The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! I have the following to say to you, in continuation of our conversation yesterday morning. The point is that you feel in the right way the sending out by the spiritual powers present in the spiritual world and connected with Christ's life on earth, and that you feel your own connection with these spiritual powers as your mission. And in this sense I have read to you the words from the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5, verses 9 and 10, in the way they present themselves when we try to penetrate their real meaning in our language:

After Christ brought his bodily life to an end, he is the healer of sins through all earthly times for all who are filled with him, and is referred to with the word of the spirit as the highest savior of souls according to the rite of Melchi-Sadek.

Only when you feel your own calling in the spirit of these words, with which at the beginning of the Christian era those who were to fulfill the mission of Christ to the full were sent out, will you be able to see in them a renewal of Christian work. Now, however, it is important that we are able to let this word - which is an old word, but has been renewed in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews - have the right effect on our souls. This word, which designates the actual mission of the Christian priesthood, points out to us that only those in the early days of Christian development, that is, in the first centuries of Christianity, sensed their priestly mission in the right way, who said: We do not want to understand alone, in the sense of the Levitical rite, that which we have to bring into the world as a cult, but we want to see through the look through the Levitical rite to that rite which stands nearer to the divine world order and according to which the priest-king Sadek, Adonai Melchi-Sadek, performed the sacrificial service before the priest-king of the ancient Jews, and that is a sacrificial service which Abraham, the old priest-king of the Jews, to whom the Levitical priestly service is to be traced back, also recognized as the higher one for that time. This indicates to us that the sacrificial service of the Jews, insofar as it is traced back to the sacrifice of Abraham, must be understood as a lower one in the early days of Christianity compared to that which was then accomplished in its archetypal old way by Melchi-Sadek, and which in a higher sense, closer to the spiritual world, was again accomplished, is being accomplished and is to be further accomplished by the Christ Jesus Himself. It is pointed out that what Christ's sacrifice is - which is to be renewed on the altar in the way it can happen -, is a higher act than the act that was offered in the days before Abraham - not to the God Jehovah - by Melchi-Sadek, and we must now understand what is actually in these words.

It is said that Melchi-Sadek offered his sacrifice through bread and wine, which were considered inferior to the offerings made by Abraham – the underlying concept here is quite clear. However, we must also bear in mind that the expression “bread and wine” is one that came from later, exoteric Judaism and no longer shows the original full understanding. Because this original and complete understanding was no longer present in those who had a hand in formulating the text of the Old Testament, but only in those initiates who still had an understanding of the ancient initiation in the early centuries of Christianity, it can no longer be fully determined from the text of the Old Testament what is actually meant by the sacrifice of Melchizedek. And yet, those who are sent out into the world as priests today must also have a correct understanding of these offerings of Melchi-Sadek.

If one goes back to what is really meant, in the sense of the initiatory knowledge, when it is said that the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek was offered in the form of bread and wine, one comes to see that in the bread, in the right initiatory knowledge, has always been seen as a carrier of salt. The Jews actually no longer acted in the right sense and with the right understanding when they forgot the salt and even emphasized that it was necessary to use unleavened bread for the sacred sacrificial act. In the bread that was originally meant, salt was seen, just as in the wine it was not the wine as such that was seen, as it presents itself in its wine substance, but it was sought in the wine the extraordinarily volatile, fluctuating content of sulfur or phosphorus, which in the old term is one and the same. If we speak in the right sense, we must actually say that the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek - that is, the sacrifice that was performed according to his rite - was offered through salt and sulfur - or through salt and phosphorus - as found in the foodstuffs bread and wine. That is the original conception, and initiation is called “initiation” because it always goes back to the original conception. In the ancient Hebrew priesthood, the real bread, which contains salt, was replaced by unleavened bread for a certain reason that was not human, because certain secrets were no longer known.

What is it, then, that is contained in salt and phosphorus when a person absorbs them through bread and wine? In salt and phosphorus, through salt, lies the connection between man and the earth. The more salt a person absorbs, the more he connects with the earth, and the more phosphorus he absorbs, the more he breaks away from it and frees himself from it. What takes place in the human body – not outside of the human body – through the combination of salt and phosphorus is a process that properly connects the person to earthly existence, because the salt connects him to the earth in the right way, while the phosphorus snatches him away from earthly existence in the right way, making him free from it again. It is so that the man who has salt and phosphorus in the right way in him stands on the earth in the right way, is properly connected to the earth, but also receives the necessary ethereal and astral lightness to be free again from the earth forces in his being. The fact that the Jews of later times laid the main emphasis on the unleavened in bread showed that they no longer wanted to be connected with the earth, but wanted to have in the bread itself that which would carry them above the earth. Thus they wanted a supermundane and not an earthly priesthood; they wanted a priesthood that would rule the earth from the outside. This was the case with Judaism in particular at the time of Christ. Because Judaism, through long periods of time, had established a priesthood in its mysteries that was not properly connected with the earth, it could not understand that the Being of whom its initiates spoke as the coming Messiah could come to perfection in an earthly body; and it never dawned on the initiated Jews either that the Christ could have walked on earth in an earthly body, in the body of Jesus. Only Paul realized this when he received the help that the Christ revealed Himself not in the earthly body but in the etheric body.

Thus are all things connected, and this you must feel, for the words from the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which were given to those who were sent out as priests in the first Christian centuries, these words can only be understood in the right way from these foundations. But what is gained by going back to the actual original form of the offering of “salt and brimstone”? We can imagine what is gained by doing so if we imagine the contrast that existed between the high priest, between Melchi-Sadek, who was also a priest-king, an Adonai, and Abraham. In the current of intellectual life in which Melchi-Sadek also stood, the idea of repeated earthly lives was alive. It lived precisely in the mystery community to which Melchi-Sadek belonged in such a way that it was kept hidden from the uninitiated as a mystery, but it was handed over to all those who had been initiated into these mysteries. The Abrahamitic Hebraism was characterized by the fact that it restricted human perception to what arises as something spiritual for man when one disregards repeated earth lives, when one does not go into them, when one still takes scantily into account the pre-earthly life that preceded one's earth life and then considers the post-earthly life.

At least that was the teaching of the Pharisees. Abraham was the forefather of Judaism, who had the mission, within the education of mankind on earth, not to allow the teaching of repeated earthly lives to be active at first, in contrast to the higher priest, whom he recognized and who applied this teaching to those who were consecrated by him when they offered a sacrifice. He was opposed to the view of Melchi-Sadek, as described in the Old Testament. We must visualize this view of Melchi-Sadek in the following way.

It was the case that those who became disciples of Melchi-Sadek, which Abraham did not fully become, came to recognize that a person who, here on earth, in addition to doing good and right, also does wrong, needs a power that passes from his present body to the body of the next earthly life. Man cannot by himself carry over into the body, that is to say into the physical and etheric organization of the next earth-life, that which he accomplishes as activity in one earth-life; he can carry it over - and that now in sense of the time of human evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha, in that what is accomplished through the cult with salt and phosphorus is done for him, in the sense that Melchi-Sadek accomplished the sacrifice through bread and wine. This enabled people in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha to take with them into the bodies they took on in the next life on earth the consequences of the good and evil they had committed in the previous life on earth. In other words, it was only through this that people were able to develop karma. None of the moral actions of one earthly life would have been passed on to a future life if it had not been for this kind of passing from body to body of what must be borne, so that there is karma, the cosmic destiny of man.

And what would have happened if there had been no such sacrifices of salt and phosphorus, if there had been no priest-kings to perform these sacrifices and thus become human beings who, so to speak, carried the other bodies along with them through their own momentum and enthusiasm, thus carrying the power of karma from one earthly life to another? Then the good and evil that people have done in one earthly life would have fallen away from them in that particular earthly life and become an inheritance of that power which, in the sense of the Gospel, is referred to as the “prince of this world”, not as the prince to whom man, with his innermost being, belongs. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the constant struggle of the time was that the so-called prince of this world - a spirit that had become Luciferic-Ahrimanic, namely a spirit that had become strongly Ahrimanic - took possession of that which tends towards evil in man, so that he could use the power of this evil for himself in the cosmic order. Human beings would then have become increasingly free from this evil. They were not allowed to do so; they were not allowed to do so because otherwise a new existence of their own would have begun in each new life on earth, and they would never have been able to atone for what is called 'sin' themselves. The sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek therefore consists in the fact that the healing of sins was preserved for men by continually snatching them from the prince of this world, and thus giving men the possibility of effecting a sin-atoning through their own nature in a subsequent life on earth. The Catholic Church was careful later on not seriously to consider this secret, which it has known for many centuries, even as late as the Middle Ages, and which is still known today by individual initiates of the Catholic Church, as religious content, for the reason that it is easier to tell people that their sins are forgiven, that is, that they are wiped out of the earth, even with the help of indulgences, to blot them out, instead of telling them that one is working to ensure that they are not blotted out on earth and do not become prey to the prince of this world and thereby corrupt the world for eternity instead of telling them that the healing of sins consists precisely in the fact that man is given the opportunity to make up for sins in the following earthly life.

In the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek, therefore, in the right sense for that time, the remedy for sins is given, and the healing consisted in giving men the strength to keep their sins and not to deliver them up to the prince of this world. All that lies in the meaning of these words, you, my dear friends, will find renewed and exalted in what the Christ accomplished on earth. And only this illumination, which is now being given, will lead you on the path to recognize in the right sense what the word means: Christ took upon Himself the sins of men, united with them. Christ did not come to unite human piety with Himself, but He was the One who united Himself with the sins of men in order to take upon Himself the burden of sin. And when Paul says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” he means: You humans should accept the Christ in you, and thus accept the current in you that goes into the future of the earth, which contains your stream of sins, but the stream of sins that does not lead to death, but to the atonement of sins. And as priests you will become real healers of sins, not repulsors of sins, whereby men would perish in the light of their existence on earth. Again, this mystery is not explained in the church because it does not want to say what speaks to the courage, but what speaks to the cowardice of men. And it speaks to the cowardice of men when one says: Your sins will be taken from you. But one must speak to the courage and strength of men when one tells them: Your sins will be kept from you, you can carry them into the following earthly lives and can create the compensation for them so that you do not spoil earthly development, and in this way you can carry what you have worked for into future earthly cycles. But this is what you must feel with dignity again if you want to understand your priestly office in the right way. For then you will unite in your mission the three things that the Christ wants to see united in the mission of those who follow him and acknowledge him as the true Master, who in a higher sense has renewed the sacrifice of Melchi-Sadek, who acknowledge him in such a way that they continue his work among men in the threefold sense:

Firstly: in the name of the Father, by feeling truly imbued with God and the spirit, by feeling themselves to be priests not merely by profession, by virtue of their office, but by feeling themselves to be priests through the spirit. Those who do not perform their priestly duties with enthusiasm but merely as a job – which is always the heritage of the prince of this world – do not perform them in the sense of Christ.

"The second is that the word of the gospel is not externalized in the sense of the prince of this world, but proclaimed in the sense of the living Christ, so that the proclamation of the gospel is based on spiritual understanding in the heart of the priest. The continuing churches have sinned very grievously against the second, that which Christ demanded of his servants; they have sinned very grievously by bringing about conditions that are still visible today in their extremes. Especially those who want to be priests or teachers of the gospel very often most often criticize when anyone wants to base the gospel on the living spirit again. And then, in a seductive way that actually contains a Luciferic impulse, it is said that the Gospel should not be interpreted in a “complicated” way – but it is not a matter of a complicated interpretation, but of an interpretation in keeping with the spirit – it should be interpreted in simple words, as they stand. But that means nothing other than that it should not be interpreted at all. Because the way it is proclaimed today is not the gospel; that is, the way it is proclaimed today is actually denied by many theologians. The second thing you should feel as priests of a renewed priesthood is that you should carry out your ministry with enthusiasm, that you have the will to fulfill Scripture in a spiritual sense.

The third thing is that you want to be and should be in the right sense soul doctors of people, soul healers, by your word actually being fulfilled by that power that is given with the commission you have received, by that power through which you, when you perform the cult in the right sense and teach from inner enthusiasm, from inner knowledge, interpreting the scriptures , then in your work you have the power to heal souls, that is, to truly continue the work that the Christ accomplished with the Mystery of Golgotha and that is indicated by the words that he who struggles for the inheritance of evil in human nature, so that this human nature may not bring sin from one from one life to another, has been bound by the Mystery of Golgotha in the earthly life for a thousand years, that is, for a period at the end of which people should have become so strong that they can no longer fall prey to him; then he will be released again, and then people will have to have greater strength to resist him.

We live in the time, my dear friends, in which, on the one hand, Christ wants to show Himself to people again to strengthen their power; in this time we must prepare ourselves for this in the appropriate way. But we also live in the time when the thousand years are fulfilled, when the adversary wants to break his fetters and will do his utmost to achieve his intentions. And that is the time when the real secret of human evolution will be revealed to people, that those who truly feel the “Christ in me” take their sins with them by having the intention not to repel sins and thereby deliver them to the adversary, but to take them within themselves and, through what happened at Golgotha, to have a healing effect on humanity.

My dear friends, I believe you expected to learn not an unctuous reworking of what has already been taught, but something that really contains the secrets of initiation; and you will see that much of what has been taught so far is the very opposite of what is real. And if you cannot feel very keenly that you have to bring something new into the world, which in many respects is the very opposite of what is not a teaching from God but a teaching from the prince of this world, then you will not be able to enter into what you want in the right way. It is therefore an important matter. And the words that I have to add, so to speak, as the “first sermon” at the first mass that has been held here, must not only be words spoken in theory, but they must contain something that can shake your souls in a certain way and bring them to a new state of mind. Because the time has come when people must again be told: Change your minds! And those who want to lead people in a new priestly sense must also speak in such a way that it is said: Change the mind by which, in misunderstanding the facts, the Christian mind has been veiled to man so far!

In this way, after the preceding ceremonies, it falls to me to address the word of sending to you, the word of sending that was spoken in the sense of the first Christian sending of those who had been called to the apostolate, this word of sending forth, which is recorded in the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy, chapter 1, verse 6. And this word I have to speak to you at this moment in the manner in which we can express it in our present language:

I exhort you always to stir up the gift of the Holy Spirit that is in you, which was given to you by the touch of the power of the Spirit world.

And I have to add the word from the first epistle of Timothy, chapter 4, verse 14, which in turn is translated into the language that is expressed by our present words with liveliness, so it means:

Do not lose the excited spiritual power from the eyes of your soul, which is given to you through the spirit word that touches the power of the spiritual world and works in the future.

Those who were sent out in the first Christian centuries to become the apostles were sent out in the spirit of the words of truth contained in these letters to Timothy, and became true followers of the apostles. And if you want to carry out what you have set out to do in the right way, you must become successors of the apostles. You can only do that if you say to yourselves: The apostles will speak to us in the mind of Christ; but we must bring the right understanding to the language of the apostles! And in order for you to have the right understanding of the language of the Apostles, I followed the solemn ceremony of the ordination of the shepherds of souls by connecting, so to speak, the first sermon for the Apostle ministry, which can lead you in the right sense to an understanding of your Apostle ministry. But only if you know that it is precisely in the alchemy of salt and phosphorus – or sulphur – that is, in the bread and wine, that you renew what happened on the cross and as a result of the death on the cross, then you will know that you have to consider the third as part of your mission. The three components of your mission are as follows:

First, that you should discharge your office in the enthusiasm with which the divine spiritual world permeates us;

secondly, that you should bring strength to the communities in the living word, not in the dead word, which actually denies the real spirit and which today, out of a Luciferian inclination, is called the “simple” word; and

thirdly, that you feel like real healers, like real doctors for the sins of humanity, that is, that you can accomplish, in addition to your own state of soul, in addition to the interpretation of the word the miracle of the remission of sins, that is, the transformation of the inheritance of the prince of this world into a good that the Christ carries into the souls of men through all subsequent eras and circles of the earth for the atonement of sins. As one imbued with God, as a teacher of God and as a healer of sins – in this sense you must give to your communities and tell them what you yourselves experience in your enthusiasm, what you can learn as a teacher of God within you, and that it may become manifest to them what you have attained as the living power of the healing of sins. That is what I had to place upon your souls today.

A participant: What about the breaking off of a piece of the host? Does that have something to do with the human constitutional elements?

Rudolf Steiner: If we see in the whole host what lives as solar power in man, we first take in nine-tenths, which we initially let work through their salt content. In this way, we connect nine-tenths of what is in us with our earthly existence, in the way I have just described. The question is: what happens to the remaining tenth? We immerse it in the wine, and before it enters our organism, we mix it with the phosphorus of the wine. It is in this mixing of the phosphorus with the salt that the part of the action taken out of the human being lies. The other part of the action takes place when we allow the salt to combine with the phosphorus merely through inner alchemy. The fact that we also take a small part out of this inner alchemy and leave it to the power that lives on the altar, that is what lies in the breaking away of the tenth from the host.

If we consider the whole human being, in the sense in which I have presented it in my “Theosophy”, according to its nine parts, we find, if we go down from above: spirit man, spirit of life, spirit self, consciousness soul, mind soul, sentient soul, sentient body, etheric body, physical body. These are the nine members. They would not connect with earthly life in the right way if there were not a synthesis: this is the tenth (see the larger circle drawn around the nine smaller circles in the diagram on Plate 3). This gives us ten members, which also appear in the ten Sephirot of the pre-Christian era, albeit in the way that corresponds to that time, when full self-awareness did not yet exist. If you now think of the host in connection with the ten members of the human being, you have in it a member that is the physical body, the ninth (in the drawing, the small red circle), which is actually the tenth. This physical body is in a special position, it is in a different position from the other links in human nature. You have to bear in mind that if you look out into the vastness of space from the earth, in the parts bordering on the earth, in a very, very fine resolution, you have everything that is on the earth, except for the salt-like. The salt-like is a property of the earth itself. There was once a period in the evolution of the Earth when salt formations also occurred in the Earth's immediate surroundings, but they no longer developed into solids, remaining instead in a liquid or gaseous state. Then a time came in the evolution of the earth when salt formation only occurred on the earth itself and in its immediate vicinity, so that the ether, which permeates the earth but extends beyond it, has no part in the formation of salt. Salt is something that has only a meaning for earthly existence itself, and this is shown by the fact that for no other celestial body but the Earth has salt formation become the peculiar characteristic of planetary formation. If you take the physical body, then, simply through its organization, it has a share in salt. And at the moment when you break out of the whole human being, which the host represents, the 'physical body', you can say: I cannot have this body connected in any other way with the one in which the other parts are already inside, than by me letting what can no longer take place on earth in the right way, what only takes place in a decadent way – by forming phosphoric acid salts, , but which make up precisely the heaviest part of the human being, his bony part, which belongs solely and exclusively to earthly existence. By allowing this to combine in an extra-terrestrial way – that is, allowing the salt to combine with the phosphorus that is in the wine – I allow, through what I do in the rite, through Christ, that which would not be effected in my own body. So I must consume a part of the host in such a way that it does not work like the other part of the host; so that [by breaking off a part of the host] it should be shown that man himself is not the alchemist who effects the transmutation, but it should be shown how that which man cannot do is done by the power of Christ at the altar.

This is how the matter presents itself when we consider it in terms of the new spiritual alchemy.

A participant: What about the seven candles on the altar?

Rudolf Steiner: It is good to put into words everything that is present in the cultus in a physical form, because the physical form of the cultus should speak to us. If we wanted to express in a single sentence what is contained in the seven candles, we would have to say: Just as there are seven human constitutional elements within you, a sevenfold power radiates out of the ritual for you, each part of which belongs to a part of your own being.

A participant: What can be said about the figures on the chasuble?

Rudolf Steiner: If we consider the processes that take place in the cosmos and which either close in on human beings, so that they participate in cosmic processes, or which are expressed in a different way so that they develop images or replicas of them, then, if we want to express this in words, we can only do so in the following way: Panel 3

We can say that ascending and descending forces are at work everywhere in the cosmos. These ascending and descending forces can best be visualized by a line like this:

We would then have the ascending forces on one side and the descending forces on the other.

On the one side we would have the ascending forces and on the other the descending forces. You can imagine it something like this: if you were to stand on one pan of a set of scales, you would be heavy, i.e. you would take part in the general ponderability of the earth, in gravity. You would join the forces that work downwards. There are, of course, other forces at work than those that we initially think of as represented by gravity. You could live in connection with everything that manifests itself as gravity, but you could never develop a soul life permeated by thoughts. For if you were only exposed to these forces of gravity, your brain would weigh 1500 grams; but a brain weighing 1500 grams would immediately crush all the fine veins beneath it. If the brain were to press down on the lower surface of the head with this weight, a person would not be able to think, and would therefore not be able to develop a soul life. How do we develop a soul life? You develop a soul life, to put it bluntly, through Archimedes' principle. Archimedes said that when he was once in the bath, he observed that he felt lighter than outside the water. And in physics we learn the law that every body, when immersed in water, loses as much weight as the weight of the amount of water displaced by it, so that when you are in the water, you lose as much weight as a human formed from water would weigh. Now our brain is floating in the brain fluid and as a result it loses so much of its weight that instead of pressing down with 1500 grams, it only weighs 20 grams. In physics, what counteracts the force of gravity in the fluid, which now works upwards and not downwards, is called buoyancy. Thus man lives with his soul not in the forces of gravity, the ponderable forces, but in those forces that draw upward; he himself is a physical cosmos, which, as regards his soul life, does not live in what is heavy in him, but in what continually strives to escape from gravity in him.

Thus we can say: We need only look at the human being very roughly in physical terms, and we cannot think materially at all. The human being has the characteristic of being heavy. But if we were to think with the material, we would have to think with the heaviness. We cannot think with heaviness, but only with uplift. It is therefore nonsense to believe that we think with heaviness. We think with that which strives upward to heaven; thus we join the forces that work upward. We human beings live in the forces that draw downward and those that work upward; our inner being is in the upward-working forces, our outer being in the downward-drawing ones. The physical body is heavy, the etheric body is neutral in relation to gravity, the astral body pulls up and the I is carried up through the astral body, not down. Thus the outer man is integrated into the cosmos. But what does he do as an organism that also has an inner organic life? The following happens:

Everything that takes place in the head is a true reflection of what is happening in the metabolic-limb organization. When, for example, a person digests and his kidney and liver systems work together to regulate digestion in the right way, a process takes place in the kidney and liver systems that is also reflected in the left part of the brain. There is never just something going on below or just above, but there are always corresponding processes taking place below and above. Thus, just as the human being is outwardly embedded in the cosmos of ascending and descending forces, so too is he inwardly endowed with these forces; those forces that are in the left part of the brain act down in the liver and kidneys; those forces that are in the upper right part of the brain act down in the stomach (see diagram, plate 3).

And if we follow the effects of these forces, the ascending and descending ones, we get this second line:

Plate 3

There is a neutral point in the human being where these two forces intersect. If you show yourself as a spiritual person to the believing community, and you show yourself from the front, you show yourself in this form (see drawing). If you turn around, then that part of you which is more an image of your own inner being shows itself in the other line. With regard to the upper, dotted part, it is then a matter of taking it up through yourself, that is, letting it go within you and leaving it to the gods to properly effect the transformation of the ascending into the descending forces. So that you simply show what is right when you are vested. You pronounce the secrets of the world through the vestment.

So you can't say: why is that so? In the material world, man is simply Maya. During the sacred act, he can show himself as he is in relation to the cosmos and to himself. You make sure that the person shows himself not in an illusory form, but in his truth. The image is intended to suggest what is a reality in the human being in the spiritual sense, but what is also reproduced in the physical human being. You just need to form a picture of how the blood circulation in the human being proceeds in the left and right halves of the heart, how the blood flows from the right atrium to the right ventricle, through the lungs, back to the left atrium , from there to the left ventricle, and again supplies the upper part of the human being, this is visible in an approximate way, corresponding to earthly conditions. Only when one follows this line, the point of intersection is somewhat shifted in the physical and is more towards the bottom.

A participant: Does a donation formula have to be given for the community communion?

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the Act of Consecration of Man, the Mass, can be read and the faithful merely listen. The Communion of the faithful can also be incorporated into the Act of Consecration of Man; in that case it takes place after the Priestly Communion. And so it should actually be that all the breads are in the paten, to be used for the Communion of the faithful, and that all the wine is in the chalice, to be used for the Communion of the faithful. So the Priestly Communion is coming to an end.

May Your Body, O Christ, which I have received, and Your Blood, which gives me life, penetrate me, so that the disease of sin may be cured by the healing medicine, the sacrament.

It is done through You, who bear and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and, through the Holy Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.

Altar server: Yes, let it be so.

Now the priests' communion is over; now the faithful's communion begins:

The body of Christ which you receive and the blood of Christ which gives you life may permeate you so that the disease of sin may be healed by the healing medicine, the sacrament.

It is done through You, who bear and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and, through the Holy Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.

Altar server: Yes, Lord, let it be so.

The host is given, placed on the tongue. The believer is touched lightly with the fingers of the right hand on the left cheek, and it is said again:

Peace be with you.

Then the chalice is passed. The left cheek is again touched with the fingers of the right hand, and again it is said:

Peace be with you.

This is the transition from the priest's communion to the faithful's communion.

Of course, Holy Communion is not to be distributed at every Mass, but in any case it should not happen that the faithful proceed to Communion without an opening of the Mass. Now it may be that in some places the Mass cannot be read. Then it would of course still be good, even without celebrating the Mass, at least to develop the whole spirit of the Mass, so that - since the community will certainly demand the explanation of the Mass right from the start - the Communion of the faithful can at least be incorporated into the Mass action in spirit.

A participant asks whether the Communion of the faithful should also take place without the Priestly Communion.

Rudolf Steiner: The action can certainly be performed in an appropriate manner. It is not good if the communion of the faithful is brought about without the communion of the priests. The communion of the priests should come first.

A participant: What about the mixing of water and wine?

Rudolf Steiner: This is a given in actual alchemy, in that the human being - I only hinted at this yesterday by way of example - continually develops alcohol within himself as he needs it. Now, the human being is also 90% water column, the other is only incorporated in it. Therefore, in the chalice, we also have an image of the human being made of water and wine, in that you do not just take the wine, but the wine, which is a product of the human being, mix it with the water.

You can only unite with Christ by entering into the phantom of the physical human body. This is contained in the words: “entering into the physical earth”; and this is what man finds when he

physical, even when it is already corrupted in the physical, is linked precisely to Christ. Thus renewal takes place in union with Christ, which is there as a consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer asks whether words could also be given for the laying out of the robes in the sacristy.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could think of something like that, but I would actually like to warn against the danger of over-Catholicizing. The situation is this: if you take a missal in your hands today – the good missals include instructions for this – you will find an extraordinarily strong externalization. Every second, when the priest dresses or walks to the altar, he is doing something prescribed for him; he cannot escape the words contained in the missal. A Missa solemnis is, after all, something extraordinarily complicated, and only by first tormenting candidates for the priesthood to learn how to put together a mass, for example at Christmas, at Easter and so on, does one make it possible for the matter to proceed without difficulty. Otherwise, the composition of a mass, for example a Christmas mass, where many individual priests work together, would take an extremely long time to prepare, because everything is externalized and has to be coordinated. Now this is simply postponed to the time of the candidates, and later the priests can spare themselves the trouble, because it actually happens automatically. So it is precisely in the Catholic Church that it is the “catholic” that it has externalized everything, and one must go back to feeling one's way through the action of the Mass with such moods, as I have just indicated through the two fundamental sermons, so that one does not have to specify. And you have indeed given the priest the means to keep this alive in his mind, in the breviary, if it is used in the right way and is brought into the right connection with the preparation for and the celebration of the Mass. I would therefore like to warn against the fact that the matter is too formulaic. I must strive to bring back what is Catholic in the Ahrimanic externalized, to the original real spiritual. So I would like to warn against feeling too strong a tendency towards Catholicism. They would quickly end up on the same path that Catholicism actually took in the 5th century, but especially between the 10th and 12th centuries, where everything was really externalized. I believe that we would have to avoid that if we act correctly. So: do not go too far when formulating. Formulate what needs to be formulated, but do not go too far.

What I said yesterday and today, and what I may still have to say, offers the opportunity to experience the original spiritual dimension in a very concrete way, not just in a general, abstract way, but in a very concrete way, during the preparation, the celebration and the aftermath of the Mass. There it comes to life every day. We do not run the risk that the Roman Catholic priest does, namely – and of course one must express things as they are – when you celebrate the great lines of the rite, it is also a real process. What you perform as a rite is imprinted in the ether of the universe; and when you read the tenth mass, it is not the same as the first time. The first time you excite the vibrations in the cosmic ether, the tenth time you already place yourself in the vibrations; thus, more and more an objective arises. If you now permeate everything with formulas too strongly, you get the same result as when a Catholic priest performs the service. The actual rite breaks away from the person, but the rite that clings too strongly to the person causes a terrible hardening in the person: he repeatedly enjoys the same thing that he enjoyed the day before, he enjoys, so to speak, his own sputum over and over again. And that must be avoided. A participant: How should we understand 'to the right and left of the altar' at Mass?

[Rudolf Steiner's answer is only poorly recorded by the stenographer. See note.)

A participant asks about sobriety when celebrating the Act of Consecration of Man.

Rudolf Steiner: You can imagine how much more undisturbed the whole process of celebrating the Mass is when there is no nourishment at work within you. The Catholic Church has the idea that the consumption of the sacrament at Mass is made the first consumption of the day, with the exception of those who have dispensation because otherwise their health would be harmed. Now, the idea is that the mass is basically performed for others, so it is detached from the priest, so that the question of whether the priest should perform the mass on an empty or a full stomach is actually a personal matter for the priest. Of course, it has an effect on him, because he also has to read it for himself. Now he can arrange it in such a way as he needs for his own strengthening. He has to read the Mass every day. But if one priest says, “I feel the power of the Mass for eight days,” another says, “I feel it for a month.” This is true for the priest himself.

The act should be celebrated at sunrise, not at sunset. A mass at sunset cannot be considered a real mass for the cosmos. During the Christmas season, a mass should be read around midnight, at the transition from the descent to the ascent of the sun, between December 24th and 25th. This is how it is now; originally it was between December 22 and 23. This is now also correct in the Catholic Church. A mass is to be read at midnight between December 24 and 25, immediately where the sun begins to rise. A participant: How often should incense be burned during the ceremony?

Rudolf Steiner: Only one incense is necessary. But of course, if you want to celebrate the service solemnly, you can even do it up to three times. You don't have to limit it to a clever system. It is a process that develops. You must not ask: What difference does it make if I do it three times? - The first time invokes the process.

Today I'd like to add a few things to our various spiritual scientific discussions relating to Christianity. In the first place we are going to consider the interpretation and explanation of Christian parables. Then I'd like to say a few things, just touching on the subject lightly, on the Book of Revelation, which I also spoke of in the public lectures.¹¹⁷

The first parable I want to consider is the one of the untrustworthy agent.¹¹⁸ As you know, this parable is a puzzle to many people. Let us look at it, at least in so far as we want to consider it today. I am going to present it in the literary translation¹¹⁹ and we'll then consider it in esoteric terms.

He also said to his disciples: ‘There was a rich man who had an agent of whom he heard complaints that he was wasteful with his property. So he called him and said to him:” What is this that I hear about you? Render an account of your management, as you cannot be agent any longer.” The agent said to himself: “What shall I do now that the lord takes the management away from me? I have not the strength to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what to do so that when I have been dismissed as agent they will accept me into their homes.” And he called his lord's debtors, one at a time, and said to the first: “How much do you owe my lord?” And he answered: “A hundred measures of oil.” So he said to him, “Sit down at once, take your account and write fifty.” Then he said to another: “And you, how much do you owe?” And he answered: “A hundred measures of wheat.” So he said to him: “Take your account and write eighty.” And the lord praised the untruthworthy agent because he acted with forethought, and said: “The sons of this age show more forethought in their own generation than the sons of light.” ’

This parable has been a great puzzle to many people, and rightly so. Before we go into it, let us just consider that parables like this have been explained in all kinds of different ways through the ages. We have known people to say that there is profound meaning behind such a parable. Many have tried to find explanations according to their own ideas. It is perfectly clear that if people come and explain such parables according to their own ideas, something intelligent will result if the individual concerned is intelligent, and something unintelligent if he's not. If people bring in their own ideas, there can of course be no guarantee that theirs is the right interpretation. The situation is completely different from the spiritual scientific point of view. What matters to us is to explain such parables the way it was done in the original Christian mysteries; that we know the profound significance which they hold and out of which they have arisen.

Such Christian mysteries existed and I have referred to them on several occasions. I said that Paul went forth to speak of Christianity, and that he founded the esoteric Christian school under Dionysius in Athens. We are going to explain the parables in the way they were explained at that time. We are not going to speak of our own ideas but of things we are truly able to know. The teachers at those Christian schools drew on the things they had received from Christ Jesus himself.

It is especially today that parables of this kind have suffered greatly because people's—and even theologians'—thinking is generally materialistic. To demonstrate what is actually possible in this regard, let me read you something about this parable from a small book published as part of a series.¹²⁰ The author is considered to be one of the most outstanding representatives of the Hamack approach; he was appointed associate professor at Jena University and a few days ago to the chair of New Testament studies. These are therefore the ideas presented by a university professor. What is more, his wisdom is available to everyone, for the book only costs a few pence. The best way of disseminating ideas like these is to present them in cheap books of this kind. Everything suggests that the matter is more important than one would generally think, for that is how the materialistic thinking of theologians reaches the hearts and minds of people.

The way of explaining such a parable is more or less like this: ‘The things people say regarding a deeper meaning to these parables are nothing special; it is something which simply is not there behind the parables. We need to go back to our original, childlike way of thinking.’ It is as if the Christ merely intended to tell an artfully composed story. What he said in the story is of so little importance that it is entirely in accord with modern thinking, where things cannot be reduced low enough, to bring them down to the level of the most ordinary commonplace.

His actual words are: 'Let us take the parable of the untrustworthy agent, for this often causes problems. We'll take it on its own, up to the words: "The lord praised the untrustworthy agent because he acted with forethought." The reason why we leave away the rest of the verses will be clear later on; one thing is certain and that is that they can no longer all be used for the interpretation, for they are about completely different ideas. If we take the parable as a parable again, all it is intended to say is that the agent knew that there would be an accounting followed by dismissal. He therefore considered what he might do in this situation, and right away took the only course he could think of. That was an intelligent way of doing things. Even his lord, whom he had cheated, had to admit this.

Now to what it was meant to tell Jesus' contemporaries: "You, too, know and believe that God will call you to account one day. Be intelligent, therefore, and prepare for this!' 'At least be intelligent about if, the parable is meant to say. Jesus was not concerned in this case with goodness, nor with the longing in human hearts. A harsh, ironical mood prevails. Nothing here of 'Blessed be they who bear pain, blessed those of a pure heart!' Instead we have: 'If you won't listen to everything, at least be as intelligent as that untrustworthy agent!' There's a note of sharpness in this parable, and this is why we have such a strange choice of image. Jesus did not consider it necessary to add that we cannot prepare for God's judgement by committing further villainies the way the agent did.

You see that Weinel himself compared the lord in the story with God. The last three lines clearly show that the parable could be seen to relate to this, for the author says that God might one day call the soul to account. So there should surely be the words: 'at least be good'. But if we then read what the lord says to the untrustworthy agent, using the words 'you should at least be as intelligent as such an untrustworthy agent', it means we have not understood the parable.

Such ideas are presented in popular books today and implanted in the minds of young students. It is not the kind of materialism which explains the outside world in materialist terms which is worst, but the materialism of people who do not want to know of any deeper insight into theological things. It is the kind of materialism which is the cause of the other, scientific materialism. Here materialism enters deeply into human souls, and then one cannot help oneself but interpret the facts of modern science in a materialistic way. We'll have to learn again to understand things of the spirit And this can only happen through the approach where it is truly possible to explain the Bible and other religious documents.

We come to understand such a parable if we enter more deeply into its meaning. One thing to be considered from the beginning is that it is in Luke's gospel and does not appear in the other gospels. What does it mean to say it is only in Luke's gospel? It means a great deal. If you study the gospels, for instance those of Mark and Luke, and compare them, you'll find that each has a particular mood. In yesterday's lecture I said these were canonical works coming from different initiation centres. Luke goes back to the initiation gone through by the Essenes and Therapeutists. You therefore have a medical aspect to it, seeking to restore balance for people, to bridge differences between them and make it come true that in the eyes of the world of the spirit, all human beings are equal. Luke's gospel often seems like a gospel for people who are oppressed and burdened. It will help them to stand up straight, for they are equal in the eyes of the world of the spirit. This needs to be considered, and then we shall find the basic note, the mood, which is to be found in the gospel of Luke.

In earlier times, the different gospels were in fact declared to be different even in tone. Let us hold on to this for a bit. Here we have to consider an important basic quality of Christianity, which you'll remember from earlier lectures. You know that I often reminded you of the words: ‘Anyone who does not disregard his wife, child, mother and brother, cannot be my disciple.’¹²¹ You know that these words refer to a major step forward in the evolution of the human race. It refers to the fact that in earlier times we had a love in the world that was founded on blood bonds; this love had to go, however, as soon as the bonds of blood were broken. In earlier times, in the past, blood relative loved blood relative. The Christ taught the love which will be such that one human being loves the other, irrespective of how their blood relates. This bond of brotherhood will mean that people are equal not in the greatest possible external sense, but in what Christianity teaches to be equality in the worlds of the spirit.

The coming of the Christ thus brought a decisive change in human evolution on earth. It gave the impulse for humanity to progress towards a great bond of brotherhood that encompasses the whole world. Christ Jesus has made it possible for human beings to be guided by the power that comes from his words, guided to that all-encompassing love for which we use the term 'bond of brotherhood'. The gospels give us the strength and power we need to establish this bond. This is something we need to understand clearly.

Seeing things in this way, we perceive the great profundity of a word we find in the gospels in many ways, a word which always refers to the old law, the law pertaining to the early times described in the Old Testament. Jesus did say¹²² that neither the dot on an i nor anything else should be gone against in this law, but he put something completely new in place of this law, something which has not yet become real. He put the free, loving attitude people have to one another in place of things that are governed by law today. Laws regulate the ways people live together and the things one person has to do for another. A time will come, however, when each individual will know, having an immediate feeling for this, what he needs to do for, and give to, his human brother.

Let us now consider the parable from the point of view of Christianity. If we take it seriously we'll grasp the profound significance and understand that the rich man may indeed be compared to the divine regent of this world. The analogy does indeed exist—rich man and divine regent of the world. But how? Putting the question like this, one might easily be asking why the agent was untrustworthy. It is generally assumed that it is because he let people put down 80 instead of 100 measures, and so on. People think the agent was untrustworthy because he put something down for people that was not in accord with their debt certificates. This was veiy wrong. Truth is that he was called untrustworthy because he had demanded excessively high prices for the grain and other produce which he had sold to the people. We can now understand why people would not support the agent if his lord dismissed him. If that were not the case, we'd have to assume that the rich man himself wanted to be untrustworthy. But the parable says nothing of the kind. And if we take the sentences that follow—the ones Weinel was arbitrarily leaving out—we'll find that we have no need to think the rich man to have been someone who would ask his agent to cheat people. The agent thought he'd serve his lord well by getting the best possible prices for him. Yet in spite of this he stood accused of not having acted in his lord's interests.

Let us approach the parable in the light of the above and get a clear picture. It was said of the agent that he had wasted his lord's property. He knew that people would not stand by him because of the way he had done things, asking high prices. So he thought: 'What am I to do? My master wants an accounting, and he'll dismiss me from my office. The others, he said to himself, won't accept me into their homes.' So what did he do? He made up for some of the things he had done wrong earlier, as an untrustworthy agent. He let people off a bit, that is, he now asked more humane prices. He let some of the mammon go which he had wrongly demanded for his lord.

If we take the parable like this, we may indeed compare the rich man with the divine regent of the world, and the agent with someone who was appointed to govern the old world at the behest of the divine regent, when life was regulated by laws. We may then also say that there was to be an accounting as to how affairs had been managed. It was found that the agent had grown untrustworthy. The same may be said of the law. It had been good originally, but had gradually become unfair. Class distinctions were made and rights established that could no longer be upheld. And so someone who had said that neither the dot of an i nor anything else should be gone against in this law, now had to demand an accounting from the Pharisees and Scribes who were administering the law. The parable was about the Pharisees; they were the untrustworthy agents, administrators of the law. It was they who must not imagine that if they were not accepted by the one they thought to be their god they would be welcome in the huts of those who were subject to the law.

We can now also see why there is no need to make the rich man in the parable untrustworthy. He actually praised the agent for having cut prices. If a rich man wants to cheat people, surely he's not going to praise someone who returns some of the money where prices have been too high. The agent thought to serve his lord and grew unjust towards others. In the same way the people whose task it was to guard the law believed they were serving their lord and grew unjust towards other people.

This changed the moment the Christ came. We also see that those who have been handling those laws needed to restore to rights anything they have done wrong in the process. The law had grown unjust. Now, when love of all people was demanded, those who wanted to gain the huts—meaning the souls—of people must put the just law in place of a law which in specific areas had become unjust. They have to write something off where things had become unjust. In the gospel, therefore, the old Scribes and Pharisees are divided into those who in rigid orthodoxy go on calling themselves ‘children of God’. They are the ones whom Christ Jesus condemns, saying he wants to have nothing to do with them. They are the ones of whom he says that they continue to be far removed from him; who say: ‘We serve God who has given us the laws.’ They were the ‘children of light’ because they held fast to the law, which was a technical term for the servants of God who were later compared to the untrustworthy agent The others, who lived among the people, who had to be involved with human inclinations, were the ‘children of the world’. They did not insist on the letter of the law; they let people off because one could no longer do things in an unjust way. They are people who were unjust before, but having to be in close touch with life they were forced to change. Because of this the 'children of the world' were wiser than the 'children of light'.

The parable refers to the way the world is ruled. What was good before may become a torment, and something else must take its place. So what is the situation now concerning the law, and the honesty of those who administer it? Where are the people who no longer base themselves on the old law? And those who have reason to fear that they will not be welcome in the huts of others, because they have been unjust? The parable is now easily understood, for we have given the old esoteric interpretation from which the parable originally arose. One should not interpret the parable in a materialistic, theological way, but very simply. These parables exist in order to show the profound significance of humanity’s great mission.

The other parable is the parable of the lost son. You know it. It also presents difficulties for some. It would be taking us too far to read out the whole parable. You know what it is about. A father had two sons. One asked for his inheritance so that he might go out into the world; the other stayed at home, was a good boy and helped to run his father’s affairs. The one who had gone out into the world lost everything, grew poor, and ended up in the greatest misery and dire want. When he came home, his father received him most lovingly. When the older son heard this, he grew angry and would not enter the house. His father went outside and asked him to come in. But he said to his father: 'Look, I have been serving you for so many years, but you've never given me a ram so that I might have a pleasant time with my friends. But now that this son of yours has come, having wasted his inheritance on bad girls, you have killed a fatted calf for him.' He said to him, however: *My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But you should be happy and delighted for your brother was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found again.'

Imagine now that someone plays a part in the parable of the lost son today and that it is not covered with the dust of millennia of venerable tradition. Don't think that there aren't also people today who consider it to be extremely unfair that the father receives his runaway son with open arms, putting his other son at a disadvantage. Don't think that people are going to say anything else! And they do say it. There are people who do not venerate the Bible the way the faithful do. To some, the Bible is an ordinary book known the world over. A few lines from someone who sees it like this, a thoroughly bourgeois freethinker, will show you. The book is entitled Finsternisse (darknesses).¹²³ It says: 'Our sympathies are entirely with the older son... The way the father treats his younger son is extremely unfair to the older son,' and so on.

This is uninspired, but many people would think the same if the parable were to be written today. Consider, however, that there's something behind these things. Consider that we can understand the whole nature of these things out of what lies behind them. We can see, therefore, that we merely have to give them a deeper meaning. The most important of these parables may also be found in a kind of canon of the mysteries, taking different forms among different nations. Let me tell you one from the Hebrew Canon,¹²⁴ and then you can make the comparison.

A king had to accept the fact that his son left him and went away. He sent the tutor who had power over his son, that he might bring him home. The tutor did soften the son's heart. But the son said: 'How am I to face my father again?' And his father sent word: 'Surely it is me, your father, whom you'll be facing,' and so on. But it also says something else, and that is: 'This also happened to the people of Israel who had grown sinful and turned away from their father, the regent of the world. They had lost faith.' The story then goes on: The King sent messengers after his son. The son said, however: How can I face my father? His father replied: Surely it is your father whom you'll be meeting face to face?

The parable is not the same as in the gospel but it came into existence centuries before the Christian era, with definite similarities, and has been preserved in Hebrew tradition. The difference is merely that a deeper explanation is given. It is spelled out for people that the story refers to the nation which needs to return to the father. Jesus merely gave the images in the parables, interpreting them only for the disciples. The Jewish parable relates to the nation, a single nation connected by blood bonds; the Christian parable relates to the evolution of the whole of humanity.

Let us now remember how souls came down from the keeping of the divine spirit in ancient Lemurian times, how the soul entered into the human being, and how it was only because of this that he became an individual person. Let us follow the way the soul grew more and more individual; let us remember that animals still have group souls today and not individual souls—a group soul on the astral plane. If we go back in the evolution of the human race we find that humans also had group souls once, being closer to the divine spirit then than they are today. Human beings had not yet descended and entered into bodies at that time. They brought about what the god in them brought about. Once they had entered into human bodies they grew more and more individual, their own masters in the habitation of a human body. Others remained behind at the original level and at other early stages. Because of this we have the different types of human beings side by side. We have people who today still have almost a generic soul. We cannot perceive individual impulses in them, and they act less of their own accord and more in a generic way. The god instilled the group soul. It continued like this until the independent human being evolved who seeks the way back to his god again.

The process of evolution was such, therefore, that originally the human being was a group soul in the keeping of the divine spirit. Looking at an individual today and at human evolution, we are able to say: Primitive man still remains with the father; he has not left his father’s habitation. The other one, however, has gone out into the world, has asked for his inheritance, so that he may develop freely. A moment comes when the developing human being feels isolated, deprived of spiritual goods. He then seeks to find his way back to God again. That is the process of evolution—descent from the god into matter and then the re-ascent, returning to his father’s house. If we find the way back out of our own resources, we return having first grown poor, hungering for spiritual goods. We do, however, return as independent individuals, and the higher we advance in the spirit the more do we return home. Candidates felt themselves to be returning to the house of their divine father. What they said came from the group soul. It will become clear to us if we consider this in its occult sense.

It is not easy to study the human organism esoterically. The way people are today, they have a physical body, an ether body, an astral body and the actual I. All these bodies do not exist on their own; they are not yet independent entities. Please forgive the not very appetizing comparison, but it will show things a bit more clearly. Spirits that are more or less alien by nature are present in all these bodies, like maggots in a cheese. They move in and out. The influences to which human beings are subject come from the outside and from very different spirits. The spirits that move into and out of the physical body are called 'phantoms'. The human being becomes unfree because of this. The spirits present in the ether body are called 'spectres'. And the spirits present in the astral body are called 'demons'. As you know, people who were not superstitious but knew something of these things, were familiar with this. And the entities that have to do with the I are called 'ghosts'.

How does the human being grow individual? By purifying himself. He is most powerfully purified by becoming a companion to the world of the spirit. He then works on his astral body to free it from demons. When he is working on his ether body he frees himself from spectres. Working on the physical body he gets rid of his phantoms. Once this is done, he returns to the pure, divine realm. He will have won something in the process. He had been unfree. But now, having freed himself, he returns to his father’s house a free man. This will make it easier for you to understand the reports of Jesus driving out demons.

In the parable of the lost son, you need to think of the whole of human evolution. The spirits will be delighted at the soul's return, for it will not have remained the way it was when it went away. The individual has changed, has become free. This delights his companions. We should not see the sphere to which the parable relates as something lowly or small; we need to see it as the great cosmic tableau. You will penetrate even more deeply if you recall that everything is the other way round on the astral plane, as I told you. Remember I said that even figures have to be read the other way round in the astral world, in their mirror images. So if we come to the figure 64, we should read 46, not 64. When your passions take their leave of you, it seems to you that they are all kinds of spirits rushing towards you. If you want to create a parable with a profound, ethical core for the most sublime worlds, you use numerous images that appear the other way round in the physical world. This shows you the deeper reason why some parables, ethical in the world of the spirit, will sometimes offend in the physical world. You have to think of many things in parables. You are driven by them, through your feelings, into the world of the spirit. And that is also the mood, the tone, which lives in such parables. And it is in fact characteristic of such parables that they offend in their physical form.

Another parable I would like to mention briefly is the one of the wise and foolish virgins.¹²⁵ This also makes us think. Let us recall. The realm of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, however, and five were wise. The foolish virgins took their lamps but no oil with them. The wise virgins carried oil in their vessels as well as their lamps. The bridegroom was delayed and they all grew sleepy and went to sleep. At midnight, however, voices were heard: “Lo, the bridegroom is coming; go forth to meet him!” The virgins all rose and prepared their lamps. The foolish ones then said to the wise ones: “Give us of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” The wise virgins replied: “No, for then both we and you will not have enough; but go to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.” Yet as they went away to buy some the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him for the wedding, and the door was closed. Finally the other virgins also came and said: “Lord, lord, open up for us!” He said, however: ‘Truly, I tell you I do not know you. Watch and wait, therefore, for you will know neither the day nor the hour at which the Son of Man will come.”'

Here an indication is given that the parable has something to do with the Christ's future coming. Let us make this clear. We can do this if we once again consider the parts of the human being. If I work on my astral body, the Holy Spirit arises in Christian terms. If the I works on the ether body, budhi arises, or Christ, the logos. In my Theosophy, the Holy Spirit is called ‘spirit self,’ the Christ, the logos, is called ‘budhi’ or ‘life spirit’.

We look at people today and see the way they are living now that they have developed physical body, ether body, astral body and I. If the I works on the astral body, the Holy Spirit, spirit self, manas develops from the astral body. And because the I has already done some work on the astral body, people also have some manas, some Holy Spirit. This manas acts into the human being in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit A time will come when humanity will enter into the sixth of the root races. Manas will then have developed in those who have really done something for their development They will have developed manas. They will be ready to receive budhi, the Christ, the sixth basic part.

In the sixth race human beings will develop the Christ, and that will be the majority of people. We are moving towards that time. It will be the time when Christ Jesus will come. At that time human beings will be given the power to move to the place where they can receive the Christ in a new form, as a fruit, the place where the Christ laid down the seed, as it were, like a mustard seed that will grow ii the soul. The Christ will be visible to them, that is, to those who have developed the inner Christ eye.

A parable, a symbol, is used to describe what human beings are inwardly developing. Just as the physical human being comes into existence through the male and female principles coming together, so the idea is that the other parts of the human being were also inseminated, that the different parts were inseminated in a particular way. This was during the Saturn period. Then the ether body developed, and then the astral body. The coming of these new developmental aspects was thought to be like an insemination. This example can also show you how deeply the words of the Bible must be taken. It is not for nothing that it says in the Bible: 'And Adam knew his wife,'¹²⁶ when referring to an insemination, for at the back of it all is the idea of insemination out of the spirit. To know1, 'gain insight', is to be inseminated with the divine self. 'Know yourself means 'Let yourself be inseminated with the divine self which is present throughout the world'.

Something similar to this lies behind the parable of the foolish and wise virgins in Christian esotericism. The image of insemination is the lamp which has been given oil. Thus each of these parts of the human being is seen as a virgin who has not yet been inseminated, and the inseminated bodies of the human being are the virgins who have poured oil into their lamps. The undeveloped part of humanity remains where it is, with no oil in its lamp, and does not take its bodies up to the budhi level. The developed part has allowed the spirit to influence its bodies, pouring oil into the lamp, as it were. The others have poured no oil into their lamp, they have not developed their five bodies. The others did develop them, preparing for the important moment of the Christ's coming. The time of the Christ's coming then arrives. Some will have poured oil into their lamps; their souls will be illumined and ready to receive the Christ. Others, who have remained dark in themselves, will see that others have developed and they'll go to receive the wisdom from the others. They will need to go to the merchants to get their oil. But they'll be too late. And what will the Christ say to the wise virgins? ‘I know you.’ And what will he say to the foolish virgins? 'I do not know you.'

Applied to insemination the parable thus means: He will come to inseminate the sixth basic part, and he'll enter into the sixth basic part. 'Adam knew his wife, and she came to be with child.' And then the bridegroom says to the unwise virgins: 'I do not know you.' Such words taken from the profundity of Holy Writ will always be true. If we were to proceed in this way we would find that letter by letter the Bible contains the science of the spirit, and that we can learn the truths of that science by studying it. We need no other book. Anyone who says that the Bible contradicts the science of the spirit, does not know the Bible, and it does not matter if they are theologians who consider themselves to be at a very high level. Life in the spirit has to be found again in this ancient document.

Now a few comments on the things I was referring to in my public lectures on the Book of Revelation. You know that the sun once separated from the earth, and that it will unite again with the earth in the far distant future. The quality which makes it possible for human beings to become so spiritual that they are able to reunite with the sun is in occult terms called 'the sun's intelligence'. This good spirit in the sun has an adversary, the demon in the sun. The two are not only active in the sun but also send their influences down to the earth. The powers of the good sun spirit enter into plant, animal and human being; they bring forth life on earth. The adversary principle of the sun demon, the power which opposes the union of earth and sun, is active in man's evil powers.

Occult symbols of this have existed through the ages.¹²⁷ A seven-cornered sign is the symbol of the good sun spirit. The seven corners symbolize the seven planets. The pentagram is the symbol for the human being. In occultism, the stars are drawn into the figure [heptagram] in the form of seven eyes. They bind it all together. At the same time we also have the days of the week if you follow this line here (Fig. 21).¹²⁸

In the distant past, time could not yet be measured by external methods based on the way the sun moves around the earth. Early occultists thought of special regents for the orbit of the sun, and they were right in their thinking. The whole system was orbiting, and time was determined in relation to the twelve signs of the zodiac—Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, and so on. As you know, one cycle in the evolution of a cosmic system is called a manvantara, and this is always followed by a pralaya, a state of rest. They alternate like day and night, with both night and day of 12 hours duration. Those 12 hours correspond to the vast periods of time in the cosmic day that were regulated by the ancient rulers of the circling of the zodiac. I would need to draw 24 masters of rotations around this sign. If I were to draw it for you, you'd have the heptagon here (Fig. 21), then the seven eyes for the seven stars, and the 24 ancient rulers, 12 for the night and 12 for the day.

The good sun spirit is also called 'the lamb'. We have already referred to the pentagram as the symbol of the human being. A black magician uses it with the two 'horns' pointing upwards and the single peak pointing down. On completion of this development, the 'good' will have developed seven 'horns'. That is the sign of the Christ spirit.

Having gained this occult insight, read the passage where John receives the book sealed with seven seals. Let us read it as it is given in chapter 4 of the Book of Revelation. 'And immediately I was in the spirit And behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone ... And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting'—I have presented them to you in the twenty-four hours of the cosmic day, night and day. And then, moving on to chapter 5: ‘And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of god sent forth into all the earth.’ This occult sign forms the background to John's writing of the secrets of cosmic existence in his Book of Revelation. You need to know these if you are to have some feeling for the profundity of this work, and what it signifies when the adversary of the lamb is spoken of as the two-homed beast. The symbol of the sun demon is drawn like this:

The Book of Revelation is all in occult writing, which is given expression in words.

One of its secrets also lies in the 'number of the beast', 666,¹²⁹ also 'the number of a man'. According to Aramaic occult teaching, the figure should be read like this: 400, 200, 6, 60. These four figures¹³⁰ are represented by the Hebrew letters:

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Hebrew writing is read from right to left:

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These letters symbolize the four principles that cause man to harden completely unless he is able to transform them. Sameh represents the principle of the physical body, vav that of the ether body, resh that of the astral body, and tav the lower I which has not developed into higher I. The whole word reads ‘Sorat’, which is the occult name of the sun demon, the adversary of the lamb.

This is the secret which in more recent theology has been turned into: It means ‘Nero’.¹³¹ I can’t think of anything more fanciful. The individual who invented this Nero story is considered to be one of the greatest theological thinkers. Vast volumes have been written on the subject. People thus misunderstand the meaning of those symbolic signs. Works like the Book of Revelation can only be understood by someone who is able to read the occult writing.

The prophetic significance of such signs and symbols may also make you realize that the spiritual science movement has an important mission. In choosing the seven seals from the Book of Revelation for the auditorium in Munich, we are also giving an outward indication of the direction we want to take. The spiritual principle is to come to face us again also in the outside world.

• 117. See Steiner R. Supersensible Knowledge (GA 55), lecture of 26 April 1907. Tr. R Stebbing. Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1987.
• 118. Luke 16: 1-8.
• 119. Weinel H. Die Gleichnisse Jesu in Aus Natur und Geisteswelt. Sammlung wissenschaftich-gemeinverständlicher Darstellungen 46. Band, 2. Auflage Leipzig 1905, S. 130.
• 120. Ibid S. 23.
• 121. SGenesis 3: 14,Rev. 1: 8.
• 122. Matth. 5:17-18.
• 123. Zurich 1896; quoted by Weinel (see note 119).
• 124. Free rendering of story of Absalom according to 2 Samuel.
• 125. Matth. 25: 1-13.
• 126. Genesis 4: 1.
• 127. The sketches have not survived. See The Apocalypse of St John (Book of Revelation) (GA 104). Tr. rev. M. Cotterell. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1958; Occult Seals and Columns. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1924.
• 128. See also lecture given on 4 March 1907, in this volume.
• 129. Rev. 13: 18.
• 130. The Phoenician and later the Hebrew alphabet had a fixed sequence of letters, and this also made it possible to use the letters as numerals. This happens on several occasions in the Old Testament, in both the Hebrew and the Greek versions. The numerical value of letters is of considerable importance in occult writings.
• 131. The interpretation which Rudolf Steiner had shown to be wrong may still be found in reference works today, e.g. in Lexikon der Bibel, von Fritz Rienecker herausgegeben, 3. Auflage, Wuppertal 1961.

During these last weeks I have lectured on many forms of the Mysteries. We have been trying to gain insight more especially into those Mysteries which, in a certain sense, were the last of the great Mysteries connecting man’s inner life directly with Nature, with the spirit of Nature-existence. These were the Mysteries of Hibernia. And on the other hand we have seen how, through insight into Man himself, through insight of an altogether intimate, spiritual kind, individual and personal, the Greek Mysteries penetrated into the inner being of Man. One may indeed say: Just as in external Nature various regions of the Earth bear various kinds of vegetation, so in the course of human development in the different regions of the Earth the most manifold influences upon Man appear from the side of the spiritual world.

If we were now to proceed Eastward—as we shall be doing in the course of the next few days in our study of historical connections—we should find there many other forms of the Mysteries. Today, however, since all our visitors are not yet here, rather than start on something new, I will add to what we have already been considering. Looking back on the evolution of man we may describe it as a threefold development, as it appears with all clarity to the Imaginative consciousness. I say the ‘Imaginative’ consciousness, for by extending the epochs of which I am about to speak further and further into the past, we should of course arrive at a greater number than the threefold; and it would be the same if we were to penetrate farther into the future. Today, however, we will take for our study those middle stages of human evolution which do not appear first to Inspiration, but quite clearly even to Imagination. We will consider these today from a particular standpoint.

As late as the Egyptian epoch mankind was still at the stage when for the European-African as well as for the Asiatic peoples there was for the consciousness of man no such thing as what we call matter. There was no external coarse substance of any kind for human consciousness, much less those abstractions which we now call carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, and so on. There were none of these things; everything in outer Nature was immediately seen as the embodiment of divine-spiritual Beings who manifest themselves throughout the whole of Nature. If today we go into the hills and pick up a stone, we look upon it as a substance like any other. Nothing at all comes into our consciousness such as came into the consciousness of the ancient Egyptian and Oriental.

If we today stand before a man and look, let us say, at his finger, we do not consider what we find there as human finger to be an object just like any other. We regard it as belonging to the human organism as a v/hole. If we were to look, for example, at the last joint of the index finger, we could not do otherwise than speak of it as a part of a whole organism. Thus it was for the consciousness of the ancient Egyptians; and thus too it was for the consciousness of the ancient Orientals. If they came upon a stone and took it up, it was not for them merely a stone as it would be for us today; it was not ordinary earthly substance at all; it was a part of the divine body which the Earth appeared to them to be. Men of old regard the outer surface of the Earth just as we in our consciousness regard the human skin. Again, we may meet a man, and become conscious that he reminds us of someone else we already know, who is perhaps not now present; and if it afterwards transpires that the person we met is the brother or sister of the other, then we see at once : these two arc of the same flesh and blood, they belong in a special physical way to one another. When the ancient Greek or Oriental raised his eyes to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and then looked at the Earth, he saw in the Earth the divine body of the God of the Earth, but at the same time he saw also in the Earth the sister or brother of the planets—in short, he saw a family likeness to the planets which revolve out there in space around the Earth,—Jupiter, Mars, Saturn.

Thus, in their perception of the Cosmos as a whole, and in their perception of the Earth as part of the Cosmos, there was for these ancient people something of soul and spirit. You must picture to yourselves what an utterly different experience this was from the experience modern man has in his perception. It means something, indeed, to gaze at the divine body of the Earth, and to see in the Earth a member of the great family of the planets of the Universe! The people of old did indeed think of the Universe as God-enfilled. For them not only was the whole Earth filled with the Gods, but the great planetary world-bodies, each single planet—all were God-enfilled. In stone and tree, in river and rock, in cloud and lightning, some spiritual being was revealed. This consciousness was awake in wide circles of people on the Earth, and this consciousness was intensified in the various forms of the Mysteries to be found here and there on the Earth.

To turn now to the Greek nature, at the time when the external political greatness of Greece sank into a kind of chaos and the Macedonian power arose, we find a new current flowing into human knowledge. It is what we came to know last time as Aristotelianism, as that which Alexander the Great in a spiritual connection had made his task. When we look at the culmination of the greatness of Greece on the one hand, and on the other the fall of Greece and the rise of Macedonia, we are faced, first of all, with what external history tells us, which is in reality a mere legend. But we can also see something else. In the subconsciousness of the deeper thinkers we perceive an impulse which came from those Mysteries to which Aristotle was very near—despite the fact that he never spoke of them outwardly. They were those Mysteries which, in the deeper sense, awakened to full life in their hearers the consciousness that the whole world was a theogony, a divine process of being, and that we see the world in an altogether illusory way if we believe anything comes to being in the world other than Gods alone. It is Gods who are manifested in the beings and entities of the world. It is Gods who have experiences in the world, it is Gods who perform deeds. And what we see in clouds, what we hear in thunder, what we behold in lightning, what we see on the Earth in rivers and mountains, in the mineral formations—all are revelations, expressions of the coming-into-being of the destinies of the Gods hidden behind them. And what appears externally as cloud, lightning, thunder, trees or forest, mountains or stream, is nothing else than a revelation everywhere of Gods’ existence—-just as the skin of a man reveals his inner nature of soul. And if everywhere there are Gods, then, as the pupils of the Mysteries were taught in Northern Greece, one must differentiate between the lesser Gods who are in single Nature-beings and Nature-processes, and the greater Gods who manifest as Beings of the Sun, of Mars, of Mercury, and of a fourth who cannot be made externally visible in an image or a form.

Those were the great Gods, the great planetary Gods, who were presented to man in such a way that his gaze was led out into the cosmic expanse, to see with his eyes, to see too with his whole heart, what lives in Sun, Mars, Mercury—yes, and what lives not only out there in one little circle in cosmic space but what lives everywhere in cosmic space. This was what was first of all revealed to man.

And then, after what I may call a majestic impulse had been awakened in the pupil of the Mysteries of Northern Greece, in that his gaze was directed out to the planetary spheres—then this insight was deepened within him in such a way that the eye was, so to speak, taken hold of by the heart, so that he might see with the soul. Then the pupil understood why, on the altar facing him, three symbolically formed vessels had been placed.

Here in Dornach we once introduced a portrayal of these vessels in a Eurythmy performance of Faust. They were presented there exactly as they appeared in the Samothracian Mysteries of Northern Greece. The important fact is that with these vessels in their whole symbolic form there was associated an act of consecration, an act of sacrifice. A kind of incense was put into them and lighted, and as the smoke streamed up, three words (of which we shall speak tomorrow) were uttered with mantric power into this smoke by the Father who was celebrating; and there appeared the forms of the three Kabiri. It happened in the following way. The human breath, as it was exhaled, took shape through the mantric word that was spoken, and communicated its form to the ascending, evaporating substance that had been incorporated in the symbolic jars. When in this way the pupil learned to read in the stream his own breath, to read what the stream of his breath wrote in the smoke, he learned at the same time to read what the mysterious planets said to him from out the wide Universe. For now he knew: as the one Kabir was formed through the mantric word and its power, so in actuality was Mercury; as the second Kabir was formed, so in actuality was Mars; and as the third Kabir was formed, so in actuality was Apollo, the Sun.

When we look at those fashion plate figures—if you will forgive such plain speaking—such as we see only too often in the galleries, of the later Greek plastic art, and which are only so greatly admired because people have no idea of the majesty from which they have declined, when we direct our gaze to those figures of an Apollo, a Mars, a Mercury, we must look at them with the gaze with which Goethe looked, during his Italian journey; for then we may gain some idea of what Greek art really was in the productions that are now lost—lost and destroyed along with so much else in the first centuries of the Christian era, in the frightful devastation which befell those times. If we look penetratingly at those late Greek plastic figures, held to be so great (and rightly on the one hand), as pointing the way, but on the other hand wrongly because they are mere imitative reproductions of the earlier—if we look through them back to that from which they arose, we see how in the older Greek times it was nothing less than the revelations accompanying the sacrificial rites that were reproduced in art—revelations that in those earlier times were even more majestic and grand than later on in the Kabiri Mysteries of Samothrace. We look back into times when the mantric word was uttered into the incense smoke, and the true figures of Apollo, of Mars, and of Mercury appeared.

Those were times when man would not say, in the abstract: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God—for then he could say something quite different. He could say: In me the outgoing breath takes shape, and inasmuch as it shapes itself in an ordered way, it shows itself as an image of cosmic creating; for it creates for me, out of the sacrificial smoke, forms which are for me living fines of writing, telling me what the planetary worlds would say to me.

When the pupil of the Kabiri Mysteries at Samothrace approached the gates of the places of Initiation, then through the instruction he had received the feeling came to him: Now I am entering the place that holds for me the magic acts of the celebrating Father. (The Initiate who celebrated in these Mysteries was called the Father.) What did the magic power of this celebrating Father reveal to his pupil? Through what was laid within man by the Gods, through the power of speech, the priest-magician and sage wrote into the sacrificial smoke the writing which expressed the secrets of the Universe.

Thus it was that the pupil, as he approached the gate, said in his heart: I am entering that place within whose shelter dwells a powerful Spirit, within whose shelter dwell the greater Gods, who unveil on Earth the secrets of the Universe through the sacrificial acts of man.—There, my dear friends, words were spoken and a writing written that appealed not only to the intelligence but laid claim to the whole man. In the Samothracian Mysteries there was still present something of a knowledge that is today quite dimmed. Modern man is perfectly able to speak with truth something of what he feels a quartz crystal to be like, he can say what hair feels like, or the human skin, or the fur of an animal, he can say how silk or velvet feels to him. Modern man has the capacity of realising such things through his feeling. In the Samothracian Mysteries something still existed by means of which man could truly say how the Gods let themselves be felt. For the sense of feeling, the sense of touch, was still capable of that of which in ancient times it had always been capable; it was still able to feel the spiritual, to touch the Gods.

And now the wonderful thing is this. We must certainly go back to very ancient times even to speak of how man could say with truth: I know through my finger-tips what the Gods feel like. In the Samothracian Mysteries, however, man had another way of touching the Gods. It was as follows:

When the priest-magician spoke the words into the smoke rising from the incense, when he intoned the words into the exhaled breath, then in the outgoing breath he felt as man otherwise feels when he stretches out the hand to touch; and as one knows that one touches differently with the fingertips in passing them over different substances—in feeling velvet, or cat’s fur, or the human skin,—so did the Samothracian priest-magician perceive with the outgoing breath; he perceived the exhalation which he breathed out towards the incense smoke as an expression of something coming out of himself, he felt it as an organ of touch reaching towards the incense smoke. He felt the smoke, and in the smoke he felt the great Gods, the Kabiri coming to meet him. He felt how the smoke forced itself and how the forms there shaping themselves came into the exhaled breath, so that the exhaled breath felt: here is something spherical, there is angularity, there again something is catching hold of me. The whole divine figure of the Kabir was touched and felt by the breath clothed in the form of the word. With the speech issuing from the heart the Samothracian wise men ‘touched’ the Kabiri, that is, the greater Gods descending to them in the smoke of the incense; it was a living interchange between the word within man and the word without in cosmic space.

When the initiating Father led the pupil to the sacrificial altar, and, step by step, taught him how man can feel with speech, and when the pupil progressed further and achieved for himself this ‘feeling with speech’, he came at last to that stage of inner experience in which he first had clear consciousness of the form of Mercury or Hermes, of Apollo, and of Ares or Mars. It was as if the consciousness were wholly raised up out of the body, as if that which the pupil earlier knew as the content of his head, had gone up above his head, as if the heart were located in a new place, being thrust up out of the breast into the head. Then, in the one who had in this way really gone out beyond himself, there arose a knowledge that inwardly formed itself into the words: Thus do the Kabiri, the greater Gods, will thee! From that time the pupil knew how Mercury lived in his limbs, the Sun in his heart, Mars in his speech.

So you see it was not by any means only natural processes and beings in the outer world that were presented to the pupil in ancient times. What was presented to him was something neither one-sidedly naturalistic, nor one-sidedly moral, but he was given something wherein Morality and Nature flowed into one. That was the secret of the Samothracian world—that to the pupil it was granted to have the consciousness: Nature is Spirit, Spirit is Nature.

To those times which found their last echo in the cult of the Kabiri, is to be traced the insight which brings earthly substances into connection with the Heavens. In olden times, when one saw that red-brown mineral with the coppery sheen, which we call copper, one could not simply say as we say today: ‘That is copper, that is a constituent of the Earth.’ It could not be thought of in this way. For the ancients it was no constituent of the Earth. They said: ‘Wherever copper is manifest, there is manifest a deed of Venus on the Earth. The Earth has only suffered rocks and stones to appear, such as sandstone, or chalk, in order to take up in her lap what the Heavens have planted on to the Earth.’ As little as we now should venture to say of a seed that it had merely grown out of the Earth—-just as little in those times would one have been able to say that copper ore was a constituent of the Earth. One had to say: The Earth that is here with its sandstone, or any other stone, is the ground within which something of a metallic nature has been planted by some planet. The metal is a seed planted in the Earth by a planet. Everything within the Earth was viewed as proceeding from the influence of the Heavens upon the Earth. Today the Earth and its substances are described as you may see it done in any mineralogical or geological work, and as it would never have been in the science of the ancients. In those times when man let his gaze wander over the Earth, looking at a substance meant looking up to Heaven and there in the Heavens beholding the essence and reality of the substance.

Copper, tin, lead, only apparently lie in the Earth; they are seeds planted in the Earth-existence during the time of Old Sun and Old Moon. This was still the teaching of the Kabiri in the Samothracian Mysteries. And this it was ultimately that worked upon Aristotle and Alexander—if only as an atmosphere or mood of knowledge. And then a beginning was made for something quite different.

Man did not, with his insight, come right down at once on to the Earth; he went through an intermediary stage. Even in the echoes of those ancient times, in the Samothracian Mysteries, if men wished to describe the metals of the Earth or other earthly substances such as sulphur or phosphorus, it was in fact the Heavens they were describing, just as one describes a plant when one wants to know the nature of a seed.

If you have a seed of corn before you, you cannot recognise its nature and kind unless you know the plant. What would you do with a seed which looks like this, for example, if you did not know what the aniseed plant looks like? What then, the men of old would have asked, would you make of the copper appearing in the Earth, if you did not know what Venus looks like, in spirit, soul and body, up there in the Heavens?

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From the knowledge of the Heavens, gradually a knowledge of the environment of the Earth, a knowledge of the atmosphere, was gained. When man regarded what was of the Earth, instead of describing what the stars are, in their essence and nature, he looked to a being of Earth and said to himself; There lives in it first of all what we see in the firm soil; and there lives in it that also which we see as fluid with the tendency to form into drops, and there lives within it too what tends to spread out on all sides, the aeriform, which lives, for example, in human breath and speech. And then there lives in it the fiery element which decomposes the single being so that from the scattered, disintegrated parts a new being may arise. Thus did man behold the elements in every earthly formation.

And as in the ancient Mysteries men looked to the Salt—true, it is also cosmic in nature, but it is formed and moulded by the Earth—as they looked to everything of a salt-nature and saw in it that which Mother Earth has brought to meet the metals, so they looked on the other hand to Mercury, and they saw the Mercurial in that which comes from out of the Universe and is destined to become metal.

It is really so utterly childish to try to give descriptions, as modern man does, of what was thought of as Mercury in olden times! Persistently in the background is the idea that by Mercury, even in the Middle Ages, something like quicksilver, some single metal, could be intended. This is not the case; no single metal alone is denoted. Mercury means every metal in so far as it stands under the influence of the whole Cosmos. For what would copper look like if the Cosmos alone, in its periphery, worked upon it? Copper would be globular like quicksilver. If the Cosmos alone affected it, what would lead be like? Lead would be globular, like quicksilver. What of tin, if it were affected only by the Cosmos? Tin would be globular. Every metal if affected only by the Cosmos would be quicksilver. All metals are Mercury in so far as the Cosmos acts upon them. But what about Mercury, the actual present-day Mercury which still takes on a globular form on the Earth? What, then, is it?

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I will tell you. The other metals—let us say, lead, copper, tin, iron—have progressed beyond the globular form. If the whole Earth were still under the influence of the spherical Cosmos all metals would be mercurial. They have progressed beyond the mercurial form. Today they crystallise into other forms. Only the true quicksilver, in the present-day sense of the word, has remained at that stage. What did the ancients and even the mediaeval alchemists say of quicksilver? They said: copper, tin, iron, lead are the good metals which have progressed with Providence. Quicksilver is the Lucifer among the metals, for it has remained at an earlier form. Thus it was in earlier times; when the terrestrial was spoken of in this way, in truth men were really speaking of the celestial.

Thence could men come to speak of that which lies between the periphery and the Earth. Between the periphery and the Earth there lies first, below, the Earth itself, then the watery element, the aeriform, and the fiery.

Thus did the ancients see everything on the Earth in the aspect of the Heavens. And thus did the men of mediaeval times, which came to an end in the first third of the fourteenth century, see everything in the aspect of the surrounding atmosphere. Then, in the fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries came the great change. Man, in his outlook, fell down right on to the Earth. And now to his consciousness the elements of water, air, fire, split up; they split up into sulphur, carbon, hydrogen and so forth. Man sees everything in its terrestrial aspect.

Therewith begin the times which I indicated when describing the fading of the Hibernian Mysteries—the times when man comprehended the Earth with his knowledge, but the Heavens became for him a matter of mathematics. He calculated the size of the stars, their movements, their distance away, and so on. The Heavens became an abstraction to him.

Nor was it only the Heavens which became an abstraction. The reflection of the Heavens in the living human being is his head, and what man can learn of the Heavens is in his head. Since man has learnt to know only the mathematics of the Heavens, that is, the logical and abstract, therefore from this time onwards only the logical and abstract lived in his head—only that which is of the nature of concepts and ideas. Man lost all possibility to receive what is of soul and spirit into his life of concepts and ideas. Then, when the spirit was sought for, there began that great struggle between what man could attain with the idea-content of his head, with his brain-content, and what the Gods desired to reveal to him from the Heavens. This struggle was fought out at its fiercest, and in its grandest aspects, in Rosicrucianism—in the true forms of what are called the Rosicrucian Mysteries in the Middle Ages.¹ There the helplessness of modern man was perceived as a preparation for true knowledge. For, even then, in circles of true Rosicrucian Initiation something very powerful made itself felt. And it was this. The pupil became—not abstractly, but inwardly—livingly illumined to perceive: As modern man you can penetrate only to the world of ideas; thereby, however, you lose the very essence of your being as Man.

And the pupil felt that what the new age was giving him could not lead him on to that which was his own true being. He felt: Either you must despair of knowledge or you must go through a kind of death of the pride in abstraction.

The Rosicrucian, the true Rosicrucian pupil, felt as if the master had given him a blow on the cheek, to indicate to him that the abstractions of the modern brain are not suited to penetrate into the spiritual worlds, and that he must make a recantation of the merely abstract, if he would enter those worlds.

That was indeed a great moment of preparation for what we may call the Rosicrucian Initiation.

• 1. See Rosicrucianism and Modem Initiation. Six lectures given at Dornach, 6th to 13th January, 1924. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

[ 1 ] My dear friends! Yesterday we started by addressing a wish which licentiate Bock had expressed at the beginning of our course and we find that what we need to build on to what I said yesterday afternoon about sacramentalism relevant to today, can be discovered if we link the possible reflections, which are necessary, to the 13th chapter of the Gospel of St Mark. It is important for us to certainly try again, in all seriousness, to derive specific meaning from what is expressed in living words. To me it is impossible that pastoral care can be developed in the future, without yourself developing the application of living words and even experiencing living words. However, it is impossible for current mankind which is so strongly gripped by materialism, to be able to handle the living Word in itself, without a historical deepening. It is simply so, that in dealing with intellectualistic concepts and ideas we are only dealing with dead words, with the corpse of the Logos. We will only deal with the living Word when we penetrate through the layer in which man lives today, only, and alone, by penetrating through the layer of the dead, the corpse-like words.

[ 2 ] My dear friends, the Catholic Church has to a certain degree understood very well how to misplace and obstruct access to these living words for those who, in their opinion, should be the true believers. In pastoral care the Catholic Church in a certain sense considers these enlivening words already, but in an outward sense. All these things will only become understood when we take what I presented yesterday and think them through deeply, and, if we can still penetrate them further, to yield clarity. I'm saying that the Catholic Church understood very clearly in this regard, to exterminate the life of the Word, because it belonged to one of the most significant epochs of all human development, and which had contributed briefly before and some three centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, just to the civilized part of humanity.

[ 3 ] When we ask our contemporaries about the essence of the Gnosis, for example the essence of the Montanistic heresy, then with the current soul constitution you basically can't understand anything correctly relating to it. That which would outwardly be informative in the becoming church has been carefully eradicated and the things that archaeologists, philosophers, researchers of antiquity discover from this characterised epoch, will indeed be deciphered word for word, but the decipherment does not mean reaching an understanding. All of this must actually be read differently, in order to enter the real soul content of olden times. It is for instance possible for modern humanity, to take the Deussen translation, which has exterminated all real meaning of the Orient, and, while thinking these translations are great, while mankind can't eradicate all understanding for what Deussen translated, devote yourself to such a Deussen translation. In order to understand, you need to penetrate the meaning of the first Christian centuries, more specifically the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha happened.

[ 4 ] I would like to give you access, somewhat in the way I have out of Anthroposophy, by means of a presentation, which you can visualise as symptomatic of what history brings. One of the most extinct things belonging in the first Christian centuries was referred to as the Pistis, placed in contrast to the Gnosis. The Gnosis can't be understood if one doesn't know that in that time epoch, in which, let's say, you appeared in the form of a Basilides or Valentinus, people who lived in the spirituality of that time, were fighting a very terrible battle, which can be characterised by them asking a question: What do we poor people have to do on the one hand with the spirit that juts in our souls, and on the other hand our physical body into which our soul likewise juts into? In a terrifying manner this question played out in the soul battle among religious people. The two opposite poles, to a certain extent, of this battle was the Gnosis and Montanism sect.

[ 5 ] The Gnosis was, for people who wanted to become Gnostics, being aware that within a person, where the soul resides, the spirit can only be reached through knowledge, through clear, lucid, light-filled knowledge. However, it was already during a time in which intellectualism was being prepared in the dark, in a time when intellectualism was regarded as the enemy of the human soul's relation to the spirit. To a certain extent people prophetically saw how intellectualism would push in, in the future; this arrival of intellectualism was seen as stripping the world of spirituality, wanting to completely make the world void of the Divine, like I have characterised for you yesterday. People saw this and people experienced intellectualism as a danger. People wanted to hold on to something spiritual which didn't come from intellectualism. That's roughly the soul battle Basilides fought, the Gnostic who wanted to stick to what was revealed in the course of the year. He said to himself: When a person submits himself to his forthcoming intellect, then he separates himself from the Divine spirituality of the cosmos; he must connect to what lies in his environment, which has come into being through the Divine spiritual cosmos; he must adhere to that which has the venerable image of cosmic creation in the circling of the world and thus the Divine process in matter; he must adhere to the course of the year.—Basilides did the following: He looked up - but with him it was actually still only tradition, so no longer an inner imaginative perception as in older times, which I characterised as the reading of the movement of the stars—he looked up and said: Last but not least, the spiritual gaze is lost; when we feel, that when we become aware the spiritual gaze is lost, then we talk about the unknown God, the God who can't be grasped in words and concepts, from whom the fist aeon this unknown God manifests himself, revealing himself—this concept of manifestation which later unified things as with Basilides, will be totally misunderstood if compared with what we understand today under "manifestation"; one should not say "it manifests itself" but "it is formed out of," it is individually shaped—out of the unknown God is formed the Nous, which also appeared with Anaxagoras as the first creation of the unknown God.

That is the first principle, which exists in people as a copy, when the human mind, not the intellectual mind but the lively mind I've characterised for you during these days, still existed within Greek philosophy (up to Plato), and which then appeared in a weaker form still in Aristotle.

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[ 6 ] What comes next is the Logos, in which from the Nous we descend further down. In human beings it is expressed by perceiving sound and tone. In the neck area we find five other principles which we need not characterise in detail now. With this we have what was first called the holy days of the year, which gives people, when they read the cosmos, an understanding of the human body, leading to the human head organisation.

[ 7 ] Besides these principles we find others in the human organization, 364 in total, which gives 364 + 1=365, the outer symbol which is expressed as the 365 days of the year. The word Day (Tag) originally was inwardly connected to God, so what Basilides, by speaking about 365 days, spoke about 365 gods which all partake in the creation of the human organism. As the last one of the gods—i.e. if you take one plus 364, and then take the last day of the year as a symbol for one God—Basilides saw the God who was worshipped by the Jews in the Old Testament. You see, this is what is extraordinary in the Gnosis, that it is in such a relationship to Jahve, the Jewish God, that he is not the unknown God connected to the Nous and Logos but with the Jewish God as the 365, as the last day of the year.

[ 8 ] By understanding the Gnosis in this way, the experience of the soul was to be permeated spiritually. If I were to give you a characteristic aspect of the Gnosis, in relation to inner human experience it is this: that the Gnostic aspired in everything to penetrate the Highest with knowledge, so that his gaze rose above the Logos up to the Nous. The Gnostic says: In Christ and in the Mystery of Golgotha the Nous is embodied in the human being; not the Logos, the Nous is embodied. This, my dear friends, if it is grasped in a lively way, has a distinct result for our inner soul life. If you consider these things abstractly, as is in our intellectual time presented to many people, well, then it is heard that people in olden times didn't speak about the Logos in which Jesus became flesh, but of the Nous, which became the flesh of Jesus. That's the thing then, if you have pegged such a term. For a person who spiritually lives within a lively experience of concepts, he would not be able to do otherwise, than to grasp such a soul's content, as to imagine sculpturally what the Nous becoming flesh is. The Nous having become flesh however, can't speak; this can't be the Christ, can't go through death and resurrection. The Christ of the Gnostic, which is actually the Nous, could only come as far as being embodied in people; it could not die or accomplish resurrection.

For Basilides, this darkened his observation. His gaze becomes clouded the moment he approaches the last acts of the Mystery of Golgotha with his inner gaze; it clouds his gaze when it comes to dying and resurrection. His gaze is drawn to the route towards Crucifixion, the route to Golgotha of Jesus Christ, but he couldn't accomplish, out of a lively imagination, that the Christ carried the cross to Golgotha, was killed on the cross and resurrected. He regards it in such a way that Simon of Cyrene took the cross from the Christ, that he carried it up to Golgotha, and instead of Christ, that Simon of Cyrene is crucified. This is the Christ imagination of the Gnostic in as far as the image of Basilides appears and is basically the historical expression of the Gnosis.

[ 9 ] So we see how the Christ in his final deed, is omitted by the Gnostic, how the Gnostic can't grasp the final result of Golgotha, how in their imagination the Christ is merely accomplished through the Nous, how it ends at the moment the Christ gives the cross away to Simon of Cyrene. On the one hand we have Gnosis, which is so strongly afraid of intellectualism that it did not let the legitimate power of intellectualism into human vision and as a result could not enter into the last act of the Mystery of Golgotha.

What did the Gnosis do? It stood in quite a lively way, I could say, in relation to the most extraordinary and powerful question of that current age: How does one penetrate the supersensible spirit from which the soul originated?—The Gnostic pointed away from that which somehow wanted to flow in from intellectualism and result in the image of Christ up to the point when he hands the cross to Simon of Cyrene. This is the one side of the human battle which at the time had the result of creating the influence of the great question, which I have set before you. What comes forth from this wrestling?

From all this wrestling another great question arises which became the crux for the Christian Gnostics. My dear friends, because the Gnostics regarded 365 as the Divine god of the Jews, they experienced the Fatherly and the Divine at the end of this row. When the Jews worshiped their god, they experienced it as Fatherly, while what later appeared as the Holy Ghost, they experienced the opposite pole, in the Nous. As a result, the Gnostics gave an answer to the primordial question in the first Christian centuries, an answer which is no longer valid today. Their answer was: The Christ is a far higher creation than the Father; the Christ is essentially equal to the Father. The Father, who finds his most outward, extreme expression in the Jewish god, is the creator of the world, but as the world creator he has, out of its foundations allowed things to be created simultaneously, the good and evil, the good and bad, simultaneously health and illness, the divine and the devilish. This world, which was not made out of love, because it contains evil, the Gnostics contrasted with the more elevated divine nature of the Christ who came from above, downward, carrying the Nous within, who can redeem this world that the creator had to leave un-liberated.

Christ is not essentially the Father, said the Gnostics, the Father essentially stood lower than the Son; the Son as Christ stood higher. This is the fundamental feeling permeating the Gnosis: however, it has been completely obstructed by what later occurred in the Roman Catholic continuation. Basically, we can't look back at what the big question was: How does one relate to the greater Christ in contrast to the less perfect Father? The Gnostic actually saw things in such a way that the Father of the worlds was still imperfect, and only by bringing forth his Son, he created perfection; that through the propagation of his Son, the act of procreation of his Son, He would complete the development of the world.

[ 10 ] In all these things you see exactly what lived in the Gnosis. If we now look at the opposite side, which comes into the strongest expression with Monatunus, already weaker but still clearly with Tertullian, then we look over to those who said to themselves: If we want to reach into the Gnosis, everything disappears; we can't through the outer world, not through the contemplation of the seasons, not through reading the stars, reach the divine, we must enter into man, we must immerse ourselves in man.—

While the Gnosis directed its gaze to the macrocosm, so Mantanismus dived into the microcosm, in the human being himself. Intellectualistic concepts were at that time only in its infancy and could not yet be fully expressed; theology in today's sense did not arise in this way. What existed in all the exercises, in particular those prescribed by Mantanus for his students, were inner stories, something which was enlivened within the students as visions. These atavistic visions for the Montanists were particularly indigenous. All those who were to separate themselves from belonging to the mere pastoral care of the Montanists were allowed to practice, and all of them were allowed to practice to the extent that they could answer the question: how does the soul-spiritual in man, in the microcosm, relate to the physical-bodily aspect?

[ 11 ] During ancient times, long before the Mystery of Golgotha, what I've just said was something obvious; had a self-evident answer. For those who lived in the time epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha, such an obvious answer didn't exist. People first had to dive into physicality. Because a fear existed of bringing intellectualism into this physicality, one entered the corporality with the power of the imagination and we get to know the descriptions of the forming of Montanist visions, which have also disappeared. In descriptions of Montanist visions—and this is characteristic—we always find the repetitive idea of the Christ soon returning in a physical body to the earth. One can't think of Montanism without thinking of the imminent return of the Christ to earthly corporeality. While the Montanist was familiar with the idea of finding the returning Christ, he strongly set before his soul what happened at the cross, what was accomplished through the death on the cross, what is involved in dying, what is involved in resurrection. The re-descent of the Christ, the physical-bodily immersion that takes place, was tinged by materialistic feelings in this view of the Montanists; they lived in the idea that Christ would come again and live in time and space. This was pronounced and those who believed this in the schools were only those who responded to the belief of the imminent coming of Christ Jesus to the earth, where he would stride along as if he is in a physical body.

[ 12 ] This is in contrast to the Gnosis, this is the other pole: it had a different danger, the danger that all historic development of humanity is to be imagined in space and time. The urge to imagine such an idea of the world is what Augustinus for instance experienced in his exchange with the Bishop Faustus. Through Faustus a method of imagination is introduced which is completely tinged with the senses as images presented to Augustinus, and this became a materialistic experience of the world for Augustinus, from where he approached the world. Augustinus' words are gripping: I search for God in the stars, and do not find Him. I search for God in the sun, in the moon, and don't find Him. I search for God in all the plants, in all the animals, and don't find Him. I search for God on the mountains, in the rivers; I don't find Him.—

He means that in all the images there is no inner experience of the Divine, as it is with the Montanists. Through this Augustinus learnt, as it happened in his exchange with Faustus, to recognise materialism. This created his soul battle, which he overcomes by turning to himself, to faith, towards believing what he doesn't know.

[ 13 ] We must let this rise out of history because the important things do not happen in a way, we can control it, by taking a document in hand which has lain in the archives, or by looking at the entire history of these fore-mentioned men from outside—that is an outer assessment of history. The most important part of history takes place in the human soul, in human hearts. We need to look into the soul of Basilides, into the soul of Montanus, into the soul of Faustus, into the soul of Augustinus, if we want to look into what really happened in the historic fields which one then can develop into what actually became a covering of Christianity in the Church of Constantine. The Constantine Church took on the outer life of worldly realms in which the spiritual no longer lived—in the sense of the 13th Chapter of the Mark Gospel—depicted as an already un-deified earth, a perished earth, into which the divine kingdom must again live as brought by him in its real spiritual soul form.

[ 14 ] You see, in the course of both these viewpoints, one on the side the Gnosis which only came up to the Nous, and on the other side Montanism, which remained stuck in a materialistic conception, you see, how in these contrasts present during the first Christian century, the writer of the St John Gospel was situated. He looked on one side to the Gnosis, which he recognised from his view as an error, because it said: In the primordial beginnings was the Nous and the Nous was with God, and God was the Nous, and the Nous became flesh and lived among us; and Simon of Cyrene took the cross from Christ and thus accomplished a human image of what happened on Golgotha, after Christ only went up to carrying the cross and then disappeared from the earthly plane.—For the gaze of the Gnostic Christ disappeared the moment Simon of Cyrene took over the cross. That was a mistake.

Where do you arrive if you succumb to all thought being human and having nothing to do with the spirit? No, this is not the way the writer of John's Gospel experienced it. It was not the Nous which was at the primordial beginnings, not the Nous with God and a veil covering everything which is related to the Christian Mystery, but: In the primordial beginnings was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and a God was the Logos and the Logos became flesh and lived among us.—So the first actions are connected to the final actions: a unity comes about when we understand it with the spirit. We wish for something which doesn't lift us above human heights, to where we must find the Nous, because that is only one perspective of the spiritual.

Just as much spirit is needed for the spiritual orientation to let people form the idea that Jesus and the Christ God is one, so much spirituality exists in the Logos. When we hold on to the Nous, we only reach Christ; when we hold on to a Montanistic vision we only reach Jesus who in an unbelievable way returns as Christ, but then again only as a physical Jesus. No, we should not turn ourselves to the Nous coming from humanity, we must turn to the Logos, in which the Christ became man and walked among us.

[ 15 ] The origin of the St John Gospel has really come about through an immense spiritual time context. I can't do otherwise, my dear friends, than to make a personal remark here, that I need to experience it as the greatest tragedy of our time, that theologians do not experience the majesty of the John Gospel at all, that out of a deep struggle preceding it, out of a struggle, the big question arose: How can mankind manage to, on the one hand, find a way to his soul-spiritual in the spiritual-supersensible where his own soul-spiritual nature originated from? On the other hand, how can mankind reach an understanding for how his soul is within the physical-bodily nature?

On the one hand the question could be answered by the Gnosis, and on the other hand it could be answered by an imagination towards the Pistis, which then came to Montanism in a visionary manner. The writer of the St John's Gospel was continuously placed in the middle, between these two, and we feel every word, every sentence only intimately if we do it in such a way as it flowed out of the course of the times, and in such a way that you feel the course of time during the Mystery of Golgotha as if it can be experienced forever in the human soul. With an anthroposophic gaze we can look back at the turning point in time, to the most important turning point in the earth, when one wanted to have this experience of adoration of the St John's Gospel. The day before yesterday I said to you, one has, and must, have an experience when one reads the Gospels with an anthroposophical approach, by reading them time and time again. This admiration of the reader is always renewed with each reading by the conviction that one can never learn everything from the Gospels because they go into immeasurable depths. In Gnosis, my dear friends, you can learn everything because it adheres to outer nature and cosmic symbols. In Montanism one can learn all about it because everyone who is familiar with such things knows what a tremendous suggestive persuasiveness all this has, that can be experienced through microcosmic visions, stronger than any outer impression. You must first learn, my dear friends, in order to be able to talk someone out of a vision, you first need to learn how to do it. You could, if you want to convince a person religiously, rather talk him out of what he has experienced with his outer senses, than anything he has experienced as visions, as atavistic clairvoyance, because atavistic visions are far deeper in a person. By allowing atavistic visions into a person, he is far more connected to them than to his sense impressions. It is far easier to determine an error in sense impressions than an error related to visions. Visions are deeply imbedded in the microcosm. Out of such depths everything originated which the writer of John's Gospel saw from the other side, the side of the Montanists.

Montanism was the side of the Charybdis while the Gnosis was the side of the Scylla. He had to get past them both. I feel it at once, as our current tragedy, that our time has been forced—really out of the very superficial honesty, which prevail in such areas—that the Gospel of St John has been completely eliminated and only the Synoptics accepted. If you experience the Gospels through ever greater wonderment at each renewed reading, and when you manage to delve ever deeper and deeper into the Gospels, then it gives you a harmony of the Gospels. You only reach the harmony of the Gospels when you have penetrated St John's Gospel because all together, they don't form a threefold but a fourfold harmony. You won't accomplish, my dear friends, what you have chosen to do in these meetings for the renewal of religion in present time, if you haven't managed to experience the entire depths, the immeasurable depths of the St John's Gospel. Out of the harmony of John's Gospel with the so-called synoptic Gospels something else must come about as had been established by theology. What can really be experienced inwardly as a harmony in the four Gospels must come about in a living way, as the living truth and therefore just life itself. Out of the experience, out of every experience which is deepened and warmed by the history of the origin of Christianity, out of this experience must flow the religious renewal. It can't be a result out of the intellect, nor theoretical exchanges about belief and knowledge, but only from the deepening of the felt, sensed, content which is able to be deepened in such a way as it was able to truly live in the souls of the first Christians.

[ 16 ] Then, my dear friends, we see how Christianity was submerged by all that Christ experienced in Romanism—as I've presented to you—in the downfall of the world. Those who still understand Christ today will have to feel that the downfall is contained in all that is held by the powers of Romanism. By allowing the powers of Romanism to be preserved by the peoples who lived in this Romanism—the Roman written language, the Latin language had long been active—by our preservation of Roman Law, in our conservation of the outer forms of the Roman State, by our even uprooting the northern regions which contained the most elementary Germanic feelings experienced out of quite a different social community, in the Roman State outstripping all that is from the north, we live right up to our present days in a Roman world of decay because in Christendom, as it was considered in the vicinity of Christ Jesus himself, no other site could be found. This is because the Christianity of Constantine, which found such a meaningful symbol in the crowning of Constantine the Great in Rome, was a Christianity which expressed itself in outer worldliness, in Roman legalities. Augustinus already experienced, as I characterised yesterday and today, the feeling in his soul: Oh, what will it be then, if that gets a grip on the world, that which streams out of godless intellectualism, out of godless Romanism into the world? The principle of civil government will become something terrible; the Civitas of people will be opposed by the Civitas Dei, the God State.—So we notice the rise—earlier the indications had already been there, my dear friends—we see an interest emerging that was just seized in the following times in its fullest power in religious fields, that a light is cast on all later religious battles in the soul, which has just felt these religious battles most deeply.

Already with Augustinus this question emerged: How do we save the morality in the face of outward forces of law? How can we save morality, the divinely permeated morality? Into Romanism it can't spread.—This is the striving for internalization we find in the commitments and confessions of Augustinus, if we penetrate them correctly.

[ 17 ] This occurs in the later striving in the most diverse forms. It appears in the tendency towards outer moral stateliness, which had to be developed according to Roman forms of the Roman Papal church, develop through the coronation of the kings becoming Roman emperors, in which the kings were accepted as instruments of the Roman Papal church, which itself was only fashioned out of ungodly Romanism. I speak in the Christian sense, in the sense of the first Christianity, which experienced Romanism as an enemy. How could one escape this which was being prepared? The first way one could get out was to not allow the internalised Christ to submit to the nationalization of morality, as it had evolved in the Roman Papal church. The nationalization, the outer national administration of morality was what Augustinus still accepted on the one hand, while, however, in the depths of his soul there were forces which he rebelled against.

[ 18 ] We see in this rebellion, one could call it, the tendency of morality to withdraw within, at least to save the divinity within morality, according to what one had lost in outer worldliness. We see this morality being turned inward, being searched for as the "little spark" mentioned by Meister Eckhard, by Tauler, by Suso and so on, and how in particular it profoundly, intimately appears in the booklet Theologia Deutch. This, my dear friends is the battle for the moral, which now came to the fore, not to be lost within the divine spirituality, when it has already been lost in outer world knowledge and administration of the world. However, for a long time one was not ready to use such force like Suso regarding morality and seize the divine to penetrate the moral.

[ 19 ] At first it was a question of arranging the whole in a kind of vague form, always envisioning the side of the outside world, for there had to be someone like a Carolus Magnus, who on the one hand was a worldly administrator, and who could transfer the state administration of morality to the crown of the emperor as an outward gesture, while the church worked in the background. It was imagined in such a way, I could say, that it became a kind of moral dilemma, a conscience that has become historical. This started in the 9th, 10th centuries and this inner conscience steered towards people looking at the world, and that man, because he stood in the middle of the search for the divine in the moral, didn't manage it in the world and searched for the enemies in the world which he felt within. Man looked in the world to find enemies. This resulted in the danger of Christians looking for enemies in the outer world, this led, my dear friends, to the mood of the crusades.

[ 20 ] The crusade mood stands in the middle of the quests for internalization, yet people still didn't reach that place within themselves where the divine was grasped through the moral. The crusade mood lived in two forms; it lived above all in the moral impact of Godfrey of Bouillon and his comrades. From them the call went out against Rome: Jerusalem against Rome! To Jerusalem! We want to replace Rome with Jerusalem because in Rome we have become acquainted with outwardness, and in Jerusalem we will perhaps find inwardness, when we relive the Mystery of Golgotha in its holy places.—This is how the imagination came to Godfrey of Bouillon who we may think of as finding the enemy inwardly, even though he still looked for it outwardly, looking for it in the Turks. The striving to turn more inward and there find the ruler of the world, but at the same time to crown a king of Jerusalem, all this expressed itself in the historic mood of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. All this lived in the people. For once try to place yourself, in both the worldly and the spiritual reasons of the crusades and you will discover this historical mood everywhere.

[ 21 ] Rome saw this. Rome felt it indeed, something was happening in the north: Jerusalem against Rome. In Rome one felt the externalization, but Rome was careful. Rome already had its prophets; it was careful and looked into the future, seeing what people wanted: Jerusalem against Rome. So it did something which often happens in such cases, it introduced in its own way what the others first wanted, and the Pope allowed his creatures, Peter of Amiens and his supporters, to preach about the crusade in order to carry out from Rome what actually went against it. Study the history with understanding; take it as an impulse and you will see that already the first steps of the crusades took place in what Rome had anticipated and that which Godfrey of Bouillon and his supporters strived for.

[ 22 ] So we see in the historic mood how outer actions were searching for what lay within. I could say we can understand this historic mood in a spiritual way when we see how the Order of the Temple has grown out of the crusades, orders which are already further in their turning within. As a result of the crusades it brought an inwardness with it. It only takes things in such a way that it knows that one does not actually internalize them if one does not penetrate the exterior at the same time, when one doesn't, in order to save the moral, see it as an enemy in an exterior way. As paradoxical as this might appear, my dear friends, what Godfrey of Bouillon saw outwardly in the realm of the Turks, this is like Luther's battle at Wartburg Castle with its devils as an inner power. The struggle is directed inward.

[ 23 ] If you now look at all of this, what appears in programs about such people as Johannes Valentin Andrea, Comenius, what lives in the Bohemian brothers, then you will understand how in the later centuries of the crusades the pursuit of internalization has gone. I must at least mention the most symptomatic picture seemed to me always to be in a single place when I looked at this lonely thinker who lived in Bohemia, the contemporary of Leibniz, Franziskus Josephus von Hoditz und Wolframitz. For the first time, in all clarity—we don't only know this today—he stripped morality of legality. Everywhere in the early days of writing in the Roman spirit, the legal was bound to the moral. What lived in a religious way in most people, lived in a philosophic way in the contemporaries of Leibniz. He wanted the moral element to be purely philosophic. Just like Luther wanted to get the inner justification, because in his time it was no longer possible to get justification in the outer world, so Franziskus Josephus von Hoditz und Wolframitz as a lonely thinker, saw the task: How do I save, purely conceptually, morality from the encirclement and transformation of legality, with those poor philosophic concepts? How do I save the purely human-moral?—He didn't deepen the question religiously. The question was not one-sidedly, intellectually posed by Hoditz—Wolframitz. However, just because it is put philosophically, one notices how he struggles philosophically in the pure shaping of the substantial moral content living in the consciousness.

[ 24 ] In order to understand these times which after all form the foundation of ours, in which the feelings of our contemporaries live—without knowing it—you should, my dear friends, always look back at the deep soul battles experienced in the past, also when a modern person feels that he has "brought it so delightfully far"; by looking back at this time of the most terrible human soul battles, only one period of superstition is seen.

[ 25 ] So, I could say, the historic development of the struggle for morality came about. What was being experienced in this struggle shows up right into our present day, and it can be imposed on the spiritual search into religion, for religious behaviour, even into aberrations. Still, no balance has been found between Pistis and Sophia, between Pistis and Gnosis. This abyss is still gaping in contrast to the writer of the Gospel of St John who had infinite courage to stand above it and find the truth in between it all.

This summoning of strength in the search for the moral, in the will to save the divine, by applying it only to the moral, was felt in their simple, deep but imperfect way by those southern German religious people who are regarded as sectarians today, the Theosophists, who we find on the one hand in Bengel, and on the other, in Oetinger, but who are far more numerous than only in these two. They use all their might to strive, in complete earnestness, for attaining the divine in the moral, yet by trying to attain the divine in morality they realise: We need an eschatology, we need a prophecy, we need foresight into the course of the world's unfolding. This is still the unfulfilled striving of the Theosophists in the first half of the 19th century, started at the end of the 18th century when we must see the dawn of that which was completely buried at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and which must, from all those who experience the necessity for religious renewal, be seen.

[ 26 ] For this reason, my answers to your wishes which are in pursuit of such religious renewal, can't turn out in any other way than they do. I would quite like to give you what I must believe you are actually looking for.

Today, we will include a presentation of German poetry in the circle of reflections that we are now cultivating during this time. The first part of this presentation will be dedicated to the poet in whose presence we have the great and intimate satisfaction of seeing him in our midst today: our dear Professor Friedrich Lienhard. And it is in keeping with a deep feeling for the unique life's work of our esteemed friend that I want to express, albeit late, following the feelings that have been expressed to Friedrich Lienhard by the broadest circles of the German people on the occasion of his birthday a few weeks ago. It certainly corresponds to our deepest feelings when I express to him today the complete merging of all our warmth with the festive joys that have surrounded him, which have shown him how much that which he has been able to give to his people from the depths of his gifted nature resonates in the hearts of many.

Certainly, my dear friends, there was a wider circle that is more important for historical development today than our narrower circle, which in a festive mood has approached Friedrich Lienhard in the last few weeks. But with all our hearts we join with our feelings, with our sentiments, with what Friedrich Lienhard was fully entitled to hear in these weeks: the deepest agreement of her innermost feelings with his feelings. Many have spoken to him about it. The highest recognition that science can give to human intellectual endeavor has been bestowed upon Friedrich Lienhard by his, I would say, mother university. This is a source of great joy to us and, I am sure, to all those who are able to feel the deep debt of gratitude that exists towards human intellectual achievement. All those who heard about how Lienhard's mother university awarded the honorary doctorate, the recognition of science for human intellectual achievements, were overcome with the deepest satisfaction and joy. And in the deepest sense, we empathized with everything that has happened around him in the past few days, empathized because what is so infinitely sacred to us, what we cling to with all our love and striving, also seems to permeate his work.

It can be said that more recent human culture has produced much that is significant in the way of poetic art. In many places, what present culture can give to people flourishes in poetic achievements. The future will decide, and the heart of the present can already sense how it will decide, which of these blossoms are so closely linked to the temporality of contemporary culture that they will also fade when that culture, with its sole affiliation to the present, sinks into the past. And what is culture of our time has been brought up from the depths of the human being, that it blossoms, grows and greens towards that which is eternal, which will remain of our culture of the times, as something that carries the seeds of the future and will be a support for the ongoing spiritual culture of humanity. We want to be connected to the eternal in the present, to everything that reaches into the future, with all our hearts. And we hear this in the words of Friedrich Lienhard. When we connect with the wonderful natural moods that sound so uplifting, so enchanting, so delightful, so graceful in Friedrich Lienhard's poetry, then we feel how, behind his work, in his work, the spirits of nature themselves surge and weave. We feel drawn through the word, through the thought, through the feelings, to the creative nature, with which we also want to connect in knowledge through spiritual science. And we feel that these poems arise from what seizes man from the eternal, that they express this eternal in the temporal for the upliftment, the joy, the elevation of the human heart and soul. This makes us intimate with all of Lienhard's poetry. It makes us read and listen to it; it makes us, I would say, live and weave ourselves into it from the very first line, feel connected to its life element, to its creativity, and at the same time feel how the soul's life force, the spirit's air of life, overflows in us when we are allowed to let the impressions of his poetry take effect on us. Then again, when he conjures up the figures of ancient times out of the mysterious fog of existence, in lively activity and lively effectiveness, then we feel that yearning of humanity come to life, which expresses itself in the fact that the human human soul must look beyond everything that takes place historically on the outside, before the eyes and ears and the other senses of humanity, and plays itself up into the mythical, which, as an eternal element, encompasses the historical-temporal. And in this truly mythical element, in this element that connects human hearts with the eternal, we feel the figures that Friedrich Lienhard conjures out of the darkness and yet so full of light of prehistoric times.

On the one hand, Lienhard's poetry elevates us from the sensual to the spiritual and creative side of nature, from the present to the past. On the other hand, in his creations, we feel how they carry us into that which can take hold of us from everyday life in a deepening way can take hold of us in a deepening way, enabling us to live in the here and now as a spiritual and living being, how these poems connect us with everything humanly close and humanly lofty, how they develop heart and mind for everything that lives and moves in the world with man. Immersing ourselves in his poetry, we are able to live through its magic with so much that conquers and elevates human hearts in nature and spirit. And so, living with his poetry, we experience the most intimate happiness, the happiness that is the guide to man's true home.

So I ask you, my dear Professor Lienhard, to accept this greeting, which comes from the faithful search for understanding of the impression of your life's work, your life's work that has incorporated so much meaningful and eternal from the development of humanity and entitles us to greet you for all that we now hopefully expect from you in this incarnation. Please accept these words as a promise that we would like to extend to you, not out of passing feelings, but out of a deeper understanding of your life's work to date. Take them as an expression of our desire for all that we may hope for to come from you. Please accept my words as a prelude to every greeting that we wish to extend to you on your future journey through life. May what we strive for be bound to what you strive for. This bond will be sacred to us and we will always view it in such a way that we feel happy and satisfied to see the poet Friedrich Lienhard in our midst. Every moment that we spend in your company will be a moment of heartfelt joy and satisfaction for us.

I wanted to express this to you as a greeting before we now open our hearts to your work again for a short time.

Recitation by Marie Steiner from 'Poems' by Friedrich Lienhard: Faith; Morning Wind; Forest Greeting; The Creating Light (see page 216 for texts),

Lonely Rock

A rock beckons me in the golden air,
High and alone.
Around its summit is the scent of the heath
And evening glow.
A faithful little bee rings out in the herb
Flower bells, pure and calm.
Whoever looks out from there over the land
The world is his!

ELFENTANZ

Raschelgewänder und seidene Schuh',
Krone, Korallen und Bänder dazu
Rundaradei!
Rauschen und schleifen wir, singen dabei,
Rauschen und singen wir,
we swing our rustling skirts
around the ash tree, around into May,
Rundaradei, eia, rundaradei!

Do you want to catch us?
You have to dance with us!
Do you have feet as silky as ours?
Are you as flexible,
Are you as cuddly,
Are you as fast and as swinging as we are?

The leaves on the bush,
They turn in the breeze
The grass-green skirts and flicker in the process!
And if from the blue
The nights a thaw came,
So dances and sparkles in the morning of May!

Drink the light and dance yourself lively!
Drink the light and then up the hill!
A pearl from the early grass splashes down on you, Imagine an elf leaping at you! Finches, oh, see how they fly, Little clouds, oh, see how they glide, Everywhere, everywhere, faces of the sun, You alone in the midst of it all, a darkened man!

Do you want to grab us?
You have to drag along with us!
Do you also have little feet as silky as ours?
Are you as flexible,
Are you as cuddly,
Are you as fast and as nimble as we are?

He stumbles and lurches,
The clogs of the shaggy bear!

Nimble, buzz around him,
Flirting, confusing him!
Whirlwind, caressing wind, teasing wind: there!
Tousle him fine,
Pluck him fine,
Pluck and pluck and pluck him fine!
Hey, and so we float airily and free!
Down there, you catch me now, catch me, catch me,
Tear the train behind me, kiss my cheek, after all,
Catch me – catch me – catch me –
Gone!

SUMMER NIGHT

Strange night! In the reed and moor,
How the dry reed rustles and slurps!
It embraces as if it were alive,
And sighs as it releases them again.

How sweet the rustling sounds!
I have always loved the night wind:
It breathes voices and souls into the reeds, the birches, the moonlight
It breathes voices and souls into them.

Many ghosts are dancing, the world is loud,
The smallest herb stirs and giggles.
From the old knight's tower,
An owl laughs into the enchanted night...

EVENING RED

I long for a homeland that has no earthly boundaries,
I long for an eternal heavenly city out of human need.
The evening glow shines brightly and clearly, the spring rustles gently in the Wasgenwald
How soon my day on earth will pass, and all my daily work!

Oh, come, thou universal night, which knows no earthly measure,
From whose depths star upon star burns upon our tiny star!
I am not tired of the day's work, and yet I am tired of the day
I long for your vastness, you unlimited heavenly city!

AUTUMN ON ODILIENBERG

1. Autumn bells

Through red forest and bell singing,
Through an autumn day's sparkling dew
I seek on anxious heights
The stronghold of a holy woman,
Seeking sunshine above the clouds!
Oh misty walk,
Oh rugged slope,
I will a proud life long
be a pilgrim!

2. The blue flower

The earth smiles as a garden land
On the pilgrim who found the blue flower.

A lily blooms from the deep forest blue:
The bright monastery of a holy woman.

And though I search always, always, always,
You, silent mountain, are the blue flower.

3. Autumn Walk

How beautiful you are! You're a web of golden hair,
I walk transfigured through a fairy-tale grove.
All my soul soars up to God,
A smoke that lost itself in the blue of the heights.

Am I the one who walks dreaming in the falling leaves,

As this earth is full of colors,

Odilienberg is as beautiful as heaven!
In nothing but light, valley and hill dissolve,
And bliss was mine, which was so full of sorrow
Thank you for everything, you blessed year!

SUNDAY MORNING ON THE ODILIENBERG

What laughter and radiance today in the forest and shimmering meadow?
Odilia walks over the mountain and blesses the sunny valleys.

The early bells awaken far and near from weekdays and worries
There is a wondrous radiance on this Sunday morning!

From Otrott and from Heiligenstein, from Klingental and further:
A holy Jacob's ladder rises from the sound of the bells!

And all the saints who have ever lived in the land of the Alisassen
They gather in the “Heidenstadt”, in invisible lanes!

And all the Celts and warriors who long ago converted to the Lord
They crowd like a forest of flowers around the one who is highly revered.

Oh sea of spirits, oh sea of sounds, oh radiance in forest and meadow
Odilia walks over the mountain and blesses the sunny district!

ST. ODILIA

Patron Saint of Alsace

Her heart was a sun,
her eyes were dead and gray!
And from the clear forehead
of the beautiful woman
flowed the golden hair
in a rich flood —
Oh Holy Woman of Odilia,
make me pious and good!

In a mountain spring
she washed her white hands
and her blind eyes
Then she saw her Alsace
in pure May blossom
standing before her eyes
Oh holy woman of Odilia,
teach me to see!

In the monastery the bells are ringing,
The world is drowning in the fog
But see, the stars are shining brightly
From the summer night sky,
But see, Strasbourg is shining brightly
Over to our heights
Oh Holy Lady of Odilia,
Alsace is beautiful!

We will then connect with what we hear from Friedrich Lienhard's poetry, some of a poet who, like Friedrich Lienhard, shows us that the most Germanic nature finds its way out of its self-conception to the eternal of an ideal world view, who also shows us how the whole intimate empathy with the vibrations of the German being broadens the view to universality, to an all-worldly view, how the German view does not narrow, how it leads out to the great wide plan, where all that is human comes into its own and nothing human is misunderstood.

Wilhelm Jordan is the other poet, of whom we want to hear the piece of his Nibelung poem, especially where he wants to introduce a mood of the human heart, where the heart opens out of the temporal in order to listen for counsel for the temporal out of the eternal. How the German hero seeks counsel not only in the external world, but also from spiritual beings who speak through nature and through the soul's outer being. How the German hero opens his heart to this counsel in order to repel the threat that comes from the Huns in the east and threatens the burgeoning of German culture. This scene, which is so poignantly connected with the innermost German feeling, but with the feeling of world culture, is then inserted into our present performance.

From “The Nibelungs” by Wilhelm Jordan. The Saga of Sigfrid, 18th Song.

Just then spoke to the servants
Of the sanctuary in the grove at Holmgart,
Now already infirm and very old, the seeress Oda:

“I thought to rest from the runic office, The little time that my pilgrimage On earth still lasts; but highly significant Is this message from the reeve of Berne; The noble Ditrich, who has long since been in charge of Ditmar, Tired of age, of the power. His bravest man and armorer, Hildebrant, the son of Herbrant,he sent, together with Siegfried's steward,to the mighty mother of men and his most valiant man and armorer,
Hildebranten, the son of Herbrant,
Sandt' he, together with Sigfrid's carer,
to the mighty mother of men and gods,
to give account, to seek advice
and guiding light from the fall of the lots...

But small is the measure of human wisdom;
So let us now pray for revelation
From the omniscient spirit of the mighty goddess,
Who bears all happenings in her womb,
And sees the shadow cast of what is still uncreated.
Omnipotent mother of men and gods,
Once more in this hour,
Strengthen the mouth of the weary. For the last time,
Before I die, I will ascend
The golden throne on the hollow step
And, with incense clouds swirling around my forehead,
From the disappointing breath from the eternal depths,
boldly gaze into the future. —
So now speak, messenger, Ditrich of the Berners:
What does he ask of the goddess of the Goth leaders ?“

Then the offspring of Heribrant spoke:

”What will help us to salvation
from the Hunnic hordes?
What is the goal of the future for a German?"

Once the question had been asked, she climbed the ladder
weakly and with difficulty. With a golden knife
she cut the rice, came down slowly,
carved the smooth bark with runes,
divided the stick into small pieces,
And turned away, she drew them
On the white carpet... Then she tied on the cloth,
Woven from unbidden, black kid
Wool, bent down, selected,
Reaching blindly, went into the grotto
And bade the princes and witnesses follow her.

Then she mounted the chair. She lined up the rods
On the holy table made of the wood of a fir tree,
Which the storm blast had once split to the root,
And then read the motto according to their position.

Then she sat lost in deep thought,
While the steam in dense clouds
Enveloped her head, to which a hundred winters
Had bleached the hair to a blinding snow.

Now at last she beckons. The incense evaporates,
eyes roll in holy ecstasy
and sparkle with fire, but only into the distance
do they gaze, enraptured, perceiving the future.
And so the divinely gifted began:

"In a surging confusion, shadows of princes and peoples and future strugglesappear to me. But in the space of the searching soul,thousands of yearsdeceptivelymove together in view.

Oh, Ditrich, consider
The envy in the neighborhood!
Otherwise a relative
Will throw you from the throne,
And you seek security
And help to return home
In bitter banishment
With the dreaded enemy.

What threatening urge
From east and west!
There Hun hordes,
Here Merowig's might.
Thus languishes the question
Of rights and realms;
Obey the hero,
That aids to salvation.

Here, the ruling
domestic sovereign
binds the envious neighbors
to a glorious empire;
There lie the corpses,
There rise the cities,
The Lechfeld illuminates
the sun of victory.

Be strong in the West,
Conquer in the East,
And take in the North
The march to the sea,
Only do not seek the concubine
In the south of the mountains,
For spirits and bodies
You poison with your kiss.

Oh King, do you fail to recognize
The meaningful legend
Of the future's salvation
Through domestic discipline?
The fruit tree of the frosty land
Becomes sick and crippled,
Because, to ennoble it,
The palm branch does not fit.

Woe! scarlet red foam
The rivers of blood,
The staggering crowd
Is discouraged and swears.
Then the red beard rages
Hidden in the mountains,
Until the raven pair, waking up,
Calls him to Valhalla.

Then the proud ones pray
And bow their foreheads
Like penitents to the dust
Before the rising star.
What crowns in the manger
The infant victor?
Three kings come
And call him Lord.

Oh, Master of mercy,
The furious, wild
And heartless Hilde
Banishes thy commandment;
Their sword shelters the weak, —
Not again awake —
To the rage of revenge
The envy and the need.

Gone, forgotten
Are gods and heroes,
Inaudible fade away
Their praise and their song.
The fearless fathers
Admired wisdom
Is cunningly slandered
And shamelessly reviled.

Incomprehensible feud
Empties the land,
Sending children and old men
To fight for a grave.
The bearer of the crown,
Struck by the crook,
There he bends barefoot
To the prayer of repentance.

But the magician trembles;
You, little rod, destroy for him
The bulwark of his castles;
His letter is burnt.

Dawn is announced
By the candles of the children's tree:
The time of estrangement
Will soon be over.

Another age of disaster,
Full of doubt and discord?
Brothers are consumed
With an excessive lust for murder.
Like greedy vultures
The Franks estrange
The best of the castles
On the rushing Rhine.

But the flames do not burn for long
The shining embers;
We overthrow the proud
From the defiant throne,
And it repents in exile
On a lonely island
The despot despairing
The disruption of the realm.

Therefore, though the earth
Has more warriors than herbs
To fight the world war,
Be fearless, my people.
Full of proud thoughts
The German endures
The storms with strong patience.

The day of recovery will come,
We will find the leader,
Who remembers our fathers
My people will win.
They will fight the battles,
They will adorn themselves with wreaths
And forge the crown
Of the united power.

The seeress spoke it; then she sank down
And gasped for breath, gasping and groaning,
With a broken look, her head on her chest.
Now she raises her head again as if listening,
With flaming eyes and flying hair.

“O Sigfrid,” she cries, “look at the sun!
It fades, it blackens: the wavering lights,
That shimmer through the shadows of the trees, they form
Not discs as usual, no, sharp sickles.
The toads lament, the owl hoots, So that midday becomes night; the murderous marten Stalks and catches the sleepy birds. As much as you thirst, you dare not drink: For behind you... Help! - wait, Hela! Oh woe - stricken - the world goes to ruin
Dreadful scream - terrible night.

Speech failed her. She leaped up,
As, with an arrow through the heart, the stag leaps up in the air
Plunged to the ground and was dead.

When, deeply moved by the words of the seer
And shaken, stunned by the horrors of death,
Odas' remains surrounded the others,
Then disappeared unnoticed from the threshold of the grotto
And won the expanse of Sibich, the Welsche.

It is perhaps important and especially a propos where the kind of considerations now in point are concerned, to look back on many things connected in former times with some particular spiritual stream. For you have seen that it is a question of spiritual events that lie at the basis of the physical world, making it necessary at present for man to take a new standpoint in relation to the whole understanding of his connection with the world and with the rest of mankind. Yesterday we pointed out how much must be differently understood which, apparently well founded, shines forth here and there into the spiritual life of mankind. You must really be clear, my dear friends, that when impulses founded in this way are taken seriously then, as life goes at the present time, opposition arises against this seriousness and against these impulses generally, the opposition of hate, the opposition of envy, of fear, which proceed from the pettiness of men and so on. Only a deep understanding of things can help to clear away the many hindrances to which the adherent of such a spiritual revolution is exposed. For this deep understanding is well adapted to strengthen the soul, so that this soul is a match for much that always makes itself felt precisely in opposition to the most earnest endeavours in world activity. And so we wish today to enlarge in many ways upon what was said yesterday.

I pointed out yesterday how man, just by standing on the ground of Spiritual Science, can be absolutely objective towards other spiritual streams, how he certainly has no need to misjudge other spiritual streams. From this standpoint I said that on certain points, compared with many of the statements made today by philosophers and theologians outside the Church, through their training the representatives of the Catholic clergy are superior. Just at present we live at a time in which everyone wishing to take the questions concerning a world-conception seriously should come to an understanding about these things. The different currents of world-conception and the social currents of the present day both require this. Without very fundamental observation, the temptations arising from the scholarly approach cannot be properly fathomed, cannot be recognised in their actual lack of significance in the light of the greater demands of the present. The temptation to fall in with the objections of scholarly opponents of the endeavours of Spiritual scientists today is not to be underrated. It is true that if men have sufficient power of discriminations if they would bestir themselves to go into the facts concerning the basis of Spiritual Science, the broad base on which it stands, they would be less exposed to this temptation. But such power of discrimination is rare. What as Spiritual Science, according to how we understand it, wishes to join in with the world current accounts for many kinds of attacks, including those, for example. from the standpoint of the Catholic faith. It is necessary to grasp such things at this time because in the chaos that is about to break upon us, unfortunately far too little appreciated, far too little heeded by men—in this chaos many different things of a disconcerting nature will proceed from what is contained in the Catholic doctrine.

Now today I should like to make you familiar with the kind of judgment about some particular spiritual scientist that an orthodox Catholic may pronounce if he has reason to assume this spiritual scientist to be an unintelligent reader or listener. One of the most common objections against what we here mean by Spiritual Science is its being pantheistic. One of the chief objections made, for example, in the articles by the Jesuit, Zimmermann, in the publication “Voices of the Time” is this—that Spiritual Science is Pantheism.

You know how often I have spoken about this point. You know how I have said that the only wad of overcoming this commonplace Pantheism, so dominant in many places today, is to put in its place the concrete spiritual world of which Spiritual Science speaks. It is naturally not intended, on the part of those from whom the objections come, to go deeply into the truth; taking into account all the prejudice belonging to certain religious partisanship, their efforts go much more in the direction of bringing forward what has a definite suggestive or hypnotic effect. Pantheism is indeed the view that in everything spread out in Nature, spread out anywhere in the phenomenal world, there lives the divine, that, in a way, nature herself is to be looked upon as direct revelation of the divine. It is just this which I have always attacked—this watered-down Pantheism that is forever talking of how behind the outspread world of phenomena there is spirit, spirit, spirit. I have always called your attention to how this is much the same as refusing on the physical plane to recognise tulips, roses or lilies as anything but plants, plants, plants. Spiritual Science goes straight to the individual, concrete spiritual beings and does not speak in the pantheistic general may about the spirit. Another characteristic of Pantheism lies in saying: Pantheism has no wish to separate outer nature from the divine spiritual but would mingle both together. Now, my dear friends, one must indeed be a Jesuit to make it appear that it is believed where the actual ranks of the beings of the higher hierarchies are spoken of in this way as being individualised among themselves and having a personal and superpersonal existence in themselves—it is believed that there can be any question of the mingling of this hierarchical world as a whole with external nature. Whoever can think in accordance with reality will be unable to make anything at all of the accusation of Pantheism, where such a description of the world of the hierarchies, and the connection of the individual beings of the hierarchies with nature, is concerned.

There is a further thing that is quite unique and is given particular prominence in the articles from “Voices of the Time”, namely, that in sir Spiritual Science it is said—and this is supposed to be heretical in the Catholic churd—that the divine is living in man's soul, that the soul of man is itself a drop in the ocean of this divine. Such and similar utterances are collected there and established as heresies within the Catholic confession.

Thus it is shown how the teaching that a divinity should live immediately in the soul is heretical and to be condemned. Now faced with this a reasonable man might say: There is no need for you to draw my attention to such foolishness. But, my dear friends, that is not important, that is not the question. But it must be a matter of these things playing a real part in the world, that where men would deceive themselves these things should play a really powerful part, and that we must already be alive to such things. But they are connected with something besides. And now we will turn our attention from any particular attack that has been made. Let us imagine a man, a Jesuit, who has either been made apathetic where his own reflections are concerned or consciously lives in them—what I mean is, he knows that for himself he has no need to reflect about things but has only to judge the faithful according to the sense of the officially recognised creed. For once we will look at the kind of pronouncements such a man can make about the path of Spiritual Science. I an simply telling you here the average—I should not like to say opinion for opinion does not meet the case, but average utterance of an official representative of the Roman Catholic Church about the path of Spiritual Science, as this would come from a modern believer.

He would perhaps say: The Catholic Christian would not dare take such a path as the one recommended by Spiritual Science for gaining insight into the supereensible. For all the Church Fathers and every exponent of Church doctrine—the cleric of today would perhaps say—condemn such a path. By such a path man is supposed to acquire the special faculty of rising to the supersensible world. That, however, is heresy, that should never be an aim at all. All that may be striven for by an orthodox Catholic is what their teachers of religious doctrine hold to be the legitimate vision. This 'legitimate vision' is that the present day hall-marked cleric of Rome considers valid. What does ne understand by it?

You will be able to form a concept of what he understands by it when you distinguish between two kinds of gifts which, in the sense of the orthodox Catholic Church, man can receive as a believing Catholic. The one kind of gift is the so-called gratiae grate detae, what is given through grace, the supernatural gifts of grace, one might say the Greek charisms. The other gifts are those which may be called the universal human gifts. The gifts that ae out of the ordinary, the charisms are bestowed by God in a way that is out of the ordinary upon men who are out of the ordinary. The Maid of Orleans would perhaps be given as an example. These gifts cannot be striven for, they are bestowed as special gifts of grace upon outstanding men and may not be striven after, accouding to the dictates of the Church. What may be striven for, however, is a certain enhancement of the general life of the soul which does not bring men to any extra-ordinary faculty but to a raising og the faculties that are universal and human. Such a raising of universal human faculties has nevertheless the effect—so says the Roman Catholic Church today of making man capable of being permeated with the Holy Spirit.

Therefore this is what we say: The ordinary mortal thinks something, feels something or does something. According to the dictates of the Church, according to the dictates of the State, he has in duty bound to do these things in a certain ways with his ordinary mortal reflection he can endeavour to perform his action in accordance with the Church, in accordance with the State: in the opinion of the Church this is the same as being in accordance with God. He may also notice, however, if in other things he is an ordinary Catholic Christian, that the Holy Ghost often intervenes in his acting, thinking, feeling, and that because the Holy Ghost is working in him the practice of certain virtues becomes easy which otherwise is difficult. This, however, may not be striven for in such a way that man would go beyond the ordinary point of human endeavour, and develop special faculties for penetrating to the supersensible worlds all striving of such a kind is reprehensible.

Now here I have described the objections an orthodox, hallmarked, Roman Catholic cleric would make to what is found, for example, in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. He would say: man strives for special faculties that would place him in a position to unite himself in a certain way with the spiritual world. But he may not do this. He must remain perfectly passive until he notices that in his mind and soul there enter impulses of the Holy Spirit. He may not bring about ax qualitative change in his behaviour, only an enhancement, as it were, a facility in becoming virtuous, a facility in other faculties exercised ter man on the external physical plane.

You can read this kind of thing today not only against our Sairitual Science but against all man-made endeavours towards producing a human being who sees a spiritual world ground him just as rhynical men with his physical senses, sees around him a physical world. This is familiar even among those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of Christian belief dictated by Rome. And it in widely recognised that anyone thinking differently about the things I have just been describing to you, is a heretic. In giving such a description it must alters be made clear that these things still have tremendous influence today upon millions of human beings. We must not be so egoistic as to think that because one has ceased to believe in thaw oneself (and this too is only a matter of belief) there is no further need to worry. This is exactly what is such a pity today, particularly where the social movement is in question, men are so egoistic that they look only to the needs of their own soul and have no wish to extend their gaze to what unites men, to what is permeating millions and millions of men, as a drivinfr impulse which, when it then breaks forth, can appear in the font we nee things now arising in the word, Today it is necessary to be quite clear about the sources of these things and the necessary attitude to take towards the things themselves.

Now these clerics stamped with the mark of Rome as a rule appeal to the Fathers of the Church. They go back to the Church Fathers of earlier centuries and from their sayings take what they believe to be in harmony with all I have just described. Now, naturally, I cannot read out to you for hours at a time the doctrines of the Church Fathers; I should like, however, to draw your attention to something in this direction, namely, the attitude to these things that can be taken by man in this age of the consciousness soul which began with the fifteenth century.

First, therefore, we must keep in mind that the way into the spiritual world, as Spiritual Science understands it, is held to be heretical; so says the modern cleric recognised by orthodox Rome. In the second place we have to remember the accusation against Spiritual Science—that it speaks oft man being able to partake of the divine; this also is heretical, as once more stated today by the Catholic cleric approved by Rome.

Let us be willing to look for once rather more closely at what an outwardly—not inwardly as we shall soon see—an outwardly well-reputed Church Father, outwardly well-reputed also by Rome, says about a matter like the vision of which I have previously given you a description. John of the Cross,¹ for example, speaks about what vision should be for orthodox Catholic Christians who through this vision my be said to get beyond the mere general belief of the Church and rise to a kind of higher perception of the divinity pulsing through the world. The Catholic Church today allows a man through vision to get beyond purely general belief. But it forbids him to get as far as superphysical faculties, that is, faculties leading into the super-physical world in the same way as external senses lead into the world of the senses. Now St. John of the Cross says: “The time has come (he is referring to the time of vision) when the reflection and contemplation undertaken previously by the ordinary powers of the soul should gradually cease, when the soul sees itself bereft of its former enjoyments and palpable delights.”

Thus St. John of the Cross admits the state in which ordinary reflection is silenced, the reflection by which man comes to terms with the things of the physical plane that are perceived by the senses and understood by the intellect. He admits, therefore, that man deprives himself ordinary contemplation which the soul experiences in such contemplation and in such relation to external nature ceases. This he admits.

Condemned to a state of barrenness and aridity (he goes on to say) the soul can no longer deliberate by means of the intellect.

Thus, by shutting off his senses, by stopping the activity of his intellect, (and this is necessary for the attainment of vision) man with his soul comes to a kind of barrenness and aridity. By this he really comes to that participation in the divine, held by St. John of the Cross to be permissible. When therefore the soul no longer reflects with the intellect or even finds any physical support, then the senses are no longer enriched. The spirit has the advantage without receiving anything from the senses. It can thus be seen that in this state, God is the principal agent.

Now let us go minutely into this matter. St. John of the Cross says: Man can reflect, he can take up outer perceptions through his senses, the soul can become passive, the soul of itself does nothing further. Thereby God becomes the principal agent in the soul. He Himself instructs the soul and gives it suitable knowledge. In visions he presents the soul with wholly spiritual possessions, more particularly knowledge and love of God, without the soul having to reflect or enter upon other exercises which are no more possible to it than formerly.

Take these words of the canonised John of the Cross, one who is still recognised today in Rome as an orthodox Father of the Church. Take these words first in relation to the accusation of Pantheism recently made against Spiritual Science for having spoken, for example, of the life of soul as being like a drop in the ocean of the divine, therefore having itself a divine nature, which today according to preaching and believing clerics is heresy. But, my dear friends, St. John of the Cross describes the possibility of coming to a passive condition of the soul when reflection and sense perception are shut off and God is the chief agent, when, in his own words, God presents the soul during vision with wholly spiritual benefits Himself, instructing the soul, imparting to it an infusion of wisdom.

Now I ask you: What sense have these words if it is said further that the human soul is never brought into a real connection with the divine Being? What does the statement mean that God Himself is alone active in the soul, when it is supposed to be heretical to speak of men coming into direct, conscious connection with God? When anyone says: the soul is related to the sum of the divine-spiritual like a drop in the ocean that is of the same nature an the water of the ocean as a whole—should this be understood as unpermitted Pantheism if truth held good, and when at the same time it is recognised, for example, that an orthodox Father of the Church, St. John of the Cross, admits the possibility of God Himself taking over the chief activity in the soul? To recognise how far truth is the governing factor in official circles you must keep consciously in your soul the following fact—that, at the sane time, such masters are appealed to as St. John of the Cross who really teaches Pantheism (if one is to call it Pantheism) in a far more marked way than Spiritual Science. But this is held to be heresy! So, what is one to do? St. John of the Cross is allowed to pass for a Church Father of authority, and people are deceived by being told that Pantheism is forbidden. But this means further that nobody may assert it to be heretical if it is said: God is so directly present in the soul that the human soul can be conscious of this!

No, my dear friends, people today should not be loose in their thought; they dare not think loosely if still greater misfortune is not to befall mankind. Today men should be able consciously to keep the fact before them that it is possible officially to convey this kind of misrepresentation of the truth throughout the world.

Another utterance of St. John of the Cross is: ”Priceless are the inner benefits imprinted by this silent vision into the soul when it is unconscious. In short they are nothing but the extraordinarily tender and most mysterious anointing by the Holy Ghost who, as he is God, acts as God.”

“The Holy Ghost acts as God immediately in the soul,” says St. John of the Cross (this was Catholic doctrine at the time of John of the Cross before the age of the consciousness soul) “And works upon, and inundates the soul in secret with such a measure of riches, gifts and graces that it is beyond description.”

And now I would ask you: what are we supposed to understand when one of those who write about heresy today says it is heretical to assert that God is identical with the human soul!

This is the position of things. But men are so little awake that they pay no attention today to how the truth is 'managed'. in the final analysis it rests on man having troubled so little about what has been given out as truth in the world, that so fearful a catastrophe should have fallen upon it. And it rests on this also that truth can be hated in the way it is still hated at present by certain people.

Today in Rome the approved clerics take particular pains constantly to emphasise that no difference should be said to exist between the ordinary faculties the faithful develop by belief, and the enhancement of belief that is expressed in vision. No difference is supposed to exist or at the most a difference of degree; for when a real difference is striven for, this is heretical. But St. John of the Cross says: “The difference consists in man seeing only darkly through belief, whereas with perception of the soul theveils are removed from Him”. (He means God). At the time when St. John of the Cross wrote these things down, before the age of the consciousness soul, this was Catholic doctrine. What today holds sway as Catholicism where these things are concerned is only the shadow and no longer the light. It is really very beautiful how John of the Cross describes for that age the mystical path of Knowledge, the way into the tensible. He says: “The narrow portal is the night of the senses. To pass through it, the soul has to get free from itself and cast its shell.” At that time these things were said not in the way that Rome speaks, but rather as Spiritual Science speaks. Spiritual Science is the real continuation of the noble strivings to enter the spiritual world as they appear in John of the Cross. But Spiritual Science is the continuation suited for the present age: it reckons with the progress of mankind

The narrow portal is the night of the senses. To go through it the soul must become free of itself and cast its shell. And by then taking beliefs which has nothing to do with the senses, for its guide, the soul travels along the narrow path to the second night—the night of the spirit.

And very beautiful is the description by St. John of the Cross of the union with the divine-spiritual: “The union is accomplished when the two wills, namely, the will of the soul and the divine will, become one.”

It could not be more clearly expressed that a divine will exists holding sway over the world, and a will belonging to the soul, both of which merge in vision. But today that is said to be heresy. Truth would be honestly upheld were it said: Today St. John of the Cross is no longer a saint but a heretic. This is what the cleric of Rome would be bound by duty to say if he wished really to uphold his assertions.

Thus, St. John of the Cross says that union is brought about by the two wills, that of the soul and the divine will, becoming uniform, which means, when there is nothing in the one will that is opposed by the other.

But then in the sphere of the orthodox Roman Catholic clericalism it is definitely intended that the path of individual knowledge should be barred to the mere believers and also to the bumbler clerics. Today, therefore, while misrepresenting people like John of the Cross, people such as John of the Cross are constantly having attention drawn to them. It is pointed out that John of the Cross would at that time have only allowed vision to be resorted to if men first received three signs. The first of these signs by which the soul felt itself summoned to vision, that is, to mystical vision, would be inability to contemplate and to make use of imaginative powers, antipathy towards outer contemplation. Thus when the soul feels loath to receive sense-perceptions and to reflect, the time has arrived when it should give itself up passively to the will of God.

The second sign would be perceiving that one no longer desired to employ the imaginative power of the senses in special outer and inner imaginations. Thus the first sign is becoming tired, the second is ceasing to have desire. The third inner sign would be the sensation of most intimate joy felt by the soul in being alone, therefore without sense-perceptions and reflection, but with attention focussed purely on the divine.

Now, my dear friends, you will not read what is in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds intelligently without saying to yourself something which it is true, is modified to suit the time, namely: with those three signs I can now first find myself completely in harmony. There is absolutely nothing against the three signs. One has only to meet them with understanding in accordance with existing conditions. Let us then consider the three signs, which John of the Cross sets up as signs on receiving which the soul may turn to mystical vision, and thus to the path into the spiritual supersensible world.

The first sign would be the inability to contemplate and use one's imaginative power, reluctance towards contemplation. We must remember how these words were written before the age of the consciousness soul was fully established. Than when the age of the consciousness soul is established man turns his gaze upon nature as she is presented to him by modern science. But the historical development of mankind must still be reckoned with. We have to reckon that the men around St. John of the Cross were not soaked and steeped in the conceptions that shower in all directions out of modern natural science. St. John of the Cross had only those about him who led a life of devotion to the Catholic Faith, who took their world outlook from this Catholic Faith and were preached to from the pulpits of Catholic Churches. One has to speak differently to such men from how one speaks in the twentieth century to men soaked through by scientific conceptions. For what does it actually mean to be permeated by a scientific outlook? Whether they admit it or not all men are that nowadays down to the last peasant in the last cottage, if he is not just an illiterate, and even illiterates are permeated by scientific conceptions in the form of their thought. Anyone who looks at the world today in the way it must be looked at in the sense of the modern world, if he has a living need for knowledge must, because scientific conceptions inform him only about what is dead, must come to see that scientific observations make it impossible for him to be satisfied with them. There arises exactly what St. John of the Cross describes as the first sign. This sign is produced by the scientific kind of conception. At the time he wrote it was granted to few, today it is granted to all who even begin to think. We must take note of this difference. Were St. John of the Cross to write today he would say: Certainly at that time to those men who felt incapable of observing things outwardly and of setting the imaginative power in movement, mystic vision had to be recommended. Today everyone given up to unprofitable conceptions of science, at a definite point of time becomes capable of abandoning these conceptions, particularly when in their souls they have a longing to find some kind of path to the divine-spiritual. St. John of the Cross spoke to very few candidates; today all thinking men are candidates. This exactly represents the progress of mankind. Thus when man who lives in the scientific age feels this longing today, it is the fulfilment of what St. John of the Cross accepted as the granting of the sign.

The second sign is man's perceiving that he no longer desires to use the imaginative power of the senses for special outer or inner imaginations. My dear friends, the moment science can do no more than afford man a view, a perception, of how he has developed from what is animal, the soul in reality begins to perceive that the desire has flown simply to observe in the outer world what the senses reveal. For these reveal that man has descended from the animals; one no longer has any desire in that direction. And bemuse the time has come—formerly only for the few, now for all thinking men—in the actual sense of John of the Cross one turns to what is the idea behind evolution, that is, one turns to the path into the spiritual world.

The third sign is the experience of joy in the depths of the sea en feeling itself alone in its contemplation of God. Now this inward joy will certainly be felt, as soon as they find their way into the supersensible world, hy all who in this scientific age have absorbed only those concepts offered them by science.

Once again we are faced by the fact, the significant fact, that it is just our Spiritual Science of today that so thoroughly fulfils what, for his time and in his sense, was demanded by such a man as John of the Cross.

The stream of development flows on and today fulfilment has a different appearance from What it then had. There are other contributing factors. whoever looks today with an honest sensefor truth at the evolution of mankind, will say to himself: Because we have entered upon the scientific age, the feeling for super-sensible knowledge must be kept alive in men. Such demands as those of John of the Cross will be fulfilled without further adoif man treads the path marked out, for example, in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. If he takes this way there will be revealed to him not what was revealed at the time when St. John of the Cross was writing, but there will be revealed to man what lies today on the path of human evolution. At this point we can no longer speak in the sense of pure positivist Christianityas did St. John of the Cross, for the serious fact lies before us, referred to both yesterday and many times previously that today in a certain respect man either consciously or unconsciously passes by the Guardian of the Threshold. There he comes to recognise that he must speak not only of a single divinity but of the divine hierarchies. There he comes to know how Ahriman and Lucifer are to be contrasted with the divine hierarchies. But, my dear friends, just as the Catholic Church wanted to hold men back from accepting the Copernican view until the year 1827, in a similar way it will want to keep men from the supersensible knowledge that is a necessity for our times. Why in this? It is because it does not wish men to be awake to what is streaming into the evolution of mankind from spiritual heights.

It is true that there may be some and there are some who with a certain honesty say the following: Man today is not prepared to approach directly with his soul what comes from the spiritual world; this only does him harm. Then when he meets the Guardian of the Threshold he will not be able to distinguish illusion from reality. Therefore let us give him a grizzly picture of setting out on the spiritual path so that he runs no risk. - Such people do not reckon with the necessities of the age, they reckon with a narrow, limited conception, but it is possible that they are sincere. The majority, however, of those who say things such as: “One dare not set out today on the path to supersensible knowledge” mean something else. From various directions a certain feeling of fear towards truth holds the truth back from flowing in. This feeling of fear, this anxious feeling, is present in the official upholders of widely extended religions; it is also prevalent in certain societies of Freemseons and similar brotherhoods. I have already drawn attention to this from another point of view.² There are, too, within these Societies some people who are honest from their point of view, but the force with which they hold up the progress of mankind is terribly strong. The following calls for attention. There are those, particularly in the higher grades of these Orders, who say: Man as a rule is not sufficiently mature to come to an immediate knowledge of the spiritual world, therefore he should be held back from direct entrance into the spiritual world. It is a forbidden thing to enter and man shold only be permitted to get as far as the practice of ceremonies prescribed in certain ancient rituals. He should be referred to all manner of symbols which do not lead him directly into the spiritual world but which as far as possible would indeed be symbols of great antiquity. I have told you that in this respect certain Masonic Orders, shall we say, hold to what is in contrast to the dearest impulse of most of the ladies. Most ladies you must know are young, most masonic societies would like to be as old as possible! Where possible, very ancient ritual is indicated or very ancient traditions. Not always, but very frequently it has an untrue intention, but sometimes it is honestly meant when it is said Rituals that are very old can do no harm when carried out by men today, for they are obsolete, they have become rigid, they are merely the shadows of what they have been. Besides, human souls have lived so long with rituals, with their symbols mid what these represent, that they have became habituated to them and will no longer receive shock from the impression of an immediately experienced truth. If people are made acquainted with what is thoroughly old, what still exists only as a shadow, they will be lass exposed to danger. All these things may be argued, my dear friends, but they have to collapse in face of the necessity belonging to this turning point of time. The evil that would come were man to throw back the breaking wave of the spiritual tide, would be greater than all the rest of evil beside. Our real duty in face of all those cosmic spirits who have to do with the evolution of mankind, is to make man realise what, simply throw present cosmic lrws in any case in the unconscious, is taking place in the soul of every man today. In the age of the consciousness soul it is an absolute necessity to call this up into consciousness. It is necessary, also, where what is arising with such power in social dew ads is concerned, that that is actually present in the soul of ran should be recognised. For, externally, existence becomes ever more like a mask, and elmsys merely phenomenal. The possibility absolutely exists for man to have such experience in his soul that he posses by the Guardian of the Threshold; but because of the materialism of the time his consciousness of this passing will be suppressed. What is suppressed, however, what is not conscious, not for that reason non-existent! In spite of all, it is there. Any man passes by the Guardian, but by reason of present education he suppresses this. What it then represents can be something quite different. It may be the deeds of Lenin, it may be the deeds or a member of some kind of Spartacus League. Heed must be paid today to the fact that we have arrived at the age when through the delusive impulses of materialism the passing through certain spiritual impulses may be outwardly masked in a way that is very highly dangerous to mankind.

The times are serious. But action will be in accordance with this seriousness if in man the honest will is only there to interpret with his sound human understanding that can be brought from the spiritual world through a real Science of the Spirit.

• 1. San Juan de la Cruz, born 1542, died 1591, studied under the
  Jesuits in Medina del Campo, became Abbot of the Carmelite Monastay at Menrezo about 1568; successfully defended himself on an indictment brought against him by the Inquisition, and founded the Monastery of Ban= in lam In 1581 the Order of the Carmelites hauled aver to his the direction of their pal Monastery at
  Granada. The Curia appointed him as Pro al Vicar of
  We-UM in lam, and in 1566 as Definitor. Through the discipline of his Order he acquired enemies vho, by their influmea vg Philip II, sumeoded in eausing, John of thi Woos to be co
  the Monastery of Ubede. In 1675 Benedict XIII canonised the "ecstatic Doctor."
• 2. See a XLVII, Leettlres 8 and 9.

Let us transport ourselves in imagination toRammenau in Oberlausitz, a spot not far from Kamenz in Saxony, the birthplace of Lessing. The year is 1769. A house of no great size stands beside a brook. The generations inhabiting this house, as records show, had been engaged in the ribbon-weaving industry, from father to son, ever since the period of the Thirty Years' War. The standard of life prevailing at this time in the house was not even as high as tolerable comfort, indeed it was very near to poverty. By the brook that flowed past the house, in this year of 1769, stood a seven-year-old boy, fairly small, rather sturdily built for his age, with red cheeks and expressive eyes, that at this moment were showing signs of deep distress. The boy had just thrown into the brook a book that was floating away. At this juncture his father appeared on the scene from the house and must have spoken to the boy more or less to the following effect: “Why, Gottlieb, whatever are you thinking of? You are flinging into the water what your father bought for you with hard-earned money to give you pleasure!” The father was very angry, for just before this he had given the book as a present to his son Gottlieb, who till then had had no acquaintance with books apart from the Bible and the hymn book.—Now what had really happened? Hitherto young Gottlieb had received with the most serious attention whatever had been taught him of the contents of the Bible and hymn book, and he was a boy good at his lessons at school. Wishing to please him, his father bought him one day for a present the book of folk tales called Der Gehörnte Siegfried (The Horned Siegfried). Gottlieb plunged deeply into the study of this book, with the result that he had to be scolded for his forgetfulness and inattention to all his lessons, which he had till then found so interesting. That went to the boy's heart. He was so fond of the Gehörnte Siegfried, his newly acquired book; it aroused in him such deep interest and sympathy. But on the other hand this thought was vividly present to his mind: “You have neglected your duty.” Such were the thoughts in the mind of the seven-year-old boy. So he went off to the brook and forthwith flung the book into the water. He was punished for it, because though he could tell his father the facts, he could not explain the real underlying reason.

Let us now follow the boy Gottlieb at this stage of his life into other situations. For instance, we catch sight of him one afternoon on a lonely moor far away from his parents' house, standing there from 4 o'clock onwards and gazing into the distance, utterly absorbed in the view of the solitary spaces surrounding him. And thus he was still standing at five and at six o'clock and even when the bell sounded for evensong. Then a shepherd came by, and seeing the boy standing there, gave him a cuff and told him to come along home.

Two years after this time, in 1771, Baron von Miltitz was visiting the landowner in Rammenau. He had come over from his own estate in Oberau one Sunday, in order to dine with the neighbouring squires and enjoy their society; and before the meal he had intended to hear the morning sermon. However, he arrived too late to hear the clergyman of Rammenau, well known to him as a worthy man; for much to his regret the sermon was already over. When the visitors, his host and the other persons present were talking amongst themselves about this, somebody made the suggestion: “Oh there is a boy in the village who might perhaps repeat the sermon by heart; it is known that he can do so.” And so Gottlieb, now nine years of age, was fetched, and came along in his blue peasant smock. A few questions were put to him which he answered briefly with “yes” and “no.” He felt very ill at ease in this high-class society. Then it was suggested to him to repeat the sermon which he had heard just before. He paused to meditate and then, speaking as it were from the depth of his soul, as if he felt intimately every word, he repeated from beginning to end the sermon which he had heard, in the presence of the visiting landowner and the company. And he repeated it in such a way that all felt as if everything that he said were proceeding directly out of his own heart; he seemed to have so imbibed it that it had become part of himself. Thus with inward fire and animation, which increased as he went on, the nine-year-old Gottlieb recited the whole sermon. ... This nine-year-old Gottlieb was the son of Christian Fichte, the ribbon-weaver. The landowner von Miltitz was profoundly astonished at this experience, and declared that he must himself take charge of the boy's education. In view of the straitened circumstances of the boy's parents, the relief from such a responsibility was bound to be extremely welcome to them, even though they deeply loved the boy. For after Gottlieb many other children had come, till they were now a large family; and so they had no choice but to grasp the helping hand which Baron von Miltitz so generously offered. And Baron von Miltitz was so strongly impressed by his encounter with the boy that he wanted to take young Gottlieb away with him immediately. And so he took him away to his own home at Oberau near Meissen. ... Young Gottlieb, however, felt by no means at home in the mansion, which formed so great a contrast with everything to which he had been accustomed in the poor ribbon-weaver's cottage. He felt indeed altogether unhappy over the whole affair, till he was sent to Niederau nearby to a clergyman named Leberecht Krebel. And there Gottlieb grew up in an environment full of intimacy and affection, in the household of this excellent minister Krebel. With his unusual gifts the boy found himself deeply attracted by all the gleams of truth which he divined in his talks with the worthy pastor. And when Gottlieb reached the age of thirteen he was able, with the support of his benefactor, to enter the Schulpforta School.

He was transferred to the strict discipline of Schulpforta, which did not by any means suit him. He observed that the manner in which the pupils lived together involved much concealment towards the teachers and officials, and much duplicity in behaviour. Further he was altogether out of harmony with the system by which the older boys were set in authority over the younger as prefects. Gottlieb had already at that time absorbed Robinson Crusoe and many other tales, and had been influenced by them. At first this school life seemed intolerable to him. He could not reconcile it with his conscience that there should be—as he felt—concealment, duplicity, deceit in any place intended to promote spiritual growth. What was to be done? He resolved to escape secretly into the world outside. Accordingly, he made ready and simply ran away. On the way there arose in his mind, prompted by his innermost feelings, the thought: “Have you done right? ought you to do this?” Where should he now turn for counsel? He fell upon his knees, addressed a prayer to Heaven and waited for a sign to be given him from the spiritual worlds as to what he should do. The sign from within urged him to turn back, and he willingly did so. Very fortunately there was then at Schulpforta an unusually sympathetic headmaster, by name Geisler, who persuaded young Gottlieb to relate the whole affair to him and showed deep understanding. Instead of punishing him, he even made it possible for Gottlieb to be on happier terms with himself and his environment, as happy indeed as he could wish. He was able also to make friends with the most gifted among the staff.

It was not easy for him to obtain satisfaction for his intellectual needs. Already aspiring, even at that age, towards the highest, he was not free to study the authors of whom he had heard so much; for Goethe, Schiller, and in particular also Lessing, were at that period forbidden fruit at Schulpforta. However, there was one of the masters who obtained for him a remarkable book, Lessing's Anti-Goeze, that inspired polemic against Goeze, which contained the whole substance of Lessing's profession of faith, his lofty and valiant outlook, expressed in free and outspoken language.

Thus Gottlieb in these early years imbibed from this Anti-Goeze all that it was able to give him. It was not only the ideas which he appropriated, indeed that was the least important part; he also made his own the manner of approach towards the highest things and the attitude towards various views of the world.

And so Gottlieb's schooldays went by at Schulpforta. When he had to write his examination thesis on leaving, he chose a literary subject. It was a remarkable piece of work. It was altogether lacking in the quality characteristic of many young people who introduce all kinds of philosophical ideas into their school compositions. This essay contained no trace of philosophy or of philosophical ideas and notions. On the other hand it already betrayed the fact that the young man made it his special aim to observe human beings, to look into the depth of their heart; and it was this acquired knowledge of men which found expression above all in this school essay.

In the meantime his benefactor Baron von Miltitz had died. The funds so generously supplied for the young man stopped. Fichte passed his final examination at Schulpforta, went to Jena, and had to live there in the direst poverty. He could take no share at all in anything that then made up the student life of Jena. Day by day he had to earn by hard toil what he required for his bare subsistence. And he could only find in rare hours the opportunity of nourishing the aspirations of his spirit. Jena proved to be too small, so that Fichte was unable to find his spiritual food there. It struck him that he would have better facilities at Leipzig, a larger city, and went there to try. He tried to prepare himself there for the situation in life which was the ideal of his father and mother, deeply god-fearing people; namely for the Saxon ministry, for a post as minister and preacher. Indeed one may say he had shown himself predestined for the office of preacher. He had proved so capable of assimilating the truths of Holy Writ that even in his father's house he was frequently invited to make comments on this or that passage in the Bible, and similarly while he was living with the good clergyman Leberecht Krebel. And whenever he was able to visit his home for a short time, in the place which contained his parents' unpretentious cottage, he was allowed to preach there, for the local minister was a friend of his. And he would preach in such a way, prompted as it were by a sacred enthusiasm, that what he was able to impart was the very word of God, in a version that was at once individual and yet altogether in conformity with the Bible itself.

So he went on trying, at Leipzig, to train himself for his calling as a country pastor. But it proved difficult. It was hard for him to secure any teaching position which he thought himself able to fill. He occupied himself with correcting work, with tutoring, but this life became very hard for him. And above all he found himself in the course of it unable to make any progress with his own intellectual aims. He was already twenty-six, and these were hard times for him. One day he had no more resources left and no prospect of securing anything during the next few days; no prospect either that, if things were to go on in the same way, he could ever secure entry to even the most modest profession which he had set himself as an aim. His people at home could support him only to a very meagre extent; for, as I have said, it was a family abundantly blessed with children.

And so one day he stood at the edge of an abyss and in his soul, like a desperate temptation, the question arose: “Have I no prospects for this life of mine?” Though it may not have been quite present to his consciousness, yet in the background of his mind was the idea of a voluntary death. Then, just at the opportune moment, appeared the writer Weisse, who had become one of his friends. Weisse offered him a post as tutor at Zurich and took steps to ensure that he should really be able to take up this post within three months. And so from the autumn of 1788 onwards we find our Fichte at Zurich. Let us try once more to picture him with the mind's eye, as he stood in the pulpit in the Zurich Minster, now completely possessed with his own conception of the Gospel of St. John, already quite intent on the endeavour to reproduce the teachings of the Bible in a form of his own. He did this in such a way that those who heard his inspiring words resound through the Zurich Cathedral must have thought that a man had arisen who was capable of rendering the scriptures with quite a new eloquence, in a new way, with a fresh inspiration. Many, doubtless, who heard him then in the Cathedral at Zurich, must have carried away this impression.

And now we can follow him again into a new situation. He became a tutor in the Ott household, in the inn “Zum Schwert” at Zurich. There he encountered a peculiar narrow-minded outlook to which he could only partially adapt himself. He succeeded in getting on good terms with his pupil, but less so with the parents. And we can trace what Fichte really was in the following incident. One day the pupil's mother received a singular letter from her son's tutor, who was living in the house. What were the contents of this letter? Roughly as follows. Education was a task, the writer said, to which he, Fichte, would willingly lend himself. What he knew of his pupil gave him an assured prospect of being able to do great things with him. But the process of his education would have to be developed in one particular point: it was essential above all to educate his mother! For a mother who behaved in such a way towards a pupil was the greatest obstacle to any education under her roof! I need not dwell upon the peculiar feelings with which Frau Ott read this epistle. However, the incident was passed over, and up to the spring of 1790, that is for about eighteen months, Fichte was able to pursue a fruitful activity in the Ott household at Zurich.

But Fichte was not by any means the man to circumscribe within the limits of his profession the thoughts which filled his soul. It was not in his nature to avert his attention from the spiritual processes taking place around him. Through his inner zeal and the close interest he felt for all the spiritual changes going on around him, he became closely absorbed also in what was going on in his own environment. There in Switzerland his thoughts turned to the ideas which were then filling the minds of all men, to the mental reactions provoked by the outbreak of the French Revolution. We can, so to speak, overhear him discussing at Olten, whenever he found any specially gifted people to talk to, the questions which were then dominating France and the world with their imperious significance; making up his mind that those were the ideas which deserved primary attention, and associating all the preoccupations derived from his deep religious feeling and acute intellect with the new ideas of human happiness, human rights and the high ideals of humanity.

Fichte was no egoist, capable only of developing his soul rigidly from within. This soul of his grew in communion with the outer world. His soul knew unconsciously the duty of existing for something beyond one's self, of standing as a personification of the world's purpose in the age in which one lives. That was one of Fichte's deepest convictions. And thus, just at the period when his spirit was most sensitively aware of the processes at work in his environment, he developed in close communion with the Swiss element. And we always find that this German-Swiss element left a permanent mark on the whole personality of Fichte in his later life and work.

It is necessary to understand the deep-seated difference between Swiss life, and life a little further north, in Germany, in order to grasp the impression which the Swiss environment, the Swiss character and endeavour made upon Fichte. For example, this Swiss element is distinguished from other forms of German life especially by the way in which it infuses a kind of self-conscious element into all the intellectual life, so that all cultural activity acquires a political expression; everything is so conceived that the current conceptions serve to put the individual into touch with immediate action, with the world. For this German-Swiss character art, science, literature are only separate tributaries of the whole river of life.

It was this element which appealed so happily to Fichte's own spiritual character. He too was a man who could not conceive any human activity or any human endeavour in isolation. For him too every individual factor had to be linked with the entirety of man's action, meditation and feeling and with man's whole philosophy. Moreover, in Fichte his capacity for achievement was intimately linked with his ever unfolding personality. No one who reads Fichte to-day, who approaches those writings of his which often seem so arid in their substance, or those particular writings and treatises which radiate intelligence, can have any notion of what Fichte must have been when he poured into his discourse, upon a cause which he deeply felt and espoused, all his inner fire and intensity. For into his discourse there passed also what he was. He even attempted at that time—it was an abortive attempt—to establish at Zurich a school of public speaking. For he believed that through the manner in which spiritual things are set before men a different and more effective influence could be exerted than merely through the ideas themselves, however excellent these may be.

At Zurich, in the household of a Swiss named Rahn, then well-to-do, a brother-in-law of Klopstock, Fichte found stimulating society which made a strong impression upon him. He formed a deep attachment to the daughter, Johanna Rahn. With this niece of Klopstock he formed a close intimacy, at first a friendship, which developed gradually into love. By now his position as tutor at Zurich was no longer really tenable, and he needed to look further afield. He did not want at that moment, before he had made his way in the world—as he frequently remarked at the time—to enter the Rahn household as a member of it, and perhaps live on its resources. He wanted to make his way further in the world—with him we cannot say his “fortune”—but his way.

He returned again to Germany, to Leipzig. He thought of remaining there for a while, hoping to find what his real vocation might be, to find that form of spiritual expression which he sought as his object in life. He intended then to return after a while, to work out in freedom what he had brought into harmony within himself. But then an unexpected event happened which upset all his plans. Disaster overtook Rahn, for he lost his whole fortune. Fichte was now not only tormented by the knowledge that the people dearest to him had sunk into poverty, but he himself was compelled to resume his wanderings through the world, abandoning the cherished plans which he had nursed in his innermost heart.

The first thing that offered was a post as tutor at Warsaw. However, as soon as he arrived and presented himself there, the aristocratic lady whose house he was to enter formed the impression that Fichte's manners, which then and subsequently struck many people as downright and vigorous, were really uncouth and that he had no talent for adapting himself to social life. When this was pointed out to him, he could not endure it and took his departure.

His way now led him to that place where he might expect to find a man whom he revered more than anybody, not only among his contemporaries but in his whole generation, towards whom he had been drawn when for a while he was immersed in the study of Spinoza and his philosophy; a man towards whom he had been drawn while studying his writings, with which he was now wholly in accord. As at an earlier date his thoughts were filled with the Bible and other works, so now the writings of this man, Immanuel Kant, confronted him as a new creation. So he made his way to Königsberg and sat at the feet of the great teacher. And he found himself altogether in harmony with the image reflected in his soul of this teaching, which he held to be the greatest ever bestowed upon mankind. And in Fichte's soul, all the ideas derived from his own devout nature, from his meditation on the divine guidance of the world and on the way in which the mysteries of this guidance have been revealed throughout eternity to mankind—all this was blended with what he learned and heard from Kant. And he projected all that arose in his soul into a work which he entitled Kritik aller Offenbarung (A Critique of all Revelation). This was in 1792, when Fichte was thirty years of age. Then a remarkable thing happened. Kant immediately recommended a publisher for the book, which aroused his enthusiasm. It went out into the world without the author's name, and nobody supposed it to be anything but a work by Immanuel Kant himself. Thus favourable criticisms were showered upon it from every quarter. Meanwhile Fichte, again through Kant's intervention, had secured in the excellent Krockov household near Danzig a tutoring post which this time was very congenial to him, and in which he could freely cultivate his spiritual aspirations; and it was intolerable to him so to appear before the world that the public, when discussing his book, in fact associated it with another author. He could not endure that; and when the first edition, which was soon exhausted, was followed by a second, he published his name. And now he had a singular experience. A great many critics at least found it impossible to say the exact contrary of what they had said before; but the judgment at first passed upon the book was now toned down. This was for Fichte yet another lesson in his study of human psychology.

After he had spent some time in the Krockov household he felt able, in view of his present status in the world, not indeed in a mundane sense, but intellectually—for he had proved that he was capable of something—he felt able to prepare for his return to the Rahn household. Only thus had he resolved to win Klopstock's niece, and now he could do so. So in 1793 he went back again to Zurich, and Klopstock's niece became his wife.

He set to work now, with the utmost intensity, not only to develop in himself the ideas he had assimilated from Kant, but also to immerse himself more deeply in all that had occupied his mind during his first stay at Zurich, in all those ideas about the aims and ideals of humanity which were now permeating the world. And he mingled the substance of his own thoughts about human ideals and endeavours with the ideas now passing through the world. He was so independent a nature that he could not refrain from communicating to the world his inevitable conclusions on the ideas about human progress then held by the most radical thinkers. The book now published by him in 1793 was entitled: Beiträge zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (Suggestions for the Enlightenment of Public Opinion on the French Revolution).

Simultaneously with the elaboration of this book there went on in his mind a perpetual revision of those views of the world which he had formed for himself from contact with the outlook of Kant. There must be, he said to himself, a philosophy of life which, in the light of a supreme impulse, could illuminate the whole domain of knowledge for the human mind. And this philosophy, aspiring so strongly towards the highest that no higher ideal of knowledge could ever be found, was the ideal which now hovered before Fichte's eyes.

By a singular concatenation of circumstances, while he was still engaged in working out his ideas within himself, he received a message from Jena. The impression made there by Fichte's achievement was such that on the strength of it he was invited, when Karl Leonhard Reinhold resigned his post at Jena University, to succeed him there as Professor of Philosophy. Those who were then directing the intellectual life in that University welcomed with the utmost satisfaction the idea of introducing into this famous College (then the highest in prestige of any in Germany) the remarkable personality who, while in one aspect he struck them as a hot-head, in another made the impression of a man striving, especially in his quest for a philosophy of life, towards the highest levels of thought.

And now let us just attempt to view him in imagination as he discharges the duties of his new appointment. He desired to transmit to those who now from 1794 onwards were his pupils, the outlook on the world which had formed itself within him. But Fichte was not a teacher like any other. Let us first consider the results of his spiritual evolution. It would take too long to explain this in his own words, but it can be characterized out of his own spirit as follows. He aspired towards a supreme ideal of such a kind that the human spirit might apprehend the stream and mystery of the world at a point where the spirit is directly one with this stream and mystery. So that man gazing into this mystery of the universe might be able to link his own existence with it, that is to say, to know it. This result could not be attained in any exterior sensuous existence. It could not be reached by any eye, any ear, any other sense, nor by everyday human understanding either. For all that can be apprehended outwardly by the senses must first be co-ordinated by human intelligence; it has its existence in the outer world. It can only be considered as real when its existence is, so to speak, confirmed by the observations of the senses. But that is no real existence; or at least no opinion can be formed at first about the real existence of what is only apprehended by the senses. The source of all knowing must rise in the depth of the Ego itself. That cannot be a something complete in its existence, for a completed existence in the inner self would be equal to what appears as completed existence within the outer senses. It must be a creating reality. This is the Ego itself, that Ego which recreates itself every moment, that Ego which is grounded not on a completed being, but on an inward activity. This Ego cannot be deprived of its being, since that being consists in its creation; in its self-creation. And into this self-creation flows everything that has real being. Away then with this Self out of the world of the senses, and into those spheres where the spirit moves and has its being, where the spirit works as creator; we must lay hold of this spiritual life and act from the point where the Ego unites with the spiritual processes of the world. We must plunge into that current which is not external complete being, but which from the source of the divine world- existence creates the Ego, first as Ego and then as human ideals, as the great conceptions of Duty.

Such was the form which the Kantian philosophy had assumed in Fichte's soul. And thus he did not want to present his hearers with a ready-made doctrine; with that this man was not concerned. With Fichte it was not a lecture like another lecture, a doctrine like another doctrine. No; when this man took his place at the lecturer's desk, then what he had to say there, or rather to do there, was the fruit of a long meditation of many hours during which in thought he saw inwardly the divine being, the divine spiritual ebb and flow streaming through the world, and permeating in its course the Ego which ever recreates itself, by a sublime process above and beyond all sensuous existence. After having brooded long in self-imposed debate as to what the world's spirit had to impart to the soul about world mysteries, then, and only then, did he come before his audience. But then he was not concerned to convey his message, but to create an atmosphere of communion between himself and his hearers. His endeavour was that what had come to life in his soul concerning the world mysteries should come to life likewise spontaneously in the souls of his listeners. His purpose was to awaken spiritual activity and spiritual being. From the souls of his hearers, as they hung upon his words, he sought to call forth a self-renewing spiritual activity. He did not merely communicate ideas. The following is an instance of what he sought to give to his hearers; one day he was attempting to illustrate this self-renewing faculty of the Ego, how all mental activity can arise in the Ego and how man can only reach a real grasp of world mysteries by laying hold of this self-renewing faculty within himself; and when he was attempting to illustrate this, entering the spiritual world with his hearers, and, as it were, taking each one by the hand to guide him into the spiritual world, he said: “Now may I ask you just to fix your attention for a moment upon the wall. Well, you have now, I hope, formed a mental picture of the wall. The wall is now present in your minds as an image. And now think of a person thinking of the wall. Detach your minds altogether from any thought of the wall itself. Fix your attention entirely on the person thinking of the wall.”

This direct manner, this direct relation which Fichte sought to establish with his hearers made many of them uneasy, but at the same time impressed them profoundly. The spirit at work in Fichte had to come to grips with the spirit of his hearers.

Thus for several years the man worked on, never repeating the same lecture, but continually creating anew. For he did not care about imparting in sentences this or that information, but strove ever and again to awaken a new response in his hearers. This is evident from his oft-repeated assertion: “It matters nothing that what I have to say to men should be repeated by this person or that, but rather the essential is that I succeed in kindling a flame in men's souls, a flame which shall induce every one to think for himself. Let no one repeat my words after me, but let each one be stimulated by me to deliver his own message.” Fichte's aim was to produce, not pupils, but original thinkers. If we follow out the history of Fichte's influence, we can understand how it was that this man, the most German of the German philosophers, did not train any real students of philosophy. He founded no school of philosophy. But the direct relationship which he established with his pupils again and again produced men of mark.

Now Fichte was aware—inevitably, since he sought to lead the minds of men up to a direct contact with creative spiritual reality—he was aware that he must speak in quite a special way. Fichte's whole style was indeed hard to follow. None of those who attended any of his courses at Jena had ever come into contact with such teaching before. Schiller himself was astonished at it, and Fichte once discussed with Schiller how his, Fichte's, teaching activity and his manner of presentation appeared to himself. For example, Fichte remarked; “Of course, if people just read what I have said, then it is impossible, as people read to-day, that they should comprehend what I am trying to say.” Then, taking up one of his books, he attempted to illustrate how, in his judgment, his work should be read aloud. Then he said to Schiller: “You see, people nowadays do not know how to recite inwardly. But people can only grasp the inner meaning of my lectures by really reciting them mentally, otherwise it is lost.” Certainly Fichte's own rendering of his lectures was no mere reading, it was direct speech itself. Therefore even to-day we ought in studying Fichte to recite his words mentally against the background, as it were, of his whole spiritual life, which merits our attention as representing the spiritual life of the whole German people. Even to-day we ought still to train ourselves in reciting and listening inwardly to those passages of Fichte which otherwise seem so dry and so bare.

We have now reviewed in our minds Fichte's spiritual development and reached one of the peaks of his spiritual life. It is right therefore to glance back for a moment over this remarkable evolution. We first visualised Fichte as he stood before Baron von Miltitz in his blue peasant smock, a sturdy red-cheeked peasant boy who had no other education than that open to his class, but who, even as a nine-year-old child, had assimilated that education till it had become the most fundamental possession of his soul. In him we have an example of a soul grown to maturity wholly out of the midst of the German people, without at first receiving any culture other than that which belongs to the common every-day life of the German people. We have followed this spirit through difficult phases; this spirit—whose ideal it really is to remain within the people, but yet is bound to yield to the deepest motives of his being—can be followed in his course as he rises to the loftiest heights of inner spiritual growth and work, until at last he becomes, as we have been able to illustrate, a moulder of men. We are following the road traversed by a German spirit growing directly out of the people and climbing by its own strength alone to the topmost peaks of spiritual being.

Thus up to the spring of 1799 Fichte discharged the duties of his teaching post at Jena. Even before that time all sorts of dissensions had arisen, for it must be admitted that Fichte was not by any means the kind of man who is easy in intercourse, the kind of man willing for the sake of friendly relations to use roundabout methods and facile gestures in his dealings with other people. But here we come to an important point, which has significance for the whole of the German life of that epoch.

One person in particular felt deep satisfaction—a feeling which Goethe also shared—at having been able to call Fichte to his University at Jena: this person was the Duke, Karl August. And we may well, I think, record here the singular tolerance shown by Karl August in calling to his University the man who had most freely applied the Kantian philosophy in criticism of revealed religion; and moreover in inviting to his University the man who had most boldly and outspokenly taken a stand for the freest ideals of human development. It would be, I feel, a failure to do justice to Karl August, that noble spirit, if we passed on without pointing out what unusual broad-mindedness this German prince must then have needed, in calling Fichte into his service. This invitation was described by Goethe as a piece of audacity; and I should like to remind you of the world of prejudices which Karl August and Goethe, who in the nature of things were bound to be the chief authors of this invitation, had to face in taking it on themselves to bring Fichte to Jena. As I say, it would be almost an injustice not to point out Karl August's remarkable freedom from all prejudice. And to illustrate this I should like to read out a passage from Fichte's book entitled: Suggestions for the Enlightenment of Public Opinion on the French Revolution:

“They (Fichte is referring to the European princes, including those of Germany) are for the most part brought up in indolence and ignorance, or if they know anything it is a kind of knowledge specially concocted for them; it is a notorious fact that once they are on the throne they neglect to go on with their education, that they read no new works except perhaps shallow sophistries and that they are invariably behind their times by at least as many years as they have reigned.”

That passage is from the last book which Fichte had then written—yet the Duke Karl August invited this man to his University!

Anyone who gives a little attention to the whole situation of Fichte and those who had sent for him will come to this conclusion: that those people who held the view of the great and magnanimous Karl August and Goethe had undertaken a campaign against the people of their immediate circle, who were altogether and absolutely in disagreement with the idea of sending for Fichte. And this was a campaign which was not easy to undertake; for as already stated, it was not possible with Fichte to make use of manoeuvres such as are so generally practised in the world. Fichte was a man who by his awkwardness, by his bluntness often offended the very people whom it was most desirable to avoid offending. He was not a man to make smooth gestures: he was a man who, if something did not please him, would strike out with his fist against the world. And the manner in which Fichte was then using his whole energy to impart his message to the world was admittedly such as to cause Goethe and Karl August some distress; it was not easy for them, it was very hard for them to put up with it, and they were distressed.

And so little by little the storm-clouds gathered. First of all, Fichte wanted to give a course of ethical lectures, those which are printed under the title “Lectures on the Morality of the Scholar.” The only suitable hour that he could find was on Sunday. But this was a shocking suggestion to all who held that it would be a profanation of the holy day to address the Jena students on a Sunday on the subject of morality as Fichte conceived it. And protests of every sort and kind poured in upon the Weimar Government, upon Goethe and Karl August. The whole Senate of Jena University passed a unanimous resolution to the effect that a deplorable sensation and infinite mischief would result if Fichte were to deliver lectures on morals in the University on Sundays—he had selected the hour of the afternoon church service. In this affair Karl August was forced for the time being to leave Fichte's adversaries in possession of the field. But once again it would not be right to pass on without drawing attention to the manner in which he did it. The following is an extract from the letter sent by Karl August to the University of Jena:—

“In accordance with your request we have resolved that the above-mentioned Professor Fichte shall be permitted to continue his moral lectures on Sunday only after the close of the afternoon church service.” However, Karl August was brought to this decision only on account of “a circumstance so unusual as the arrangement of lectures of this kind during the hours appointed for Divine Service.” In the official decree sent by the Duke to the University Senate he wrote in reference to these lectures:—“We have been glad to assure ourselves that if his (Fichte's) moral lectures resemble the accompanying admirable essay from his pen, they may well prove to be of the highest value.”¹

But the attack was pressed home. The enemy never afterwards let go their hold. And so, in 1799, came about that unhappy controversy over the charge of atheism, as a result of which Fichte had to relinquish his position as lecturer at Jena. A younger man named Forberg had contributed to the periodical Fichte was then editing, an article which incurred from a certain quarter a charge of atheism. Fichte, for his part, thought that what this young man had written was rather imprudent, and wished to add marginal comments. Forberg disagreed with this suggestion; so that Fichte in that lofty manner of his which he used not alone in great matters but also in the smallest ones, would not hear of rejecting the article because he disagreed with it, and would not add marginal notes against the author's will; however, he wrote in the form of a preface some lines about the basis of the belief in the divine governance of the world. These lines of his were wholly imbued, through and through, with the spirit of genuine and deeply-felt reverence and piety, exalted to that spiritual level of which Fichte said that it was the only true reality, that we can only grasp reality when the Ego feels itself moving in the sphere of the spirit, immersed in the spiritual stream of the world. We must not, therefore, he added, apprehend the existence of God by any external revelation or external knowledge whatever. We must apprehend the existence of God in the living process of creation. We must sense the creative process of the world by standing in the stream of it, ourselves ceaselessly creating and so attaining our own immortality.

But in consequence of this article the charge of atheism was now turned against Fichte himself. It is impossible to relate here the full details of this controversy. It is indeed grievous to observe how Goethe and Karl August, against their will, had to take sides against Fichte; who, however, would never be restrained, when he felt impelled to communicate his appointed message to the world, from retorting to an attack by a direct blow. So matters went on till Fichte heard that steps were to be taken against him, that he was to be reprimanded. Goethe and Karl August would have preferred to see the matter settled by a reprimand. But Fichte said to himself that to accept a reprimand for ideas drawn from the deepest sources of the human spirit, would mean an offence against honour, not his personal honour, but that of the spiritual life itself. And so he then wrote a private letter, which however was viewed as an official communication and filed among the official documents, to the Minister Voigt at Weimar, to the effect that he would never accept any reprimand, no, rather he would take his departure! And whenever Fichte wrote about matters of this kind he wrote as he spoke. It used to be said of him that he had a sharp tongue when necessary; and in correspondence too he could be cutting towards anybody, whoever it might be. Thus the authorities had no alternative, unless everything were to be turned upside down at Jena, but to accept the resignation which Fichte had not really meant to tender, for his private letter had been treated as an official communication. At any rate that was how it came about that Fichte had to give up his post as teacher at Jena, which had been blessed with such fruitful influence.

Shortly afterwards we see him appear at Berlin. He has now approached from a fresh angle the position of the Ego in the ever-moving stream of the world-spirit. The book which he then wrote (and which can now be bought cheaply in Reklam's Universal Library) was called Die Bestimmung des Menschen (The Destiny of Man). Into the composition of this work he threw his whole being and energy. In it he strove to show how those who only view the world of the senses from outside, co-ordinating it with the understanding, can only point the way towards a meaningless view of the world. The gist of Part I is to show how in this fashion one arrives only at a dream-reflection of life. The object of Part II is to show how the mind thus comes to regard the world as a chain of exterior necessities. And in Part III we come to the enquiry as to how the soul fares when it seeks not merely an image but a direct participation in that great creative process of all existence. After putting the finishing touches to the work, Fichte wrote to his wife, whom he had then left behind at Jena: “I have never before looked so deeply into religion as during the composition of the last part of this work, The Destiny of Man.”

Apart from a short interval in 1805, which he spent at the University of Erlangen, Fichte passed the remainder of his life in this world at Berlin. At first he gave private lectures at the various houses in which he lived, lectures of an impressive character; subsequently he was invited to assist in the newly-founded University, to which we must now turn our attention.

As I said, apart from the short interlude in 1805 at Erlangen, his work now lay in Berlin. He was still drawing from ever fresh sources in his soul the ideas which he had to impart to the public. So at Erlangen, continually recasting his ideas in a fresh mould, he presented his theory of knowledge, his outlook on the world. Strangely enough, whereas at Jena he had from the beginning of his course a fair audience which steadily increased, and similarly in Berlin, the number of his hearers in Erlangen dwindled by one half in the course of the term. Everyone knows how professors generally take such a falling-off; anyone who has any experience knows that they simply have to accept it. But Fichte did not react to it in that way. One day when his audience at Erlangen had diminished to one half, he referred to it, taking for granted that his words would reach also those who had stayed away, in one of those thundering tirades in which he demonstrated to people that, if they would not hear what he had to say, then they were good only for external historical knowledge, not for intellectual knowledge. And after going on to discuss what a man should become in life if in his spiritual strivings he rejected this intellectual kind of knowledge, he continued as follows:—“Now as to the time of my lectures. I have heard how much dissatisfaction is felt at the choice of time. I will not consider this strictly according to principles which are really self-evident and which would have to be applied here. I will take it that the persons concerned are only misinformed, and will try to put them right. No doubt they may say that there is a tradition in this matter dating from long ago. Supposing that this were the fact, I should have to reply that grave abuses must have existed in the university from the earliest times. ... I myself have held at Jena from six to seven o'clock in summer and winter a course such as this, attended by hundreds, whose numbers used to increase considerably towards the close. I must say openly that when I arrived here I selected this hour because no other was available. Now that I have realised the point of view adopted towards it, I shall select it deliberately for the coming summer.

“At the back of all these difficulties we find a deep-seated incapacity in people to occupy themselves and a great deal of shallowness and ennui, so that after a meal has been taken, by God's grace, at midday, people find it unendurable to stay any longer in the town. And even if you were to give me proofs—which I hope it would be impossible to supply—that such has been the custom at Erlangen since its foundation, in the whole of Franconia, indeed throughout South Germany, then I would not hesitate to answer that in that case shallowness and futility must have made their headquarters at Erlangen and the whole of South Germany.” Whatever one may think of such outbursts as this, it is truly characteristic of Fichte as regards his intense concentration on the spiritual message which he was trying to deliver to mankind. Whenever he spoke he did not seek merely to say something but to do something for men's souls, to lay hold on them; thus every soul who stayed away was a real loss, not for himself but for the purpose which he was trying to realise for mankind. For Fichte the word was also an act. Since he himself dwelt within the spiritual world, it was possible for him through spiritual communion to gather others around him within that world, because he was himself within it and was no mere theoretical champion of the principles he professed when he said: “Reality is not in the outer world of the senses but in the spirit; and whoever knows the spirit can perceive behind all sensuous existence the spiritual reality.”

And to him this was no mere theory, it was also a practical reality, as was proved at a later date at Berlin by the following incident. One day when his audience was assembled in the lecture hall, which was near the Spree Canal, a terrible message was brought. Some children, with Fichte's son among them, had been playing down there; a boy had fallen into the water and it was thought to be Fichte's son. Fichte and a friend set out, and in the presence of all his students, they pulled the boy out of the water. Although the boy bore a close resemblance to Fichte's son, it was not in fact he. Yet for a moment Fichte had been convinced that it was his son. He did what he could for the child, who however was dead when taken from the water. Anybody who knows the intimate family affection in Fichte's household between him, his wife Johanna and their only son, will realise something of what Fichte went through at that moment; the terrible shock that he underwent and then the transition from this shock to the deepest joy when he was able to clasp his son in his arms. When he had done this and changed his clothes, he proceeded to deliver the remainder of his two-hour lecture just as he always did, that is, wholly intent on his subject.

This was not a unique instance. Often and often did Fichte give similar proofs of his integral loyalty to the world of the spirit. For example, it was at this period at Berlin that he delivered public lectures which were intended as a criticism and a severe indictment of his age. He passed in review one by one the various epochs of history. But it was, he said, the age in which he lived, which had brought selfishness to the extreme limit. And in that age of selfishness he found himself confronting the personality of Napoleon, in whom, in his view, this selfishness was incarnate. During all this period when the Napoleonic chaos was enveloping north and central Germany, Fichte never in his heart viewed himself otherwise than as Napoleon's spiritual antagonist. And so we get his character study of Napoleon, of which it may be said that an image of the Emperor, profoundly German in its approach and in its vigour and based on the loftiest philosophical standpoint, had shaped itself in the mind of this German thinker who had grown out of that peasant boy in a blue smock of whom earlier we had a glimpse. We have come now to a state of human existence at the present time, said Fichte, in which people have lost their consciousness of the spiritual influence which pulsates through the world and also through human existence and evolution, and which, in the form of the moral impulses, carries mankind forward from epoch to epoch; of the truth that in the march of history man is only of value in so far as he is sustained by what is permanent from age to age in the moral impulses and the moral order of the world. Of all this people no longer know anything. We have arrived at an epoch in which we see one generation succeed another like links in a chain. Even the best minds, said Fichte, have forgotten the moral principles which must pervade these links. And in such a world we encounter the personality of Napoleon, an inexhaustible source of energy indeed, but a man who, though he may have had in his soul occasional glimpses of freedom, has never formed any true notion of the real all-embracing ideal of freedom as it works from age to age in men's moral aspirations and in the moral framework of the world. And from this fundamental deficiency that a personality which is only a shell, without any true spiritual core, can yet wield such immense force, from this phenomenon Fichte traced the personality, the whole “catastrophe” as he expressed it—Napoleon.

In mentioning this and in placing side by side these two personalities—Fichte, the most forceful exponent of the German outlook with his view of Napoleon, and on the other side Napoleon himself—reference should be made to an observation attributed to Napoleon at St. Helena, after his downfall; for it is only in this light that the whole situation can be clearly grasped. At St. Helena, after his downfall, Napoleon expressed himself as follows: “Everything would have gone all right. I should not have fallen before all the Powers which ranged themselves against me. With one factor only did I fail to reckon, and it is this that really brought about my downfall, namely—the German philosophers!” Let narrow minds say what they will about the value of philosophy; this piece of self-revelation from Napoleon's own lips has more weight, I think, than all the objections that might be raised against Fichte's idealism, which indeed had a thoroughly practical aspect.

Finally, it is possible to adduce another proof, a proper historical proof, that it is not so difficult for an idealist such as Fichte to be practical when occasion demanded. It had become necessary for him to enter as a partner into his father's business, which had now been taken over by his brothers. We see him accordingly as a partner in the family ribbon-weaving business. His parents were still alive; and we may note that he proved to be a good and prudent business man, capable of lending valuable assistance to his brothers, who had remained simply men of business. A man such as Fichte has many critics who say: “Oh these idealists, they dwell in a dream-world, they understand nothing of practical life!” But it may well be imagined that Fichte from the depth of his being, and especially in his lectures on Die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (The Vocation of the Scholar), had something to say which cannot be too often repeated in the face of those who point to the unpractical nature of idealism, of the spiritual world altogether. In the introduction to this course of lectures Fichte made the following observations:—

“That ideals cannot be demonstrated in the actual world is a fact which we know perhaps as well as our critics, perhaps better. We merely assert that reality must be judged with reference to these ideals and must be modified by those who feel in themselves the strength to do so. Supposing however that our critics cannot even concede so much; well, seeing that they are what they are, this inability will mean small loss to them, and none to the world. It will simply mean that they do not count in the process towards the ennoblement of mankind, which anyway will go forward without any doubt; as to these others, may kindly nature have them in her keeping, granting them in God's good time rain, sunshine, wholesome nourishment and proper circulation of the blood, and, in addition to all these—right thoughts!”

The significance of ideals, the significance also of practical life, was something already quite clear to the mind of this German. But then Fichte's was a nature which stood by itself. He may be called one-sided; but this one-sidedness must occur sometimes in life, just as there are certain forces which must occasionally overshoot the mark in order to achieve the best results.

Undoubtedly Fichte's behaviour often had a rough side to it, as when apart from his lectures on the principles of morality, he attempted to take practical steps at Jena against the tyranny of routine, and against drinking and loafing ways among the students. He had by now a certain following in student circles. Further, as a result of his influence, petitions had been presented to the authorities asking for the abolition of this or that society which was particularly given to disorder. As we have seen, Fichte was a rugged nature, not skilful in making smooth gestures, but quite likely, metaphorically of course, to strike out fiercely with his fist now and then; and indeed matters came to such a pass that the majority of the Jena students were altogether opposed to Fichte and his practical moral influence. So they banded themselves together and smashed his windows. To Goethe, though he respected Fichte and was respected by him, the incident suggested a humorous comment. “Why yes,” said Goethe, “that is the philosopher who derives everything from the Ego! It is truly an inconvenient way of being assured of the existence of the non-ego, to have one's windows smashed; that was not what one assumed as the contrary of the Ego.”

All this, however, does not mean that there was any lack of harmony between Fichte's and Goethe's philosophical outlook. And Fichte was profoundly right in the feeling he expressed in a letter to Goethe on 21st June, 1794, soon after the beginning of his lectures at Jena, when sending to Goethe the proofs of his work on the Theory of Knowledge:

“I regard you, and have always done so, as representing the purest spirituality of feeling at the point so far reached by human progress. Philosophy rightly turns towards you, for your feeling is its best criterion.”

And Goethe wrote to Fichte, after receiving the pages of the Theory of Knowledge: “There is nothing in your work which is not altogether in line with my own customary way of thinking.” Again, in another letter to Fichte, referring also to the Theory of Knowledge: “These ideas are indeed now in harmony with nature; but men's minds must also come into harmony with them and I believe that you will be able to present them in the right way.” And if anyone to-day should assert that he finds this Theory of Knowledge, as then published by Fichte, dry and unlike Goethe, or that Goethe would have had no taste for such things, one must reply to this criticism as I replied when publishing the letters of Fichte to Goethe, in the Weimar Schiller-and-Goethe Archives, in the Goethe Year-Book of 1894.² In the Goethe-Schiller Archives there are extracts from Fichte's Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's own hand, accompanied sentence by sentence by the ideas inspired in him reading Fichte; and after all it is intelligible that Goethe, one of the most German among Germans, out of the pure spirituality of feeling with which he sought for a fresh outlook on the world, should inevitably hold out his hand to the man who as the most German of all Germans was in quest of a philosophical outlook based on the force of pure reason alone. Goethe once also, by the way, expressed very aptly his relationship towards the philosophy of Kant. What he said was—not word for word, but in substance—as follows: Kant had argued that, by turning his attention outward upon the world, man can only arrive at sense-knowledge. But his sense-knowledge is nothing but appearance, merely something which man himself by his point of view introduces into the world. Knowledge must be deposed from its seat, for it is only by a belief that it is possible to arrive at freedom, at infinity, at a conception of the divine spiritual existence. And this attempt to arrive not at a belief, but at a direct insight into the spiritual world, this attempt to bring the individual creative process into communion with the creativeness of the divine world spirit, this attempt which Kant believes to be impossible, would be, as he terms it, the “venture of reason” and Goethe's comment on this is: “Very well then, an attempt must certainly be made to undertake, undaunted, this venture of reason! And assuming that a man has no doubts of the spiritual world but believes in freedom and immortality in God, why should he not face this venture of reason and with the creative element of the soul transport himself into the heart of the creative process which ebbs and flows through the world?” In Fichte, Goethe found a conception of the same venture, only imagined in another way.

And indeed it had to emerge sooner or later, albeit in a rugged form, this urge towards spirituality, towards the apprehension of the all-creating world-intelligence, towards the state where the creative Ego indwells in the creative world-being and is one with it. And in Fichte's view the impulse in this direction was to be given by his Theory of Knowledge. In this theory the very spirit of the German people produced before the world what it had to utter about life and the world and the aims of mankind; it was as it were a direct gesture from the German people, from out of which we see Fichte's soul mount upwards to the heights. Indeed he himself was aware that his philosophy was always rooted in his living intercourse with the spirit of the German people. This spirit found here, it is true, only such expression as it could, seeing that it had first to emerge through the medium of such a rough-hewn personality as Fichte's. No, truly, his was not a personality easy to deal with. Of this we find again another illustration in the following connection. When a University was to be founded at Berlin, and it fell to Fichte to work out a scheme for it, his plan, worked out to the smallest details, showed what his conception of a University was like. And what was his idea? In this University to be started at Berlin he wanted to build something so fundamentally novel, especially for the beginning of the nineteenth century, that—we may say it without the slightest fear of contradiction—this novelty is as yet unrealised anywhere in the world, and the world is still waiting for it. Needless to say, Fichte's scheme was not put into practice, though indeed he was aiming at nothing else than, as he expressed it, to make the University into a “School of training in the scientific application of intelligence.” What was this University to become? A place of nurture, which might be termed a school of training for the scientific use of the intelligence! Accordingly, it was to turn out, not specialists in this subject or that, such as philosophers or natural scientists or physicians or jurists, but human beings so closely fitted into the structure of the world as to have entire command over the art of using their intelligence. Only imagine what a blessing it would mean if such a University really existed anywhere in the world! if actually we could find realised anywhere a school that would turn out people who have made their inner soul so vital that they could move freely within the essential logic of existence!

But truly this personality was not easy to deal with! It was something massive which existed in order to leave a distinctive mark on history. Fichte became the second Rector of the new University. He filled the position so energetically that he was only able to remain Rector for four months; for neither the students nor the authorities concerned could tolerate any longer what he was attempting to accomplish. All this however, just as with Fichte himself, is typical of German national feeling. For when he delivered his Reden an das deutsche Volk (Addresses to the German People), to which, and indeed to the whole great phenomenon of Fichte, I have already repeatedly referred here, not only during the war but also before it—when he delivered these Addresses he knew that he was trying to communicate to the German people what he had, so to speak, overheard in his meditative conversations with the world-spirit. The only response at which he was aiming was to arouse in their souls whatever can be aroused out of the deepest sources of the German being. This manner which Fichte adopted towards his time and towards those whose souls he hoped to raise to a level sufficient for the tasks of the wider universe, all this was unlikely to make any impression on idlers or superficial people, except perhaps to excite their curiosity. But this latter response was the last which Fichte sought to evoke. Needless to say, when such an intellectual phenomenon as Fichte appears in the world, the very easiest course is to turn it into ridicule; there is nothing easier than to play the critic and to laugh at it. People did this a good deal, and the result was sometimes to place Fichte in difficult situations. For example, immediately after his arrival at the University of Jena, he found himself in quite a serious dilemma through his inability to agree with others who after all were also philosophers. Thus there was at the Jena University a man who was the traditional professor of philosophy, a man by the name of Schmid. This man had expressed such vehement condemnation of Fichte's previous work that it was really outrageous that Fichte was now to become his colleague. Thereupon Fichte in turn published a few remarks in the periodical in which Schmid's criticism had appeared. And so the affair went on, backwards and forwards. Fichte assumed his position at Jena just at the time when he was writing in the Jena periodical to which Schmid had contributed “I declare that for me Herr Schmid will no longer exist in this world.” It was a serious matter to take his place beside his colleague in such an atmosphere. A less serious, but no less characteristic incident, was as follows: at that time there was appearing at Berlin a periodical called Der Freimütige (The Independent) directed by the “celebrated” German writer Kötzebue and another man. It was impossible to make out (indeed I believe that even by the most intimate clairvoyance it would not have been possible) the reason why this Kötzebue attended Fichte's lectures. But these doubts lasted only for a while, and presently the reason became clear when Der Freimütige, then a very prominent magazine at Berlin, began to publish the most vicious attacks upon Fichte's lectures. One day Fichte found it more than he could stand. Thereupon he took a number of this magazine Der Freimütige and dissected it before his audience, ridiculing the opinions expressed in the article with the inimitable humour which he had at his command. The countenance of one member of the audience, whose presence there so far had been unexplained, grew longer and longer. And finally Herr Kötzebue stood up with a very long face and announced that he did not see why he should listen to this any longer; so he went off and did not return. But Fichte was heartily glad to be rid of him.

Through the way in which he adapted himself in practice to life, when he was trying to remould the innermost depths of human existence, Fichte knew how to find the tone precisely adapted to the situation before him. Even though he dwelt altogether in the spiritual world, he was yet no otherworldly idealist, but he was a man standing altogether by himself and was accustomed to pay earnest heed to what he felt to be the innermost promptings of his own nature. Accordingly, at a certain time when Napoleon had conquered Berlin and the French were in occupation, he was unable to remain in the city. He did not choose to remain in a city which was under the French yoke. He went therefore first to Königsberg, subsequently to Copenhagen, returning only when he was ready to come forward as the German who could put before his compatriots the very soul of his nation and its national characteristics, in his Addresses to the German People.

Fichte is rightly regarded as a direct expression of German national sentiment, as an expression of that spirit which eternally and profoundly—in so far as we are able to apprehend the spirit of German nationality—dwells in our midst—and not merely in thought. A philosopher, Robert Zimmerman, by no means in accord with Fichte in his philosophical outlook, has finely characterised this aspect of Fichte in the following passage:

“As long as there beats in Germany a heart capable of feeling the shame of foreign domination, so long will the memory of this brave man persist among us; at a moment of the deepest humiliation, amid the ruins of the monarchy of Frederick the Great, in the midst of the French occupation of Berlin, within sight and hearing of the enemy, surrounded by spies and informers, there was a man who yet undertook the task of regenerating from within by the spirit the energies of the German people which had been broken from without by the sword; and at the very moment when Germany's political existence seemed as if annihilated for evermore, this man undertook to recreate it for future generations by the inspiring thought of universal culture.”

It is true that to-day we may think quite differently as to the substance of many of the ideas expressed in the Addresses to the German People, and indeed in Fichte's other writings; but that, as I should like to repeat once more, is not the main question. The main thing is that we should feel the German spirit which pervades his productions, and the renewal of the German spirit in its relations with the world at large, the revival which breathes forth from the Addresses to the German People. The main thing is that we should feel this as the spirit which is now alive amongst us and which we can perceive only in this one instance of Fichte, who has thus taken his place in German evolution—at first, indeed, in a style which attracted widespread notice. Power and energy combined with profound introspection—such were the qualities with which this soul strove to take his place in world evolution. Accordingly, at the period when the end of his life was approaching, in the autumn of 1813, Fichte again found an opportunity of repeating in the most intimate form before his Berlin audiences his whole Theory of Knowledge, after remoulding and recasting it, as a result of further meditations, till it embodied his deepest thoughts. In these Addresses, once more penetrating the souls of his hearers in the way described earlier, he considered again the impossibility for man to go behind the veil of his existence unless he be willing to embrace this existence in the spirit, beyond all sensuous reality. But to those men who believe themselves able to apprehend the truth of existence through the sense-world and the results of sense-experience alone, to these people Fichte proclaimed in these lectures, which are among his last:

“All their knowledge only leads to misunderstanding and vain words; and for that they praise themselves and think all is well. For example, as regards sight: the image of an object is thrown on the retina. Similarly the image of an object is reflected in the surface of still water. Do we therefore hold that the surface of the water can see? What is that further factor which makes the difference between that image in the water and real seeing, the factor which exists in us but not in the water? But these people have not even an inkling of this, for their minds do not reach so far.”

We must become aware, says Fichte, of a special sense, a new sense within one's self, if we mean to experience that existence in the spirit which alone makes all other existence intelligible. “I am, and I am with all my aims only in a supersensuous world.” These words are Fichte's own, and they run like a leitmotiv through all Fichte's utterances throughout his life, which he again confirmed in another way in that autumn of 1813. And what was it that he spoke of then? Of the necessity for men to become conscious that with the outlook on things and the world current in ordinary life and ordinary knowledge one could never get behind the reality of being. We must, he said, become aware that a supersensuous mind dwells in every one of us, and that man can merge his being in a world beyond the senses, and with this supersensuous mind can become, as a creative Ego, one with the stream of the creative pervading world-spirit. It is, he says, as though a seeing man comes to a world of the blind and tries to explain to the inhabitants colour and form, and the blind people deny that these exist. Even so the materialist denies, because he does not possess the requisite sense, like the man who knows: “I am, and I am with all my aims and deeds in the supersensuous world.”³ And with such emphasis did Fichte then impress upon his hearers this existence in the supersensuous, this life in the spiritual, that he said: “Accordingly the new sense is the sense of the spirit; the sense for which only spirit and nothing else whatever has being, and for which also that other, the every-day existence assumes the form of spirit and is transformed into it, for which therefore being as such has actually disappeared.”

It is a glorious fact that in German spiritual development there should have been someone to bear witness in this way to the life of the spirit, in the presence of those who were eager to hear what the German nation, on its highest level, and speaking from the depth of its being, has to utter. For that is what this German nation communicated through Fichte, and it is true of Fichte more than of any other man, that he represented the German soul speaking, at the level it had then reached, to the German nation itself.

Whether we consider this Fichte externally, or whether we look with the inner eye into his soul, always he appears to us as the most direct expression of German nationality itself, not that which is present only at a particular time within the German people, but what is ever present, what is ever there in our midst, if we only know how to perceive it. Through his personality Fichte presents himself to us in such a way that we desire to have his image as if plastically before our souls; and with the mind's eye clearly to see him and hear him as he creates that atmosphere which rises as he speaks between his soul and that of his hearers, so that we seek to draw quite close to him. The result is that we can feel his presence, as I would put it, like that of a legendary hero, a hero of the spirit, who with the eyes of the spirit can always be seen as a leader of his people, if this people only know itself aright! His own people can visualize him, by bringing his image plastically before their souls as one of their chief spiritual heroes.

And to-day, in this age of deeds, in this age when the German people is wrestling as never before for its very existence, we shall do well to evoke with the vision of the spirit the image of this man, who was able to depict German nature and character from the loftiest point of view, but also in the most vigorous individual style, so that of him more than of any other we may believe that, if we understand him rightly, we still have him actually among us. For everything in him is cast so wholly in one mould, he comes forward so directly towards us that as we look at him, he seems to stand before us in his fashion as he lived; whether each single feature stands out from his complete being, or whether we let ourselves be influenced by the most intimate aspects of his soul, in either case he stands before us as a whole. We cannot comprehend him else, for otherwise we comprehend him only blunderingly and superficially.

Yes, we can catch a glimpse of him at his work of kindling among his compatriots the souls of men to surrender themselves, creative in the stream of creation, to the vital forces of the world; ascending, in company with those others, to spiritual experience and entering as a living influence into the process of development of his people. We need but to open the eyes of the spirit. It is only thus plastically that he can be understood; but if we open the eyes of the spirit to his greatness as a national figure, then we shall find him standing in our midst. He endeavoured, as we have seen, to produce effects different from those of other teachers by using language as a medium of doing rather than saying when he came before his audience; in such a way that it was indifferent to him what he said, because he aimed solely at kindling the hearer's soul to deeds of his own, because something had to take place in the souls of his hearers to make them undergo a change between entering and leaving the hall. All this has the quite unusual result that we find his living image, that of a man of the people moulding his fellows, present to our minds; and that we seem to hear him transforming into the words which are themselves deeds those thoughts overheard, as it were, in the solitary meditations and dialogues with the world-spirit, whereby he prepared himself for every single lecture; so that when he had finished speaking, he dismissed his audience as changed people. They had become other beings, not through his strength but through the awakening and kindling of their own. If we understand him rightly in such a way, then we may believe that we hear him clairaudiently as he strives to reach with the sharp edge of his words the spirit which he has already apprehended in the soul, seeking ever—as was said of him—to send out into the world, through his cultivation of the soul, not merely good but great men.

If we indeed form within us a living image of what he was, we cannot fail to hear his words, those words which seemed to be but using this Fichte to communicate a message from the heart of the world, kindling as it came fire and warmth and light. Fortitude vibrated in his words, and moral energy emanated from them. In others too fortitude was kindled by his words as they poured through the ears into the souls and hearts of those who heard him, and from these utterances streamed out into the world a flow of moral energy, when Fichte's followers, with their souls thus aflame with the fire of his eloquence, went out into the world, as we so often learn from contemporaries, as the most capable men of their time. By opening the ears of the spirit we can hear Fichte, if we understand him at all, directly as if he were a living presence speaking out of the heart of his people. And whoever has any ear for such national greatness will hear it still in our midst. It is rare indeed to find ourselves confronted with any spirit in whom we can trace all that he is into every single act of his life. That sense of duty, of the moral order the world, which he embodied at the climax of his philosophical development, can it not already be noted in the seven-year-old boy who threw the Gehörnte Siegfried into the water, because he had conceived a passion for it which he felt to be in contradiction to his duties? The brooding man preparing by meditation for his lectures, with his spirit intent on the mysteries of the world, can he not be found already in embryo in the boy who stood for hours on the moor with his eyes fixed in one direction, lost in the mysteries of nature till the shepherd passed and led him home? That intense fire which inspired Fichte in his teacher's chair at Jena and later when, as he said, he was speaking to the representatives of his whole nation in the Addresses to the German People—can we not feel it already in the incident when he so impressed Baron von Miltitz by his reproduction of the country clergyman's sermon? And if we possess even a little spiritual divination, can we not feel this spirit very near to us in every single act, even in the slightest act of his life? Can we not feel how fortitude of soul, moral energy stream out from this spirit throughout the whole subsequent German development? Can we not feel the lasting vitality, even if we can no longer agree with the ideas in detail, in the Addresses to the German People? Although the work was twice confiscated by the censorship in 1824, it could not be killed; it is alive more than ever to-day, and is destined to live on in men's souls.

How clearly we can see him, this Fichte, standing in our midst! How clearly we can hear him, if we understand him rightly! If we use our spiritual sense we can feel how he thrilled the hearts of his followers, and beyond that of the whole German people in all its subsequent evolution; and we can feel that what he created, the stream of spiritual energy which he contributed to the ever-moving current of his nation's development, must remain something imperishable! We cannot help ourselves, if we understand him aright, we must feel this spirit of Fichte to be

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner: Sonderdruck aus dem Goethe-Jahrbuch, fünfzehnter Band 1894: Neue Mitteilungen. Sieben Briefe von Fichte an Goethe. Zwei Briefe von Fichte an Schiller. (Reprint from the Goethe Year-Book, Vol. 15: New Communications. Seven Letters from Fichte to Goethe. Two Letters from Fichte to Schiller.)
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner: Reprint from the Goethe Year-Book, Vol. 15, 1894: Further Communications; Seven Letters from Fichte to Goethe; Two Letters from Fichte to Schiller. That Goethe was keenly interested in Fichte's philosophy and by no means adopted a negative attitude towards it, is proved by a passage in a letter to Fichte of 24th June, 1794, in which he says about the first sheets of the Theory of Knowledge: “There is nothing in the pages you have sent me which I do not understand or at least believe that I understand, nothing which cannot be easily assimilated to my accustomed way of thinking.” Further evidence of this can be seen in the fact that Goethe made long extracts from this work, still preserved in the Goethe Archives.
• 3. “Imagine a world of people blind from birth, for whom therefore only those things and their relationships are known which can be apprehended by touch. Go among these, and talk to them of colour and the other relationships which are present only through light to the sense of sight. You will be talking to them of nothing, and it is all the better if they say so; for thus you will soon perceive your error and, unless you have the power of opening their eyes, you will desist from useless explanation.”

[ 1 ] The author would like to sketch several pictures—nothing other than that—and not about the spiritual thought-life of Austria but only from this life. No kind of completeness will be striven for, not even with respect to what the author himself has to say. Many other things might be much more important than what is to be brought here. But this time only a little bit will be indicated from the spiritual life of Austria that is more or less, directly or indirectly, connected in some way with spiritual streams in which the author himself has stood during his youth. Spiritual streams like those meant here can indeed also be characterized, not by presenting mental pictures one has formed of them, but by speaking of personalities, their way of thinking and inclinations of feeling, in whom one believes these streams to express themselves, as though symptomatically. I would like to depict what Austria reveals about itself through several such personalities. If I use the word “I” in several places, please consider that to be based on my point of view at that time.

[ 2 ] I would like first of all to speak about a personality in whom I believe in myself able to see the manifestation in a very noble sense of spiritual Austrianness in the second half of the nineteenth century: Karl Julius Schröer. When I entered the Vienna College of Technology in 1879, he was professor of German literary history there. He first became my teacher and then an older friend. For many years now he has not been among the living.

In the first lecture of his that I heard, he spoke about Goethe's Götz van Berlichingen. The whole age out of which this play grew, and also how Götz burst into this age became this play grew, and also how Götz burst into this age became alive in Schröer's words. A man was speaking who let flow into every one of his judgments what, out of the world view of German idealism, he had incorporated into all the feeling and willing of his entire spiritualized personality, His following lectures built up a living picture of German poetry since Goethe's appearance on the scene, They did so in such a way that through his depiction of poets and poems one always felt the living weaving of views, within the essential being of the German people, struggling to come into reality. Enthusiasm for the ideals of mankind carried Schröer's judgments along, and this enthusiasm implanted a living sense of self into the view of life that took its start in Goethe's age. A spirit spoke out of this man that wanted to communicate only what had become the deepest experience of his own soul during his observations of man's spiritual life.

[ 3 ] Many of the people who got to know this personality did not know him. When I was already living in Germany, I was once at a dinner party, a well-known literary historian was sitting beside me. He spoke of a German duchess, whom he praised highly, except that—according to him—she could sometimes err in her otherwise healthy judgment as, for example, when she “considered Schröer to be a significant person.” I can understand that many a person does not find in Schröer's books what many of his students found through the living influence of his personality; but I am convinced that one could also sense much of this in Schröer's writings if one were able to receive an impression not merely by so-called “rigorous methods” or even by such a method in the style of one or another school of literature, but rather by originality in judging, by the revelations of a view one has experienced oneself. Seen this way, a personality grown mature in the idealism of German world views does in fact speak forth from the much maligned book of Schröer, History of German Poetry in the Nineteenth Century and from others of his works. A certain manner of presentation, in his Faust commentaries, for example, could repel many a supposed free thinker. For there does work into Schröer's presentation something that a certain age believed to be inseparable from the character of what is scientific. Even strong-minded thinkers fell under the yoke of this belief; and one must seek these thinkers themselves in their true nature by penetrating through this husk of their creations that was forced upon them by this yoke.

[ 4 ] Karl Julius Schröer lived his boyhood and youth in the light of a man who, like himself, had his roots in spiritual German Austrianness, and who was one of its blossoms: his father, Tobias Gottfried Schröer.

It was not so long ago that in the widest circles certain books were known to which many people certainly owed the awakening of a feeling, supported by a view of life in accordance with the spirit, for history, poetry, and art. These books are Letters on Aesthetics' Chief Objects of Study, by Chr. Oeser, The Little Greeks, by Chr. Oeser, World History for Girls' Schools, and other works by the same author. Covering the most manifold areas of human spiritual life from the point of view of a writer for young people, a personality is speaking in these writings who grew up in the way of picturing things of the Goethean age of German spiritual development, and who sees the world with the eye of the soul educated in this way. The author of these books is Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who published them under the name Chr. Oeser. Now, nineteen years after the death of this man, in 1869, the German Schiller Foundation presented his widow with an honorary gift accompanied by a letter in which was stated: “The undersigned Board has heard with deepest regret that the wife of one of the most worthy German writers, of a man who always stood up for the national spirit with talent and with heart, is not living in circumstances appropriate to her status nor to the service tendered by her husband; and so this Board is only fulfilling the duty required of it by the spirit of its statutes when it makes every possible effort to mitigate somewhat the adversity of a hard destiny.” Moved by this decision of the Schiller Foundation, Karl Julius Schröer then wrote an article about his father in the Vienna New Free Press that made public what until then had been known only to a very small circle: that Tobias Gottfried Schröer was not only the author of the books of Chr. Oeser, but also a significant poet and writer of works that were true ornaments of Austrian spiritual life, and that he had remained unknown only because he could not use his own name due to the situation there regarding censorship. His comedy The Bear, for example, appeared in 1830. Karl von Holtei, the significant Silesian poet and actor speaks of it in a letter to the author right after its appearance: “As regards your comedy The Bear: it delighted me. If the conception, the disposition of characters, is entirely yours, then I wish you good luck with all my heart, for you will still write more beautiful plays.” The playwright took all his material from the life of Ivan (the Fourth) Wasiliewitsch and all the characters except Ivan himself are freely created. A later drama, The Life and Deeds of Emerick Tököly and his Comrades in Arms, received warm acclaim, without anyone knowing who the author was. One could read of it in “Magazine for Literary Conversation” (October 25, 1839): “An historical picture of remarkable freshness ... Works offering such a breath of fresh air and with such decisive characters are true rarities in our day ... Each grouping is full of great charm because it is full of great truth; ...The author's Tököly is a Hungarian Götz von Berlichingen and only with it can this drama be compared... From a spirit like this author we can expect anything, even the greatest.” This review is by W. v. Ludemann, who has written a History of Architecture, a History of Painting, Walks in Rome, stories and novellas, works that express sensitivity and great understanding for art.

[ 5 ] Through his father's spiritual approach the sun of idealism in German world views had already shone beforehand upon Karl Julius Schröer as he entered the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin at the end of the 1840s and there could still experience, through much that worked upon him, this idealism's way of picturing things. When he returned to his homeland in 1846, he became director of the Seminar for German Literary History and Language in the Pressburg secondary school for girls that his father had founded in this city. In this position he unfolded an activity that essentially took this form: Through his striving Schröer sought to solve the problem of how to work best in the spiritual life of Austria if one finds the direction of one's strivings already marked out by having received the motive forces of one's own soul from German culture. In a Text and Reading Book (that appeared in 1853 and presents a “History of German Literature”), he spoke of this striving: “Seniors, law students, students of theology ... came together there (in the secondary school) ... I made every effort to present to a circle of listeners like this, in large perspectives, the glory of the German people in its evolution, to stimulate respect for German art and science, and where possible to bring my listeners closer to the standpoint of modern science.” And Schröer describes how he understands his own Germanness like this: “From this standpoint there naturally disappeared from view the one-sided factional passions: one will listen to a Protestant or a Catholic, to a conservative or a subversive enthusiast, or to a zealot of German nationalism only insofar as through them humanity gains and the human race is elevated.” And I want to repeat these words, written almost seventy years ago, not in order to express what was right for a German in Austria at that time, nor even now. I only want to show the nature of one man in whom the German—Austrian spirit expressed itself in a particular way. To what extent this spirit endows the Austrian with the right kind of striving: on this question the adherents of the different parties and nations in Austria will also decide very differently. And in all this one must also remember that Schöer expressed himself in this as a young man still who had just returned from German universities. But the fact is significant that in the soul of this young man—and not for political purposes, but out of purely spiritual thoughts about how to view the world—a German Austrian consciousness formed for itself an ideal for the mission of Austria that Schröer expressed in these words: “If we pursue the comparison of Germany with ancient Greece, and of the Germanic with the Greek tribes, we find a great similarity between Austria and Macedonia. We see the beautiful task of Austria exemplified there: to cast the seeds of Western culture out over the East.”

[ 6 ] Schröer later became professor in the University of Budapest and then school director in Vienna; finally, he worked for many years as a professor of German literary history in the Vienna College of Technology. These positions were for him only an outer covering, so to speak, for his significant activity within Austrian spiritual life. This activity begins with an investigation into the soul and linguistic expressions of the German-Austrian folk life. He wants to know what is working and living in the people, not as a dry, prosaic researcher but rather as someone who wants to discover the riddle of the folk soul in order to see what forces of mankind are struggling to come into existence in these souls. Near the Pressburg region, among the farmers, there were living at that time some old Christmas plays. They are performed every year around Christmas time. In handwritten form they are passed down from generation to generation. They show how in the people the birth of Christ, and what is connected with it, lives dramatically in pictures with depth of heart. Schröer collects such plays in a little volume and writes an introduction to them in which he depicts this revelation of the folk soul with most loving devotion, such that his presentation allows the reader to immerse himself in the way the people feel and view things. Out of the same spirit he then undertakes to present the German dialects of the Hungarian mountain regions, of the West-Hungarian Germans, and of the Gottscheer area in Krain. His purpose there is always to solve the riddle of the organism of a people; his findings really give a picture of the life at work in the evolution of language and of the folk soul. And basically the thought is always hovering before him in all these endeavors of learning to know, from the motive forces of its peoples, what determines the life of Austria. A great deal, a very great deal, of the answer to the question, What weaves in the soul of Austria?, is to be found in Schröer's research into dialects.

But this spiritual work had yet another effect upon Schröer himself. It provided him with the basis for deep insights into the essential being of the human soul itself. These insights bore fruit when, as director of several schools, he could test how views about education and teaching take form in a thinker who has looked so deeply into the being of the heart of the people as he had through his research. And so he was able to publish a small work, Questions about Teaching, which in my view should be reckoned among the pearls of pedagogical literature. This little book deals brilliantly with the goals, methods, and nature of teaching. I believe that this little volume, completely unknown today, should be read by everyone who has anything to do with teaching within the German cultural realm. Although this book was written entirely for the situation in Austria. the indications there can apply to the whole German-speaking world. What one today might call outmoded about this book, published in 1876, is inconsiderable when compared with the way of picturing things that is alive in it. A way of picturing things like this, attained on the basis of a rich experience of life, remains ever fruitful even though someone living later must apply it to new conditions. In the last decades of his life Schröer's spiritual work was turned almost entirely to immersing itself in Goethe's life's work and way of picturing things. In the introduction to his book German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, he stated: “We in Austria want to go hand in hand with the spiritual life of the German empire.” He regarded the world view of German idealism as the root of this spiritual life. And he expressed his adherence to this world view in the words: “The world-rejuvenating appearance of idealism in Germany, in an age of frivolity a hundred years ago, is the greatest phenomenon of modern history. Our intellect (Verstand)—focused only upon what is finite, not penetrating into the depths of essential being—and along with it the egoism focused upon satisfying sensual needs, suddenly retreated before the appearance of a spirit that rose above everything common.” (See the introduction to Schröer's edition of Faust). Schröer saw in Goethe's Faust “the hero of unconquerable idealism. He is the ideal hero of the age in which the play arose. His contest with Mephistopheles expresses the struggle of the new spirit as the innermost being of the age; and that is why this play is so great: it lifts us onto a higher level.”

[ 7 ] Schröer declares his unreserved allegiance to German idealism as a world view. In his History of German Poetry of the Nineteenth Century there stand the words with which he wants to characterize the thoughts in which the spirit of the German people expresses itself when it does this in the sense of its own primal being: “Within what is perceived experientially, determining factors are everywhere recognizable that are hidden behind what is finite, behind what can be known by experience. These factors must be called the ‘undetermined’ and must be felt everywhere to be what is constant in change, an eternal lawfulness, and as something infinite. The perceived infinite within the finite appears as idea; the ability to perceive the infinite appears as reason (Vernunft), in contrast to intellect, which remains stuck at what is surveyably finite and can perceive nothing beyond it.” At the same time, in the way Schröer declares his allegiance to this idealism, everything is also at work that is vibrating in his soul, which senses in its own being the Austrian spiritual stream. And this gives his world-view-idealism its particular coloring. When a thought is expressed, there is given it a certain coloring that does not allow it to enter right away the realm described by Hegel as the realm of philosophical knowledge when he said, “The task of philosophy is to grasp what is; for, what is reasonable is real, and what is real is reasonable. When philosophy paints its gray on gray then a form of life has become old; the owl of Minerva begins to fly only when dusk is descending.” (See my book Riddles of Philosophy, vol. I.) No, the Austrian, Schröer, does not want to see the world of thoughts gray on gray; ideas should shine in a color that ever refreshes and rejuvenates our deeper heart. And what would have mattered much more to Schröer in this connection than thinking about the bird of evening was to think about the deeper human heart struggling for light, seeking in the world of ideas the sun of that realm in which our intellect, focused upon the finite and upon the sense world, should be feeling the extinguishing of its light.

[ 8 ] Herman Grimm, the gifted art historian, had nothing but good to say about the Austrian culptor Heinrich Natter. In his essay on Natter, published in his Fragments (1900), one can also read what Grimm thought about Natter's relation to Austria. “When I meet Austrians, I am struck by their deep-rooted love for the soil of their particular fatherland and by their impulse to maintain spiritual community with all Germans. Let us think now of one such person, Ignaz Zingerles. Natter's statue of Walter von der Vogelweide owes its existence to the unceasing quiet work of Zingerles. He resembled the men of our earlier centuries through the fact that he was hardly conceivable outside the province of his immediate homeland. He was a figure with simple outlines, fashioned out of faithfulness and honesty as though out of blocks of stone. He was a Tyrolean, as though his mountains were the navel of the earth, an Austrian through and through, and at the same time one of the best and noblest Germans. And Natter was also all these: a good German, Austrian, and Tyrolean.” And about the monument to Walter von der Vogelweide in Bozen Herman Grimm says: “In Natter, inwardness of German feeling was united with formative imagination, His Walter von der Vogelweide stands in Bozen as a triumphant picture of German art, towering up in the crest of the Tyrolean mountains at the border country of the fatherland, A manly solid figure.”

I often had to think of these words of Hennan Grimm when the memory came alive in me of the splendid figure of the Austrian poet Fercher von Steinwand, who died in 1902. He was “all these: a good German, Austrian, and Carinthian,” although one could hardly say of him that he was “inconceivable outside the province of his immediate homeland.” I learned to know him at the end of the 1880's in Vienna and for a short time associated with him personally. He was sixty years old at the time: a true figure of light, even externally; an engaging warmth shone from his noble features, eloquent eyes, and expressive gestures; through tranquil clarity and self-possession, this soul of an older man still gave the effect of youthful freshness. And when one came to know this soul better, its particular nature and creations, one could see how a feeling life instilled by the Carinthian mountains united in this soul with a contemplative life in the power of the idealism in German world views. This contemplation (Sinnen) was already entirely native to his soul as a poetic world of pictures; this contemplation pointed with this world of pictures into the depths of existence; it confronted world riddles artistically, without the originality of artistic creation paling thereby into thought-poetry; one can observe this kind of contemplation in the following lines from Fercher von Steinwand's Chorus of Primal Dreams:

Out of all regions
Ever ascended,
Wanders an ether in far-radiant arches;
Travel the billows to
Depths ever silent.

There with our all-seeing
Will as their cargo,
Wending their way through the fog go our ferries;
Sail between wonderful
Banks new arising.

There before all-warming
Eyes of soft mildness
Winding and turning we fashion our patterns
Out all around dreaming
Regions of star-fields.

There to misfortune we
N'er are indebted,
There we constructed our fortresses hovering, And tribulations we
Joyfully shattered.

He who would paint you with
Most holy features,
Highest abode of our contemplative urgings:
Wait for the swiftest
Servants of love!

[ 9 ] The following verses seek to portray how the soul, in thinking-waking daydreams, lives in far-away starry worlds and in immediate reality; then the poet continues:

No matter what careful
Powers accomplish,
Only on dreaming's own wide-spreading pinions
Can what is mighty be
Gained now forever.

Every o'erpowering greatness of action,
All of the angels who guard what was planted
Are given counsel by
Dreams that inspire them.

[ 10 ] Fercher von Steinwand then sings further about the penetrating of thinking, spiritualized to the point of dreaming, into the depths of the world, and about the penetrating of that kind of dreaming which is an awakening out of our ordinary waking state into those depths where the life of what is spiritual in the world can make itself tangible to the soul:

Life that our pulsating
Hearts have perceived,
Life that our struggling hearts have ascended
To all the welcoming
Cries of the spirits:

[ 11 ] And then Fercher von Steinwand lets sound forth to the human spirit what the beings of the spirit realm speak to the soul that opens itself to them in inner contemplation:

Healed ones, now be here by
Loving encircled!
What you were seeking in uplifting hours,
Here, you selected ones,
Is it disclosed;
Here in the grandeur of
Halls of the Godhead,
Where to the heart other hearts are so pleasing,
Where buried voices are
Sounding forth newly

Where now the care-worn are
Royally striving,
Radiant souls now in smiles are all wreathed,
Round all the wrecks of the
Wheels of the ages—

Only the blinded ones,
Earth-bound and foolish,
Were for the gulf of destruction begotten,
Lost to the worlds of
Spirit perfection!
Weal to the sens'tive one
Round whom we hover,
Whom we enliven to bloss'ming existence,
All without weaving in
Fugitive shadows!

[ 12 ] In the literary works of Fercher von Steinwand there then follows upon this Chorus of Primal Dreams his Chorus of Primal Impulses:

In the distances unbounded
Of our ancient mother Night.
Hark—to be in inward conflict
Seems the deep mysterious might!
Do we hear present'ment striding?
Is our longing wide awake?
Was a spirit-lightning lit?
Are our dreams through spaces gliding?

How now are powers by powers enraptured,
Blessed exchanges!
Now sudden hastenings.
Then quiet lingerings,
Reveling listenings
Change into beckonings
Marveling fearings!
Charm of desiring
Mounts, and sinks down,
Sinks into hatred.
Faced with the pallid
Picture of embracing
Cannot clasp hatred.
Ramifications dim,
Inclinings burgeoning,
Send forth their tendrils.
Ponderous inklings
Dawn and go faltering
O'er the wide spaces,
Seem to give counsel
Or to give guidance.
What they're preparing
Is it the sowing
Of immense actions,
Of radiant ages?
Who felt the furrows
To be creative!
Who wandered through them
Blissfully savoring,
Or disentangling,
Grandeurs discovering!
Yonder the stir is like spirits embracing
We are enwarmed
And are receiving,
Seeking, and thinking,
See ourselves lifted,
Woven in joy with
Highest beginnings.
You wafting ‘round us,
In us arising:
“You are ideas!—”

[ 13 ] Reflecting in this way, the poet's soul enters into an experience of how the ideas of the world-spirit announce the secrets of existence to the spirit of man's soul and of how the spirit of man's soul beholds the shapers of sense-perceptible shapes.—After presenting the observations of the soul within the chorus of primal world impulses in brilliant, ringing pictures, the poet concludes:

May duration grow accustomed
To what urge has conjured up;
May adorning and appeasement
In creation's stream prevail.
Sweetest light! in noble ringing
Mounts my heart aloft to you:
Linger at your western gate;
Help to crown the deed of love!
Risen from all earthly bonds is our impulse Soul—resurrected!
But what is ripened
Ruling, and valid
Proves to be spirit!
All that is circling,
All earth foundations,
All heavenly kindlings are
Self-made in spirit,
Came forth from spirit,
Work through the spirit
–
Powerful freedom from chaos did fashion
Space for good fortune!
Cloaked, with the dew of its deep-breathing mildness, Forest and field!
Cared that the dew and the light be companions,
Forming the hem of deep transfiguration—
Cared that each droplet should float at the threshold
of Spiritual radiance!

In Fercher von Steinwand's Complete Works (published by Theodor Daberkow in Vienna), there are also several indications about his life given by the poet himself when pressed by friends on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, He wrote, “I began life on March 22, 1828 upon the heights of the Steinwand above the banks of the Möll in Carinthia (Kärten); that means, in the midst of a defiant congregation of mountains with their heads held high, beneath whose domineering grandeur burdened human beings seem continuously to grow poorer,”

Since, in his Chorus of Primal Impulses, we find the world view of German idealism cast in the form of a poetic creation, it is interesting to see how the poet, on his paths through Austrian spiritual life, receives impulses from this world view already in his youth. He describes how he enters the university in Graz: “With my credentials—which of course consisted only of my report cards—held tight against my chest, I presented myself to the dean. That was Professor Edlauer, a criminologist of high repute. He hoped to see me (he said) industriously present in his lecture course on natural law. Behind the curtain of this innocent title he presented us for the whole semester, in rousing lectures, with those German philosophers who, under the fatherly care of our well-meaning spiritual guardians were banned and kept from us: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and so on—heroes, therefore; that means men who founded and fructified all areas of pure thinking, who gave the language and created the concepts for all the other sciences, and who, consequently, are illustrious names shining from our street comers today and seeming almost strange there in their particular diamond clarity. This semester was my vita nuova!”

[ 16 ] Whoever learns to know Fercher von Steinwand's tragedy Dankmar, his Countess Seelenbrand, his German Tones from Austria, and other works of his will be able through this to feel many of the forces that were working in the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century. And everything about Fercher von Steinwand testifies to the fact that one receives out of his soul a picture from this spiritual life in clarity, truth, and genuineness. The amiable Austrian poet in dialect Leopold Hormann felt rightly when he wrote the words:

Far from all baseness
All avarice and meanness;
Foe of publicity,
That loathesome false lady;
German in soul,
Strong yet with kindness
Great in his thinking,
No faltering and wavering,
Proof against all objections:—
Fercher von Steinwand!

[ 17 ] Out of the Austrian spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century, a thinker arose who brought to expression deeply significant characteristics of the content of modern world views: the moral philosopher of Darwinism, Bartholomaeus von Carneri. He was a thinker who experienced the public life of Austria as his own happiness or suffering; for many years, as a representative in the federal council, he took an active interest in this life with all the power of his spirit. Carneri could only appear at first to be an opponent of a world view in accordance with the spirit. For, all his efforts go to shaping a world picture from only those mental pictures which occur in the train of thought stimulated by Darwinism. But if one reads Carneri with a sense not only for the content of his views but also for what lay beneath the surface of his truth-seeking soul, one will discover a remarkable fact. An almost entirely materialistic world picture takes shape in this thinker, but with a clarity of thought that stems from the deep-lying, idealistic basic impulse of his being. For him as for many of his contemporaries the mental pictures growing from a world view rooted entirely in the soil of Darwinism burst into his thought-life with such overpowering force that he could do no other than incorporate all his consideration of man's spiritual life into this world view. To want to approach the spirit cognitively on any path other than those taken by Darwin seemed to him to rend the unified being that must extend out over all human striving in knowledge. In his view Darwinism had shown how a unified, lawful interrelationship of causes and effects encompasses the development of all the beings of nature up to man. Whoever understands the sense of this interrelationship must also see how the same lawfulness enhances and refines the natural forces and drives in man in such a way that they grow upward to the heights of moral ideals and views. Carneri believes that only man's blind arrogance and misled overestimation of himself can entice his striving for knowledge into wanting to approach the spiritual world by different cognitive means than in approaching nature.

Every page of Carneri's writings on the moral being of man, however, shows that he would have shaped his view of life in Hegel's way if, at a particular point of development in his life, Darwinism had not struck like lightning, with irresistible suggestive force, into his thought-world; this occurred in such a way that with great effort he silenced his predisposition toward an idealistically developed world view. As his writings also attest, this world view would definitely not have arisen through the pure thinking at work in Hegel, but rather through a thinking that resounded with a hearty, contemplative quality; but his thinking would have gone in Hegel's direction.

As though from hidden depths of Carneri's soul, Hegel's way of picturing things often arises in Carneri's writings, cautioning him as it were. On page 79 of his Fundamentals of Ethics one reads: “With Hegel ... a dialectical movement took the place of the law of causality: a gigantic thought, which, like the Titans all, could not escape the fate of arrogance. His monism wanted to storm Olympus but sank back down to earth; it remained a beacon for all future thought, however, illuminating the path and also the abyss.” On page 154 of the same book, Carneri speaks of the nature of the Greek way and says of it: “In this respect We do not remember the mythical heroic age, nor yet the times of Homer. ... We take ourselves back to the highlight of ages that Hegel depicted so aptly as the youthful age of mankind.” On page 189 Carneri characterizes the attempts that have been made to fathom the laws of thinking, and observes: “The most magnificent example of this kind is Hegel's attempt to let thoughts unfold, so to speak, without being determined by the thinker. The fact that he went too far in this does not prevent an unprejudiced person from acknowledging this attempt (to see one single law as underlying all physical and spiritual evolution) to be the most splendid one on the whole history of philosophy. The services he rendered to the development of German thinking are imperishable, and many an enthusiastic student who later became an embittered opponent of his has unintentionally raised a lasting monument to him in the perfection of expression he acquired through Hegel.” On page 421 one reads: “Hegel has told us, in an unsurpassable manner, how far one can go in philosophizing” with mere, so-called, healthy common sense.

Now one could assert that Carneri too has “raised a lasting monument to Hegel in the perfection of expression he acquired through Hegel,” even though he applied this way of expression to a world picture with which Hegel would certainly not have been in agreement. But Darwinism worked upon Carneri with such suggestive power that he included Hegel, along with Spinoza and Kant, among those thinkers of whom he said: “They would have acknowledged the sincerity of his (Carneri's) striving, which would never have dared to look beyond them if Darwin had not rent the curtain that hung like night over the whole creation as long as the theory of purpose remained irrefutable. We have this consciousness, but also the conviction that these men would have left many things unsaid or would have said them differently if it had been granted them to live in our age of liberated natural science...”

[ 18 ] Carneri has developed a variety of materialism in which mental sharpness often degenerates into naiveté, and insights about “liberated natural science” often degenerate into blindness toward the impossibility of one's own concepts. “We grasp substance as matter insofar as phenomena—resulting from the divisibility and movement of substance—work corporeally, i.e., as mass, upon our senses. If the divisions or differentiations go so far that the phenomena resulting from them are no longer sense-perceptible but are now only perceptible to thinking, then the effect of substance is a spiritual one” (Carneri's Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 30). That is as if someone were to explain reading by saying: As long as a person has not learned to read, he cannot say what stands upon the written page of a book. For, only the shapes of the letters reveal themselves to his gaze. As long as he can view only these letter shapes, into which the words are divisible, his observation of the letters cannot lead to reading. Only when he manages also to perceive the letter shapes in a yet more divided or differentiated form will the sense of these letters work upon his soul.

Of course, an unshakable believer in materialism would find an objection like this absurd. But the difficulty of putting materialism in the right light lies precisely in this necessity of expressing such simple thoughts in order to do so. One must express thoughts that one can scarcely believe the adherents of materialism do not form for themselves. And so the biased charge can easily be leveled against someone trying to clarify materialism that he is using meaningless phraseology to counter a view that rests upon the empirical knowledge of modern science and upon its rigorous principles.¹ Nevertheless, the great power of materialism to convince its adherents arises only through the fact that they are unable to feel the weight of the simple arguments that destroy their view. Like so many others, they are convinced not by the light of logical reasons which they have examined, but by the force of habitual thoughts which they have not examined, which, in fact, they feel no immediate need to examine at all. But Carneri does differ from the materialists who scarcely have any inkling of this need, through the fact that his idealism continuously brings this need to his consciousness; he must therefore silence this need, often by quite artificial means. He has scarcely finished professing that the spiritual is an effect of finely split-up substance when he adds: “This conception of the spirit will be unsatisfying to many people who make other claims about the spirit; still, in the further course of our investigations, the value of our view will prove to be significant and entirely able to show the materialism which wants to grasp the phenomena of the spirit corporeally that it cannot go beyond certain bounds” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 30). Yes, Carneri has a real aversion to being counted among the materialists; he defends himself against this with statements like the following: “Rigid materialism is just as one-sided as the old metaphysics: the former arrives at no meaning for its configurations; the latter arrives at no configurations for its meaning; with materialism there is a corpse; with metaphysics there is a ghost; and what they are both struggling for in vain is the creative heat of sentient life” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 68).

But Carneri does feel, in fact, how justified one is in calling him a materialist; for, no one with healthy senses, after all, even if he is an adherent of materialism, will declare that a moral ideal can be “grasped corporeally,” to use Carneri's expression. He will say only that a moral ideal manifests in connection with what is material through a material process. And that is also what Carneri states in his above assertion about the divisibility of substance. Out of this feeling he then says (in his book Sensation and Consciousness): “One will reproach us with materialism insofar as we deny all spirit and grant existence only to matter. But this reproach is no longer valid the moment one takes one's start from this ideal nature of one's picture of the world, for which matter itself is nothing but a concept a thinking person has.” But now take hold of your head and feel whether it is still all there after participating in this kind of a conceptual dance! Substance becomes matter when it is so coarsely split up that it works only “upon the senses as mass”; it becomes spirit when it is split up so finely that it is then “perceptible only to thinking.” And matter, i.e., coarsely split up substance, is after all only “a concept a thinking person has.” When split up coarsely, therefore, substance achieves nothing more than playing the—to a materialist!—dubious role of a human concept; but split up more finely, substance becomes spirit. But then the bare human concept would have to split up even finer. Now such a world view would make that hero, who pulled himself out of the water by his own hair, into the perfect model for reality.

One can understand why another Austrian thinker, F. von Feldegg (in the November 1894 edition of “German Words”), would reply to Carneri with these words: “The moment one takes one's start from the ideal nature of one's picture of the world! What an arbitrary supposition, in all the forced wrong-headedness of that thought! Does it indeed depend so entirely on our pleasure whether we take our start from the ideal nature of our picture of the world or, for example, from its opposite—from the reality of our picture of the world in fact? And matter, for this ideal nature, is supposed to be altogether nothing except a concept a thinking person has? This is actually the most absolute idealism—like that of a Hegel, for example—which is meant to render assistance here against the reproach of materialism; but it won't do to turn to someone in the moment of need whom one has persistently denied until then. And how is Carneri to reconcile this idealistic belief with everything else in his book? In fact, there is only one explanation for this state of affairs and that is: Even Carneri is afraid of, yet covets, the transcendental. But that is a half-measure which exacts a heavy toll. Carneri's ‘Monistic Misgivings’ fall in this way into two heterogeneous parts, into a crudely materialistic part and into a hiddenly idealistic part. In the one part, the author's head is correct in the end, because he is undeniably sunk over his head in materialism; but in the other part, the author's deeper heart (Gemüt) resists the clumsy demands of rationalism's modes and conceits; it resists them with all the power of that metaphysical magic from which, even in our crudely sense-bound age, nobler natures are not able to escape entirely.”

[ 18 ] And yet, in spite of all this, Carneri is a significant personality of whom one can say (as I indicated in my book Riddles of Philosophy: “This Austrian thinker sought, out of Darwinism, to open wide vistas in viewing the world and in shaping life. Eleven years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, Carneri came out with his book Morality and Darwinism, in which, in a most comprehensive manner, he turned this new world of ideas into the foundation of an ethical world view. After that he worked ceaselessly to elaborate a Darwinistic ethics. Carneri seeks to find elements in our picture of nature through which the self-conscious ‘I’ can fit into this picture. He wants to think this picture of nature so broadly and largely that it can also comprise the human soul.”

By their very character, Carneri's writings seem to me in fact everywhere to challenge us to root everything out of their content that their author had forced himself into by surrendering to the yoke of the materialistic world view; his writings challenge us to look only at that which—like an elemental inspiration of his deeper heart—appears in them as a revelation of a large-scale human being. Just read, from this point of view, what he thinks the task to be for an education toward true humanness: “It is the task of education ... to develop the human being in such a way that he must do the good, that human dignity not suffer from this, but that the harmonious development of a being who by his very nature is happy to do what is noble and great is an ethical phenomenon more beautiful than anything we could imagine. ... The accomplishment of this magnificent task is possible through man's striving for bliss, into which his drive for self-preservation purifies itself as soon as his intelligence develops fully. Thinking is based on sensation and is only the other side of feeling; which is why all thinking that does not attain maturity through the warmth of feeling—and also all feeling that does not illuminate itself with the light of thinking—is one-sided. It is the task of education, through the harmonious development of thinking and feeling, to purify man's striving for bliss in such a way that the ‘I’ will see in the ‘you’ its natural extension and in the ‘we’ its necessary consummation, and egoism will recognize altruism as its higher truth. ... Only from the standpoint of our drive to attain bliss is it comprehensible that a person would give his life for a loved one or to a noble end: he sees precisely in this his higher happiness. In seeking his true happiness, man attains morality, But he must be educated toward this, educated in such a way that he can absolutely do no other. In the blissful feeling of the nobility of his deed he finds his most beautiful recompense and demands nothing more.” (See Carneri's introduction to his book Modern Man.) One can see: Carneri considers our striving for bliss, as he sees it, to be a power of nature lying within true human nature; he considers it to be a power that, under the right conditions, must unfold, the way a seed must unfold when it has the appropriate conditions. In the same way that a magnet, through its own particular being, has the power to attract, so the animal has the drive of self-preservation and man the drive to attain bliss. One does not need to graft anything onto man's being in order to lead them to morality; one needs only to develop rightly their drive to attain bliss; then, through this drive, they will unfold themselves to true morality. Carneri observes in detail the various manifestations of human soul life: how sensation stimulates or dulls this life; how emotions and passions work: and how in all this the drive to attain bliss unfolds. He presupposes this drive in all these soul manifestations as their actual basic power. And through the fact that he endows this concept of bliss with a broad meaning, all the sours wishing, wanting, and doing falls—for him, in any case—into the realm of this concept. How a person is depends upon which picture of his own happiness is hovering before him: One person sees his happiness in satisfying his lower drives; another person sees it in deeds of devoted love and self-denial. If it were said of someone that he was not striving for happiness, that he was only selflessly doing his duty, Carneri would object: This is precisely what gives him the feeling of happiness—to chase after happiness but not consciously. But in broadening the concept of bliss in this way, Carneri reveals the absolutely idealistic basic tenor of his world view. For if happiness is something quite different for different people, then morality cannot lie in the striving for happiness; the fact is, rather, that man feels his ability to be moral as something that makes him happy. Through this, human striving is not brought down out of the realm of moral ideals into the mere craving for happiness; rather, one recognizes that it lies in the essential being of man to see his happiness in the achieving of his ideals. “We are convinced,” says Carneri, “that ethics has to make do with the argument that the path of man is the path to bliss, and that man, in traveling the path to bliss, matures into a moral being.” (Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 423)

Whoever believes now that through such views Carneri wants to make ethics Darwinistic is allowing himself to be misled by the way this thinker expresses himself. He is compelled to express himself like this by the overwhelming power of the predominant natural-scientific way of picturing things in his age. The truth is: Carneri does not want to make ethics Darwinistic; he wants to make Darwinism ethical. He wants to show that one need only know man in his true being—like the natural scientist seeks to know a being in nature—in order to find him to be not a nature being but rather a spirit being. Carneri's significance consists in the fact that he wants to let Darwinism flow into a world view in accordance with the spirit. And through this he is one of the significant spirits of the second half of the nineteenth century. One does not understand the demands placed on humanity by the natural-scientific insights of this age if one thinks like those people who want to let all striving for knowledge merge into natural science, if one thinks like those who toward the end of the nineteenth century called themselves adherents of materialism, or even if one thinks like those today who actually are not less materialistic but who assure us ever and again that materialism has “long ago been overcome” by science. Today, many people say they are not materialists only because they lack the ability to understand that they are in fact materialists. One can flatly state that nowadays many people stop worrying about their materialism by pretending to themselves that in their view it is no longer necessary to call themselves materialists. One must nevertheless label them so. One has not yet overcome materialism by rejecting the view of a series of thinkers from the second half of the nineteenth century who held all spiritual experiences to, be the mere working of substance; one overcomes it only by allowing oneself to think about the spiritual in a way that accords with the spirit, just as one thinks about nature in a way that accords with nature. What is meant by this is already clear from the preceding arguments of this book, but will become particularly apparent in the final considerations conceived of as “new perspectives” in our last chapter,

But one will also not do justice to the demands placed on humanity by the natural-scientific insights of our age if one sets up a world view against natural science, and only rejects the “raw” mental pictures of “materialism,” Since the achievement of the natural-scientific insights of the nineteenth century, any world view that is in accordance with the spirit and that wishes to be in harmony with its age must take up these insights as part of its thought-world. And Carneri grasped this powerfully and expressed it urgently in his writings. Carneri, who was only taking his first steps on the path of a genuine understanding of modern natural scientific mental pictures, could not yet fully see that such an understanding does not lead to a consolidating of materialism but rather to its true overcoming, Therefore he believed—to refer once more to the words of Brentano (see page 45 of this book)—that no success can be expected from modern science in “gaining certainty about the hopes of a Plato and Aristotle for the continued existence of our better part after the dissolution of the body,” But whoever goes deeply enough into Carneri's thoughts, not only to grasp their content but also to observe the path of knowledge on which this thinker could take only the first steps, will find that through him, in another direction, something similar has occurred for the elaboration of the world view of German idealism as occurred through Troxler, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, and others going in the direction characterized in this book. These spirits sought, with the powers of Hegelian thinking, to penetrate not merely into spirit that has become sense-perceptible but also into that realm of spirit which does not reveal itself in the sense world. Carneri strives, with a view of life in accordance with the spirit, to devote himself to the natural-scientific way of picturing things. The further pursuit of the path sensed by these thinkers can show that the cognitive powers to which they turned will not destroy the “hopes of a Plato and Aristotle for the continued existence of our better part after the dissolution of the body,” but rather will give these hopes a sound basis in knowledge. On the one hand, F.v. Feldegg, whom we have already mentioned (“German Words,” November 1894), is certainly justified when he says—in connection with the conflict in which Carneri was placed toward idealism and materialism:—“But the time is no longer far off in which this conflict will be settled, not merely as one might suppose within the single individual, but within our whole cultural consciousness. But Carneri's ‘Misgivings’ are perhaps an isolated forerunner of completely different and more powerful ‘Misgivings,’ which then, raging toward us like a storm, will sweep away everything about our ‘scientific’ creed that has not yet fallen prey to self-disintegration,” On the other hand, one can recognize that Carneri, by the work he did on Darwinism for ethics, became at the same time one of the first to overcome the Darwinian way of thinking.

[ 19 ] Carneri was a personality whose thinking about the questions of existence gave all his activity and work in life their particular stamp. He was not one of those who become “philosophers” by allowing the healthy roots of life reality to dry up within them. Rather, he was one of those who proved that a realistic study of life can create practical people better than that attitude which keeps itself fearfully, and yet comfortably, at a distance from all ideas and which obstinately harps on the theme that the “true” conduct of life must not be spoiled by any dreaming in concepts. Carneri was an Austrian representative in the Styrian provincial diet from 1861 on, and in the federal council from 1870 to 1891. Even now, I often have to think back on the heart-lifting impression he made on me when, from the gallery of the Viennese federal council, as a young man of twenty-five just beginning life, I heard Carneri speak. A man stood down there who had taken up deeply into his thoughts the determining factors of Austrian life and the situation arising from the evolution of Austrian culture and from the life forces of its peoples; this was a man who spoke what he had to express from that high vantage point upon which his world view had placed him. And in all this there was never a pale thought. always tones of heart's warmth, always ideas that were strong with reality, not the words of a merely thinking head; rather, the revelations of a whole man who felt Austria pulsing in his own soul and who had clarified this feeling through the idea: “Mankind will deserve its name wholly, and wholly travel the path of morality only when it knows no other battle than work. no other shield than right, no other weapon than intelligence, no other banner than civilization.” (Carneri, Morality and Darwinism, p. 508)

[ 20 ] I have tried to show how a thoughtful idealism constitutes the roots, solidly planted in reality, of Carneri's soul life; but also how—overwhelmed by the materialistic view of the time—this idealism goes its way accompanied by a thinking whose contradictions are indeed sensed but not fully resolved. I believe that this, in the form in which it manifests in Carneri, is based on a particular characteristic that the folk spirit (Volkstum) in Austria can easily impress upon the soul, a characteristic, it seems to me, that can be understood only with difficulty outside of Austria, even by Germans. One can experience it, perhaps, only if one has oneself grown up in the Austrian folk spirit (Volksart). This characteristic has been determined by the evolution of Austrian life during the last centuries. Through education there, one is brought into !:I. different relationship to the manifestations of the immediate folk spirit than in German areas outside Austria. In Austria, what one takes up through one's schooling bears traits that are not so directly a transformation of what one experiences from the folk spirit as is the case with the Germans in Germany. Even when Fichte unfolds his thoughts to their fullest extent, there lives something in them recognizable as a direct continuation of the folk element working in his Central German fatherland, in the house of Christian Fichte, the farmer and weaver. In Austria, what one develops in oneself through education and self-education often bears fewer of such directly indigenous characteristics. The indigenous element lives more indirectly, yet often no less powerfully thereby. One bears conflicting feelings in one's soul; this conflict, in its unconscious working, gives life there its particularly Austrian coloring.

As an example of an Austrian with this soul characteristic, let us look at Mission, one of the most significant Austrian poets in dialect.

[ 21 ] To be sure, poetry in dialect has also arisen in other Germans out of subterranean depths of the soul similar to those of Mission. But what is characteristic of him is that he became a poet in dialect through the above-mentioned trait existing in the soul life of many Austrians. Joseph Mission was born in 1803, in Mühlbach, in the Lower Austrian district, below Mannhardtsberg; he completed school in Krems and entered the Order of Pious Schools. He worked as a secondary school teacher in Horn, Krems, and Vienna. In 1850 there appeared a pearl of Austrian poetry in dialect written by him: “Ignaz, a Lower Austrian Farmer Boy, Goes Abroad.” It was published in an uncompleted form. The provost Karl Landsteiner, in a beautiful little book, later wrote about Mission and reprinted the uncompleted poem.)

Karl Julius Schröer said of it (1875), and quite aptly, in I my opinion: “As small as the poem is and as solitary as it has remained through the fact that Mission published nothing further, it nevertheless deserves special attention. It is of the first order among Austria's poems in dialect. The epic peacefulness that permeates the whole, and the masterful depiction in the details that enthralls us constantly, I astonishing and refreshing us through its truth—these are qualities in Mission that no one else has equaled.” The setting out on his travels of a Lower Austrian farmer boy is what Mission portrays. A direct, truth-sustained revelation of the Lower Austrian folk spirit (Volkstum) lives in this poem. Mission lived in the world of thoughts he had attained through his education and self-education. This life represented the one side of his soul. This was not a direct continuation of the life rooted in his Lower Austrianness. But precisely because of this and as though unconnected to this more personal side of his soul experiences, there arose in his heart (Gemüt) the truest picture of his folk spirit, as though from subterranean depths of the soul, and placed itself there I as the other side of his inner experience. The magic of the direct folk spirit quality of Mission's poem is an effect of the “two souls within his breast.” I will now quote a part of this poem here and then reproduce the Lower Austrian dialect in High German prose as truly and modestly as possible. (In this reproduction, my intentions are only that the sense of the poem emerge fully in a feeling way. If, in such a translation, one simply replaces the word in dialect with the corresponding word in High German, the matter becomes basically falsified. For, the word in dialect often corresponds to a completely different nuance of feeling than the corresponding word in High German.)

Lehr vo main Vodern auf d'Roas

Naaz, iazn loos, töös, wos a ta so, töös sockt ta tai Voda.
God, what's so good! and try tai luck ö da Waiden.
Muis a da sogn töös, wo a da so, töös los der aa gsackt sai.
I and tai Muida are old and tahoam, know as ee, looks nothing out.
What you look and work and plod and do not care
Do it for the children, what don't you do, don't leave the place!
I'm just a pressed person and a black woman,
Graif an s'am aa, ma fint töös pai ortlinga rechtschoffan Kinern,
Gladly under Orm, on taas mer d'Ergiibnus laichter daschwingan.
If you don't have any luck, you won't live all your life.
Just stay in the same place, in the middle of the golden mass, don't get bored.
Your luck is round as a ball, balls so lightly toni as touaha.
But if something happens and misfortune befalls you, don't let it go.
Don't let anything happen to you, don't let it happen to me, don't let it happen to you.
Klock's unsan Heagoot, pitt'en, iih so ders, er mochts wida pessa!
Mocka'r and hocka'r and pfnotten and trenzen with the kimt nix außa.
Head hanging, just as if amt' Heana had eaten her protest:
You don't like it bad, you don't like it bad, you don't like it bad! Look at your soul, what you have, think about the future!
If you give something, don't talk about it, take it and so for it: good luck!
Look Naaz, mirk ta dos fai: what little politeness iis no longer gstroft!
Get ti nea ritterla, Fremd zügelt t'Leud, ist a Sprichwoat, a Worwoat.
Let's go, don't wash your hands, don't get any more clay. Go on, don't open your eyes, you won't be lucky in Trambuich.
Go two weeks and tar oani is naich, so gee du en olden.
If you go to a place that is also often the case, you are a big one -
Look at tain Gsund, ta Gsund iis pai olIn no allwail tos Pessa.
So what do you have in the world if you are not healthy? - - - - -
Come back and you'll find our old friends in the parlor,
We often go to places where you and your friends are happy to meet us,
Finding our guittäter and our vastoabani friendschoft! Olli, sö kenan uns glai - und töös, Naaz, töös is dos Schöner!"

Advice from my Father for my Travels
(Translation of Rudolf Steiner's High German prose version.)

Ignaz, now listen well to what I say to you; I am your father.
In God's name, since it must be so that you are to seek your fortune in the wide world,
Therefore I must tell you this; and what I tell you take well to heart.
I and your mother are old and have stayed at home; you know that nothing comes from that.
One slaves away, takes pains, works hard, and weakens oneself in the care of work
One does this out of love for one's children; what would one not do just so they will not fall into bad ways.
If later one becomes weak and sick, and hard times come,
Even they spring upon us lovingly if, when they come, proper honest children
Are standing by to help, so that one can more easily do what the state and life demands.
If good fortune should find you, don't live like a cavalier.
Stay as you were, in the golden mean of the middle road; do not budge from the right path of life.
Good fortune is round like a ball; it rolls just as easily away from as toward us.
If some effort does not succeed, or if a misfortune befalls you, do not speak of it to people.
Remain calm; let nothing show; do not be faint-hearted;
Pour out your troubles to God alone; beg him; I tell you, He makes everything better again!
To act troubled, to withdraw, to pull a sour face, to be whiny: nothing is achieved by that.
To let your head hang as though the chickens had eaten your bread away from you:
That improves nothing bad, let alone making the good even better!
Guard the possessions you take with you; take a little care for the future.
If someone gives you something, just receive it, without affectation, and say: “God bless you!”
Listen, Ignaz, and remember this well: no one has ever been punished for being polite!
Don't act stubborn; new places make a person modest; this is a saying and a true word.
Don't be led astray into gambling; don't let the dance floor mean too much to you.
Don't let anyone read your future in the cards; and do not seek your destiny in the book of dreams.
If two paths lie before you and one of them is new, then you take the old one.
If one is crooked, which is often the case, then you take the straight one.
Protect your health; health is the best of all possessions.
Admit it to me, after all: What does one really possess in the world if one lacks health?
- - - - -
If you ever come back home and no longer find us old folk in this little room,
Then we are there where your grandfather and your grandmother await us with joy,
Where our benefactors and our dead relatives will find us!
They will all recognize us at once—and this, Ignaz, is something very—beautiful.

[ 22 ] In 1879 Karl Julius Schröer writes the following about this Austrian from whose educated soul there arose so magnificently the life of the peasants and also, as the above section of his poem shows so well, the native philosophy of the peasants: “His talent found no encouragement. Although he wrote much more than the above work, he burned his entire literary output ... and now lives as librarian for the Piaristic faculty of St. Thekla of the Fields in Vienna, isolated from all social intercourse, as he puts it, ‘without joy or sorrow.’” As in the case of Joseph Mission one must seek many personalities of Austrian spiritual life living in obscurity.

Mission cannot come into consideration as a thinker among the personalities portrayed in this book. Nevertheless, to picture his soul life gives one an understanding for the particular coloration of the ideas of Austrian thinkers. The thoughts of Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, and Planck shape themselves plastically out of each other like parts of a thought-organism. One thought grows forth from the other.

And in the physiognomy of this whole thought-organism one recognizes characteristics of a certain people. In the case of Austrian thinkers one thought stands more beside the other; and each one grows on its own—not so much out of the other—but out of a common soul ground. Therefore the total configuration does not bear the direct characteristics of the people; but, on the other hand, these characteristics are poured out over each individual thought like a kind of basic mood. This basic mood is held back by these thinkers within their heart (Gemüt) in the way natural to them; it sounds forth but faintly. It manifests in a personality like Mission as homesickness for what is elemental in his people. In Schröer, Fercher von Steinwand, Cameri, and even in Hamerling, this basic mood works along everywhere in the fundamental tone of their striving. Through this, their thinking takes on a contemplative character.

[ 23 ] In Robert Hamerling one of the greatest poets of modern times has arisen from the lower Austrian district. At the same time he is one of the bearers of the idealism in German world views. In this book I do not intend to speak about the nature and significance of Hamerling's literary works. I wish only to indicate something of the position he took within the evolution of world views in modern times. He did in fact give expression in the form of thoughts to his world view in his work The Atomism of Will. (The Styrlan poet and folk author Adolf Harpf published this book in 1891, after Hamerling's death.) The book bears the subtitle “Contribution to a Critique of Modern Knowledge.”

[ 24 ] Hamerling knew that many who called themselves philosophers would receive his “contribution” with—perhaps tolerant—bewonderment. Many might think: What could this idealistically inclined poet undertake to accomplish in a field that demands the strictly scientific approach? And the presentations in his book did not convince those who asked this; for their judgment of him was only a wave rising from the depths of their souls where (in an unconscious or subconscious way) this judgment issued from habits of thought. Such people can be very clever; scientifically they can be very important: and yet the struggles of a truly poetic nature are not comprehensible to them. Within the soul of such a poetic nature there live all the conflicts from which the riddles of the world present themselves to human beings. A truly poetic nature, therefore, has inner experience of these world riddles. When such a nature expresses itself poetically, there holds sway in the foundations of his soul the questioning world order that,without transforming itself in his consciousness into thoughts, manifests itself in elemental artistic creation. To be sure, no inkling of the real being of such true poetic natures is present even in those poets who recoil from a world view as from a fire that might singe their “life-filled originality.” A true poet might never shape thoughts in his consciousness for what actually lives powerfully in the roots of his soul life in the way of unconscious world thoughts: nevertheless, he stands with his inner experience in those depths of reality of which a person has no inkling if, in his comfortable wisdom, he regards as mere dreams the place where sense-perceptible reality is granted its existence from out of the spirit. If now, for once, a truly poetic nature like Robert Hamerling, without dulling his creative poetic power, is able to lift into his consciousness, as a thought-world, what often has remained unconscious in other poets, then, with respect to such a phenomenon, one can also hold the view that, through this, special light is shed from spiritual depths upon the riddles of the world. In the foreword of his Atomism of Will, Hamerling himself tells how he arrived at his thought-world. “I did not suddenly throw myself upon philosophy at some point out of a whim, for example, or because I wanted to by my hand at something different. Moved by the natural and inescapable urge that drives us, after all, to search out the truth and solve the riddles of existence, I have occupied myself since earliest youth with the great questions about human cognition. I have never been able to regard philosophy as a special department of science that one can study or not study—like statistics or forestry—but always as the investigation into what is most immediate important, and interesting to every person. ... For my own part, I could by no means keep myself from following the most primal, natural, and universal of all spiritual drives and from forming a judgment over the course of the years about the fundamental questions of existence and life.”

One of the people who valued Hamerling's thought-world highly was Vincenz Knauer, the learned and sensitive Benedictine priest living in Vienna. As guest lecturer at the university in Vienna, he held lectures in which he wanted to show how Hamerling stood in that evolutionary stream of world views that began with Thales in Greece and that manifested in the Austrian poet and thinker in its most significant form for the end of the nineteenth century. To be sure, Vincenz Knauer belonged to those researchers to whom narrow-heartedness is foreign. As a young philosopher he wrote a book on the moral philosophy in Shakespeare's works. (Knauer's lectures in Vienna were published under the title The Main Problems of Philosophy from Thales to Hamerling.)

[ 25 ] The basic idealistic mood underlying Hamerling's view of reality also lives in his literary work. The figures in his epic and dramatic creations are not a copy of what spirit-shy observation sees in outer life; they show everywhere how the human soul receives direction and impulses from a spiritual world. Adherents of spirit-shy observation are critical of such creations. They call them bloodless mental products lacking the juice of real life. They are often to be heard belaboring the catch phrase: The characters of this poet are not like the people who walk around in the world; they are schemata, born of abstractions. If the “men of reality” who speak like this could only have an inkling, in fact, how much they themselves are walking abstractions and their belief the abstraction of an abstraction! If they only knew how soulless their blood-filled characters are to someone having a sense not just for pulsing blood but also for the way soul pulses in the blood. From this kind of “reality standpoints” one has said that Hamerling's dramatic work Danton and Robespierre has enriched the shadow folk of bygone revolutionary heros with a number of new schemata.

[ 26 ] Hamerling defended himself against such criticisms in his “Epilogue to the Critics” which he appended to the later editions of his Ahasver in Rome. In this epilogue he writes: “... People say that Ahasver in Rome is an ‘allegorical’ work—a word that immediately makes many people break out in goose-bumps.—The poem is allegorical, to be sure, insofar as a mythical figure is woven in whose right to existence is always based only upon the fact that it represents something. For, every myth is an idea brought into picture form by the imagination of the people. But, people will say, Nero is also supposed to ‘represent’ something—the ‘lust for life’! All right, he does represent the lust for life; but no differently than Moliere's Miser represents miserliness and Shakespeare's Romeo love. There are, to be sure, poetic figures that are nothing more at all than allegorical schemata and consist only of their inner abstract significance—comparable to Heine's sick, skinny Kanonikus who finally was composed of nothing but ‘spirit and bandages.’ But, for a poetic figure filled with real life, its inherent significance is not some vampire that sucks out its blood. Does anything actually exist that ‘signifies’ nothing? I would like to know, after all, how a beggar would manage not to signify poverty and a Croesus wealth. ... I believe therefore that Nero, who is thirsting for life, sacrifices Just as little of his reality by ‘signifying’ lust for life when placed next to Ahasver, who is longing for death, as a rich merchant sacrifices of his blooming stoutness by happening to stand beside a beggar and necessarily making visible, in an allegorical group, the contrast between poverty and wealth,” This is how a poet, ensouled by an idealistic world view, repulses the attacks of those who shudder if they catch a scent anywhere of an idea rooted in true reality, in spiritual reality.

[ 27 ] When one begins a reading of Hamerling's Atomism of Will, one can at first have the definite feeling that he let himself be convinced by Kantianism that a knowledge of true reality, of the “thing-in-itself,” was impossible. Still, in the further course of the presentations in his book, one sees that what happened for Hamerling with Kantianism was like Carneri with Darwinism. He let himself be overcome by the suggestive power of certain Kantian thoughts; but then the view wins out in him that man—even though he cannot push through to true reality by looking outward with his senses—does nevertheless encounter true reality when he delves down through the surface of soul experience into the foundations of the soul.

[ 28 ] Hamerling begins in an entirely Kantian way; “Certain stimuli produce odors in our sense of smell. The rose, therefore, has no fragrance if no one smells it.—Certain oscillations of the air produce sound in our ear. Sound, therefore, does not exist without an ear. A rifle shot, therefore, would not ring out if no one heard it. ... Whoever holds onto this will understand what a naive mistake it is to believe that, besides the perception (Anschauung) or mental picture we call ‘horse,’ there exists yet another horse—and in fact only then the actual real one—of which our perception ‘horse’ is only a copy. Outside of myself there is—let me state this again—only the sum total of those determining factors which cause a perception to be produced in my senses which I call a ‘horse’.” These thoughts work with such suggestive power that Hamerling can add to them the words: “If that is not obvious to you, dear reader, and if your understanding shies away from this fact like a skittish horse, then read no further; leave this and every other book on philosophical matters unread; for you lack the necessary ability to grasp a fact without bias and to retain it in thought.” I would like to respond to Hamerling: “May there in fact be many people whose intellect does indeed shy away from the opening words of his book like a skittish horse but who also possess enough strength of ideas to value rightly the deeply penetrating later chapters; and I am happy that Hamerling did after all write these later chapters even though his intellect did not shy away from the assertion: There in me is the mental picture ‘horse’; but outside there does not exist any actual real horse but only the sum total of those determining factors which cause a perception to be produced in my senses which I call a ‘horse’.” For here again one has to do with an assertion—like that made by Carneri with respect to matter, substance, and spirit—that gains overwhelming power over a person because he just does not see at all the impossible thoughts into which he has spun himself. The whole train of Hamerling's thoughts is worth no more than this: Certain effects emanating from me onto the surface of a coated pane of glass produce my image in the mirror. Nothing occurs through the effects emanating from me if no mirror is there. Outside the mirror there is only the sum total of those determining factors which bring it about that in the mirror an image is produced that I refer to with my name.

In imagination I can hear all the declamations against a philosophical dilettantism—carried to the point of frivolity that would dare to dispose of the serious scientific thoughts of philosophers with this kind of a childish objection. I know, in fact, what all has been brought forward by philosophers since Kant in the way of such thoughts. When one speaks as I have just done, one is not understood by the chorus that propounds these thoughts. One must turn to unprejudiced reason, which understands that the way one conducts one's thinking is the same in each case: whether, when confronted by the mental picture of the horse in my soul, I decree the outer horse to be nonexistent, or, when confronted by the image in the mirror, I doubt my existence. One does not even need to enter into certain, supposedly epistemological refutations of this comparison. For, what would be presented there—as the entirely different relationship, after all, of the “mental picture to what is mentally pictured” than of the mirror image to what is mirroring itself—already stands there for certain epistemologists as established with absolute certainty; for other readers, however, the corresponding refutation of these thoughts could in fact be only a web of unfruitful abstractions.

Out of his healthy idealism, Hamerling feels that an idea, in order to be justified within a world view, must not only be correct but also in accordance with reality. (Here I must express myself in those thoughts which I introduced in the presentation on Karl Christian Planck in this book.). If Hamerling had been less suggestively influenced by the way of thinking described above, he would have noticed that there is nothing in accordance with reality in such thoughts as those which he feels to be necessary in spite of the fact that “one’s intellect shys away from them like a skittish horse.” Such thoughts arise in the human soul when the soul has been made ill by a mind for abstractions estranged from reality and gives itself over to a continuous spinning out of thoughts that are indeed logically coherent but in which no spiritual reality holds sway in a living way. It is precisely his healthy idealism, however, that guides Hamerling in the further thoughts of his Atomism of Will out of the web of thoughts he presented in the opening chapters. This becomes particularly clear where he speaks of the human “I” in connection with the life of the soul. Look at the way Hamerling relates to Descartes' “I think, therefore I am.” Fichte's way of picturing things (of which we have spoken in our considerations of Fichte in this book) works along like a softly sounding, consonant, basic tone in the beautiful words on page 223 of the first volume of The Atomism of Will: “In spite of all the conceptual hairsplitting that carps at it, Descartes' Cogito ergo sum remains the igniting flash of lightning for all modern speculation. But, strictly speaking, this ‘I think, therefore I am’ is not made certain through the fact that I think, but rather through the fact that I say that I think. My conclusion would have the same certainty even if I changed the premise into its reverse and said ‘I do not think, therefore I am.’ In order to be able to say this, I must exist.” In discussing Fichte's world view, we have said in this book that the statement “I think, therefore I am” cannot maintain itself in the face of man's sleeping state. One must grasp the certainty of the “I” in such a way that this certainty cannot appear to be exhausted in the inner perception “I think.” Hamerling feels this; therefore he says that “I do not think, therefore I am” is also valid. He says this because he feels: Within the human “I” something is experienced that does not receive the certainty of its existence from thinking, but on the contrary gives to thinking its certainty. Thinking is unfolded by the true “I” in certain states; the experiencing of the “I,” however, is of such a kind that through this experience the soul can feel itself immersed into a spiritual reality in which it knows its existence to be anchored even during other states than those for which Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” applies. But all this is based on the fact that Hamerling knows: When the “I” thinks, life-will is living in its thinking. Thinking is by no means mere thinking; it is willed thinking. As a thought, “I think” is a mere fantasy that is never and nowhere present. It is always the case that only the “I think, willing” is present. Whoever believes in the fantasy of “I think” can isolate himself thereby from the whole spiritual world; and then become either an adherent of materialism or a doubter in the reality of the outer world. He becomes a materialist if he lets himself be snared by the thought—fully justified within its own limits—that for the thinking Descartes had in mind the instruments of the nerves are necessary. He becomes a doubter in the reality of the outer world if he becomes entangled in the thought—again justified within certain limits—that all thinking about things is in fact experienced within the soul and that with his thinking, therefore, he can in fact never arrive at an outer world existing in and of itself, even if such an outer world existed. To be sure, whoever sees the will in all thinking can, if he inclines to abstraction, now isolate the will conceptually from thinking and speak in Schopenhauer's style of a will that supposedly holds sway in all world existence and that drives thinking like whitecaps to the surface of life's phenomena. But someone who sees that only the “I think, willing” has reality would no more picture will and thinking as separated in the human soul than he would picture a man's head and body as separated if he wished his thought to portray something real. But such a person also knows that, with his experience of a thinking that is carried by will and experienced, he goes outside the boundaries of his soul and enters into the experience of a world process (Weltgeschehen) that is also pulsing through his soul. And Hamerling is headed in the direction of just such a world view, in the direction of a world view whose adherent knows that with a real thought he has within himself an experience of world-will, not merely an experience of his own “I.” Hamerling is striving toward a world view that does not go astray into the chaos of a mysticism of will, but on the contrary wishes to experience the world-will within the clarity of ideas.

With this perspective of the world-will beheld through ideas, Hamerling knows that he now stands in the native soil of the idealism of German world views. His thoughts prove even to himself to have their roots in the German folk spirit (Volkstum) that in Jakob Böhme already was struggling for knowledge in an elemental way. On page 259f. of Hamerling's Atomism of Will one reads: “To make will the highest philosophical principle is what one seems to have overlooked until now—an eminently German thought, a core thought of the German spirit. From the German Naturphilosophen of the Middle Ages up to the classical thinkers of the age of German speculation, and even up to Schopenhauer and Hartmann, this thought runs through the philosophy of the German people, emerging sometimes more, sometimes less, often only at one moment, as it were, then disappearing again into the seething masses of our thinkers' ideas. And so it was also the philosophus teutonicus who was in truth the most German and the most profound of all modern philosophers, and who was the first, in his deeply thoughtful, original, and pictorial language, to grasp the will expressly as the absolute, as the unity. ...” And now, in order to point to yet another German thinker in this direction, Hamerling quotes Jacobi, Goethe's contemporary: “Experience and history teach us that man's action depends far less upon his thinking than his thinking depends upon his action, that his concepts direct themselves according to his actions and only copy them, as it were; that the path of knowledge, therefore, is a mysterious path, not a syllogistic one, nor a mechanical one.”

Because Hamerling, out of the prevailing tone of his soul, has a feeling for the fact that the accordance of an idea with reality must be added to its merely logical correctness, he also cannot regard those pessimistic philosophers' views of life as valid which wish to determine—by an abstract conceptual weighing—whether pleasure or pain predominates in life and therefore whether life must be regarded as a good or an evil. No, reflection become theory does not decide this; this is decided in much deeper foundations of life, in depths that have to judge this human reflection, but do not allow themselves to be judged by this reflection. Hamerling says about this: “The main thing is not whether people are correct in wanting to live, with very few exceptions, at any price, no matter whether things are going well or badly for them. The main thing is that they want it and this can by no means be denied. And yet the doctrinaire pessimists do not reckon with this decisive fact. Intellectually and in learned discussions, they always only weigh against each other the pleasure and pain life brings in particular situations; but since pleasure and pain belong to feeling, it is feeling and not intellect that ultimately and decisively draws up the balance between pleasure and pain. And, with respect to all mankind—indeed one can say with respect to everything living—the balance falls on the side of the pleasure of existence. That everything living wants to live, under any circumstances and at any price, this is the great fact; and in the face of this fact all doctrinaire talk is powerless:” In the same way as the thinkers from Fichte to Planck described in this book, Hamerling seeks the path into spiritual reality, except that his striving is to do justice to the natural-scientific picture of the world to a greater degree than Schelling or Hegel, for example, were able to do. Atomism of Will nowhere offends against the scientific picture of the world. But this book is everywhere permeated with the insight that this picture of the world represents only a part of reality. This book is based upon an acknowledgement of the thought that a person is submitting to belief in an unreal world if he refuses to take up the forces of a spiritual world into his thought-world. (I use the word “unreal” here in the sense employed in our discussion of Planck.)

[ 29 ] Hamerling's satiric poem “Homunculus” speaks forcibly for the high degree to which his thinking was in accordance with reality. In this work, with great poetic force, he depicts a man who himself becomes soulless because soul and spirit do not speak to his knowledge. What would become of people who really stemmed from a world order such as the natural-scientific way of picturing things sets up as creed when it rejects a world view in accordance with the spirit? What would a man be if the unreality of this way of picturing things were real? In somewhat this way one could formulate the question that finds its artistic answer in “Homunculus.” Homunculism would have to take possession of a mankind that believed only in a world fashioned according to mechanistic natural laws. One can also see in Hamerling how a person striving toward existence's ideas has a healthier sense for practical life than a person who, fearful of the spirit, shies away from the world of ideas and feels himself thereby to be a true “man of reality.” Hamerling's “Homunculus” could help those regain their health who, precisely in the present day, are allowing themselves to be led astray by the opinion that natural science is the only science of what is real. Such people, in their fear of the spirit, say that the idealism of our classical period—which, in their opinion, has been overcome today—brought knowing man (homo sapiens) too much into the foreground. “True science” must recognize that attention should be paid above all to economic man (homo oeconomus) within the world order and in human arrangements. For such people “true science” means solely the science stemming from the natural-scientific way of picturing things. Homunculism arises out of opinions like this. The proponents of these opinions have no inkling of how they are hurrying toward homunculism. With the prophetic eye of the knower, Hamerling has delineated this homunculism. Those who fear that a rightful estimation of homo sapiens in Hamerling's sense might lead to an overestimation of the literary approach will also be able to see from “Homunculus” that this does not occur.

• 1. NoteText

Today we continue our study of F. von Wrangell's booklet 'Science and Theosophy'. Before we do so, I would like to briefly recapitulate some thoughts that could be linked to the various chapters so far.

First of all, I would like to explain why the points of view presented in this brochure may be of importance for our consideration. As I have already said, we are living in times when people who base their thinking on spiritual science may find themselves having to defend it against various attacks. Now, in our time, a defense will be particularly necessary when the attacks come from the side of science, and this is because science, which has developed in a certain form over the past three to four centuries, can justifiably claim to be the basis of a world view and actually makes this claim. A scholar in the humanities can therefore say: Yes, if spiritual science has nothing to say in response to the objections of science, then it proves itself to be poorly founded; for anyone who wants to advocate a worldview today must be able to defend it against the objections of science. Therefore it is especially important to take note when a scientist appears and explains what a scientist has to say about the relationship between genuine scientific thinking and theosophical, or even spiritual teachings.

The previous considerations have shown you that it can be particularly important for the spiritual teachings to be defended from the point of view that is conditioned by an awareness that has gone through astronomical and similar scientific research. I have, of course, pointed out how a representative proponent of the modern worldview, Du Bois-Reymond, invokes the so-called Laplacian mind, the astronomical knowledge of the world; I have shown what modern man imagines under the Laplacian mind, under the astronomical knowledge of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to show how far a comprehensive worldview can be built out of such astronomical conceptions.

Then I said that it was important for this brochure to point out that practical materialism must necessarily follow from theoretical materialism, from the theoretical-materialistic-mechanical conception of the world. I then showed how spiritual science must also stand on this point of view, even if in our present time the objection is still often raised that theoretical adherents of the materialistic-mechanical world view do not deny the validity of ideal, ethical motives, but on the contrary profess them.

We then saw in the brochure a beautiful exposition of the world view that arises for those who want to stand exclusively on the point of view of the mechanistic-materialistic worldview. I have, so to speak, sketched this world picture and particularly emphasized - which is also emphasized in the brochure - that the one who sees the all-encompassing world picture in the mechanical-materialistic world picture cannot view the inner experiences that take place in the consciousness of the human being essentially different from other natural processes, and thus as a by-product of mechanistic-materialistic processes. And if one creates such a mechanistic-materialistic world view, then logically there can no longer be any question of the survival of a soul-core after death.

The brochure then goes on to examine this basic assumption. In particular, it is pointed out what the relationship is between freedom and morality and the mechanistic-materialistic basic ideas; how the concept of freedom and responsibility can no longer be held if one completely embraces the materialistic-mechanistic and how this gives rise to the actual world question or world riddle, namely that it is necessary to gain such a world view within which the ideas of freedom and responsibility can have a place.

Then it is pointed out how the idea of a general law, as it were spread out as a network over all phenomena, has only gradually come about, and also how it is impossible to ever refute freedom of will on the basis of experience , because, as we have seen, freedom of will can never be conceived as being so interwoven into this network of materialistic-mechanical processes as it would have to be if one were to profess this world view alone.

Then, in an epistemological discussion, it is shown how man enters into a relationship with the external world through his senses; how one can visualize the formation of concepts, of ideas, the formation of ideas of space and time. It is pointed out how the principle of causality should be a general principle of the world view, but how it has only gradually entered into the world view because it was originally assumed that similar real motives are present in things as they are in people , so that the development would show that man did not originally start from a mechanical causality, but that he basically worked his way through to the mechanical-materialistic view only from a different view of the connection between phenomena.

Then it is pointed out how, in more recent times, scientific observation has tried to achieve objectivity. The particularly important principle of materialistic-mechanical science, the principle of measurement, is now being discussed, and we will soon see how this principle of measurement also has further consequences for the more complicated parts of contemporary science.

Now I would like to draw your attention very urgently to what the booklet says about measurement. I would really like to ask you to use it as a starting point to really embrace the character of modern science through this examination of measurement. We have seen how the principle of measurement is then applied to the principle underlying clocks and watches. I would now like to make a few comments specifically about the principle of measurement to show you how you could use this chapter of the Wrangell writing “Science and Theosophy” as a kind of leitmotif to tie in with what you can find in the various discussions about modern science, especially with regard to the character that is required in the presence of real science.

We have seen what the essence of measurement is, and we have also found a reference to how measurement introduces a kind of uncertainty in a certain relation, despite all objectivity in the observation to which the measurement applies. We can very simply point out this uncertainty by saying the following: When we have simple measurement, the measurement of lengths or spaces, we use a standard as a basis. When we have to measure a length, we have to do it in such a way that we determine the ratio of the length to a yardstick. The length must be given in the sensory world and our yardstick must also be realized in the sensory world. Now you will find a remark in the scriptures that draws attention to the fact that something is introduced that makes measuring uncertain. Measurement is based on the fact that something is compared with the standard; one compares how often the standard is contained in the thing to be measured.

Now, however, a slight warming, for example, causes the heat to expand the scale. So let us assume that the scale has been heated and has become a little longer as a result. Of course - since we are measuring in a room that is approximately equally warm, otherwise we would have to consider further complications - the thing being measured would be expanded in the same proportion as the scale. But if the measuring stick and the thing being measured are made of materials that do not expand equally, so that the measuring stick expands less or more than the thing being measured, then we are already dealing with inaccuracies in the measurement.

So we can emphasize two things. One is that the observation becomes independent of our subjectivity, of the observer. We compare the thing to be measured with the measuring stick, that is, we compare the objective with the objective. A good deal of modern science is based on this, and basically it is also an ideal of modern science. The other thing is if we were to observe the things around us simply according to our subjectivity. Just imagine the following, for example. Imagine you have a vessel of water in front of you; now bring one hand close to the stove and the other hand into an ice pit; then put both hands into the water. You will have a completely different feeling in each hand, even though the water is the same temperature. The water will seem cold to the heated hand, and not cold at all to the cold hand. Thus, the subjective extends over everything objective. This is just a crude example, but it shows how the subjective always underlies all observation. Measurement detaches the content from the subject, from the observer. Therefore, there is an objective truth, a realization, detached from the subjective. This is important. And because in recent times more and more efforts have been made to become independent of the subjective in relation to the world view, measurement became a kind of ideal.

You see, this measurement becomes so objective because the standard is independent of us, because we eliminate ourselves and insert the standard in our place. Those who remember my lectures in Berlin about the different points of view one can take towards the world will see that something similar underlies spiritual science itself. I said there: As long as one stands on the ground of external reality, one faces the world and makes a picture of the world for oneself. But as soon as one enters the spiritual world, one must, in principle, look at what is to be considered from different points of view – but now the point of view is meant spiritually. I have given twelve points of view, and only when one takes these twelve points of view does one point of view always correct the other. In this way one also becomes independent of subjectivity to a certain extent.

From this you can see how science and spiritual science converge, how what lies as a necessary motive for development in science, objectivity, must also be striven for by the spiritual scientist, although not by asserting all twelve points of view. The twelve different points of view correct each other. Thus, measuring is the detachment from subjectivity. But on the other hand, it is pointed out that even when measuring, accuracy can only be achieved within certain limits, and Wrangell points this out in the next chapter:

Error limits in measurement

When measuring time, as with measuring length, you can also specify the limit of accuracy, or more correctly, the error limit. Within these limits, the fact obtained is objectively correct, but it never reaches flawless accuracy.

In this respect, all facts derived from sensory perception differ from the intuitive truths of thought, such as the formal laws of logic, and all truths of mathematics.

So, by rightly presenting measurement as the means that, when the margin of error is taken into account, gives a certain accuracy in relation to a world view, it is pointed out at the same time how this accuracy, which can be achieved in relation to the external sensual world, can never be a flawless correctness. It can never give the same kind of truth that one has in the so-called intuitive truths of thought, in the formal laws of logic and in the truths of mathematics.

The next chapter is a further elaboration of what I have already said:

Absolute validity of logical and mathematical truths

Logical truth, for example: a part is smaller than the whole,

— that is a mathematical truth. It cannot be said with absolute certainty how many times a part is contained in this line [presumably a line on the blackboard was pointed to]

or: If two things are equal to a third, then they are also equal to each other, without any restriction;

– these are absolute truths; but they are also not gained through external perception, but through thinking.

every person in sound mind recognizes its compelling necessity. This is also the case in mathematics; once certain basic assumptions have been agreed upon, all other mathematical propositions follow with compelling necessity and without any restriction. If, for example, we agree on what we call a straight line, what a right angle is, what parallelism means, then the theorems of geometry follow with absolute certainty.

It is necessary to agree on these things. We must agree on what a right angle is, what a straight line is, what parallelism means. If we have agreed that parallel lines are those lines which are the same distance apart at all points that lie vertically above each other, or if we have agreed that parallel lines are those lines that, however far they are extended, never intersect, then we can use parallel lines to understand further mathematical propositions. I will now link something to it that seems quite far removed.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Let's assume we have a triangle here: We have discussed several times that the three angles of a triangle together are 180 degrees. Now, what is 180 degrees? It is 180 degrees if you imagine a point here and a straight line drawn through this point. 180 degrees is the size of the arc around this point, which is a semicircle. So these three angles a, b, c should be arranged in such a way that, when they are placed together in a fan shape, they form a straight line. This can be easily illustrated by drawing a parallel to the line AB through the point C. Then, if we agree on the value of the angle at point A, we can see that the angle a' must be equal to this angle a, and the angle b' must be equal to b. Now the three angles are next to each other in a fan shape and add up to 180 degrees. I would still have to introduce intermediate links, but you will see that the truth, that the three angles of a triangle together add up to 180 degrees, is based on this. That is, there are certain basic truths of mathematics that arise from self-activating thinking, on which one has to agree, and from which all of mathematics then follows.

A person who has the ability to follow the line of reasoning is as convinced of the eternal validity of the final sentence as he is of his own existence.

No one can ever doubt that the angles of a triangle together add up to 180 degrees. For those of our esteemed friends who know a little about it, I emphasize that we are disregarding a spatial geometry that is based on a different point of view; that would take us too far today.

Spatial science (geometry) establishes certain relationships between surface areas and their linear dimensions, as well as between spatial parts and the corresponding linear sizes.

This is the simplest idea. Because if you draw a rectangle, the area of this rectangle is the one that I shade. If you call the length of the base line a, the length of this line b, you get the area when you multiply a by b; that is, you compose the area from linear size and linear size.

These relationships were discovered by thinkers through intuition, logically linked to already known truths (this is what mathematical proof consists of). The correctness of the proof is not tested by experience, but is immediately recognized by intuition.

It is very important that you get involved in this matter, how mathematical reasoning and mathematical cognition in this respect differs from all cognition that relates to external sense objects. You can never have the latter without approaching the external sense object. So you have to take into account all the inaccuracy that comes into play. But if one wants to prove something, one does not need to draw mathematical structures, they arise in intuitive thinking. Drawing is only an illustration for dull thinking that does not want to work in itself. But one could think to oneself that one does mathematics without any illustration in inner visualization.

This profound and fundamental difference must never be overlooked: facts drawn from experience, which, due to the limitations of our senses, always contain sources of error, and logical or mathematical truths, which have absolute validity for us humans once the basic assumptions have been recognized as correct.

If a conclusion is drawn from any empirical fact by a chain of mathematical or logical propositions, this latter is only correct within the limitations under which that empirical fact was observed; only under these limitations can the final result obtained be accepted as a scientifically proven fact of experience; this is often overlooked.

Such empirical facts, when applied to phenomena of the sensory world, can lead to correct practical and theoretical results, and often they achieve such a high degree of probability that we consider this probability to be equivalent to certainty. However, from an epistemological point of view, it is not.

The further chapter is called:

All natural laws are derived from experience and therefore have only limited validity.

When we speak of natural laws according to which certain phenomena necessarily occur when certain conditions are present – or, to put it another way, certain causes necessarily have certain effects – these laws are derived from experience and can therefore only be proven to be correct within certain limits of accuracy.

We will explain this with a few examples: The astronomer says that the earth revolves around its axis at a uniform speed; what does he mean by that?

— So you can inwardly recognize certain mathematical truths, but you cannot inwardly recognize that the earth revolves around its axis. So what does the astronomer mean by that?

First of all, it means: “We have good reason to assume that the apparent daily rotation of the starry sky is an optical illusion caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis; we call the duration of such a rotation a ‘sidereal day’. To measure the duration of a sidereal day (i.e. one rotation of the Earth around its axis), we have to compare it with a period of time that we assume to be unchanging. As such a unit of time, we choose the period of oscillation of a pendulum of a certain length attached to a clock. Experience shows us that the better the conditions are met to ensure that a clock runs smoothly, and the more precisely we make the star observations on which the duration of an Earth rotation is determined, the more constant the ratio between the number of pendulum oscillations and the number of Earth rotations proves to be. With the current state of technology, the rotation of the Earth has proven to be uniform within the possible margins of error, which can only reach a small fraction of a second. We cannot claim absolute uniformity, and we have reasons to doubt it.

— We need not go into the last sentence; it can be the subject of a later consideration.

So what is actually available to external observation? On the one hand, the phenomenon that we experience as day and night on Earth, and on the other hand, the comparison with the vibrations of a pendulum clock. And since we know from other premises that the pendulum swings evenly, and that the even swing of the pendulum can be compared with what is perceived in relation to the earth, we must conclude that the earth also rotates evenly around its axis. Another explanation will be given in the next chapter in relation to chemistry.

Chemical Laws

It is similar with chemistry. The whole structure of this science rests upon the proposition: Chemical combinations can only take place in quite definite proportions by weight of their indecomposable components,

- as an example of this is given in a footnote: “For example, one unit of volume (say one liter) of oxygen combines only with two units of volume of hydrogen to form water.” So one atom of oxygen combines with two atoms of hydrogen to form one molecule of water. I have often spoken of this combination of oxygen with hydrogen to form water. Then the footnote continues: “Since an atom of oxygen is 16 times heavier than an atom of hydrogen, we can also say: one unit of weight of hydrogen combines with 8 units of weight of oxygen to form 9 units of weight of water. If there is more oxygen in the mixture than 8 times the amount by weight of hydrogen, the excess remains as 'free, uncombined oxygen; if, on the other hand, there is less oxygen, the excess hydrogen remains uncombined.” Thus, only in this very specific ratio does oxygen combine with hydrogen to form water; in water they are present in this ratio. They cannot combine in any other way.

or in technical terms: the elements form chemical compounds only in whole multiples of their atomic weights.

- This sentence contains the entire hypothesis of the atom. What is stated here is correct for the entire sensory perception, for the observation of quantities of weight and spatial relationships. But if one assumes that oxygen and hydrogen consist of the smallest parts, of atoms that cannot be divided any further, then one must assume that the same certain relationship also takes place between the atoms. And since we cannot divide atoms any further, when oxygen combines with hydrogen, a tiny part of one must combine with two tiny parts of the other, the same weight ratio must exist. If we take the atomic weight of oxygen and the atomic weight of hydrogen, we get a weight ratio, that is, one atom of oxygen combines with two atoms of hydrogen, whereby the oxygen atom is eight times heavier. The whole multiple of the atomic weight goes into the compound. What must one do to arrive at such a thing? One must do a weighing, which is also a measurement. So one goes to the sensual facts, and from the result of the weighing one gets this law, that the individual substances do not combine in any arbitrary way, but in a very definite ratio.

The empirical facts from which this law is derived are never absolutely exact (because all weighing and measuring are subject to errors of observation); if the law nevertheless expresses something absolute, then the following should be said: the more exactly the apparatus used for chemical the more carefully the methods for breaking down compound compounds into indivisible elements are constructed, the better the composition of the substance can be represented by a combination of multiples of the corresponding atomic weights of these elements.

Since the chemist is aware of the possible margins of error in his measurement operations, he knows whether or not the final result of his analysis agrees with the above law within these margins of error. If he finds a major deviation, he is so convinced of the correctness of the law for the time being that he assumes the presence of an as yet unknown element to explain the deviation found, or searches for an unnoticed source of error. Thus, in practice, he regards the law as absolutely correct, although theoretically he is aware of the relativity of this empirical law.

That is to say, if we had found from other empirical facts that two or three elements combine in a certain ratio, and if we had seen yet another relationship in the substances in which these elements are found, we would have to assume that there is something else in them.

The next chapter is called:

Physical Laws

When physics postulates the law of conservation of energy, it means that if we convert a certain amount of kinetic energy into heat and compare the numbers that express the amount of kinetic energy in its units and the amount of heat produced from it in calories (units of heat) , we obtain a ratio, which is called the “mechanical heat equivalent”; the more accurately the measurements are made, the better it is ensured that all the motion is converted into measurable heat, the more accurately the ratio obtained in different experiments agree with each other. This is the actual result of experience.

— Here we have an entire physical doctrine in a single sentence. What leads to this doctrine can be demonstrated by the very simple fact that when we rub a finger over a surface, it becomes warm. You can check this for yourself. This energy, the muscle energy you expend, is not heat at first; but heat occurs and energy is lost. What happened? Your energy has been transformed into heat. If you press here, for example, a certain amount of heat is generated; if you apply a different energy, heat is also generated. You might think that it is generated irregularly, but that is not the case. The question of the relationship between the expenditure of energy and the heat that results from it has been the subject of important research. In 1842, Julius Robert Mayer - who was treated quite badly by his peers at the time, despite the fact that he is now considered a first-rate scientist - was the first to point out that the relationship between energy and the heat that results from it is a constant. And he also tried to determine the ratio. In his essay, written in 1842, it is still stated imprecisely. Later scholars, through their research, then determined and stated the exact number. Helmholtz, who argued about the priority of the discovery, sought to prove that there is such a ratio, a constant relationship between the energy expended and the heat generated from it. The same amount of energy produces the same amount of heat, and the ratio between heat and energy expended is as constant as the ratio of the constants is constant. This is called the “mechanical equivalent of heat.” This is how you get a physical law.

The physicist goes beyond this experience when he replaces the constantly diverging observation results with a simple common formula. He is justified in doing so as long as he is aware of the conditions under which the formula is valid.

— A formula arises from the mere fact that I say: when energy is converted into heat, there is a certain relationship between energy and heat. But however many cases have been investigated, the cases that will be investigated the day after tomorrow have not yet been investigated today. So when the physicist expresses a formula in such a context, he must be aware of the scope of validity that such a formula can have.

Similarly, it can be shown that all natural laws, in their simplified form, go beyond experience.

- So that, basically, one goes beyond experience if one does not stick to the description of the individual case.

Let us now consider the next chapter in terms of its overall tendency; it is called:

Cognition Progresses from the Simple to the Complex.

The phenomena of the sensory world as they present themselves are so complex that, in order to fathom their context, man is first obliged to limit his attention to the simplest and then, step by step, to expand the field of knowledge. The apparent, uniform, circular motion of the stars offered in its simplicity the possibility of applying the absolute truths of mathematics to empirical facts of observation and thereby to predict future events by calculation.

- For future lunar or solar eclipses, as I mentioned last time, it is based on observing the stars, formulizing their movements, and then inserting certain values into these formulas. This makes it possible to predict the day of a solar eclipse in, say, 1950.

This successful activity developed the ability to express large groups of phenomena in a clear, generally valid, mathematical form for vivid presentation. In the geocentric world system, the concept of natural law was magnificently expressed. Around the Earth, resting at the center of the world, the crystal-clear celestial sphere with the countless stars attached to it rotated with unchanging uniformity. Only seven celestial bodies: the sun, moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye, have their own movement, for a vivid representation of which various combinations of circular movements were used. The result was the ingenious but complicated so-called Ptolemaic system with its cycles and epicycles.

- The earlier world system was geocentric, assuming that the Earth was at the center of the world and the other stars somehow revolved around it, and so it was observed how the world gear presented itself. You could also calculate the movements mathematically. It does not matter that one had a world view that is no longer valid among astronomers today.

With increasing accuracy of observation and expansion of knowledge, the difficulties grew to represent the observed facts in this way with computational accuracy, until finally the boldest and most momentous of all scientific hypotheses – the Copernican – solved the difficulties.

- That is how it turned out; today the circumstances are quite different. It was assumed that the Earth was at the center, the starry sky was moving around it, and the planets had their own motion. It was assumed that such a planet moved in an orbit that itself moved in an orbit. This had to be imagined in epicycles. One had to have a very complicated understanding of space, which complicated the whole worldview. Now a principle entered into human thinking that contributed significantly to the acceptance of the Copernican worldview. This was the principle that had never been more frequently cited than at that time: Nature does everything in the simplest way. But that, it was said, it had not done in the simplest way. And so it was Copernicus who simply turned the matter around. He said: Let's try putting the sun in the center and letting the other heavenly bodies move around it. And so a different astronomical world view emerged, the Copernican one. I have already told you that the Church did not allow a Catholic to believe in this system until 1822.

The earth, degraded from its position at the center of the world to a satellite of the sun, orbiting it at breakneck speed, like the other planets, while rotating on its axis like a spindle , is a notion that so completely contradicted the evidence of the senses and the teachings of the Church that the latter's efforts to nip the heretical doctrine in the bud are understandable.

The reasons that led to the acceptance of this hypothesis could initially only be fully appreciated by those who were aware of how much more simply the results of the observations were explained by this hypothesis than if the Earth were assumed to be at rest. Of course, the distances that separate us from the fixed stars had to be thought of as incomprehensibly large.

- Now an important argument follows, but one that we must make the subject of a separate consideration:

Incidentally, full proof of the correctness of the Copernican hypothesis was only provided two and a half centuries later, with the discovery of the so-called “aberration of light”, and even later with the measurement of some stellar parallaxes.

- From what parallaxes of the stars and aberration of light are, you will see that the Copernican worldview was indeed subject to a certain uncertainty until these discoveries.

The mathematical method, which had been strengthened by research into the movements of the stars, was gradually applied to the phenomena of earthly, inanimate nature, which were closer to us and therefore more complicated. Statics, the study of the balance of forces, emerged among the ancients, and then, only with the revival of the exact sciences, dynamics, the mathematical study of motion. Galileo investigated the laws of falling bodies; intuitively he recognized them, expressed them in formulas, tested and proved them through ingenious experiments, which made more precise measurements possible.

— It is pointed out that science is basically a penetration of external phenomena with mathematical ideas. The Ptolemaic world view also proceeded from the idea of extending the mathematical like a net. When you see a star, you must already have grasped the mathematical concept of the circle if you are to say that the star moves in a circle. Thus you connect the mathematical with what you see empirically. This is also done in a large part of the mechanical sciences, for example in statics, which is concerned with investigating the conditions under which equilibrium of forces is achieved, whereas dynamics investigates the conditions under which movements can be regulated, and so on. So we see how sciences are formed by interspersing what is perceived empirically with mathematics.

Finally, Newton applies the earthly laws of gravity to celestial phenomena. He proves mathematically that the same force that drives the apple to the earth - the mutual attraction of two masses of matter - forces the moon to orbit around the earth and the planets, together with the earth, to describe their orbits around the sun, the elliptical shape of which, discovered by Kepler, corresponds to the requirements of mechanics.

- Here we come to the famous apple-and-Newton anecdote, in which Newton was once sitting under an apple tree and saw an apple fall. Now we might ask: Why does the apple fall down there? For the naive person, this is not really a scientific question; but it is precisely here that the scientific person comes into play, in that what is not a question for the naive person becomes a question for the scientific person. The naive person finds it quite natural that the apple falls down. But it could also remain hanging, and it would, if not for a force exerted by the earth; the earth pulls it toward itself. If you now imagine the earth and the moon going around it, you will realize that the moon would have to fly away if another force did not counteract it. Just remember what the boys do; maybe the girls too, but I don't know. Suppose you have an object, tie it to a thread, hold the thread at one end and move it around in circles. Try to cut the thread, then the object will fly away. The moon also goes around like that. But why doesn't it fly away? At every point it is subject to this force. If the earth were not there, the moon would certainly fly away; but because the earth is there, it attracts the moon, and it attracts the moon in such a way that it does not come here to A, but comes here to B, after a certain time.

06

The Earth must always attract him in order to keep him in a circle. This is the same force, Newton said to himself, as that which acts on the apple, which the Earth draws down to itself. It also uses this force to keep the Moon in its orbit. That is the same force with which celestial bodies attract each other and maintain their orbits. We see the force in the sinking apple; the same force, the general force of attraction, gravity, is in the heavenly bodies. The rest about how this gravity works, how it decreases with distance, and so on, are details. With this Newtonian theory of gravitation, a very important chapter of the scientific world view was introduced, a chapter that was basically established until our time; only in our time has it been shaken. I have already pointed out to you how a so-called theory of relativity is shaking it. But we will talk about that another time.

It was only with the discovery of the laws of gravitation that the world view became unified and comprehensive, encompassing the entire cosmos. The lofty idea of a cause (force) that acts everywhere and with necessity, measurable in its effects, and therefore suitable for objective examination, accustoms the human mind to seek such examination everywhere and always to strive to reduce phenomena to as few basic assumptions as possible.

The progress of European science depends essentially on the application of this principle.

Indeed, much revolves around the application of this principle. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that, as a twelve-year-old boy, I was surprised by a treatise in the school program that attempted to explain the phenomena in a way other than by gravity. At the time, this gave me a lot of headaches because I was not yet very familiar with the formulas, with the integral and differential formulas, with which the treatise was interspersed. But I can still tell you what it was about if I leave all that out.

Imagine the earth here, the moon there. (There is a drawing. Drawing p.166). That is, through the empty space, the earth acts on the moon; it therefore has an effect in the distance. Now there was a lot of thinking about whether such an effect can really take place in the distance. Many were of the opinion that a body cannot act where it is not, and others said that a body is where it acts. Schramm [the author of the aforementioned essay] says: The whole of gravitation theory is mysticism, because it assumes that a world body extends into the invisible in order to attract another. Whether it is a world body or a molecule is irrelevant. They are therefore there at a certain distance. Now he claims the following: The world bodies are not alone. Space is filled with bodies. There are many more bodies. But they are not at rest either, but in perpetual motion. If we now imagine that these bodies are all in motion, then they continually collide with this body that we imagine here; bodies also collide here; but bodies also collide from within, so that the body is collided against from all sides. And now he calculates the number and effect of these collisions. You can easily see that there are smaller surfaces here for being pushed, and larger surfaces here. But because fewer pushes can take place here than out there, the bodies are driven together. You have the result of the attractive force here, composed of different pushes, because they take place in different numbers. So there is a drumming there, there is a drumming there; so there must be fewer impacts from the inside out than from the outside in. The bodies therefore tend to come together. They are driven together by the individual impacts.

This man [Schramm] tried to replace the gravitational force with a different kind of approach. He tried to eliminate mysticism from the theory of gravity.

Paul Du Bois-Reymond wrote a paper in which it was mathematically proven that such impacts, which correspond to the phenomenon of gravity, are never possible.

This is how science proceeds in its work; it attempts to arrive at principles from uncertain premises, then to overturn these principles in order to return to the old principles. If Paul Du Bois-Reymond's arguments are correct, then one must return to the older principles. So one returns to what should be rejected. This is an interesting case that can show how science works.

The progress of European science depends essentially on the application of this principle. In this way, it has gradually been possible to unify more and more and larger areas of phenomena within inanimate nature, to reduce the phenomena of mechanics, heat, light, sound, electricity, magnetism and chemical affinity to transformations of a quantitatively indestructible something that we call energy, and whose measurable size is expressed by the product of the moved mass multiplied by the square of the speed.

— That is, it is pointed out here that if you form a world view in this way, you come to the assumption of an energy in space. I have already pointed out what the naturalist Ostwald said, that it is not the slap that matters, but the energy that is applied in the process. And so, hypothetically speaking, you can have a material body here: (Something was obviously being drawn). How can you perceive it? Only by the fact that you can detect a different spatial expansion here than in the surrounding area. But that is also only a recoil, just as you, when you see a body, can perceive nothing but what affects the eyes with a certain force. Thus, matter can be replaced by energy. What we call matter can only be energy everywhere, and so observation and the mathematical law according to which the movements take place provide the basis for expressing the law of energy as the product of the mass moved and the square of the speed. Discussing this, however, would take us too far; it can be done later.

So far, no authenticated fact is known that would contradict the basic assumption of the mechanical view within inanimate nature. On the other hand, countless conclusions derived from it, whether logically or mathematically, have been confirmed by empirical , and the more certain it is that the lawful concatenation of events and the indestructibility of mass and energy are confirmed, the more precise the examination is, and the smaller the possible errors in the measurements.

It is pointed out here that a certain comprehensive physical law can be inferred from the observation. We can most easily arrive at this law by saying: We have a certain energy. We transform this into heat. Heat, in turn, can undergo another transformation - we see this in steam engines and so on - it can be converted into another energy. This transformation takes place in corresponding proportions. That is, we are led to the so-called law of conservation of energy, that is, to the law that is expressed as follows: there is a certain amount of energy in the universe. It transforms. When a certain amount of energy, say from heat, is transformed, energy disappears on the one hand, but on the other hand there is another energy. So there is a transformation of energy. This is a law that plays an important role and that has recently been extended to the entire world view. And that brings us to the next chapter:

Extension of the mechanical idea to the organic

However, this has only been proven in terms of numbers within the inorganic world, as far as we receive impressions from it through our five senses. It is understandable that this idea of the law is also applied to organic, living nature.

But the question is, how far are we entitled to do so?

That means, when we compare these energies and apply the law of energy to everything that is inanimate, inorganic nature, we can then also try to apply the same law to organic nature. That is why the next chapter is called:

Difference between Inanimate and Animated Bodies

What is the difference between an animate and an inanimate body?

We call a body animated when material changes take place in it not only according to physical and chemical laws, but in addition to these forces, which are alone active in inanimate nature, other forces also come into play that are peculiar to each species and each individual, which cause each living individual to grow, reproduce, and die.

— It is the characteristic of living beings that they grow, reproduce and die. We do not find this in the inorganic. But there is a tendency in the mechanistic-materialistic world view to apply the same principles to the living beings, to the organic, as are applied to the inorganic world.

Whether we ascribe these laws to a “life force” or some other hypothetical cause, the fact is that the gulf between the organic and the inorganic has not now been bridged and that the more precise the observations are made, the more certain it turns out that living things can only arise from living things.

Now follows a sentence that is quoted countless times; here it reads:

The opposite assumption: that the living is only a different arrangement of the non-living, is for the time being a hypothesis not confirmed by any fact.

— But I have also put forward another point of view, and it is important that, with regard to this point of view, we also consider the other. One could believe that the validity of a spiritual world view depends on the fact that it is not possible to prove how a living thing can arise from inorganic substances. But there was a long period of time when people believed in the spiritual world view, yet still thought that a homunculus could be created in a laboratory. So the spiritual world view was not always made dependent on the fact that living things cannot be created from inanimate ones. It is our time's task to emphasize that living things can only arise from living things, and that the spiritual world view depends on this. I have often said how Francesco Redi first formulated the sentence only about 200 years ago: “Living things can only come from living things,” and proved that living things can arise from non-living things. It is also important that science points out that there is a gulf between the organic and the inorganic. Ferdinand Cohn emphasized at the naturalists' meeting in Berlin that the laws used to prove the inorganic are insufficient to prove the organic. Bunge from Basel could be cited; and Julius Wiesner, the botanist, says: The further botany advances, the more it shows how a gulf exists between the inorganic and the organic. Wrangell therefore says:

We must therefore, if we wish to remain within the bounds of what is currently scientifically established, distinguish between two essentially different groups of phenomena: the animate and the inanimate.

The next chapter is called:

Consciousness

We humans are confronted by another phenomenon through inner experience: consciousness with its expressions, which are: feeling, thinking, willing.

We have no compelling reason to believe that plants also think and will, and without leaving the realm of experience, we are justified in still making the distinction within the organic realm between unconscious plants and conscious animals.< sup class=“footnote”>1The brochure continues with the footnote: “Those who do not recognize a fundamental difference between plants and animals only retain the distinction for reasons of greater clarity.”

- We have often spoken of the fact that there are people who want to blur the difference between the plant and the animal, who claim that plants attract and devour living beings. You also know of a being that attracts and then devours approaching beings: namely, a mousetrap. And yet one need not assume that a mousetrap has an animal soul in it.

All phenomena that are connected with consciousness we call “spiritual phenomena”.

- We would have to say more precisely “All phenomena that we bring to consciousness,” because in spiritual science we must also call that which is not the astral body and I spiritual. If you are only in the physical body and etheric body, then we are not dealing with consciousness, but with spiritual activity.

Thus the world, as far as we are aware of it through our five senses and our thinking, seems to contain three essentially different principles: matter, unchanging in its mass and properties, life obeying its own laws, and the spiritual.

- I would also like to point out that even philosophers who are outside of spiritual science, such as Eduard von Hartmann and others, have spoken of an unconscious spiritual, so that one... [gap in the transcript]

In science that has the inorganic as its object, the assumption that cause and effect are in a fixed numerical relationship to each other proves to be true, as already stated, that all happenings within this world of the inanimate follow the strict law of necessity.

In accordance with the nature of every science, biological science, which has the study of life phenomena as its object, starts from the same assumption. However, since measurement, and consequently the numerical examination of the lawful course of changes (i.e. of events), is not applicable to many life phenomena, the rule of the necessary, unalterable connection between cause and effect cannot be proven beyond doubt in the field of biology. But there is no reason to doubt it, and the inner probability, as well as the analogy with what is certainly known to us, speaks in favor of it. In any case, this assumption must be taken as the basis of all scientific research, for the task of such research is indeed to discover these laws.

Now, in various lectures, I have pointed out how, in recent times, efforts have been made to trace numerical constancy right up to animal and human phenomena. Rudner, for example, tried to show how much heat energy is contained in the food that a particular animal receives; and then he tried to show how much heat the animal develops in its life phenomena. From the constant number that results, it can be seen that the heat absorbed with the food reappears in the activity. The activity would be converted food.

Another researcher extended this to the soul by testing a number of students. The principle of applying numerical relationships is quite good. This can be applied to all these phenomena. We will talk tomorrow about the extent to which this is entirely correct. But logically, the matter is usually kept very short-sighted, because someone could, according to the same logical laws as Rubner, check how the monetary values or the equivalents for them that are carried into the bank correspond to those that are carried out. They must correspond. If one were to conclude from this that there are no people in the bank who do this, that would certainly be wrong. If one examines the food that is introduced into the organism and the energy that comes out again and finds them corresponding to each other, one should not assume that there is nothing of a spiritual nature involved.

Then there is another chapter:

Spiritual phenomena

If we consider spiritual phenomena, they are, for ordinary sensory observation, linked to certain material conditions, and this could give rise to the materialistic view that spiritual phenomena would not exist at all without the material basis of a living being with its brain, nerves, etc.

— This assumption has become so strong that Du Bois-Reymond said in one of his speeches that if one wants to speak of a world soul, one must prove where the world brain is. So he said: If you want to speak of a soul of the world, you must prove where the brain of the world is. So much has it been reinterpreted in the materialistic sense, because if you observe man in the physical world, you see that everything of a spiritual nature is bound to the brain.

Most people have always had an inner aversion to this view, and the belief in the independent existence of spiritual beings and in their interaction with the sensory world we are familiar with has been expressed in the most diverse forms of religious and spiritualistic ideas.

A great many facts that are supposed to be direct confirmations of such a view are certainly based on deception and delusion.

- We have indeed gone through some of these delusions and this madness here in recent times. It is of great importance that he who stands on the ground of the spiritual scientific world view is free from deception and delusion.

Recently, however, well-documented factual material has been brought together which, in order to explain it, makes the assumption of a spiritual world appear to be the most probable hypothesis. It would now be unscientific to simply dismiss the latter – as happened just a few decades ago.

And now this will be discussed further in the following chapter:

Man's Occult Abilities

If numerous facts that can be perceived with the ordinary senses already suggest, if not demand, a spiritualistic interpretation, then there is the additional fact that many credible people claim to have other organs of perception in addition to the five senses that are not developed in most people, but which allow them to enter into direct contact with the spiritual world.

That the five senses of man do not exhaust all possibilities of perception can be assumed a priori and is confirmed by many phenomena in the animal world. There is therefore no justification for disputing it, but it is a scientific duty to examine the facts carefully and without prejudice, which is indeed now being done by many outstanding representatives of the exact sciences.

For very many people who have occult experiences themselves or hear about them from credible individuals, the existence of spiritual worlds is a proven fact, and the possibility of gaining insight into the mysteries of the world by penetrating into them is beyond doubt.

From time immemorial, teachings have been formed from such supposed or real insights, which are sometimes spread as secret teachings among the chosen few, and sometimes as openly taught religious systems. Of the major world religions, European culture is most closely interwoven with the Christian doctrine.

It is important that we use such a discussion to tie in with how spiritual science views it. Today, when spiritual science takes into account everything that human development has gone through to date, it initially does not so much emphasize that there are already other organs of perception in addition to the five senses of the human being — you know, if you look back on much of what we have covered, that there are other organs — but rather emphasizes that other organs of perception can be formed. In 'How to Know Higher Worlds', it is described what one has to do so that such organs can be formed. It is important that today's spiritual science, in a different sense, but still in a certain sense, claims the same universality as the other science. The other science tries to gain knowledge that applies to all people. Spiritual science seeks to develop such organs of perception that can be developed by all people. Just as the scientist can test what is claimed, so can the one who develops the spiritual organs test what spiritual science claims. Ordinary science relies on those abilities that already exist, while spiritual science relies on those that can be developed.

Now let us consider the principle by which abilities are developed. You will find a detailed description of how these abilities are developed in 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. I will just briefly explain how to understand such abilities.

When a symphony is played, there are actually nothing more than air vibrations in the room. These air vibrations can also be calculated mathematically. And if you did enough calculations, you could mathematically express all the movement that takes place in the instrument and in the air as the sum of the facts of movement. You could abstract completely from the symphony you are listening to and say: I don't care about Beethoven's symphony; I want to be a mathematician and investigate what motion states prevail there. — If you tempt it that way, you would have the symphony canceled and only the motion states. But you will have to admit that the symphony is still there, too. It cannot be denied and is something other than a mere image of the states of motion. What happened there? It was actually only Beethoven who, in a certain way, caused such states of motion to arise. But that does not yet make a real symphony.

If you now imagine that a person applies all those abilities that are otherwise used to recognize the external physical world in order to obtain such laws as the intuitive laws of mathematics and logic, that is, the laws that a person develops by being a thinking person, and if treating himself with these laws in the same way that the composer treats the states of movement of the air, when he does not accept the abilities of mathematics and logic and other abilities as they are, but works on them inwardly, then something arises in him that is something other than the empirical abilities of logic, mathematics and empirical research. If you compare this and the treatment that the composer applies to the air with what one does inwardly, and consider what comes out, then you have the possibility to say: There is a person who has the ability to do empirical research, the ability to form mathematical and logical judgments, that is just like a sum of states of motion that are in the instruments and in the air. But if you treat these in a certain way, a symphony, a musical work of art, arises. The laws by which you treat yourself are just those that are given in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Then something arises that first develops, that is a consequence of human activity. And just as someone who has a musical ear does not just perceive the vibrations of instruments and air, so someone who has developed their inner senses perceives not only the sensual, mathematical and logical world, but also the spiritual world. This education of something new on the basis of what already exists leads to one working one's way into a spiritual world. Thus, the point for spiritual science is to recognize that the abilities that a person already has can be further developed, just as the movements of the instruments and of the air can be further developed. It is on the basis of this further development that a person can develop an understanding of the world that gives him something he would not perceive without this further development. The essential thing about spiritual science is that it points to the possibility of further developing certain abilities; not to the existence of abilities already present, but to the further development of them. And then Wrangell is right when he says that the same thing is pointed out in the various religious systems as in the secret teachings.

The next chapter is called:

The Essence of Jesus' Teachings

If we regard the common feature in all the countless interpretations of Jesus' teachings as the essence of Christianity, then it consists in the “glad tidings” that the Creator and Ruler of the Universe is a Father to man, whom He created in His own image , is a dear Father, that love for God and fellow human beings is the highest moral commandment, that the soul of man is immortal and that a fate is prepared for it after death that corresponds to the moral behavior of man during his life.

- Just as we have developed the essence of Christianity with the instrument of spiritual science, it must be said that what is expressed here is indeed the content of Jesus' teaching, but not the essence of Christianity. The essence of Christianity consists in the fact that a development took place in time, in that a fertilization of the man Jesus with the Godhead took place, that is, that a being that had not been connected with the earth until then connected itself with the earth through the well-known process, whereby time is divided into a pre-Christian and a post-Christian period. This realization of the appearance of the Christ-being on Earth belongs to the essence of Christianity.

The obvious aberrations into which the organized Christian communities, the historical churches, have fallen, have brought their dogmas into opposition to some firmly established scientific achievements, thereby causing the conflict between faith and knowledge, religion and science, which is corroding the spiritual life of European culture.

This situation explains the interest that has turned to other religious systems that claim not only to be in harmony with science, but also to expand it. Among these teachings, Theosophy deserves special attention. Since H.P. Blavatsky drew the attention of European culture to this teaching, which originated in India, it has found various representations.

Whenever the word “theosophy” is mentioned, it is important to draw attention to what spiritual science is and what the theosophical worldview is.

I think I will be able to finish tomorrow. However, I still need to discuss the extent to which Blavatsky's teachings originated in India and the extent to which they did not, and in doing so, I need to address some of the things that separate spiritual science from much of what is called Theosophy. So I will talk about that tomorrow.

Berlin, February 15, 1909

You will have been able to see from the one lecture given here on the more complicated question of reincarnation that the spiritual scientific view of the world continues its progression. Hence, what in the beginning could be presented as elementary truths is undergoing a metamorphosis, so that gradually we rise to ever higher truths. It is therefore correct to present general cosmic truths in their initial stage in as simple and elementary a form as possible. Thereafter, however, it is also necessary to advance slowly from the simple ABC's to the higher truths, because you will agree that through these higher truths we gradually attain what Spiritual Science intends to give us: the opportunity to understand and penetrate the very world that surrounds us in the sentient—the physical—sphere. Now it is true that we have a long way to go in our ascent before we shall be able to somehow draw the connecting links in the spiritual lines and forces that exist behind the world of the senses. But you will agree that this or that phenomenon in our existence has become clearer and easier to explain just by what we have been discussing in the last few lectures. So today we want to advance a little in this specific area and again take as our subject matter the more complicated questions of reincarnation—of reembodiment.

Above all, we want to see clearly that there are differences among the beings who occupy leading positions in the human evolution of the earth. We have to distinguish such leading individualities in the course of human evolution who, as it were, developed from the beginning with humanity on this earth as it exists, but with the important distinction that they progressed more rapidly. We might put it this way: If we go back in time to the most ancient Lemurian Age, we find the most varied stages of development among the human beings then incarnated. All the souls incarnated at that time have been repeatedly reincarnated—reembodiedduring the successive Atlantean and post-Atlantean periods. The speed with which these souls developed varied. Some souls are alive that developed relatively slowly as they went through various incarnations; they still have long distances to traverse in the future. But then there are also those souls who have developed rapidly and who, one might say, have utilized their incarnations in a more productive way. They are now on a high plane of soul-spiritual development, one that will be reached by normal human beings only in the far-distant future. But as we dwell on this sphere of soul life, we can nevertheless say this: No matter how advanced these individual souls may be, however far they may tower above normal human beings, yet within our earthly evolution they have made a journey similar to the rest of humanity, except that they have advanced more rapidly.

In addition to these leading individualities, who in this sense are like other human beings but stand on a higher plane, there are also other individualities—other beings—who have not gone through various incarnations as have the other human beings in the course of human evolution. We can visualize what lies at the bottom of this when we tell ourselves the following: There have been beings in the time of the Lemurian evolution under consideration—beings who no longer needed to descend into physical embodiment as the other human beings just described. They were beings capable of accomplishing their development in higher, more spiritual realms who did not need to descend into corporeal bodies for their further progress. However, in order to intervene in the course of human evolution, such beings can nevertheless descend vicariously into corporeal bodies such as our own. Thus it can happen that such a being appears; if we test it clairvoyantly in regard to the soul, we cannot say, as we can of other human beings, that we trace it back in time and discover it in a previously fleshly incarnation, then trace it farther back and find it again in another incarnation, and so on. Instead, we will have to admit that in tracing the soul of such a being back through the course of time, we may not arrive at an earlier fleshly incarnation of such a being at all. However, if we do, it is only because the being is able to descend repeatedly in certain intervals in order to incarnate vicariously in a human body.

Such a spiritual being who descends in this way into a human body in order to intervene in evolution as a human being is called an “avatar” in the East; such a being gains nothing from this embodiment for himself and experiences nothing that is of significance for the world. This, then, is the distinction between a leading being that has emanated from human evolution and beings whom we call avatars. The latter reap no benefit for themselves from their physical embodiments, or even from one embodiment to which they subject themselves; they enter a physical body for the blessing and progress of all human beings. To repeat—an avatar being can enter a human body just once or several times in succession; but when it does, it is then something different from any other human individuality.

The greatest avatar being who has lived on earth, as you can gather from the spirit of our lectures here, is the Christ—the Being whom we designated as the Christ, and who took possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth when he was thirty years of age. This Being, who did not come into contact with our earth until the beginning of our era, was incarnated for three years in a body of flesh and has since that time been in contact with the astral, i.e., the spiritual, sphere of our super-sensible world; this Being has a unique significance as an avatar being. Although other, lower avatar beings can reincarnate several times, it would be in vain for us to seek the Christ-Being in an earlier human embodiment on earth. The difference between the Christ and the lower avatars does not lie in the fact that the latter incarnate repeatedly, but that they derive no benefits for themselves from their earthly embodiments. Human beings give the world nothing; they only take from it. By contrast, these beings only give; they take nothing from the earth. To gain a perfect understanding of this idea, you have to distinguish between such a lofty avatar being as the Christ and lower avatar beings. Such avatar beings can have the most varied missions on earth; and in discussing one of those missions, we want to avoid speculative language and take a concrete case as an illustration for such a mission.

You all know from the ancient Hebrew story of Noah that a large part of post-Atlantean, post-Noah humanity traces its ancestry back to the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japhet. It is not our purpose today to elucidate what Noah and these three tribal ancestors represent in other respects. We simply want to elucidate here that Hebrew literature, speaking of Shem as one of Noah's sons, traces the whole tribe of the Semites back to him as its ancestor. A genuinely occult perception of such a matter, of such a story, is always grounded in deeper truths. Those who are able to conduct occult research into such things know the following about Shem, the ancestor of the Semites.

When such a personality is destined to become the forefather of an entire tribe, care must be taken from his birth—and even earlier—to insure that he can become such a forebear. Now, what preparations were necessary to ensure that an individuality such as Shem could indeed become the forefather of a whole people or tribal community? In the case of Shem it was done by giving him a quite specially prepared etheric body. We know that when human beings are born into this world, they structure around their individuality an etheric or life body, along with the other members of their being. A special etheric being must somehow be prepared for the ancestor of a tribe because it has to be, as it were, the prototype of an etheric body for all the descendants in succeeding generations. And so it happens that we have in such a tribal individuality a typical etheric body, a prototype as it were. Because of blood relationship in successive generations, the etheric bodies of all descendants of the tribe are in a certain sense copies of the ancestor's etheric body. Thus, every Semitic person's etheric body had something like a copy of Shem's etheric body woven into it. Now, by what means is such a condition brought about in the course of human evolution?

Let us look at Shem more carefully. We find that his etheric body received its archetypal form because an avatar had woven himself into it. It was not such a high avatar that we can compare him with other avatar beings, but still a lofty avatar descended into his etheric body. This avatar individuality was not connected with Shem's astral body nor with his ego, however, but was woven into his etheric body alone. From this example we can study what it means when an avatar being partakes in the constitution and composition of a human being. What does it mean, then, when a human being who, like Shem, has the mission to be the ancestor of a whole people should in a way have the essence of an avatar woven into his body? It means that every time the essence of an avatar is woven into the soul of a fleshly being, any one member—or even several members—of the super-sensible constitution of this human being are capable of being multiplied and split into many parts.

The fact that an avatar being was interwoven with Shem's etheric body made it possible for countless copies of the original to come into being and to be woven into all the human beings who became the descendants of this ancestor in subsequent generations. Thus, the descent of an avatar being is, among other things, significant in that it contributes to the multiplication of one or several members of the being who is animated by the avatar. As you can see from this, an especially precious etheric body was present in Shem, an archetypal etheric body, prepared by an exalted avatar and then woven into Shem so that it could descend in many copies to all those who were destined for consanguinity with him.

As we have already said in a previous lecture, a spiritual economy exists by virtue of the fact that something of special value is preserved and carried over into the future. We have heard not only that the ego reincarnates but also that the astral body and the etheric body are capable of doing the same. Aside from the fact that countless copies of Shem's etheric body came into being, his own etheric body was also preserved in the spiritual world because it could later be useful in the mission of the Hebrew people. Remember that all the peculiarities of the Hebrews had originally come to expression in this etheric body, and if at any time something of special importance was to happen to them—if one of them should be assigned a special task or mission, then this could be best accomplished by an individual who bore the etheric body of the ancestor within himself. As a matter of fact, an individual bearing the etheric body of Shem later played an important part in the history of the Hebrew people. We have here indeed one of those wonderous complications in the evolution of humankind that can explain so much to us. We are dealing here with an exalted individuality who, as it were, was compelled to condescend in order to be able to speak to the Hebrews in a comprehensible manner and to give them the strength necessary for a special mission. By analogy, if an intellectually advanced individual had to speak to a primitive tribe, he would have to learn its language, but this does not mean that the language in question would elevate him personally; all the individual would have to do is to take the trouble of acquainting himself with the language. In this same way, an exalted individuality had to make a strong personal effort to become one with Shem's etheric body to be able to give a definite impulse to the ancient Hebrew people. This personality was the very Melchizedek¹² you find in Biblical history. In a way, he wore Shem's etheric body so that later he could give Abraham the impulse that you find so beautifully in the Bible. What was contained in the individuality of Shem was multiplied because an avatar being was incarnated in it, and all this became interwoven with all the other etheric bodies of the Hebrews. In addition, Shem's own etheric body was preserved in the spiritual world so that it could be borne at a later time by Melchizedek, who was to give the Hebrews an important impulse through Abraham.

This is how finely interwoven the facts behind the physical world are, facts that are needed to elucidate to us what happens in the physical world. Only by being able to point to such facts of a spiritual nature that are behind the facts of the physical world do we learn to interpret history. History can never become comprehensible through considering physical facts alone.

Now, if the descent of an avatar being affects the soul-spiritual components of the human being in that he or she becomes the bearer of the avatar's soul, and if this results in multiplication and transmission of the archetypal copy onto others, then this phenomenon becomes especially significant with the appearance of Christ on earth. Because the avatar essence of Christ lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, it became possible not only that the etheric body but also that the astral body and even that the ego were multiplied innumerable times; by ego, I mean the “I” as an impulse that was kindled in the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth when Christ entered his threefold sheath. However, foremost in our consideration is here the fact that the etheric and astral bodies could be multiplied because of the presence of the avatar being.

Now, one of the most significant turning points in human history was the appearance of the Christ principle in earthly evolution. What I have told you about Shem is actually typical and characteristic of pre-Christian times. When an etheric or an astral body is multiplied in this way, the copies of the original are usually transmitted to those people who are related by blood to the ancestor who had the prototype. Hence, the copies of Shem's etheric body were transmitted to the members of the Hebrew tribe, but when the Christ Avatar Being appeared, all this was changed. The etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth were multiplied and the copies preserved until they could be used in the course of human evolution. However, they were not bound up with this or that nationality or tribe. But when in the course of time a human being appeared who, irrespective of nationality, was mature and suitable enough to have his own etheric or astral body interwoven with a copy of the etheric or astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, then those bodies could be woven into that particular person's being. Thus we see how it became possible in the course of time for all kinds of people to have copies of the astral or etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their souls.

The intimate history of Christian development is connected with this fact. What is normally described as the history of Christian development is a sum of entirely external occurrences. It is for this reason that far too little attention is given to what is most important—the distinction of actual periods in Christian development. Anyone who can look more deeply into the developmental progress of Christianity will easily perceive that the manner in which Christianity was disseminated was different in the first few centuries from that of later centuries in the Christian era. In the first few Christian centuries the dissemination of Christianity was, in a way, bound up with everything that could be gained from the physical plane. We need only look at the early teachers of Christianity to see how they emphasized physical memories, physical connections, and everything that had remained in a physical state. Just consider how Irenaeus,¹³ a man who contributed so much in the first century to the dissemination of Christian doctrine in various countries, stressed that memories should extend back to those who had listened to the disciples of the Apostles. It was important to prove through such physical recollections that Christ Himself had actually taught in Palestine. It was specially emphasized, for example, that Papias¹⁴ himself had sat at the feet of the Apostles' disciples. Even the places were shown and described where such personalities had sat—people who could still be cited as eyewitnesses to the fact that Christ had lived in Palestine. The physical progress in memory was what was especially emphasized in the first few centuries of Christianity.

How much stress remained on everything that was physical can be seen from the words of the old St. Augustine¹⁵ living at the end of this era, who said: “Why do I believe in the truths of Christianity? Because the authority of the Catholic Church compels me to do so.” To him, the physical authority's telling him that something exists in the physical world was the important and essential thing. The determining factor for him was that a corporate body had preserved itself within which one personality is linked back to another until one arrives at one who, like Peter, was a companion of Christ. Hence, we can see that in the dissemination of Christianity during the early centuries, it was the documents and the impressions of the physical plane to which the greatest importance was given.

All that changes after the time of St. Augustine and into the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. It was then no longer possible to appeal to living memories or to consult the documents of the physical plane because they were too far removed from the present. Something entirely different was present in the whole mood and the disposition of the human beings, especially the Europeans, who were then embracing Christianity. It was the feeling, the direct knowledge, of the existence of Christ, of His death on the cross, and of His continuing life. From the fourth and fifth up to the tenth and twelfth centuries, a large number of people would have considered it foolish to be told that they could doubt the events in Palestine because they knew better. People like these were especially common in European countries, and they had always been able to experience inwardly in miniature a kind of Pauline revelation, that is the experience through which Saul became Paul on the road to Damascus.

What made it possible for a number of people in those centuries to be able to receive revelations about the events in Palestine that were in a sense clairvoyant? It was possible because the multiplied copies of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth had been preserved and were in these centuries woven into the etheric bodies of a large number of people who wore these multiplied copies as one would wear a garment. Their etheric body did not consist entirely of the copy of Jesus' etheric body, but it had had woven into it a copy of the original. There were indeed human beings in those centuries who were able to have such an etheric body and who could thereby have an immediate knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ.

All this, however, had the effect that the Christ image was no longer associated with the externally historical and physical transmission of the story. The highest degree of such disassociation is evident in that wonderful literary work of the ninth century, the Heliand.¹⁶ This poem was written down by a seemingly simple Saxon in the time of Louis the Pious, who reigned from 814–840. The Saxon's astral body and ego could not match what was in his etheric body because the latter had had woven into it a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. This simple Saxon priest, the author of the poem, was certain from immediate clairvoyant vision that the Christ existed on the astral plane and that He was the same Christ who had been crucified at Golgotha! And because this was a direct certainty for him, he no longer needed to resort to historical documents or to physical mediation in order to know that the Christ does exist. Therefore, he describes the Christ detached from the whole Palestinian setting and from the peculiarities of the Jewish character. This poet, then, depicts the Christ as if He were something like a leader of a Central European or Germanic tribe, and he describes those who surround Hirn as His followers—the Apostles—as if they were vassals of a Germanic prince. The entire external scenery has been changed, but the structure of the events and the essential and eternal aspects of the Christ figure remain the same. This poet did not have to hold rigidly to historical events when he was speaking of the Christ because he had a direct knowledge of Him that was built upon a foundation as important as a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. What he had acquired as immediate knowledge, he draped with a different external setting. Even as we have been able to describe this writer of the Heliand poem as one of the peculiar personalities who had a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into his own etheric body, we can find other personalities in this period who also carried a copy within themselves. We see, therefore, that the most important things take place behind the physical occurrences and that these things can explain history to us in an intimate way.

If we continue to trace Christian development, we come to the period from about the eleventh or twelfth up to the fifteenth century, and it is here that we discover an entirely different mystery that now carried evolution forward. If you remember, first it was the memory of what had taken place on the physical plane, followed by the etheric element being woven into the etheric bodies of the pillars of Christianity in Central Europe. But later, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, it was numerous copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth that became interwoven with the astral bodies of the most important pillars of Christianity. In those days the human beings had egos capable of forming extremely false ideas about all sorts of things, yet in their astral bodies a direct force of strength, of devotion, and of the immediate certainty of holy truths was alive. Such people possessed deep fervor, an absolutely direct conviction, and also in some circumstances the ability to prove this conviction. What sometimes must strike us as being so strange especially in these personalities is that their ego development was not at all equal to that of their astral bodies because the latter had copies of the astral body of Jesus Christ woven into them. Their ego behavior often seemed grotesque, but the world of their sentiments, feelings, and fervor was magnificent and exalted.

Francis of Assisi,¹⁷ for example, was such a personality. We study his life and cannot, as modern people, understand what his conscious ego was; yet we cannot help having the most profound reverence for the richness and range of his feelings and for all that he did. This is no longer a problem once we adopt the perspective mentioned above. He was one of those who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own astral bodies, and this enabled him to accomplish what he did. Many of his followers in the Order of the Franciscans, with its servants and minorites, had such copies interwoven with their astral bodies in a similar fashion.

All the strange and otherwise mysterious phenomena of that time will become lucid and clear to you as soon as you set this mediation in world evolution between that time and previous times properly before the eye of your soul. The important distinction that must be made for these people of the Middle Ages is whether what was woven into their souls from the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth contained more of what we call the sentient soul, more of the intellectual soul, or more of the consciousness soul. This distinction is important because, as you know, the astral body must be envisioned as containing, in a certain sense, all of these three components, as well as the ego, which it encompasses. What was woven into Francis of Assisi was, as it were, the sentient soul of Jesus of Nazareth, and the same is true in the case of that remarkable personality Elisabeth of Thüringen, who was born in 1207.¹⁸ Knowing this secret of her life will enable you to follow the course of her life with your whole soul. She, too, was a personality who had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into her sentient soul. The riddle of the human being is solved for us by means of just such knowledge.

If you know that during this time the most diverse personalities had sentient soul, intellectual soul, or consciousness soul woven into them as copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, you will above all comprehend that little understood and much maligned science that has become known as scholasticism.¹⁹ What tasks did the scholastics set for themselves? They set out to find, on the basis of judgment and intellect, verifications and proof of those phenomena for which historical links and physical mediation did not exist and which could no longer be known with the direct clairvoyant certainty possible in previous centuries through the interwoven etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. These people set themselves the task by saying: Tradition has communicated to us that the Being known as Jesus Christ has appeared in history and that, in addition, other spiritual beings of whom religious documents bear witness have intervened in human religion. Then, from the intellectual soul, that is from the intellectual element of the copy of Jesus Christ's astral body, they set themselves the task of proving with subtle and clearly developed concepts all that their literature contained as mystery truths. Thus arose the strange science that attempted what was probably the most penetrating intellectual venture ever undertaken in the history of human thought. One may think of the content of scholasticism as one wishes, but for several centuries this school of thought developed the capacity of human reflection and thus put its imprint on the culture of the time. Scholasticism accomplished this by an extremely subtle discernment between and outlining of various concepts. As a result, between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries the school implanted into humanity the capacity to think with acute and penetrating logic.

The special conviction that Christ can be found in the human ego arose among those who were imbued more strongly with the copy of the consciousness soul of Jesus of Nazareth, because the ego functions in the consciousness soul. Because these individuals had within them the element of consciousness soul from the astral body of Jesas of Nazareth, the inner Christ rose resplendent within their souls, and through this astral body they came to know that the Christ within them was the Christ Himself. These were the individuals whom you know as Meister Eckhart,²⁰ Johannes Tauler,²¹ and all other pillars of medieval mysticism.

Here you see how the most diverse manifestations of the astral body, multiplied by the fact that the exalted Avatar Being of the Christ had entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, continued to work in the following age and brought about the real development of Christianity. This is an important transition in other respects as well. We have seen how humanity in the course of its evolution was otherwise dependent upon having incorporated within it these copies of the Jesus of Nazareth Being. In the early centuries people had existed who depended entirely on the physical plane; then in the following centuries there were human beings who were susceptible to having the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their own etheric bodies. Later, human beings, one might say, became more oriented toward the astral body, and that is how the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth could now be incorporated into them. The astral body is the bearer of judgment, and it was the human capacity to judge that was awakened between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries.

This awakening of the astral body can also be observed in another phenomenon. Before the twelfth century, the depths of mystery contained in the Holy Communion were especially well understood. It was not widely discussed, but rather was accepted in a manner that enabled a human being to feel everything that was contained in the words, “This is My body and this is My blood.” Christ meant with these words that He would be united with the earth and become its planetary spirit. And because flour is the most precious thing on earth, bread became for human beings the body of Christ, and the sap flowing through plants and vines became to them something of His blood. Through this knowledge, the value of the Lord's Supper was not diminished but was, on the contrary, enhanced. People in the early centuries felt something of these infinite depths, and they continued to do so up to the time when the power of judgment was awakened in the astral body. It was only then that disputes began about the meaning of the Lord's Supper. Just think about the discussions about the meaning of the Lord's Supper among the Hussites, Lutherans, and the dissenting Zwinglians and Calvinists.²² They would not have been possible in earlier times when people still had an immediate, direct knowledge of the Lord's Supper!

Here we see verified a great historical law that should be of special significance to the spiritual scientist: As long as people knew what the Lord's Supper was, they did not discuss it. They began to discuss it only after they had lost direct knowledge of it. Let us consider the fact that people discuss a particular matter as an indication that they do not really know it. Where knowledge exists, knowledge is narrated, and there is no particular desire for discussion. Where people feel like discussing something, they have, as a rule, no knowledge of the truth. Discussion begins only when there is a lack of knowledge, and it is always and everywhere the sign of decline regarding the seriousness of a subject matter when discussions about it are to be heard. Discussions portend the decline of a particular trend. It is very important that time and again in Spiritual Science we learn to understand that the wish to discuss something should actually be construed as a sign of ignorance. On the other hand, we should cultivate the opposite of discussion, and that is the will to learn and the will to gradually comprehend what is in question.

Here we see an important historical fact verified by the development of Christianity itself. But we can also learn something else when we see how, in the centuries of Christianity characterized above, the power of judgment, this keen intellectual wisdom, is further developed. Indeed, when we focus our attention on realities and not on dogmas, we can learn how much Christianity has accomplished since its inception. Take scholasticism. What has become of it when we look not at its content, but perceive it as a means of cultivating and disciplining our mental faculties? Do you want to know? Scholasticism has become modern natural science! The latter is inconceivable without the reality of medieval Christian science. It is not only that Copernicus was a canon and Giordano Bruno²³ a Dominican, but that all thought forms with which natural objects have been tackled since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are nothing but what was developed and nurtured by the Christian science of the Middle Ages from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries. There are people today who look up passages in scholastic books, compare them with recent findings of natural history, and then say Haeckel and others aver something entirely different. Such people do not live in reality but in the world of abstractions! Realities are what matters! The work of Haeckel, Darwin, DuBois-Reymond, Huxley,²⁴ and others would all have been impossible had the Christian science of the Middle Ages not preceded them. These modern scientists owe their mode of thought to the Christian science of the Middle Ages. That is the reality, and it is from that science that humanity has learned to think in the true sense of the word.

But there is more. Read David Friedrich Strauss²⁵ and try to observe his mode of thinking. Try to realize what his chain of reasoning is: how he wants to present the entire life of Jesus of Nazareth as a myth. Do you know where the keenness of his thinking comes from? He gets it from the Christian science of the Middle Ages. Everything used today to combat Christianity so radically has been taken over from the Christian world of learning in the Middle Ages. Actually, today there cannot be an opponent of Christianity of whom it could not easily be shown that he would be unable to think as he does had he not learned his thought forms from the Christian science of the Middle Ages. If one considered that fact, one would indeed look at world history as it really is.

What, then, has happened since the sixteenth century? Since that time the human ego has increasingly come into prominence and with it human egotism, and with egotism, materialism. Everything that the ego had absorbed and acquired was gradually unlearned and forgotten. Human beings now were compelled to limit themselves to what the ego could observe and to what the physical sensory system was able to give to the ordinary intelligence. That is all the ego could take into its inner sanctuary. Culture since the sixteenth century has become the culture of egotism.

What must now enter into the ego? Christian evolution has passed through a development in the physical, etheric, and astral bodies and has made its way as far as the ego. Now it must take into this ego the mysteries and secrets of Christianity itself. Following a time when the ego learned to think through Christianity and then apply the thoughts to the external world, it must now become possible for the ego to become a Christ-receptive organ. This ego must now rediscover the wisdom which is the primordial wisdom of the Great Avatar, of Christ Himself. And how is this to be done? It must be done through a more profound understanding of Christianity through Spiritual Science. Having been carefully prepared through the three stages of physical, etheric, and astral development, the inner organ would now have to open itself to its human host so that he or she could henceforth look into the spiritual environment with the eye that the Christ can open for us.

Christ descended to earth as the greatest avatar being. Let us view this in the right perspective and try to look at the world as we would be able to do after we have received the Christ into ourselves. Then we would find the whole process of our world evolution illuminated and pervaded by the Christ Being. That is to say, we would describe how the physical body of human beings originated on Old Saturn,²⁶ how the etheric body made its appearance on Old Sun, the astral body on Old Moon, and the ego on the Earth. Finally, we would find how everything tends toward the goal of becoming ever more independent and individual in order to incorporate into the evolution of the earth the very wisdom that passes from the Sun to the earth. In a way, Christ and Christianity must become the perspective center of a cosmic view for the liberated ego.

So you see how Christianity has gradually prepared itself for what it is to become. In the early centuries the Christian received Christianity with his physical ability to cognize truth, later with his etheric capacity, and throughout the Middle Ages with his astral capacity to cognize truth. Then Christianity in its true form was repressed for a while until the ego had been trained by the three bodies in the course of Christian evolution. But after this ego had learned how to think and direct its vision to the objective world, it is now mature enough to perceive in all phenomena of the objective world the spiritual facts that are so intimately linked with the Central Being, the Christ. Thus, the ego is now capable of beholding the Christ everywhere in the most diverse manifestations as the foundation of the objective world.

Here we stand at the point of departure for spiritual-scientific comprehension and perception of Christianity, and we begin to understand what a task and mission has been assigned to our movement for spiritual knowledge. In so doing, the reality of this mission becomes evident to us. Just as the individual human being has a physical, an etheric, and an astral body in addition to his or her ego, so it is with the historical development of Christianity, and both continue to rise to ever more lofty heights. We might say Christianity, too, has physical, etheric, and astral bodies, as well as an ego—an ego that can even deny its origin as it does in our time. To be sure, an ego can become egotistic, but it still remains an ego that can receive the true Christ Being into itself, thereby rising to ever higher stages of existence. What the human being is in particular, the great world is in its totality; and that includes its historical evolution.

If we look at the matter in this way, a perspective of the far-distant future opens itself before us from the spiritual-scientific point of view, and we know this perspective can touch our hearts and fill them with enthusiasm. More and more it becomes clear to us just what it is we have to do, and then we realize that we are not groping in the dark. This is so because we have not devised ideas that we intend to project into the future in an arbitrary fashion, but we intend to harbor and follow only those ideas that have been gradually prepared through centuries of Christian development. It is true that only after the physical, etheric, and astral bodies had come into existence could the ego make its appearance; now it is to be developed little by little to spirit self, life spirit, and spirit man. By the same token, modern human beings with their ego form and present thinking, could have developed only from the astral, etheric, and physical form of Christianity. Christianity has become ego. Just as truly as this was the development of the past, so it is equally true that the ego form of humanity can appear only after the astral and the etheric forms of Christianity have been developed. Christianity will develop on into the future. It will offer humanity far greater things, and the Christian development and way of life will arise in a new form. The transformed astral body will appear as the Christian spirit self, the transformed etheric body as the Christian life spirit. And in a radiant perspective of the future of Christianity, spirit man shines forth before our souls as the star toward which we strive, illuminated and glowing throughout with the spirit of Christianity.

• 12. Melchizedek was the king of Salem and “Priest of the Most High God,” who blessed Abraham after the defeat of Chedorlaomer (Genesis 14:18-20) and who was later to typify the priesthood of the future Messiah (Psalms 110:4; Heb. 5-7).
• 13. St. Irenaeus (c. 125-c. 202) was a Greek theologian, Bishop of Lyons in 177–78, and the first Father of the Catholic Church to systematize Christian doctrine.
• 14. Papias was a second-century Christian theologian and Apostolic Father of the Church.
• 15. St. Augustine (354–430) was the Bishop of Hippo in what is now Algiers and one of the four Latin fathers. His famous book The City of God is a justification of Christianity against pagan critics, and his Confessions is a classic of Christian mysticism.
• 16. Heliand, the title of the epic (c. 825) is an Old Saxon word for German Heiland = the Savior. The poem had 5,983 lines and was written in alliterative verse.
• 17. The Italian St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) was one of the greatest Christian saints and founder of the Franciscan Order.
• 18. Elisabeth of Thüringen (1207–1231), the young widow of a German margrave who had died on a crusade in 1227, chose a life of poverty, humility, and charity and became the typical saint of the late Middle Ages.
• 19. Scholasticism was the school of thought in the Middle Ages in which theology and philosophy were conjoined. The German term Scholastik normally designates this medieval school of thought, whereas Scholastizismus, the linguistic equivalent of the English term, is used exclusively to denote sophistry and casuistry.
• 20. Meister (Johannes) Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), a Dominican-trained German theologian and the most profound of the German medieval mystics, was probably the first writer of speculative prose in German.
• 21. Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) was a German Dominican mystic and a disciple of Meister Eckhart.
• 22. The Hussites advocated communion in both kinds, i.e., both wine and bread, for laity as well as priests. Lutherans believed that a change takes place by which the body and blood of Christ join with the bread and wine. This principle of consubstantiation was rejected by the Zwinglians who saw only symbolic significance in the communion. Finally, the Calvinists believed that Christ was spiritually, but not physically, present in the Sacrament.
• 23. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was a noted Italian philosopher and mystic who, although a member of the Dominican Order in his youth, was in constant opposition to religious orthodox schools. He was tried by the Inquisition for heresy and burned to death.
• 24. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1932) was a renowned German zoologist and, like the English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), developed a theory of evolution. Emil DuBois-Reymond (1818–1896) was a famous physiologist in Berlin. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) was an English biologist and writer.
• 25. David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) was a philosopher and theologian whose writings mark a turning point in the critical study of the life of Jesus. In his main work, The Life of Jesus (2 vols, 1835–36), Strauss applied the “myth theory” to the life of Jesus and denied all supernatural elements in the Gospels.
• 26. (Old) Saturn, (Old) Sun, and (Old) Moon are names for former evolutionary forms through which the Earth has passed. The reader is referred to An Outline of Occult Science (Anthroposophic Press, 1972), for a thorough discussion of this topic.