among the many memory pictures that emerge, there emerge particularly vividly the pictures of teachers and other influential figures of the ninth and tenth years.

These more intimate details of life tend to be overlooked by natural-scientific methods of research that concentrate on more external phenomena. Unfortunately, not much attention is paid to what happens to a child—earlier in one child, later in another—approximately between the ninth and tenth years. What enters a child’s unconscious then emerges again vividly in old age, creating either happiness or pain, and generating either an enlivening or a deadening effect. This is an exact observation. It is neither fantasy nor mere theory. It is a realization that is of immense importance for the teacher. At this age, a child has specific needs that, if heeded, help bring about a definite relationship between the pupil and the teacher.

A teacher simply has to observe the child at this age to sense how a more or less innate and unspoken question lives in the child’s soul at this time, a question that can never be put into actual words. And so, if the child cannot ask the question directly, it is up to the teacher to bring about suitable conditions for a constructive resolution of this situation.

What is actually happening here?

One would hardly expect a person who, in the 1890’s [1894], wrote a book entitled The Philosophy of Freedom to advocate the principle of authority on any conservative or reactionary grounds. Yet, from the standpoint of child development alone, it must be said that, just as up to the change of teeth a child is a being who imitates, so, after this event, a child needs naturally to look up to the authority of the teacher and educator. This requires of the teacher the ability to command natural respect, so that a pupil accepts truths coming from the teacher simply because of the child’s loving respect, not on the strength of the child’s own judgments. A great deal depends on that.

Again, this is a case in which we need to have had personal experience. We must know from experience what it means for a child’s whole life—and for the constitution of a person’s soul—when children hear people talk of a highly respected member of their family, whom they have not yet met, but about whom all members of the household speak in hushed reverential tones as a wise, good, or for any other reason highly esteemed family member. The moment then arrives when the child is to be introduced to such a person for the first time. The child feels overcome by deep awe. He or she hardly dares open the door to enter into the presence of such a personality. Such a child feels too shy to touch the person’s hand. If we have lived through such an experience, if our souls have been deepened in childhood in this way, then we know that this event created a lasting impression and entered the very depths of our consciousness, to resurface at a later age. This kind of experience must become the keynote of the relationship between the teacher and the child. Between the change of teeth and puberty, a child should willingly accept whatever the teacher says on the strength of such a natural sense of authority.

An understanding of this direct elemental relationship can help a teacher become a real artist in the sense that I have already indicated.

During this same period, however, another feeling also lives in the child, often only dimly and vaguely felt. This is the feeling that those who are the objects of such authority must themselves also look up to something higher. A natural outcome of this direct, tangible relationship between the teacher and the child is the child’s awareness of the teacher’s own religious feelings and of the way in which the teacher relates to the metaphysical world-all. Such imponderables must not be overlooked in teaching and education. People of materialistic outlook usually believe that whatever affects children reaches them only through words or outer actions. Little do they know that quite other forces are at work in children!

Let us consider something which occasionally happens. Let us assume that a teacher thinks “I—as teacher—am an intelligent person, but my pupils are very ignorant. If I want to communicate a feeling for the immortality of the human soul to my students, I can think, for instance, of what happens when a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis. I can compare this event, this picture, with what happens when a person dies. Thus I can say to my children, ‘Just as the butterfly flies out of the chrysalis, so, after death, the immortal soul leaves the physical body.’ Such a comparison, I am certain, offers a useful simile for the child’s benefit.”

But if the picture—the simile—is chosen with an attitude of mental superiority on the part of the teacher, we find that it does not touch the pupils at all and, soon after hearing it, they forget all about it, because the teacher did not believe in the truth of his simile.

Anthroposophy teaches us to believe in such a picture and I can assure you that, for me, the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis is not a simile that I have invented. For me, the butterfly emerging out of the chrysalis is a revelation on a lower plane of what on a higher level represents the immortality of the human soul. As far as I am concerned, it is not I who created this picture out of my own reasoning; rather, it is the world itself that reveals the processes of nature in the emergence of a butterfly. That is what this picture means to me. I believe with every fibre of my soul that it represents a truth placed by the gods themselves before our eyes. I do not imagine that, compared with the child, I am wiser and the chid more foolish. I believe in the truth of this picture with the same earnestness that I wish to awaken in the child. If a teacher teaches with such an attitude, the child will remember it for the rest of his or her life.

Unseen supersensible—or shall we say imponderable—forces are at work here. It is not the words that we speak to children that matter, but what we ourselves are—and above all what we are when we are dealing with our children. This is especially important during the period between the ninth and tenth years, for it is during this time that the child feels the underlying background out of which a teacher’s words are spoken. Goethe said: “Consider well the what, but consider more the how.” A child can see whether an adult’s words express a genuine relationship with the supersensible world or whether they are spoken with a materialistic attitude—the words have a different “ring.” The child experiences a difference of quality between the two approaches. During this period between the ninth and tenth years, children need to feel, if only subconsciously, that as they look up to the authority of their teachers, their teacher likewise looks up to what no longer is outwardly visible. Then, through the relationship of teacher to child, a feeling for other people becomes transformed into a religious experience.

This, in turn, is linked to other matters—for example, the child’s ability to differentiate itself from its surroundings. This too is an inner change, requiring a change of approach toward the subjects taught. We shall speak of that tomorrow. In the meantime, one can see how important it is that certain moods of soul—certain soul conditions—form an intimate part of the theory and the practice of education.

When the plans for founding the Waldorf school in Stuttgart were nearing realization, the question of how to form the hearts and the souls of teachers so that they entered their classrooms and greeted their children in the right spirit was considered most important. I value my task of having to guide this school enormously. I also value the fact that, when I have been able to be there in person, the attitude about which I have been speaking has been much in evidence among the teaching staff, however varied the individual form of expression. Having heard what I have had to tell you, you now will realize the significance of a question that I always ask, not in the same words but in different ways each time, either during festive school occasions or when visiting different classes. The question is, “Children, do you love your teachers?” And the children respond “Yes!” in chorus with a sincere enthusiasm that reveals the truth of their answer. Breathing through all of those children’s souls, one can feel the existence of a bond of deep inner affection between teachers and pupils and that the children’s feeling for the authority of the teacher has become a matter of course. Such natural authority is meant to form the essence of our educational practice during these years of childhood.

Waldorf pedagogy is thus built not only upon principles and educational axioms—of which, thanks to the work of the great pedagogues, there are plenty in existence already—but, above all, upon the pedagogical skills in practical classroom situations, that is, the way each individual teacher handles his or her class. Such skill is made possible by what anthroposophy unfolds in the human soul and in the human heart. What we strive for is a pedagogy that is truly an art, an art arising from educational methods and principles founded on anthroposophy.

Of course, with such aims today, one must be prepared to make certain compromises. Hence, when the Waldorf school was opened, I had to come to the following arrangement with the school authorities. In a memorandum, worked out when the school was founded, I stipulated that our pupils should attain standards of learning comparable to those reached in other schools by the age of nine, so that, if they wanted, they would be able to transfer into the same class in another school. But, during the intervening years—that is, from when they entered school around six to the age of nine—I asserted our complete freedom to use teaching time according to our own methods and pedagogical point of view. The same arrangement was offered to pupils who stayed in the school through the age of twelve. Because they had reached the standards of learning generally expected at that age, they were again given the possibility of entering the appropriate classes in other schools.

The same thing happens again when our pupils reach puberty; that is, when they reach school-leaving age. But what happens in between is left entirely to our discretion. Hence we are able to ensure that it unfolds out of our anthroposophical understanding of human beings, just as our curriculum and educational aims do, which are likewise created entirely out of the child’s nature. And we try of course to realize these aims while leaving scope for individual differences. Even in comparatively large classes, the individuality of each single pupil is still allowed to play its proper part.

Tomorrow, we shall see what an incisive point of time the twelfth year is.

There is obviously a certain kind of perfection in education that will be attained only when we are no longer restricted by such compromises—when we are given complete freedom to deal with pupils all of the way from the change of teeth to puberty. Tomorrow, I shall indicate how this could be done. All the same, since life itself offered us the opportunity to do so, an attempt had to be made. Anthroposophy never seeks to demonstrate a theory—this always tends toward intellectuality—but seeks to engage directly in the fullness of practical life. It seeks to reveal something that will expand the scope of human beings and call into play the full potential of each individual. Certainly, in general terms, such demands have been made before. The what is known; with the help of anthroposophy, we must find the how. Today, I was able to give you a few indications regarding children up to the ninth year or so. When we meet again tomorrow, I shall speak in greater detail about the education of our children during the succeeding years.

There is no doubt that the Spiritual Science we have been studying for many years is beginning to make more and more headway in the world and to find increasing understanding in the hearts and minds of our contemporaries. It might be useful occasionally to speak of how the ideas of Spiritual Science are being made known and many of you would be glad to know what effect the spiritual nourishment you have yourselves received has had upon others at the present time. It is only now and then that I can speak of this spread of spiritual-scientific thought in the outer world, but it will be some satisfaction to you to know that we can see how the spirit inspiring us all is finding entry in various countries. I could see, for instance, that our ideas were beginning to find a footing when I was lecturing in the south of Austria, in Trieste, recently. Then, when I gave a course of lectures in Copenhagen¹ only a few days ago, there too it was evident that the spirit we are trying to cultivate under the symbol of the Rose Cross is gaining more and more ground. Signs such as these make it clear that there is a need and also a longing for what we call Spiritual Science.

It is fundamental to the spirit informing our Movement that we should refrain from any agitation or propaganda and far rather pay heed to the great, all-embracing wisdom needed by the hearts and souls of modern men if they are to feel any security in life to-day. It is our duty to make these spiritual thoughts into real nourishment for our souls. You will certainly have understood enough of the great law of Karma to know that it is by no chance or accident that an individual feels urged to come down into the physical world at this particular time. The souls of all of you here have felt the longing to incarnate in a physical body at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century because of a desire to experience what can be achieved in the present physical environment.

Let us look at our own epoch and see how its spiritual aspect appears to souls which, like yours, have been born into it. At the turn of the century conditions were very different from what they had been fifty or sixty years earlier. Human beings who—like all of you here—are growing up at the present time, attempt now and then to hear about the spiritual guidance and leadership of the world, about the spiritual forces and influences pervading the external world in the different kingdoms of nature and penetrating into the souls of men. But for the last fifty years a soul longing and searching for spiritual nourishment has found very little. This longing has been present in the depths of men's souls, although it may have been a very faint voice, easily silenced. Nevertheless the longing is there and everyone is seeking for spiritual nourishment, whatever his position in life and whatever use he may make of his faculties. No matter in what department of science you may be working to-day, you learn only external, material facts; they can be utilised very cleverly and ingeniously to advance modern culture but they are no help at all towards understanding what the spirit may reveal. No matter whether you are an artist or are engaged in some practical work, you will find little that can pass into head or hand to give you not only energy and impetus for your work but also security and comfort in life. By the beginning of the nineteenth century people had forebodings that in the near future very little spiritual nourishment would be left. During the first half of the century, when vestiges of an old spiritual life were still present, although in a different form, many people felt that there was something in the air presaging the complete disappearance of the ancient treasures of the spirit handed down by tradition from olden times. Yet it is precisely the legitimate progress of culture during the nineteenth century that will completely wipe out the spiritual traditions handed down from the past.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, many voices are to be heard speaking in this strain and I will quote one example of a man who lived during that period and had a wide knowledge of the old form of theosophy, but who also knew that owing to the course of events in that century it was bound to disappear; at the same time he was convinced that a future must come when there would be a revival of this old theosophy but in a new form. I am going to read you a passage written towards the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, in 1847. Its author was a thinker of a type no longer in existence to-day—men who were still sensitive to the last echoes of those old traditions which have now been lost for a considerable time.—

‘It is often difficult to learn among the older theosophists what the real purpose of theosophy is ... but it is clear that along the paths it has taken hitherto, theosophy can acquire no real existence as a science nor achieve any result in a wider sphere. Yet it would be very ill-advised to conclude that it is a phenomenon scientifically unjustifiable and also ephemeral. History itself decisively disproves this: it shows how this enigmatic phenomenon could never make itself really effective in the world but for all that was continually breaking through and was held together in its manifold forms by the chain of a never-dying tradition. ... At all times there have been very few in whom this insistent speculative need has been combined with a living religious need. But theosophy is for these few alone. ... The important thing is that if theosophy ever becomes scientific in the real sense and produces obvious and definite results, these will gradually become the general conviction, be acknowledged as valid truths and be universally accepted by those who cannot find their way along the only possible path by which they could be discovered.

But all this lies in the womb of the future which we do not wish to anticipate. For the moment let us be thankful for the beautiful presentation given by Oetinger, which will certainly be appreciated in wide circles.’

This shows what a man such as Rothe of Heidelberg felt about the theosophical spirit in 1847. The passage is from his Preface to a treatise on Oetinger, a theosophist living in the second half of the eighteenth century.

What, then, can be said about the spirit of theosophy? It is a spirit without which the genuine cultural achievements of the world would never have been possible. Thinking of its greatest manifestations, we shall say: Without it there would never have been a Homer, a Pindar, a Raphael, a Michelangelo; there would have been no depth of religious feeling in men, no truly spiritual life and no external culture. Everything that man creates he must create from out of the spirit. If he thinks that he can create without it he is ignorant of the fact that although in certain periods spiritual striving falls into decline, the less firmly rooted a thing is in the spirit the more likely it is to die. Whatever has eternal value stems from the spirit and no created thing survives that is not rooted in it. But since everything a man does is under the guidance of the spiritual life, the very smallest creation, even when used for the purposes of everyday life, has an eternal value and connects him with the spirit. We know that our own theosophical life has its source in what we have called the Rosicrucian stream; and it has often been emphasised that since the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Masters of Rosicrucian wisdom have been preparing conditions that began at the end of the nineteenth century and will continue in the twentieth. The future longed for and expected by Rothe of Heidelberg is already the present and should be recognised as such. But those who caused this stream to flow into souls, at first in a way imperceptible to men, have been preparing conditions for a long, long time. In a definite sense what we have called the Rosicrucian path since the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is present in our Theosophical Movement in a more conscious form; its influence has flowed into the hearts and minds of the peoples of Europe and sets its stamp upon them.

From what has happened in European culture, can we form an idea of how this spirit has actually taken effect? I said just now that it has worked as the true Rosicrucian spirit since the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; it was always present although only at that time did it assume Rosicrucian form. This Rosicrucian spirit goes back to a very distant past—it had its Mysteries even in Atlantean times. The influence has been taking effect for long ages, becoming more and more conscious as it streamed into the hearts and souls of men.

Let us try to form some idea of how this spirit made its way into humanity. We meet together here and our studies help us to perceive ways in which the human soul develops and gradually rises to regions where it can understand the spiritual life, and perhaps actually behold it. Many of you have for years been trying to let concepts and ideas which mirror the spiritual life stream into your souls as spiritual nourishment. You know how we have tried to acquire some understanding of the riddles of the world. I have often described the different stages of the soul's development and how it can rise to the higher worlds; how a higher part of the Self must be distinguished from a lower part; how man has come from other planetary conditions, having passed through a Saturn-, a Sun- and a Moon-evolution, during which his physical, etheric and astral bodies were formed; and how finally he entered into the period of Earth-evolution. I have told you that there is something within us that must receive its training here on the Earth in order to rise to a higher stage. We have also said that the development of certain beings—the Luciferic beings—was retarded during the Old Moon-period and they later approached man's astral body as tempters, and also in order to impart to him certain qualities. I have often told you too how man must overcome certain tendencies in his lower self and through this conquest rise into the spheres to which his higher Self belongs, into the higher regions of the spiritual life. Words of Goethe must be remembered:

And as long as thou knowest it not,
This Dying and Becoming,
Thou art but a troubled guest
Upon the dark Earth!

The degree of development that is possible to-day and can give strength, assurance and a genuine content to life is within our reach if we acquire knowledge of the manifold nature of man and realise that his constitution is not a haphazard medley but consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. We have formulated definite ideas, for example of the temperaments, by studying the process of education and the development of the physical body up to the seventh year, of the etheric body up to the fourteenth and of the astral body up to the twenty-first year. By studying the mission of Truth, of Prayer, of Anger, our ideas of the three bodies, of the sentient soul, intellectual or mind-soul and consciousness—or spiritual soul, do not remain mere abstractions but impart meaning, clarity and content to our existence.

In this way we have achieved some understanding of the riddles of the world. And although there are large numbers of people outside our circle who still, consciously or unconsciously, persist in materialism, there are nevertheless many souls who feel it necessary to their very existence to listen to expositions of the kind we have been able to give. Many of you would not have been present among us for years, sharing our experiences and activities if it were not a necessity of your very lives. Why are there souls to-day who understand these things and for whom the ideas and concepts developed here become a guide on their life's way? The reason is this.—Just as you have been born into the modern world with these longings, so our forbears in Europe—and this means very many of those present here to-day—were born during past centuries into a world and environment very different from those of the nineteenth century. Let us cast our minds back to the sixth, seventh or even the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our era when many of those present here were incarnated, and think of the sort of things that souls then living might have experienced.

In those times there was no Theosophical Society where subjects such as those with which we are concerned were studied; the influence of the environment upon the souls of men took a very different form. People did not travel about giving lectures on spiritual-scientific subjects, but minstrels went from village to village, from city to city, proclaiming the spirit. These minstrels did not speak about theosophy, about the lower and higher Ego, about man's physical, etheric and astral bodies and so on. As they moved around the land their mission was to speak of the spirit in the way it was wont to be proclaimed at that time. The following story was told all over Middle and Eastern Europe.—

Once upon a time there was a King's son. During a ride one day he heard moans coming from a ditch, and following the course of the ditch in order to discover the source of the moans, he found an old woman. He dismounted, climbed down into the ditch and helped the old woman who had fallen into it, to get out. Then he saw that she had injured her leg and could not walk. He asked her how the accident happened and she told him: ‘I am old and I have to get up soon after midnight to go to the city and sell my eggs; on the way I fell into this ditch.’ The King's son said to her: ‘You cannot get home by yourself so I will put you on my horse and take you.’ This he did, and the woman said to him: ‘Although you are of noble birth, you are a kind and good man; and because you have helped me I will give you a reward.’ He guessed now that she was not an ordinary woman, for she said: ‘You shall have the reward which your kind soul has earned. Do you want to marry the Flower-Queen's daughter?’ ‘Yes!’ he replied. She went on: ‘For that you will need something that I can easily give you,’ and she gave him a little bell, saying: ‘If you ring this bell once the Eagle-King will come with his hosts to help you in the predicament in which you find yourself; if you ring twice the Fox-King will come with his hosts to help you in the predicament in which you find yourself; and if you ring three times the Fish-King will come with his hosts to help you in the predicament in which you find yourself.’—The King's son took the little bell and returned home, announced that he was going to search for the Flower-Queen's daughter, and rode off. He rode a long, long way but nobody could tell him where the Flower-Queen lived with her daughter. By this time his horse was completely exhausted and could carry him no longer so that he was obliged to continue his journey on foot. He came across an aged man and asked him where the Flower-Queen lived. ‘I cannot tell you,’ the aged man replied, ‘but go on and on and you will find my father who may perhaps be able to tell you.’ So the King's son went on, year after year, and then found another, still more aged man. He asked him: ‘Can you tell me where the Flower-Queen lives?’ But the aged man replied: ‘I cannot tell you, but you must go on and on for many more long years and you will find my father who will certainly be able to tell you where the Flower-Queen lives.’—So the King's son went on and at last found an old, old man and asked him if he could tell him where the Flower-Queen lived with her daughter. The old man replied: ‘The Flower-Queen lives far away, in a mountain which you can see from here in the distance. But she is guarded by a fearsome Dragon. You cannot get near at present for this is a time when the Dragon never sleeps; he sleeps at certain times only and this is one of his waking periods. But you must go a little further, to another mountain, and there you will find the Dragon's mother; through her you will attain your goal.’ So he went on and found the Dragon-mother, the very archetype of ugliness. But he knew that whether he could find the Flower-Queen's daughter would depend on her. Then he saw seven other dragons around her, all eager to guard the Flower-Queen and her daughter who had been long imprisoned and were destined to be set free by the King's son. So he said to the Dragon-mother: ‘I know that I must become your servant if I am to find the Flower-Queen.’ ‘Yes’, she said, ‘you must become my servant and perform a task that is not easy. Here is a horse which you must lead to pasture the first day, the second day and the third. If you can bring it home in good condition you may possibly achieve your object after three days. But if you fail, the dragons will devour you—we shall all devour you.’ The King's son agreed to this and the next morning he was given the horse. He tried to lead it to pasture but it soon disappeared. He searched for it in vain and was in despair. Then he remembered the little bell given him by the old woman, took it out and rang it once. A host of eagles gathered, led by the Eagle-King, looked for the horse and found it, so that the King's son was able to take it back to the Dragon-mother. She said to him: ‘Because you have brought the horse back I will give you a cloak of copper so that you can attend the Ball tonight at the court of the Flower-Queen and her daughter.’ Then, on the second day, he was again given the horse to take to pasture, but again it disappeared and he could not find it. So he took out the bell and rang it twice. Immediately the Fox-King appeared with a host of his followers; they looked for and found the horse and the King's son was again able to take it back to the Dragon-mother. She then said to him: ‘To-day you shall have a cloak of silver so that you can attend the Ball to-night at the court of the Flower-Queen and her daughter.’ At the Ball the Flower-Queen said to him: ‘On the third day ask for a foal of that horse and with it you will be able to rescue me and we shall be united.’ Then, on the third day, the horse was again handed to him to lead to pasture, and again it soon disappeared, for it was very wild. So he took out the bell and rang it three times, whereupon the Fish-King appeared with his followers, found the horse, and for the third time the King's son brought it home. He had now successfully performed his task. The Dragon-mother then presented him with a mantle of gold as his third garment in order that on the third day he might attend the Flower-Queen's Ball. He was also given as a fitting reward the foal of the horse he had cared for. With it he was able to lead the Flower-Queen and her daughter to their own castle. And around the castle, since there were others who wanted to steal her daughter, the Flower-Queen caused a thick hedge to grow to prevent the castle from being invaded. Then the Flower-Queen said to the King's son: ‘You have won my daughter and henceforth she shall be yours, but only on one condition. You may keep her for half the year but for the other half she must return beneath the surface of the earth and be restored to me. Only on this condition can you be united with her.’ So the King's son won the Flower-Queen's daughter and lived with her for half the year, while for the other half she was with her mother.—

This story, as well as others like it, was listened to by many people in those days. They listened and drank in what they heard but did not, like many modern theosophists, proceed to invent allegories, for symbolic or allegorical interpretations of such matters are valueless. People listened to the stories because they were a source of delight to them and a warm glow pervaded their souls as they listened. They wanted nothing more than this as they listened to the story of the Flower-Queen and the King's son with his bell and his wooing of the Flower-Queen's daughter.

There are many souls alive to-day who in those days heard such tales with inner delight, and the effects lived on in them. Their feelings and perceptions were converted into thoughts and experiences and their souls were transformed by new forces. These forces have changed into the longing for a higher interpretation of the same secrets, a longing for Spiritual Science. In those days the wandering minstrels did not go about saying that man strives towards his higher self and to that end must overcome his lower self which holds him back. They gave their message in the form of a story about a King's son who rode out into the world, heard moans coming from a ditch and thereupon performed a good deed. To-day we speak simply of a good deed, a deed of love and sacrifice. In earlier times the deed was described in pictures. To-day we say that man must develop a feeling for the spirit which will awaken in him an inkling of the spiritual world and create powers through which he can establish relationship with it. In earlier times this was expressed in the picture of the old woman who gave the King's son a bell which he rang. To-day it is said: Man has taken into himself all the kingdoms of nature and unites in harmony everything that lies outspread before him. But he must learn to understand how what is outspread in the external world lives within him and how he can overcome his lower nature, for only if he can bring what is at work in the kingdoms of nature into the right relationship with his own being can it come to his aid.

We have spoken often enough of man's evolution through the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon and of how he left behind him the other kingdoms of nature, retaining within himself the best of each in order that he might rise to a higher stage. To what stage has he evolved? To indicate what lives in the human soul Plato had already used the picture of the horse on which man rides from one incarnation to another. In the times of which we have been speaking the picture used was that of the bell which was rung to summon the representatives of the kingdoms of nature—the Eagle-King, the Fox-King and the Fish-King—in order that the being destined to become the ruler of these kingdoms might establish the right relationship with them.

Man's soul is unruly and can be brought into the right relationship with the kingdoms of nature only when it is tempered by love and wisdom. In earlier times this truth was presented in pictorial form and the soul was helped to understand what we to-day express differently. Men were told that the King's son rang the bell once and the Eagle-King appeared; twice and the Fox-King appeared; three times and the Fish-King appeared. It was they who brought back the horse. In other words: the tumults which rage in the human soul must be recognised; when they are recognised the soul can be freed from lower influences and brought into order.

In the modern age we say that man must learn how his passions, his anger and so on, are connected with his development from one seven-year period to another. In other words, we must learn to understand the threefold sheaths of the human being. In earlier times a wonderful picture was placed before men: the King's son was given a mantle, a sheath, every time he rang the little bell—that is to say, when he had subjugated one of the kingdoms of nature. To-day we speak of studying the nature of the physical body; in earlier days a picture was used—of the Dragon-mother giving the King's son a cloak or mantle of copper. We study the nature of the etheric body; in earlier times it was said that the Dragon-mother gave the King's son a silver cloak on the second day. We speak of the astral body with its surging passions; in earlier times it was said that on the third day the Dragon-mother gave the King's son a cloak of gold. What we learn to-day about the threefold nature of man in the form of concepts was conveyed through the picture of the copper, silver and golden cloaks. Instead of the pictures of the copper, silver and golden cloaks we speak to-day in terms which convey an understanding of how the solid physical body is related to the other sheaths of the human being as copper ore is related to silver and gold.

We speak to-day of seven classes of Luciferic beings whose development was retarded during the Moon-evolution and who set about bringing their influence to bear upon man's astral body. The minstrels said: When the King's son came to the mountain where he was to be united with the Flower-Queen's daughter, he encountered seven dragons who would have devoured him if he had not accomplished his task. We know that if our evolution does not proceed in the right way it will be corrupted by the forces of the sevenfold Luciferic beings. We say nowadays that by achieving spiritual development we find our higher Self. The minstrels said: The King's son was united with the Flower-Queen. And we say: A certain rhythm must be established in the human soul. You will remember that a few weeks ago I said that when an idea has arisen in the soul we must allow time for the idea to mature, and it will then be possible to detect a certain rhythm in the process. After seven days the idea has penetrated into the depths of the soul; after fourteen days the maturing idea can lay hold of the outer astral substance and allow itself to be baptised by the World-Spirit. After twenty-one days the idea has become still more mature. And only after four times seven days is it ready to be offered to the world as a gift of our own personality. This is the manifestation of an inner rhythm of the soul. A man's creative faculty can work effectively only if he does not try immediately to force upon the world something that occurs to him but is aware that the ordered rhythm of the external world repeats itself in his soul, that he must live in such a way that the Macrocosm is reflected in the Microcosm of his own being. The minstrels said: Man must bring the forces of his soul into harmony, must seek the Flower-Queen's daughter and enter into a union with her during which he spends half of the year with his bride and for the other half leaves her to be with her mother who lives in the depths. This means that he establishes a rhythm within himself and the rhythm of his life takes its course in harmony with the rhythm of the Macrocosm.

These pictures—and hundreds like them could be mentioned—stimulated the soul through the thought-forms they created; and the result is that souls living to-day have become sufficiently mature to listen to the different kind of presentation given by Spiritual Science. But before this could happen man had perforce to experience a sense of deprivation and intense longing. The spiritual longings of the soul had first to be engulfed in the physical world. This did in fact happen in the first half of the nineteenth century; and then, in the second half of the century, came the materialistic culture with its devastating effect upon spiritual life. But the longing grew all the stronger and the ideal of the spiritual-scientific Movement became all the more significant. In the first half of the century there were only few who in a kind of silent martyrdom felt that ideas once conveyed in the form of pictures in narratives still survived but only in a state of decline.

In the soul of a man born in the year 1803, echoes of the old wisdom of past times were still reverberating. Something closely akin to theosophical ideas was a living reality in him. His soul was completely engrossed in what we to-day call the spiritual-scientific solution of the riddle of world-existence. His name was Julius Mosen. His soul was able to survive only because for most of his life he was bedridden. Soul and body could not adjust themselves to each other because owing to the way in which Mosen had grasped these ideas without being able to penetrate them spiritually, his etheric body had been drawn out of his physical body which was paralysed as a result. His soul had nevertheless risen to spiritual heights. In 1831 he wrote a remarkable book, Ritter Wahn. He had learnt of a wonderful legend still surviving in Italy, an old Italian folk-legend. As he studied it he became convinced that it enshrined something of the spirit of the universe, that those who created its imagery were filled with the living spirituality of the World Order. The result was that in 1831 he wrote a truly wonderful work—which, needless to say, has been forgotten, in common with so much that is the product of spiritual greatness.

Ritter Wahn sets out to conquer death and on his way he comes across three old men—Ird, Time and Space. Julius Mosen hit on the German word Ird to translate the Italian il mondo, because he knew that there was something particularly significant in it. Ird, Time and Space are the names of the three old men who, however, can be of no use to Ritter Wahn because they are themselves subject to death. Ird denotes everything that is subject to the laws of the physical body, and so to death; Time, the etheric body, is by its very nature transitory; and the third, the lower astral body, which gives us the perception of Space, is also subject to death. Our individuality passes from incarnation to incarnation; but according to the Italian folk-legend, Ird, Time and Space represent our threefold sheath.

Who is ‘Ritter Wahn?’ Each of us, passing from incarnation to incarnation, looks out upon the world and faces maya, the great Illusion; each of us, in that we live a life in the spirit, goes forth to conquer death. On this quest we meet the three old men who are our three sheaths. They are indeed very old! The physical body has existed since the evolutionary period of Old Saturn, the etheric body since the period of Old Sun, and the astral body since the period of Old Moon. The Ego, the ‘I’, has been embodied in men in the course of the Earth period itself. Julius Mosen depicts Ritter Wahn seeking to overcome death. He uses the Platonic image of a rider on horseback—an image that was known all over Middle Europe and still farther afield. Ritter Wahn rides out in an attempt to conquer the heavens with materialistic thinking—like those who cling to the sense-world and are imprisoned in illusion and maya. But when through death they enter the spiritual world, what happens is faithfully described by Julius Mosen. Such human beings have not lived out their lives to the full and long to come down again to the Earth in order that their souls may continue to evolve. So Ritter Wahn returns to the Earth. He sees the beautiful Morgana, the soul, which is destined to be stimulated by whatever is earthly and—like the Flower-Queen's daughter—represents the union with what man can acquire only through schooling on Earth. He falls a victim to death through being again united with the Earth and the beautiful Morgana. This means that he passes through death in order that he may raise his own soul, represented by Morgana, to higher and higher stages during each succeeding incarnation.

It is from pictures like these which carry the stamp of their thousands of years’ life that ideas stream into artists of the calibre of Julius Mosen. In his case they were given expression by a soul too great to live healthily in a physical body during the approaching age of materialism and Julius Mosen had consequently to endure the silent martyrdom imposed on him by his passionate soul.—Such was the impulse at work in a man living in the first half of the nineteenth century. It will become active again but in such a way as to kindle human powers and forces; and it will enable us to have some understanding of what is meant by the spirit of Rosicrucianism—the spirit that must make its way into the souls of men.

We can now surmise that what we ourselves are cultivating has always existed. Were we to imagine that anything in the world can prosper without this spirit working in men we should be succumbing to the delusions suffered by Ritter Wahn.

Whence came the minstrels of the seventh, eighth or even thirteenth centuries, wandering as they did through the world to create thought-forms that would enable souls in our own day to have a different kind of understanding? Where had these minstrels learnt how to bring such pictures to men? They had learnt from the centres we think of to-day as the Rosicrucian schools. They were pupils of Rosicrucians. Their teachers said to them: You cannot now go forth into the world and clothe your message in concepts and ideas, as will have to be done later on; you must speak of the King's son, of the Flower-Queen and of the three cloaks, in order that from these pictures thought-forms may come into being and live in the souls of men. And when these souls return to Earth they will understand what is needed for their further progress.—Messengers are continually sent out from the centres of spiritual life in order that in every age what lies in the depths of the spirit may be made accessible to men.

It is a superficial view to believe that such tales can be invented by human fancy. The old tales which give expression to the spiritual secrets of the world came into being because those who composed them gave ear to others who were able to impart the spiritual secrets. Consequently we can say with truth that the spirit of all humanity, of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm, lives in them.

The minstrels were sent out to tell their stories from the same centres whence we to-day draw the knowledge on which the culture needed by humanity is based. Thus it is that the spirit in which mankind is rooted moves on from epoch to epoch. The Beings who in pre-Christian times imparted instruction to individuals in the temples, teaching them what they had themselves brought over from former planetary evolutions—these Beings placed themselves under the leadership of Christ, the unique Individuality who became the great Teacher and Guide of mankind. Stories which have come down through the centuries and have inspired in the whole of Western culture thought-forms expressing in pictures the same teaching about Christ as we give to-day, make it quite clear that in the period after the Mystery of Golgotha the spiritual leadership of mankind, working through its centres of learning, was vested in Christ. All spiritual leadership is connected with Him. If we can make ourselves conscious of this fact we shall be turning our gaze to the light we need in order to understand the longings of human souls incarnated in the nineteenth century.

If we think deeply about souls who reveal the longings of earlier times, we shall recognise with a sense of profound responsibility that they waited for us to bring their longings to fulfilment. Julius Mosen, the author of Ritter Wahn and Ahasver, and others like him, were the last prophets of the West because the teachings once given by messengers from the holy temples in the form of pictures to prepare souls for later ages, were living realities to them. And their yearning is indicated in words written by Rothe of Heidelberg in 1847: ‘... if theosophy ever becomes scientific in the real sense and produces obvious and definite results, these will gradually become the general conviction, be acknowledged as valid truths and be universally accepted by those who cannot find their way along the only possible path by which they could be discovered ...’ At that time a man who had these yearnings—thinking not only of himself but also of his contemporaries—could only say with resignation that all this lay in the womb of the future which he had no wish to anticipate. In 1847, men who were cognisant of the secrets of the Rosicrucian temples had not yet spoken in a way that could be generally understood. But what lies in the womb of the future can become living power if there are enough souls who realise that knowledge is a duty—a duty because we must not give back undeveloped souls to the World-Spirit. Were we to do that we should have deprived the World-Spirit of forces implanted in us. If there are souls who recognise their duty to the World-Spirit and endeavour to understand the riddles of the world, the hopes cherished by the best men of earlier times will be fulfilled. They looked to us, who were to be born after them, and longed that theosophy should become scientifically acceptable and lay hold of the hearts of men. But these hearts must exist! And that depends upon people who have identified themselves with our spiritual-scientific Movement being convinced of the need for spiritual illumination of the riddles of existence. It depends upon every single soul among us whether the longings of which I have spoken prove to have been empty dreams on the part of those who had hoped for the best in us or to have been dreams now brought to fulfilment.

When we see the barrenness of science, art and every domain of social life we must tell ourselves that we need not succumb to it but that there is a way out. For again an age has dawned when voices from the holy temples are speaking—not in pictures and stories but proclaiming truths which many people still regard as theories but which can and must become sources of life and nourishment to the soul. Each individual can resolve with the highest powers of his soul to receive this source of life.

This is what we must impress upon our souls as the epitome of the meaning and spirit of the guidance of mankind. If we allow this thought to be active in our souls it will be an impulse in us for many months. We shall find that it can grow into an impressive structure—quite independently of the words used to express it. My words may well be imperfect but it is the reality in the thought that matters, not the form in which it is expressed. This reality can live in every single soul. The totality of truth is present in every soul as a seed and can be brought to blossom if the soul devotes itself to the development of that seed.

• 1. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind. (Obtainable from Rudolf Steiner Press.)

Recently I have become aware of mystics who have attempted to elucidate the nature of the human being in the following way. I will quote the result to which they believe they have arrived. They say something like this: If we look at the human being as he walks on earth, his whole existence is a kind of riddle. His soul-being towers mightily above what he is able to represent in his entire humanity, to reveal himself, as it were, in the living out of the interrelationship with other people. Therefore, one must assume - so such mystics think - that man is actually something quite different in his essence from what he appears to be here in his earthly walk. He must be a comprehensive cosmic being, who, according to his inner nature, is much, much more powerful than what he presents himself as being here on earth; he must have forfeited his place in the great cosmos for some reason and must have been banished into this earthly existence – as for example, a mystic follower of this direction - to learn modesty here, to learn to be modest here, to feel small here for once, while in truth he is a great, powerful cosmic being, but who in some way has made himself unworthy to live out this cosmic being.

I know that there are many people who just laugh at such an idea. But the one who understands life from a deeper point of view knows that even such a mystical idea ultimately arises from the great difficulty of solving the riddle of life, which difficulty imposes itself ever more sharply and sharply on the human soul, precisely the more this human soul seeks to delve into true reality. I do not, of course, want to cite anything in particular in support of this idea of a modern mystical trend, which I have just characterized. I just wanted to cite it as something that has also found a place in human souls as a concept. One could just as easily cite a dozen other, more or less philosophical or mystical solutions to the human riddle in abstracto.

If one then tries to understand the reason why the most diverse people try to understand in such different ways, sometimes in quite unusual ways, what it actually means to be human here on earth, one comes to different conclusions. Above all, it is found that precisely with regard to the great, real questions of existence, people do not want to fulfill one thing for themselves, which they certainly admit on a small scale on every possible daily occasion: on every possible daily occasion, man will admit that one should not obscure the truth with one's desires, that what one desires to be true cannot be decisive for the objectivity of the truth. In ordinary life, in small matters, man will readily admit this; but in the great matters we see, as it were, the impossibility for people to arrive at a realistic world view, precisely because people cannot help asserting their desires when it comes to grasping the truth. And most of the time, it is precisely those desires that play a major role that could be called unconscious desires, which a person does not even admit are desires in his soul. Yet these desires are present in the soul; they remain subconscious or unconscious. And that would be the task of spiritual training: to make one aware of such desires that remain unconscious, in order to rise above the illusory life and penetrate into the sphere of truth.

These unconscious desires play a particularly important role when the highest truths of life are to be asserted within the human being, the truths about the essence of human life itself, let us say now of this ordinary human life as it unfolds in the physical world between birth and death. A real, appropriate, realistic consideration must always look at the whole course of life if life is to be understood. And just imagine that such a realistic consideration of life should yield a result that man, even if only in his subconscious desires, does not desire at all. Then man would do anything to get away from such an inconvenient result by means of apparent logic.

Surely, if we consider only life on earth, there is nothing to suggest that the truth must correspond to human desires, even if these desires are unconscious. It could, after all, be that the truth about human life is also completely unpleasant.

Spiritual science shows that this is truly the case. Of course, a higher point of view can be found from which the matter may appear differently. But for the life that a person would like to lead on this earth, a truthful examination shows that the truth about man is such that most people who are too comfortable in life feel a slight shudder - albeit a subconscious shudder, but you will understand what I mean - a slight unconscious, sometimes very strong subconscious shudder. But then the whole of human life must be considered.

We know that this whole of human life, when considered objectively and in detail, breaks down into distinct periods. You can read about these periods in my little booklet The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science. We know that we can only understand the human being by observing life, first from birth to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, from sexual maturity to the beginning of the twenties, let us say on average to the age of twenty-one; then again to the age of twenty-eight. We can understand the human being's life in the same way that we seek to understand anything scientifically, by looking at the seven-year cycles of human life.

Significant events occur in human life during each of these periods. From what we mentioned again yesterday, you know that the human being stands in life, integrating himself into the cosmos – I reminded you of the image of the magnetic needle yesterday – so that, for example, the formation of his head points far, far into the distant past, and the formation of his extremities points into the distant future, just as the magnetic needle points with one pole to the north and with the other pole to the south.

But this alignment with the cosmos is different in each of the main human periods. In each of the main human periods, different forces intervene in the organization of humanity. In the first seven years of our lives, something quite different prevails in us than in the second seven years. Everything that comes to expression in the seventh year, in that, one might say, all the growth is dammed up, as at a bank, by the eruption of the permanent teeth, everything that is dammed up in the eruption of the permanent teeth plays out of the forces of the cosmos in the first seven years of life. And again, there is something that the human being takes back in his education. What the human being takes back in his education, by becoming sexually mature, that with which he, I would like to say, tinges himself, it forms in that certain developmental forces, which are thoroughly grounded in the cosmos, develop in the second epoch of life and so on.

Now the thing is that one must say: in the whole human being, the various members do interact. The child, up to the change of teeth, also develops a certain psychic activity; and this psychic activity is extraordinarily important, especially in these first years of life. I am reminded of the truly wise saying of Jean Paul, who said that at the beginning of his life, one undoubtedly learns more for life from one's nurse than from all one's professors in the academic years. There is something very wise and very true in this saying. One must only assess things in the right way. One learns a lot in these first seven years of life, but what is learned remains, so to speak, intellectually and otherwise in the dullness of the soul life, which is still almost a physical life, down below. But if you read my booklet 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity', you will see that this life, which the child develops in the first seven years, can also be evaluated differently from the usual way. In these first seven years, there is truly not much wisdom in the human organism. When the child - as the bourgeois expression goes - has seen “the light of day”, his brain is still quite undifferentiated. It only differentiates over time, and what emerges in terms of brain structures truly corresponds, when studied, to influences of a deeper wisdom than anything we can muster in later life when we construct machines or do anything scientifically. Of course, we cannot do this later in a conscious way, which we do unconsciously when we have just seen the light of the world, as I said. Cosmic reason rules in us, that cosmic reason of which we also had to speak when we mentioned the development of language. Truly, a high cosmic reason rules in the human being in the first seven years of life.

In the second seven years of life, this cosmic reason then focuses on tingeing the human being with what leads to sexual maturity; there it prevails, this cosmic intellectuality, to a small extent already. One might say: that which remains, which is not used inwardly, well, that just rises up into the head. And it affects the head – and usually it is afterwards! But what affects the head is actually something that is spared in the inner being, in the unconscious of the soul life. And then it continues in seven-year periods.

Nowadays, the usual approach is to study the whole of human life, the so-called normal human life; because to study this normal human life, a certain devotion is necessary, first to the real human being, but then also to the great cosmic laws. And however strange it may sound, what takes place in the first seven years of childhood cannot be understood, not as a child, not as a young man or woman, not even when one imagines that one has already grasped the whole of life in one's twenties. One cannot understand it. One can come to some understanding of what takes place in childhood if one seeks this understanding inwardly in the human being, in inner experience, say between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three. Old age, old age itself, only gives us the opportunity to gain a slight insight into what rules in us during the first seven years of childhood. This is an uncomfortable thing, because today, when a person has barely outgrown the young badger years, he wants to be a full human being. And today it is uncomfortable to admit to oneself that there is something in the world, even in oneself, that can only be understood at the turn of fifty. And again, if it is a matter of understanding, of inner-human understanding, as we can first achieve it as human beings, then we can learn to understand something of what takes place in human nature during the years in which sexual maturity develops, that is, from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life. This takes place between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six, at the beginning of the fifties.

It would be good if such truths were to be recognized, because through such truths one would learn to understand life, while the other truths that are usually established about human beings are such as one wishes. One just does not realize that unconscious desires are there. And again, what takes place in us from puberty to the age of twenty-one, one gets some inner, experienced insight into that, so that one can have a certain judgment about it between the forty-second and forty-nine, and again, what happens in the twenties up to the twenty-eighth year, about that one can get some information between the thirty-fifth and forty-second year. What I say about these things is based on real observation of life, which one must do by training oneself in spiritual-scientific observation, and not by engaging in the kind of nonsense of self-knowledge that is often called self-knowledge today, but by engaging in real self-knowledge, that is, by engaging in knowledge of human nature. And it is only in the period from about twenty-eight to thirty-five that one can experience something and at the same time understand it by experiencing it; there is a certain balance between understanding and thinking. In the first half of life one can think various things, one can imagine various things; in order to experience with understanding what one can imagine in the first half of life, one must await the second half of life.

It is an uncomfortable truth, but that is how life is. I can even imagine people saying: Yes, if the human being is so circumscribed in his or her entire inner conformity to law, where does that leave the free will of the human being? Where does freedom go? Where is the consciousness of humanity? - Certainly, I can also imagine that someone feels unfree because he cannot be in Europe and America at the same time, that someone feels unfree because he cannot reach down to the moon. But facts do not conform to human desires. Even when it comes to man gaining insight into himself, it is necessary to face the facts. These facts are as follows: We do not live a life that is constantly changing and metamorphosing for no reason. We live this life in such a way that each period of life has its meaning and significance in relation to others. And for that we live, as we say, the normal life, if we are granted such, until the age of sixty — we will also talk about early death from this point of view tomorrow — in a way that only in the second half of life does it become clear to us what prevails in the first half of life. People would be able to orient themselves in the world much more securely and correctly if this knowledge of life were to gain some ground. For then they would build on a true foundation of life, whereas today, because they do not base themselves on objectivity but on desires, they often simply cling to the idea that one must learn something until one's twenties, but after that one is a finished person, then one is ready for anything in life. In this way one completely overlooks the inner coherence of life. To get to know life is really an inner task. And one must not forget, especially when it comes to this intimate task, that desires must remain silent and that objectivity must be taken into account.

Now a certain balance is emerging in the course of human evolution. In earlier times the matter was quite different, as I have already presented: You remember how I spoke of the human development from the Atlantic time until today, of the ever-younger becoming of humanity. A certain equalization has occurred in that in the course of evolution it has been found that one element was related to the other. If that had not occurred, then one would simply have to keep the matter in life so: A person in their twenties would have to believe a forty-year-old when it comes to certain things that relate to truths in a person that can only be grasped as vividly as I have characterized them in the forties. It is not quite like that, but in the course of human development, the concepts themselves, the ideas, have become such that one can have a certain intuitive conviction at one age and at the other. If you are sufficiently devoted to let the forty- and fifty-year-olds tell you about their life experiences, provided, of course, that they have had any, today people usually don't, if you let yourself be told about these life experiences when you are still younger, you are not dependent on mere authority authority, that has already become the case through development; but by thinking – as a young person one can only think – there is more to the way and character that the thoughts have taken than what merely appeals to faith. There is already a certain possibility in it to also understand. Otherwise one would have to say: in youth man thinks, in old age he comprehends. But there is already something in it that can teach one more than a religious belief, a mere authoritative conviction. This gives a certain balance.

But take what I have said as a truth of life. If you take it as a truth of life, it will shed light on the practice of life. Just think, when what I have said is present in life, when it is thought and felt and sensed by people, how it expresses itself in the relationship between people! How it creates, as it were, binding links from soul to soul! A person who is still young looks at the old in a special way when he knows: He can experience something that, in relation to him, who can only think, is an understanding of what is thought. One is interested in a completely different way in the messages that a person in a different age can give, if one understands life in such a way. And one retains one's interest, even when one has reached a higher age, for what abounds as younger people, even as children. They remember how often I have said: The wisest can learn from the little child! Of course, the wisest of all will gladly and lovingly learn from a small child. Even if he does not want to be taught by a small child about morals or other views of life, he would be able to gain an infinite amount of wisdom from the child, especially with regard to cosmic secrets, which are expressed quite differently in a small child than in a later human being. The interest that prevails from soul to soul increases quite substantially when such things are not mere abstract theories, but when such things are wisdoms of life.

Real spiritual science has the peculiarity of strengthening, enhancing, and reinforcing the bonds of love that people have for one another, which must essentially be based on the bonds of mutual interest. Ordinary wisdom can leave people dry, as dry as some scholars are. Spiritual science, truly grasped in its substance, cannot leave people dry, but will, under all circumstances, make people love, wants to strengthen and increase mutual human interest.

I had planned to tell you a small number of such things today, things that are unpleasant for life, but are truths, are facts, because one does not progress spiritually if one does not get used to boldly facing facts, even if they are uncomfortable.

Another fact is this – it is already clear from yesterday's observations – that the intellect, as we can achieve it in the present cycle of humanity, is only suitable for awakening understanding over a certain period of time. I do not envy those people who today set about translating Aeschylus, or even Homer, the Psalms and so on, truly, I do not envy them! That faith can exist in our time, such philistine fibbing as Mr. Wilamowitz' translations of the Greek dramas, which really betray Aeschylus or whatever, that is just a sad sign of the times. You can't observe as soon as something big happens; often you don't even have the patience to observe small things. It would be good to try to observe small things as an exercise. I will give you an example of a very childlike, small thing.

Recently I read an article in one of these international magazines published here in Switzerland, in which the socialist writer Kautsky complained about a Russian socialist who quoted Kautsky in the most terrible way, so that the opposite of what is in Kautsky's books is given as Kautsky's opinion. That there was any intentional distortion of Kautsky's text was, given the nature of the matter and the personalities involved, quite out of the question. I then read the article by the person in question myself, but I also found it curious that what was quoted was presented as Kautsky's opinion. And while I was still reading, I formed an opinion about it, because I was interested in how something like this could be possible at all; but I very soon realized, by reading the essay, what must have happened, and this was also confirmed to me afterwards because the person concerned apologized; but I only saw that later. The person in question had not read Kautsky's book in German, but had read it in Russian translation, and, having written his essay in German, had retranslated it. So that was what had happened: translation from German into Russian and retranslation. In the process, the opposite of what was in the German book came out and was quoted!

All that is needed to turn things upside down is to translate a text from one language into another, honestly and accurately! It is not even necessary to talk about incorrect facts, but basically only about the principles that are commonly applied in translation today. The observation I have made is a small, childish one. But anyone who has the patience to observe such things in life should no longer find it incomprehensible when he is told that it is impossible to understand Homer with what is available to us today; it is only an imagined understanding.

Now, that is the external side of the matter. But there is also an essential internal side to the matter. The state of mind in Homer's time was so essentially different from the state of mind of today's man that today's man is also far removed from the possibility of understanding Homer. For today's state of mind is such that it is essentially tinged with intellectuality. That was not the Homeric state of mind. Man today cannot discard this tinge if he remains in the ordinary everyday state of mind. This state of mind forces man more strongly than he believes, and more strongly than he is aware of, to live in abstract terms, in which Homer did not live at all. But it is difficult for people to reconcile this with their subconscious or unconscious desires, so they say to themselves: Yes, with the understanding that is the normal understanding of the present, one must refrain from understanding something that comes from the time of Homer or even from the time of Aeschylus. This renunciation of man is something that does not correspond at all to the subconscious desires. This is where spiritual science must intervene, which does not remain with the ordinary state of mind, but evokes a comprehensive state of mind so that one can place oneself in states of mind that are different from the normal states of mind of the present. With the means of spiritual science, one can in turn penetrate into that which cannot be reached with the present-day mind, with the present-day state of mind. It would be of immense importance for the modern man to say to himself: Only over a certain stretch of the development of humanity does the understanding that we can have extend. Even with a view to the future, it is not entirely unimportant to keep such things in mind.

No matter how clearly you express yourself today, no matter how clearly you write or speak, record what is spoken, it will not be too long before, in the near future, times will move faster, if I may use the paradoxical expression, than they did in the past, it will be completely impossible to understand what we speak or write today in the same way as we understand it. It is only possible for our understanding to comprehend what we speak and write over a certain period into the future. The historian goes back to documents and wants to rely only on external documents. But it does not depend on whether one understands something or not, whether documents are there or not, but whether the possibility of understanding extends that far. Well, for more distant times, this possibility of understanding does not extend that far. And if one does not have resignation, then Kant-Laplacean theories or the like come out. I have spoken about this often enough. What, after all, is a Kant-Laplacean theory other than the impotent attempt to use the intellect of the present to think about the origin of the world, despite the fact that our understanding, our normal state of mind, has distanced itself so far from this origin of the world that what we think about time with our present understanding of the world, which should coincide with the Kant-Laplacean theory, can no longer resemble it at all.

This knowledge, that it is necessary to resort to other types of knowledge when going beyond a certain period of time and distance, is what spiritual science must also produce. Man cannot recognize anything beyond a certain age if he does not resort to spiritual scientific research, if he does not try to understand existence with senses other than those to which the intellect is bound. Now, if we consider what I have just said, we can see how narrow the horizon of the modern man must be if he does not want to resort to other levels of research, to other levels of knowledge, for those things that ordinary intellectuality, which is actually the prevailing one today, does not suffice to recognize. We know that one can ascend to imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. These types of knowledge then lead to other paths; only they can supplement what can only be seen as an island of existence if one relies on the present state of the soul.

That which comprises the present state of mind is actually bound to the human ego; you can read about this in my “Theosophy”, “Secret Science in Outline” and so on. But the human being also carries other aspects of their being within them: we know of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. But the soul's usual state today does not extend down into the astral body, not into the etheric body, not into the physical body. For what the anatomist recognizes from the outside is, after all, the outside. The inner recognition does not extend beyond the ego, let alone beyond the physical body. One must come to observe the human being from the inside with understanding, and the knowledge of life of which I spoke at the beginning of today's reflections is a beginning of this inner knowledge, and what one can comprehend in the second half of life is a beginning, albeit a weak beginning. When one takes hold of the human being inwardly, one descends from the mere intellect to the sphere of the will. Yesterday I mentioned that the subject of the will, the actual volition in us, preserves the cosmic memory. So one must descend into the human being. What the human being could develop if he had the will to do so, by developing normal wisdom in the second half of life, would be a beginning of this descent. It would not shed much light, but it would shed light on what the human being needs to live. But if he then descends with the developed higher knowledge, then by descending into his own being the memory of the cosmos opens up to him. Then, however, something different emerges than the Kant-Laplacean theory, for example, what we carry within us in our physical being. You know that, according to its nature, it is our oldest, going back to the fourth past incarnation on earth. If you go down there, you learn to recognize what this fourth past incarnation on earth was like in the Saturn era. But one can learn from the ordinary wisdom that opens up in the second half of life what one has to do to penetrate deeper and deeper into the nature of the human being, who is an image of the world, and by learning to recognize this image, to recognize the world.

It is usually subconscious or unconscious desires that dominate a person when he thinks up something with a light heart or in complete comfort, something that he should actually say is not accessible to his thinking, such as the Kant-Laplace theory or something similar. And so we touch again – we must, I would like to say, approach our tasks in circles – that which prevents people of the present from building the bridge between ideality and reality, which is of course of great concern to us now.

People of all ages have tried to find a way beyond these things. But it is difficult to fully understand these things, precisely because it is uncomfortable to approach the real facts. In our time it has become customary, I might say, everywhere to recognize half of the matter, the other half not. Here is a classic example: Karl Marx once said that philosophers had so far only endeavored to interpret the world with their concepts; but what was important was to change the world, one really had to find thoughts that would change the world. The first part is absolutely correct. Philosophers have endeavored, insofar as they are philosophers, to interpret the world, and if they were a little clever, they did not believe that they could do anything other than interpret the world. But the very archetype of all philosophical philistinism, Wilhelm Traugott Krug, who taught in Leipzig from 1809 to 1834 and wrote a great many books on everything from fundamental philosophy to the highest stages of philosophy, demanded that Hegel's philosophers should not only deduce concepts but also the development of the pen – something that infuriated Hegel. But even in this field, resignation is necessary, resignation that says: Of course, we human beings are called upon to change the world as whole human beings, insofar as the world consists of human life. But thinking, the thinking of the present, is simply not capable of bringing about this change. One must have the resignation to say to oneself: This thinking, which the human being of the present has, which is so gloriously sufficient, which is really quite suitable for understanding nature, this thinking is completely unsuitable for achieving something when it comes to the will to act. But that is an uncomfortable truth. Because once you see through this, you no longer say: Philosophers have so far endeavored to interpret the world, but what matters is changing the world – and secretly believe that they can contribute to this through some dialectic; instead, you say to yourself: Philosophers have only been sufficient for interpreting things because philosophers can cite them. With nature, it is enough for us to merely interpret it, because nature is, one might say, thank God, there without us, and we can content ourselves with interpreting it. Social and political life is not there without us, and we cannot be content with merely grasping it with such concepts, which are only suitable for interpreting life and not for shaping it. It is necessary to rise from mere theorizing, which mostly consists of hallucinations, as I explained yesterday, and which is so truly the hobbyhorse of the present, to the life of reality. And the life of reality in the facts demands that one does not take it so straightforwardly, this life, as one is accustomed to taking it. Certainly, ideas that one person conveys to another lead to something; but they do not always lead to the same thing. There are no absolute truths, just as there are no absolute facts, and there are no absolute facts just as there are no absolute truths. Everything is relative. And the effect of something I say is determined not only by whether or not I believe it to be true, but also by the nature of the people in a particular age, and how they react to it, if I may use the expression. I will cite a significant case that is very important to consider.

If you go back to around the 14th century of the Christian era, you could present mysticism to people before that century. In those days, mystical concepts still had the power to educate and inspire people. The Oriental population of Asia, the Indian, Japanese, Chinese, has retained these qualities in many ways, because older qualities are preserved by certain members of humanity in later times. One can still study many things in the present that were also the case with European populations in earlier times; but the whole state of mind of humanity has changed. And anyone who passes on mysticism today, for example, must be aware that we are approaching the age when, by teaching mysticism, real mysticism – Meister Eckhart's, Tauler's, and the like, you teach them by the way they react to it, what Lucifer only coaxes out of man, what brings them to bickering and quarreling. And it may well be that there is no better way to prepare a sect for quarreling and fighting, for disunity, for mutual grumbling, than to give them mystically pious speeches. Now, when understood in a straightforward way, this seems almost impossible; but it is a factual truth. It is a factual truth because it depends not only on the content of what one says, but on the way in which the person reacts to things. And one must know the world. And above all, one must not base one's views on one's desires.

I can always remember the conversation I once had in a southern German town with two Catholic priests who were in my lecture, which I gave at the time on the Bible and wisdom. The two Catholic priests could not really object to anything. The lecture contained precisely the things about which they could not reasonably object. But priests, even if they cannot object, cannot of course accept something like that; so they have to object to something. So they said: Yes, in terms of content, we could indeed say roughly what you said. But what we say, we say in such a way that every person can understand it; you, after all, are only saying it for a certain number of people who have a certain education, and what is said for people must be understandable for everyone. - Then I said to them: Yes, you see, what you believe is understandable to all people, and what I believe about it, that is not the point. What matters is not our theoretical views about what people understand, but the study of reality. And there you can easily do a reality test yourself. I ask you: If you now apply these methods and present this in your church today in the way you believe that all people will understand it – will all people go to your church, or aren't some already staying away today? That some stay away is much more important than you believing that you speak for all people. Because the reality is that some do stay away. That you believe you speak for all people is your belief. And for those who no longer go to church with you, I speak for them, because I believe that one has to submit to reality and that one can also speak to those who no longer go to church but who are still entitled to seek the path to the spiritual worlds. Here, in a trivial example, the difference is illuminated between how one thinks realistically, letting one's views be dictated by reality, and how most people believe they know what they just imagine, think up and wish for, and then swear by it. The reality researcher is even prepared at any time to discard anything he considers right, and when the facts teach him, to come to a different line of thought, because reality is not as straightforward as people wish it to be.

And so it may well be, and will increasingly be the case – this is the trend of the development of human nature – that while you want to teach the most pious mysticism, the most heartfelt mysticism of a sect, the people of that sect become more and more quarrelsome and quarrelsome. But it is just as unwise to teach people one-sided scientific views. To gain scientific knowledge, one needs a great deal of acumen, and you know that I am not at all inclined to be in any way inferior to anyone in fully recognizing scientific truths. But the fact also exists that if one were to teach the world only scientific truths or scientifically-oriented truths, the acumen that is applied to finding scientific truths would contribute significantly to condemning people to a lack of freedom. Just as one-sided mysticism would increasingly lead to quarrels and disputes, one-sided natural science in the sense of today's time would lead people to inner bondage, to inner bondage. So you see, it is fully considered when spiritual science strives neither to be one-sidedly mystical nor one-sidedly scientific, but to do justice to each individual without underestimating or overestimating it, but progressing from duality to trinity. Not the either-or, but the both-and, illumination of the one by the other, that is what spiritual science leads to by itself. For example, a person with a purely scientific mind who rants about mysticism is always going to be in the wrong, because what he says will generally be nonsense. But it is just as wrong, as a rule, for a purely mystical person who knows nothing of scientific knowledge to rant about science. Only a mystic should grumble about mysticism, if I may vary it, and only someone who knows about natural science should grumble about natural science now and then. Then his things will be as he says, because they will be weighed correctly. But it will always be bad if someone who does not understand natural science and perhaps believes himself to be a great mystic passes judgment on it, or if a scientist does not understand mysticism and passes judgment on mysticism. It has often been said in spiritual scientific circles that certain truths must appear paradoxical to people because they so strongly contradict the complacency of ordinary life.

Today I have presented you with a whole series of things that have, so to speak, struck your soul without being resolved. I have presented you with some facts of life that have to be admitted even if one would like things to be different. Many a person who today considers himself a great person, who is capable of much, has no idea of these truths of life. But this is precisely the basis of the catastrophes of our time, that our time so urgently needs to get to know this life and does not want to get to know this life.

Tomorrow we will talk about some of the things that should lead to the resolution of some contradictions that have rightly been brought to your souls today.

Dear attendees! After yesterday's lecture, which I was allowed to give here, some of the listeners may perhaps be astonished that one can speak of spiritual science or theosophy as a way of life. For what I tried to explain yesterday, as the fundamental, the basic principle of the study of the spiritual worlds, presupposes a vigorous, patient, long-lasting exercise of the human soul. Only through this can what was spoken of yesterday be achieved: that the soul becomes so strong and powerful within itself that it can feel itself to be a spiritual being and actually leave the physical body, thus living in such a way that, in the true sense of the word, the soul itself becomes a spiritual being among other spiritual beings in its experience, that it enters a new world in this spiritual world.

That was the purpose of yesterday's paths. If we allow ourselves to be guided very briefly once more by the soul, what has emerged is that the human soul is capable of doing spiritual chemistry; that it is capable of extracting itself as a spiritual-soul being from the context in which it stands in everyday life with the body, just as one is capable of extracting hydrogen from water. And we have seen that by vigorously continuing the exercises we characterized yesterday, the soul really does come to know its physical body first as something external, like the other things, but to know itself as being lifted out and transferred into a spiritual world. And in the further progress of the soul's practice, it turns out that the soul also leaves what it experiences in a soul-like way in everyday life – which only brings back the memory of its life to the point where our ordinary memory, as at a point in our childhood, emerged before our self-awareness – but that then this inner content of the soul changes and that what comes out can be called the spiritual core of the human being , which, when it is experienced, contains the eternal part of the human being, which passes through the gate of death and of which one can then know from real knowledge that he [the human being] goes through repeated earthly lives, that he leads a life alternating between a life on earth that runs between birth and death, and a life in the spiritual world that runs between death and a new birth.

Now it could be said: Is it not in the nature of things that this leaving of the physical body, this experiencing oneself as a spiritual-soul being in a completely different world, which can only be achieved after great efforts, that it is perhaps suitable for few people in the present, [that] therefore not everyone can become a soul researcher? Is it therefore not unnecessary to make that which only a few can really do, that which only a few can know, into common knowledge? One could object: How can someone who does not become a spiritual researcher themselves have any understanding of the messages that are given to them by the spiritual researcher about processes, conditions and entities in the spiritual world? For individuals, for a few people, one might say, the attainment of spiritual science may be a life asset; but for those who do not want to go this way, who do not reach a certain point on the path described yesterday, for them spiritual science cannot be a life asset. And yet! Even to the abstract thought it must appear as if that which can be attained in the indicated way must be a real inner good.

In today's lecture, the term “theosophy” is used. One could say that spiritual science is a theosophical world view. For this has always been understood to mean a world view that gives the human soul certainty and knowledge that the deepest, innermost core of our being can be reached, and thus it turns out that in its essence we experience that as the root of our existence, is connected with the root of all existence in the world, with the divine-spiritual existence of the world. Through our essential core, we ourselves are rooted in the divine-spiritual. This is what is meant by the term theosophy. And a theosophical world view does not just want to say that one can sense and believe that the human being is connected in his nature to the divine spiritual world, but it wants to say that the human being can also recognize this connection, that he can penetrate to this point within himself where he is connected to the divine spiritual that permeates and interweaves the world. And from the consciousness of this cognizable connection, a theosophical world view wants to create strength and hope for life.

Thus, a theosophical world view should actually be a true asset in life. But even if someone has gained the conviction through the path of the soul described yesterday that one can recognize how our soul is connected to its source, it might still seem as if only those who are able to undertake such research of the soul themselves can have a real awareness, a consciousness of this connection. But it is not so. This must be emphasized again and again: the conditions, processes and beings of the spiritual world can only be investigated by the method described yesterday. Only by going out of our physical body ourselves through the application of the described method and being among spirits, can we recognize the spiritual foundations of the world. But once they have been recognized by the spiritual researcher, the person to whom they are communicated need not be a spiritual researcher himself to find them understandable and comprehensible, to apply them in the fullest sense in life, to permeate life with them.

To be able to research something in the spiritual world, one must be a spiritual researcher, just as one must be a painter to be able to paint a picture. But once the picture is there, it would be sad if only the painter could understand it. And so it is with what can be found through spiritual research. If it is presented in the right way, then the human soul is attuned to truth and not to error. And just as we can understand the picture that the painter, who can paint, has painted, so we can understand and grasp everything that the spiritual researcher has to say and put it at the service of life, without being a spiritual researcher ourselves.

However, in our present time, it is still a long way before this can be achieved for a wider circle of people. For there is much that stands in the way of the modern soul if it wants to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say to the world. Today, people come from an admirable scientific culture. It has equipped him with habits of thought directed towards the external. Today, man is not accustomed to living in the very different concepts that the spiritual researcher brings out of the realm of the spiritual world.

But this will change when people's habits of thought have recognized that what stands in the way of spiritual research is prejudice. Then people will find that the descriptions of spiritual science can be understood by everyone. Just as chemistry, physics and any other science cannot be used to benefit life, even though not everyone can become a chemist, physicist or whatever, and people use what comes from chemistry and physics without being chemists and physicists, it is certainly true that what the spiritual researcher has to say can be put into the service of life, can become part of our soul, can penetrate the soul.

But then the concepts and ideas that the spiritual researcher has to give directly from the spiritual world have a different effect on the soul than the external concepts and ideas. And only when one has considered what spiritual research can be as a theosophical world view does one come to realize what a valuable asset this spiritual science is. Of course, one might say: When the spiritual researcher speaks of a vital good, this spiritual science cannot give bread and external goods at first. But what it has, it gives; and what it gives is food for the soul, but such food for the soul as it gives is more and more needed by souls due to the particular configuration that our life has taken on in our time.

Now, in order to understand the essence of spiritual science, we must first think of one thing. That is, spiritual research differs from ordinary research in the sensory world in that the human being allows himself to be passively impressed by the truth through the other sciences; that the human being must devote himself and the world transmits the truth to him from the outside. In spiritual research, however, the soul must be active from the very beginning, developing inner energy.

We have seen how the soul must ascend in three ways to the purely supersensible states, processes and entities. By placing itself in these states, it develops an inner facial expression, a purely spiritual mimicry. One cannot merely let what the states of the spiritual world are shine in from the outside. One must unite with it; one must become so one with it that one expresses it in oneself, but expresses it in one's soul, emancipated from the body. Thus, as a spiritual researcher, one enters the spiritual world. As long as one remains passive, it says nothing. Only when one expresses what it has to communicate, when the inner spiritual expression is an expression of what one experiences, only then does it speak. And the gesture, the movement of the soul, it enters into the spiritual world, but again actively, not by living into it as in the outer science, by speculating, but by letting thoughts live within you, you grasp the processes of the spiritual world. Only by imitating them with your own spiritual being can you become aware of them. And the third way was that the human being penetrates through spiritual physiognomy by immersing himself in the spiritual being and raising up the forces in himself from his depths that make him similar in his spiritual and mental state to the moments when he wants to immerse himself in a spiritual being, this spiritual being.

Thus the spiritual researcher enters the spiritual world in three ways: through spiritual facial expressions, through spiritual gestures and postures, and through spiritual physiognomy, but always actively, always in activity. And what he brings forth from the spiritual world must be formulated in concepts. And here we arrive at the point where it turns out that it is actually more difficult to communicate the insights of the spiritual world than it is to communicate the insights of the physical world. A person in our time claims that spiritual science also expresses itself externally in exactly the same way as external science expresses itself. Now, external science expresses itself in such a way that it presupposes the object it wants to recognize. And only afterwards does it want to give the concepts about it. And it does right from its point of view. The spiritual researcher actively immerses himself in the spiritual world and he must himself become an expression of what he experiences in the threefold way as described; and his concepts are formed in such a way that they arise within him vividly, and testify to their truth not as an image, but through their content and their power. The external researcher communicates what he has seen, what he has observed. The spiritual researcher is different: He gives conceptual expression to that which he has experienced, that which has become a part of himself, that which he has struggled to understand; these concepts must be fluid and must illuminate each other so that the concepts are like living beings. But they are such that they arise out of what the deepest essence itself is.

When the spiritual researcher forms his concepts and presents them to the public, these concepts contain information that he can only experience by bringing together the depths of the human soul with the foundations of the world, insofar as they are accessible to us, with the spiritual foundations of the world, so that his concepts are drawn from the depths of the soul. And these depths of the soul are present in every human soul. The spiritual researcher speaks of something that is present in every human soul. When he has researched it and expresses it, he expresses it in such a way that he lets a sound ring out with which the strings of the soul can resonate, to which it can bring full understanding because it is precisely the sound of one's own being.

But these concepts, these ideas, these feelings, in which the spiritual researcher must clothe what he experiences, have the effect of impressing the innermost part of our soul so that it feels drawn to them, because the concepts are active and lead to activity. One cannot understand spiritual science with a casual mind that does not want to be alive within itself. It can only be understood by trying to follow it with the living life and activity of the concepts. Thus spiritual research arises from the activity of the soul and at the same time challenges it to be understood, the activity of the soul.

From this we see that when we respond to spiritual research, we awaken the active power of the soul. It appeals to everything in our soul that wants to be active. The centuries-old scientific education of people has, however, pushed this active power of the soul into the background. But when a force is stretched to its highest degree, the counterforce asserts itself. And anyone who can look into the depths of today's souls knows that the souls long to get out of mere looking and observing, to do what calls for the innermost activity. In this way, the human being learns to feel and experience that he is in the midst of the spiritual world, but not as an understanding being that participates in its life.

Thus, the concepts and ideas and feelings of spiritual science are themselves the educators of the soul, which they seek to guide to participate in the reasons for existence in which we are rooted. First of all, this is realized in the fact that our thinking is oriented – and we can truly speak of an inner soul-good that permeates us through the understanding we bring to the ideas of spiritual research – that our thinking habits, our way of understanding, our soul mood is seized. And while it is otherwise possible to experience that in our presence, especially with well-meaning thinkers, there is something about the orientation of thinking that leaves much to be desired, spiritual science, the messages of spiritual research, can really bring people to orient his thinking in such a way that he imbues this thinking with habits that have a certain natural tendency towards truthfulness; that have a tendency not to get involved in the contradictions of life; to notice how thinking must penetrate into external things. The education of our thinking, the sharpening of our thinking, is what will emerge first when spiritual science enters into our cultural life.

I would like to give an example that can really show what the sharpness of thinking is like in our time. Let us assume that a very important thinker of the present day, who is regarded in the broadest circles today as an astute mind, has done many things that are noticed by those who have trained their thinking in what thinking must not do. There is a recent book by a thinker in which two assertions are found, separated by thirty or forty pages. The thinker in question wants to explain in what sense people today can still be Christians. And one approaches the soul of today's free-thinking people in a pleasing way when one says – and he says it –: Today we must go beyond the demon stories told in the Bible. All right, he may be of that opinion. Thirty pages later, however, one reads the remarkable sentence in the same book: When the spiritual and the physical touch in the soul, then demonic powers arise. You tell that to someone, and he can say: Well, the second time he didn't mean it like that, then he meant it figuratively. Yes, my dear audience, that is precisely the point: people are allowed to use such phrases and are not aware of the grotesque way in which they contradict all orderly thinking.

But people do not notice this today. And we are only on the way to our thinking being corrupted by mere passivity in this direction. This is how it is for those who can see through and observe things. In another famous book, you can read today - there is talk of combating a certain philosophical school of thought - that an author uses the image: This philosophy moves like a clown who pulls up the ladder he has climbed up to him and falls down. The book is quite witty, but I would like to ask you how the clown is supposed to pull the ladder up to him. You only think and write something like that when your thinking is disoriented. But today we are only at the beginning; such books are full of impossible thinking.

But since external culture is, as it were, the imprint of what people think, our culture must gradually be permeated by disordered thinking, unless this thinking is educated in such a way that it can respond with a fine feeling for what can and cannot be said. What can be said must be felt as connected with the essence and weaving of reality. Through orientated thinking, we can become familiar with reality, and this will be the fruit of spiritual science. Everyone will notice that this fruit of spiritual science harmonizes our lives; that it pours something into the soul that is able to bring this life into harmony with reality. In this way, spiritual science already has an educational and training effect on our thinking, making it inwardly active and alive.

And something else results from this. Those who gradually absorb what educated thinking in spiritual science can form in them will feel within themselves the independence of their inner being, the wisdom, the spirituality of their actual core. And there would be no materialism and no monism if one were to really engage in truly trained, energetic, inwardly self-gathering thinking. The strengthening and invigoration of our soul is the fruit of what we have for our thinking from spiritual science.

But spiritual science also brings forth as a second fruit of life that which belongs to the field of self-knowledge. Just as a diseased organism sometimes cannot endure the freshest air, but it can be seen from this that the organism is not healthy, so it can also be seen by some people in relation to spiritual science that they cannot tolerate it, that it makes an impression on them, this spiritual science, that it is fantasy, illusion. One will gradually come to realize that this is a form of self-knowledge; that from it one can see how one should struggle upwards in the soul in order to be able to understand what the spiritual researcher can obtain from the depths of the world.

How far you are from self-knowledge can be recognized by measuring yourself against the demands that the spiritual researcher places on the soul. Therefore, no one should be deterred if they notice that, through spiritual science, their thinking is at first somewhat numbed, disturbed, or their memory no longer seems as coherent to them as it used to. All these are transitional phenomena. We must recognize ourselves in this and say to ourselves: We must struggle to bear the stronger demands in the soul. But then this spiritual science will communicate its healthy spiritual life to us all the more.

And if we go further, we may find that perhaps even today spiritual science is not universally respected as a valuable possession because its value is not so immediately apparent. Nowadays, material goods are of course valued much more than spiritual goods because people do not really understand how material goods depend on spiritual goods. But if many a person could really ask himself out of a certain realization of things – and we can hear this question in our time from many souls who do not quite know how to begin with this or that, who lack a healthy direction in life, who lack the ability to give themselves direction and strength out of a powerful inner being – if many a person could ask himself: Where does all this come from?

These things affect even our physical well-being. Today more than ever, we have to speak of the nervousness of our age, of how unbalanced people are, how they lack balance. Where does this lack of balance come from? Ultimately, it is rooted in the soul. An example of this: that which can most lead to an external feeling of unease, to all possible symptoms of nervousness, to everything else that makes our social life so difficult, what can lead to this is spiritual barrenness, emptiness of the soul, a non-connection of the soul with what spiritual research wants to give, what spiritual research wants to fill the soul with.

Of course, there are some people today who say they have no need for the concepts of spiritual science. That is certainly true. But that is only in their conscious mind. In the depths of the soul there is always a longing for the sources of existence. And what we do not give to the soul asserts itself in it as emptiness, desolation, doubt. And, not overnight, but over decades, what is missing in the soul, what is present as chaos in the soul, pours out into the physical organization. We are no longer up to life. We can no longer pour the soul's strength into the physical because the soul is empty. Because people have become accustomed to paying attention to outward appearances in a natural way over the centuries, they have become estranged from that which can permeate the soul with spiritual content. A great many unhealthy symptoms, which go as far as the physical body and make people unable to cope with life, stem from this. And it will get worse and worse if spiritual science does not intervene and give the soul what it craves without knowing it with the higher consciousness.

Have we not seen that in our time – I do not want to say that there is pessimism in general, but that it has been examined in a peculiar way? If one speaks of pessimism in general, one would have to mention all sorts of misunderstandings. One could mention that some older religions also contain pessimism. But that is not the point, but rather the way in which one tries to support pessimism in our time. This support shows something very peculiar. Perhaps some of you will see what I am about to say as a curiosity. In our time, Kant has found followers. And one of these followers has written Studies in a Psychology of Pessimism. He undertook a strange investigation that takes a completely objective, passive scientific approach to the human being and seeks to examine whether life contains more suffering, more unpleasantness than pleasure, happiness, etc. This professor [Kowalewski] first tried to determine whether this is really the case by asking schoolchildren. He had the children write down what they call happiness in life and what they call suffering in life. They wrote down the following as suffering: illness, death, flooding. As for pleasure, they wrote down: ice cream, playing, gifts. We should not be surprised at the quality of this zest for life. But for the positive researcher, it depends on numerical relationships, and Kowalewski did indeed not just come up with ordinary numbers, but difficult integral terms. His reasoning about pessimism is therefore not easy to read. He was able to determine that in 39 cases suffering was emphasized, in 25 to 27 cases pleasure. So one can conclude from the children's minds that life offers more of the painful than of the pleasurable. And he thought: That doesn't quite go into the positive, you have to do it differently. He also used the diary of a well-known contemporary philosopher. He always wrote down when he felt pleasure and when he felt suffering. And when Professor Kowalewski looked through this diary, he found that suffering outweighed pleasure. So he had the second piece of evidence. But he went further, he was looking for something more certain. He observed people who walk quickly and people who walk slowly. When you are sad, he says, you walk slowly; when you are happy, you walk quickly. That is the professor's premise. And lo and behold, it turns out that there is a far greater number of sad, slow walkers. And so a book has been written in which these numerical relationships have been expressed in mathematical integral forms, and one can say, so to speak, equipped with these: Well, if you examine the external life, the pessimistic world view turns out to be justified, because the external life contains much more of the fatal, the sorrowful, than of the beneficial, the pleasurable. Science has now proved that!

Now there is no need to smile at such ideas. I am not going to talk about the value of such research, in what way it characterizes certain sciences. I just want to ask: What is actually being looked at here? Well, it is what touches man from the external world, what makes an impression on man, for nothing else can be investigated with such methods. No attention is paid to what man is capable of opposing to the impressions from outside, in the way of the unity and self-contained nature of his inner being.

I would like to quote something else that Mechnikov said in his 'Contributions to Optimism'. He talks about someone who was a friend of his, a person who was very nervous, who experienced the disinclination of life in the deepest sense. He could no longer hear a carriage rattle. He could not hear that someone was ringing his bell. He could not see that many people were coming to meet him. And many other things as well. You can imagine what was unbearable for this person. In the end, he knew of no other way to save himself than through morphine, in order to have a sense of stability within himself. Often he was close to taking such a large morphine dose that he could find death. He was also close to death more often, but was saved again and again. Then Mechnikov continued: So that was the man, but it got better and better with his pessimism. And actually Mechnikov says quite rightly why this is so: his external perception, so to speak, became more and more dulled; the outside world no longer made such a strong impression on him as it had done before.

Now we ask ourselves: What led to a greater balance of the soul in this person? That he became duller to the impressions of the outside world, that he was able to close himself off to these impressions. But throughout his life, his inner being was weak. But it can never be a matter of weakening us for everything beautiful and sublime that may come from the world, not to become nervous, but only for what I would like to express as follows: Could not man have had the same earlier, if a strong inner being, permeated with soul substance, had opposed the perceptions of the outer world? But that is precisely what spiritual science strives for: to make man strong within himself against the changing impressions of the outside world; so that we need not become dull to the world, and yet stand securely in the world.

Then it will no longer be necessary to examine the questions of a better or worse life according to purely external things. Kowalewski has done an even more precise experiment and a careful analysis has shown that we have every reason to approach the outside world when we are confronted with it as being much richer in suffering than in pleasure. He did the following. He says: Let us assume that we are examining the sense of taste. Now he has established – in external science you need concepts; where the spirit is absent, you need concepts and words – he called what makes a taste impression in us in the smallest amount of any substance the 'gustie'; and so he established what the gustie is of quinine, which makes an unpleasant impression; sugar makes a pleasant impression. And so he had a number of people take quinine and sugar together to see how much of each was needed to balance it out. And lo and behold, he found that almost twice as much sugar gusti had to be used than quinine gusti if the sugar gusti was to balance the quinine gusti. That means that, in terms of taste, we have to double the pleasant if we want to eliminate the unpleasant.

What I am reflecting on is that we cannot measure something that has an impact on our lives. And the mistake is that one does not take into account that one is actually not at all suited to assess the sugar level in the right way in relation to one's outer life. We take it for granted, but we estimate the quinine level quite strongly. As is well known, we are very much affected by the disease, but we rarely feel the full extent of our desire for health. And this is connected with the mistakes that are made in such investigations.

But we can also fill our health, which must gradually become boring to us when the soul emptiness remains, with what comes to us from the spiritual world, and we can hold out, so to speak, what flows in from the spiritual world to us, which can always hold and carry us, against the obviousness of the disaffection of the outer world. One should not treat a pessimistic mood by asking: Is the world good or bad? but in such a way that one says to oneself: The person who does not find the strength to stand securely in the world has not drawn enough from the spiritual world. What the person of whom Mechnikov speaks acquires through the deadening of his outer organization flows into our soul as a true asset of life when we take up spiritual-scientific concepts and ideas. Just as the most important things for the development of the soul of the spiritual researcher himself flow from the soul's harmony, so the soul's harmony and balance flow out again as a vital asset from the communications of spiritual research.

And we can cite another thing. We have now spoken of the influences of spiritual science on our thinking and imagining, on our minds. We can also speak of an influence on our will, on the initiative of our actions. The fact that we receive such concepts from the spiritual researcher, which are brought down from the spiritual worlds, means that these concepts also penetrate into our soul in such a way that they are suitable for pointing our soul to what is independent in it from the external sense world.

But now, how much arises in our will as a result of external stimulation? I see something that stimulates me. Perhaps I see a flower, I pick it; I am stimulated by it. I do something in life in one way or another. Once the educators taught me something; as a result, the skill arose in me for this or that. If we examine our will, we find external stimuli everywhere. This is precisely what characterizes the will in everyday life: it is stimulated from the outside to a greater extent than is usually believed. Even people who believe themselves to be the freest are dependent on this or that stimulus. They believe they act freely, but they only act according to what has been exerted as a stimulus from the outside world. In particular, we can often see that when people resist this or that in the name of the freedom of their soul, they are in fact resisting because of their stubbornness, their lack of freedom, and not because of the freedom of their mind. In short, the will is rooted everywhere, so to speak, in the external world.

When we take in spiritual science, what flows from its insights has a strengthening and invigorating effect on this will in particular. It works in such a way that this will in the soul becomes independent. But when it does that, we feel it as a force in the soul, as something that can only receive stimulation from within. We are enriched in our soul when we strengthen our will in this way. The external causes no longer affect that part of our inner being that we have acquired through our own will. We withdraw from external causes with our will. When someone becomes more and more deeply involved in spiritual science, they feel their will growing stronger. They can say: “I can now want more than I could before.” But this can only be achieved through devotion to spiritual science.

But if there is no external stimulus for the will, where must impulses come from? Again, what arises as new will not remain in rest, in inactivity, if it receives impetus from within. There is only one thing that no longer compels: what we call love in the broadest sense. This means that the motives of our will must be warmed through by love through the influence of spiritual science. We learn to recognize more and more the deep meaning of the word:

[duty]: where one loves what one commands oneself,

where that which leads us to action leads us entirely through our love for the task at hand, and we strive to accomplish it with the strength of soul with which we strive to accomplish everything that arises from love. With this, we have gained a beautiful fruit of spiritual science as a treasure for life. We have achieved the transformation of our will into the will to love. The treasure of the will to love grows ever greater when spiritual science becomes our life's treasure. Again, it is not something that provides us with material goods. But this will to love is a strengthening, valuable good for our external security in life, which we will see grow and grow as we properly penetrate into spiritual science through the concepts and ideas of spiritual science.

And again, a piece of self-knowledge can be linked to it. We often hear that people think highly of themselves when it comes to their will to love. But this is not the case. For when people, in wise self-observation, become aware of how the ideas and concepts of spiritual science make them aware of the selfishness and lack of love that still exists in them, spiritual science is once again the beautiful corrective, the genuine guide to self-knowledge. On the one hand, it gives us the will to love; on the other hand, it makes us aware of how much we still lack of this will to love. Thus, spiritual science is also the highest form of life, which can be described by the word self-education.

And further, spiritual science leads us beyond what the concepts borrowed from the external world can give us. It leads us to what the spiritual researcher finds by going out of his body with his soul and connecting with the roots of the world from which he, spirit from spirit, is taken. It thus leads us to what is deepest in our soul.

More and more one will see, as I also tried to explain yesterday - through the parable at the end - that science, which is built according to the pattern of external science, must stop at a certain point if it wants to become a worldview. I could explain this for many ideas that are important life ideas. I will explain it for only one idea now. Let us suppose that some philosopher, who at first wants nothing to do with spiritual science, Lotze, a man of spirit - I will stick to my habit of quoting those whom I consider worthy of opposition, those whom I regard as authorities - Lotze, who has written a book, 'Microcosm', which contains many significant works on philosophy, has also tried to present a philosophy of religion. But he arrives only at a conception of truth, at a recognition of such a conception of truth, which is won according to the pattern of those conceptions and ideas that are far removed from outer reality, that are won passively. Lotze therefore attempts to win a philosophy of religion by building it up in the sense of outer science. And, lo and behold, Lotze goes as far as is humanly possible. From his presuppositions he arrives at the assumption of a spiritual being, a divine being, that permeates and pervades the world, that is creatively active. He arrives at being able to conceive of the laws of nature as shaped and spiritualized by a unified divine essence. But every time a religious philosophy of this kind seeks to show how that which is shaped according to the pattern of external truth, like a natural law, is connected with the moral commandments, with that which, as inner impulses, inspires us in life, then it must come up against a duality for which it knows no connection. On the one hand, there are laws that operate with rigid, cold necessity. Where, in this whole system of natural laws, does that which lives in us as our moral impulses arise, as that which drives us to be noble in our human existence, that which permeates us with morality? Where does it spring from out there? If philosophy is to become a way of looking at life, then this question becomes relevant. It takes on significance. If philosophy is to become a regulator of our view of life, pointing out that on the one hand there is the world of necessity, and on the other the world of moral commandments, which, however, lives in us as if cut off from the world - how is it rooted in the world? As long as we remain with the passive concept of truth, we will never be able to bridge this gap, because there is a relationship between necessary truth and its legitimacy and moral truth and its legitimacy that cannot be seen in the external world, that cannot be passively grasped. The relationship between the natural order and the moral order cannot be grasped any more than the relationship between a mother and her child can be grasped through natural laws alone. The father could be there without the child being there. If the child is there, the child emerges from the father, but the father could be without a child. There is no necessity in the father, yet the father leads to the child. Perhaps one of the most significant conceptions and ideas of Christianity is that the relationship of the one God to the God who is to permeate our innermost being is presented in our morality as the relationship of the Father to the Son, the Christ. Theosophy or spiritual science shows us that there is a relationship between the moral world order and the natural-law necessity and world order, such as that of the Son to the Father.

But this relationship can only be understood by going beyond what can be given in passive terms to what can be grasped in the spiritual world; which stands before us in such a way that Goethe can coin the words - he looked to Kant, who tried to set limits to human knowledge, who wanted to regard as mere belief that which is moral world order ; he called it an “adventure of reason” that should not be undertaken. Goethe, who had to reject the kind of world view that Kant represents; he said that if one could truly rise to the upper regions through virtue and faith in the moral order, then one should bravely endure the adventure of reason and also go up with the whole soul to a higher world.

Then, at the same time, something is poured into the natural order as well as into the moral order that is as communal as that which exists between father and son, because nature, if we look at it as it is, could exist without morality, like the father without a son. Only when we look at what has really happened do we find the right relationship between father and son.

So we have to go to what has really happened in the world, and there we come to the very core of Christianity.

I wanted to give you an example of how religious concepts, which the human mind needs to feel its connection with what pulses through the world as divine-spiritual, how the human being can be strengthened in his religious life through spiritual science. For spiritual science shows him that one can really still grasp and understand that which, according to a great philosopher such as Kant, one should only assume and only be able to believe.

Our time, however, is living into an epoch in which it is once again quite clear to the spiritual researcher how souls are increasingly longing not only to accept religious deepening based on the authority of faith, but also to be able to recognize as we recognize nature, that which binds people together with the Divine-Spiritual in the cosmos outside.

Another asset for life will be that the newly awakening religious needs - for they will awaken, the religious needs appropriate to our time - will give these spiritual scientific concepts of inner support, of being set within, again.

The spiritual researcher himself is familiar with all the objections that can be made. If someone wants to say, for example: Now you have presented spiritual science as a special bringer of love. Doesn't Christianity do that for itself? — Yes, of course. The person who says that is fully convinced of it, and perhaps from his point of view he is quite right. But one could give him an answer, which I once had to give to a clergyman who said to me: Yes, what spiritual science says about Christianity, at least in many respects one can certainly go along with that. But one thing strikes me. The way you speak, you only speak to a few educated people who fulfill certain conditions. But we speak to all people. And that must be a true teaching that speaks to all people. I replied, “Pastor, have you found that all people go to church with you?” He could not say that. You see, I said, I want to speak to those who do not go to church with you, because they also have a living yearning for an understanding of Christianity. The fact shows that you are not speaking for them. So you are not speaking correctly for all people. And we do not have the right to say: something is right because we like it; we have to observe the facts. You may think you can dress your teaching in words that will appeal to everyone, but what we think is not always right, the facts must speak. For those who do not go to church but still long for an understanding of Christianity, we must also speak.

Of course, Christianity also speaks of love, but the point is not just to talk about the way to love; the point is to find the way that is the right way for a particular time. You must not be so selfish as to say: I want nothing to do with such a way to love, because the old way is good enough for me. That is egoism, which does not want to pay attention to the longings and tendencies of the souls that are touched by what will touch more and more souls in the future. But it is these souls that need the new paths, and the number of these souls will grow. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to inspire them. It wants to give life goods of the kind that have been discussed here.

I could speak about many other life goods that can flow from spiritual science, but the principle is how spiritual science creates life goods, how spiritual science brings forth that which is immortal in us. But through this, what consciousness evokes in us is awakened and activated: You are an independent being; within you is a source through which spiritual life can bubble, which empowers you, which can give you strength, which can give you everything you need for your life.

Spiritual science is indeed gradually transformed into feelings and sensations. We not only experience immortality theoretically. From the whole structure of my lecture, you could see that the concepts of spiritual science bring to life and resonate within us what the spiritual researcher explores. This is particularly the case with one of the most important questions in life, the question of immortality.

If you delve deeper into spiritual science, you will receive a spiritual doctrine of immortality, a teaching about the core of the human being that can be clothed in concepts and ideas so that we not only know about immortality, but feel within us what is immortal in us. We become like a plant that could feel how the germ grows within it into a new plant. We feel what passes through the gate of death; we learn to experience it. And the time will come when principles such as those set forth in my book 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science' will be applied to the education of the child, when the soul will be so stimulated that it will live on in us, that we will have acquired a feeling through the concepts we have absorbed, that we will know: by living towards death, you develop more and more what your eternal part is. In the second half of life, when we see wrinkles forming on our skin and our hair turning gray, we will feel how all this is like the fading blossoms of plants, but how there is something in us that is emerging ever stronger, overcoming what fades away in us. And as we live towards a new life, we will feel that life. Old age will not be filled with an empty hope, but with the experience of what is felt within as a reality, which will be carried through death into the realm of the spiritual. This, however, will give certainty in life. It will dispel all superficiality, all incoherence of the spirit, all chaos in life. Thus, in addition to the other possessions of life, there will be a particularly intimate possession for our soul.

Just as I have pointed out that with the insights of spiritual science from the depths of human inner and outer perception, one can feel in harmony with all those who, in the right sense, have sensed the significance of human soul life and its relationship to the whole spiritual world through the whole development of humanity, so I would like to conclude by speaking of a thinker who is often forgotten today; a sincere, courageous thinker who, in a small booklet, which is really what is written on its title page, a “Dietetics of the Soul” - I would like to remind you of this dear connoisseur of the human soul, of Feuchtersleben.

The human soul cannot deny that ultimately its happiness consists only in the expansion of its innermost being and possessions.

Yes, the soul's true happiness and, we may add, the soul's true spiritual possessions consist in the expansion of the soul's inner being and possessions. And if spiritual science is what I tried to present yesterday and today, then it is indeed entirely that which, with all its impulses, strives for the expansion of the soul's inner being and possessions. And truly, with what spiritual science gives, one feels oneself standing within what the best minds of humanity have longed and thirsted for, because the soul needs it for its inner spiritual nourishment. Therefore, one is in harmony with such a fine, delicate soul as Feuchtersleben, one that nevertheless thinks and feels on a grand scale. And to sum up, if one wants to collect together in a general feeling what spiritual science can give as its best, one may say: spiritual science gives life's goods; it promotes the genuine, true happiness of the soul. It is held in the sense in which Feuchtersleben's saying is meant:

The human soul cannot hide the fact that its happiness ultimately consists only in the expansion of its innermost being and possession.

Question & Answer: Question: Can you slap children on the hand?

Rudolf Steiner: That is not so easy to answer. Such questions take on a new significance and importance in our time. There is not always a simple answer to a simple question. Simplicity is convenient, but even a clock is not simple. The universe is even less simple, with less power in it than in a clock. Spiritual science does not make things more comfortable, but through it one sees into areas that are indispensable for shaping life. Then one finds that simple things are complicated. Spiritual science gets one used to taking things more precisely, taking things more seriously. Farm children are quite properly tapped on the knuckles, with proper taps, decorated with an iron ring, but they have not become nervous. City children, who have never been tapped on the knuckles, are often nervous. Life is complicated. What is achieved in one nature through something is not always achieved in the other nature through it.

Goethe is right when he says, “One thing is not suitable for all”; we must take people as individuals and not judge abstractions. We cannot say that one thing or another is generally harmful or useful. Spiritual science will lead us from the abstract to the concrete, to an immediate understanding of immediate, concrete life. Then one will find that the question of nervousness will not have much to do with it; but much more important is the question of education from the spiritual-scientific point of view. Then one can completely dispense with what is indicated here. But this education requires much more of the activity of the soul of the educator, who is able to find his way into every soul.

Beating is usually required by the nature of the educator, not the person being educated. In general, it can be said that corporal punishment is not particularly recommended as a means of education, regardless of whether it is on the fingers or elsewhere.

Question: Is clairvoyance possible while awake? [...]

Rudolf Steiner: As a rule, one cannot see the physical-sensory world and the spiritual world at the same time. The physical world is then like a sinking, and simultaneous seeing is usually caused by bringing something like a having [raising?] of the soul into the spiritual vision. What matters is not the state, but the fact that one is so present in the spiritual vision with one's ego, with one's consciousness, that one does not experience it as if in a trance, but consciously. Only then can one seek the connection between the two worlds. It is said that matter does not appear to be present when this state occurs. Yes, it was said yesterday that one has a picture in front of oneself and that one must first learn to read these pictures. You cannot relate them to reality as in the physical world, but must first learn to read them.

Question: Is the concept of God actually set aside in Theosophy, or at least not emphasized as it is in the Christian religion?

Rudolf Steiner: That is a strange question, because theosophy is named after the concept of “God” or “Theos”. It is as if one speaks of Selters water, from which the watery, liquid part has been completely removed. Such objections can only be made if one has not studied the subject. We do not have the immodesty to constrict God into a limited concept; in him we live and move and have our being, and so do our concepts. One can only gradually become familiar with the divine. Most of the time, such a question only wants to say: I do not want any other Christianity than I have always understood. Question: Should flawlessness be achieved?

Rudolf Steiner: That is an abstraction. Questions are often asked about the beginning and end of the world and so on, but the human being can only gradually ascend to understanding. The concepts that are usually brought up are usually as unsuitable as possible. Spiritual science places us in life and keeps us from abstract speculation. Through theosophy, morality is also led into the concrete.

Question: Is there not a danger for the theosophist of being withdrawn from his fellow human beings by the cult of the ego?

Rudolf Steiner: Where there is strong light, there is also strong shadow. There must be a transformation into the will to love, so that the ego is sought much more outside than inside.

Question: Christ's suffering and death is only an archetype for us, since we have to atone for our mistakes later anyway.

Rudolf Steiner: I first have to familiarize myself with this question. It is based on a misunderstanding of the idea of karma. One then says: Why should I help a person who is in need and misery? One should help him first, that is written on his karmic account and has a further effect. How I can help one person, I can help two, three, five, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, and a mighty being like the Christ can help all people in karma.

Question: How can I be released from a sin of thought that I cannot make amends for because the person concerned has since died?

Rudolf Steiner: This must be balanced out in the further course of life. One must not judge this from a merely earthly point of view. We are not dissatisfied with our fate from a higher point of view. Between death and birth, we would be very dissatisfied if we did not have the suffering that flows from our deeds; we do not feel it as suffering at all, but as a relief to be able to balance it out; we strive to balance it out. There is a completely different state between birth and death than between death and a new birth.

Question: What influence does anesthesia have on the finer bodies?

Rudolf Steiner: Wherever it is possible to avoid anesthesia, it should be avoided. Normally, the soul and spirit leave the body during sleep; with anesthesia, they are forced out, that is, they are subjected to force. If it is necessary, it should be used, of course. Question: Does a stillborn child have an ego?

Rudolf Steiner: No more than a corpse. It may have been an attempt at incarnation of the ego before it died in the mother's body.

Question: We have often heard about the effects of karma. What about the cruel punishments in the Middle Ages?

Rudolf Steiner: It is like an account book. The punishment is, so to speak, on the debit side and balances with the other side. There is no need for an absolute balance to be there immediately when a punishment occurs. The soul would not even be satisfied with that after death, because it wants to balance.

Question: Some of the Theosophists look unusual in their hairstyles and clothing. A stranger can feel uncomfortably touched!

Rudolf Steiner: This is certainly not a result of the spiritual current! One must be tolerant of the tastes of others; this is perhaps one of the assets of Theosophy. If you want to wear what you like, why shouldn't others be allowed to do the same? Hopefully it doesn't happen too often that Theosophists become Theosophists through hairstyles and clothing. And, ladies, wearing what you like is something that other women do too, and the Theosophists don't say anything, even if they don't always like it.

Question: [Is there a] sense of self after death?

Rudolf Steiner: Self-awareness is rooted in what remains after death. Only after death we have other tools for perception. Eyes and ears fall off. The soul produces other tools. [The] sense of self is preserved, indeed with a much more intense character. Other theosophists are said to have stated that after death there is only consciousness but no self-awareness? This may be stated in some books, but it has nothing to do with the spiritual science referred to here.

Question: On the other hand, the seer of Prevorst: the people she speaks of still show remorse.

Rudolf Steiner: This does not exclude self-awareness.

The other questions are not of a nature that would be suitable for answering here.