The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eight days ago began with a presentation to help us understand the language of John. We considered how the Apocalypse is to be read and what is hidden behind some of the mysterious expressions, for example, behind the lamb as the beast with seven eyes and seven horns. We also sought to explain the beast with two horns and considered the number 666 as an example of how we must live into this mysterious book. Today, we again seek to find the meaning of this book.

The record of the New Testament is a record of initiation. Using individual images as examples we have seen how deep their meaning really is. All the images have shown us that the Gospels express, in pictorial form, the deepest imaginable meaning of the evolution of the world. It could occur to someone to ask why there are contradictions in the individual Gospels, why they do not correspond to each other. What needs to be said concerning this is already laid out in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact.¹ The Gospels are not records of the biography of Christ Jesus, but rather records concerning initiation. And the Apocalypse is the profoundest record. Augustine said: What is now called the “Christian religion” is the ancient true religion. What was the true religion, now is called the Christian religion.²

We understand what is meant by this statement when we consider the fundamental assertion of Christianity: “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” John 20:29) In this way something entirely new has come into the world. The teachings are already contained in other religious systems. Among those who understood who “Christ” is the main emphasis was never placed on the content of this teaching. One can also find this content in records from earlier times. What is important with Christ is what this individual means for humankind. We can acquire an understanding for this most readily if we take a look at the ancient mystery centers.

Until the time of Christ only a few specially chosen people were initiated. After severe testing they were permitted to learn the teachings that can now be found in my book Theosophy.³ One had to wait a long time until the higher degrees of vision were permitted. Only the most initiated knew the tradition of how to carry out an initiation. If someone wanted to become a pupil, as a first step they had to do this, as a second step, that, and so forth. The initiation concluded when the pupil had gone through the preparatory stages and was led by the wise ones into the mysteries themselves. That took place in a state of consciousness called “ecstasy,” a state of existence outside the physical body. It was connected with a diminution of consciousness, but at the same time with a vision of the spiritual world. An inner schooling consisting of certain will impulses, meditations, and a purification of the desires brought the pupil to a point where the last step was possible. Then the pupil was put by the initiator into a state that lasted three and a half days, a state like the one we enter when we fall asleep at night. External sense impressions disappeared. When we are asleep, nothing enters into the place where the sense impressions of sight and sound have disappeared, but with those being initiated a new world appeared. They were surrounded by a new world, a world of astral light, not the darkness, nothing of what today's human being experiences in the night appeared to them. The darkness was permeated by spiritual light and beings that are incarnated within the spiritual light. These beings became visible in the astral light. Then, after awhile, the astral world full of flowing light began to resound with the music of the spheres. What had merely been seen earlier began to be heard; it was a pure, spiritual music. External music is only a shadow-like reflection of the sounds of the spheres the seer hears, the seer who also perceives the inside of spiritual beings. Suppose we enter a large room filled with people; only when they begin to speak do they reveal their inner life to us. That is how it is in the spiritual world. First the beings become visible, then the inner life of the beings speaks to us. That is the harmony of the spheres.

Then, when the initiates were led back to vision of the physical world, they experienced themselves fully transformed into new human beings. Everyone who returned in this way then typically expressed: “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” (Compare Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34)⁴

And so they returned, knowledgeable concerning the spiritual world out of their own experience. They were then seen as messengers from the spiritual world. What they had experienced up to the point of entering the spiritual world was prescribed precisely, stage by stage.

Although the rites of initiation were not recorded exactly, still there were canons of initiation containing prescriptions for all the steps. Everywhere, whether in the Egyptian schooling of Hermes, or in the Persian school, or in the Greek mysteries, or with the Druidic or Drotten mysteries, there were typical, traditional rules concerning what was to be experienced by anyone wanting to become an initiate.

Typical, similar characteristics appear wherever the lives of the great apostles of religions or world-views are described. The lives of Orpheus, Pythagoras, Hermes, and Buddha have many features in common, features that are important for all religious heroes. Why is this? Superficial researchers have believed that one borrowed from the other. But that is not true. Nevertheless, all of these typical religious heroes passed through these steps up to the highest stage of initiation. There were no biographies in ancient times that took into consideration the external conditions of a person's life. The further back we go before the turning point of time, the less value we find ascribed to the externals of life. Absolutely nothing was said concerning what the very greatest heroes of humankind experienced externally on the physical plane. Their lives were entirely dedicated to initiation. Telling the story of their initiation meant telling the story of their life. The main thing about a Hermes or a Buddha was what he had experienced until the initiation. Since the stages of initiation were similar everywhere, one heard a spiritual description of the life of the great initiates.

What in the past had been experienced only in secret became historical fact in Christianity. What could be described of Herme' experience took place in inner mysteries, at locations far removed from profane eyes.

In Christianity, for the first time, something was experienced as an external physical event that otherwise only took place in the mystery centers. The course Christ's life followed is the same as that experienced by all initiates when, to begin with, they had their etheric bodies lifted out of their physical. Everything that Christ Jesus experienced physically, on the physical plane, they had experienced in the etheric realm. Their last words were also, “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” They had experienced earlier in the etheric body what Christ experienced in a physical body. In this way the prophecies of the prophets were fulfilled. This one time only experience of Christ represents the greatest decisive turning point in our world history and separates it into two parts.

The evangelists did not write ordinary biographies, but took rather the existing canonical initiation books. All four Gospels are to be seen as initiation writings, each presented from a different perspective. Since, however, initiation is described everywhere in the same way, the Gospels are in agreement on the most important things. We can describe the life of an initiate if we consider it as a life dedicated wholly to initiation. It would have seemed unholy to the evangelists to give an ordinary, external, historical biography of Christ Jesus. They had to take the building blocks for their writings from books derived from the mysteries. Hence, to a certain extent, what the prophets had said was fulfilled.

In a certain sense the Apocalypse represents a new kind of initiation; it shows how the old mysteries were transformed into Christian mysteries. When we look back at the old mysteries we find in them a more or less unified feature. It consisted of the following: Whether we go to Egypt, or to Persia, or to India, whether we are deepened in the Orphic or the Eleusinian mysteries, we find there complete agreement in one feature: a prophecy concerning the One who is to come.⁵ This trait is also found in the Northern European mysteries. There was an initiate in the most ancient times who was signified by the name “Sig.” The Drotten mysteries, which were in Russia and Scandinavia, the Druidic mysteries in Germany all derived from an initiate with the name Sig, who was the founder of the northern mysteries. What happened in the mysteries has been preserved in the various myths and legends of the German nation and other Germanic peoples. The myths and legends are pictorial representations of what was experienced. In the Siegfried legend⁶ we see most clearly that feature that seeks for an end. This feature is expressed in mythological terms in the “Gotterdammerung,” the twilight of the gods.⁷ This is characteristic of all the northern mysteries.

In all mysticism the image of the feminine is used for the soul; this image is also used by Goethe in his “chorus mysticus,” in the concluding scene of the second part of Faust. It is the eternal in the human being, the divine soul that draws the human being forward. Just as initiation was described in ancient Egypt and Persia as the union of the soul with the spiritual, so was it also described here in the north. Here in the north it was understood best that a man proved his worth on the field of battle. Those who counted for something in the north were honored as fighters who fell in the field of battle; those were the ones who entered into eternal life; the others died in their sleep. The fallen fighters were received by the Valkyries,⁸ their own soul; union with the Valkyries was union with the eternal. It was said of Siegfried that he had already united with the Valkyries here on earth; that shows he was an initiate. The meaning of the story, that Siegfried had already experienced union with the Valkyries here on earth, is that he was an initiate. This legend tells us something with the death of Siegfried. When experiencing initiation in the ancient mysteries the initiate is told: We can only bring you to a certain point ... further than this only another can bring you—this other one is Christ Jesus—all that we can give you will be darkened when he comes, the One who will bring the new initiation. Siegfried is vulnerable to Hagen⁹ on his back because the cross has not yet been placed on the back of the one who will take over from the ancient initiation. This part of the body will one day be made invulnerable when the cross has been laid across it. In this way the northern mysteries alluded to Christ Jesus.

All the ancient mysteries looked toward him who was to come, who will live on the physical plane so as to found a new world order. The new initiation is what will occur through the impulses he gave. We find a portrayal of this in the Apocalypse. It tells us how initiation will proceed until Christ Jesus comes again in a new form. The Apocalypse refers to the time when an organ for receiving Christ will be developed. The time until Christ Jesus again will approach is described in the Apocalypse. We will understand the individual words if we adopt the way of thinking of one who has experienced such an initiation. We remember here the words of Christ—if we understand them we will also understand the Apocalypse—“Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) Christ directs his view from the past over to the present because for him there is an eternal present.

If we wish to understand what is meant by this we need only remember the fourfold human being who consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. When the I lights up in the course of evolution then the astral and etheric bodies are changed; and then finally the physical body too. The I is here for eternity; it is born out of the womb of a higher spirituality. Whether we look into the past or into the future, this I is what is eternal. If we observe an individual we can ask the question: What transformation has this person's I gone through? If we look back to the great Atlantean flood and then further back we do not find the I in a body such as exists today. At that time we were in a state wherein we could not think as well as we can now. When we look into the future we find the I in bodies ever more perfect, bodies having a perfection that we today with our thinking cannot even imagine. We cannot now imagine the perfection of thinking, the purity of feeling, and so forth in the future bodies of humankind. Initiates must make use of the form the human body has at any given time. Christ, too, had to use the ordinary form of the human body in his time. Still, when we look deeper we see in him a stage of evolution that humankind will only achieve in the distant future. Christ Jesus was the first born among those who could overcome death.

Let us compare the two ways of developing. The human being is born, goes through a life on earth, dies, goes through an astral condition, through devachan, and is then born again. When we go back to the beings who were present before the Lemurian age we have beings who do not die and are not reborn. They are constantly exchanging sheaths, as we do between physical birth and death. Then a certain revolution enters in. Today, human beings alternate between spiritual and physical life. With the group souls of animals it happens this way: Individual animals discard their bodies but the group souls themselves never die.

If we try to imagine the very highest being, the one who was as highly developed at the beginning as others will be at the end of evolution, then we have the image of Christ. He was the I that was as highly developed at the beginning as the human being will be at the end. “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come ...” (Rev. 1:4) He is the first and the last.

The one who gives the Revelation to John is thus described. It is a Christian book; that is proven by the passage that reads: “... and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first born of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:5,6)

Christianity represents the greatest possible individualization of the human being, the freedom of the human being as an individual. At the beginning of the human race we see small communities held together by blood ties. Love was limited to those of the same blood. Now Christ Jesus comes and expands all ethnic groups and communities to include all of humanity. All ethnic religions are overcome through him. Christianity is the religion of the world. Within it there are only human beings; Christianity knows only human beings. Christianity would never be able to speak of the community of religions, but only of community of human beings. An age began when the secret mysteries became accessible to everyone through the mystery of Golgotha, which was placed in the center of the world. The chosen priests and kings gradually cease to exist. A final state is pointed to wherein everyone is a priest and a king, a state wherein all distinctions are swept away and all human beings are made equal. Therefore, the Apocalypse speaks of: “... a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father.” (Rev. 1:6)

The book portrays a real initiation, an ascent, to begin with, through learning on the physical plane. This step is portrayed in the words concerning the seven letters to the seven communities. The seven letters present what must first be learned. Then a number of pictures lead us to the astral plane. We see groups of beings undergoing transformation in the astral light: “... and he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and, round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald.” (Rev. 4:3) “And before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.” (Rev. 4:6) The quality and being of the astral light is indicated by the transparency. In the astral light we can see through objects; they appear like glass. The entire astral world is like a glass sea.

The four living creatures then follow; they are to represent the human group souls. They were full of eyes within and without and had no peace day or night. There is constant movement in the astral world—astral eyes are everywhere and everything is transparent to them, both within and all around.

We see how, at first, the mysteries of the physical plane are described and then, out of the sealed book, the astral imaginations. They approach us in pictures.

After the seer has perceived the spiritual beings in the astral light for awhile, they begin to sound forth. This is described in the resounding of the trumpets when the sixth seal is opened. That is the condition of devachan. The seer becomes “clairaudient,” able to hear spiritual sounds—the spiritual ear is opened.

The stage then follows when the seer expands his consciousness over the entire earth. This is indicated in the swallowing of the book. It expresses the ascent into the higher regions of the spiritual worlds.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact (Hudson, N.Y.:Anthroposophic Press, 1993).
• 2. Actual words: “For what is now called the Christian religion existed even among the ancients and was not lacking from the beginning of the human race until ‘Christ came in the flesh.’ From that time, true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian.” Augustine, The Retractions Book I, chapter 12, section 3, trans. Mary Inez Bogan in The Fathers of the Church (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968).
• 3. Steiner, Theosophy (GA 9) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1993).
• 4. ompare lecture of September 12, 1910 in The Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 123) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press. 1965).
• 5. Compare the lecture cycle Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, and Revelations of the Spirit (GA 129) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963); Mystery Centers (GA 232) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973); and World History in the Light of Anthroposophy (GA 233) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977).
• 6. Compare the lecture of October 21, 1904: “Die Siegfriedsage” in Esoterik und Weltgeschichte in der grieschischen und germanischen Mythologie [“The Legend of Siegfried” in Esoteric and World History in Greek and German Mythology] (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1955).
• 7. Compare the lecture of August 14. 1908 in the lecture cycle Universe, Earth and Man (GA 105) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1987).
• 8. he virgin heroines of Germanic mythology.
• 9. One of the main heroes of the Nibelungen saga: he treacherously suffocates Siegfried after a hunt while Siegfried is drinking at a fountain.

You know the passage in the Gospel of John: “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Consider further how Jesus Christ contrasts his mission with the events in the wilderness: “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. I give you another bread, I am the bread of life.

Let us recall once more how the four members of the human being developed at different times. The I only emerges as consciousness towards the end of the Atlantean period. The manasic abilities only arise in our fifth root race, and more specifically, manas arises inwardly in the sentient body in the primeval Indian epoch. In a higher form, Manas enters the sentient soul in the case of the ancient Persians. In the case of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, Manas enters the intellectual or mind soul.

Let us be clear about what this means. Unlike today's astronomers, the Chaldean-Babylonian priests viewed the stars differently. They saw in them living, spirit-filled worlds. When they spoke of the planet Mercury, they did not just mean a material thing, but the Mercury spirit – just as we do when we name a person. The movement of the stars, their starry writing, was an expression of something spiritual for them. This is manasic knowledge, a penetration of space with thoughts.

What their Chaldean predecessors limited to heavenly connections, the Egyptian sages drew into the service of more and more earthly matters and animal needs; they placed the manasic entity at the service of matter.

Please note this. An example of this is the construction of the artificial Lake Moris. The Egyptians created a reservoir to regulate the Nile flood. The development of all of Egypt was based on manasic knowledge. Manasic means purely spiritual. Manasic beings were placed in the service of the highest human needs. It is the very nature of the mind soul to use manasic wisdom to satisfy external needs and desires.

Today, this development, “Egyptian darkness,” the darkness of Manas, has progressed much further. But is it so crucial whether a person grinds his grain between two stones or orders it by cable in New York? Kama Manas is the name given in Theosophy to such a connection of higher consciousness with animal, earthly, material purposes. The ancient religions would have looked down on the achievements of all our technology, our communication and trade with very mixed feelings. They saw it as a defilement of sacred things when man put his higher mental capacity at the service of the lower natural needs. This was worse than when an animal uses its instincts, which are good for nothing better, to satisfy its needs. It was felt as a defection, an abuse of the manas called to higher tasks, a defection of the spirit from itself. This defection is expressed in a strange name: “Egypt”. This refers not only to the country, but the name is also the symbol for such apostasy; for it was in Egypt that it first happened on a large scale. The word Egypt is therefore not only meant as the name of the country here, but of the particular state of mind, the delusion of Manas, where the higher nature is placed in the service of the lower. This is not meant as a criticism, but as a description of the facts of spiritual-historical evolution.

This stage had to be passed through; Manas had to be submerged in lower forces during three sub-races in order to then arise from its own nature. Within Egypt, however, there arose the people who were called to purify Manas, so to speak, to raise it to a higher consciousness. The Israelite people were called upon to fulfill the task of working Manas out of their own people. And the great missionary for this is Moses. The Israelites were transplanted to Egypt, where they received the inspiration for Manas. The exodus from Egypt is at the same time the exodus from Manas into the higher reality.

To achieve this, something had to happen that would have a transforming effect on the ego. Moses first became the lawgiver of Israel. The Ten Commandments had to begin with the conscious I being worked towards. God must announce himself as the expression of the ego in man.

In the third chapter of the second book of Moses, it is related how Moses, while tending Jethro's sheep, sees a burning bush from which the voice of Yahweh resounds: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This is the birth of Manas in self-awareness. Moses says to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” God replies to him: “I will be with you. And this shall be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought my people out of Egypt, you will sacrifice to God on this mountain.” Moses asks further: “If I come to the children of Israel and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they will say, What is his name? what shall I say to them?” And God replies to him, ‘I am that I am. So you shall say to the children of Israel, I-Am has sent me to you.’ This is the birth of clear self-awareness, which was previously vague.

Now it will be a matter of grasping God in his spirituality; to keep the God who announces himself within, truly holy. The law applies namely already to something higher. Jehovah God says to the people: “I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But the people made an image for themselves and worshipped the golden calf, although they were commanded not to make an image or to take the name in vain. But God, who is formless, wanted to be the formless God for them.

If we want to understand this process even more precisely, we must now point out another. The I has a long history of development in humanity. In order for the I to arise, the human body, which developed towards it, had to be transformed in many ways.

In the ancient Atlanteans, part of the etheric head was still outside the physical head. This part corresponds to our forebrain. The head had to grow towards the etheric body, it had to mature towards spirituality. This was the prerequisite for

self-awareness. Independence emerged at that moment in physical evolution when a bone system first developed in humans. The stability that humans thus acquired is connected to their predisposition for spirituality. And when we look at the future of humanity, it becomes all the more clear to us how important the formation of this bone system was. How will the human race change – in its body, not in its soul? It will become more and more solid. Just as the oyster masters its shell, man will master his body, his tool, from the outside. To understand this, you only need to start from the state of sleep, in which the soul masters the physical organism from the outside. In the times to come the soul will consciously control the body as its instrument from without. The formation of the bones is therefore the potential for something great and glorious. Hence the old religious injunctions: Keep your bone system. Do not break your bones. The symbolic expression of this was the sacrifice in Egypt in remembrance of the deliverance that took place there when the first-born of the Egyptians were strangled. As an outward sign, a lamb is to be enjoyed, and the words are therefore significant: “And you shall not break a bone in him!” Thus, at the point where Manas' liberation begins, this importance of bone formation is emphatically indicated in the ritual prescription for the Passover lamb. And with the great Lamb, the representative of humanity, with Christ Jesus, what was otherwise usual with all crucified people, the legs were not broken. “That the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.”

So the Jews were led out of Egypt. Let us see if our view is confirmed more precisely in the Bible. Yes, literally! It is one of the great achievements of spiritual science to be able to read the details of religious documents about ancient symbolic acts in their literal sense. The people of Israel go into the wilderness. What is the wilderness? When the self is absorbed in itself in order to seek the God within, then it must go into the wilderness, into solitude, and this wilderness man must then revive in himself after the awakening of the Manas in himself. When the children of Israel murmured because they were close to starvation, the Lord promised them that the next morning they would have plenty of bread. The next morning “it lay in the desert, round and small like the hoarfrost on the ground.” Then the Israelites asked each other, “Man hu - what is this?” That is the question that man asks himself when he is supposed to recognize something. They called the food that came from the shimmer manna. It is the same word as manas. Of course, philologists will object to this explanation, but that is how it is. The task of the Jewish people was to carry pure manas into the future.

To understand this better, we must step to the edge of a mystery, the fourth of the seven unspeakable mysteries. Yesterday we spoke of the mystery of numbers, today we will touch on the fourth, that of birth and death.

Birth and death, what are they in the occult sense? One must realize this. Are they always necessarily linked to life? Let us think back to pre-Lemurian times, before man descended into gross physical matter.

He had a kind of light and fire body and was embodied in etheric matter. His contemporaries on earth are beings who are slightly higher than animals in physical bodies. In the animal body, a kind of cavity is formed. The etheric man descends into the cavity and fills the physical body. The man of light had condensed himself into an air man, who now moved into the physical body. This is the moment depicted in the history of creation with the words: “And God breathed into him the living breath, and he became a living soul.” With the breath we actually draw in our etheric body. The etheric man had condensed to the air when his connection with the earthly body could be made, and he entered the lungs. With each breath we actually draw our etheric body into us.

The entire way of life was different for early man than it was for later man. Parts were constantly being released from his etheric body, and new etheric substance was constantly being drawn into it: renewal and excretion were taking place. There were also constant intensive changes within it, corresponding to the higher subtlety of the etheric body; this happened continuously without the abrupt change of birth and death. So there was no birth and death, only a transformation occurred. Dying and being born could only take place after the etheric body had entered into matter.

Strictly speaking, birth and death are changes in the state of consciousness. Death can and must only occur where a soul dwells in a body that is actually foreign to it and uses foreign organs. The soul's previous purpose in life dissolves when the physical body is discarded. These two bodies are subject to two completely different laws and worlds, since the body belongs to the earth and the soul to the astral. The spiritual man who dwells in the body receives it when he enters the world, and the earth takes it away from him again. It is as if I live in the earth as a tenant: the tenement house is subject to the property laws and regulations - so is the earthly body. Through it, man can see outward. This looking outwards is a condition for knowledge; therefore birth and death are inseparable from the arising of knowledge. The Bible says this with the words: “Your eyes will be opened and you will know what is good and what is evil.”

Thus, since Lemuria, Manas has been prepared, organized in opposition to what was formed in the lower realms. Manas enters the physical body through the senses; death is conditioned by manas, without manas there would be no death. This is the passage in the Gospel of John: “Your fathers ate manna and died.” One cannot die from the bread of life. It is Christ who brings the etheric evolution again. The Christ impulse is the penetration of Budhi.

Manas is therefore a point of transition that took place when the etheric body entered the physical body in Lemuria. Budhi is brought into the etheric body from within through Christ, but from within. This principle of inward vitalization is brought by Christianity. “I am the bread of life.” As long as the world was bound to the physical body, the principle of heredity, man had no possibility of looking beyond death. But this happens at the moment when his life body, his ether body, can be enlivened from within through Budhi, when Manas receives Budhi. Moses is therefore the messenger for Manas, Christ the bringer for Budhi. At this stage, the initiate can be outside his body.

Now we ask ourselves one more question: a people is made the bearer of the development of Manas, the whole national consciousness is condensed in the one initiate. When the Jewish people were about to forfeit their mission, the Lord said: I will destroy them, but I will make you, Moses, a great nation. This passage is to be taken literally; it is a higher initiation of Moses. In this way, Moses is given his mission in such a way that he is made an initiate with a national consciousness.

Another deeply significant fact is the part played by blood in the process of Manas, for the higher process must naturally be reflected in the blood. Moses takes the sacrificial blood and sprinkles it over the people. This is the sign of the truth of the covenant through blood relationship. When Manas has absorbed the blood and so has Budhi, then we understand the passage in the Gospel of John: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.” If Christ is to be able to work on humanity, He must make a covenant with it through His blood. Man must receive Christ's blood in the Lord's Supper if Christ is to implant Budhi in him.

Now we must consider some cosmic-human truths – the world is really very complicated. The entities that are stones, plants and animals today are closely related to human beings. Man is not the latest creature in creation, but the earliest. Today, let us disregard earlier earth embodiments and deal with man.

When the Earth emerged from the Pralaya and condensed to the etheric Earth, it actually consisted of nothing but etheric human bodies and can be compared figuratively to the shape of a giant blackberry. Man at that time was a completely spiritualized being, endowed only with an etheric body.

The next stage is that the etheric human beings divide into two currents, one ascending and one descending. From the descending current the animals emerge. Just as when we have two brothers, one of whom becomes more and the other less like the father, so men divide into two groups, men and degenerate men, the animals. Later, these two groups became three: the plants were added. Then a fourth group separates: the mineral.

Whenever a new element is added, the human being develops a different, new nature. At the moment when the animal separates, the human being develops an astral sense; at the moment when the plant separates, etheric growth. At the moment when the stones branch off, the microcosm forms bones. Every time a new nature develops, a corresponding correlate arises in man, so that one can say of every animal, every plant, every mineral what corresponds to them in man. The lion is also in man, but overcome. Hence the correspondences and analogies between bodily organs and earthly objects, be it a lion, deadly nightshade or asbestos. Paracelsus says: Outside in the earthly world there are nothing but letters; man is their coherent inner meaning, their word. All of nature is only man laid out; in man the word is formed.

Those driven away from the stream of human development have not remained without any development at all; on the contrary, they have even reached certain developmental goals earlier than the non-specialized human being. For example, the future hardness of the human body is being prepared; the woody plant has long since achieved this in its inferior nature. Certain poisons also represent a developmental advantage over humans. Poison that is found in a plant was once also in man. If man had developed in the same sense as these substances, then he could, for example, excrete arsenic from himself. If he contracts cholera, the same symptoms occur as if he had taken arsenic. That is why Paracelsus called the cholera patient an arsenicicum.

Just as with wood and poisons, so too with the plant sap, the wine, which is a substance that has rushed ahead of human development. This can be examined in more detail. The wine, the sap that flows through the grapevine, is a one-sided development of the blood. What the blood breathes gives carbonic acid, alcohol. Alcohol is, so to speak, future blood. The plant sap breathing out carbonic acid is related to the present blood as the blood of the future is to the blood of the present. From the cosmic knowledge we experience the relationship between wine and blood. Christ may say of the wine: This is my blood. For Christ is the representative of the future humanity. His teaching itself is a living source to which humanity develops. Let us think of the parable of the vine and the branches, of the transformation of water into wine. The vine is only a developmental anticipation, analogous to the anticipated hardening of the wood. Just as the plant today transforms its watery juices into wine, so man cannot do it today, but he will transform his blood later.

From this point of view, light is thrown on the mystery of the transformation of water into wine at the marriage at Cana. Why at Cana in Galilee? Galilee (el gojim) is the land of the mixed race, of the non-Aryans. There racial mixing had always been very strong, thus the removal of the barriers between peoples; there the marriage of different bloods took place. The mother of Jesus is also present, as she is later at the cross. She is never called “Mary” in the Gospel of John. On the contrary, the two other women at the cross are explicitly named “Mary”, and one of them is referred to as the sister of the mother of Jesus. Jesus' mother is not Mary.

This collection of special prayers is a wonderful companion for parents and caregivers and will help guide children on their journey to adulthood. It includes verses for every occasion—for parents to recite as the incarnating soul prepares for birth, for the baby after birth, and for children of all ages. Also included are prayers for morning and evening and graces for mealtimes.

This book is a First English Edition, published in 1943. The prayers in this volume offer insight into the greater cosmic relationships in which individuals are immersed before birth, during life, and after death.

Spoken by the Mother

BEFORE BIRTH:

And the soul of the child,
Be it given to me
According to Thy will
Out of the worlds of the spirit.

AFTER BIRTH:

And the soul of the child,
Be it guided by me
According to Thy will
Into the worlds of the spirit.

Spoken by the Mother for the Child

May light flow into thee, that can take hold of thee.
I follow its rays with the warmth of my love,
I think with the best glad thoughts of my thinking
on the leaping of thy heart.
They are to strengthen thee, they are to bear thee up,
they are to keep thee pure.
I would fain gather my glad thoughts into thy steps
on the paths of life,
So they link themselves to thine own will of life
That this may find itself in strength in all the world
ever more through its own self.

Evening Prayer

FROM head to foot
I am made in the image of God.
From my heart right into my hands
I feel the breath of God.
When I speak with my mouth
I follow the will of God.
When I behold God
In father and mother,
In all dear people,
In animal and flower,
In tree and stone,
Nothing can fill me with fear,
But only with love for all that is about me.

Morning Prayer

WHEN I look at the sun, then I think God's spirit,
When I move my hand, then lives in me God's soul,
When I take a step, then stirs in me God's will.
And when I behold a man, then God's soul lives in him.
And so too it lives in father and mother,
In animal and flower, in tree and stone.
Never can fear come near to me,
If I think—God's spirit;
If I live—God's soul;
If I bestir—God's will.

Child's Prayer

THE growing plants live
In sun-light's power,
The bodies of men act
In soul-light's might.
And what the heavenly light of the sun
Is to the plant,
That is the soul-light of the spirit
To the body of man.

Child's Prayer

O sun, thou shinest over my head,
Ah stars, you look down upon field and city,
Ye animals, you are busy and move over the face of Mother Earth,
And plants, you live through the force of the earth and the sun.

Grace

THE plants are quickening in the earth's deep night,
The herbs are sprouting through the power of the air,
The fruits are ripening through the sunlight's might.

Thus quickens the soul within the heart's holy shrine,
Thus sprouts the might of the spirit in the light of the world,
Thus ripens the strength of man in the glory divine.

Children's Song

THE light of the sun floods through
All space so wide,
The song of the birds sounds through
The air so free,
The boon of the plants is drawn
From the bosom of earth,
And souls of men lift up
In thankfulness
Their being to the spirits of the world.

Meister Bertram, Hieronymus Bosch, Dieric Bouts, Pieter Brueghel, Petrus Christus, Gerard David, Jan Van Eyck, Master of Flémalle, Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Hugo van der Goes, Quentin Matsys, Hans Memling, and Joachim Patinir.

The pictures we shall show today are to illustrate the development of Dutch and Flemish painting towards the end of the 15th century and on into the 16th.

From the inner historical point of view, this is one of the most important moments in the evolution of Art. It is, as you know, the period immediately after the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—that epoch which is called upon to bring forth, out of the depths of human evolution, all that is connected with the development of the Spiritual Soul. In the Dutch and Flemish pictures we shall now consider, this comes to expression in a most characteristic way. We see in every detail how the Spiritual Soul begins to work. We can see it, my dear friends, if only we bring to these works of Art an elementary power of understanding—that is to say, if we have to some extent escaped the unhappy fate of being historians of Art after the modern fashion.

The most up-to-date of the modern critics and historians will, no doubt, consider a critic like Hermann Grimm an altogether inferior intellect. But if we have not the misfortune to be quite so up-to-date, then, even if we knew nothing beforehand of the laws and impulses of human evolution as explained by Spiritual Science, we should still find in this artistic evolution a wonderful confirmation of all the differences which Spiritual Science indicates in its descriptions of the Third, Fourth, and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. It is interesting to see how gradually there emerges—century after century during these epochs—what we may regard as the fundamental frame-work of the artistic conceptions of today. It is interesting to see the several elements of it emerging in the most manifold quarters in the evolution of mankind.

If we go back to the history of drawing and painting, we find that the laws of Space, for example, have only been evolved by gigantic efforts of the human soul. The older representations in line and color do not really constitute a pictorial Art in the modern sense. They are more like a kind of narrative or story-telling on the flat surface. This applies to a by no means very distant past. (Without entering at length into these historic aspects, I will only indicate a few general points of view.)

We can see that in those olden times, the artist had in his mind's eye some story which he wished to portray—a story such as one might even narrate in words. He did not try to represent Space as it is; he simply fixed on to the flat surface what he desired to represent. The various things that he relates stand side by side on this flat surface. From our point of view, we could, at most, regard this as a kind of primitive illustration. Today we should not even allow the art of illustration to proceed in this way, merely setting down the events of the narrative on a flat surface.

At the next stage, an attempt is made to represent the ordering of things in Space, at any rate, in a most rudimentary way, by introducing the principle of overlapping. The artist makes use of the visibility, or partial visibility of this or that figure.

A figure that stands in the way of another, is in the foreground; the other stands behind it. By this method of overlapping, the surface is really used to suggest, at any rate, the dimension of depth.

At a following stage, the several figures are already made larger or smaller in proportion, taking into account that that which appears larger is to the front, while all that which appears smaller is further back. If, however, we return to the Third Post-Atlantean period, we find that this spatial treatment to which we are now accustomed, did not exist at all. They either put things down on the flat surface, as described above, or else they used the element of Space to express their thought. This, indeed, continued into the Graeco-Latin period. Contrary to the way in which things are really seen, we often find figures which are obviously to the front (nearer to the spectator) smaller in proportion to other figures which are further away. In olden times they often made use of this kind of treatment.

We see a King, for example, enthroned in the background of the picture. His subjects, in the foreground, are represented as being smaller in proportion. In Space they are not really smaller, but according to the conception prevailing, they are smaller in idea. Hence, while they are placed in the foreground, they are made smaller. This gives you the transition to a thing you will frequently find in older times—I mean what we may call "inverse perspective" compared to the perspective we know today. In this “inverse perspective” we must imagine things envisaged as they are seen by a particular figure in the picture. Figures which are in front from our point of view can, indeed, be smaller than other figures which are farther back, if a figure in the background is conceived as the observer of the scene. But to this end the man who is actually looking at the picture must entirely obliterate himself! He must either imagine himself away, or he must think himself into the picture, as it were,—into the personality of the figure conceived as the observer of the scene.

Here, then, we have an Impersonal perspective. This “impersonal perspective” was still suited to the stage of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, when the Spiritual Soul was not yet so consciously born as afterwards. The man of the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch cannot forget himself; he demands a presentation arising from his own point of view. Hence it is that the art of perspective, strictly related to the visual point of the spectator, only appears with Brunellesco—that is to say, is the main, with the beginning of the Renaissance.

We may truly say that what is now called perspective was first introduced into the technique of Art at that point of time. Moreover, the South, through the impulses I characterised in one of the earlier lectures, is the inventor of perspective. For the South is much concerned with the ordering of things in the inner relationship of Space; concerned, that is to say, with qualities in extension. Thus the South is predisposed for mastery in the whole art of composition, and at a later date we see this art of composition fertilised by the Southern Renaissance—with all that I have described already as the inherent impulses which then came to the surface, and reached so high a degree of perfection.

Thus there comes forth in Art what we may call the gathering together of things in Space, where the man who looks at the picture is included in the whole conception. Truly, this corresponds to the age when the Spiritual Soul is born—when man becomes conscious of himself.

Hence it is in the south—in all that is connected with the Southern culture, which we have described before—it is here that the modern principle of perspective first arises. We see how it evolves quite naturally out of the Southern culture.

Meanwhile, however, another principle is at work, is emerging in the North; this principle we see in its nascent state, as it were, in the very moment of its origin, when we turn our gaze to the Brothers Van Eyck.

In the two Van Eycks—Hubert van Eyck to begin with, and later in his brother Jan—we see emerging, albeit in a different form as yet, what afterwards came forth as described when dealing with Rembrandt, for example. Something which emerges out of the Mid-European, Northern element. These things always find expression in external symptoms—in outwardly real symbols, if I may so call them. Brunellesco must be conceived as the inventor of modern perspective. The ancient perspective—that which underlies the Greek pictures, for example,—does not possess what is called a “vanishing point.” It has a whole “vanishing line.” The scene we see seems to converge, not in a vanishing point, but in a vanishing line. In this is, indeed, expressed the radical difference between the ancient perspective and the modern, which is the perspective of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Brunellesco, then, is the discoverer of modern perspective. It is discovered in the South. Whereas in the North—this is no mere tradition, but contains a profound truth—in the North oil-painting is discovered. Although Hubert van Eyck was not the sole inventor of oil-painting, nevertheless, it is true that oil-painting was discovered in the age and out of the whole milieu out of which he created.

Now what does this signify? What is the underlying reason? For the art of oil-painting was then carried to the South. Perspective was carried from the South to the North; oil-painting from the North to the South. What does this signify?

It is deeply rooted in their fundamental character and mood of soul. In the South men have a feeling for coming together mutually in the Group. The South has far more attachment to the Group-soul as such. Hence the people of the South are fond of describing themselves as members of such and such a Group. They have little understanding of the individual principle. Such things should be taken into account, for Nations will never understand each other if they take no pains to grasp their several characteristics.

When a man has been brought up in the more Latin spirit—who has received the inner impulse of the Southern nature—speaks of his devotion to nation or people—when he calls himself a Patriot in one sense or another, he means something very different from the Mid-European who speaks of Patriotism. Mid-Europe really has no talent for this belonging together, this gathering of men together into a Group. In Mid-Europe there is a faculty for the Individual principle. The true native character of Middle Europe is expressed in the recognition of the Individual, and in the age of the development of the Spiritual Soul this implies, to begin with, the recognition of the personality, the human individual—the person.

Now, if we feel essentially the Group-element, which is, of course, extensive (spread out in space), we shall naturally live in the element of composition. One who has this tendency will have a natural understanding for the art of composition. If, on the other hand, we have a strong feeling for the individual principle, we shall seek to mould the individual from within—outward. Instead of seeing the Spirit, as it were, put forth its feelers to embrace and hold the Group together, we see the Spirit within each single form; we place the several individual figures side by side, seeing the Spirit in each single one. We seek to bring to the surface of the body what is there in the inner being of the soul.

This is not to be achieved by perspective, but by color that is irradiated, flooded by light. Thus in the profoundly Germanic brothers, Van Eyck, we have the real starting point of the modern art of color, which seeks to hold fast in the color itself, what comes from the individual character of the soul to the outer surface of the body.

The brothers Van Eyck and their successors, derive their essential inner quality from this Northern Mid-European element, while composition, which gradually finds its way into their works, is borrowed more from France and Burgundy.

It is no mere matter of chance that this special development in the 15th century took place at a time when the districts where these artists lived did not possess a hard-and-fast political structure. Such a structure was only afterwards imposed upon them from the South—from France and especially from Spain. In that period we see spread out over the Northern and Southern Netherlands the more individual City-formations—towns and cities whose connection as compact States was at most a very loose one. The people of those regions, and of that time, had no inclination to think that men ought to be held together in groups by well-defined States, where the State itself is the important thing—where the precise extent and frontiers of a particular State are considered a matter of importance. To the people out of whom the brothers Van Eyck arose, the particular nation to which they belonged was not the point. Nor did they think of what is called the “State,” or trouble themselves about its frontiers. What mattered to them was that human beings full, thorough-going human beings—should develop, regardless of the group to which they might belong.

So we see this Art of the Southern Netherlands, the regions of Flanders. The inner being of man is conjured forth to the surface of the body in a tender and thoughtful way. By a mysterious power they flood their pictures with light, introducing just that element which color can introduce, for the individual characterisation of the soul.

Then we see the burgher, the citizen virtues of the Northern Netherlands reaching down into the Southern aristocratic element. The life of the burghers gives birth to that Art which places the individual so thoroughly into the world. It is, in reality, an overcoming of the Group-soul principles in Art.

And yet, as we shall see in the very first of our pictures today, how wonderfully the mass-effects are, nevertheless, attained. But with these mass-effects, it is not that they are conceived as a group from the outset. They arc not deliberately constructed: the figures distributed in Space so as to belong together as a Group. On the contrary, these wonderful groupings arise through the very fact that each individual being has his full importance, and takes his stand beside the others.

Such are the things that we shall recognise out of this portion of artistic evolution. In the brothers Van Eyck we still have comparatively primitive, rudimentary groupings in Space, but withal a high degree of inwardness, and a strong adaptation to what is actually seen, regardless of any hard and fast conventions.

In effect, we have here the second pole of that entry into the physical reality in the artistic life, which belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean period. This pole is in the North, while the other takes its start from the Italian art of the Renaissance. There we have the element of composition, and all else is to some extent subservient to this. In the North we have a creating from within, outwards. Only gradually and by dint of constant striving do they arrive at a certain power of composition by the placing together of individuals portrayed with inwardness of soul. Thus the one aspect of the naturalistic principle in Art, which belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, found its essential fountain-head in these regions. These painters place their subject in the immediate reality which surrounds them. The Biblical story, for example, when reproduced in Art by men of earlier times, was taken right away from their immediate surroundings. But this period in Art places the Biblical narratives into the midst of the immediate naturalistic reality. Men of the Netherlands stand before us as the characters of Biblical history.

What formerly shut one off, as it were, from the outer naturalistic world—the golden background and all that was expressed in it—ceases to exist. On the very soil where we ourselves are standing, the Biblical scenes move before us.

It goes with this, quite naturally and inevitably, that they everywhere surround their human figures with that peculiar treatment of space which we find in their interiors, not in their outer landscapes. I would express it thus. Having ceased to be living in the composition, the space itself must be transposed, transplanted into the picture. Space, as such, must now appear in the picture. How, then, can this be done? By shaping a portion of the picture itself as a “space,” that is to say, by placing the figures in an “interior”—in a room, or the like. Or, again, by painting a naturalistic space such as forms itself around the human being in the landscape. Thus with all the impulses of the new age which, as above described, permeate especially this Dutch and Flemish Art, we see arising quite naturally, the art of landscape painting. The landscape appears, often with a mighty and overpowering grandeur, in the background of the figures, or in some other way.

This Art evolves and flourishes most beautifully in the age of the free cities, when every town or city in these regions has a pride in its independence, and feels no inner need for territorial union with other cities. A certain international consciousness arises. This freedom from separations, this freedom from the Group-spirit, is a product of the sound and strong Germanic burgher-spirit of those times and places.

All this grows out of the life of the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Influenced very slightly by the South—influenced only by the Southern art of composition through the adjoining southern countries—their artistic creation springs from this democratic strength and soundness of the burghers, and blossoms forth until the time when the whole thing is eclipsed, if I may put it so, by the Group-mind once more.

Thus the period in artistic evolution which we shall illustrate today is at the same time a period of free development of human beings. I might continue to say many other things; but I wanted, above all, to fix your minds on the world-historic moment when this development in Art took place.

We will now proceed at once to show a number of pictures on the screen.

We begin with the famous Altar-piece of Ghent, by the Brothers Van Eyck.

1. The Brothers Van Eyck. Altar-piece. (St. Bavo. Ghent.)

2. God, the Father

3. Mary

4. John

This Altar-piece consists of many parts. This is the portion seen when the front is opened—the middle portion above the Altar. The figure in the center, in Papal costume, is representing God the Father. Conceived in the spirit of the Church, God the Father is actually represented as a Pope. Nevertheless, the features I have indicated are recognisable in the whole artistic composition. If we went back still further, we should find the preceding evolution altogether steeped in Christian ideas—the Christian traditions—that is to say, which the ecclesiastics forcibly impressed upon the people. These traditions most certainly corresponded to a manner of thought inspired by the Group-consciousness. But out of the midst of this very element we now witness the individual spirit making itself felt.

The figure to your left is Mary; that on the right is St. John. Here, then, we find ourselves in the first third of the 15th century. Hubert Van Eyck died in 1426; the Altar-piece was finished by his brother Jan. It is the first third of the 15th century.

From the same Altar-piece we will show the angel-pictures, to the right and left of these central figures.

5. Angels making Music

Here you see a group of angels playing on instruments of music. Compare them with the angels by the German Christian Masters of the period immediately preceding this. Lochner, for instance, or the Master of Cologne—the pictures we saw in a former lecture. You will see how great a difference there is. The angels here are full-grown human beings, in spite of their clerical and ceremonial garments—fully developed human beings—no longer as before, half child-like forms. In such a group as this, you will see that the artist has not yet reached a thorough-going perspective. The perspective is only carried through to a slight extent. You see the whole picture on the surface—spread out like a tapestry. We will now show the angel-picture from the other side of the altar-piece.

6. Angels singing

This whole Altar-piece was done by order of a wealthy Burgher for the Church of St. Bavo. The several parts are now scattered abroad—at Ghent, in Brussels, in Berlin ...

7. The Brothers van Eyck. Adoration of the Lamb.

Here we come to the main portion of the picture, beneath the other three. The “Adoration of the Lamb” is one of the fundamental motifs of this and the preceding period. Here we see it beautifully presented as the fundamental religious conception which had evolved during the course of many centuries. It could not have been embodied in this beautiful artistic form till they had so grown together with this conception as to represent it thus. Throughout the centuries of Christianity this idea had gradually taken shape—this idea of the Salvation, the Redemption of mankind through a great Sacrifice.

We must go far, far back in time to realise its full significance. Compare the subject—the story which this picture tells—with a picture, for example, of the Mithras Offering. There you have Mithras seated on the Bull; the Bull is wounded, the blood is flowing. It is the uplifting of Mithras, His salvation by the overcoming of the Beast. You are familiar with the deeper spiritual meaning of this picture; it is, if I may so describe it, the very antithesis of the one we now see before us. The rearing and rebellious Bull has to be fought down—gives up his blood by force; the Lamb gives His Blood of His own free will.

8. Adoration of the Lamb as compared to a Mithras-Relief

What does this signify? Salvation is lifted out of the element in which it was previously conceived—the element of violence, and strife and conflict. It comes into the element of free devotion and out-pouring Grace. Such is the idea which is here expressed. Not by man seeking in pride to rise beyond himself, seeking to kill his lower nature, but by experiencing in his soul that which streams through the world and patiently suffers with the world, will he attain his liberation at every point of this world's existence, his redemption.

Such is the Universal—and therefore, the individually universal—principle of redemption which we here find expressed. The Lamb is One, yet no one being is striking it. Therefore we see it offered up for every one of those who worship it, who draw near to it from all their different spheres of life—near to the Lamb of Salvation, near to the Fountain of Life.

The greatest conception of the Middle Ages, grown and matured in the course of the centuries, is thus recorded at the end of the Mediaeval Ages by the brothers Van Eyck, and there arises in this period one of the greatest of all works of Art.

Of course, we must bear in mind the points of view I emphasised just now. The individual principle, creating from out of the inner life, wrestles still with an inadequate mastery of the treatment of space. You will, for instance, scarcely be able to imagine a spectator situated with his eye in such a place as to perceive the spatial distribution of this figure here (at the bottom of the picture).

Very beautifully Van Eyck portrayed how the Impulse of the Lamb works in the various callings, in the several branches of human life. Here are some examples.

9. Brothers van Eyck. The Knights and Judges. (From the Altar-piece at Ghent. Berlin Museum.)

These are the Judges and the Knights as they draw near to the Lamb. All these are portions of the same great Altar-piece. The next is a very tender picture:

10. Brothers van Eyck. The Pilgrims and Hermits. (From the Altar-piece at Ghent.)

Here we can already admire the treatment of landscape in relation to the human beings to whom it belongs.

Hubert van Eyck died in 1426, when the Altar-piece was not nearly finished. His brother Jan continued working at it for many years, and scholars have long been engaged in the dispute, which they seem to regard as so important, as to which portions are due to Hubert and which to Jan. This dispute is, after all, more or less superfluous, if we are interested in the artistic aspect. We now come to another picture by Van Eyck.

11. Jan van Eyck. Madonna. (At Bruges.)

This picture was painted in 1436. You will admire the tenderness of expression in the Madonna, no less than the characterisation of this figure (the Canon, Georg van der Pole). It reveals a wonderful observation of Nature and a strong sense of character, with all the primitiveness of the period—needless to say. The next picture was painted by Jan van Eyck in Spain, whither he had been summoned.

12. Jan van Eyck. The Waters of Life. (Prado. Madrid.)

Observe the Gothic architecture in the background. To represent the Waters of Life, the Well of Life, in connection with the Sacrifice of the Lamb, was natural to the ideas of that time. Once more, as in the former picture, you have the motif of God the Father with Mary and St. John.

Here, however, it is transferred more into the spirit of the Southern Art—not unnaturally, as the picture was painted in Spain.

In the former picture we had the same theme treated with more of the Northern character.

13. Jan van Eyck. The Crucifixion. (Berlin.)

Notice how the characteristic qualities come to expression in this picture. The human element far outweighs the Biblical tradition. Only the subject, the occasion, we might say, is taken from that quarter. See with what deep human sympathy the Biblical story is re-awakened, as it were. Here it is not merely the prevalent idea that it is meet to represent in pictures what the Bible tells. The whole event is felt again and re-experienced in the highest degree. It is scarcely conceivable—(pointing to the figures of Mary and St. John)—that a Southern artist would have placed this line, and this, side by side. Here, however, the painter's chief concern is not with the composition, but to give an impression of real inwardness—to realise the inner experience. And then we must say that the effect of this line, and this line, together, is most wonderful, characterising as it does the different moods of the soul.

We now give two examples of secular subjects by the same artist.

14. Jan van Eyck. The Betrothal. (National Gallery. London.)

This picture shows very clearly how great was the artist's power of characterisation and expression. Our last picture by Van Eyck shows the attempt to get still further in the way of portraiture;

15. Jan van Eyck. The Man with the Carnation. (Berlin.)

Here you will see with great distinctness, the artist does not care at all to conceive what a man should be like; he does not work out of any such impulse, but as he sees the human being—whatever presents itself to his vision—this he reproduces.

We now come to a contemporary artist who outlived Van Eyck by a few years—the Master of Flémalle, as he is called.

16. Master of Flémalle. St. Veronica. (Frankfort.)

In him we recognise a seeker inspired by somewhat the same impulse as the Van Eycks, yet influenced far more from France. He recognise these influences in the “line.” There is a kind of echo of artistic tradition. In Van Eyck's work we feel that everything is born out of an elemental inner need. Here, on the other hand, there is already an underlying opinion—this thing or that ought to be represented in such or such a way. Though they are not by any means predominant in his work, still we can see the Master of Flémalle accepts the principles of certain aesthetic traditions. In the former artist you will not easily find, for example, this peculiar position of the hand, nor this peculiar treatment of facial expression. These elements in the picture are undoubtedly to some extent determined by certain influences from France. An atmosphere of elegant grace is poured out over these figures, which you will not find to this extent in the figures of Van Eyck.

17. Master of Flémalle. Death of the Virgin. (London.)

Characteristically—this picture shows the Christian legend transplanted into the artist's present time. These pictures were painted about the thirties of the 15th century.

We now come to Van der Weyden, who—like the former artist, received certain influences from France. Still, he contains all those elements which mark him out clearly as a follower of the Van Eycks.

18. Rogier van der Weyden. Descent from the Cross. (Berlin.)

Already in this picture you will see a characteristic difference. There is an essentially dramatic life in this, whereas we might say Van Eyck is purely ethical. Van Eyck places his figures quietly side by side; they influence one another, but there is no one all-pervading movement. Here, however, in Van der Hayden's work, there is a certain drama in the working together of the figures. It is not merely ethical.

19. Rogier van der Weyden. Descent from the Cross. (Prado. Madrid.)

The same subject, treated once more by the same artist. And now a picture taken from the Christian legends.

20. Rogier van der Weyden. St. Luke painting the Madonna. (Munich.)

Here you see the Evangelist St. Luke, who, as the legend has it, was a painter, painting Mary and the Child.

21. Rogier van der Weyden. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

One of these is King Philip of Burgundy; this one, who is just taking off his hat, is Charles the Bold. If only by this external feature, the whole scene is very much transferred into the artist's immediate present. For the Kings who come to worship the Child, he takes the figures of princes more or less of his own time.

22. Rogier van der Weyden. Charles the Bold. (Berlin.)

Here, then, we have a portrait by Van der Weyden. All these artists attained—a certain perfection in the art of portraiture.

We now come to Petrus Christus:

23. Petrus Christus. The Annunciation (wings of an Altar-piece) (Berlin.)

24. Petrus Christi. The Birth of Christ

The Angel and Mary (The Annunciation) and the presentation of the Christ Child. Petrus Christus works more or less equally along the lines of Van der Weyden on the one hand, and the Van Eycks on the other. These pictures were painted about 1452—the middle of the 15th century.

In the following pictures we come increasingly to the more Northerly Dutch element, where the landscape is developed to greater and greater perfection. The next picture is by Dieric Bouts the Younger. And now, a picture extraordinarily characteristic of this stream in Art:

25. Dieric Bouts. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Alte Pinakothek. Munich.)

26. John the Baptist and Christopher

On one side is the Baptist; on the other side the Christophorus—the Christ-Bearer. Truly, there comes to expression here the full and immediate human inwardness, and with it the landscape that belongs to it. In Dieric Bouts you will especially notice this art—to place the human being fittingly within the landscape of open Nature.

The realistic representation of things is working its way through more and more. Man as an artist becomes more and more able to find, in the direct reproduction of Nature, what he has been striving for along this path.

27. Hugo van der Goes. Portinari Altarpiece, c. 1475. (Uffizi. Florence.)

Truly, Realism has here reached a high degree of perfection. The same subject again:

28. Hugo van der Goes. Adoration by the Shepards, 1480 (Berlin.)

29. Hugo van der Goes. St. Anthony and St. Matthew.

Below are the Donors of the picture. By the same artist:

30. St. Margaret and St. Mary Magdalene. (Ste. Maria Novalis. Florence.)

31. Hugo van der Goes. The Death of Mary. (Academy. Bruges.)

32. Hugo van der Goes. Adam and Eve. The Fall. (Vienna.)

The Art of that time—as I have said on previous occasions relating to Meister Bertram—did not picture a mere snake, but tried to portray the Luciferic element.

33. Meister Bertram. The Fall (Hamburg.)

That the snake itself—the existing physical snake—should have been the Tempter, is an invention of the most modern naturalistic materialism.

We now come to the artist who, educated in the School of Van der Weyden, represents, in a certain sense, its continuation. He was known in the School as Der deutsche Hans. I refer to Hans Memling.

34. Hans Memling, Madonna Enthroned. (Uffizi. Florence.)

This artist was born at Mainz. We shall, if possible, in the near future, show some examples of Upper German paintings, which have their own characteristic peculiarities. Its tendencies are quite evidently present in this picture; but for the rest, Memling had absorbed all that was then living in the Art of the Netherlands, including the influence that came over from France. The next picture is also by Hans Memling.

35. Hans Memling. The Seven Joys of Mary. (Munich.)

—a motif which was also familiar to those times. The various events connected with the life of Mary are here portrayed. Unfortunately it is too small in this reproduction to recognise the details very clearly.

36. Memling. The Last Judgment. (Marienkirche. Danzig.)

A characteristic picture by Memling. With real genius, in his own way, he brings to expression his conception of the Last Judgment. There is a certain angular quality about it, and yet the whole event is permeated with humanity, with inward feeling. The picture is note at Danzig. A powerful trader stole the picture—but, being a pious man also, he afterwards bequeathed it to a church in Danzig.

He will also acquaint ourselves with Memling's portraits. You will see that all this School achieves a greatness of its own in representing the human individuality.

37. Memling. Portrait of a Man. (Berlin.)

The expression of the qualities of the soul in this face is, indeed, remarkable. This is a well-known picture at the Hague.

38. Memling. Portrait. (The Hague.)

We come now to the later artists who no longer show quite the same freedom and simplicity, but a certain contortion and inner complexity. David, for instance, was born in 1400; he came from Holland. Hitherto, we may say, we have had before us the pre-Reformation period in Art; the artist we shall now show brings us already very near the Reformation.

39. Gerard David. Adoration of the Magi. (Munich.)

Here you will recognise how strongly the Southern influence is already working in the element of composition.

40. Gerard David. Baptism of Christ. (Bruges.)

41. Gerard David. Madonna and Christ, with Angels. (Rouen.)

42. Gerard David. Mary and Child

The next is by an artist who was in a sense only a kind of imitation of David. We now come to Geertgen, who, though he dies at the early age of twenty-eight, does, indeed, bear within him all the peculiar characteristics of this epoch.

43. Geertgen. Holy Family. (Amsterdam.)

44. Geertgen. The Holy Night. (Berlin.)

As we go forward into the 16th century, other elements mingle more and more with what was characteristic of the Van Eyck period. We come now to Hieronymus Bosch.

45. Hieronymus Bosch. Descent from the Cross.

In his work we find a strong element of composition. Also we have no longer the mere naturalistic observation. His work is permeated with a fanciful, fantastic feeling—so much so, that he becomes the painter of all manner of grotesque and “spooky” subjects.

46. Hieronymus Bosch. Christ carrying the Cross.

47. Hieronymus Bosch. Hell. (Prado. Madrid.)

The fantastic element is mingled with all that he had learned in this direction.

Now we come to Quentin Matsys, in whom the element of composition is already strongly paramount. Indeed, this is already in the 16th century.

48. Quentin Matsys. Holy Family, 1509. (Brussels.)

49. Quentin Matsys. Mourning for Christ. (Antwerp.)

Here you see quite deliberate composition. In the next picture we shall see how this feeling for composition combines with that for individual characterisation even where there is less intensity of form, or movement, in the group.

50. Quentin Matsys. The Money-Changer and His Wife. (Louvre. Paris.)

We now come to an artist who reveals the characteristics of the period especially in his landscape-painting—Joachim Patinir. It was at this time and from these regions that landscape-painting first developed and found its way into the full artistic life. Only from this time onward was it really discovered for the life of Art.

51. Patinir. The Flight into Egypt. (Madrid.)

52. Patinir. The Flight into Egypt. (Berlin.)

53. Patinir. The Baptism of Christ. (Vienna.)

I beg you to look at this especially, from the point of view of landscape-painting. Such landscape treatment could naturally only originate in the age of attempted naturalism; only then does landscape begin to have a real meaning for Art.

54. Patinir. Temptation of St. Anthony. (Prado. Madrid.)

The next is a painter quite definitely of the 16th century. I spoke just now of the “Burgher” element. He carries it still further, even into the sphere of the peasantry. His works are born of the elemental simplicity of the people. Nevertheless, all manner of other influences enter into them—Italian influences, for example. Thus he strangely unites his elemental Dutch simplicity with a very marked Renaissance feeling. I refer to Pieter Brueghel—born in 1525.

55. Brueghel. The Pious Man and the Devil. (Naples.)

56. Brueghel. The Blind Leading the Blind. (Paris. Louvre.)

57. Brueghel. The Fall of the Angels. (Brussels.)

58. Brueghel. The Way to Calvary. (Vienna.)

And another Biblical subject by the same painter.

59. Pieter Brueghel. The Adoration of the Magi. (London.)

With that, we will finish for today.

[The meeting began with a discussion of some children Dr. Steiner had observed that morning.]

Dr. Steiner: E. E. must be morally raised. He is a Bolshevik.

A teacher who was substituting in the first grade poses a question.

Dr. Steiner: You should develop reading from pictorial writing. You should develop the forms from the artistic activity.

A teacher suggests beginning the morning with the Lord’s Prayer.

Dr. Steiner: It would be nice to begin instruction with the Lord’s Prayer and then go on to the verses I will give you. For the four lower grades I would ask that you say the verse in the following way:

The Sun with loving light
Makes bright for me each day;
The soul with spirit power
Gives strength unto my limbs;
In sunlight shining clear
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind,
That thou so graciously
Hast planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn.

From Thee come light and strength,
To Thee rise love and thanks.

The children must feel that as I have spoken it. First they should learn the words, but then you will have to gradually make the difference between the inner and outer clear to them.

The Sun with loving light
Makes bright for me each day;
The soul with spirit power
Gives strength unto my limbs;

The first part, that the Sun makes each day bright, we observe, and the other part, that it affects the limbs, we feel in the soul. What lies in this portion is the spirit-soul and the physical body.

In sunlight shining clear
I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind,
That thou so graciously
Hast planted in my soul,
That I with all my might
May love to work and learn.

Here we give honor to both. We then turn to one and then the other.

From Thee come light and strength (the Sun),
To Thee rise love and thanks (from within).

This is how I think the children should feel it, namely, the divine in light and in the soul.

You need to attempt to speak it with the children in chorus, with the feeling of the way I recited it. At first, the children will learn only the words, so that they have the words, the tempo, and the rhythm. Later, you can begin to explain it with something like, “Now we want to see what this actually means.” Thus, first they must learn it, then you explain it. Don’t explain it first, and also, do not put so much emphasis upon the children learning it from memory. They will eventually learn it through repetition. They will be able to read it directly from your lips. Even though it may not go well for a long time, four weeks or more, it will go better later. The older children can write it down, but you must allow the younger ones to learn it slowly. Don’t demand that they learn it by heart! It would be nice if they write it down, since then they will have it in their own handwriting. I will give you the verse for the four higher classes tomorrow.

[The verse for the four higher grades was:]

I look into the world;
In which the Sun shines,
In which the stars sparkle,
In which the stones lie,
The living plants are growing,
The animals are feeling,
In which the soul of man
Gives dwelling for the spirit;
I look into the soul
Which lives within myself.
God’s spirit weaves in light
Of Sun and human soul,
In world of space, without,
In depths of soul, within.
God’s spirit, ‘tis to Thee
I turn myself in prayer,
That strength and blessing grow
In me, to learn and work.

[The texts of the verses are exactly as Dr. Steiner dictated them according to the handwritten notes. It is unclear whether he said, “loving light” (liebes Licht) or “light of love” (Liebeslicht).]

[Lesson plan for the independent anthroposophical religious instruction for children:]

Dr. Steiner: We should give this instruction in two stages. If you want to go into anthroposophical instruction with a religious goal, then you must certainly take the concept of religion much more seriously than usual. Generally, all kinds of worldviews that do not belong there mix into religion and the concept of religion. Thus, the religious tradition brings things from one age over into another, and we do not want to continue to develop that. It retains views from an older perspective alongside more developed views of the world. These things appeared in a grotesque form during the age of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Modern apologies justify such things—something quite humorous. The Catholic Church gets around it by saying that at that time the Copernican view of the world was not recognized, the Church itself forbade it. Thus, Galileo could not have supported that world perspective. I do not wish to go into that now, but I mention it only to show you that we really must take religion seriously when we address it anthroposophically.

It is true that anthroposophy is a worldview, and we certainly do not want to bring that into our school. On the other hand, we must certainly develop the religious feeling that worldview can give to the human soul when the parents expressly ask us to give it to the children. Particularly when we begin with anthroposophy, we dare not develop anything inappropriate, certainly not develop anything too early. We will, therefore, have two stages. First, we will take all the children in the lower four grades, and then those in the upper four grades.

In the lower four grades, we will attempt to discuss the things and processes in the human environment, so that a feeling arises in the children that spirit lives in nature. We can consider such things as my previous examples. We can, for instance, give the children the idea of the soul. Of course, the children first need to learn to understand the idea of life in general. You can teach the children about life if you direct their attention to the fact that people are first small and then they grow, become old, get white hair, wrinkles, and so forth. Thus, you tell them about the seriousness of the course of human life and acquaint them with the seriousness of the fact of death, something the children already know.

Therefore, you need to discuss what occurs in the human soul during the changes between sleeping and waking. You can certainly go into such things with even the youngest children in the first group. Discuss how waking and sleeping look, how the soul rests, how the human being rests during sleep, and so forth. Then, tell the children how the soul permeates the body when it awakens and indicate to them that there is a will that causes their limbs to move. Make them aware that the body provides the soul with senses through which they can see and hear and so forth. You can give them such things as proof that the spiritual is active in the physical. Those are things you can discuss with the children.

You must completely avoid any kind of superficial teaching. Thus, in anthroposophical religious instruction we can certainly not use the kind of teaching that asks questions such as, Why do we find cork on a tree? with the resulting reply, So that we can make champagne corks. God created cork in order to cork bottles. This sort of idea, that something exists in nature simply because human intent exists, is poison. That is certainly something we may not develop. Therefore, don’t bring any of these silly causal ideas into nature.

To the same extent, we may not use any of the ideas people so love to use to prove that spirit exists because something unknown exists. People always say, That is something we cannot know, and, therefore, that is a revelation of the spirit. Instead of gaining a feeling that we can know of the spirit and that the spirit reveals itself in matter, these ideas direct people toward thinking that when we cannot explain something, that proves the existence of the divine. Thus, you will need to strictly avoid superficial teaching and the idea of wonders, that is, that wonders prove divine activity.

In contrast, it is important that we develop imaginative pictures through which we can show the supersensible through nature. For example, I have often mentioned that we should speak to the children about the butterfly’s cocoon and how the butterfly comes out of the cocoon. I have said that we can explain the concept of the immortal soul to the children by saying that, although human beings die, their souls go from them like an invisible butterfly emerging from the cocoon. Such a picture is, however, only effective when you believe it yourself, that is, when you believe the picture of the butterfly creeping out of the cocoon is a symbol for immortality planted into nature by divine powers. You need to believe that yourselves, otherwise the children will not believe it.

You need to arouse the children’s interest in such things. They will be particularly effective for the children where you can show how a being can live in many forms, how an original form can take on many individual forms. In religious instruction, it is important that you pay attention to the feeling and not the worldview. For example, you can take a poem about the metamorphosis of plants and animals and use it religiously. However, you must use the feelings that go from line to line. You can consider nature that way until the end of the fourth grade. There, you must always work toward the picture that human beings with all our thinking and doing live within the cosmos. You must also give the children the picture that God lives in what lives in us. Time and again you should come back to such pictures, how the divine lives in a tree leaf, in the Sun, in clouds, and in rivers. You should also show how God lives in the bloodstream, in the heart, in what we feel and what we think. Thus, you should develop a picture of the human being filled with the divine.

During these years, you should also emphasize the picture that human beings, because they are an image of God and a revelation of God, should be good. Human beings who are not good hurt God. From a religious perspective, human beings do not exist in the world for their own sake, but as revelations of the divine. You can express that by saying that people do not exist just for their own sake, but “to glorify God.” Here, “to glorify” means “to reveal.” Thus, in reality, it is not “glory to God in the highest,” but “reveal the gods in the highest.” Thus, we can understand the idea that people exist to glorify God as meaning that people exist in order to express the divine through their deeds and feelings. If someone does something bad, something impious and unkind, then that person does something that belittles God and distorts God into something ugly.

You should always bring in these ideas. At this age you should use the thought that God lives in the human being. In the lower grades, I would certainly abstain from teaching any Christology, but just awaken a feeling for God the Father out of nature and natural occurrences. I would try to connect all our discussions about Old Testament themes, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and so forth, to that feeling, at least insofar as they are useful, and they are if you treat them properly. That is the first stage of religious instruction.

In the second stage, that is, the four upper grades, we need to discuss the concepts of fate and human destiny with the children. Thus, we need to give the children a picture of destiny so that they truly feel that human beings have a destiny. It is important to teach the child the difference between a simple chance occurrence and destiny. Thus, you will need to go through the concept of destiny with the children. You cannot use definitions to explain when something destined occurs or when something occurs only by chance. You can, however, perhaps explain it through examples. What I mean is that when something happens to me, if I feel that the event is in some way something I sought, then that is destiny. If I do not have the feeling that it was something I sought, but have a particularly strong feeling that it overcame me, surprised me, and that I can learn a great deal for the future from it, then that is a chance event. You need to gradually teach the children about something they can experience only through feeling, namely the difference between finished karma and arising or developing karma. You need to gradually teach children about the questions of fate in the sense of karmic questions.

You can find more about the differences in feeling in my book Theosophy. For the newest edition, I rewrote the chapter, “Reincarnation and Karma,” where I discuss this question. There, I tried to show how you can feel the difference. You can certainly make it clear to the children that there are actually two kinds of occurrences. In the one case, you feel that you sought it. For example, when you meet someone, you usually feel that you sought that person. In the other case, when you are involved in a natural event, you have the feeling you can learn something from it for the future. If something happens to you because of some other person, that is usually a case of fulfilled karma. Even such things as the fact that we find ourselves together in this faculty at the Waldorf School are fulfilled karma. We find ourselves here because we sought each other. We cannot comprehend that through definitions, only through feeling. You will need to speak with the children about all kinds of fates, perhaps in stories where the question of fate plays a role. You can even repeat many of the fairy tales in which questions of fate play a role. You can also find historical examples where you can show how an individual’s fate was fulfilled. You should discuss the question of fate, therefore, to indicate the seriousness of life from that perspective.

I also want you to understand what is really religious in an anthroposophical sense. In the sense of anthroposophy, what is religious is connected with feeling, with those feelings for the world, for the spirit, and for life that our perspective of the world can give us. The worldview itself is something for the head, but religion always arises out of the entire human being. For that reason, religion connected with a specific church is not actually religious. It is important that the entire human being, particularly the feeling and will, lives in religion. That part of religion that includes a worldview is really only there to exemplify or support or deepen the feeling and strengthen the will. What should flow from religion is what enables the human being to grow beyond what past events and earthly things can give to deepen feeling and strengthen will.

Following the questions of destiny, you will need to discuss the differences between what we inherit from our parents and what we bring into our lives from previous earthly lives. In this second stage of religious instruction, we bring in previous earthly lives and everything else that can help provide a reasoned or feeling comprehension that people live repeated earthly lives.

You should also certainly include the fact that human beings raise themselves to the divine in three stages. Thus, after you have given the children an idea of destiny, you then slowly teach them about heredity and repeated earthly lives through stories. You can then proceed to the three stages of the divine.

The first of these stages is that of the angels, something available for each individual personally. You can explain that every individual human being is led from life to life by his or her own personal genius. Thus, this personal divinity that leads human beings is the first thing to discuss.

In the second step, you attempt to explain that there are higher gods, the archangels. (Here you gradually come into something you can observe in history and geography.) These archangels exist to guide whole groups of human beings, that is, the various peoples and such. You must teach this clearly so that the children can learn to differentiate between the god spoken of by Protestantism, for instance, who is actually only an angel, and an archangel, who is higher than anything that ever arises in the Protestant religious teachings.

In the third stage, you teach the children about the concept of a time spirit, a divine being who rules over periods of time. Here, you will connect religion with history.

Only when you have taught the children all that can you go on, at about the twelfth grade, to—well, we can’t do that yet, we will just do two stages. The children can certainly hear things they will understand only later. After you have taught the children about these three stages, you can go on to the actual Christology by dividing cosmic evolution into two parts: the pre-Christian, which was really a preparation, and the Christian, which is the fulfillment. Here, the concept that the divine is revealed through Christ, “in the fullness of time,” must play a major role.

Only then will we go on to the Gospels. Until then, to the extent that we need stories to explain the concepts of angel, archangel, and time spirit, we will use the Old Testament. For example, we can use the Old Testament story of what appeared before Moses to explain to the children the appearance of a new time spirit, in contrast to the previous one before the revelation to Moses. We can then also explain that a new time spirit entered during the sixth century B.C. Thus, we first use the Old Testament. When we then go on to Christology, having presented it as being preceded by a long period of preparation, we can go on to the Gospels. We can attempt to present the individual parts and show that the four-foldedness of the Gospels is something natural by saying that just as a tree needs to be photographed from four sides for everything to be properly seen, in the same way the four Gospels present four points of view. You take the Gospel of Matthew and then Mark, Luke, and John and emphasize them such that the children will always feel that. Always place the main emphasis upon the differences in feeling.

Thus, we now have the teaching content of the second stage. The general tenor of the first stage is to bring to developing human beings everything that the wisdom of the divine in nature can provide. In the second stage, the human being no longer recognizes the divine through wisdom, but through the effects of love. That is the tenor, the leitmotif in both stages.

A teacher: Should we have the children learn verses?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, at first primarily from the Old Testament and then later from the New Testament. The verses contained in prayer books are often trivial, therefore, you should use verses from the Bible and also those verses we have in anthroposophy. In anthroposophy, we have many verses you can use well in this anthroposophical religious instruction.

A teacher: Should we teach the Ten Commandments?

Dr. Steiner: The Ten Commandments are, of course, in the Old Testament, but you should make their seriousness clear. I have always emphasized that the Ten Commandments state that we should not speak the name of God in vain. This is something that nearly every preacher overdoes since they continually speak vainly of Christ. Of course, this is something we must deepen in the feeling. We should not give religious instruction as a confession of faith, but as a deepening of feeling. The Apostles’ Creed as such is not important, only what we feel in the Creed. It is not our belief in God the Father, in God the Son, and in God the Holy Spirit, but what we feel in relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is important is that in the depths of our soul, we feel that it is an illness not to know God, that it is a misfortune not to know Christ and that not to know the Holy Spirit is a limitation of the human soul.

A teacher: Should we teach the children about historical things, for instance, the path of the Zarathustra being up to the revelation of Christianity, or the story of the two Jesus children?

Dr. Steiner: You should close the religious instruction by teaching the children about these connections but, of course, very carefully. The first stage is clearly more nature religion, the second, more historical religion.

A teacher: Then we should certainly avoid teaching about functionality in natural history? Schmeil’s guidelines for botany and zoology are teleological.

Dr. Steiner: With regard to books, I would ask that you consider them only as a source of factual information. You can assume that we should avoid the methods described in them, and also the viewpoints. We really must do everything new. We should completely avoid the books that are filled with the horrible attitude we can characterize with statements such as “God created cork in order to cork champagne bottles.” For us, such books exist only to inform us of facts. The same is true for history. All the judgments made in them are no less garbage, and in natural history that is certainly true.

In my opinion it would not be so bad if we used Brehm, for example, if such things are to be up-to-date. Brehm avoids such trivial things, though he is a little narrow-minded. It would be a good idea to copy out such things and use stories as a basis. Perhaps, that would be the best thing to do. The old edition of Brehm is pretty boring. We cannot use the new edition written recently by someone else.

In general, you can assume all school books written after 1885 are worthless. Since that time, all pedagogy has regressed in the most terrible way and simply landed in clichés.

A teacher: How should we proceed with human natural history? How should we start that in the fourth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Concerning human beings you will find nearly everything somewhere in my lecture cycles. You will find nearly everything there somewhere. You also have what I presented in the seminar course. You need only modify it for school. The main thing is that you hold to the facts, also the psychological and spiritual facts. You can first take up the human being by presenting the formation of the skeleton. There, you can certainly be confident. Then go on to the muscles and the glands. You can teach the children about will by presenting the muscles and about thinking by presenting the nerves. Hold to what you know from anthroposophy. You must not allow yourselves to be led astray through the mechanical presentation of modern textbooks. You really don’t need anything at the forefront of science for the fourth grade, so perhaps it is better to take an older description and work with that. As I said, all of the things since the 1880s have become really bad, but you will find starting points everywhere in my lectures.

A teacher: I put together a table of geological formations based on what you said yesterday.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, you should never pedantically draw parallels. When you go on to the primeval forms, to the original mountains, you have the polar period. The Paleozoic corresponds to the Hyperborean, but you may not take the individual animal forms pedantically. Then you have the Mesozoic, which generally corresponds to Lemuria. And then the first and second levels of mammals, or the Cenozoic, that is, the Atlantean age. The Atlantean period was no more than about nine thousand years ago. You can draw parallels from these five periods, the primitive, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, the Cenozoic, and the Anthropozoic.

A teacher: You once said that normally the branching off of fish and birds is not properly presented, for example, by Haeckel.

Dr. Steiner: The branching off of fish is usually put back into the Devonian period.

A teacher: How did human beings look at that time?

Dr. Steiner: In very primitive times, human beings consisted almost entirely of etheric substance. They lived among other things but had as yet no density. The human being became more dense during the Hyperborean period. Only those animal forms that had precipitated out, lived. Human beings lived also with no less strength. They had, in fact, a tremendous strength. But they had no substance that could remain, so there are no human remains. They lived during all those periods but only gained an external density during the Cenozoic period. If you recall how I describe the Lemurian period, it was almost an etheric landscape. Everything was there, but there are no geological remains. You will want to take into account that the human being existed through all five periods. The human being was everywhere. Here in the first period (Dr. Steiner points to the table), “primitive form,” there is actually nothing else present except the human being. There are only minor remains. There the Eozoic Canadensa is actually more of a formation, something created as a form that is not a real animal. Here in the Hyperborean/Paleozoic period, animals begin to occur, but in forms that later no longer exist. Here in the Lemurian/Mesozoic period, the plant realm arises, and here in the Cenozoic period, Atlantis, the mineral realm arises, actually already in the last period, in these two earlier periods already (in the last two sub-races of the Lemurian period).

A teacher: Did human beings exist with their head, chest, and limb aspects at that time?

Dr. Steiner: The human being was similar to a centaur, an extremely animal-like lower body and a humanized head.

A teacher: I almost have the impression that it was a combination, a symbiosis, of three beings.

Dr. Steiner: So it is, also.

A teacher: How is it possible that there are the remains of plants in coal?

Dr. Steiner: Those are not plant remains. What appears to be the remains of plants actually arose because the wind encountered quite particular obstacles. Suppose, for instance, the wind was blowing and created something like plant forms that were preserved somewhat like the footsteps of animals (Hyperborean period). That is a kind of plant crystallization, a crystallization into plantlike forms.

A teacher: The trees didn’t exist?

Dr. Steiner: No, they existed as tree forms. The entire flora of the coal age was not physically present. Imagine a forest present only in its etheric form and that thus resists the wind in a particular way. Through that, stalactite-like forms emerge. What resulted is not the remains of plants, but forms that arise simply due to the circumstances brought about by elemental activity. Those are not genuine remains. You cannot say it was like it was in Atlantis. There, things remained and to an extent also at the end of the Lemurian period, but as to the carbon period, we cannot say that there are any plant remains. There were only the remains of animals, but primarily animals that we can compare with the form of our head.

A teacher: When did the human being then stand upright? I don’t see a firm point of time.

Dr. Steiner: It is not a good idea to cling to these pictures too closely, since some races stood upright earlier and others later. It is not possible to give a specific time. That is how things are in reality.

A teacher: If the pistil is related to the Moon and the stigma to the Sun, then how do they show the movement of the Sun and Moon?

Dr. Steiner: You must imagine it in the following way (Dr. Steiner draws). The stigma goes upward, that would be the path of the Sun, and the pistil moves around it, and there you have the path of the Moon. Here we have the picture of the Sun and Earth path as I drew it yesterday. The Moon moves around the Earth. That is in the pistil (Dr. Steiner demonstrates with the drawing). It appears that way because the path of the Moon goes around also, of course, but in relationship, not in a straight line. The path of the Sun is the stigma. This circle is a copy of the helix I drew yesterday. It is also a helix.

A teacher: You have told us that the temperaments have to do with predominance of the various bodies. In GA 129, you said that the physical body predominates over the etheric, the etheric over the astral, and the I over the astral. Is there a connection with the temperaments here? In GA 134, you mention a figure that gives the proper relationship of the bodies.

Dr. Steiner: That gives the relationship of the forces.

A teacher: Is there a further relationship to the temperaments?

Dr. Steiner: None other than what I presented in the seminar.

A teacher: You have said that melancholy arises due to a predominance of the physical body. Is that a predominance of the physical body over the etheric?

Dr. Steiner: No, it is a predominance over all the other bodies.

A question arises about parent evenings.

Dr. Steiner: We should have them, but it would be better if they were not too often, since otherwise the parents’ interest would lessen, and they would no longer come. We should arrange things so that the parents actually come. If we have such meetings too often, they would see them as burdensome. Particularly in regard to school activities, we should not do anything we cannot complete. We should undertake only those things that can really happen. I think it would be good to have three parent days per year. I would also suggest that we do this festively, that we print cards and send them to all of the parents.

Perhaps we could arrange it so that the first such meeting is at the beginning of the school year. It would be more a courtesy, so that we can again make contact with the parents. Then we could have a parent evening in the middle of the year and again one at the end. These latter two would be more important, whereas the first, more of a courtesy. We could have the children recite something, do some eurythmy, and so forth.

We can also have parent conferences. They would be good. You will probably find that the parents generally have little interest in them, except for the anthroposophical parents.

A teacher asks Dr. Steiner to say something about the popularization of spiritual science, particularly in connection with the afternoon courses for the workers [at the Goetheanum].

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is important to keep the proper attitude in connection with that popularization. In general, I am not in favor of popularizing by making things trivial. In my opinion, we should first use Theosophy as a basis and attempt to determine from case to case what a particular audience understands easily, or only with difficulty. You will see that the last edition of Theosophy has a number of hints about how you can use its contents for teaching. I would then go on to discussing some sections of How to Know Higher Worlds, but I would never intend to try to make people into clairvoyants. We should only inform them about the clairvoyant path so that they understand how it is possible to arrive at those truths. We should leave them with the feeling that it is possible with normal common sense to understand and know about how to comprehend those things. You can also treat The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity in a popular way. There you have three books that you can use for a popular presentation. Generally, you will need to arrange things according to the audience.

Several children are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: The most important thing is that there is always contact, that the teacher and students together form a true whole. That has happened in nearly all of the classes in a very beautiful and positive way. I am quite happy about what has happened.

I can tell you that even though I may not be here, I will certainly think much about this school. It’s true, isn’t it, that we must all be permeated with the thoughts:

First, of the seriousness of our undertaking. What we are now doing is tremendously important.

Second, we need to comprehend our responsibility toward anthroposophy as well as the social movement.

And, third, something that we as anthroposophists must particularly observe, namely, our responsibility toward the gods.

Among the faculty, we must certainly carry within us the knowledge that we are not here for our own sakes, but to carry out the divine cosmic plan. We should always remember that when we do something, we are actually carrying out the intentions of the gods, that we are, in a certain sense, the means by which that streaming down from above will go out into the world. We dare not for one moment lose the feeling of the seriousness and dignity of our work.

You should feel that dignity, that seriousness, that responsibility. I will approach you with such thoughts. We will meet one another through such thoughts.

We should take that up as our feeling for today and, in that thought, part again for a time, but spiritually meet with one another to receive the strength for this truly great work.

The consciousness soul, intellectual soul and sentient soul shouldn't be completely equated with willing, thinking and feeling, for the latter are to be found in each of the three soul members. People who are more feeling beings come to esotericism, and namely, especially those who have a religious bent. Such people usually get general ideas about the spiritual world and also Imaginations very easily. They're usually spared the things that make it difficult for men to ascend into spiritual worlds. Their worries are taken away from them by an angelic being, they're carried over the threshold by their angel. Such men can experience many beautiful things in the spiritual world, and when they speak about this we should listen well to what they tell us.

Then there's people who come to esoteric development more out of the will that's connected with emotions and passions, and this can be connected with criticism and ridicule. It's more difficult for them than for the feeling type to get into the spiritual world. When they stand before the threshold they're tortured by their passions and emotions so badly that it can become physical torture. In their meditation it's as if they were being tormented and hindered by devils. They would like to enter the spiritual world, but they don't feel that they can.

The third path through thinking is one that one can choose oneself. But very few people tread this path. One hears people say that they can't imagine what things were like during Moon evolution. But that's their own fault. A farmer would easily be able to understand Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. People who don't understand it just don't want to accept it because they've never seen it. But even if we had never seen a child we would know that an adult couldn't be the way he is if there weren't other stages of development behind him.

Our verse Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur is speaking about the Father God who has a son in Christ. It was a deep thought of Christianity to express this relation with the help of the father-son relationship. For a father can also remain without a son. It's a gift of the Father that he let the Son proceed from him. If one feels united with the Son who is the God in a man's soul one can arrive at a deeper understanding of EDN, ICM and will later also come to a realization of PSSR.

Before I close the lecture cycle of this winter with a picture of the human future and human ideals, I would like to talk of the present cultural life as it expresses itself in one of the most significant and most typical spiritual heroes of our time.

Not from the literary, not from the aesthetic point of view, but from the world view I might speak of Ibsen's attitude; for really everything expresses itself just in Ibsen that the deepest and best spirits of the modern time feel and think.

One has often said that every poet is the expression of his time. Indeed, this sentence holds good, but only if one gives it the quite special contents, it can be understood. Just as Homer, Sophocles, and Goethe were expressions of their time, it is undoubtedly Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906, Norwegian playwright and poet) for the present, and nevertheless how differently our time does leave its stamp on him as once on those personalities.

In order to recognise how completely different the time was around the turn of the 18-th century, the time of Goethe, Schiller and Herder, and how differently our time expresses itself, one needs to put two things next to each other only. Goethe still rounds off the second part of his Faust, seals it and leaves it behind as a big will of his life. After his death he leaves a legacy behind to the human beings, shining into the future, full of forces in the confidence: “the traces of my days will survive into eternity” (Faust II, 11583-11584). A human being who is basically the representative of the whole humanity stands before us in Faust. We cling to him; he fulfils us with purpose in life, with life-force. Beyond his death Goethe points out that to us. Faust cannot become outdated; we find deeper and deeper truths in it. We feel it as something living on, something that we have not exhausted: this is an end of his life pointing to the future.

Henrik Ibsen consciously finished his life work long before his death with his drama When We Dead Awaken (1899). What has fulfilled human beings for half a century, what existed in revolutionary and other ideas penetrated Henrik Ibsen's soul. He described what the hearts moves what separates them, fighting the struggle for existence in a way never seen before. This drama appears as a big review and stands there like a symbol of the artist himself. He was a hermit in the human life, a hermit in his own life. For half a century he looked for human happiness and truth, did not save any forces to get to light and truth, to the solution of the big riddles of life. Now he himself awakes, feels what lies behind him as something dead, and he decides to write nothing more. It is a review that points only to the transitory; what he longed for appears to him as something mysterious, something unreal the ideals collapse behind him. Because he awoke, he is at his wits' end. This is the poet who is the representative of our time, the poetically greatest one. This life balance is a criticism of everything that we have a give-up and at the same time an awakening from and at the criticism of our time. An immense overview of the modern life expresses itself in this drama; if we realise it, we understand the tragic in the personality of the poet. For Henrik Ibsen is a tragic personality.

If one wants to understand him completely, one has to understand him as representative of our time. Hence, do not consider it as academic sophistry if I try at first to conceive the nerve of our time; for Henrik Ibsen is an expression of it. A word characterises our time and also the whole Ibsen, this is the word “personality.” Goethe also probably said: “personality is the highest happiness of the earth children only.” But, nevertheless, it happens with Ibsen quite differently. Ibsen is completely a child of our time, and from here we understand him best of all.

Remember how differently the personality stands there in ancient Greece. How does Oedipus stand there? What moves the destiny of Oedipus goes far beyond his whole house. We have to make connections with quite different regions: his destiny extends beyond his individual personality, it is lifted out above personality however, the personal is not yet lifted out from the moral connection with the whole world. This is different from today: we have now to search for the centre in the personality that destiny relocated in the personality. Bit by bit we can pursue this. With the emergence of Christianity it happens that the urge of individuality wants to satisfy itself. The personality wants to be free, free before the highest, before the divine. The connections are torn, the personality shifts for itself. During the Middle Ages, personality tries to understand itself.

How deeply the whole environment is yet connected with the personality in Greece! How the human being grows out of his surroundings! He is born out of the whole universe. The external configuration of the Greek life, however, is like a piece of art: Plato creates a state idea in which the single human being should adapt himself like a limb to the whole body. Christianity brings another ideal; but this new one is purchased by the price of the relationship with nature, one seeks above nature. The Christian searches what should release his personality in something that reaches beyond personality. Even the individual Roman felt as a member of the whole state: he is a citizen first, and then he is a human being. In mediaeval times, a tendency prevails that looks out over the environment, looks up to a yonder world which one clings to. This makes a big difference for the whole human thinking, feeling and willing. This continues that way up to modern times.

The Greek, the Roman citizen lived and died for what surrounded him what lived in his outside world. In mediaeval times, something of a divine world order still lived, indeed, not in the environment, but in the “Gospel of the Good News,” and expressed it like in a mirror. In the best as in the simplest souls, in the mystic as in the people this divine world order was alive. It is something that is given from without, indeed, but that lives as something emerging in the soul. What happens in the world of stars as God's will fulfils the soul substantially: one knows what is beyond birth and death.

Let us take the new time and look from the artistic point of view at Shakespeare. What finds expression in Shakespeare's dramas and lives in these dramas is the character first of all. Something like that does not exist in Greece and in mediaeval times. Shakespeare's dramas are character dramas; the main interest is directed to the human being, to that what happens in the depth of his soul, as he is put into the world.

The Middle Ages had no real drama; the human beings were occupied with other interests. Now the personality emerges but with it all the uncertain, all the incomprehensible of personality emerges at the same time. Take Hamlet: one can hear so many different interpretations about that from so many scholars. About no work so many books were probably written. This is due to the fact that this character itself has something uncertain. It is no longer a mirror image of the outside world, also no longer a mirror of the Good News.

The whole point of view of the modern times takes on this character. Have a look at the figure of Kant (1724-1804, German philosopher) how everything is put into the personality. What he says would be possible neither in mediaeval times, nor in antiquity. It is something quite uncertain that he represents: act in such a way that your action could become the guideline of the community. But this ideal remains something quite uncertain. He says: we cannot recognise, we have limits that we cannot overcome with our reason; it only feels something dark that urges and drives. Kant calls it the categorical imperative.

The Greek, the medieval human being had sharply outlined ideals. He knew not only that he should live like the other human beings in their sense: they lived in his blood. This had changed: a categorical imperative which has no right contents positioned itself before the reason; nothing fills this soul with particular ideals. Thus it was in the 18th century.

Something that asks for certain ideals awoke in our classical authors. It is interesting that Schiller who was a not less harsh critic of his time like Ibsen we take the Robbers: Karl Moor wants something certain, he wants to create human beings who change their time, do not practise only criticism , it is interesting that Schiller trusts in the ideal and says: whatever the world may be, I put human beings into it who set this world on fire.

Even more significantly this comes to the fore with Goethe in his Faust. Goethe appears here as a spirit who looks into the new aurora.

But now there came the 19th century with its demand for freedom, for personality. What is freedom? In which respect should the human being be free? One must want something certain. But it was freedom in itself, which one wanted. In addition to that, the 19-th century had become the most rationalistic one. The human beings see their surroundings; but no ideal pours out of them; the human beings are no longer borne by ideals. The human being stands on the peak of his personality, and the personality has become self purpose. Hence, humanity can no longer distinguish two concepts today: individuality and personality; it does no longer distinguish what must be separated.

What is individuality? Individuality is that what appears full of contents in the world. If I have a future thought, full of contents, and imagine what I insert into the world, my personality may be powerful or weak, but it is the support of these ideals, the cover of my individuality. The sum of all these ideals is the individuality which shines from the personality. The 19th century does not make this differentiation; it considers the mere powerful personality, which should be, actually, a vessel, a self purpose. That is why the personality becomes something nebulous, and with it also that becomes nebulous which was as clear as ether once. Mysticism was called mathesis once because it was clear like two times two. The human being lived in such spiritual contents, he took stock of himself and found something that was higher than personality: he recognised his individuality. The 19-th century cannot understand mysticism, one talks of it as something unclear, something incomprehensible. This was necessary: the personality had to be felt once like a hollow skin. One speaks mostly of personality, however, the real personality exists least of all. Where the personality is fulfilled with individuality, one speaks of it least of all because it is a matter of course. One talks mostly of that what is not there. If, hence, the 19th century talks of mysticism, it speaks of something unclear. We understand why this happened that way.

As a son of his time Henrik Ibsen deeply looked down into this personality and this time. Like an honest truth seeker he strives for the true contents of the personality, but as somebody who is completely born out of his time. “Oh my eye is dazzled by the light to which it turns.”

How would have an old Roman spoken of the right? It was a matter of course to him; as little as he denied the light, he would have denied the law. With Ibsen one reads: “Right? Where is it valid as right?” Everything is determined by power to a greater or lesser degree. Thus we see Henrik Ibsen as a thoroughly revolutionary spirit. He looked into the human breast, and he found nothing there, everything that the 19th century offered was nothing to him. He expresses it: oh how have these old ideals of the French revolution lost their strength; we need a revolution of the whole human spirit today! This is the mood expressing itself in Ibsen's dramas.

Once again let us consider the ancient times. The Greek felt well in his polis, the Roman in his state, the medieval human being felt as a child of God. How does the son of the modern time feel? He finds nothing around himself that can support him. The Greek and the medieval human being did not feel as lonesome human beings, with Ibsen the strongest man is the most lonesome one. This feeling of loneliness is something absolutely modern, and Ibsen's art arises from it. This concept, nevertheless, which speaks from Ibsen's dramas: we must appeal to the human personality, is nothing clear. These forces in the human being which must be uncovered are something uncertain, but we have to turn to them. Ibsen tries to understand the human beings around him in such a way. However, what else can one see in such a time than the struggle of the personality which is torn out from all social connections? Yes, there is the second possibility: if the human being is still connected with the state, with his surroundings, his personality bows to that, denies itself. However, what can these connections mean to the human being even today? They were true once, now the human being shifts only for himself and disharmonies originate between the personality and the surroundings.

Ibsen has a decided sense of the untruth of these connections between the human being and his surroundings. The seeker of truth becomes the rigorous critic of the lie. Hence, his heroes become uprooted personalities, and those who want to produce the connection with their surroundings must become enslaved by the lie, can do it only by deception of their self-consciousness. In the dramas of the middle time this attitude can be found. We see this if we let pass by Brand (1866), Peer Gynt (1867), and Emperor and Galilean (1873) before our eyes. We find a tip to three ages in the latter drama. The first is that which we have characterised before, that of the past when the external form held good so much. Emperor Julian looks into the second, that of the Galilean, which shows an internalisation of the soul. But a third age is said to come when the human being has ideals again and coins them from within to the outside. Destiny once came from without. What must be longed for is the internal ideals which the strong human being can impress to the world; he should be an emissary not reproduce, but shape, create. The third world age in which the ideal comes into its own is not yet attained. In the loneliness, the human being finds it in his soul, but not in such a way that it had force and power to fashion the world. This unification of Christianity with the antique ideal is the reverse way. But Ibsen put this ideal on a weak soul which collapses; Julian is still the human being of the past.

On the other hand, we have to do it with the human being who rests on the only formal, on the hollowed out personality. Nothing is more typical for Ibsen than the way he put the hard gnarled figure of his “Brand” into our time. He is not despotic and autocratic, but he is torn out of the connection with the environment. He stands there as a clergyman, surrounded by people to whom the connection with the divine had become a lie. Beside him a clergyman stands who only believes what he believes because he generally has no strong religious feeling.

An ideal which is a higher one must be able to work on all human beings. The theosophical ideal of brotherliness immerses the human acting in mildness and benevolence and regards every human being as a human brother. As long as this ideal is not yet born and the human being must rest on the fragments and leftovers of the old ideals which mix personality and individuality, he appears as hard and sturdy. Who puts up the personality ideal in such a way becomes hard and sturdy like Brand, and it must be that way. Individuality connects, personality separates. Nevertheless, this passage through the personality uncovered forces which had to be developed and would not have emerged, otherwise. We had to lose the old ideals, to regain them once on a higher level. A poet like Ibsen had to reach into this personality and to describe it as a hollow one as he does it brilliantly in the League of Youth (1869).

He explained what works on the personality, what it should only present in his later dramas in which he becomes the positive critic of the time like in the Pillars of Society (1877).

He shows us the personality in conflict with its surroundings in the Ghosts (1881). During the conflict with her surroundings Mrs. Alving must lie where she seeks for truth to bring her son in a clean atmosphere. Thus fate befalls her like the ancient Greeks. Ibsen lives in the sign of Darwin, and this Oswald stands not in a spiritual, ethical connection with the past, but in that of heredity. The personality, as far as it is soul, can only be torn out from its surroundings; the corporeality is connected with the physical heredity, and thus a fate befalls Oswald Alving pouring out only from the physical laws like a moral, spiritual-divine fate befalls the antique hero.

With it Ibsen is completely a son of his time. However, he also shows that way what of this personality is justified of the personality which should again become an individuality maybe later.

In an especially typical way this problem faces us in the woman. Nora lives as it were at A Doll's House (1879) and grows out of it, seeking for the way to individuality. All old world views have stated an individual, natural difference between man and woman, and this reproduced till our time. The passage had just to be found by the personality to remove this. Only as personalities man and woman are opposing each other on the same level; not until they find the same in the personality, they are able to develop the same individual, so that they go once as companions toward future. As long as one got the ideals from without, they were connected with the natural, and the natural was rooted in the difference between man and woman which can be compensated only in the soul. From nature this contrast was brought into religion still in mediaeval times, while it yet had an echo of the natural in the divine.

You find the male and female principles in the old religions side by side as something that flashes through the whole being, lives and works in nature. We find it in Osiris and Isis, in God Father and Mary. Only when one had cast off the nature basis, when one got to the soul and emancipated this soul, the personal in the human being finally managed to get to freedom by that which is not connected with the differentiation of man and woman. So only the contrast of male and female was overcome. And the poet of personality also had to find the typical word for it. Thus that differentiation grows up as a problem in him in such dramas like A Doll's House, Rosmersholm (1886) and The Lady from the Sea (1887).

We see how Ibsen is connected with everything that constitutes the greatness, even if the emptiness of our time. The more Ibsen looked into the future, the more he felt how the emptiness must happen if the personality is emancipated, is detached from its divine-spiritual connections. Thus Ibsen himself faces the problem of personality in The Master Builder (1892) with the big question to the future: we have freed the personality to what end? Something uncertain remains with this search for the essential. As a real truth seeker he represents this unknown like in an allegory in The Lady from the Sea. She gets free for the old duties. However, one has to continue asking: to what end? This is shown in the drama symbolically in a marvellous way.

When he tries to look even farther into the riddles of life in Little Eyolf (1894), in When We Dead Awaken, something deep disappears to him in the human heart in which he believed before. Desperation seizes the sculptor in When We Dead Awaken who tried to catch the ideal. He cannot yet form the free human being: animal grimaces rise before him. He tries to form something creatively that lifts him out of them, a resurrection however, always the grimaces push themselves to the fore, position themselves before the picture. When he realises that he cannot overcome them, he awakes and sees what is missing for our time, what it does not have. A tremendously tragic moment is put before us in When We Dead Awaken.

Thus Henrik Ibsen is an intrepid prophet of our time: he still feels in the deepest heart, assured of a good future, that there must be something that reaches beyond personality; but he is quiet, and this silence has that tremendously tragic in itself. Who familiarised himself with what stands out in the personality beyond birth and death who made himself familiar with the big law of karma finds new contents also in the personal. He establishes a new ideal; he overcomes personality and makes himself the confessor and lord of this big law of retribution.

The antique human being trusted in the reality around himself; he built up the supports of his soul on it. The Middle Ages experienced the ideal in the innermost soul. The modern human being has descended to isolation in the personality, to egotism. He still feels the categorical imperative but as something uncertain, dark. He strives for personal freedom, but the question imposes itself on him: to what end should the personality be freed?

The old ideals say nothing more to our time; something new must arise.

It is the purpose of the theosophical world view to bring freedom about which does no longer depend on personal arbitrariness, which combines again with divine ideals. It is the spiritual, theosophical life and world view to contribute to it, to build up this future.

Only if the best of our time point to this theosophical, spiritual-scientific world view being rooted in the cosmic reality, it gets the significance which it must have. If a great man is quiet in tragic modesty, one like Henrik Ibsen who has aroused the minds, this is such a suggestion.

In the days of the 19-th century drawing to an end he wrote his When We Dead Awaken. Now then, the time has come that to us dead human beings Goethe's saying comes true:

As long as you don't have
This dying and growing,
You are any dull guest
On the dark earth only. (From West-Eastern Divan)

The time has come that we live again, that we become personalities again but emancipated personalities: individualities.

The members of the Anthroposophical Society come into the Society, as indeed is obvious, for reasons that lie in their inner life, in the inner condition of their souls. And as we are now speaking of the karma of the Anthroposophical Society, nay of the Anthroposophical Movement altogether, showing how it arises out of the karmic evolution of members and groups of members, we shall need to perceive the foundations of this karma above all in the state of soul of those human beings who seek for Anthroposophy. This we have already begun to do, and we will now acquaint ourselves with certain other facts in this direction, so that we may enter still further into the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Most important in the soul-condition of anthroposophists, as I have already said, are the experiences which they underwent in their incarnations during the first centuries of the founding of Christianity. As I said, there may have been other intervening incarnations; but that incarnation is above all important, which we find, approximately, in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth century A.D. In considering this incarnation we found that we must distinguish two groups among the human beings who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. These two groups we have already characterised. We are now going to consider something which they have in common. We shall consider a significant common element, lying at the foundation of the souls who have undergone such lines of evolution as I described in the last lecture.

Looking at the first Christian centuries, we find ourselves in an age when men were very different from what they are today. When the man of today awakens from sleep, he slips down into his physical body with great rapidity, though with the reservation which I mentioned here not long ago, when I said that this entry and expansion into the physical body really lasts the whole day long. Be that as it may, the perception that the Ego and the astral body are approaching takes place very quickly. For the awakening human being in the present age, there is, so to speak, no intervening time between the becoming-aware of the etheric body and the becoming-aware of the physical. Man passes rapidly through the perception of the etheric body—simply does not notice the etheric body,—and dives down at once into the physical. This is a peculiarity of the man of the present time.

The nature of the human beings who lived in those early Christian centuries was different. When they awoke from sleep they had a distinct perception: “I am entering a twofold entity: the etheric body and the physical.” They knew that man first passes through the perception of the etheric body, and then only enters into the physical. Thus indeed, in their moment of awakening they had before them—though not a complete tableau of life—still very many pictures of their past earthly life. And they had before them another thing, which I shall describe directly. For if man enters thus, stage by stage, into that which remains lying on the couch, into the etheric and physical bodies,—the result is that the whole period of waking life becomes very different from the experiences which we have in our waking life today.

Again, when we consider the moment of falling asleep nowadays, the peculiar thing is this:—when the Ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric, the Ego very quickly absorbs the astral body. And as the Ego confronts the cosmos without any kind of support, being unable at its present stage to perceive anything at all, man as he falls asleep ceases to have perceptions. For the little that emerges in his dreams is quite sporadic.

This again was not so in the times of which I am now speaking. The Ego did not at once absorb the astral body; the astral body continued to exist, independently in its own substance, even after the human being had fallen asleep. And to a certain extent, it remained so through the whole night. Thus in the morning the human being awakened not from utter darkness of unconsciousness, but with the feeling:—“I have been living in a world filled with light, in which all manner of things were happening.” Albeit they were only pictures, something was taking place there. It was so indeed: the man of that time had an intermediate feeling, an intermediate sensation between sleeping and waking. It was delicate, it was light and intimate, but it was there. It was only with the beginning of the 14th century that this condition ceased completely in civilised mankind.

Now this means that all the souls, of whose life I was speaking the other day, experienced the world differently from the man of the present time. Let us try to understand, my dear friends, how those human beings—that is to say you yourselves, all of you, during that time—experienced the world.

The diving down into the etheric and physical body took place in distinct stages. And the effect of this was that throughout his waking life man looked out upon Nature differently. He saw not the bare, prosaic, matter-of-fact world of the senses, seen by the man of modern times, who—if he would make any more of it—can only do so by his fancy or imagination. No, when the man of that time looked out, upon the world of plants, for instance, he saw the flowering meadow land as though there were spread over it a slight and gentle bluish-red cloud-halo. Especially at the time of day when the sun was shining less brightly (not at the height of noon-tide), it was as though a bluish-red light, like a luminous mist with manifold and moving waves and colours, were spread over the flowering meadow. What we see today, when a slight mist hangs over the meadow (which comes of course from evaporated water),—such a thing was seen at that time in the spiritual, in the astral. Indeed every tree-top was seen enveloped in a cloud, and when man saw the fields of corn, it was as though bluey-red rays were descending from the cosmos, springing forth in clouds of mist, descending into the soil of the earth.

And when man looked at the animals, he had not merely an impression of the physical shape, but the physical was enveloped in an astral aura. Slightly, delicately, and only intimately, this aura was seen. Nay, it was only seen when the sunshine light was working in a rather gentle way;—but seen it was. Thus everywhere in outer Nature man still perceived the spiritual, working and weaving.

Then, when he died, the experience he had in the first days after passing through the gate of death—gazing back upon the whole of his past earthly life—was in reality not unfamiliar to him. As he looked back upon his earthly life directly after death, he had a distinct feeling. He said to himself: Now I am letting go that quality, that aura from my own organism, which goes out into all that I have seen of the aura in external Nature. My etheric body goes to its own home. Such was man's feeling.

Naturally all these feelings had been much stronger in more ancient times. But they still existed—though in a slight and delicate form—in the time of which I am now speaking. And when man beheld these things directly after passing through the gate of death, he had the feeling: “In all the spiritual life and movement which I have seen hovering over the things and processes of Nature, the Word of the Father-God is speaking. My etheric body is going to the Father.”

And if man thus saw the outer world of Nature differently owing to the different mode of his awakening, so too he saw his own outer form differently than in subsequent ages. When he fell asleep the astral body was not immediately absorbed by the Ego. Now under such conditions the astral body itself is filled with sound. Thus from spiritual worlds there sounded into the sleeping human Ego,—though no longer so distinctly as in ancient times, still in a gentle and intimate way,—all manner of things which cannot be heard in the waking state. And on awakening man had the very real feeling: It was a language of spiritual Beings in the light-filled spaces of the cosmos in which I partook between my falling asleep and my awakening.

And when man had laid aside the etheric body a few days after passing through the gate of death, to live henceforth in his astral body, he had once more this feeling: “In my astral body I now experience in a returning course all that I thought and did on earth. In this astral body in which I lived every night during my sleep,-herein I am experiencing all that I thought and did on earth.” Moreover, while he had carried into his awakening moments only a vague and undetermined feeling, he now had a far clearer feeling. Now in the time between death and a new birth, as in his astral body he returned through his past earthly life, he had the feeling: “Behold in this my astral body lives the Christ I only did not notice it, but in reality every night my astral body dwelt in the essence and being of the Christ.” Now man knew, that for as long as he would have to go thus backward through his earthly life Christ would not desert him, for Christ was with his astral body.

My dear friends, it is so indeed, whatever may have been one's attitude to Christianity in those first Christian centuries, whether it was like the first group of whom I spoke or like the second, whether one had still lived as it were with the more Pagan strength, or with the weariness of Paganism, one was sure to experience—if not on earth, then after death—the great fact of the Mystery of Golgotha; Christ who had been the ruling Being of the Sun, had united Himself with what lives as humanity on earth. Such was the experience of all who had come in any way near to Christianity in the first centuries of Christian evolution. For the others, these experiences after their death remained more or less unintelligible.

Such were the fundamental differences in the experience of souls in the first Christian centuries, and afterwards. Now all this had another effect as well. For when man looked out upon the world of Nature in his waking life, he felt this world of Nature as the essential domain of the Father God. All the spiritual that he beheld living and moving there, was for him the expression, the manifestation and the glory of the Father God. And he felt: This world, in the time when Christ appeared on earth, stood verily in need of something. It was the need that Christ should be received into the substance of the earth for mankind. In relation to all the processes of Nature and the whole realm of Nature, man still had the feeling of a living principle of Christ. For indeed, his perception of Nature, inasmuch as he beheld a spiritual living and moving and holding sway there, involved something else as well. All this which he felt as a spiritual living and moving and holding sway,—hovering in ever-changing spirit-shapes over all plant and animal existence,—all this he felt so that with simple and unbiased human feeling he would describe it in the words: It is the innocence of Nature's being. Yes, my dear friends, what he could thus spiritually see was called in truth: the innocence in the kingdom of Nature. He spoke of the pure and innocent spirituality in all the working of Nature.

But the other thing, which he felt inwardly—feeling when he awakened that in his sleep he had been in a world of light and sounding spiritual being—of this he felt that good, and evil too, might there prevail. In this he felt, as it sounded forth from the depths of spiritual being, good spirits and evil spirits too were speaking. Of the good spirits he felt that they only wanted to raise to a higher level the innocence of Nature and to preserve it; but the evil spirits wanted to adulterate with guilt this guiltlessness of Nature. Wherever such Christians lived as I am now describing, the powers of good and evil were felt through the very fact that as man slept the Ego was not drawn in and absorbed into the astral body.

Not all who called themselves Christians in that time, or who were in any way near to Christianity, were in this state of soul. Nevertheless there were many people living in the southern and middle regions of Europe, who said: “Verily, my inner being that lives its independent life from the time I fall asleep till I awaken, belongs to the region of a good and to the region of an evil world.” Again and again men thought and pondered about the depth of the forces that bring forth the good and the evil in the human soul. Heavily they felt the fact that the human soul is placed into a world where good and evil powers battle with one another. In the very first centuries of Christianity, such feelings were not yet present in the southern and middle regions of Europe, but in the fifth and sixth centuries they became more and more frequent. Especially among those who received knowledge and teachings from the East (and as we know such teachings from the East came over in manifold ways), this mood of soul arose. It was especially widespread in those regions to which the name Bulgaria afterwards came to be applied. (In a strange way the name persisted even though quite different peoples inhabited these regions). Thus in later centuries, and indeed for a very long time in Europe, those in whom this mood of soul was most strongly developed were called ‘Bulgars.’ ‘Bulgars’—for the people of Western and Middle Europe in the later Christian centuries of the first half of the Middle Ages—Bulgars were human beings who were most strongly touched by this opposition of the good and evil cosmic spiritual powers.

Throughout Europe we find the name ‘Bulgar’ applied to human beings such as I have characterised. Now the souls of whom I am here speaking, had been to a greater or lesser degree in this very mood of soul. I mean the souls who in the further course of their development beheld those mighty pictures in the super-sensible ceremony, in which they themselves actively took part,—all of which happened in the spiritual world in the first half of the 19th century. All that they had lived through when they had known themselves immersed in the battle between good and evil, was carried by them through their life between death and a new birth. And this gave a certain shade and colouring to these souls as they stood before the mighty cosmic pictures.

To all this yet another thing was added. These souls were indeed the last in European civilisation to preserve a little of that distinct perception of the etheric and the astral body in waking and sleeping. Recognising one another by these common peculiarities of their inner life, they had generally lived in communities. And among the other Christians, who became more and more attached to Rome, they were regarded as heretics. Heretics were not yet condemned as harshly as in later centuries. Still, they were regarded as heretics. Indeed the others always had a certain uncanny feeling about them. They had the impression that these people saw more than other folk. It was as though they were related to the Divine in a different way through the fact that they perceived the sleeping state differently than the others among whom they dwelt. For the others had long lost this faculty and had approached more nearly to the condition of soul which became general in Europe in the 14th century.

Now when these human beings—who had the distinct perception of the astral and the etheric body—passed through the gate of death, then also they were different from the others. Nor must we imagine, my dear friends, that man between death and a new birth is altogether without share in what is taking place through human beings on the earth. Just as we look up from here into the spiritual world of heaven, so between death and a new birth man looks down from that world on to the earth. Just as we here partake with interest in the life of spiritual beings, so from the spiritual world one partakes in the experiences of earthly beings upon the earth. After the age which I have hitherto been describing there came the time when Christendom in Europe was arranging its existence under the assumption that man has no longer any knowledge of his astral or his etheric body. Christianity was now preparing to speak about the spiritual worlds without being able to presume any such knowledge or consciousness among men. For you must think, my dear friends, when the early Christian teachers, in the first few centuries, spoke to their Christians—though they already found a large number who were only able to accept the truth of their words by external authority—nevertheless the simpler, more child-like feeling of that time enabled men to accept such words, when spoken from a warm and enthusiastic heart. And of the warmth and enthusiasm of heart with which the men of those first Christian centuries could preach, people today, where so much has gone into the mere preaching-of-words, have no conception. Those however who were still able to speak to souls such as I have described today,—what kind of words could they speak? They, my dear friends, could say: “Behold what shows itself in the rainbow-shining glory over the plants, what shows itself as the desire-nature about the animals,—lo, this is the reflection, this is the manifestation of the spiritual world from which the Christ has come.” Speaking to such men about the truths of spiritual wisdom, they could speak, not as of a thing unknown, but in such a way as to remind their hearers of what they could still behold under certain conditions in the gently luminous light of the sun: The Spirit in the world of Nature. Again when they spoke to them of the Gospels which tell of spiritual worlds and spiritual Mysteries or of the secrets of the Old Testament, then again they spoke to them not as of a thing unknown, but they could say: “Here is the Word of the Testament. It has been written down by human beings, who heard, more fully and clearly than you, the whispered language of that spiritual world in which your souls are dwelling from the time you fall asleep till you awaken. But you too know something of this language, for you remember it when you awaken in the morning.” Thus it was possible to speak to them of the spiritual as of something known to them. In the conversation of the priests or preachers of that time with these men, something was contained of what was already going on in their own souls. So in that time the Word was still alive and could be cultivated in a living way.

Then when these souls, to whom one had still been able to speak in the living Word, had passed through the gate of death, they looked down again upon the earth, and beheld the evening twilight of the living Word below. And they had the feeling that it was the twilight of the Logos. “The Logos is darkening”—such was the underlying feeling in their souls. After their life in the 7th, 8th or 9th century (or somewhat earlier) when they had passed through the gate of death again and looked down upon the earth, they felt: “Down there upon the earth is the evening twilight of the living Logos.” Well may there have lived in these souls the Word: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But human beings are less and less able to afford a home, a dwelling place for the Word that is to live within the flesh, that is to live on upon the earth.” This, I say again, was an underlying mood, it was indeed the dominant feeling among these souls, as they lived in the spiritual world between the 7th or 8th and the 19th or 20th century, no matter whether their sojourn there was interrupted by another life on earth. It remained their fundamental underlying feeling: “Christ lives indeed for the earth, since for the earth He died; but the earth cannot receive Him. Somehow there must arise on earth the power for souls to be able to receive the Christ.”

Beside all the other things I have described, this feeling became more and more living in the souls who had been stigmatised during their earthly time as heretics. This feeling grew in them between their death and the coming of a renewed revelation of the Christ—a new declaration of His Being.

In this condition of their souls, these human beings—disembodied as they were—witnessed what was happening on earth. It was something hitherto unknown to them, nevertheless they learned to understand what was going on, on earth below. They saw how souls on earth were less and less taken hold of by the spirit, till there were no more human beings left, to whom it was possible to speak such words as these: ‘We tell you of the Spirit whom you yourselves can still behold hovering over the world of plants, gleaming around the animals. We instruct you in the Testament that was written out of the spiritual sounds whose whispering you still can hear when you feel the echo of your experiences of the night.’ This was no more.

Looking down from above they saw how different these things were now becoming. For in the development of Christendom a substitute was being introduced for the old way of speaking. For a long time, though the vast majority to whom the preachers spoke had no longer any direct consciousness of the Spiritual in their earthly life, still the whole tradition, the whole custom of their speech came down to them from the older times,—I mean, from the time when one knew, as one spoke to men about the Spirit, that they themselves still had some feeling of what it was. It was only about the 9th, 10th or 11th century that these things vanished altogether. Then there arose quite a different condition, even in the listener. Until that time, when a man listened to another, who, filled with a divine enthusiasm, spoke out of the Spirit, he had the feeling as he listened that he was going a little out of himself. He was going out a little, into his etheric body. He was leaving the physical body to a slight extent. He was approaching the astral body more nearly. It was literally true, men still had a slight feeling of being ‘transported’ as they listened. Nor did they care so very much in those times for the mere hearing of words. What they valued most was the inward experience, however slight, of being transported—carried away. Men experienced with living sympathy the words that were spoken by a God-inspired man.

But from the 9th, 10th, or 11th, and towards the 14th century, this vanished altogether. The mere listening became more and more common. Therefore the need arose to make one's appeal to something different, when one spoke of spiritual things. The need arose somehow to draw forth from the listener what one wanted him to have as a conception of the spiritual world. The need arose as it were to work upon him, until at length he should feel impelled even out of his hardened body to say something about the spiritual world. Thus there arose the need to give instruction about spiritual things in the play of question and answer. There is always a suggestive element in questions. And when one asked: What is baptism? Having prepared the human being so that he would give a certain answer; or when one asked: What is Confirmation? What is the Holy Spirit? What are the seven deadly sins?—when one trained them in this play of question and answer, one provided a substitute for the simple elemental listening. To begin with this was done with those who entered the Schools where this was first made possible. Through question and answer, what they had to say about the spiritual worlds was thoroughly brought home to them. In this way the Catechism arose.

We must indeed look at such events as this. For these things were really witnessed by the souls who were up there in the spiritual world and who now looked down to the earth. They said to themselves: something must now approach man which it was quite impossible for us to know in our lives, for it did not lie near to us at all.

It was a mighty impression when the Catechism was arising down upon the earth. Very little is given when historians outwardly describe the rise of the Catechism, but much is given, my dear friends, when we behold it as it appeared from the super-sensible: “Down there upon the earth men are having to undergo things altogether new in the very depths of their souls; they are having to learn by way of Catechism what they are to believe.” Herewith I have described a certain feeling, but there is another which I must describe to you as follows:—We must go back once more into the first centuries of Christendom. In those times it was not yet possible for a Christian simply to go into a church, to sit down or to kneel, and then to hear the Mass right through from the beginning—from the “Introitus”—to the prayers which follow the Holy Communion. It was not possible for all Christians to attend the whole Mass through. Those who became Christians were divided into two groups. There were the Catechumenoi who were allowed to attend the Mass till the reading of the Gospel was over. After the Gospel the Offertory was prepared, and then they had to leave. Only those who had been prepared for a considerable time for the holy inner feeling in which one was allowed to behold the Mystery of Transubstantiation, only these—the Transubstantii as they were called—were allowed to remain and hear the Mass through to the end.

That was a very different way of partaking in the Mass. Now the human beings of whom we have been speaking (who in their souls underwent the conditions I described, who looked down on to the earth and perceived this strange Catechism-teaching, which would have been so impossible for them)—they, in their religious worship too, had more or less preserved the old Christian custom of not allowing a man to take part in the whole Mass till he had undergone a longer preparation. They were still conscious of an exoteric and an esoteric portion in the Mass. They regarded as esoteric all that was done from the Transubstantiation onward.

Now once more they looked down and beheld what was going on in the outer ritual of Christendom. They saw that the whole Mass had become exoteric. The whole Mass was being enacted even before those who had not entered into any special mood of soul by special preparation. “Can a man on earth really approach the Mystery of Golgotha, if in unconsecrated mood he witnesses the Transubstantiation?” Such was their feeling as they looked down from the life that takes its course between death and a new birth: “Christ is no longer being recognised in His true being; the sacred ceremony is no longer understood.”

Such feelings poured themselves out within the souls whom I have now been describing. Moreover they looked down upon that which became a sacred symbol in the reading of the Mass, the so-called Sanctissimum wherein the Host is carried on a crescent cup. It is a living symbol of the fact that once upon a time the great Sun-Being was looked for in the Christ. For the very rays of the Sun are represented on every Sanctissimum, on every Monstrance. But the connection of the Christ with the Sun had been lost. Only in the symbol was it preserved; and in the symbol it has remained until this day. Yet even in the symbol it was not understood, nor is it understood today. This was the second feeling that sprang forth in their souls, intensifying their sense of the need for a new Christ-experience that was to come.

In the next lecture, the day after tomorrow, we will continue to speak of the karma of the Anthroposophical Society.

Today I would like to examine certain other aspects of our subject.

I have often dealt with the genius of language, and you know from my book Theosophy that we refer to real spiritual entities when we speak of spiritual beings in an anthroposophical context. Thus “genius of language” designates the spiritual entity behind any specific language, an entity with whom man can become familiar and through whom he can receive, from the spiritual world, strength to express his thoughts which, at the outset, are present in his earthly self as a dead heritage from that higher world. It is, therefore, appropriate for anthroposophical students to seek, in the formation of language, a meaning which is independent of man because rooted in the spirit.

I have already drawn attention to the peculiar way the German language designates the beautiful and its opposite. We speak of the opposite of the beautiful (das Schoene) as the ugly or hateful (das Haessliche). Were we to denote the beautiful in the same way we would call it—since the opposite of hate is love—the lovely or loving. As it is, we make a significant difference. In German the word beautiful (das Schoene) is related to shining (das Scheinende). The beautiful shines; brings its inner nature to the surface. It is the distinguishing quality of the beautiful not to hide itself, but to carry its essence into outer configuration. Thus beauty reveals inwardness through outer form; a shining radiates outward into the world. If we were to speak, in this sense, of beauty's opposite, we would call it the concealed or non-radiant, that which holds back its being, refusing to disclose it in any outer sheath. To put it another way, “the beautiful” designates something objective. If we were to treat its opposite just as objectively, we would have to speak of concealment, of something whose outer aspect belies what it really is. But here subjectivity enters, for we cannot love what conceals itself, showing a false countenance; we must hate it. In this way the ugly calls up quite a different emotional reaction than the beautiful; we do not respond to it out of the same recesses of our nature.

Thus the genius of language reveals itself. And we should ask: When in the broadest sense we strive for the beautiful in art, what is our goal? The very fact that the German word for “beautiful” proceeds outward (as its opposite suggests a remaining within our emotions, our hate) means that the beautiful bears a relation to the spiritual outside us. For what shines? What we apprehend with our senses does not need to shine for us; it exists. It is the spiritual that shines, radiating into the sensory, proclaiming its being even in the sensory. By speaking objectively of the beautiful, we take hold of it as a spiritual element which reveals itself in the world through art. The task of art is to take hold of the shining, the radiance, the manifestation, of that which as spirit weaves and lives throughout the world. All genuine art seeks the spirit. Even when art wishes to represent the ugly, the disagreeable, it is concerned, not with the sensory-disagreeable as such, but with the spiritual which proclaims its nature in the midst of unpleasantness. If the spiritual shines through the ugly, even the ugly becomes beautiful. In art it is upon a relation to the spiritual that beauty depends.

Proceeding from this truth, let us consider one of the arts: painting. Recently we dealt with it insofar as it reveals the spiritual-essential through shining color. In ancient times man, by surrendering in the right way to the genius of language, showed his inner knowledge of color in his vocabulary. When an instinctive clairvoyance prevailed, he felt that metals revealed their inner natures in their colors, therefore gave them, not earthly names, but names connecting them with the planets. Otherwise people would have felt ashamed. For man looked upon color as a divine-spiritual element bestowed upon earthly substances only in the sense of our recent lectures. Perceiving the gold in gold's color, he saw not merely the earthly in that metal but the sun proclaiming itself from the cosmos in its gold color. Indeed, from the very start man saw something transcending the earthly in the colors of earthly objects. But it was only to living things that particular colors were ascribed, for living things approach the spirit in such a way that the spiritual shines forth. Animals were felt to have their own colors because in them the spirit-soul element manifests directly.

In ancient times, when man's artistic sense was not outward but inward, he painted not at all. To paint a tree green is not true painting for the reason that however well one imitates her, nature is still the essential thing; nature is still more beautiful, more vital; it needs no copy. A real painter never imitates. He uses an object as a recipient or focus of the sun, or to observe a color reflex in that object's surroundings, or to catch, above it, an interweaving of light and darkness. In other words, the thing painted is merely an inducement. For example, we never paint a flower standing in front of a window; we paint the light which, shining in at the window, is seen through the flower. We paint the sun's colored light; catch the sun.

In the case of a person, this can be done still more spiritually. To paint a human forehead the way one believes it should look is nonsense; this is not painting. But to observe how the sun rays strike that forehead, how color shows up in the ensuing radiance, how light and darkness intermingle, to capture with one's paint brush all that interplay: this is the task of the painter. Seizing what passes in a moment, he relates it to the spiritual.

If, with a sense for painting, we look at an interior view, the matter of most importance is not the figure or figures therein. I once accompanied a friend to an exhibition where we saw a painting of a man kneeling before an altar, his back toward us. The painter had given himself the task of showing how sunlight falling through a window struck the man's back. My friend remarked that he would much rather see a front view. Well, this was only material, not artistic, interest. He wanted the painter to show the man's character, and so forth. But one is justified in doing this only if one expresses all perceptions through color. If I wish to paint a human being sick in bed with a certain disease, and study his facial color in order to apprehend how illness shines through the sensory, this may be artistic. If I want to show, in totality, the extent to which the whole cosmos manifests in the human flesh color, this may also be artistic. But if I try to imitate Mr. Lehman as he sits here before me, I will not succeed; moreover, this is not the task of art. What is artistic is how the sun illumines him, how light is deflected through his bushy eyebrows. Thus for a painter the important thing is how the whole world acts upon his subject; and his means of holding fast to a transitory moment are light and darkness, the whole spectrum.

In times not so long ago one could not imagine a presentation of Mary, the Mother of God, without a face so transfigured it had passed beyond the ordinary human state; a face overcome by light. One could not imagine her clothed otherwise than in a red garment and blue cloak, because only so is the Mother of God placed rightly into earthly life; the red garment depicting all the emotions of the earthly, the blue cloak the soul element which weaves the spiritual around her; the face permeated and transfigured by spirit, overcome by light as a revelation of the spirit. We do not, however, properly and artistically take hold of these truths if we stop with what I have just described. For I have translated the artistic into the inartistic. We feel them artistically only if we create directly out of red and blue and the light by experiencing the light, in its relationship to colors and darkness, as a world in itself. Then colors speak their own language, and the Virgin Mary is created out of them.

To achieve this one must live with color; color must become emancipated from the heavy matter opposing its innermost nature. Palette colors are alien to true painting in that, when used on a plane surface, they have a down-dragging effect. One cannot live with oil-based colors, only with fluid colors. When a painter puts fluid colors upon a plane, color—owing to the peculiar relationship between man and color—springs to life; he conceives out of color; a world arises out of it. True painting comes into being only if he captures the shining, revealing, radiating element as something living; only if he creates what is to be formed on the plane out of this element. For to understand color is to understand a component part of the world.

Kant once said: Give me matter, and out of it I shall create a world. Well, you could have given him matter endlessly without his ever being able to make a world out of it. But out of the interplaying medium of color a world of sorts can indeed be created, because every color has direct relationship with something spiritual. In the face of present-day materialism, the concept and activity of painting have—except for the beginnings made by impressionism and, still more, by expressionism—been more or less lost.

For the most part modern man does not paint, he imitates figures with a kind of drawing, then colors the surface. But colored surfaces are not painting for the reason that they are not born out of color and light and darkness.

We must not misunderstand things. If somebody goes wild and just lays on colors side by side in the belief that this is what I call “overcoming drawing,” he is mistaken. By “overcoming drawing” I do not mean to do away with drawing, but to let it rise out of the colors, be born from the colors. Colors will yield the drawing; one simply has to know how to live in colors. Living so, an artist develops an ability—while disregarding the rest of the world—to bring forth works of art out of color itself.

Look at Titian's “Ascension of Mary.” This painting stands at the boundary line of the ancient principle of art. The living experience of color one finds in Raphael and, more especially, in Leonardo da Vinci, has departed; only a certain tradition prevents the painter from totally forsaking the living-in-color.

Experience this “Ascension of Mary.” The green, the red, the blue, cry out. Now take the details, the individual colors and their harmonious interaction, and you will feel how Titian lived in the element of color and how, in this instance, he really created out of it all three worlds.

Look at the wonderful build-up of those worlds. Below, he has created out of color the Apostles experiencing the event of Mary's ascension. One sees in the colors how these men are anchored to the earth; colors which convey, not heaviness in the lower part of the painting, only a darkness which fetters the watching ones to earth. In the color-treatment of Mary one experiences the intermediate realm. A dull darkness from below connects her feet and legs with the earth; while, above her, light preponderates. This third and highest realm receives her head and radiates above it in full light, lifting it up. Thus are set forth, through inner color experience, the three stages of lower realm, middle realm, and the heights where Mary is being received by God the Father.

To understand this picture we must forget everything else and look at it solely from the standpoint of color, for here the three stages of the world are derived from color not intellectually but artistically. True painting takes hold of this world of effulgent shining, of splendid manifestation in light and darkness and color, in order to contrast what is earthly-material with the artistic. But the artistic is not permitted to reach the spiritual. Otherwise it would be not “shine” but wisdom. For wisdom is no longer artistic, wisdom leads into the formless and therefore undepictable realm of the divine.

With artistry like Titian's in “The Ascension of Mary,” we feel, on beholding the reception of Mary's head by God the Father, that now we must go no further in the treatment of light; we must halt. For we have reached the limit of the possible. To carry it further would be to fall into the intellectualistic, the inartistic. We must not make one stroke beyond what is indicated by light, rather than contour. The moment we insist on contour, we become intellectualistic, inartistic. Near the top this picture is in danger of becoming inartistic. The painters immediately after Titian fell prey to this danger. Look at the depiction of angels right up to the time of Titian. They are painted in heavenly regions. But look how carefully the painters avoided leaving the realm of color. Always you can ask yourself in regard to these angels of the pre-Titian age, and of Titian too: Couldn't they be clouds? If you cannot do that, if there is no uncertainty about existence, being, or semblance, shine, if there is an attempt fully to delineate the essence of the spiritual, artistry ceases.

In the seventeenth century it was otherwise, for materialism affects the presentation of the spiritual. Now angels began to be painted with all kinds of foreshortenings, and one can no longer ask: Couldn't that be clouds? When reason is active, artistry dies.

Again, look at the Apostles below: one has a feeling that in this “Ascension of Mary” only Mary is really artistic. Above, there is the danger of passing into the formlessness of pure wisdom. If one attains the formless one attains, in a certain sense, the zenith of the artistic. One has dared to press forward boldly to the abyss where art ceases, where the colors disappear in light, and where, if one were to proceed, one could only draw. But drawing is not painting. Thus the upper part of the picture approaches the realm of wisdom. And the more one is able to express, in the sensory world, this wisdom-filled realm, and the more the angels might be taken for billowy clouds shimmering in light, the greater the art.

Proceeding from the bottom of the picture to the really beautiful, to Mary herself rising into the realm of wisdom, we see that Titian was able to paint her beautifully because she has not yet arrived at, but only soars up toward, the realm of wisdom; and we feel that, were she to rise still higher, she must enter where art ceases. Below stand the Apostles. Here the artist has tried to express their earth-fettered character. But now a different danger threatens. Had he placed Mary further down, he could not have depicted her inward beauty. If Mary were to sit among the Apostles, she could not appear as she does as a kind of balance between heaven and earth; she would look different. She simply does not fit among the Apostles with their brownish tones. Not only are they subject to earthly gravity; something else has entered: the element of drawing takes hold. This you can see in Titian's picture. Why is it so?

Well, brown having already left the realm of color, it cannot express Mary's beauty; something not belonging entirely to the realm of the beautiful would be injected. If Mary stood or sat among the Apostles and were colored as they are, it would be a great offense. I am now speaking only of this picture and do not maintain that when standing on earth Mary must be in every instance, artistically speaking, an offense. But in this picture it would be a blow in the face if Mary stood below. Why?

Because if she stood there colored like the Apostles we would have to say that the artist presented her as virtuous. This is the way he presents the Apostles; we cannot conceive of them otherwise than looking upward in their virtue. But this for Mary would he inappropriate. With her, virtue is so self-evident that we must not express it. It would be like presenting God as virtuous. If something is self-evident, if it has become the being itself, we must not express it in mere outer semblance. Therefore Mary soars up into a region beyond all virtues, where we cannot say of her, through colors, that she is virtuous, any more than we can say of God that He is virtuous. He may, at most, be virtue itself. But this is an abstract, philosophical statement having nothing to do with art. With the Apostles, however, the artist succeeded in representing, through his color treatment, virtuous human beings. They are virtuous.

Let us look at how the genius of language reflects this truth. Tugend (virtue, in German) is related to taugen (to be fit, in German). To be fit, to be able to cope with something morally, is to be virtuous. Goethe speaks of a triad: wisdom, semblance and power. Art is the middle term: semblance, the beautiful; wisdom is formless knowledge; virtue is power to carry out worthwhile things effectively.¹

Since ancient times this triad has been revered. Once, years ago, a man said to me—and I could appreciate his point of view—that he was sick and tired of hearing people speak of the true, the beautiful and the good, for anyone in search of an idealistic expression mouthed the phrase. But in ancient times these realities were experienced not externally but with complete soul participation. Thus in the upper region of Titian's picture we see wisdom not yet transcendent, radiating artistically because of the way it is painted. In the middle, beauty; below, virtue, that which is fit. What is the inner nature of the fit? Here is manifest the genius, the profundity, of the languages active among men. If we proceeded in an exterior way we might be reminded of a certain hunchback who went to church and listened to a priest describing quite externally how everything in the world is good and beautiful and fit. Waiting at the church door, the hunchback asked the priest: You said the idea of everything is good—have I, too, a good shape? The priest replied: For a hunchback you have a very good shape.

If things are considered as externally as this, we shall never penetrate to the depths. In many fields modern observation proceeds so. Filled with external characteristics and definitions, men do not know that their ideas turn round and round in circles.

In respect to virtue it is not a question of fitness for just anything, but of fitness for something spiritual, so that a person places himself into the spiritual world as a human being. Whoever is a complete human being by reason of his bringing the spiritual not merely to manifestation but to full realization through his will is—in the true sense—virtuous. Here we enter a region which lies within the human and religious, but no longer within the artistic, sphere, and least of all within the sphere of the beautiful. Everything in the world contains a polarity. Thus we can say of Titian's picture: Above Mary he is in danger of passing beyond the beautiful, there where he reaches the abyss of wisdom. Below, he comes to the brink of the other abyss. For as soon as a painter represents the virtuous, meaning that which man realizes through his own being, out of the spiritual, he again leaves behind the beautiful, the artistic. The virtuous human being can be painted only by characterizing virtue in its outer appearance, let us say by contrasting it with vice. But an artistic presentation of virtue as such is no longer possible.

Where in our age do we not forsake the artistic? Simple life conditions are reproduced crudely, naturalistically, without any relation to the spiritual, and without this relation there is no art. Hence the striving of impressionism and expressionism to return to the spiritual. Though in many cases clumsy, tentative, exploratory, it is better than the inartistic copying of a model.

Furthermore, if one grasps the concept of the artistically-beautiful, one can deal with the tragic in its artistic manifestations. The human being who acts in accordance with his thoughts, who lives his life intellectualistically, can never become really tragic. Nor can the human being who leads an entirely virtuous life. The only tragic person is one who in some way leans toward the daimonic, that is to say, toward the spiritual, whether in a good or bad sense. Today in this age when man is in the process of becoming free, daimonic man, that is man under the influence of tutelary spirits, is an anachronism. That man should outgrow the daimonic and become free is the whole meaning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. But as he progresses in freedom the possibility of tragedy diminishes and finally ceases. Take ancient tragic characters, even most of Shakespeare's: they have a daimonism which leads to the tragic. Wherever man had the appearance of the daimonic-spiritual, wherever the daimonic-spiritual radiated and manifested through him, wherever he became its medium, tragedy was possible. In this sense the tragic will have to taper off now; a free mankind must rid itself of tutelary spirits. This it has not yet done. On the contrary, it is more and more falling prey to such forces.

But the great task and mission of the age is to pull human beings away from the daimonic towards freedom. The irony is that the more we get rid of the inner daimons which make us tragic personalities, the less do we get rid of external ones. For the moment modern man enters into relation with the outer world, he encounters something of the nature of daimons. Our thoughts must become freer and freer. And if, as I say in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, thoughts become will impulses, then the will also becomes free. These are polaric contrasts in freedom: free thoughts, free will.

Between lies that part of human nature which is connected with karma. And just as once upon a time the daimonic led to tragedy, so now the experiencing of karma can lead to inmost tragedy. Tragedy will flourish when man experiences karma. As long as we live in our thoughts we are free. But the words with which we have clothed our thoughts, once spoken or written, no longer belong to us. What may happen to a word I have uttered! Having absorbed it, somebody else surrounds it with different emotions and sensations, and thus the word lives on. As it flies through the world it becomes a power proceeding from man himself. This is his karma. Because it connects him with the earth, it may burst in on him again. Even the word which leads its own existence because it belongs not to us but to the genius of language may create the tragic. Just in our present time we see mankind at the inception of tragic situations through an overestimation of language, of the word. Peoples wish to separate themselves according to language, and their desire provides the basis for the gigantic tragedy which during this very century will break in upon the earth. This is the tragedy of karma. If past tragedy is that of daimonology, future tragedy will be that of karma.

Art is eternal; its forms change. And if in everything artistic there is some relationship to the spiritual, you will understand that with the artistic we place ourselves, creatively or through enjoyment, in the spirit world. A real artist may create his picture in a lonely desert. He does not worry about who will look at his picture or whether anybody at all will look at it, for he creates within a divine-spiritual community. Gods look over his shoulder; he creates in their company. What does he care whether or not anybody admires his picture. A person may be an artist in complete loneliness. Yet he cannot become one without bringing, by means of his creation, something spiritual into the world, so that it lives in the spirituality of the world. If one forgets this basic connection, art becomes non-art.

To create artistically is possible only if the work has a relationship to the world. Those ancient artists who painted pictures on the walls of churches were conscious of this fact; they knew that their murals stood within earth life insofar as this is permeated by the spirit; that they guided believers.

One can hardly imagine anything worse than painting for exhibitions. It is horrible to walk through a picture or sculpture gallery where completely unrelated subjects appear side by side. Painting lost meaning when it passed from something for church or home to an isolated phenomenon. If we paint or view a picture in a frame, we can imagine ourselves looking out through a window. But to paint for exhibitions—this is beyond discussion. An age which sees value in exhibitions has lost its connection with art. By this can be seen how much waits to be done in culture if we would find our way back to the spiritual-artistic. Exhibitions must be overcome. Of course some individual artists detest exhibitions. But today we live in an age when the individual cannot achieve very much unless his judgment grows out of a world-conception permeating fully free human beings; just as world-conceptions permeating people in less free ages led to the rise of genuine cultures. Today we have no real culture.

Only a spiritual world-conception can build up true culture, the indubitably artistic.

• 1. The English word virtue, derived from the Latin vir, man, carries a similar connotation of power. (Translators)

When we try to ascertain man's position in the Universe as a whole, it is a question of turning our attention not only to Space but to Time. Anyone who follows the history of human evolution at all, will find that it is a peculiarity of the Oriental conception of the Universe to set Space in the foreground, not leaving Time wholly disregarded, but placing everything pertaining to Space in the foreground. The peculiarity of the Western conception of the Universe is to reckon to a very special degree with Time, and it is precisely this regard for the temporal in human evolution and the Universe which must have primary consideration in a right view of the Christ-Force. To recognise the full significance of the Christ-Force in human evolution on Earth, we must be able to place Man himself correctly in the whole Universe, in a temporal sense. The customary belief in the law of the conservation of force, and especially that of the conservation of substance, hinders this. The law of the conservation of force is one which would so place Man in the Universe that he stands there as a mere product of nature. Attempts have been made to discover the procedure of the transformation through combustion of what man takes in as nourishment, and to find out how the heat of combustion is set up and how other forces arise in man as transformed forces of the food. Such attempts have already been made in modern times by students. They are like thoughts which find expression somewhat in the following way. A man sees a building, he hears that it is a Bank, and endeavours by some method to calculate how much money is put into the Bank and how much taken out; and finding that the amounts are the same, draws the conclusion that the money has either transformed itself in there or has remained the same, but that there are no officials there in the Bank at all. This is approximately the logic of the thought that whatever a man has eaten may be found again in the transformed forces of his calefaction, his activity. Here too courage is lacking actually to put to the test the depth of thought underlying these modern principles. One might indeed arrive at many things by testing what we find in modern science; one has only to test its logic and more especially its reality.

Now the point is that on account of a mass of unreality and of illogical methods of thought, man is placed in the dilemma in which, as I have already pointed out, on the one hand stand ideals, as secondary effects, and on the other, natural occurrences; and we can find no means of building a bridge between them. At most an attempt is made today by chatterers in the sphere of philosophy to talk of natural occurrences in a way which flatters the primitive thought of man; this kind of talk has no desire to go into anything concrete, but prefers to acquiesce in such nonsense as that of Eucken or Bergson. What is of real consequence is, first of all, that one should ask oneself: What it is that man bears within him out of the whole compass of the Universe? What enables him as a member of the Universe so to work with his Ego, that one can see that what results from his activity is his own? Now of all things of the Universe, of all properties of being in the Universe, one such property is easier to study than others, if one only sets aside the prejudices of modern science, and that is the element of heat.

Certainly it must be said in the first place that even the animal world, and perhaps to some extent the plant world, have heat of their own; but the heat of the higher animal world and of man can be distinguished from other kinds of individual heat. And it is necessary to enquire now into what may be called the heat peculiar to man. For in this particular heat (leaving aside for the moment that of the animal, although what I am saying does not contradict the facts in the animal world; but it would lead us too far to include it in our present observations), in what man possesses as his own heat—in this he has his inmost corporeality, his inmost bodily field of activity. Our attention is not drawn to this, only because it escapes ordinary observation that the element of soul and spirit dwelling in man finds its immediate continuation in the effect it has on the heat within him. In speaking of man's bodily nature pure and simple, one should really speak of his heat-body. When we see a man before us, we are also confronted by an enclosed heat-space, which is at a higher temperature than its environment. In this increased temperature lives the soul and spirit element of man, and the soul and spirit in him is indirectly conveyed by means of the heat, to his other organs. In this way too, man's Will comes into existence.

The Will comes into being through the fact that in the first instance man's heat is acted upon, then his lung-organisation, thence his fluid-organisation, and thence only what is mineral or solid in his organism. Thus the human organisation must be represented as follows: The first part to be acted upon is the heat, then through heat the air is worked upon; thence an influence acts upon the water—the fluid-organism—and thence upon the solid organisation. (I have drawn attention to the fact that the solid part of man's organisation is the smallest, for he is more than 75% water-body.) This fact, that we really live and move in our heat element, is one of the physiological facts which we must keep carefully in mind, for we must not simply regard what forms an isolated heat-space as though it were just a space of pure uniform heat, having a higher temperature than the environment—no, we must regard it as having differentiated parts, warmer and colder. Just as our liver, lungs and so forth, differ from each other, so do the parts of our heat-organism; and this differentiation is continually changing inwardly. It is a constantly moving differentiation, and that which in the first instance unites with the activity of the soul and spirit has its being in this inner heat-organisation.

Philosophers today say that the effect of the soul and spirit upon the body cannot be perceived, because they imagine an arm as a sort of solid lever appliance; and of course they cannot see how the activity of the soul and spirit, which is conceived of as abstractly as possible, is to be transmitted to this solid lever-appliance. But one need only fix one's attention on the transition, and we find there that which has been organised for man out of the whole Universe. If we really study human thought, we find that the thought which asserts itself in our head has very much to do with this inner work that goes on within the heat-relationships. (This is not quite exactly spoken, but the inaccuracy can perhaps only be corrected in the course of time. We must try to get a complete picture, therefore I will begin with a more cursory description.) If we observe this inter-working of thoughts in the heat-space, in the isolated heat-space, it is evident that something like a co-operation of thought-activity and heat-activity takes place. In what does this consist? Here we come to something which demands very careful consideration.

Taking first the whole of the rest of man, and then his head, we can of course, trace a transmutation of matter (metabolism) from the former to the latter; and the fact that ultimately the head has to do with thought—that we perceive as a direct experience. Yet what really happens? We will lead up to this gradually by way of appropriate imagery. Let us suppose we have some fluid substance; we bring it to boiling point, then it evaporates, and changes into a more rarefied substance. This same process takes place far more intensely with human thought. All that plays its part as transmutation of substances in the human head, brings it about that all substance falls away like a sediment, it is precipitated, and nothing remains of it but the mere picture.

I will now use another example. Suppose you have a vessel containing a solution. This you cool down, which is again a heat-process. A sediment collects below, and above remains finer liquid. This is also the case with the human head; only here no substance whatever is collected above, nothing but pictures, all matter is expelled. This is the activity of the human head; it forms what are mere pictures, and expels the matter.

This process, as a matter of fact, takes place in everything that may be called the transition to pure thinking. All the material substance which has co-operated in the human inner life falls back into the organism, and pictures alone remain. It is a fact that when we rise to pure thought, we live in pictures. Our soul lives in pictures; and these pictures are the remains of all that has gone before. Not the substance, but the pictures remain.

What has just been presented can be followed into the thoughts themselves, for this process only takes place at the moment when thoughts change into mere pictures. At first thoughts live, as it were, embodied. They are permeated by substance; but as pictures they separate themselves out from this substance. If however, we go to work in a truly spiritually scientific way, we can quite easily distinguish pure thought, sense-free thought that has separated itself out from the material process, from all thoughts belonging to what I have called in these lectures the “instinctive wisdom of the ancients.”

This instinctive wisdom of the ancients, as we learn it today, bears in it, quite literally and exactly, the character of not being brought to such filtration of thought that all material substance fell away. Such falling away of all matter is a result of human development. Although not observed by external physiology, it is a fact that virtually—of course virtually and approximately—the thoughts of earthly humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha were always united with matter, and that at the time of the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha in Earth-life, humanity had arrived at the point in evolution of being able to dissociate itself from matter in the inner process of thought; matter-free thought became possible.

This is not to be regarded as unimportant! It is indeed of the utmost importance that we should observe this development in earthly life—that man in his evolution has become free from the embodiment of thoughts; that they have changed to pure pictures. Thus we may say that up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, embodied pictures lived in man; but after the Mystery of Golgotha, matter-free pictures lived in man. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe worked upon man in such a way that he could not attain to pictures free of the body, free of matter. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Universe has, as it were, withdrawn. Man has been transposed to an existence which only takes place in pictures.

What man felt before the Mystery of Golgotha as his connection with the Universe, that he related also to the Universe. He related human life on Earth to Heaven. This we can observe quite exactly. The Hebrew of old was clearly and distinctly conscious that the twelve tribes of old Israel were projections on Earth of the constellations of the Zodiac. The twelve-foldness of the Universe comes to expression in the life of man; and we may say that in those days the life of man was pictured as a result of the twelve-foldness of the Heavens, of the Zodiac. Every man felt the starry Heaven streaming into him; and above all a group of men felt themselves as a group into which the starry Heaven rayed. In the evolution of Hebrew antiquity we must go back to the time when we are told of the twelve sons of Jacob as the projection on Earth of the twelve regions of Heaven. Just as there was this in-streaming of the heavenly forces upon Earth-man in gray antiquity, so also, since in the different parts of the Earth's surface evolution came about at different times, in Europe we find a similar thing at a later time. We must go back to the Middle Ages and study the legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, those significant Celtic legends. For Mid-Europe developed later to the stage reached by the old Hebrews thousands of years before. Mid-Europe was only so far on at the time to which the Legends of Arthur and his Round Table are assigned. There was however, a difference. Hebrew antiquity evolved to the point where the in-streaming from the Universe still yielded embodied pictures. Then came the point of time when the body was withdrawn from the pictures, when the pictures had to be given a new substance. There was indeed a danger that, as regards his soul-life, man would pass completely into a picture-existence. This danger man did not at once recognise. Even Descartes was still floundering, and instead of saying: ‘I think, therefore I am not’, he said the opposite of the truth: ‘I think, therefore I am’. For when we live in pictures, we really are not! When we live in mere thoughts, it is the surest sign that we are not. Thoughts must be filled with substance. In order that man might not continue to live in mere pictures, in order that inner substance might once more be in the human being, that Being intervened who entered through the Mystery of Golgotha. Hebrew antiquity was the first to meet with this intervention of the central force, which was now to give back reality to the human soul that had become

picture. This, however, was not at once understood. In the Middle Ages we have the last ramifications in the twelve around King Arthur's Table; but this was soon replaced by something else—the Parsifal Legend, which places One man over against the twelve, One man, who develops the twelve-foldness from out of his own inner centre. Thus, over against that picture which was essentially the Grail picture, must be the Parsifal picture, in which what man now possesses within him, rays out from the centre. The endeavour of those in the Middle Ages who wished to understand the Parsifal picture, who wished to make the Parsifal striving active in the human soul, was to bring into the picture-existence that could crystallise out in man after all the materiality had filtered away—to bring into it true substance, inwardness of being. Whereas the Grail legend shows still the in-streaming from without, the Parsifal figure is now set over against it, raying out from the pictures that which can restore reality to them.

Inasmuch as the Parsifal Legend appeared in this form, it represented the striving of humanity in the Middle Ages to find the way to the Christ within. It represents an instinctive striving to understand that which lives as the Christ in the evolution of humanity. If one studies inwardly what was experienced in the form of this figure of Parsifal, and compares it with what is to be found in the modern creeds, one receives a strong impulse towards that which must happen today. People are now satisfied with the mere husk of the word ‘Christ’ and believe that they thus possess Christ, whereas even the theologians themselves do not possess Him but hold to the outer interpretation of the word. In the Middle Ages there was still so much direct consciousness left, that by comprehending the representative of humanity, Parsifal, men were able to wrest their way upwards to the form of Christ. If we reflect on this we receive the impression of man's place in the whole Universe. Throughout the world of Nature, conversion of forces prevails. In man alone matter is thrown out by pure thought. That matter which is actually cast out of the human being by pure thought is also annihilated, it passes into nothingness.

If we reflect upon this, we must think of all Earth-existence as follows: Here is the Earth, and on the Earth, man; into man passes matter. Everywhere else it is transmuted. In man it is annihilated. The material Earth will pass away in proportion as matter is destroyed by man. When, some day, all the substance of the Earth will have passed through the human organism, being used there for thinking, the Earth will cease to be a cosmic body. And what man will have gained from this cosmic Earth will be pictures. These however, will have a new reality, they will have preserved an original reality. This reality is that which proceeds from the force which, as central force, makes itself felt through the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, when we look to the end of the Earth, what do we see? The end of the Earth will come when all its substance is destroyed as described above. Man will then possess pictures of all that has taken place in earthly evolution. At the end of the earthly period the Earth will have sunk into the Universe, and there would remain merely pictures, without reality. What gives them reality however, is the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha having been there in humanity; that gives these pictures inner reality for the life to come. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new beginning is set for the future existence of the Earth.

From this we can see that what is contained in our stream of evolution is not to be regarded merely as a continuous stream, where one thing is always related to another as effect to cause, but we must so consider the Earth-evolution that we recognise in the first place a pre-Christian evolution, out of which came all that men were able to think at that time, for what they were able then to think was contained in the Father-God, was imparted to the Earth through Him. The nature and work of the Father-God however, was such that what He created as Earth-evolution was given over to that part of Earth-evolution that tends to pass away. A new beginning was made with the Mystery of Golgotha. Of all that went before only pictures were to remain, as it were descriptive paintings of the world. These pictures were, however, to receive new reality through that which entered as Being into the evolution of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. That is the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; that is what I meant years ago, when I said: Christianity will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence. We have not grasped Christianity until we can say to ourselves: Precisely in the domain of heat such a change is taking place in man that through it matter is being destroyed and a purely picture-existence comes forth out of the matter; but through the union of the human soul with the Christ-substance this picture-existence is made into a new reality.

If we compare this thought, showing us the interweaving of what man has transformed into soul and spirit with physical existence, if we compare this whole thought with the cheerless scientific thoughts of modern times which can lead only to a blind alley, we shall see its great and deep significance, and we shall see how we are to regard thoughts like those of Julius Robert Mayer, which are in reality that which falls away from cosmic existence, even as ice and snow melt before the Sun. Man however, retains these pictures, and they derive a reality for the future because a new substance has laid hold of them, the substance which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.

And through this, the thought of freedom is established for man and is united with scientific thinking. This comes about because man says: Not ‘conservation of matter and of energy’; but, ‘matter and energy have a temporal life allotted to them.’ We take part not in the developing material Universe, but in its decay, and we have now to raise ourselves out of it to mere picture-existence and permeate ourselves with That to which we can only devote ourselves with our free-will, to the Christ-Being. For He so stands in human evolution that man's connection with Him can only be a free one. Anyone who seeks to be constrained to recognise Christ cannot find His Kingdom, he can rise only to the Universal Father-God, who however, in our world, has now only a share in a decaying world, and precisely on account of the decay of His own world, has sent the Son. Spiritual cosmogony must unite with natural cosmogony, but they must unite in man—and that by a free act. Hence we can only say of one who wishes to prove freedom that he is still at an ancient heathen standpoint. All proofs of freedom fail; our task is not to prove freedom, but to take hold of it. It is grasped when one understands the nature of sense-free thinking. Sense-free thinking however needs again the connection with the world, and this connection it does not find unless it unites with what has been introduced into the evolution of the world as new substance through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus the bridge between natural and moral cosmogony lies in a right understanding of Christianity. It might at first appear very strange that just those who uphold the modern creeds—as well as ancient creeds that extend their influence into modern life—do not desire a science leading towards Christianity, but desire a science as materialistic as possible, so that an unscientific faith may hold its own alongside of it.

In this connection we might say: Modern materialism and reactionary Christianity are very closely related, for the latter has driven mankind into the conception that things spiritual must not be penetrated by true knowledge. Knowledge must be kept free from the Spiritual, must be kept away from it, must extend only to the material. Thus on the one hand stands the advocate of one or other creed, who says: Science extends only to what is sense-perceptible; all else must be grasped by faith alone. On the other side stands the materialist, who says: science extends only to what is sense-perceptible; and faith I have given up.

Spiritual Science is not related to materialism. Modern creeds are indeed very closely related to it; that is to say, old creeds as introduced into modern life are indeed closely related to materialism.

I think I have now shown how the possibility of permeating the moral law with what we can know of nature, and conversely, of permeating nature-knowledge with moral law—is bound up with Spiritual Science. For the phantom which figures today in external science as Man, that delusive picture which shows Man as a configuration of mineral substance, simply does not exist. Man is just as much organised into the Fluid element as into the Solid; he is organised also into the element of Air, and above all, into that of Heat. When we come as far as Heat, we find the transition to the soul-and-spirit nature, for in Heat we have already the transition from Space to Time; and that which is of the soul flows in the temporal. Beyond Heat we pass more and more out of Space into Time, and it becomes possible, by the roundabout way here indicated, to seek the moral in the physical. Indeed it might be said that one who thinks short-sightedly will scarcely arrive at the connection of the moral with the physical in human nature—for one might certainly go to meet death as a miscreant without dislocating a limb, but remaining a well-formed man. The heat condition in the man is however not examined. The heat condition is changed far more subtly and delicately than is supposed, and works back upon what man carries through death. Today the method of study is such that we look up into abstraction, we have our thoughts up there; and we look down into the physical-material. We do not make the transition unless we pass over to the inwardly stirring heat lying between these, which has, at least for human instinct, still a physical as well as a soul aspect. We can develop warmth for our fellows morally—soul-warmth, which is the counterpart of physical warmth. This soul-warmth however, does not arise through a physical change in the sense of Julius Robert Mayer's theory; it arises—but how does it arise? I might say that here it gives palpable evidence of itself. Why do we speak of ‘warm’ feelings? Because we feel, we experience that the feeling we call ‘warm’ gives the picture of outer, physical warmth. The warmth percolates into the picture. What today is only soul-warmth will in a future cosmic existence play a physical part, for the Christ-Impulse will live therein. What today is simply picture-warmth in our world of Feeling—will live on, that it may become physical when the Earth-warmth has disappeared, for it is what the Christ-Substance, the Christ-Nature is. Let us try to find that delicate connection between external physical warmth and that which we instinctively call warmth of feeling; let us try to find it. Let us go to what Goethe said in his book called ‘The Material-Moral effects of Colours’, let us see how in his colour-perception he places the cooling colours on one side, and the warming colours on the other; how he unites the material-moral with the physical conditions which can to a certain extent be measured with a thermoscope, and shows how the element of soul interplays with the external and physical. Then we arrive at one aspect of how a moral cosmogony can be found in the study of Goethe.

The Jesuits of course hate this alliance. Therefore the best book on Goethe written out of the Jesuit thought is a poisonous book, a terrible book, though much more ingenious and effective than anything written about him elsewhere, because written with inner Jesuitical rhetoric. I refer to the three-volumed work on Goethe by Father Baumgartner. It is full of spite and malice, but it is both powerful and effective. We may be very sure that in that world, of which many people have no conception, a world which opposes us too, Goethe is better known than he is among more cultured circles. Those who appreciate Goethe and understand him from the positive standpoint, form but a small community. There is a large community of those who hate him; we do not conceive it half large enough. Some time ago I pointed out how little people are awake to what lives among us—I once said I would have liked counts to be taken at the door of all those who knew the German work, Weber's Thirteen Limetrees, a work that was truly Roman Catholic in the most positive sense. I should like to know how many it would be! The result would have been deplorable. Yet soon after publication this work ran through hundreds of editions. Have those who bring humanity forward any idea in their waking consciousness of how widespread these things are? That they have a widespread effect is certain; so too have those things from which the conflict with us proceeds. Whereas we have a small community which holds to Goethe, but is yet never able to point to anything of importance from Goethe's wisdom, the Jesuit book on Goethe is written with great cleverness and acumen—and that is precisely what we need, that we may be filled with spirit that is awake. Spiritual Science will surely succeed if a wakeful spiritual life really takes root in us.