The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we will deal with the initiation steps of the so-called Rosicrucian, Occidental occult training. Everything that is presented here is by no means to be understood as general rules for life, but can only be the task of the one who voluntarily submits to this training and thus initially stands out from the general human race in order to later be able to pass on what he has achieved. Once he has decided to become a disciple, there should be no possibility for him to criticize this training, the way it is conducted, or the behavior of the occult teacher. He must put himself into the hands of the teacher's experience. If this is impossible, and if he entertains any trace of mistrust or dissatisfaction towards his teacher, then it is better to sever the tie between himself and the teacher. For only an affection based on trust and recognizing the teacher's authority can establish the right relationship between the student and the teacher, which should be beneficial for the student. The student is always free to leave the occult training. But if one wants to undergo it, one must also be clear about the fact that the rules in question are given out of a firmly established truth in the sense of the most advanced individualities, those whom we have to regard as the great teachers of mankind, and that one can only progress if one obeys the rules. It must also be clear that this path with its instructions has already been tried and tested by many hundreds and has been successful.

In the three paths that we have now discussed, the relationship between the student and the teacher is different. In the Indian yoga training, the relationship between student and guru is very strict: absolute, complete submission to the guru is an absolute requirement. Since the student is not yet familiar with the higher worlds when following the Indian path, it is necessary that he is guided by his personal guru.

The relation is different in the case of the Christian training. There the teacher is the guide to the great Guru, Christ Jesus. A personal connection, a personal relationship of mind to Christ Jesus, is absolutely necessary for the disciple. If he cannot believe with all the power of his soul in Christ Jesus and in what He has done and exemplified for humanity, he cannot follow the Christian Path.

In the Rosicrucian training, the relationship is the freest and easiest. The teacher is the faithful friend, the guide within the narrower limits of his student's occult experience. He is not concerned with the student's daily activities, he trusts him and allows him full freedom. There is no compulsion or command anywhere, only advice is given. But there must be a friendly relationship of trust between teacher and student. Without this, the training would remain in the realm of the manasic, without it, Budhi could not be implanted at all. The power generated by the relationship of trust is necessary for occult training. Without it, the dormant powers in the student cannot be awakened.

Since the Rose Cross Way indicates study as the first step, it might be thought that this training is not for everyone. However, this is not correct; it is there for everyone, even for the simplest person. Because this study is understood to mean popular Theosophy, everything that you hear and read here in these lectures and in my or other spiritual scientific writings; that is already such a study. It is the elementary occult teaching given to man. Through it he is to become free from the prejudices of life, from the suggestion of science, which completely dominates the modern man and has already caused much mischief, blocking his unbiased view of the world, the way to impartiality, which he must find in order to have a clear judgment. In the Occident, free thinking is no longer common; instead, everything is suggestion, established dogma through power and authority. Even in the simplest concepts we have this suggestive influence: the suggestion of scholars, the suggestion of science, the suggestion that emanates from the individual. Our modern life is dominated by the family, by the relationship between the sexes. The theosophist, however, should penetrate more deeply into preparatory, logical, and sense-free thinking. He should immerse himself in such trains of thought as far as possible. For this purpose, to train such a way of thinking, I have written the two books 'Truth and Science' and 'Philosophy of Freedom', so that one can immerse oneself in such trains of thought. It is less important to understand the content in question than to live in these trains of thought. Free, sharp, rational thinking is necessary because it gives the student a certain independence, but this thinking is also a sure guide to the higher worlds. We encounter new and different things in the various worlds; but what remains the same in all worlds is thinking. Everywhere there are different perceptions, different experiences, but logic is the same in all worlds. This only changes on the Budhiplan. A remarkable change now occurs in the student. His thoughts expand to embrace other worlds. The thoughts that a person usually has here are not mental, they relate only to the physical plane. They are only the shadow images of mental reality. Now he is approaching its reality.

Next to study, the second faculty we have is imagination. Everyone must go through it at some time. Man gradually frees himself from the dry sensual contemplation of things. He tries to see in them only the expression of something that stands behind them and begins to look at the world in the Goethean sense according to the word: “Everything that is transitory is only a parable.” The pupil must carry out this deepened way of thinking systematically. Things must become parables, symbols, to him. When we look at the rose, it is a symbol for a certain form of beauty; the autumn crocus is the image of a fine, melancholy inwardness.

And so every thing has a meaning at its basis. Things are in fact parables in reality. The whole sensual world is an illusion; the spiritual world is the real one. There must be and be achieved an interaction between people and the spiritual world. We must keep our thoughts and our soul life fluid; we must not form rigid forms. It has already been pointed out in Lucifer-Gnosis that through a continuous, loving contemplation, the qualities are released from things and then flow through space. Thus, for example, something like a flame formation seems to rise from a plant; behind this is the spiritual. In these flowing, flooding sensations of color and taste, which have no correlate here on the physical plane, the human being must now find his way, and then he is ready for the teaching of occult writing to begin.

The third thing to learn is how to read the occult writing. This helps us to correctly line up the manifold phenomena like pearls on a string. The occult writing is not arbitrarily conceived, but represents the currents that flow through the world. Something that plays a major role in spiritual reality is two spirals rolled into one another, forming a vortex. At the root of the nose is the predisposition for the two-petalled lotus flower, which will develop into a higher organ of perception in the future. The sign of the vortex corresponds to this etheric organ. It is similar to the sign of Cancer, in which the Sun was at the dawn of the Atlantean race. We still have this and the other signs of the constellations in the calendar. A very important occult symbol is the staff of Mercury with the snake coiled around it. It is the archetypal form of the letter S. Those who know the occult language can evoke the relevant signs as thought-forms; in certain cases they then have power over others. In John's Gospel 8:3-11, there is an account of Christ and the adulteress: Christ wrote signs of the occult writing on the ground with his finger to create the right thought forms in the accusing crowd and to prompt them to the right action at the right moment. “Let him who is without guilt throw the first stone at her.” He hands over her guilt to karma, to the law of equal return. Christ wanted to say: every deed carries its reward within itself. “Go and sin no more.” Moses received instruction in the seeing of these occult signs in his conversation with God (Exodus 3 and 4). There Moses learned to know the occult writing and was endowed with the power to enable him to fulfill his task. That he had to throw a rod, which became a snake, means that he learned the occult writing.

If we imagine a vortex and think of its two parts in red and blue, we see the two etheric currents that underlie the red and blue blood.

A fourth is the rhythm of life. All higher life is based on it. Nature and the cosmos know nothing but rhythmic laws. The orbits of the stars, every flower, even the intimate life of animals know an exact rhythm. Could you imagine a violet blooming in August instead of March? Rhythm is everywhere present in nature. But the closer we get to the human being, the more the rhythm changes into chaos. The weekly timetable of our schoolchildren is still a true blessing. A person should bring a certain rhythm into themselves, create a new cosmos. This happens through daily repetitive actions, meditation at a certain time of day, and also through regulating the breathing process.

The fifth is the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. When a person finds something within himself that corresponds to a fact in the macrocosm, he first really gets to know himself. How can a person know when the sun was separated from the earth? He can find out by looking into the inside of his eye. Another point in time is when man began to say “I” to himself. This happened in Atlantis, at the time of the Primitive Semites, when a certain point in the physical head coincided with another in the etheric head. The earth was still covered with dense fog, and certain conditions outside and inside man corresponded. An important exercise is for the student to concentrate on a certain point between the eyebrows and to allow himself to be guided by an idea given to him by his teacher.

In the sixth stage, contemplation, the student goes out of himself and expands his consciousness to include the whole world. The higher self is outside of us, we must seek it in all beings, for we are all one. This also speaks from Jupiter and Venus. There are Theosophists who only want to seek the divine within themselves. But in truth, it is the lower personality that speaks from them. One such person once went around saying, “I am Atman, I am Atman.” That was the only thing he knew. Brooding within oneself leads nowhere. We are everything, and we must immerse ourselves in all beings. Immersing oneself in one's own inner being is only a detour to doing so.

When you have come so far as to be able to empathize with all beings, then you have reached the seventh stage, that of divinity. The whole nature of the world takes on a spiritual physiognomy. Everything that man sees around him becomes an expression of something higher. Just as tears are not just salty drops with a certain chemical composition, but an expression of the soul, so the plant cover of the earth is an expression of the earth soul, which is a reality. Some flowers appear to us as joyful eyes, others as tears of the earth spirit, which it weeps over the sadness that prevails in the cosmos. It is true what Goethe has the earth spirit say:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth
birth and grave,
an eternal sea,
a changing weaving,
a glowing life:
So I create at the whirring loom of time
And work the living garment of divinity.

This is how we got to know the skeleton of the Rosicrucian schooling.

Which training you undergo is not crucial. You can develop your soul powers and gain insights into the supersensible world through all three paths. Of course, it is good to consider which path you choose based on where you are at the foot of the mountain you are climbing.

What does the disciple achieve when the initiation has taken him to the summit up there? A very real thing. Remember the description of the human being. At the time of Christ Jesus, the majority of people had developed part of the astral body and part of the etheric body. It was different for the initiates. When the chela had passed the necessary stages, he was admitted to the initiation. He had to have worked through his entire astral body. There was nothing left in his astral body that he did not control. In general, passions rule over man, not man over passions. Man must be master of his desires and passions if he wants to become a disciple. Then he must work on his etheric body, he must transform the qualities of his temperament and bring it to the point where he can consciously change his movements, his gait, his writing. So it is not only about becoming moral, but one must become a completely different person.

When the entire astral body has been worked through by the I, it has become manas, the spiritual self, and is transformed into it. The transformation of the etheric body is called Budhi; he has become the spirit of life. When the initiate seizes the physical body for transformation, he then influences the planet and makes himself the center of cosmic forces; then he develops in himself Atman, the Father, the spiritual man.

At first it is an unconscious work that man does on his etheric body and his astral body. This takes place in the general process of human development. The chela begins to consciously take this work into his own hands. With unceasing practice, a certain moment is reached where the entire astral body is transformed. Then everything in the astral body can imprint itself into the etheric body. Only then may this happen, not before, because otherwise bad qualities would be imprinted. What has been acquired then goes through all incarnations with the causal body. The immortalization, the vitalization of all that the astral body contains, is an extremely important process. The astral body cannot discard this in any Kamaloka, it carries this with it forever. Therefore, the previous purification is very necessary.

The impressing of what the astral body contains into the etheric body was carried out in the old initiation by placing the disciple in a crypt and laying him in a kind of coffin. Sometimes he was also tied to a kind of cross and placed in a lethargic state, in which the etheric body emerged from the physical body at the same time as the astral body. Something similar, namely the emergence of a part of the etheric body, occurs when a limb falls asleep; one can then see the affected part of the etheric body hanging out of the body. The initiation itself was performed by a particularly high initiate. Much else was done according to prescribed rules. Such a sleep was different from an ordinary sleep. Only the physical body remained behind in the so-called coffin, and the etheric and astral bodies went out; so it was a kind of death. This was necessary to free the etheric body, because only then could the astral body imprint itself on the etheric body. This state lasted three and a half days. When the initiate was then directed by the initiator back to the physical body, one last formula was impressed upon him, with which he woke up. These were the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” that is, “My God, my God, how hast Thou glorified me!” At the same time, a certain star, Sirius in the Egyptian initiation, shone towards him. Now he had become a new man. There was a very specific reason why the completely spiritualized astral body was given a very special name: it was called the “virgin,” the “Virgin Sophia.” And the etheric body, which absorbs what the Virgin Sophia carried within herself, was called the “Holy Spirit.” And that which arose from both was the “Son of Man”. The proclamation and birth of Jesus of Nazareth are based on these mystery teachings.

This inner experience was also depicted in the image of the Holy Ghost as a dove hovering over the chalice. This is the moment described in the Gospel of John 1:32: “And John bore witness, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him’.” Imagine this happening on the astral plane, and you have a real event. The one who was allowed to experience these great things outside of the mysteries in the physical world was allowed to initiate others as an initiator. John's Gospel 11, 1-45: the resurrection of Lazarus is nothing more than an initiation performed on Lazarus.

We cannot take the gospel of John deeply enough. Even the giving of names is something extremely important. The names that appear in the Bible are taken from the inner being of man. An example of this are the names of the twelve apostles. They point to the relationship between them and the Lord, the Christ, who is the head and has as a sign the ram or the lamb. John means the one who proclaims the Budhi. You can divide the human being into twelve parts; the whole human being is a twelve-fold being. The human being as he is now gradually came into being. Each time the sun entered a new constellation, a new organ developed in the human being. For example, when the sun was in the sign of Leo, the heart developed. As the human being ascends, he incorporates a group soul. The twelve parts of the human being can be found in the names of the twelve apostles, where they are incorporated. What the twelve constituent parts are in an ordinary body, that is what the twelve apostles signify in the collective body of Christ. The part that represents the ego, in which selfishness rules and brings about the death of Christ, is called Judas Iscariot. In this naming, it was added that he had the bag, the money, the lower principle of greed.

The significance of this naming can also be seen from the fact that the one who, in the great plan of the world, is the spiritual representative of the development of mankind, is given the name “the Son of Man”. His father is the “Holy Spirit” and his mother “the Virgin Sophia”. You can find this again in the Gospel of John 19:25-27, in the scene under the cross: “Woman, behold, your son!” “Behold, your mother!” The writer of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom Christ Himself initiated, took the wisdom and wrote the Gospel of John, which contains the wisdom of Christianity.

We must not forget that these things are facts, but as such they are the expression of profound spiritual realities.

The basis of our consideration today may seem a weird arrangement to somebody: on one side Tolstoy, on the other side Carnegie, two personalities about whom probably some say, more different, more opposite persons one can hardly find. On one side, the solver of riddles of the highest social and spiritual problems searching from the depths of spiritual life—Tolstoy; and on the other side the steel tycoon, the rich man, the man about whom one knows literally hardly more than that he thought about how the accumulated wealth is to be used best of all—Carnegie. Then again the arrangement of both persons with spiritual science or anthroposophy.

Indeed, with Tolstoy nobody probably doubts that one can illumine the depths of his soul with the light of spiritual science. However, with Carnegie some probably say, what has this man to do generally with spiritual science, this man of the only practical, business work?—Spiritual science would be the grey theory, the unrealistic and life-hostile worldview as one regards it is so often, if it does not care a little about the issues of practical life, as one believes sometimes. Therefore, it could appear weird that just such a man of practical life is adduced to illustrate certain issues. If one has understood that this spiritual science is something that can flow into all single fields, yes, into the most mundane fields of practical life, then one does not consider it as something surprising that also this personality is adduced to illustrate something that should be just illustrated within spiritual science. Secondly—to speak in the sense of Emerson—we have two representative personalities of our time before ourselves. The one like the other expresses the whole striving on the one side, the work on the other side typically, as they prevail in our time. Just the opposite of the whole development of personality and soul is so characteristic with these both men on one side for the variety of life and work in our time, on the other side, nevertheless, again for the basic nerve, the real goals of our present.

We have, on one side, Tolstoy who has grown out of a distinguished class, of wealth and abundance, of a life sphere in which everything is included that external life can offer as comfort and convenience. He is a human being whom his soul development has brought almost to proclaim the worthlessness of all he got with birth, not only to himself, but also to the whole humankind like a Gospel. We have the American steel tycoon on the other side, a personality that has grown out of hardship and misery, grown out of a life sphere where nothing at all exists of that which external life can offer as convenience and comfort. A person who had to earn dollar by dollar and who ascended to the biggest wealth, who got around in the course of his soul development to regarding this accumulation of wealth as something absolutely normal for the present and to thinking only about it how this accumulated wealth is to be used to the welfare and happiness of humankind. What Tolstoy never desired when he had reached the summit of his soul development he had it abundantly in the beginning of his life. The external goods of life that Carnegie had abundantly acquired last were refused to him in the beginning of his life. This is the expression of their natures, even if in exterior way, however, the characteristic of both personalities to a certain extent at the same time. What can take action with a person in our time, what one can reflect of these external processes in and around the personality shows us with both what prevails in our present in the undergrounds of the social and mental existence generally. We see Tolstoy, as said, born out of a sphere of life in which everything existed that one can call comfort, wealth, and refinement of life. Of course, we can deal only quite cursorily with his life, because today it concerns of characterising our time in these representative personalities and of recognising their needs in a certain way.

In 1828, Leo Tolstoy is born in a family of Russian counts about which he himself says that the family immigrated originally from Germany. Then we see Tolstoy losing certain higher goods of life. Hardly he is one and a half years old, he loses the mother, the father in the ninth year. Then he grows up under the care of a relative who is, so to speak, the embodied love, and from her spiritual condition, the marvellous soul condition had to flow in his soul like by itself. However, on the other side, another relative who wants to build up him out of the viewpoints of her circles, out of the conditions of time as they formed in certain circles influences him. She is a person who is completely merged in the outward world activity which later became very odious to Tolstoy and against which he fought so hard. We see this personality striving from the outset to make Tolstoy a person “comme il faut,” a person who could treat his farmers in such a way, as it was necessary in those days, who should receive title, rank, dignity, and medals and should play a suitable role in the society.

Then we see Tolstoy coming to the university; he is a bad student as he absolutely thinks that everything that the professors say at the University of Kazan is nothing worth knowing. Only oriental languages can occupy him. In all other matters, he was not interested. Against it the comparison of a certain chapter of the code of Catherine the Great (1729–1796) with The Spirit of the Laws (1748) by Montesquieu (Charles de Secondat, Baron de M., 1689–1755) attracted him. Then he tries repeatedly to manage his estate, and we see him almost getting around to diving head first into the life of luxury of a man of his circles, diving head first into all possible vices and vanities of life. We see him becoming a gambler, gambling big sums away. However, he has hours within this life over and over again when his own activities disgust him, actually. We see him meeting peers as well as men of letters and leading a life, which he calls a worthless, even perishable one at moments of reflection. However, we also see—and this is important to him who looks with pleasure at the development of the soul where this development manifests in especially typical signs—particular peculiarities appearing with him in the development of his soul which can disclose us already in the earliest youth what is, actually, in this soul.

Thus, it is of immense significance, what a deep impression a certain event makes on Tolstoy at the age of eleven years. A friendly boy once told him that one has made an important discovery, a new invention. One has found—and a teacher has spoken in particular of the fact—that there is no God that this God is only an empty invention of many human beings, an empty picture of thought. Everything that one can know about the impression that this boy's experience made on Tolstoy shows already how he absorbed it that in him a soul struggled striving for the highest summits of human existence.

However, this soul was weird in other ways as well. Those people who like to state outer appearances and do not pay attention to that in the soul, which emerges from the centre as the actual individual through all outer obstacles, they ignore and do not pay attention to anything in such youth experiences that has different effects on the one soul and on the other one. In particular, one has to pay attention if a soul shows a disposition in the earliest youth that one could pronounce with the nice sentence of Goethe in the second part of his Faust: “I love the man who wants what cannot be.” This sentence says a lot. A soul, which desires, so to speak, something that is obvious foolishness to the philistine view, such a soul, if it appears in its first youth as such, shows the width of the scope of view just by such peculiarities. Thus, one must not ignore it, if Tolstoy tells such things in one of his first writings, in which he gives reflections of his own development.

We are not allowed to ignore when he says there things, which were absolutely valid for him, for example, when he shaved off his eyebrows and defaced his not very extensive beauty in such a way for a while. This is something that one can regard as a big outlandishness. However, if one thinks about it, it becomes an indication. Another example is that the boy imagines that the human being can fly if he presses the arms against the knees rather stiffly. If he did this, he would be able to fly, he thinks. He goes up once in the second floor and jumps out of the window, retaining the heels. He is saved like by a miracle and carries off nothing but a little concussion, which compensates one another by an 18-hour sleep again. He proved for his surroundings with it to be a strange boy. However, someone who wants to observe the soul and knows what it means to go out in his soul in the earliest youth from the track, which is predetermined on the left and on the right, does not disregard features in the life of a young person. Thus, this soul seems to be great and to have many talents from the start. Hence, we can understand that he was fulfilled with a certain disgust of himself when he was tired of the debaucheries of life, which were due to his social rank, in particular after a gamble affair.

When he goes then to the Caucasus, we can understand that there his soul becomes fond of the simple Cossacks, of those people whom he gets to know and recognises that they have, actually, quite different souls than all those people whom he had got to know up to now basically. All the principles of his peers appeared to him so unnatural. Everything that he had believed up to now seemed to him so strange, so separated from the original source of existence. However, the human beings, whom he got to know now, were people whose souls had grown together with the sources of nature like the tree by the roots with the sources of nature, like the flower with the liquid of the ground. It impressed him enormously that they were grown together with nature, that they had not become foreign to the sources of existence, that they were beyond good and evil in their circles.

In 1854, when he became a soldier, full of zest for action, to take part in the Crimean War, we see him with the most intensive devotion studying the whole soul life of the simple soldier. However, we see now a more specified feeling taking place in Tolstoy's soul, we see him being deeply moved by the naturalness of the simple human being on the one side, on the other side, also by the misery, poverty, the tortures, and depression of the simple human being. We see how he is fulfilled with love and desire to help, and that the highest ideals of human happiness, human welfare, and progress flash as shades in his mind, how he realises completely on the other side that the natural human beings cannot understand his ideals. This causes a conflict in his soul, something that does not allow him to penetrate to the basic core of his being.

Thus, he is thrown back repeatedly from that life he leads and in which he is thrown just with the Danube army from one extreme to the other. A superior says, he is a golden human being whom one can never forget again. He works like a soul that pours out goodness only and, on the other hand, has the ability to amuse the others in the most difficult situations. Everything is different if he is there. If he is not there, everybody hangs his head. If he has plunged into life, he comes back with a terrible remorse, with awful regret to the camp. Between such moods, this great soul was thrown back and forth. From these moods and experiences those views and pictorial descriptions of his literary career come, which caused, for example, the most accepting review even from Turgenev (Ivan T., 1818–1883, Russian author), and which have found recognition everywhere. However, we see at the same time how in a certain way beside the real centre, the centre of his soul, always he looks at the big strength, at the basic spring of life, how he struggles for the concepts of truth and human progress. However, he cannot help saying at a being together with Turgenev: you all do not have, actually, what one calls conviction. You talk, actually, only to hide your conviction.

One can say, life made his soul feel low, bringing it into heavy, bitter conflicts. Indeed, something most serious should yet come. At the end of the fifties, one of his brothers fell ill and died. Tolstoy had often seen death in war, had often looked at dying human beings, but he had not yet realised the problem of life to such extent as at the sight of the beloved dying brother. Tolstoy was not so fulfilled at that time with philosophical or religious contents that these contents could have supported him. He was in such a basic mood that expressed itself towards death possibly in such a way that he said, I am incapable to give life a goal. I see life decreasing, I see it running in my peers worthlessly; they do things which are not worth to be done. If one strings up an event to the other and forms ever so long rows, nothing valuable results.—At that time, he could also not see any contents and life goal in the fact that the lower social classes were in distress and misery.

He said to himself at that time, such a life whose sense one searches in vain is finished by the futility of death and if the life of everybody and any animal ends in the futility of death, who is generally able to speak about the meaning of life? Sometimes, Tolstoy had already set himself the goal to strive for perfection of his soul, to search contents for the soul. He had not advanced so far that any contents of life could be roused in the soul even from the spirit. Therefore, the sight of death had put the riddle of life in such horrible figure before his spiritual eye.

We see him travelling in Europe just in the same time. We see him visiting the most interesting cities of Europe—in France, Italy, Germany. We see him getting to know some valuable persons. He gets to know Schopenhauer (Arthur Sch., 1788–1860, German philosopher) personally shortly before his death, he gets to know Liszt (1811–1882, Austrian-Hungarian composer) and still some others, some luminaries of science and art. He gets to know something of the social life, gets to know the court life at Weimar. Everything was accessible to him; however, he looks at everything with eyes from which the attitude looks that has just been characterised. From all that he had gained only one: as well as it is at home, in the circles, which he has grown out of, it is also in Western Europe.

Now a goal faces him in particular. He wanted to found a kind of model school, and he founded it in his hometown where every pupil should learn after his talents where it should not be a stencil. We cannot get involved with the description of the pedagogic principles, which one used there. However, this must be stressed that he had an ideal of education in mind, which should meet the individuality of the child.

We see a kind of interregnum taking place, where in certain way the stormy soul experiences a kind of standstill, that soul in which the problems and the questions followed in rapid succession, into which the sensations and emotions have flowed in contradicting way. A calmer life prevails in it. This time begins with the marriage in the sixties. It was the time from which the great novels come in which he gave the comprising tremendous pictures of the social life of the present and the previous time: War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1873–1877). So much has flowed in from that which he had learnt onto these works.

Thus, he lived until the seventies of the last century. Then comes a time of his life where he faces a crucial decision where all qualms, doubts, and problems come to life again which prevailed once like from dark spiritual depths.

A comparison, a picture that he forms is rather typical of what his soul experienced. One needs to visualise this picture only and to know that it means quite another matter to a soul like Tolstoy's soul, as for another soul that is much more superficial. You need to visualise this picture only, and you can deeply look into the mind of Tolstoy. He compares his own life to an Eastern fable, which he tells possibly in such a way:

There is a man, pursued by a beast. He flees, finds a dried out well and plunges into it to escape from the beast. He holds fast onto the branches, which have grown out on the sides of the well wall. In this way, he thinks he is protected against the pursuing monster. However, in the depth, he sees a dragon, and he has the feeling, he must be devoured by it if he gets tired only a little or if the branch breaks, onto which he holds fast. There he also sees on the leaves of the shrub some drops of honey from which he could feed himself. Nevertheless, at the same time he also sees mice gnawing away at the roots of the shrub onto which he holds fast.

Two things to which Tolstoy adhered were family love and art. For the rest, he considered life in such a way that all tantalising worries of life pursue him. He escapes one and is welcomed by the other monster. Then one sees mice gnawing away the few things that one still.—One must take the picture deeply enough to see what goes forward in such a soul, what is shown there and what Tolstoy experienced in all thinking, feeling and willing in the most extensive way. The branches still pleased him. However, he also found various things, which had to gnaw away at the delight in them. If the whole life is in such a way, that one cannot find sense in it, that one looks for the meaning of life in vain, what does it mean to have a family, to build up descendants to whom one transfers the same futility? This was also something he had in mind. And art? If life is worthless, what about art, the mirror of life? Can art be valuable if it only is able to reflect that in which one looks for sense in vain?

That just stood before his soul and burnt in him after an interregnum again. Where he looked around with all those who tried to fathom the meaning of life in great philosophies and in the most various worldviews, he nowhere found anything that could satisfy his searching. Recently it was in such a way that he turned his look to those people who were originally connected with the springs of life according to his opinion. These human beings had preserved a natural sense, a natural piety. He said to himself, the scholar who lives like me, who overestimates his reason finds nothing in all researching that could interpret the meaning of life to him. If I look at the usual human being who unites there in sects: he knows, why he lives, he knows the meaning of life. How does he know this, and how does he know the meaning of life? Because he experiences the sensation in himself, there is a will, the everlasting divine will as I call it. What lives in me devotes itself to the divine will. What I do from morning to evening is a part of the divine will. If I move the hands, I move them in the will of the divine. Without being brought by reason to abstractions, the hands move.—That faced him so peculiarly, that grasped him so intensely: if the human is deeply grasped in the soul. He said to himself, there are human beings who can answer the question of the meaning of life to themselves that they can use.

It is even magnificent how he contrasts these simple human beings with those who he got to know in his surroundings. Everything is thought out of the monumental of the paradigms. He says, I got to know people who did not understand to give life any meaning. They lived by force of habit, although they could gain no meaning of life, but I got to know those who committed suicide, because they could not find any meaning of life.—Tolstoy himself was before it.

Thus, he studied that category of human beings about whom he had to say to himself, it could not be talk of a meaning of life and of a life with a meaning. However, the human being, who is still connected with the sources of nature, whose soul is connected with the divine forces as the plant with the forces of life, can answer to the question: why do I live?—Therefore, Tolstoy came so far to search for a community with those simple human beings in the religious life. He became religious in certain way, although the outer forms made a repellent impression on him. He went to the Communion again. Now it was something in him that one can explain in such a way: he strove with all fibers of his soul to find and to feel a goal. Nevertheless, again his thinking and feeling impeded him everywhere in certain way. He was able to pray together with these human beings, who were believers in the naive sense and answered to the question of the meaning of life to themselves.

He could pray—and this is tremendously typical—up to the point of a uniform way of feeling. However, he was not able to go further when they prayed: we confess ourselves to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.—This made no sense to him. It is generally typical that he was able to come up to a certain point, looking for a religious life, which was based on brotherly feelings. This life in devoutness should produce a unity of feelings, unity of thoughts. However, he could not rise to the positive contents, the knowledge of the spirit, to the spiritual view, which gives reality. The traditional dogmatics meant nothing to him. He could not connect any sense with the words, which are given in the Trinity.

Thus, he came, while all these things flocked together, to the mature period of his life, to the period in which he tried to delve completely into that which he could call true, real Christianity. He strove in such a way, as if he had wanted to comprise, to penetrate the liveliness of Christ's soul with his own soul. With this spirit of Christ's soul, he wanted to penetrate himself. A worldview should arise from it, and from this something like a transformation of all present life should result which he subjected to harsh criticism. Because he believes now to feel in his soul, what Christ had thought and felt, he feels strong enough to issue a challenge to all ways of life, to all ways of feeling and thinking of the present. He criticised harshly that out of which he has grown and which he could see in the farther environment of his time. He feels strong enough to put up the demand, on the other side, to let the spirit of Christ prevail and to get out a renewal of all human life out of the spirit of Christ. With it, we have characterised, so to speak, his maturing soul and have seen this soul having grown out of that which many of our contemporaries call the summits of life. We have seen this soul getting around to harshly criticise the summits of life, and to putting as its next goal the renewal of the spirit of Christ which it finds strange to everything that lives presently, in the renewal of Christ's life which it nowhere finds in reality. Therefore, in certain sense, Tolstoy says no to the present and affirms what he calls the spirit of Christ, which he could not find in the present but only in the first times of Christianity. He had to go back to the historical sources, which came up to him. There we have a representative of our present who has grown out of the present, saying no to this present.

Now we have a look at the other man, who affirms most intensely, what Tolstoy denies most intensely, who reaches the same formula but applies it quite differently. There we see Carnegie, the Scotsman, growing out of that dividing line of modern times which we can characterise by the fact that trade, large-scale industry and the like sweep away the small trade from the social order. We really see Carnegie growing out of that dividing line of modern life, which a newer poet so nicely characterised with the words (poem by Heinrich von Reder, 1824–1909, Bavarian officer, poet, and painter):

Gone to rack on a mule track

a smithy stands in woodland solitude;

no longer does the hammer blow

accompanied by merry songs.

Not far away the buildings rise

where sooted blacksmiths

are working so hard.

With the steam mill's nails

the coffin is closed,

it carries the nail-smith

impoverished to grave.

One needs to wake only such a mood, and one illuminates brightly that dividing line in the cultural development of modern times, which has become so important to life. Carnegie's father was a weaver who had a good living at first. He worked for a factory. This went well up to the time when the large-scale industry flooded everything. Now we see the last day approaching, when Carnegie's father can still deliver the produced to the trader. Then poverty and misery enter in the weaver's family. The father does no longer see any possibility to make a living in Scotland. He decides to emigrate to America, so that both sons do not live in misery and die.

The father finds work in a cotton factory, and the boy is employed as a bobbin boy in his twelfth year. He has to perform hard work. However, there is after one week of hard, heavy work a happy day for the 12-year-old boy. He gets his first wage: 1 dollar and 20 cents. Never again—so says Carnegie—he has taken up any income with such delighted soul as this dollar and twenty cents. Nothing made more joy to him later, although many millions went through his fingers. We see the representative of practical pursuit in our present that grows out of distress and misery that is natured in such a way to immerse himself in the present, as it is, and to become the self-made man in it. He struggles. He gains his dollar every week.

Then somebody employs him in another factory with a better wage. Here he has to work even more, he must stand in the basement and has to heat and maintain a small steam engine with big heat. He feels that as a responsible post. The fear to turn the tap of the engine wrongly what could lead to an accident for the whole factory is dreadful to him. He often catches himself sitting in his bed at night and dreaming of the tap the whole night which he turned taking care of turning it in the right direction.

Then we see him employed as a telegraph messenger in Pittsburgh after some time. There he is already highly happy with the small wage of the telegraph messenger. He has to work at a place where also books are which he had hardly seen before. Sometimes he also has newspapers to read. He has now only one worry: telegraph messengers are not to be needed in the city if they are not able to know all addresses of the companies by heart, which receive telegrams. He really manages to know the names and addresses of the Pittsburgh companies. He also already develops a certain independence. His consciousness is paired exceptionally with cleverness. He goes now a little earlier to the telegraph office, and there he learns to telegraph by own practicing. Thus, he can aim at the ideal that any telegraph messenger is allowed to have in a young, ambitious community: to become a telegraph operator once. He even succeeds in a special trick. When one morning the telegraph operator was not there, a death message comes in. He takes up the telegram and carries it to the newspaper to which it was determined. There are connections where one regards such an action, even if it succeeds, not as favourable. However, Carnegie thereby climbed up to the telegraph operator.

Now something else presented itself to him. A man who dealt with railways recognises the talents of the young man and one day he makes the following proposal to him. He said to him, he should take over railway stocks of 500 dollars that had just become available. He can win a lot if he pursues these matters. Carnegie tells now—it is delightful how he tells this—how he raised 500 dollars really by the care and love of his mother, and how he bought his stocks. When he got the first revenue, the first payment of more than five dollars, he went with his fellows out to the wood. They looked at the payment and thought and learnt to recognise that there is something else than to be paid for work, something that makes money from money. That aroused big viewpoints in Carnegie's life. With it, he grew into the characteristic of our time.

Thus, we see him immediately understanding when another proposal is made. It is typical how he grasps with complete presence of mind what appears before his soul for the first time. An inventive head shows him the model of the first sleeping car. Straight away, he recognises that there is something tremendously fertile in it, so that he takes part in it. He emphasises now again by what this consciousness, actually, grew. He did not have enough money to take part in suitable way in the enterprise of the first sleeping car society of the world. However, his ingenious head caused that he got money already from a bank: he issued his first bill of exchange. This is nothing particular, he says, but this is something particular that he finds a banker who accepts this bill of exchange. This was the case.

Now he needed to develop this only to become completely the man of the present. Hence, we have not to be surprised that he became a steel tycoon when he got the idea to replace the many wooden bridges with iron and steel bridges, that he became the man who set the tone in the steel industry and acquired the countless riches. Thus, we really see the type of the human being in him who grows into the present, the present, which unfolds the most exterior life. He grows into the most outward of appearance. However, he grows into it by his own strength, by his abilities. He becomes the extensively rich person out of distress and misery, while he himself really acquired everything from the first dollar on. He is a pensive person who associates this whole impulse of his life with the progress and life of whole humanity.

Thus, we see another strange Gospel growing out of his way of thinking, a Gospel that follows Christ. However, Carnegie immediately says at the beginning of his Gospel, it is a Gospel of wealth (essay Wealth or Gospel of Wealth, 1889). That is why his book shows how wealth is applied best of all to the welfare and to the progress of humanity. He opposes Tolstoy immediately about whom he says: he is a person who takes Christ in such a way as it is not suitable at all to our time, who regards him as a strange being of old past. One must understand Christ in such a way that one transfers Him to the present life.—Carnegie is a person who affirms the whole life of the present completely. He says: if we look back at the times when the human being were more alike than today, they were still less divided into those who had to assign a job and those who have to take a job, and if we compare the times, we see how primitive the single cultures were in those days. The king was not able in that old time to satisfy his needs in such a way as today the poorest person can satisfy them now. What happened had to happen. That is why it is right that one distributes the goods in such a way.

Carnegie establishes a strange doctrine of the distribution or application of wealth. Above all, we find with him that ideas of the purely personal efficiency, of the nature of the efficiency of the human being originate in his soul who has worked his way in life up to that which he becomes in the end. At first Carnegie sees outward goods only, then also that the human being must be efficient, externally efficient. Someone has to apply his efficiency not only to acquire wealth but also to manage it in the service of humanity.

Carnegie intensely draws the attention to the fact that quite new principles would have to enter, so to speak, in the social construction of humanity if welfare and progress should originate from the new progress and the distribution of goods. He says, we have institutions of former time that make it possible that by inheritance from the father to the son and the grandchildren goods, rank, title and dignities go over. In the life of the old time, this was possible.—He regards it as right that one can substitute with routine what the personal efficiency does not give: rank, title, dignities.

Nevertheless, he is convinced by that life he has experienced that it requires personal, individual efficiency. He points to the fact that one had ascertained that five of seven insolvent houses became insolvent, because they demised to the sons. Rank, title, and dignities devolved from the fathers upon the sons, however, never business acumen. In those parts of modern life, where commercial principles prevail, they should not be transmitted simply from the testator to the descendants. It is much more important that someone builds up a personally efficient man, than to bequeath his wealth to his children. That is why Carnegie concludes in the absurd sentence: someone has to make sure that he applies the accumulated wealth to such institutions and foundations by which the human beings are promoted to the largest extent.—The sentence with which he formulates this, which can appear grotesque, which originates, however, from Carnegie's whole way of thinking is this: “Who dies rich dies dishonourably.” One could say in certain sense, this sentence of the steel tycoon sounds even more revolutionary than many a sentence of Tolstoy.

”He who dies rich dies dishonourably” means: someone dies dishonourably who does not apply the accumulated goods to endowments by which the human beings can learn something, can get the possibility to do further studies. If he makes many human beings efficient with his wealth during his life and does not hand it down to descendants, who can use it their way lacking any talent and only to their personal well-being, he dies not dishonourably.

Thus, we see with Carnegie a very strange principle appearing. We see that he affirms the present social life and activity, that he gains, however, a new principle from it: the fact that the human being has to advocate not only the use of wealth, but also its management, as a manager of the goods in the service of humanity. This man does not at all believe that anything can devolve from the parents upon their descendants. Even if he knows the outward life only, he realises, nevertheless, that inside of the human being the forces have to originate which make the human being efficient to do his work in life.

We see these two representatives of our present: that who harshly criticizes what has developed bit by bit and who wants to lead the soul to higher fields out of the spirit. On the other side, we see a man who takes the material life as it comes, and who is pointed to the fact that within the human being the spring of work and of the health of life is to be found. Nevertheless, one may find something just in this teaching of Carnegie that allows me to remark the following. If anybody does not look thoughtlessly and pointlessly at this soul life, but looks at the forces pouring out of the souls bit by bit, does look at the individual, and is clear in his mind absolutely that it is not handed down,—what has one then to look at? One has to look at the real origin, at that which comes from other sources. One finds if one comes to the sources of the present talents and abilities that these are caused in former lives. By the principle of reincarnation and of spiritual causing, karma, one finds the possibility to process such a principle meditatively that it has forced the practical life upon a practical person.

Nobody can hope that from a mere externalisation of life anything could come that the soul satisfies, can bring the civilisation to the highest summits. Never can one hope that on those roads anything else would come than a distribution of wealth salutary in the external sense. The soul would become deserted, it would overexert its forces, but it would find nothing in itself if it could not penetrate to the sources of the spirit, which are beyond the external material life. While the soul is rejected by a material approach to life, it must find the spring, which can flow only from a spiritual approach to life. With such a life praxis, as Carnegie has it, that deepening and spiritualisation coming from spiritual science have to combine, so that the souls do not become deserted. On the one side, Carnegie demands that from the single soul, which makes it fit for the external life, on the other side, Tolstoy wants to give the single soul what it can find from the deep well of the spiritual being.

As well as Carnegie grasps the being of the present with sure look from the material life, we find Tolstoy on the other side with sure look grasping the characteristic of the soul. Up to a certain limiting point, we see Tolstoy coming who affects us, indeed, strangely if we compare everything that lives in Tolstoy's worldview to that which faces us in particular in the West-European civilisation.

One can examine work by work of Tolstoy and one sees one fact emerging above all. The matters, which one has gathered here in the West with an immense expenditure of philosophical reflection, academic pondering, and moving conclusions from pillars to post, appear to Tolstoy in such a way that they occur in five to six lines like flashes of thought and become conviction to that who can understand such a thing. Tolstoy shows, for example, how we have to find something in the human soul that is of divine nature that can visualise the divine in the world if it lights up in us. Tolstoy says there, around me, the academic naturalists live; they investigate what is real outdoors in the material, in the so-called objective existence. They search the divine primal ground of existence. Then such people try to compose the human being from all principles, substances, atoms et cetera that they search spread out outdoors in the space. Then in the end, they try to understand what the human being is, while they believe to have to combine all external science to find the primal ground of life. Such human beings, he says, appear to me like human beings who have trees and plants of the living nature round themselves. They say, this does not interest me. But there is a wood far away, I hardly see it; I want to investigate and describe this wood, then I also understand the trees and the plants which are around me, and I am able to describe them.—People appear to me that way who investigate the being of the animals with their instruments to get to know the nature of the human being. They have it in themselves; they only need to see what is in close proximity. However, they do not do this. They search the faraway trees, and they try to understand what they cannot see, the atoms. However, they do not see the human being.

This way of thinking is so monumental that it is more valuable than dozens of insights and theories that are written out of old cultures. This is typical for the whole thinking of Tolstoy. To such things, he came, and in such things, one must look. To the West European this is extremely unsatisfactory; only by a devious route via Kant he gets around to it. With the assurance of his soul, Tolstoy is driven to pronounce what is not proved, but is true, what is recognised by immediate view and of which one knows if it is pronounced that it is true. His work On Life (1887) shows this monumental original springing of the deepest truth like from the spring of life, which he searched. His last writings just show this and what is in such a way that it can shine like an aurora to a rising future.

Therefore, we have to say, the less we are inclined to take Tolstoy dogmatically, the more we are inclined to take up the gold nuggets of a primitive paradigmatic thinking, the more he becomes fertile. Of course, those who accept a personality only in such a way that they swear on their dogmas, who cannot allow to be fertilised by it, they do not have a lot from him. Something does not agree with them. However, someone who can allow to be fertilised by a great personality may receive a lot from Tolstoy. We see truth working in him, paradigmatically, and that this truth flows with strong forces onto his personal life. How does it flow in there? It is rather interesting to see that different views live in his family and tolerate each other. How was he able, however, to introduce his principles in the everyday life? By working, and not only with principles. Thereby he becomes a true pioneer of something that only must sprout in future. On the other side, Tolstoy is also a child of his time, even though he is a pioneer of the future.

Perhaps, one can nowhere feel more impressively how he puts himself in the present than in that strange picture of the year 1848, when he was twenty years old. One looks only at the face of the 20-year-old, which expresses energy and willpower, also reticence at the same time. However, the spirited twinkle in the eyes reveals something that faces the riddles of life quizzically. He is volcanic inside but not able to cause the volcano to erupt. Indeed, we see mysterious depths of the soul expressing themselves in his physiognomy, and we get the expression of the fact that something tremendous lives in him but that he cannot yet express it completely in this hereditary organism.

It is also that way with the variety of the forces which live in Tolstoy, and which could not be expressed so really. It is in such a way, as if they are expressed as caricatures, distorted in certain respect. One has also to recognise the character in him that is sometimes distorted grotesquely. Hence, it is quite wonderful if he is able to point to that which one calls something transient with the human beings normally: look at the human body. How often its substances have been exchanged! Nothing material is there that was there in the ten-year-old boy. Compare the usual consciousness to the image life of the fifty years old man: it has become completely different, until the soul structure. We cannot call it permanent, but everywhere we find the centre in it, which we may imagine possibly in the following way. The objects of the outside world are there. There is this, there is that, there a third one. Two human beings face the objects. The eyes see the same things, but they are to the one this way, to the other that way. The one says, I like this; the other says: I do not like this.—If in the outside world everything is the same, and if the one soul says, I like it, and the other says, I do not like it, if the way of life is different, a centre is there that is different from all appearance that remains constant, in spite of all change of consciousness and body. Something is there that was there before birth and is there after birth, my particular ego. This my particular ego has not begun with birth. It is not the point that anybody positions himself with the west-European habits to such a remark, but it matters that one has the sensation: one can do such a remark. Therein the greatness of the soul appears. It becomes apparent that the soul lives and how it lives. Immortality is guaranteed therein.

Tolstoy just approaches the border of that which we get to know as the innermost being of the soul by spiritual-scientific deepening. He is wedged by the world against which he himself fights so much and cannot penetrate to true cognition of that which is there before birth, and of that which comes after death. He does not come to the teaching of reincarnation and karma. Just as little, he gets to the inner impulse of the soul like Carnegie who almost demands it. Therefore, we see whether now a human being is in contradiction to everything that lives and works in the present or whether someone complies with all life forms of the present: he is led to the gates of the anthroposophic approach to life. Tolstoy would be able to find the way to Carnegie, Carnegie never to Tolstoy.

With this talk, I wanted to show that a worldview and an approach to life could be given which introduces into the immediate life praxis, which can transfer the newfound to the known, to the performed. Moreover, we see if we familiarise ourselves deeper and deeper with spiritual science that it brings that to the human beings of the one and the other view which, in the end, Tolstoy has found his way and Carnegie has found his way: a satisfying life. However, it does not depend on it that the immediate viewfinder finds the satisfactory life, and that those who search with him can find it. What Tolstoy and Carnegie have found for themselves as adequate, this can be found for all human beings only impersonally and spiritually if true spiritual knowledge of that is found which goes from life to life, which carries the guaranty of eternity in itself.

Drama in five acts by Max Halbe
Performance at the Lessing Theater, Berlin

It is a psychological puzzle that the bold "Conqueror" tragedy and this drama about the "homeless" can emerge from the same mind. On the one hand, a deep problem of the human soul, on the other, dull theatricality; on the one hand, entirely the language of the poet's own mind, on the other, a servant to the theater audience in every sentence. Should Halbe, after giving his best, have said to himself: they haven't digested it - well: here I am; I can do otherwise. God help me? - The matter is most easily explained from this point of view. A poet who tries it once, what luck he has when he gives the very worst he can give! As I let the play pass me by, the words of Merck came to mind, who said to Goethe after he had written "Clavigo": "You don't have to write such rubbish any more, others can do it too. I don't want to be so rude as to call Halbe the "others" just in case.

A Berlin boarding house is teeming with "homeless" people. We are all indifferent to them. Halbe makes not the slightest attempt to bring them closer to us. They are wandering human bellies without souls. Even with Regine Frank, who is characterized somewhat more precisely, we don't know how to find our way around. She is a pianist, a female self-made woman. She is proud of her independence. But there are twelve of her kind to a dozen. - Lotte Burwig is a provincial goose, Reginen's cousin. She can't like it in her parents' house in Gdansk. It is also too uncomfortable for poor Lotte in this house. Her father has committed suicide. The poor thing has been miserably beaten by her mother. She is also supposed to marry a bourgeois tax assessor. The good girl thinks eloping is best. She also has a role model in her cousin. So she stands on her own two feet. She wants to become a singer. First she goes to the boarding house where Regine is also staying. Her mother wants to take her home, but Lottchen has no desire to marry her tax assessor or to continue to submit to her mother's educational rules. So she stays. She falls in love with a manor owner who spends the winter in Berlin to recover from the stresses and strains of his job as an agrarian. Part of his relaxation involves turning the heads of young girls. On Christmas Eve, poor Lottchen throws herself at the seducer, kissing him fervently, kissing him endlessly. She wants to belong to the "only one". By carnival time, it's already over. Evil Eugene goes back to his estate; he shakes off his winter love affair. During a fantastic masquerade, Lottchen discovers how little the "only one" cares about her. She even threatens the unfaithful man with a dagger. She has really lost it. Even Regine finds out. She sends a telegram to her mother. Lottchen should go home after all. Better to die, she says. And the moment her mother enters, she has already said goodbye to life.

Halbe has not made any attempt to deepen the characters psychologically. The story of "evil Eugene and poor Lottchen" comes from the realms where the invention of psychology had not yet penetrated. The depiction of the milieu is also weaker than in Halbe's earlier dramas. Sometimes we are drawn in by one mood; immediately afterwards, however, another one intrudes; and we can't get out of the histrionic all-sorts.

Today I propose to carry further certain points made in recent lectures concerning the evolution of humanity since the time of Christ.

Looking back, in survey, over the evolution of mankind, we see that the epochs described in anthroposophical spiritual science take their shape from the particular soul constitution of the human beings alive at any given time. This differs greatly from epoch to epoch. Today, however, there is little inclination to look beyond man's present day makeup. Although civilization has developed in a way describable in outer documents, in general mankind is regarded as having always had the same soul nature. This is not true. It has changed; and we know the dates at which it underwent transformations externally plain and distinguishable.

The last of these turning points has often been designated as the fifteenth century after Christ; the one preceding it occurred during the eighth pre-Christian century; and we might in this way go still further back. I have often emphasized how correct the art historian Herman Grimm is when he points out that the full historical comprehension of the people of the present age reaches back no further than the Romans, at which time the ideas now prevalent settled into men's souls. Or approximately the same ideas. They still operate, though at times in a detrimental way—for example, concepts of Roman law no longer in harmony with our society. The very manner in which contemporary man takes part in social life shows a comprehension for something reaching back to the Roman period.

If, on the other hand, we describe the external historical events of ancient Greece like modern events, we do not penetrate into the real soul-nature of the Greeks. Herman Grimm is right in saying that, as usually described, they are mere shadows. Precisely because ordinary consciousness can no longer see what lived in those souls, it is unable to understand the Greeks' social structure.

Still more removed from our soul life is that of the human beings of the Egyptian-Chaldean period prior to the eighth century before Christ; more different still that in ancient Persia, and completely different that of the ancient Indian epoch following the great Atlantean catastrophe.

When with the help of spiritual science we mark the stages in the changing constitution of the human being, it becomes clear that our way of feeling about the human being, our way of speaking of body, soul and spirit, of the ego in man, our sense of an inner connection between the human being and the earth planet, arose in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Gradually, in the course of time, life has become so earth-bound that human beings feel estranged from the cosmos, and see the stars and their movements, even the clouds, as lying outside our earthly dwelling place; therefore of little significance.

Prior to the Graeco-Latin period, people's feelings and indeed their will-impulses were, if I may use the expression, elementary-cosmic. Man did not need a philosophy in order to feel himself a member of the whole universe, especially the visible universe. It was natural for him to feel himself not only a citizen of the earth but also a member of the cosmos, especially during the first epoch, that of ancient India. If we go back to the seventh or eighth millennium of the pre-Christian era, we find that the human being—I cannot say spoke but felt—that the human being felt quite differently than we do today about the ego, the self. To be sure, the human beings of that ancient time did not express themselves as we do, because human speech did not have the same scope as today. But we must express things in our own language, and I shall put it thus: In ancient India man did not speak of the ego in our modern way; it was not, for him, a point comprising all his soul experiences. On the contrary, when he spoke of the ego it was to him self-evident that it had little to do with earth and earth events. In experiencing himself as an ego, man did not feel that he belonged to the earth; but, rather, that he was connected with the heaven of the fixed stars. This was what gave him the sense and security of his deepest self. For it was not felt as a human ego. Man was a human being only through the fact that here on earth he was clothed by a physical body. Through this sheath-for-the-ego he became a citizen of earth. But the ego was regarded as something foreign to the earthly sphere. And if today we were to coin a name for the way the ego was experienced, we would have to say: man felt not a human but a divine ego.

He might have looked outward to the mountains, to the rocks; he might have looked at everything else on earth and said of it all: This is, this exists. Yet at the same time he would have felt the following: If there were no other existence than that of earth's plants, rivers, mountains and rocks, no human being would have an ego. For what guarantees existence to earthly things and beings could never guarantee it to the ego. They are in different categories.

To repeat: Within himself man felt not a human but divine ego: a drop from the ocean of divinity. And when he wanted to speak about his ego (I say this with the previously-made reservations) he felt it as a creation of the fixed stars; the heaven of the fixed stars was the one sphere sharing its reality. Only because the ego has a similar existence is it able to say, “I am.” If it were able to say “I am” merely according to the level of existence of stone or plant or mountain, the ego would have no right to speak so. Only its starlike nature makes it possible for the ego to say, “I am.”

Again, the human beings of this primeval epoch saw how the rivers flowed and the trees were driven by the wind. But if we regarded the human ego which dwells in the physical body and has an impulse to move about on the earth hither and thither—if we regarded this ego as the active force in movement, as wind is the active force in moving trees, or as anything else of earth is an active force, we would be wrong. The ego is not this kind of outer cause of motion.

In ancient times the teacher in the Mysteries spoke to his pupils somewhat like this: You see how the trees sway, how the river water flows, how the ocean churns. But from neither the moving trees, the flowing rivers, nor the heaving ocean could the ego learn to develop those impulses of motion which human beings display when they carry their bodies over the earth. This the ego can never learn from any moving earthly thing. This the ego can learn only because it is related to the planets, to starry motion. Only from Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so forth, can the ego learn motion. When the ego of its own volition moves upon the earth, it achieves something made possible by its relation to the wheeling world of the stars.

Further, it would have seemed incomprehensible to a man of this ancient epoch if somebody had said: Look how thoughts arise out of your brain! Let us travel backward in time and imagine ourselves with the soul constitution we once had (for we have all passed through lives in ancient India); then confronted by the present-day soul condition, the one which makes people assume that thoughts arise out of the brain. All that modern man believes would appear as complete nonsense. For the ancient human being knew well that thoughts can never spring from brain substance; that it is the sun which calls forth thoughts, and the moon which stills them. It was to the reciprocal action of sun and moon that he ascribed his life of thoughts.

Thus in the first post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient Indian time, the divine ego was seen as belonging to the heaven of the fixed stars, to the planetary movements, to the reciprocal action of sun and moon; and what came to it from the earth as transient, the essence of the ego being cosmic-divine.

In¹ I call the second epoch Ancient Persian. By then the perception of the cosmic ego had grown less vivid; it was subdued. But the people of that age had an intensive experience of the recurrent seasons. (I have recently and repeatedly lectured on the year's course.) Pictorially speaking, the modern human being has become a kind of earthworm, just living from day to day. Indeed he is not even that, for an earthworm comes out of his hole when it rains, while the human being—just lives along. He experiences nothing special; at best some abstract differences: in rain he is uncomfortable without an umbrella, he adjusts himself to snow in winter and sunshine in summer, he goes to the country, and so forth. But he does not live with the course of the year; he lives in a dreadfully superficial way; no longer puts his whole humanness into living.

In the ancient Persian epoch it was different. Man experienced the year's course with his whole being. When the winter solstice arrived he felt: Now the earth soul has united with the earth. The snow which for present-day man is nothing but frozen water was at that time experienced as the garment the earth dons in order to shut itself off from the cosmos and develop an individually-independent life within that cosmos. The human being felt: Now, indeed, the earth soul has so intimately united with the earth, man must turn his soul-nature to what lives in the earth. In other words, the snow cover became transparent for man's soul. Below it he felt the elementary beings which carry the force of plant-seeds through winter into spring.

When spring arrived in ancient Persia, man experienced how the earth breathed out its soul, how it strove to open its soul to the cosmos; and with his feelings and sensations he followed this event. The attachment to the earth developed during the winter he now began to replace with a devotion to the cosmos.

To be sure, man was no longer able to look up to the cosmos as he did during the immediately preceding epoch; no longer able to see in the cosmos all that gave existence, movement and thought to his ego. He said: What in winter unites me with the earth summons me in spring to raise myself into the cosmos. But though he no longer had so intensive a knowledge of his connection with the cosmos as formerly, he felt it as by divination. Just as the ego in the ancient Indian time experienced itself as a cosmic being, so in the ancient Persian time the astral element experienced itself as connected with the course of the year.

Thus man lived with the changing seasons. When in winter his soul perceived the snow blanket below, his mood turned serious; he withdrew into himself; searched (as we express it today) his conscience. When spring returned, he again opened himself to the cosmos with a certain gaiety. At midsummer, the time we now associate with St. John's Day, he surrendered with rapture to the cosmos, not in the clear way of the ancient Indian time, but with the joy of having escaped from the body.

Just as in winter he felt connected with the clever spirits of the earth, so in midsummer he felt connected with the gay spirits dancing and jubilating in the cosmos, and flitting around the earth. I am simply describing what was felt.

Later, during August, and more especially September, the human soul felt it must now return to earth with the forces garnered from the cosmos during its summer withdrawal. With their help it could live more humanly during the winter season.

I repeat: It is a fact that during those ancient times man experienced the year's course with his whole being; considered its spiritual side as his own human concern.

He also felt the importance of training himself, at certain points of the year, in this intensive experience of the seasons; and such training bred impulses for the seasonal festivals. Later on, man would experience them only traditionally, only outwardly. But certain aspects would linger on. For example, the festivals of the summer and winter solstices would keep traces, but merely traces, of ancient, mighty and powerful experiences.

All this is connected with a revolution in the innermost consciousness of man. For ancient India it was quite impossible to speak of a “people,” a “folk.” Today this seems paradoxical; we find it hard to imagine that the feeling for such a thing arose only gradually. To be sure, the conditions of the earth made it necessary, even in the ancient Indian epoch, for inhabitants of the same territory to have closer ties than those living apart. But the concept of a people, the feeling of belonging to a folk, did not exist during the ancient Indian epoch.

Something different prevailed. People had a very vivid feeling for the succession of generations. A boy felt himself the son of his father, the grandson of his grandfather, the great-grandson of his great-grandfather. Of course, things were not dealt with the way we have to describe them with current concepts; but the latter are still appropriate. If we look into the mode of thought of that ancient time, we discover that within a family circle great emphasis was laid on an ability to enumerate one's forebears, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, right down the line to very remote ancestors. A man felt himself as standing within this succession of generations.

As a consequence, the sense of living in the present was little developed. To human beings of the ancient Indian time, an intimate connection with past generations (retained as a caricature in aristocracy's present-day stress on ancestry) seemed self-evident; they needed no family records. Indeed human consciousness itself, instinctively clairvoyant, made connections with a man's ancestry by remembering not merely his own personal experiences, but—almost as vividly—the experiences of his father and grandfather. Gradually these memories grew dim. But human consciousness would continue to experience them through the blood ties.

Thus in ancient times the capacity for feeling oneself within the generations played a significant role. Parallel to it there arose—though slowly—the folk concept, the sense of being part of a people. In ancient Persia it was not yet very pronounced. When a living consciousness of life within the generations, of blood relationship coursing through the centuries, had gradually faded, consciousness focused, instead, on the contemporary folk relationship.

The folk concept rose to its full significance in the third post-Atlantean or Egypto-Chaldean period. Though, during that epoch, awareness of the year's course was already somewhat deadened, there lived, right into the last millennium of the pre-Christian age, a vivid consciousness of the fact that thoughts permeate and govern the world.

In another connection I have already indicated the following: For a human being of the Egyptian period the idea that thoughts arise in us and then extend over things outside would have seemed comparable to the fancy of a man who, after drinking a glass of water, says his tongue produced the water. He is at liberty to imagine that his tongue produced the water, but in truth he draws the water from the entire water mass of the earth, which is a unity. It is only that an especially foolish person, unaware of the connection between the glassful of water and the earth's water mass, overestimates the abilities of his tongue. The people of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch made no similar mistake. They knew that thoughts do not arise in the head; that thoughts live everywhere; that what the human being draws into the vessel of his head as thought comes from the thought ocean of the world.

In that time, though man no longer experienced the visible cosmos in his divine ego, nor the course of the year in his astral nature, he did experience cosmic thoughts, the Logos, in his etheric body. If a member of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch had spoken our language, he would not, like us, have referred to man's physical body as of prime importance. To him it was the result of what lives as thought in the etheric body; was merely an image of human thought.

During that period the folk concept became more and more definite; the human being more and more an earth citizen. The connection between the starry world and his ego had, in his consciousness during this third post-Atlantean cultural period, dwindled greatly. Though astrology still calculated the connection, it was no longer seen in elemental consciousness. The course of the year, so important for the astral body, was no longer sensed in its immediacy. Yet man was still aware of a cosmic thought element.

He had arrived at the point where he sensed his relation to earthly gravity. Not exhaustively so, for he still had a vivid experience of thinking, but perceptibly.

During the Graeco-Latin period this experience of gravity developed more and more. Now the physical body became paramount. Everything has its deep significance at its proper time, and in all the manifestations of Greek culture we see this full, fresh penetration into the physical body. Especially in Greek art. For the early Greeks their bodies were something to rejoice over; the Greeks were like children with new clothes. They lived in their bodies with youthful exuberance.

In the course of the Graeco-Latin period, and particularly during Roman civilization, this fresh experience of the physical body gave way to something like that of a person in a robe of state who knows that wearing it gives him prestige. (Of course, the feeling was not expressed in words.) A Roman individual felt his physical body as a ceremonial robe bestowed by the world order.

The Greek felt tremendous joy that he had been allotted such a body and, after birth, could put it on; and it is this feeling that gives to Greek art, to Greek tragedy, to the epics of Homer, in their human element, insofar as they are connected with the outer physical appearance of man, their particular poetic fire. We have to look for the inner reasons for all psychological facts. Try to live into the joy that gushes forth from Homer's description of Hector or of Achilles. Feel what immense importance he attached to outer appearance.

With the Romans this joy subsided. Everything became settled; men began to grasp things with ordinary consciousness. It was during the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch that man first became an earth citizen. The conception of ego, astral body and ether body of earlier times withdrew into indefiniteness. The Greeks still had a clear sense for the truth that thought lives in things. (I have discussed this in Raetsel der Philosophie.) [In English: Riddles of Philosophy, e.Ed.] But the perception was gradually superseded by a belief that thought originates in man. In this fashion he grew more and more into his physical body.

Today we do not yet see that this situation began to change in the fifteenth century, at the start of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch; that, since then, we have been gradually growing away from our bodies. We fancy that we feel as the Greeks felt about the human shape, but actually our feeling for it is dull. We have no more than a shadowlike sensation of the “quickfooted Achilles,” and little understanding of how this expression roused Greeks to a direct and striking perception of the hero; so striking that he stood before them in his essential nature. Indeed in all art we have gradually lost the experience of the permeation of the physical body by the soul; whereas in the last pre-Christian centuries the Greek felt how cosmic thought was disappearing and how thought could be taken hold of only by reflecting upon the human being. Presentday man is completely uncertain in regard to the nature of thought; he wavers.

A Greek of the sixth pre-Christian century would have considered it comical if somebody had asked him to solve the scientific problem of the connection of thought with the brain. He would not have seen it as a problem at all. He would have felt as we would feel if, when we picked up a watch, somebody demanded that we speculate philosophically about the connection between watch and hand. Say I investigate the flesh of my hand, then the glass and metal in my watch; then the relation between the flesh of my hand and the glass and metal in my watch; all in order to obtain philosophical insight into the reason why my hand has picked up and holds the watch. Well, if I were to proceed thus, modern consciousness would consider my gropings insane.

Just so it would have appeared insane to Greek consciousness if anyone had attempted, by reference to the nature of thought and the cerebellum, to explain the self-evident fact that man's being uses his brain to lay hold of thoughts. For the Greek this was a direct perception just as, for us, it is a direct perception that the hand takes hold of the watch; we do not consider it necessary to establish a scientific relation between watch and muscle. In the course of time problems arise according to the way things are perceived. For the Greek what we call the connection between thinking and organism was as self-evident as the connection between a watch and the hand that seizes it. He did not speculate about what was obvious. He knew instinctively how to relate his thoughts to himself.

If someone said: Well, there is only a hand; the watch ought to fall down, what really holds it? For the Greek this would have been as absurd as the question: What is it that develops thoughts in the brain? For us the latter has become a problem because we do not know that already we have liberated our thoughts, and are on our way to freeing them from ourselves. Also we do not know how to deal properly with thoughts because, being in the process of growing away from it, we no longer have a firm hold on our physical body.

I should like to use another comparison. We have not only clothes but pockets into which we can put things. This was the situation with the Greeks: their human bodies were something into which they could put thoughts, feelings, will impulses. Today we are uncertain what to do with thoughts, feelings and will impulses. It is as though, in spite of pockets, all our things fell to the ground; or as though, worried about what to do with then, we lugged them about in our hands. In other words, we are ignorant of the nature of our own organism, do not know what to do with our soul life in regard to it, contrive queer ideas with respect to psycho-parallelism, and so forth. I am saying all this to show how we have gradually become estranged from our physical bodies.

This fact is illustrated by the whole course of humanity's evolution. If we again turn our gaze to the ancient Indian time when the human being looked back through the succession of generations to a distant ancestor, we see that he felt no need to search for the gods anywhere but within the generations. Since, for the Hindu, man himself was divine, he remained within human evolution while looking for the divine in his forebears. Indeed the field of his search was precisely mankind's evolution.

There followed the time which culminated in the Egypto-Chaldean culture, when the folk concept rose to prominence and man beheld the divine in the various folk gods, in that which lived in blood relationships, not successively as before, but spatially side by side.

Then came the Greek period when man no longer felt god-imbued, when he became an earth citizen. Now for the first time there arose the necessity to seek the gods above the earth, to look up to the gods. By gazing at the stars, ancient man knew of the gods. But the Greek needed, in addition to the stars, the involvement of his personality in order to behold those gods; and this need kept increasing within mankind.

Today man must more and more develop the faculty of disregarding the physical, disregarding the physical starry sky, disregarding the physical course of the year, disregarding his sensations when confronting objects. For he can no longer behold his thoughts in matter. He must acquire the possibility of discovering the divine-spiritual as something special above and beyond the physical sense world before he can find it again within the sense world.

To emphasize this truth energetically is the task of anthroposophical spiritual science. Thus anthroposophical spiritual science grows out of the entire earthly evolution of mankind. We must always remember that Anthroposophy is not something arbitrarily created and placed as a program into mankind's evolution but, rather, something suited to our epoch, something resulting from the inner necessities of mankind's long history.

The fact that materialism holds sway over our age is, really, only a lagging behind. Man not only became an earth citizen in the Greek sense; today he is already so estranged from his earth citizenship he no longer understands how to handle his soul-spirit being in relation to his body—it is one of the needs of the age for the human being to behold spirit and soul in himself without the physical. Side by side with this deep soul-need, there exists materialism as an Ahrimanic stopping short at something natural in the age of the Greeks and Romans when one could still behold the spiritual in the physical, but not natural today.

Having remained stationary, we can no longer see the spiritual in the physical; we consider only the physical as such. This is materialism. It means that a current hostile to development has entered evolution. Mankind shuns the coining of new concepts; it prefers to continue on with the old. We must overcome this hostility toward development; must open ourselves to it. Then we shall acquire a quite natural relationship to anthroposophical growth of spirit, and pass over from antiquated needs to the truly modern need of mankind: namely, to raise ourselves to the spiritual.

In today's lecture I have tried to gain a viewpoint from which you can see how, for the present age, in the evolution of mankind, Anthroposophy constitutes a real necessity.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science, an Outline. Anthroposophic Press, Inc., New York.

Christian theologians are calling the gospel of John into question today.⁵³ They say the first three gospels, the synoptic gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, are consistent in the way they speak of Jesus. Any variations between them are considered unimportant. It is said that on the basis of the synoptic gospels one can have a consistent idea of Jesus. The gospel of John differs greatly from them, speaking of the founder of Christianity in a very different tone and apparently a very different way. It is therefore considered less credible. The synoptics, people say, were intended to tell the life of Christ, whilst the writer of John's gospel lived at a later period and wrote a kind of hymn to express how he felt. Theologians see John's gospel as the fictional work of a believer. The times have gone when a theologian like Bunsen⁵⁴ might write: ‘If the gospel of John does not tell the historical truth, Christianity simply will not be tenable.’ It is the task of spiritual science to show the significance of John's gospel again to the people of today.

There is another reason why present-day theologians give preference to the synoptics over John's gospel. If one takes the content of these three gospels, having thrown out the miracles, one has the image of an exalted human being, but someone who is no more than an exalted human being. According to the gospel of John, however, Jesus was more than just a highly developed human being. He was a universal spirit incarnated in an earthly body. The synoptics speak of Jesus of Nazareth, the gospel of John is about the Christ.

The introduction to John's gospel refers to an all-encompassing cosmic principle, the logos, which incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth: ‘In the beginning was the logos.’ People do not want to know about a sublime spirit descending. They only believe in highly developed human beings and not that a god ever lived on earth. It is because of this that people have gradually lost their relationship to the gospel of John over the last centuries. This lecture will be about the way people relate to the gospel of John.

If you read John's gospel the way you read any other book, to find out what it says, you are reading it very much the wrong way. John's gospel is not a book in the sense one generally takes a book to be. It is a book of life.

Let me say first of all that in all deeply religious documents every word has been put there with profound intention. This may be illustrated by considering the question: ‘What is the name of Jesus' mother according to John's gospel?’ Everyone will say: ‘Mary’. But this cannot be shown from John's gospel. Jesus' mother is first mentioned in the story of the wedding at Cana, but she is not named: ‘On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there.’⁵⁵ She is mentioned again and not named as one of the three women who stood by the cross: ‘But beside Jesus' mother and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.’⁵⁶ Here it is not his mother but her sister who is called ‘Mary’. It is unlikely that both sisters would be called Mary, and we therefore have to assume that Jesus' mother had a different name.

Another example is this. The writer of John's gospel or the individual who is otherwise always called John, is always only referred to as ‘the disciple whom the Lord loved’. ‘When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother: Here is your son.’⁵⁷ This is deeply important if we are to understand the questions we meet when we take the gospel of John in a spiritual sense.

Until a few centuries ago, the gospel of John was considered to be a book of meditation. It had to become inward experience if one wanted to have inner understanding of Jesus. It was for priests who wished to behold the secrets of Christianity. Hundreds of people have truly done this, and hundreds of them have gained the fruit of it. To penetrate to the Christian mysteries one had to let one's soul mature solely with the aid of John's gospel. People had to know, however, that the first lines had magic powers. The pupil had to let them come alive in his soul for a quarter to half an hour every morning, never speculating on them but purely to absorb their power. This was meditation. Someone who lived with the first lines of John's gospel in this way for months, for years, would realize their special power, for the eyes of the spirit would open for him. Those lines are live powers capable of waking dormant faculties. The pupils would then have living astral visions of the images given in the gospel. The first words of it served to give people this experience. Their power was greater in the past than it is today. People have changed more than one tends to think.

People did not read in the 13^th century, when printing had not yet been developed. Reading has changed humanity a great deal. Even the most devout individual today has no idea of the riches of feeling people then had. Today we must give different meditations to people who want to progress.

It would also be necessary to translate John's gospel properly,⁵⁸ so that it may once again be what it used to be for people.

In the origin was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.

This was with God in the origin.

All that exists has come into being through it, and nothing that has come into existence has done so except through it. In it was life, and life was the light of mankind. And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came to be a man, sent by God, and his name was John. He came to witness, that he bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but a witness of the light.

For the true light, that illumines all men, was to come into the world. It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world did not know it.

It came into individual human beings (it came to the I-people); but the individual human beings (the I-people) did not receive it.⁵⁹

At the time of the Lemurian race, the human soul entered into its first human incarnation. Before then it rested in God; human beings were not yet I-endowed.

This inner vision—what happens when someone gains insight into the world of the spirit? Everyday people live between waking and sleep, the latter at most broken up by dreams. Human beings consist of physical body, ether or life body, astral body and I. These four members are together when people are awake. The physical body is a sum of physical apparatuses, the eye a camera obscura, the ear a stringed instrument. The ether body enters into these, vitalizing them and conveying the sensations to the astral body—the bearer of pleasure and pain, drives, desires and passions—and then also to the I. In sleep, the physical and ether bodies lie in the bed, the astral body with the I is lifted out. The ether body stays with the physical body and vitalizes it; vital functions continue without interruption in sleep. Colours, sounds, pleasure and pain are in deep darkness, as it were, with the individual not aware of them.

There are as many worlds as the human being has sense organs to perceive. Without eyes no light. If man had an organ for electricity he would perceive it just as he now perceives light, for instance.

In sleep, a human being lives in the astral or also in the devachanic world, but is not sentient of it. A change will only come if he works consistently to develop higher organs. Light then begins to dawn around him. In sleep, he is sentient of a space around him that is filled with objects. Something happens to him the way it does to someone born blind who has an operation. Astral and spiritual sense organs develop, he sees the world of the spirit, and sleep no longer makes him unconscious. Later the world of the spirit around him begins to sound. He hears the Pythagoreans' music of the spheres, something people nowadays think is a metaphor. Goethe knew exactly what it was. In his prologue to Faust he said:

The sun proclaims its old devotion
In rival song with brother spheres,
And still completes in thunderous motion
The circuits of its destined years.⁶⁰

This cannot be taken to be mere words but must be taken literally. One hears the sun sound forth when one hears the music of the spirit. In part 2 of Faust, Goethe wrote:

Resounding now for ears of spirit
The new day is already being born.⁶¹

The world of the spirit thus first comes during sleep for human beings, but they must also be able to take the experiences they have had in their sleep into the everyday world. They must find the things they first discover in sleep among the physical objects they know when awake. This comes with further training.

When the first lines of John's gospel had had their effect, and the gospel's images arose before the mind's eye, the pupil would be assisted in developing certain feelings. After some further exercises the teacher would ask him to develop the following feeling, doing this for a long time: ‘If the plant that grows in the soil were to consider the rock on which it is growing it would have to say to it: "You, stone, belong to a lower realm than I do, but I could not exist without you." It would have to bend down to it and thank it in all humility for making life possible for it. In the same way every higher class of human beings must bend down to the lower class and thank it. Every individual who is at a higher level owes his existence to the one who is lower than he is. This is a feeling you must firmly establish in your soul, for hours every day, for weeks and for months.’

If the pupil did this, a spiritual image would finally appear before his eyes that would be the same for everyone. He would see twelve people of a lower order sitting around him and he would wash their feet. The teacher would then say: ‘Now you have inner understanding of the 13^th chapter of John's gospel, the washing of the feet.’ Apart from this image seen in the spirit there would also be physical symptoms which again were the same for almost all of them. The pupil would feel as if there was water washing around his feet.

He then had to develop a second feeling, again for weeks and months. When all the pain and hardships of life beset me, I want to develop the strength to withstand them. When he had developed this inner feeling a new vision would arise. He would see himself being scourged. This vision again would be the same for everyone. The outer symptom would be a stinging and itching sensation over the whole body that continued for a long time. He would then have to develop a third feeling. It is not enough to bear the hardships of life: ‘The best you have in you may have scorn and derision poured on it. Remain upright in spite of this.’ When the pupil had developed this feeling a third vision would appear: He would see himself wearing the crown of thorns. The external symptom would be a severe headache.

He then had to develop another feeling. ‘All people say “I” to the body they bear. Your body must be no more important to you than any other object. You must feel your body to be something alien to you.’ When the pupil had gone through this, the vision of the crucifixion would come, and externally the stigmata of the Christ on hands and feet and on the right side of the chest—not the left, as is usually said. These symptoms would come again on many occasions at times of meditation.

The teacher would then say to the pupil: ‘You will now experience the mystic death.’ This can only be described in approximate words. The pupil's experience would be that the whole of existence was extinguished for a moment; all objects had gone, were hidden behind a veil. The veil would then rip apart from top to bottom and the pupil would look into the world of the spirit. Before this there was something else. Before he knew mystic death, the pupil would have visions of all the evil that may exist in the world; he had to descend to hell before he experienced the mystic death.

In the sixth stage the pupil would begin to feel that his body no longer was something that belonged to him. His conscious awareness expanded to embrace the whole earth. When this had been developed it would be called the entombment. The seventh stage can no longer be described in earthly terms. It was resurrection and ascension to heaven. This state is beyond anything a human being can think of.

The gospel of John describes these seven stages. Someone who had gone through them all would recognize Jesus as he had lived on earth. The gospel of John is the way of coming to know Christ Jesus. It was therefore given to those who wanted to grow wise as a book to help their development, not as a book of devotions. Every part of it can become living experience.

Details: The revelation of this truth is a stage in human evolution that cannot be compared with any other. The following came into the world with Jesus: Man already had four members when he first incarnated, but he developed further. Let us consider an undeveloped human being. His astral body would still be the way it was when he received it. Let us compare it with the astral body of an average European or that of an idealist such as Schiller⁶² or a highly developed individual such as Francis of Assisi.⁶³ The average European no longer obeys every drive. He will reject some, and also put other feelings in their place—moral laws. The I has been working on the astral body. His astral body consists of two parts—the unpurified part, which is still the way it was when he received it, and the purified part. In Schiller, the purified part was already large, compared to the unpurified. And the astral body of a Francis of Assisi consists of the purified part only. This purified part of the astral body is called the spirit self or manas, and the human being then has five principles to his essential nature.

Human beings can work on their ether bodies in the same way. Religious and artistic feelings work on the ether body and create the life spirit, buddhi, out of it. If someone is able to gain control of the physical body, the part of it which he has made spiritual is the atman. The process is exceedingly slow in external evolution. In Greece the buddhi was called Chrestos, and most people today have only the first beginnings of this. The greatest power given to our age to develop the buddhi came with the Christ. He made it possible to develop the sixth principle, the buddhi, in the whole of humanity. He made humanity spiritual.

The seventh principle is that of the father. The holy spirit develops manas, the Christ the sixth principle, and when this has been extensively developed for a whole race, the power that has lain hidden in it emerges, and that is the sixth principle. All human beings who are part of that race will then have reached the sixth stage of initiation, which is the entombment.

A cheerfull or a sad face tells us that the soul is cheerful or is sad; the outer reveals the inner, everything brings the soul to revelation. If you think of the earth as the body of an ensouled being, then the souls of human beings have merged with the soul of the earth when their bodies have merged physically with the earth. The soul in the earth could be just as the human soul is in the human body. Man takes his food from the body of the earth and tramples it underfoot. Jesus said: ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’

Older writings often have keywords, specific terms for particular things. Thus a master going to the inner sanctuary with his pupils is ‘going up the mountain’. The sermon on the mount was for the pupils only: ‘And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain ... his disciples came to him.’⁶⁴

In the same way ‘temple’ refers to the physical body. It is usually referred to as our lower nature. Is it truly low in relation to the astral body? The fact is that the physical body is much more highly developed than the astral body today. Later on, of course, the astral body will be much more highly developed than the physical body. Consider the thigh bone, where maximum strength is given using the minimum of material. Or consider the heart, which is so wisely organized that it resists continuous attacks from the astral body for decades.

It was said that when an initiate's astral body loosened and came to conscious awareness: ‘He has gone out of the temple.’ The Christ speaks of the temple in the gospel of John: ‘Then they took up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.’⁶⁵ He also spoke in this sense of cleansing the temple and destroying it and rebuilding it in three days.

How the Christ came into the world may be seen as follows. The sixth principle, the buddhi, is born of the fifth when this has reached its highest point, of the spirit self or manas or, to use the name the Greeks had for the fifth principle, Sophia. All gnostics who accepted the meaning of the gospel of John called the mother of Jesus ‘Sophia’.

With the appearance of Jesus the earth received the sixth principle. The life spirit united with humanity. For this to be accomplished, the Sophia had to be fully mature first. When the life spirit unites with humanity, humanity is the Sophia. This is given as a parable in the story of the wedding at Cana.

The Lord let the gospel of John be revealed by the disciple whom he loved. That is always the name given to the first and favourite pupil of a master. In the gospel of John, reference to the disciple whom the Lord loved is first made in chapter 11, where he speaks of the raising of Lazarus. In those days, a pupil would spend three days in the temple to be initiated. Not only his astral body but his ether body, too, would be loosened. He therefore died, as it were, and was raised again at the end of the three-day period. The Lord initiated the disciple whom he loved, and the raising of Lazarus signifies this.

The disciple who stood by the cross was therefore again Lazarus, and the same initiate also wrote the gospel of John. To make it all harmonize, the disciple whom the Lord loved is not mentioned before the raising of Lazarus in chapter 11. This was the view held in all gnostic and Rosicrucian schools. It is a view that will be held again.

The gospel of John is a book full of secrets, full of powers offered to humanity.

Questions and Answers

What is the ‘causal body?’

When people die today, the ether body separates from the physical body together with the astral body and the I. The ether body still stays with the higher members for a time, and during this first period after leaving the physical body a person's whole last life lies spread before him like a vast tableau. This is because the ether body supports not only the vital functions but also memory. In life it was limited by the physical brain and unable to function fully. As soon as the physical barriers have gone, the complete memory spreads before the human soul. This continues until the ether body separates from the astral body and I after a few days. It is only the ether substance which separates, however. The memory picture is taken along. The individual keeps this essence of the ether body, and the sum of such essences from all lives on earth is the causal body.

How should we regard the celebration of the last supper in the gospel of John, and especially bread being given to Judas, the betrayer?

A specific part of the old form of initiation consisted in the pupil being taken to the temple, and in a ‘three-day death’, which meant that the ether body was also loosened and taken through astral and devachanic experiences. One of these was that every part of the body became a human figure. There were twelve parts, and the pupil would see twelve figures, with himself the thirteenth, the soul of the twelve.

Sensuality has brought egotism and this must be overcome. This was an important part of the teaching for medieval initiands. At that time, a teacher might have said something like the following to a pupil. ‘Look at the plant, it chastely holds the fruiting organs up to the sun. A fruit can only develop if the flower is kissed by the sun. Man is an upside-down plant. The animal is between the two. The cosmic soul goes through plant, animal and man. The cosmic soul is crucified on the cross which is the earth. Man's substance is interwoven with desires. His flesh is lower than the flesh of a plant. Later, man will be without desire again and chastely offer himself to the rays of the spiritual sun.’ The principle known as the holy grail arises, which is a bringing forth in the spirit.

At the last supper in the gospel of John, lower self-seeking is represented by Judas, the betrayer. The disciple whom the Lord loved was leaning on his breast. The purified energy goes up to the heart which will be the organ for bringing things forth in the spirit in future. This can already be seen in the anatomy of the heart. The heart is an involuntary muscle and therefore should have smooth fibres. But it does not; it is striated the way voluntary muscles are. It is thus already pointing to a time when it will be a voluntary muscle.

When pupils woke from their initiation, the words ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’⁶⁶ would be wrested from their lips, they mean ‘My God, my God, how you have transfigured me!’ These words given in the original text are easily changed to the other version, which is: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

The house where the last supper was taken was one of the initiation houses.

What did the transformation of water into wine at Cana mean?

The way modern theologians explain it, it is the transformation of the old testament into the new, which is to be the bubbling wine. Here in the north, Siegfried was the pre-Christian initiate who did not go beyond pre-Christian initiation. This is indicated by his vulnerable spot. Siegfried, invulnerable, was vulnerable at the point where the Christ bore the cross.

One individual will come who signifies the meaning of the earth. Water is the blood of this spirit. Water was known as ‘the blood of Christ’ in all the mysteries.

In the 8th century before Christ, the rites of Dionysus developed and with them also excessive drinking of wine. Wine was not known in Atlantean times. Today it has fulfilled its function. The appearance of the vine louse is a sign that wine has had its day. When it did not yet exist, all human beings had an awareness of the eternal core that goes from life to life. Belief in reincarnation was a consolation for an Egyptian worker who had to labour so hard that we cannot imagine it today. Those people did not drink wine. Drinking wine cuts human beings off from insight into the higher aspects. This had to happen at one time. If humanity had never had wine, they would have grown weary of the earth and that could not be allowed to happen. To develop civilization, human beings had to come to love the earth; they had to be cut off from their earlier incarnations and love only the one in which they were at the time. The whole of humanity once had to go through a period when they knew nothing of their higher principles and of earlier incarnations. Christianity did not teach reincarnation in public for two millennia; it was only taught to initiates, which is also what the Christ did when he asked them to tell no one about the things they had seen till he had come again,⁶⁷ that is, until the sixth principle had slowly evolved. That time has now come. The whole of humanity has now gone through one incarnation where they were cut off from the higher world.

In earlier times marriage was among blood relations. A consequence of the change to marrying out of one's tribe was that clairvoyance was lost. Today marriage between blood relations would cause degeneration. In those early days, people not only remembered things from their own but also from their parents' lives. This inherited memory bore a name: Adam, Seth, Enoch. Apart from memories, good and evil things were also inherited—original sin.

To change this, general love of humanity had to replace the blood bonds. ‘He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’⁶⁸

Jesus also went to people not of his tribe, to the Samaritan woman. ‘Jews had nothing in common with Samaritans.’⁶⁹ Christ Jesus came from Galilee, a country of the most mixed blood possible.

A spirit on a distant star looking at the earth would see the physical earth penetrated and surrounded by an ether and an astral body. If this spirit had observed earth evolution from Abraham to the present day it would have seen its colours change at the moment when the blood flowed from Christ's wounds. An initiation like that of Paul the apostle⁷⁰ could not have happened before the coming of the Christ. This external initiation had become possible when the earth's whole astral body changed.

Question concerning the future of Christianity

Christianity has such infinite depths that it is quite impossible to see how it will develop. As a religion it is the last. It has all the potential for development. Theosophy merely serves Christianity.

The difference between the Christ and the other founders of great religions is that in the other religions people believe in what the founders taught, in Christianity people believe in what the Christ himself represents.

Healing influence of the ether body on the physical body

Mental diseases are partly due to the fact that the ether body does not have the power to influence certain parts of the physical body. If the ether body is too weak to control part of the body, this part will get sick. If you strengthen the ether body you have helped.

• 53. E.g. Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–74), German theologian, Leben Jesu (life of Jesus) 1835, translated into English by George Eliot in 1846; Renan, Ernest (1823–92), French philologist and historian, Vie de Jésus (life of Jesus) 1863; Hamack, Adolf von(1851–1930), Das Wesen des Christentums (the nature of Christianity) Leipzig 1901.
• 54. Bunsen, Christian KarlJosias, Baron (1791–1860), Prussian diplomat, theologian and scholar, author of works on history and theology.
• 55. John 2: 3-5.
• 56. John 19: 25.
• 57. John 19: 26
• 58. Rudolf Steiner had translated John 1:1 -14 for a lecture he gave in Munich on 27 Oct. 1906 (in German in GA 94). See also lecture of 2 Dec. 1906 in this volume.
• 59. The manuscript of Rudolf Steiner's translation into German is in the Archives in Domach (No. NZ 3477). The words in parentheses were added by him at a later stage.
• 60. Karl Julius Schröer wrote in his Faust commentary: ‘The ancient Germans believed that a sound could be heard as the sun rose (Tacitus, Germania 45). In one of the Songs of Ossian translated by Goethe it says: “Where the sun sings as he rises.” The Pythagoreans held the view that the law of physics according to which heavenly bodies move and are held, is expressed in sounds that are the harmony of the spheres.’
• 61. Here Karl Julius Schröer again referred to the ancient Germans and to Ossian, continuing: ‘Goethe probably had the passages 5, 749 and 8, 393 in the Iliad in mind. The Horae, guardians of Olympus, guard, open and close the gate of heaven. Those passages do, however, say: Heaven's gate crashed open of its own accord which the Horae were guarding.’
• 62. Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von (1759–1805), German writer, poet and playwright.
• 63. St Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), Pater Seraphicus, see R. Steiner's lectures given in Berlin on 15 Feb. 1909 (in The Principle of Spiritual Economy, GA 109) and 22 March 1909 (in The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers, GA 107).
• 64. John 13:18. Sermon on the mount—see also the lecture given in Stuttgart on 19 Jan. 1907, in this volume.
• 65. John 8: 59.
• 66. Matthew 27: 46; Mark 15: 34.; ‘sabachthan’, is usually translated as ‘forsaken’. A similar-sounding word ‘shevachthani’ means ‘elevated’ or ‘glorified’. See lecture given in Basel on 12 Sept. 1910 (in The Gospel of St Matthew, GA 123).
• 67. Mark 9: 9.
• 68. Luke 14: 26; Matthew 10: 37; Mark 10: 29.
• 69. John 4: 9.
• 70. John 4: 9.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today it seems appropriate to mention certain thoughts on the meaning and nature of our spiritual Movement—anthroposophical spiritual science, as we call it. To do so will necessitate references to some events which have occurred over a period of time and which have contributed to the preparation and unfolding of this Movement. If, in the course of these remarks, one or another of them should seem somewhat more personal—it would, at any rate, only seem to be so—this will not be for personal reasons but because what is more personal can be a starting point for something more objective. The need for a spiritual movement which makes known to people the deeper sources of existence, especially human existence, can be easily recognized by the way in which today's civilization has developed along lines which are becoming increasingly absurd. No one, after serious thought, will describe today's events as anything other than an absurd exaggeration of what has been living in more recent evolution.

From what you have come to know in spiritual science, you will have gained the feeling that everything, even what is apparently only external, has its foundation in the thoughts of human beings. Deeds which are done, events which take place in material life—all these are the consequence of what human beings think and imagine. And the view of the external world, which is gaining ground among human beings today, gives us an indication of some very inadequate thought forces. I have already put into words the fact that events have grown beyond human beings, have got out of hand, because their thinking has become attenuated and is no longer strong enough to govern reality. Concepts such as that of maya, the external semblance which governs the things of the physical plane, ought to be taken far more seriously by those familiar with them than they, in fact, often are. They ought to be profoundly imprinted on current consciousness as a whole. This alone might lead to the healing of the damage which—with a certain amount of justification—has come upon mankind. Those who strive to understand the functioning of man's deeds—that is, the way the reflections of man's thoughts function—will recognize the inner need for a comprehension of the human soul which can be brought about by stronger, more realistic thoughts.

In fact, our whole Movement is founded on the task of giving human souls thoughts more appropriate to reality, thoughts more immersed in reality, than are the abstract concept patterns of today. It cannot be pointed out often enough how very much mankind today is in love with the abstract, having no desire to realize that shadowy concepts cannot, in reality, make any impact on the fabric of existence. This has been most clearly expressed in the fourteen-, fifteen-year history of our Anthroposophical Movement. Now it is becoming all the more important for our friends to take into themselves what specifically belongs to this Anthroposophical Movement. You know how often people stressed that they would so much like to give the beautiful word ‘theosophy’ the honour it deserves, and how much they resisted having to give it up as the key word of the Movement. But you also know the situation which made this necessary.

It is good to be thoroughly aware in one's soul about this. You know—indeed, many of you shared—the goodwill with which we linked our work with that of the Theosophical Movement in the way it had been founded by Blavatsky, and how this then continued with Besant's and Sinnett's efforts, and so on. It is indeed not unnecessary for our members, in face of all the ill-meant misrepresentations heaped upon us from outside, to persist in pointing out that our Anthroposophical Movement had an independent starting-point and that what now exists has grown out of the seeds of those lectures I gave in Berlin which were later published in the book on the mysticism of the Middle Ages. We must stress ever and again that in connection with this book it was the Theosophical Movement who approached us, not vice versa. This Theosophical Movement, in whose wake it was our destiny to ride during those early years, was not without its connections to other occult streams of the nineteenth century, and in lectures given here I have pointed to these connections. But we should look at what is characteristic for that Movement.

If I were asked to point factually to one rather characteristic feature, I would choose one I have mentioned a number of times, which is connected with the period when I was writing in the journal Lucifer-Gnosis what was later given the title Cosmic Memory. A representative of the Theosophical Society, who read this, asked me by what method these things were garnered from the spiritual world. Further conversation made it obvious that he wanted to know what more-or-less mediumistic methods were used for this. Members of those circles find it impossible to imagine any method other than that of people with mediumistic gifts, who lower their consciousness and write down what comes from the subconscious.

What underlies this attitude? Even though he is a very competent and exceptionally cultured representative of the Theosophical Movement, the man who spoke to me on this was incapable of imagining that it is possible to investigate such things in full consciousness. Many members of that Movement had the same problem because they shared something which is present to the highest degree in today's spiritual life, namely, a certain mistrust in the individual's capacity for knowledge. People do not trust the inherent capacity for knowledge, they do not believe that the individual can have the strength to penetrate truly to the essential core of things. They consider that the human capacity for knowledge is limited; they find that intellectual understanding gets in the way if one wants to penetrate to the core of things and that it is therefore better to damp it down and push forward to the core of things without bringing it into play. This is indeed what mediums do; for them, to mistrust human understanding is a basic impulse. They endeavour, purely experimentally, to let the spirit speak while excluding active understanding.

It can be said that this mood was particularly prevalent in the Theosophical Movement as it existed at the beginning of the century. It could be felt when one tried to penetrate certain things, certain opinions and views, which had come to live in the Theosophical Movement. You know that in the nineties of the nineteenth century and subsequently in the twentieth century, Mrs Besant played an important part in the Theosophical Movement. Her opinion counted. Her lectures formed the centrepiece of theosophical work both in London and in India. And yet it was strange to hear what people around Mrs Besant said about her. I noticed this strongly as early as 1902. In many ways, especially among the scholarly men around her, she was regarded as a quite unacademic woman. Yet, while on the one hand people stressed how unacademic she was, on the other hand they regarded the partly mediumistic method she was famous for, untrammelled as it was by scientific ideas, as a channel for achieving knowledge. I could say that these people did not themselves have the courage to aim for knowledge. Neither had they any confidence in Mrs Besant's waking consciousness. But because she had not been made fully awake as a result of any scientific training, they saw her to some extent as a means by which knowledge from the spiritual world could be brought into the physical world. This attitude was extraordinarily prevalent among those immediately surrounding her. People spoke about her at the beginning of the twentieth century as if she were some kind of modern sibyl. Those closest to her formed derogatory opinions about her academic aptitude and maintained that she had no critical ability to judge her inner experiences. This was certainly the mood around her, though it was carefully hidden—I will not say kept secret—from the wider circle of theosophical leaders.

In addition to what came to light in a sibylline way through Mrs Besant, and through Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, the Theosophical Movement at the end of the nineteenth century also had Sinnett's book or, rather, books. The manner in which people spoke about these in private was, equally, hardly an appeal to man's own power of knowledge. Much was made in private about the fact that in what Sinnett had published there was nothing which he had contributed out of his own experience. The value of a book such as his Esoteric Buddhism was seen to lie particularly in the fact that the whole of the content had come to him in the form of ‘magical letters’, precipitated—no one knew whence—into the physical plane—one could almost say, thrown down to the physical plane—which he then worked into the book Esoteric Buddhism.

All these things led to a mood among the wider circles of the theosophical leaders which was sentimental and devotional in the highest degree. They looked up, in a way, to a wisdom which had fallen from heaven, and—humanly, quite understandable—this devotion was transferred to individual personalities. However, this became the incentive for a high level of insincerity which was easy to discern in a number of phenomena.

Thus, for instance, even in 1902 I heard in the more private gatherings in London that Sinnett was, in fact, an inferior spirit. One of the leading personalities said to me at that time: Sinnett could be compared with a journalist—say, of the Frankfurter Zeitung—who has been dispatched to India; he is a journalistic spirit who simply had the good fortune to receive the ‘Master's letters’ and make use of them in his book in a journalistic way which is in keeping with modern mankind!

You know, though, that all this is only one aspect of a wide spectrum of literature. For in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, there appeared—if not a Biblical deluge, then certainly a flood of—written material which was intended to lead mankind in one way or another to the spiritual world. Some of this material harked back directly to ancient traditions which have been preserved by all kinds of secret brotherhoods. It is most interesting to follow the development of this tradition.

I have often pointed out how, in the second half of the eighteenth century, old traditions could be found in the circle led by Saint-Martin, the philosophe inconnu. In Saint-Martin's writings, especially Des erreurs et de la vérité, there is a very great deal of what came from ancient traditions, clothed in a more recent form. If we follow these traditions further back, we do indeed come to ideas which can conquer concrete situations, which can influence reality. By the time they had come down to Saint-Martin, these concepts had already become exceedingly shadowy, but they were nevertheless shadows of concepts which had once been very much alive; ancient traditions were living one last time in a shadowy form. So in Saint-Martin's work we find the healthiest concepts clothed in a form which is a final glimmer. It is particularly interesting to see how Saint-Martin fights against the concept of matter, which had already come to the fore. What did this concept of matter gradually become? It became a view in which the world is seen as a fog made up of atoms moving about and bumping into one another and forming configurations which are at the root of all things taking shape around us. In theory materialism reached its zenith at the point when the existence of everything except the atom was denied. Saint-Martin still maintained the view that the whole science of atoms, and indeed the whole belief that matter was something real, was nonsense; which indeed it is. If we delve into all that is around us, chemically, physically, we come in the final analysis not to atoms, not to anything material, but to spiritual beings. The concept of matter is an aid; but it corresponds to nothing that is real. Wherever—to use a phrase coined by du Bois-Reymond—‘matter floats about in space like a ghost’: there may be found the spirit. The only way to speak of an atom is to speak of a little thrust of spirit, albeit ahrimanic spirit. It was a healthy idea of Saint-Martin to do battle against the concept of matter.

Another immensely healthy idea of Saint-Martin was the living way in which he pointed to the fact that all separate, concrete human languages are founded on a single universal language. This was easier to do in his day than it is now, because in his time there was still a more living relationship to the Hebrew language which, among all modern languages, is the one closest to the archetypal universal language. It was still possible to feel at that time the way in which spirit flowed through the Hebrew language, giving the very words something genuinely ideal and spiritual. So we find in Saint-Martin's work an indication, concrete and spiritual, of the meaning of the word ‘the Hebrew’. In the whole way he conceived of this we find a living consciousness of a relationship of the human being with the spiritual world. This word ‘the Hebrew’ is connected with ‘to journey’. A Hebrew is one who makes a journey through life, one who gathers experiences as on a journey. Standing in the world in a living way—this is the foundation of this word and of all other words in the Hebrew language if they are sensed in their reality.

However, in his own time Saint-Martin was no longer able to find ideas which could point more precisely, more strongly, to what belonged to the archetypal language. These will have to be rediscovered by spiritual science. But he had before his soul a profound notion of what the archetypal language had been. Because of this his concept of the unity of the human race was more concrete and less abstract than that which the nineteenth century made for itself. This concrete concept of the unity of the human race made it possible for him, at least within his own circle, to bring fully to life certain spiritual truths, for instance, the truth that the human being, if only he so desires, really can enter into a relationship with spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. It is one of his cardinal principles, which states that every human being is capable of entering into a relationship with spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. Because of this there still lived in him something of that ancient, genuine mystic mood which knew that knowledge, if it is to be true knowledge, cannot be absorbed in a conceptual form only, but must be absorbed in a particular mood of soul—that is after a certain preparation of the soul. Then it becomes part of the soul's spiritual life.

Hand in hand with this, however, went a certain sum of expectations, of evolutionary expectations directed to those human souls who desired to claim a right to participate in some way in evolution. From this point of view it is most interesting to see how Saint-Martin makes the transition from what he has won through knowledge, through science—which is spiritual in his case—to politics, how he arrives at political concepts. For here he states a precise requirement, saying that every ruler ought to be a kind of Melchizedek, a kind of priest-king.

Just imagine if this requirement, put forward in a relatively small circle before the outbreak of the French Revolution, had been a dawn instead of a dusk; just imagine if this idea—that those whose concepts and forces were to influence human destiny must fundamentally have the characteristics of a Melchizedek—had been absorbed, even partially, into the consciousness of the time, how much would have been different in the nineteenth century! For the nineteenth century was, in truth, as distant as it could possibly be from this concept. The demand that politicians should first undertake to study at the school of Melchizedek would, of course, have been dismissed with a shrug.

Saint-Martin has to be pointed out because he bears within him something which is a last glimmer of the wisdom that has come down from ancient times. It has had to die away because mankind in the future must ascend to spirituat life in a new way. Mankind must ascend in a new way because a merely traditional continuation of old ideas never has been in keeping with the germinating forces of the human soul. These underdeveloped forces of the human soul will tend, during the course of the twentieth century, in a considerable number of individuals—this has been said often enough—to lead to true insight into etheric processes. The first third of the twentieth century can be seen as a critical period during which a goodly number of human beings ought to be made aware of the fact that events must be observed in the etheric world which lives all around us, just as much as does the air. We have pointed emphatically to one particular event which must be seen in the etheric world if mankind is not to fall into decadence, and that is the appearance of the Etheric Christ. This is a necessity. Mankind must definitely prepare not to let wither those forces which are already sprouting.

These forces must not be allowed to wither for, if they did, what would happen? In the forties and fifties of the twentieth century the human soul would assume exceedingly odd characteristics in the widest circles. Concepts would arise in the human soul which would have an oppressive effect. If materialism were the only thing to continue, concepts which exist in the human soul would arise, but they would rise up out of the unconscious in a way which people would not understand. A waking nightmare, a kind of general state of neurasthenia, would afflict a huge number of people. They would find themselves having to think things without understanding why they were thinking them.

The only antidote to this is to plant, in human souls, concepts which stem from spiritual science. Without these, the forces of insight into those concepts which will rise up, into those ideas which will make their appearance, will be paralysed. Then, not the Christ alone, but also other phenomena in the etheric world, which human beings ought to see, will withdraw from man, will go past unnoticed. Not only will this be a great loss, but human beings will also have to develop pathological substitute forces for those which ought to have developed in a healthy way.

It was out of an instinctive need in wide circles of mankind that the endeavours arose which expressed themselves in that flood of literature and written material mentioned earlier. Now, because of a peculiar phenomenon, the Anthroposophical Movement of Central Europe was in a peculiar position relative to the Theosophical Movement—particularly to the Theosophical Society—as well as to that other flood of written material about spiritual matters. Because of the evolutionary situation in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was possible for a great number of people to find spiritual nourishment in all this literature; and it was also possible for a great number of people to be utterly astounded by what came to light through Sinnett and Blavatsky. However, all this was not quite in harmony with Central European consciousness. Those who are familiar with Central European literature are in no doubt that it is not necessarily possible to live in the element of this Central European literature while at the same time taking up the attitude of so many others to that flood. This is because Central European literature encompasses immeasurably much of what the seeker for the spirit longs for—only it is hidden behind the peculiar language which so many people would rather have nothing to do with.

We have often spoken about one of those spirits who prove that spiritual life works and weaves in artistic literature, in belletristic literature: Novalis. For more prosaic moods we might equally well have mentioned Friedrich Schlegel, who wrote about the wisdom of ancient India in a way which did not merely reproduce that wisdom but brought it to a fresh birth out of the western cultural spirit. There is much we could have pointed to that has nothing to do with that flood of written material, but which I have sketched historically in my book Vom Menschenrätsel. People like Steffens, like Schubert, like Troxler, wrote about all these things far more precisely and at a much more modern level than anything found in that flood of literature which welled up during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. You have to admit that, compared with the profundity of Goethe, Schlegel, Schelling, those things which are held to be so marvellously wise are nothing more than trivia, utter trivia. Someone who has absorbed the spirit of Goethe can regard even a work like such as Light on the Path as no more than commonplace. This ought not to be forgotten. To those who have absorbed the inspiration of Novalis or Friedrich Schlegel, or enjoyed Schelling's Bruno, all this theosophical literature can seem no more than vulgar and ordinary. Hence the peculiar phenomenon that there were many people who had the earnest, honest desire to reach a spiritual life but who, because of their mental make-up were, in the end, to some degree satisfied with the superficial literature described.

On the other hand, the nineteenth century had developed in such a way that those who were scientifically educated had become—for reasons I have often discussed—materialistic thinkers about whom nothing could be done. However, in order to work one's way competently through what came to light at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century through Schelling, Schlegel, Fichte, one does need at least some scientific concepts. There is no way of proceeding without them. The consequence was this peculiar phenomenon: It was not possible to bring about a situation—which would have been desirable—in which a number of scientifically educated people, however small, could have worked out their scientific concepts in such a way that they could have made a bridge to spiritual science. No such people were to be found. This is a difficulty that still exists and of which we must be very much aware.

Supposing we were to approach those who have undergone a scientific education, with the intention of introducing them to Anthroposophy: lawyers, doctors, philologists—not to mention theologians—when they have finished their academic education and reached a certain stage in life at which it is necessary for them, in accordance with life's demands, to make use of what they have absorbed, not to say, have learnt. They then no longer have either the inclination or the mobility to extricate themselves from their concepts and to seek for others. That is why scientifically-educated people are the most inclined to reject Anthroposophy, although it would only be a small step for a modern scientist to build a bridge. But he does not want to do so. It confuses him. What does he need it for? He has learnt what life demands of him and, so he believes, he does not want things which only serve to confuse him and undermine his confidence. It is going to take some considerable time before these people who have gone through the education of their day start to build bridges in any great numbers. We shall have to be patient. It will not come about easily, especially in certain fields. And when the building of bridges is seriously tackled in a particular field, great obstacles and hindrances will be encountered. It will be necessary above all to build bridges in the fields encompassed by the various faculties, with the exception of theology.

In the field of law the concepts being worked out are becoming more and more stereotyped and quite unsuitable for the regulation of real life. But they do regulate it because life on the physical plane is maya; if it were not maya, they would be incapable of regulating it. As it is, their application is bringing more and more confusion into the world. The application of today's jurisprudence, especially in civil law, does nothing but bring confusion into the situation. But this is not clearly seen. Indeed, how should it be seen? No one follows up the consequences of applying stereotyped concepts to reality. People study law, they become solicitors or judges, they absorb the concepts and apply them. What happens as a consequence of their application is of no interest. Or life is seen as it is—despite the existence of the law, which is a very difficult subject to study for many reasons, not least because law students tend to waste the first few terms—life is seen as it is; we see that everything is in a muddle and do no more than complain.

In the field of medicine the situation is more serious. If medicine continues to develop in the wake of materialism as it has been doing since the second third of the nineteenth century, it will eventually reach an utterly nonsensical situation, for it will end up in absurd medical specializations. The situation is more serious here because this tendency was, in fact, necessary and a good thing. But now it is time for it to be overcome. The materialistic tendency in medicine meant that surgery has reached a high degree of specialization, which was only possible because of this one-sided tendency. But medicine as such has suffered as a result. So now it needs to turn around completely and look towards a real spirituality—but the resistance to this is enormous.

Education is the field which, more than any other, needs to be permeated with spirituality, as we have said often enough. Bridges need to be built everywhere.

In technology—although it may appear to be furthest away from the spirit—it is above all necessary that bridges should be built to the life of the spirit, out of direct practical life. The fifth post-Atlantean period is the one which is concerned with the development of the material world, and if the human being is not to degenerate totally into a mere accomplice of machines—which would make him into nothing more than an animal—then a path must be found which leads from these very machines to the life of the spirit. The priority for those working practically with machines is that they take spiritual impulses into their own soul. This will come about the moment students of technology are taught to think just a little more than is the case at present; the moment they are taught to think in such a way that they see the connections between the different things they learn. As yet they are unable to do this. They attend lectures on mathematics, on descriptive geometry, even on topology sometimes; on pure mechanics, analytical mechanics, industrial mechanics, and also all the various more practical subjects. But it does not even occur to them to look for a connection between all these different things. As soon as people are obliged to apply their own common sense to things, they will be forced—simply on account of the stage of development these various subjects have reached—to push forward into the nature of these things and then on into the spiritual realm. From machines, in particular, a path will truly have to be found into the spiritual world.

I am saying all this in order to point out what difficulties today face the spiritual-scientific Movement, because so far there are no individuals to be found who might be capable of generating an atmosphere of taking things seriously. This Movement suffers most of all from a lack of being taken seriously. It is remarkable how this comes to the fore in all kinds of details. Much of what we have published would have been taken seriously, would have been seen in quite a different light, if it had not been made known that it stemmed from someone belonging to the Theosophical Movement. Simply because the person concerned was in the Theosophical Movement, his work was stamped as something not to be taken seriously. It is most important to realize this, and it is just these trifling details which make it plain. Not out of any foolish vanity but just so that you know what I mean, let me give you an example of one of these trifles which I came across only the other day.

In my book Vom Menschenrätsel I wrote about Karl Christian Planck as one of those spirits who, out of certain inner foundations, worked towards the spiritual realm, even though only in an abstract way. I have not only written about him in this book, but also—over the past few winters—spoken about him in some detail in a number of cities, showing how he went unrecognized, or was misunderstood, and referring especially to ane particular circumstance. This was the fact that, in the eighties, seventies, sixties, fifties, this man had ideas and thoughts in connection with industrial and social life which ought to have been put into practice. If only there had been someone at that time with the capacity of employing in social life the great ideas this man had, ideas truly compatible with reality, then—and I am not exaggerating—mankind would probably not now be suffering all that is going on today which, for the greater part, is a consequence of the totally wrong social structure in which we are living.

I have told you that it is a real duty not to let human beings come to a pass such as that reached by Karl Christian Planck, who finally came to be utterly devoid of any love for the world of external physical reality. He was a Swabian living in Stuttgart. He was refused a place in the philosophy department of Tübingen University, where he would have had the opportunity to put forward some of his ideas. I entirely intentionally mentioned the fact that, when he wrote the foreword to his book Testament of a German, he felt moved to say, ‘Not even my bones shall rest in the soil of my ungrateful fatherland’. Hard words. Words such as people today can be driven to utter when faced with the stupidity of their fellow human beings, who refuse to see the point about what is really compatible with reality. In Stuttgart I purposely quoted these words about his bones, for Stuttgart is Planck's fatherland in the narrower sense. There was little reaction, despite the fact that events had already reached a stage when there would have been every reason to understand the things he had said.

Now, however, a year-and-a-half later, the following notice may be found in the Swabian newspapers:

‘Karl Christian Planck. More than one far-seeing spirit foretold the present World War. But none anticipated its scale nor understood its causes and effects as clearly as did our Swabian countryman Planck.’

I said in my lecture that Karl Christian Planck had foreseen the present World War, and that he even expressly stated that Italy would not be on the side of the Central Powers, even though he was speaking at the time when the alliance had not yet been concluded, but was only in the making.

‘To him this war seemed to be the unavoidable goal toward which political and economic developments had been inexorably moving for the last fifty years.’

This is indeed the case!

‘Just as he revealed the damage being done in his day, so he also pointed the way which can lead us to other situations.’

This is the important point. But nobody listened!

‘By him we are told the deeper reasons underlying war profiteering and other black marks which mar so many good and pleasing aspects of the life of the nation today. He knows where the deeper, more inward forces of the nation lie and can tell us how to release them so that the moral and social renewal longed for by the best amongst us can come about. Despite all the painful disappointments meted out to him by his contemporaries, he continued to believe in these forces and their triumphant emergence.’

Nevertheless, he was driven to utter the words I have quoted!

‘The news will therefore be widely welcomed that the philosopher's daughter is about to give an introduction to Planck's social and political thinking in a number of public lectures.’

It is interesting that a year-and-a-half later his daughter should be putting in an appearance. This notice appeared in a Stuttgart newspaper. But a year-and-a-half ago, when I drew attention as plainly as possible in Stuttgart to the the philosopher Karl Christian Planck, no one took the slightest notice, and no one felt moved to make known what I had said. Now his daughter puts in an appearance. Her father died in 1880, and presumably she had been born by then. Yet she has waited all this time before standing up for him by giving public lectures.

This example could be multiplied not tenfold, but a hundredfold. It shows once again how difficult it is to bring together the all-embracing aspect of spiritual science with everyday practical details, despite the fact that it is absolutely essential that this should be done. Only through the all-embracing nature of spiritual science—this must be understood—can healing come about for what lives in the culture of today.

That is why it has been essential to keep steering what we call anthroposophical spiritual science, in whatever way possible, along the more serious channels which have been increasingly deserted by the Theosophical Movement. The spirit that was even known to the ancient Greek philosophers had to be allowed to come through, although this has led to the opinion that what is written in consequence is difficult to read. It has often not been easy. Especially within the Movement it met with the greatest difficulties. And one of the greatest difficulties has been the fact that it really has taken well over a decade to overcome one fundamental abstraction. Laborious and patient work has been necessary to overcome this fundamental abstraction which has been one of the most damaging things for our Movement. This basic abstraction consisted simply in the insistence on clinging to the word ‘theosophy’, regardless of whether whatever was said to be ‘theosophical’ referred to something filled with the spirituality of modern life, or to no more than some rubbish published by Rohm or anyone else. Anything ‘theosophical’ had equal justification, for this prompted ‘theosophical tolerance’.

Only very gradually has it been possible to work against these things. They could not be pointed out directly at the beginning, because that would have seemed arrogant. Only gradually has it been possible to awaken a feeling for the fact that differences do exist, and that tolerance used in this connection is nothing more than an expression of a total lack of character on which to base judgements. What matters now is to work towards knowledge of a kind which can cope with reality, which can tackle the demands of reality. Only a spiritual science that works with the concepts of our time can tackle the demands of reality. Not living in comfortable theosophical ideas but wrestling for spiritual reality—this must be the direction of our endeavour.

Some people still have no idea what is meant by wrestling for reality, for they are fighting shy of understanding clearly how threadbare are the concepts with which they work today. Let me give you a small example, from a seemingly unrelated subject, of what it means to wrestle for reality in concepts. I shall be brief, so please be patient while I explain something that might seem rather far-fetched.

There were always isolated individuals in the nineteenth century who were prepared to take up the question of reality. For reality was then supposed to burst in on mankind with entirely fresh ideas about life, not only the unimportant aspects but especially the basic practical aspects of life. Thus at a certain point in the nineteenth century Euclid's postulate of parallels was challenged. When are two lines parallel? Who could have failed to agree that two lines are parallel if they never meet, however long they are! For that is the definition: That two straight lines are parallel if they never meet, whatever the distance to which they are extended. In the nineteenth century there were individuals who devoted their whole life to achieving clarity about this concept, for it does not stand up to exact thinking. In order to show you what it means to wrestle for concepts, let me read you a letter written by Wolfgang Bolyai. The mathematician Gauss had begun to realize that the definition of two straight lines being parallel if they meet at infinity, or not at all, was no more than empty words and meant nothing. The older Bolyai, the father, was a friend and pupil of Gauss, who also stimulated the younger Bolyai, the son. And the father wrote to the son:

‘Do not look for the parallels in that direction. I have trodden that path to its end; I have traversed bottomless night in which every light, every joy of my life has been extinguished. By God I implore you to leave the postulate of the parallels alone! Shun it as you would a dissolute association, for it can rob you of all your leisure, your health, your peace of mind and every pleasure in life. It will never grow light on earth and the unfortunate human race will never gain anything perfectly pure, not even geometry itself. In my soul there is a deep and eternal wound. May God save you from being eaten away by another such. It robs me of my delight in geometry, and indeed of life on earth. I had resolved to sacrifice myself for the truth. I would have been prepared for martyrdom if only I could have handed geometry back to mankind purified of this blemish. I have accomplished awful, gigantic works, have achieved far more than ever before, but never found total satisfaction. Si paullum a summo discessit, vergit ad imum. When I saw that the foundation of this night cannot be reached from the earth I returned, comfortless, sorrowing for my self and the human race. Learn from my example. Desiring to know the parallels, I have remained without knowledge. And they have robbed me of all the flowers of my life and time. They have become the root of all my subsequent failures, and much rain has fallen on them from our lowering domestic clouds. If I could have discovered the parallels I would have become an angel, even if none had ever known of my discovery.

... Do not attempt it ... It is a labyrinth that forever blocks your path. If you enter you will grow poor, like a treasure hunter, and your ignorance will not cease. Should you arrive at whatever absurd discovery, it will be for naught, untenable as an axiom ...

... The pillars of Hercules are situated in this region. Go not a step further, or you will be lost.’

Nevertheless, the younger Bolyai did go further, even more so than his father, and devoted his whole life to the search for a concrete concept in a field where such a concept seemed to exist, but which was, however, empty words. He wanted to discover whether there really was such a thing as two straight lines which did not meet, even in infinity. No one has ever paced out this infinite distance, for that would take an infinite time, but this time has not yet run its course. It is nothing more than words. Such empty words, such conceptual shadows, are to be found behind all kinds of concepts. I simply wanted to point out to you how even the most thorough spirits of the nineteenth century suffered because of the abstractness of these concepts! It is interesting to see that while children are taught in every school that parallel lines are those which never meet, however long they are, there have been individual spirits for whom working with such concepts became a hell, because they were seeking to push through to a real concept instead of a stereotyped concept.

Wrestling with reality—this is what matters, yet this is the very thing our contemporaries shun, more or less, because they ‘realize’, or imagine they realize, that they have ‘high ideals’! It is not ideals that matter, but impulses which work with reality. Imagine someone were to make a beautiful statement such as: At long last a time must come when those who are most capable are accorded the consideration due to them. What a lovely programme! Whole societies could be established in accordance with this programme. Even political sciences could be founded on this basis. But it is not the statement that counts. What counts is the degree to which it is permeated by reality. For what is the use—however valid the statement, and however many societies choose it for the prime point in their programmes—if those in power happen to see only their nephews as being the most capable? It is not a matter of establishing the validity of the statement that the most capable should be given their due. The important thing is to have the capacity to find those who are the most capable, whether they are one's nephews or not! We must learn to understand that abstract concepts always fall through the cracks of life, and that they never mean anything, and that all our time is wasted on all these beautiful concepts. I have no objection to their beauty, but what matters is our grasp and knowledge of reality.

Suppose the lion were to found a social order for the animals, dividing up the kingdom of the earth in a just way. What would he do? I do not believe it would occur to him to push for a situation in which the small animals of the desert, usually eaten by the lion, would have the possibility of not being eaten by the lion! He would consider it his lion's right to eat the small animals he meets in the desert. It is conceivable, though, that for the ocean he would find it just and proper to forbid the sharks to eat the little fishes. This might very well happen. The lion might establish a tremendously just social order in the oceans, at the North Pole or wherever else he himself is not at home, giving all the animals their freedom. But whether he would be pleased to establish such an order in his own region is a question indeed. He knows very well what justice is in the social order, and he will put it into practice efficiently in the kingdom of the sharks.

Let us now turn from lions to Hungaricus. I told you two days ago about his small pamphlet Conditions de Paix de l'Allemagne. This pamphlet swims entirely with the stream of that map of Europe which was first mentioned in the famous note from the Entente to Wilson about the partition of Austria. We have spoken about it. With the exception of Switzerland, Hungaricus is quite satisfied with this map. He begins by talking very wisely—just as most people today talk very wisely—about the rights of nations, even the rights of small nations, and about the right of the state to be coincident with the power of the nation, and so on. This is all very nice, in the same way that the statement, about the most capable being given his due, is nice. As long as the concepts remain shadowy we can, if we are idealists, be delighted when we read Hungaricus. For the Swiss, the pamphlet is even nicer than the map, for rather than wiping Switzerland off the map, Hungaricus adds the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol. So I recommend the Swiss to read the pamphlet rather than look at the map. But now Hungaricus proceeds to divide up the rest of the world. In his own way he accords to every nation, even the smallest, the absolute right to develop freely—as long as he considers he is not causing offence to the Entente. He trims his words a little, of course, saying ‘independence’ when referring to Bohemia, and obviously ‘autonomy’ with regard to Ireland. Well, this is the done thing, is it not! It is quite acceptable to dress things up a little. He divides up the world of Europe quite nicely, so that apart from the things I have mentioned—which are to avoid causing offence—he really endeavours to apportion the smallest nations to those states to which the representatives of the Entente believe they belong. It is not so much a question of whether these small territories are really inhabited by those nationalities, but of whether the Entente actually believes this to be the case. He makes every effort to divide up the world nicely, with the exception of the desert—oh, pardon me—with the exception of Hungary, which is where he practises his lion's right! Perfect freedom is laid down for the kingdom of the sharks. But the Magyar nation is his nation, and this is to comprise not only what it comprises today—though without it only a minority of the population would be Magyar, the majority being others—but other territories as well. Here he well and truly acts the part of the lion.

Here we see how concepts are formulated nowadays and how people think nowadays. It gives us an opportunity to study how urgent it is to find the transition to a thinking which is permeated with reality. For this, concepts such as those I have been giving you are necessary. I want to show you—indeed, I must show you—how spiritual thinking leads to ideas which are compatible with reality. One must always combine the correct thought with the object; then one can recognize whether that object corresponds to reality or not.

Take Wilson's note to the Senate. As a sample it could even have certain effects in some respects. But this is not what matters. What matters is that it contains ‘shadowy concepts’. If it nevertheless has an effect, this is due to the vexatious nature of our time which can be influenced by vexatious means. Look at this matter objectively and try to form a concept against which you can measure the reality, the real content with which this shadowy concept could be linked. You need only ask one question: Could this note not just as well have been written in 1913? The idealistic nothings it contains could just as easily have been expressed in 1913! You see, a thinking which believes in the absolute is not based on reality. It is unrealistic to think that something ‘absolute’ will result every time. The present age has no talent for seeing through the lack of reality in thinking because it is always out for what is ‘right’ rather than for what is in keeping with reality.

That is why in my book Vom Menschenrätsel I emphasized so heavily the importance not only of what is logical but also of what is in keeping with reality. A single decision that took account of the facts as they are at this precise moment would be worth more than all the empty phrases put together. Historical documents are perhaps the best means of showing that what I am saying has to do with reality, for as time has gone on the only people to come to the surface are those who want to rule the world with abstractions, and this is what has led to the plight of the world today. Proper thinking, which takes account of things as they are, will discover the realities wherever they are. Indeed, they are so close at hand! Take the real concept which I introduced from another point of view the other day: Out of what later became Italy in the South there arose the priestly cultic element which created as its opposition the Protestantism of Central Europe; from the West was formed the diplomatic, political element which also created an opposition for itself; and from the North-west was formed the mercantile element which again created for itself an opposition; and in Central Europe an opposition coming out of the general, human element will of necessity arise. Let us look once more at the way these things stream outwards. (See diagram.)

Even for the fourth post-Atlantean period—proceeding on from the old fourfold classification in which one spoke of castes—we can begin to describe this structure in a somewhat different way: Plato spoke of ‘guardian-rulers’; this is the realm for which Rome—priestly, papal Rome—seized the monopoly, achieving a situation in which she alone was allowed to establish doctrinal truths. She was to be the only source of all doctrine, even the highest.

In a different realm, the political, diplomatic element is nothing other than Plato's ‘guardian-auxiliaries’. I have shown you that, regardless of what people call Prussian militarism, the real military element was formed with France as its starting point, after the first foundations had been laid in Switzerland. That is where the military element began, but of course it created an opposition for itself by withholding from others what it considered to be its own prerogative. It wants to dominate the world in a soldierly way, so that when something soldierly comes to meet it from elsewhere it finds this quite unjustified, just as Rome finds it unjustified if something comes towards her which is to do with the great truths of the universe.

And here, instead of mercantilism, we might just as well write ‘the industrial and agricultural class’. Think on this, meditate on it, and you will come to understand that this third factor corresponds to the provision of material needs. So what is being withheld? Foodstuffs, of course!

If you apply Plato's concepts appropriately, in accordance with reality, then you will find reality everywhere, for with these concepts you will be able fully to enter into reality. Starting from the concept, you must find the way to reality, and the concept will be able to plunge down into the most concrete parts of reality. Shadowy concepts, on the other hand, never find reality, but they do lend themselves exceptionally well to idealistic chatter. With real concepts, though, you can work you way through to an understanding of reality in every detail. Here lies the task of spiritual science. Spiritual science leads to concepts through which you can really discover life, which of course is created by the spirit, and through which you will be able to join in a constructive way at working on the formation of this life.

One concept, in particular, requires realistic thinking, owing to the terrible destiny at present weighing down on mankind, for the corresponding unreal concept is especially persistent in this connection. Those who speak in the most unrealistic way of all, these days, are the clergymen. What they express about Christianity or the awareness of God, apropos of the war, is enough to send anyone up the wall, as they say. They distort things so frightfully. Of course things in other connections are distorted too, but in this realm the degree of absurdity is even greater.

Look at the sermons or tracts at present stemming from that source; apply your good common sense to them. Of course it is understandable that they should ask: Does mankind have to be subjected to this terrible, painful destiny? Could not the divine forces of God intervene on behalf of mankind to bring about salvation? The justification for speaking in this way does indeed seem absolute. But there is no real concept behind it. It does not apply to the reality of the situation. Let me use a comparison to show you what I mean.

Human beings have a certain physical constitution. They take in food which is of a kind which enables them to go on living. If they were to refuse food, they would grow thin, become ill, and finally starve to death. Now is it natural to complain that if human beings refuse to eat it is a weakness or malevolence on the part of God to let them starve? Indeed it is not a weakness on the part of God. He created the food; human beings only need to eat it. The wisdom of God is revealed in the way the food maintains the human beings. If they refuse to eat it, they cannot turn round and accuse God of letting them starve.

Now apply this to what I was saying. Mankind must regard spiritual life as a food. It is given by the gods, but it has to be taken in by man. To say that the gods ought to intervene directly is tantamount to saying that if I refuse to eat God ought to satisfy my hunger in some other way. The wisdom-filled order of the universe ensures that what is needed for salvation is always available, but it is up to human beings to make a relationship with it. So the spiritual life necessary for the twentieth century will not enter human beings of itself. They must strive for it and take it into themselves. If they fail to take it in, times will grow more and more dismal. What takes place on the surface is only maya. What is happening inwardly, is that an older age is wrestling with a new one. The general, human element is rising up everywhere in opposition to the specialized elements. It is maya to believe that nation is fighting against nation—and I have spoken about this maya in other connections too. The battle of nation with nation only comes about because things group themselves in certain ways but, in reality, the inward forces opposing one another are something quite different. The opposition is between the old and the new. The laws now fighting to come into play are quite different from those which have traditionally ruled over the world.

And again it was maya—that is, something appearing under a false guise—to say that those other laws were rising up on behalf of socialism. Socialism is not something connected with truth; above all it is not connected with spiritual life, for what it wants is to connect itself with materialism. What really wants to wrestle its way into existence is the many-sided, harmonious element of mankind, in opposition to the one-sided priestly, political or mercantile elements. This battle will rage for a long time, but it can be conducted in all kinds of different ways. If a healthy way of leading life, such as that described by Planck in the nineteenth century, had been adopted, then the bloody conduct of the first third of the twentieth century would, at least, have been ameliorated. Idealisms do not lead to amelioration, but realistic thinking does, and realistic thinking also always means spiritual thinking.

Equally, we can say that whatever has to happen will happen. Whatever it is that is wrestling its way out, must needs go through all these experiences in order to reach a stage at which spirituality can be united with the soul, so that man can grow up spiritually. Today's tragic destiny of mankind is that in striving upwards today, human beings are endeavouring to do so not under the sign of spirituality but under the sign of materialism. This in the first instance is what brought them into conflict with those brotherhoods who want to develop the impulses of the mercantile element, commerce and industry, in a materialistic way on a grand scale. This is today's main conflict. All other things are side issues, often terrible side issues. This shows us how terrible maya can be. But it is possible to strive for things in different ways. If others had been in power instead of the agents of those brotherhoods, then we would, today, be busy with peace negotiations, and the Christmas call for peace would not have been shouted down!

It is going to be immensely difficult to find clear and realistic concepts and ideas in respect of certain things; but we must all seek to find them in our own areas. Those who enter a little into the meaning of spiritual science, and compare this spiritual science with other things making an appearance just now, will see that this spiritual science is the only path that can lead to concepts which are filled with reality.

I wanted to say this very seriously to you at this time. Despite the fact that the task of spiritual science can only be comprehended out of the spirit itself, out of knowledge, and not out of what we have been discussing today, I wanted to show you the significance, the essential nature, of spiritual science for the present time. I wanted to show you how urgent it is for everything possible to be done to make spiritual science more widely known. It is so necessary in these difficult times for us to take spiritual science not only into our heads but really into our warm hearts. Only if we take it into the warmth of our hearts will we be capable of generating the strength needed by the present time.

None of us should allow ourselves to think that we are perhaps not in a suitable position, or not strong enough, to do what it is essential for us to do. Karma is sure to give every one of us, whatever our position, the opportunity to put the right questions to destiny at the right moment. Even if this right moment is neither today nor tomorrow, it is sure to come eventually. So once we have understood the impulses of this spiritual Movement we must stand firmly and steadfastly behind them. Today it is particularly necessary to set ourselves the aim of firmness and steadfastness. For either something important must come from one side or another—although this cannot be counted upon—in the very near future, or all conditions of life will become increasingly difficult. It would be utterly thoughtless to refuse to be clear about this. For two-and-a-half years it has been possible for what we now call war to carry on, while conditions remained as bearable as they now are. But this cannot go on for another year. Movements such as ours will be put te a severe test. There will be no question of asking when we shall next meet, or why do we not meet, or why this or that is not being published. No, indeed. It will be a question of bearing in our hearts, even through long periods of danger, a steadfast sense of belonging.

I wanted to say this to you today because it could be possible in the not too distant future that there will be no means of transport which will enable us to come together again; I am not speaking only of travel permits but of actual means of transport. In the long run, it will not be possible to keep the things going which constitute our modern civilization, if something breaks in on this civilization which, although it has arisen out of it, is nevertheless in absolute opposition to it. This is how absurd the situation is: Life itself is bringing forth things which are absolutely opposed to it.

So we must accept that difficult times may be in store for our Movement too. But we shall not be led astray if we have taken into ourselves the inner steadfastness, clarity and right feeling for the importance and nature of our Movement, and if in these serious times we can see beyond our petty differences. This, our Movement ought to be able to achieve; we ought to be able to look beyond our petty differences to the greater affairs of mankind, which are now at stake. The greatest of these is to reach an understanding of what it means to base thinking on reality. Wherever we look we are confronted with the impossibility of finding a thinking which accords with reality. We shall have to enter heart and soul into this search in order not to be led astray by all kinds of egoistic distractions.

This is what I wanted to say to you as my farewell today, since we are about to take leave of one another for some time. Make yourselves so strong—even if it should turn out to be unnecessary—that, even in loneliness of soul, your hearts will carry the pulse of spiritual science with which we are here concerned. Even the thought that we shall be steadfast will help a very great deal; for thoughts are realities. Many potential difficulties can still be swept away if we maintain an honest, serious quest in the direction we have here discussed so often.

Now that we have to depart for a while we shall not allow ourselves to flag, but shall make sure that we return if it is possible. But even if it should take a long time as a result of circumstances outside our control, we shall never lose the thought from our hearts and souls that this is the place—where our Movement has even brought forth a visible building—where the most intense requirement exists to bear this Movement so positively, so concretely, so energetically, that together we can carry it through, come what may. So wherever we are, let us stand together in thought, faithfully, energetically, cordially, and let us hear one another, even though this will not be possible with our physical ears. But we shall only hear one another if we listen with strong thoughts and without sentimentality, for the times are now unsuitable for sentimentality.

In this sense, I say farewell to you. My words are also a greeting, for in the days to come we shall meet again, though more in the spirit than on the physical plane. Let us hope that the latter, too, will be possible once more in the not too distant future.

Rudolf Steiner: Today I would like to add a little more in answer to Herr Burle's question last Thursday. You remember that I spoke of the four substances necessary to human nutrition: minerals, carbohydrates, which are to be found in potatoes, but especially in our held grains and legumes, then fats, and protein. I pointed out how different our nutrition is with regard to protein as compared, for instance, to salt. A man takes salt into his body and it travels all the way to his head, in such a way that the salt remains salt. It is really not changed except that it is dissolved. It keeps its forces as salt all the way to the human head. In contrast to this, protein—the protein in ordinary hens' eggs, for instance, but also the protein from plants—this protein is at once broken down in the human body, while it is still in the stomach and intestines; it does not remain protein. The human being possesses forces by which he is able to break down this protein. He also has the forces to build something up again, to make his own protein. He would not be able to do this if he had not already broken down other protein.

Now think how it is, gentlemen, with this protein. Imagine that you have become an exceptionally clever person, so clever that you are confident you can make a watch. But you've never seen a watch except from the outside, so you cannot right off make a watch. But if you take a chance and you take some watch to pieces, take it all apart and lay out the single pieces in such a way that you observe just how the parts relate to one another, then you know how you are going to put them all together again. That's what the human body does with protein. It must take in protein and take it all apart.

Protein consists of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur. Those are its most important components. And now the protein is completely separated into its parts, so that when it all reaches the intestines, man does not have protein in him, but he has carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and sulphur. You see how it is?—now the man has the protein all laid out in its parts as you had the watch all laid out on the table. So now you will say, Sure! when I took that watch apart, I observed it very carefully, and now I can make watches. Likewise I only need to eat protein once; after that, I can make it myself. But it doesn't happen that way, gentlemen. A human being has his memory as a complete human entity; his body by itself does not have the kind of memory that can take note of something, it uses its “memory” forces just for building itself up. So one must always be eating new protein in order to be able to make a protein.

The fact is, the human being is involved in a very, very complicated activity when he manufactures his own protein. First he divides the protein he has eaten into its separate parts and puts the carbon from it into his body everywhere. Now you already know that we inhale oxygen from the air and that this oxygen combines with the carbon we have in us from proteins and other food elements. And we exhale carbon in carbon dioxide, keeping a part of it back. So now we have that carbon and oxygen together in our body. We do not retain and use the oxygen that was in the protein; we use the oxygen we have inhaled to combine with the carbon. Thus we do not make our own protein as the materialists describe it: namely, that we eat a great many eggs which then are deposited throughout our body so that eggs we have eaten are spread over our whole body. That is not true.

Actually, we are saved by the organization of our body so that when we eat eggs, we don't all turn into crazy hens! It's a fact. We don't become crazy hens because we break the protein down in our intestines and instead of using the oxygen that was in the protein, we use oxygen coming out of the air. Also, as we breathe oxygen in we breathe nitrogen in too; nitrogen is always in the air. Again, we don't use the nitrogen that comes to us in the hens' eggs; we use the nitrogen we breathe in from the air. And the hydrogen we've eaten in eggs, we don't use that either, not at all. We use the hydrogen we take in through our nose and our ears, through all our senses; that's the hydrogen we use to make our protein. Sulphur too—we receive that continually from the air. Hydrogen and sulphur we get from the air. From the protein we eat, we keep and use only the carbon. The other substances, we take from the air. So you see how it is with protein.

There is a similar situation with fat. We make our own protein, using only the carbon from the external protein. And we also make our own fat. For the fats too, we use very little nitrogen from our food. So you see, we produce our own protein and fat. Only what we consume in potatoes, legumes, and grains goes over into our body. In fact, even these things do not go fully into our body, but only to the lower part of our head. The minerals we consume go up into the entire head; from them we have what we need to build up our bones.

Therefore you see, gentlemen, we must take care to bring healthy plain protein into our body. Healthy plant protein! That is what our body needs in large quantity. When we take in protein from eggs, our body can be rather lazy; it can easily break the protein down, because that protein is easily broken down. But plant protein, which we get from fruit—it is chiefly in that part of the plant, as I told you on Thursday—that is especially valuable to us. If a person wants to keep himself healthy, it is really necessary to include fruit in his diet. Cooked or raw, but fruit he must have. If he neglects to eat fruit, he will gradually condemn his body to a very sluggish digestion.

You can see that it is also a question of giving proper nourishment to the plants themselves. And that means, we must realize that plants are living things; they are not minerals, they are something alive. A plant comes to us out of the seed we put in the ground. The plant cannot flourish unless the soil itself is to some degree alive. And how do we make the soil alive? By manuring it properly. Yes, proper manuring is what will give us really good plant protein.

We must remember that for long, long ages men have known that the right manure is what comes out of the horses' stalls, out of the cow-barn and so on; the right manure is what comes off the farm itself. In recent times when everything has become materialistic, people have been saying: Look here! we can do it much more easily by finding out what substances are in the manure and then taking them out of the mineral kingdom: mineral fertilizer!

And you can see, gentlemen, when one uses mineral fertilizer, it is as if one just put minerals into the ground; then only the root becomes strong. Then we get from the plants the substance that helps to build up our bones. But we don't get a proper protein from the plants. And the plants, our field grains have suffered from the lack of protein for a long time. And the lack will become greater and greater unless people return to proper manuring.

There have already been agricultural conferences in which the farmers have said: Yes, the fruit gets worse and worse! And it is true. But naturally the farmers haven't known the reason. Every older person knows that when he was a young fellow, everything that came out of the fields was really better. It's no use thinking that one can make fertilizer simply by combining substances that are present in cow manure. One must see clearly that cow manure does not come out of a chemist's laboratory but out of a laboratory that is far more scientific—it comes from the far, far more scientific laboratory inside the cow. And for this reason cow manure is the stuff that not only makes the roots of plants strong, but that works up powerfully into the fruits and produces good, proper protein in the plants which makes man vigorous.

If there is to be nothing but the mineral fertilizer that has now become so popular, or just nitrogen from the air—well, gentlemen, your children, more particularly, your grandchildren will have very pale faces. You will no longer see a difference between their faces and their white hands. Human beings have a lively, healthy color when the farmlands are properly manured.

So you see, when one speaks of nutrition one has to consider how the foodstuffs are being obtained. It is tremendously important. You can see from various circumstances that the human body itself craves what it needs. Here's just one example: people who are in jail for years at a stretch, usually get food that contains very little fat, so they develop an enormous craving for fat; and when sometimes a drop of wax falls on the floor from the candle that the guard carries into a cell, the prisoner jumps down at once to lick up the fat. The human body feels the lack so strongly if it is missing some necessary substance. We don't notice this if we eat properly and regularly from day to day; then it never happens that our body is missing some essential element. But if something is lacking in the diet steadily for weeks, then the body becomes exceedingly hungry. That is also something that must be carefully noticed.

I have already pointed out that many other things are connected with fertilizing. For instance, our European forefathers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, or still earlier, were different from ourselves in many ways. One doesn't usually pay any attention to that fact. Among other things, they had no potatoes! Potatoes were not introduced until later. The potato diet has exercised a strong influence. When grains are eaten, the heart and lungs become particularly strong. Grains strengthen heart and lungs. A man then develops a healthy chest and he is in fine health. He is not so keen on thinking as on breathing, perhaps; but he can endure very much when he has good breathing. And let me say right here: don't think that someone has strong lungs if he's always opening the window and crying, “Let's get some fresh air in here!” No! a person has strong lungs if he is so conditioned that he can endure any kind of air. The toughened-up person is not the one who can't bear anything but the one who can!

In these days there is much talk about being hardy. Think how the children are “hardened”! Nowadays (in wealthy homes, of course, but then other people quickly follow suit) the children are dressed—well, when we were children, we wore long breeches and were well covered—at the most, we went barefoot—now, the clothes only go down to the knee or are still shorter. If parents knew that this is the best preparation for later attacks of appendicitis, they would be more thoughtful. But fashion is a tyrant!—no thought is given to the matter, and the children are dressed so that their little dresses only reach to the knee, or less. Someday they will only reach to the stomach—that will be the fashion! Fashion has a strong influence.

But what is really at stake? People pay no attention to it. It is this: A human being is constituted throughout his organism so that he is truly capable of doing inner work on all the food he consumes. And in this connection it is especially important to know that a man becomes strong when he works properly on the foods he eats. Children are not made stronger by the treatment I have just mentioned. They are so “hardened” that later in their life—just watch them!—when they have to cross an empty square with the hot sun beating down on them, they drip with perspiration and they can't make it. Someone has not become toughened up when he is not able to stand anything; the person who can endure all possible hardships is the one who has been toughened up. So, in earlier days people were not toughened up; yet they had healthy lungs, healthy hearts, and so on.

And then came the potato diet! The potato takes little care of lung and heart. It reaches the head, but only, as I said, the lower head, not the upper head. It does go into the lower head, where one thinks and exercises critical faculties. Therefore, you can see, in earlier times there were fewer journalists. There was no printing industry yet. Think of the amount of thought expended daily in this world in our time, just to bring the newspapers out! All that thinking, it is much too much, it is not at all necessary—and we have to thank the potato diet for that! Because a person who eats potatoes is constantly stimulated to think. He can't do anything but think. That's why his lungs and his heart become weak. Tuberculosis, lung tuberculosis, did not become widespread until the potato diet was introduced. And the weakest human beings are those living in regions where almost nothing else is grown but potatoes, where the people live on potatoes.

It is spiritual science that is able to know these material facts. (I have said this often.) Materialistic science knows nothing about nutrition; it has no idea what is healthy food for humanity. That is precisely the characteristic of materialism, that it thinks and thinks and thinks—and knows nothing. The truth is finally this: that if one really wants to participate in life, above all one has to know something! Those are the things I wanted to say about nutrition.

And now perhaps you may still like to ask some individual questions?

Question: Dr. Steiner, in your last talk you mentioned arteriosclerosis. It is generally thought that this illness comes from eating a great deal of meat and eggs and the like. I know someone in whom the illness began when he was fifty; he had become quite stiff by the time he was seventy. But now he is eighty-five or eighty-six, and he is much more active than he was in his fifties and sixties. Has the arteriosclerosis receded! Is that possible? Or is there some other reason, Perhaps I should mention that this person has never smoked and has drunk very little alcohol; he has lived a really decent life. But in his earlier years he did eat rather a lot of meat. At seventy he could do very little work, but now at eighty-five he is continually active.

Dr. Steiner: So—I understand you to say that this person became afflicted with arteriosclerosis when he was fifty, that he became stiff and could do very little work. You did not say whether his memory deteriorated; perhaps you did not notice. His condition continued into his seventies; then he became active again, and he is still living. Does he still have any symptom of his earlier arteriosclerosis or is he completely mobile and active?

Questioner: Today he is completely active and more mobile than when he was sixty-five or seventy. He is my father.

Dr. Steiner: Well, first of all we should establish the exact nature of his earlier arteriosclerosis. Usually arteriosclerosis takes hold of a person in such a way that his arteries in general become sclerotic. Now if a man's arteries in general are sclerotic, he naturally becomes unable to control his body with his soul and spirit, and the body becomes rigid. Now it can also happen that someone has arteriosclerosis but not in his whole body; the disease, for instance, could have spared his brain. Then the following is the case. You see, I am somewhat acquainted with your own condition of health. I don't know your father, but perhaps we can discover something about your father's health from your own. For instance, you suffer somewhat, or have suffered (I hope it will be completely cured), from hay fever. That means that you carry in you something that the body can develop only if there is no tendency to arteriosclerosis in the head, but only outside the head. No one who is predisposed to arteriosclerosis in his entire body can possibly suffer an attack of hay fever. For hay fever is the exact opposite of arteriosclerosis. Now you suffer from hay fever. That shows that your hay fever—of course it is not pleasant to have hay fever, it's much better to have it cured; but we are talking of the tendency to have it—your hay fever is a kind of safety valve against arteriosclerosis.

But everyone gets arteriosclerosis to a small degree. One can't grow old without having it. If one gets it in the entire body, that's different: then one can't help oneself, one becomes rigid through one's whole body. But if one gets arteriosclerosis in the head and not in the rest of the body, then—well, if one is growing old properly, the etheric body is growing stronger and stronger (I've spoken of this before), and it no longer has such great need of the brain, and so the brain can now become old and stiff. The etheric body can control this slight sclerotic condition—which in earlier years made one old and stiff altogether; now the etheric body can control it very cleverly so that it is no longer so severe.

Your father, for example, does not need to have had hay fever himself; he can just have had the tendency to it. And you see, just this tendency to it has been of benefit to him. One can even say—it may seem a little farfetched, but a person who has a tendency to hay fever can even say, Thank God I have this tendency! The hay fever isn't bothering me now, and it gives me permanently the predisposition to a softening of the vessels. Even if the hay fever doesn't come out, it is protecting him from arteriosclerosis. And if he has a son, the son can have the hay fever externally. A son can suffer externally from some disease that in the father was pushed inward.

Indeed, that is one of the secrets of heredity: that many things become diseases in the descendants which in the forefathers were aspects of health. Diseases are classified as arteriosclerosis, tuberculosis, cirrhosis, dyspepsia, and so forth. This can be written up very attractively in a book; one can describe just how these illnesses progress. But one hasn't obtained much from it, for the simple reason that arteriosclerosis, for instance, is different in every single person. No two persons have arteriosclerosis alike; everyone becomes afflicted in a different way. That is really so, gentlemen. And it shouldn't surprise anyone.

There were two professors at Berlin University. One was seventy years old, the other ninety-two. The younger one was quite well-known; he had written many books. But he was a man who lived with his philosophy entirely within materialism; he only had thoughts that were stuck deep in materialism. Now such thoughts also contribute to arteriosclerosis. And he got arteriosclerosis. When he reached seventy, he was obliged to retire. The colleague who was over ninety was not a materialist; he had stayed a child through most of his life, and was still teaching with tremendous liveliness. He said, “Yes, that colleague of mine, that young boy! I don't understand him. I don't want to retire yet, I still feel so young.” The other one, the “boy,” was disrobed, could no longer teach. Of course the ninety-two-year-old had also become sclerotic with his years, his arteries were completely sclerotic, but because of his mobility of soul he could still do something with those arteries. The other man had no such possibility.

And now something more in answer to Herr Burle's question about carrots. Herr Burle said, “The human body craves instinctively what it needs. Children often take a carrot up in their hands. Children, grownups too, are sometimes forced to eat food that is not good for them. I think this is a mistake when someone has a loathing for some food. I have a boy who won't eat potatoes.”

Gentlemen, you need only think of this one thing: if animals did not have an instinct for what was good for them, and what was bad for them, they would all long since have perished. For animals in a pasture come upon poisonous plants too—all of them—and if they did not know instinctively that they could not eat poisonous plants, they would certainly eat them. But they always pass them by.

But there is something more. Animals choose with care what is good for them. Have you sometimes fattened geese, crammed them with food? Do you think the geese would ever do that themselves? It is only humans who force the geese to eat so much. With pigs it is different; but how thin do you think our pigs might be if we did not encourage them to eat so much? In any case, with pigs it is a little different. They have acquired their characteristics through inheritance; their ancestors had to become accustomed to all the foods that produce fat. These things were taken up in their food in earlier times. But the primeval pigs had to be forced to eat it! No animal ever eats of its own accord what is not right for it.

But now, gentlemen, what has materialism brought about? It no longer believes in such an instinct.

I had a friend in my youth with whom I ate meals very often. We were fairly sensible about our food and would order what we were in the habit of thinking was good for us. Later, as it happens in life, we lost track of each other, and after some years I came to the city where he was living, and was invited to have dinner with him. And what did I see? Scales beside his plate! I said, “What are you doing with those scales?” I knew, of course, but I wanted to hear what he would say. He said, “I weigh the meat they bring me, to eat the right amount—the salad too.” There he was, weighing everything he should put on his plate, because science told him to. And what had happened to him? He had weaned himself completely from a healthy instinct for what he should eat and finally no longer knew! And you remember?—it used to be in the book: “a person needs from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty grams of protein”; that, he had conscientiously weighed out. Today the proper amount is estimated to be fifty grams, so his amount was incorrect.

Of course, gentlemen, when a person has diabetes, that is obviously a different situation. The sugar illness, diabetes, shows that a person has lost his instinct for nutrition.

There you have the gist of the matter. If a child has a tendency to worms, even the slightest tendency, he will do everything possible to prevent them. You'll be astonished sometimes to see such a child hunting for a garden where there are carrots growing, and then you'll find him there eating carrots. And if the garden is far off that doesn't matter, the child trudges off to it anyway and finds the carrots—because a child who has a tendency to worms longs for carrots.

And so, gentlemen, the most useful thing you can possibly do is this: observe a child when he is weaned, when he no longer has milk, observe what he begins to like to eat and not like to eat. The moment a child begins to take external nourishment, one can learn from him what one should give him. The moment one begins to urge him to eat what one thinks he should eat, at that moment his instinct is spoilt. One should give him the things for which he shows an instinctive liking. Naturally, if a fondness for something threatens to go too far, one has to dam it up—but then one must carefully observe what it is that one is damming up.

For instance, perhaps in your own opinion you are giving a child every nice thing, and yet the moment that child comes to the table he cannot help jumping up on his chair and leaning over the table to sneak a lump of sugar! That's something that must be regarded in the right way. For a child who jumps up on his chair to sneak a lump of sugar obviously has something the matter with his liver. Just the simple fact that he must sneak a bit of sugar, is a sign that his liver is not in order. Only those children sneak sugar who have something wrong with their livers—it is then actually cured by the sugar. The others are not interested in sugar; they ignore it. Naturally, such a performance can't be allowed to become a habit; but one must have understanding for it. And one can understand it in two directions.

You see, if a child is watching all the time and thinking, when will Father or Mother not be looking, so that I can take that sugar: then later he will sneak other things. If you satisfy the child, if you give him what he needs, then he doesn't become a thief. It is of great importance from a moral point of view whether one observes such things or not. It is very important, gentlemen.

And so the question that was asked just now must be answered in this way: One should observe carefully what a child likes and what he loathes, and not force him to eat what he does not like. If it happens, for instance, as it does with very many children, that he doesn't want to eat meat, then the fact is that the child gets intestinal toxins from meat and wants to avoid them. His instinct is right. Any child who can sit at a table where everyone else is eating meat and can refuse it has certainly the tendency to develop intestinal toxins from meat. These things must be considered.

You can see that science must become more refined. Science must become much more refined! Today it is far too crude. With those scales, with everything that is carried on in the laboratories, one can't really pursue pure science.

With nutrition, which is the thing particularly interesting us at this moment, it is really so, that one must acquire a proper understanding for the way it relates to the spirit. When people inquire in that direction, I often offer two examples. Think, gentlemen, of a journalist: how he has to think so much—and so much of it isn't even necessary. The man must think a great deal, he must think so many logical thoughts; it is almost impossible for any human being to have so many logical thoughts. And so you find that the journalist—or any other person who writes for a profession—loves coffee, quite instinctively. He sits in the coffee shop and drinks one cup after another, and gnaws at his pen so that something will come out that he can write down. Gnawing at his pen doesn't help him, but the coffee does, so that one thought comes out of another, one thought joins on to another.

And then look at the diplomats. If one thought joins on to another, if one thought comes out of another, that's bad for them! When diplomats are logical, they're boring. They must be entertaining. In society people don't like to be wearied by logical reasoning—“in the first place—secondly—thirdly”—and if the first and second were not there, the third and fourth would, of course, not have to be thought of! A journalist can't deal with anything but finance in a finance article. But if you're a diplomat you can be talking about night clubs at the same time that you're talking about the economy of country X, then you can comment on the cream-puffs of Lady So-and-So, then you can jump to the rich soil of the colonies, after that, where the best horses are being bred, and so on. With a diplomat one thought must leap over into another. So anyone who is obliged to be a charming conversationalist follows his instinct and drinks lots of tea.

Tea scatters thoughts; it lets one jump into them. Coffee brings one thought next to another. If you must leap from one thought to another, then you must drink tea. And one even calls them “diplomat teas”!—while there sits the journalist in the coffee shop, drinking one cup of coffee after another. You can see what an influence a particular food or drink can have on our whole thinking process. It is so, of course, not just with those two beverages, coffee and tea; one might say, those are extreme examples. But precisely from those examples I think you can see that one must consider these things seriously. It is very important, gentlemen.

So, we'll meet again next Wednesday at nine o'clock.

The questions were asked: Why, in the context of karma, are there imperfect things, evil, pain and

disease? Is not karmic compensation also brought about by the thought of a benevolent human spirit? The thought of a forgiving God is surely closer at hand than that of a strict and just God.

The following answer can be given to these questions: Our idea of God, [as it presents itself from the theosophical point of view], includes the notion that the individual entities will be led to their highest perfection in the course of time, and not in some indefinite way, but in such a way that they reach the divine final goal on a specific path of development.

In our cosmos, we are dealing with seven planetary developmental stages: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, then comes the Earth, which will later pass into the next developmental stage, into the fifth, then into the sixth and finally into the seventh. We can gain a certain idea of three of these seven planetary stages, that is, of the Moon, of the Earth and of the future planet Jupiter. We call our planet, the Earth, the cosmos of love, and the next one, Jupiter, the cosmos of fire. In the preceding planetary state, the moon state, we see the cosmos of wisdom.

We call the most highly developed beings of the present earth state the “masters of love and compassion”. The “Masters of Wisdom” were the most highly developed beings in the moon evolution; they guided the wise construction of the human organs from the cosmic karmic forces in such a way that hunger and thirst occur at the right time, for example. When these “Masters of Wisdom” appear in our time, they come across with too much wisdom. A piano maker, for instance, must carry out his work in his workshop; in the concert hall his work would only cause harm. So one and the same activity can be good in one place and bad in another. This also applies to these “Masters of Wisdom”; since they have too much wisdom, they would consequently cause harm here on earth, just as the piano maker would cause harm in the concert hall. If the “Masters of Love and Compassion” take too much of our earth with them into the next stage of planetary development, they would become a kind of “Brothers of the Shadow”, for this next epoch will have the task of purifying the Manas element to the level of Budhi. All these purified karmic feelings will then merge into a single power that will strive towards the original spirit that flows through our planet. Everything that the human being of today feels will, in the next state, converge in a purified form like flames, and these many individual flames will combine to form a single fire. And so this planet is called the Cosmos of Fire, which is formed from the purified feelings of human hearts as they resonate harmoniously with one another.

This Cosmos of Fire relates to our earthly cosmos as it did to its predecessor. The spiritual essence must first pass through wisdom, then through love, and finally it must merge with fire. This is the goal that the original spirit, which flows through the cosmos, is striving for. It wants to let humanity experience all the intermediate stages. Man should not only simply reach perfection, but it is also important to let him go through all the individual stages in order to let him experience the richness of existence. These intermediate goals could not be achieved if there were no diversity in time and space. In space, different levels of existence coexist. But beings also live in succession in time and go through different epochs, different levels. Thus, the original spirit strives for diversity in time and space. It allows the beings to progress to perfection through themselves. It allows the beings to truly undergo the individual lessons.

Karma can only work in such a way that the one, the perfect, corresponds to the other, the imperfect. Imagine that a child is supposed to develop in order to perfect itself in view of its later adulthood. It must first learn everything. It must learn to stand and walk, it must learn to keep itself in balance; in doing so, it will often fall over. If there were no pain associated with falling, falling would have no effect in the direction of perfecting abilities. In order to perfect itself, imperfection must be present in life. Each fact must be connected with another in such a way that this first fact becomes a lesson for us, that it teaches us something. This is what theosophy shows us. All intermediate stages of our planet are a learning through which we ascend to the highest degree. We must therefore see life as a learning. The divine original spirit gives us the opportunity to learn as much as possible from life. A God who only forgives would prevent us from learning.

Every action becomes the source of knowledge. It would not be so if the swinging to one side were not linked to the swinging of the pendulum to the other side. It is necessary that the pendulum can swing in two directions so that we are not guided by the hand of a creator like puppets. Because at certain stages of our development not the whole variety of human life appears, at other stages something must appear that looks like the other side of the pendulum.

Now there are physical illnesses. We cannot really understand the origin of physical illnesses. We can only understand that accidents happen to us; but that our body simply becomes ill out of itself, without an accident happening to it, is something we cannot readily comprehend. In occultism, the “brothers of the shadow” are also seen as the bearers of evil diseases that work from within; and we can look for the cosmic-karmic origin of physical illnesses that occur without external cause in the same direction. Too much wisdom in the wrong place causes the soul to stray into evil. In physical terms, this means that the masters of wisdom intervene too strongly in the organs. However, they should only occupy themselves with wisdom and not delve into the physical sphere of the organs in their present state on earth. In the same way, if the Masters of Wisdom do the same here that they rightly did in an earlier stage, they become the cause of physical illnesses. This self-perpetuating wisdom principle is the origin of physical evil.

Our cosmos of love, compassion and benevolence was preceded by the cosmos of wisdom, in which beings devoted their activity to the development of the physical body. The fact that they still extend their activity into our cosmos is what causes disease. Diseases, physical and moral evils, can be traced back to this common origin. This is a fact that emerges from occult historical research.

I have shown how our time has come through external research to the point where a spiritualization through theosophy is necessary. Western science comes to the gate of theosophy and knocks, because it cannot find satisfactory solutions on its own.

Lombroso's research, for example, is justified in itself; in his work, the physical and the psychological appear to be closely related. How closely he relates disease and physical abnormality in the case of criminals. Lombroso found purely physical abnormalities and irregularities in the physique of criminals; he measures the skulls, looks for asymmetries and abnormalities and says that where there is moral wrongdoing, there is also physical disharmony. In this way, he brings moral and physical illness very close together. In this way, physical science arrives at convictions that occultism also leads to. But Theosophy knows that in the case of moral and physical illnesses, it is a karmic intrusion of the lunar epoch into our earthly one; it is cosmic-karmic effects that come to light in this too deep penetration into the physical.

Now you will see why those who have the ability to see in the astral can be very different doctors than those who do not have this ability. During the lunar epoch, everything that happened was much closer to the astral than it is today; the astral forces were much more active, much more fluid, and much more powerful. The astral seer can therefore trace the connection between our world and the lunar one. He must look from the physical effects into the astral causes. One must try to imagine this in a picture. Let us imagine that the astral had been water and had now frozen, so that everything that was there before can be seen in the ice. A physician like Paracelsus, who had this ability to see, was able to discover a whole range of healing processes that are incomprehensible to the ordinary physician. He was able to determine the causes of physical illnesses through his ability to see, that is, to see the causes of illnesses in the preceding developmental epochs. He said that one must not only cure the earthly man, but also the sidereal man; that is, in our words: one must also cure the astral part of man. Paracelsus sees the relationship between the effect of the physical remedy used by him and the cause of the disease, and he also sees the effect of this remedy. The ordinary physician finds the effect only through the experiment.

Thus you see how what appears on earth as imperfection is no longer imperfect for us if we understand it as having been caused by the influence of wisdom, which was justified in the past, into our epoch. What is perfect in our epoch may be imperfect in an earlier or later one. Jesus says, “Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father in heaven is perfect. —No single being is perfect; it is only imperfect — in the place and at the time where it is.

Uhland and Goethe

[ 1 ] On September 3, 1786, Goethe set off on his Italian journey from Karlsbad. It brought him a rebirth of his intellectual life. Italy satisfied his thirst for knowledge and his artistic needs. He stood in awe before the works of art that gave him a deep insight into the imaginative life of the Greeks. He describes the feeling that these works of art awakened in his soul in his "Italian Journey". "At every moment" he felt called upon to contemplate them in order to "develop from the human form the circle of divine formation, which is perfectly complete, and in which no main character is missing as little as the transitions and mediations." He has "a conjecture that the Greeks proceeded according to the very laws by which nature proceeds, and which he is on the track of". He expresses how he perceives this realization as a spiritual rebirth with the words: "I have seen much and thought even more: the world opens up more and more; even everything that I have known for a long time only becomes my own. What an early knowing and late practicing creature is man!" - His feelings towards the creations of ancient art rise to the level of religious fervor: "These high works of art, as the highest works of nature, were produced by human beings according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses: there is necessity, there is God."

[ 2 ] Since Goethe had immersed himself in such an ideal of art, he saw everything in a new light. For him, this ideal becomes the yardstick for judging every phenomenon. One can observe this even in small things. When he was in Girgenti on April 26, 1787, he described his impressions with the words: "In the wide space between the walls and the sea, there are still the remains of a small temple, preserved as a Christian chapel. Here, too, half-columns are beautifully connected to the ashlar pieces of the wall, and both are worked into each other, most pleasing to the eye. You can feel exactly where the Doric order has reached its perfect measure."

[ 3 ] As chance would have it, on the same day that Goethe expressed his conviction of the high significance of ancient art by linking such words to a subordinate phenomenon, a man was born who summarized his almost opposite creed in the sentence:

Not in cold marble stones,
Not in temples, dull and dead,
In the fresh oak groves,
Weaves and rustles the German God.

Uhland's boyhood

[ 4 ] This man is Ludwig Uhland, who was born in Tübingen on April 26, 1787. When he concluded his poem "Freie Kunst" on May 24, 1812 with the above words, he was certainly not thinking of saying anything against Goethe's view of the world. Nor should they be cited in the sense of presenting a contrast between Goethe and Uhland. But they are indicative of Uhland's whole character. His path in life had to be different from Goethe's. Just as Goethe's whole inner being came to life before the "high works of art" of the ancients, so did Uhland's when he immersed himself in the depths of the German folk soul. Faced with this popular soul, he could have exclaimed: "There is necessity, there is God." He has this feeling when, wandering through the forest, he admires the native nature:

No better pleasure at this time,
Than to penetrate the forest,
Where thrush sings and hawk cries,
o deer and roe deer leap.

[ 5 ] He has the same feeling when he writes about Walther von der Vogelweide, reflecting on the art of German antiquity: "Among the old German singers, he deserves the name of the patriotic one. No one has, like him, recognized and felt the peculiarity of his people, how bitterly we hear him complain and reproach, with proud enthusiasm he sings elsewhere the praise of the German land, above all others, many of which he has wandered through: You shall speak: willekommen!"

[ 6 ] Uhland's ancestry and youthful development were highly conducive to the development of his folkloristic tendencies. His father's family was an old Württemberg family, rooted with all its attitudes and customs in the part of the country to which it belonged. His grandfather was an ornament to the University of Tübingen as a professor of theology, and his father worked as a secretary at this university. Her gentle, imaginative mother came from Eßlingen. These were favorable circumstances in which the quiet, introverted, outwardly awkward, even clumsy, but inwardly cheerful and enthusiastic for everything great and beautiful boy grew up. He was able to spend a lot of time in his grandfather's library and satisfy his thirst for knowledge in various fields. He enjoyed immersing himself in descriptions of important personalities and stories of great world-historical events as much as in descriptions of nature. Serious poems in which the life of the soul of deep people was expressed, such as those of Ossian and Hölty, made a great impression on him early on. This early Ernst Ludwig Uhland was far removed from all cowardice. If his high forehead indicated his sensible disposition, his beautiful blue eyes and cheerful disposition betrayed the deepest joy of life and the interest he could take in the smallest pleasures of existence. He was always there for all the fun games, jumping, climbing and skating. Not only could he spend hours sitting in a corner, engrossed in a book, but he could also wander through the woods and fields and devote himself entirely to the beauties of natural life. All learning was easy for him with such a disposition. Uhland's ability to master the external means of poetry became apparent early on. The occasional poems that he addressed to parents or relatives at parties show how easy verse and stanza form became for him.

Study and inclination. Uhland and Romanticism

[ 7 ] The outward course of study was forced upon Uhland by circumstances. He was only fourteen years old when his father was promised a family scholarship for his son if he studied law. Without having any inclination for this course of study, he took it up. The way he spent his apprenticeship is characteristic of his entire character. He literally split into two personalities. One personality was devoted to his poetic inclinations, his imaginative, cozy world view, his immersion in the history, legends and poetry of the Middle Ages; the other to the conscientious study of law. On the one hand, the Tübingen student lives in a stimulating devotion to everything that his "heart's desire" draws him towards, on the other hand, he appropriates the subjects of his professional studies so perfectly that he can conclude them with a doctoral thesis that has met with the approval of the most competent scholars. -

[ 8 ] The first poems that Uhland incorporated into his works date from 1804. The two ballads "The Dying Heroes" and "The Blind King" reveal a basic trait of his personality. Here he already lives in an imaginary world taken from Germanic prehistory. His love for this world has borne the most beautiful fruit for him. The sources of genuine folklore, the essence of the folk soul, were opened up to him through this love. As a poet and as a scholar, he drew the best strength from this love. And it was almost innate in him. He could say of himself that it was not only through study that German prehistory opened up to him, but that he sensed it when he gazed at the high cathedrals of the old cities. Scholarship only gave him clear, distinct ideas about what he had felt from his youth. - His immersion in the German Middle Ages was one of the characteristics of the literary movement known as Romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ludwig Tieck, de la Motte Fouqúe, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim and others were all promoters of this movement. They sought in piety and depth of mind a cure for the damage that the dry and often shallow "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century had done to the spirit. As certain as it is that the pursuit of enlightenment, the recourse to one's own understanding and reason in matters of religion and outlook on life had a beneficial effect on the one hand, it is also certain that the critical stance towards all religious tradition and all old traditions brought about a certain sobriety on the other. The Romantics felt this. That is why they wanted to help the extreme, overly one-sided and understanding spirit of the times by delving into the prehistoric life of the soul. The view of art, which saw its ideal in the ancient Greek world and which had reached its zenith in Goethe and Schiller, also appeared to them to be a danger if it forgot its own people above the foreign antiquity. They therefore endeavored to revive interest in genuine German folklore.

[ 9 ] Such a current of the times must have found an echo in Uhland's heart. He must have felt happy during his university years to live in a circle of friends who shared his inclinations in this direction. Those who live in a pronounced world view easily see only the dark side of an opposing one. And so it was that Uhland and his childhood friends in Tübingen fought in their own way against the excesses of the Enlightenment and old-fashioned views that seemed to them to contradict German folklore. They expressed their resentment against this in a "Sonntagsblatt", which they could only publish by hand. Everything they had to say against the art movement, which was represented in the Stuttgart "Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände", they put down on paper. An essay in the Sonntagsblatt "Über das Romantische" (On Romanticism) provides clarity about Uhland's attitude. Certain traits of his soul, which can already be found here, remained with him throughout his life. "The infinite surrounds man, the mystery of the Godhead and the world. What he himself was, is and will be is veiled from him. These mysteries are sweet and terrible." He did not want to speak about the mysteries of existence with sober reason; he wanted to leave the primal reasons for existence as mysteries to which feeling can indulge in vague intuition, of which only the sensing imagination should form an idea in free images, not sharply outlined ideas through reason. He preferred to seek poetry in the unfathomable depths of the popular soul rather than in the high artistic laws of the Greeks. "Romanticism is not merely a fantastic delusion of the Middle Ages; it is high, eternal poetry that depicts in images what words can scarcely or never express, it is a book full of strange magical images that keep us in contact with the dark world of spirits." To express the secrets of the world through anything other than images of the imagination seemed to him like profaning these secrets. This is the attitude of the twenty-year-old Uhland. He retained it throughout his life. It is also clearly contained in the letter he sent to Justinus Kerner on June 29, 1829. June 1829, when the latter had presented him with his book on the "Seerin von Prevorst": "If you will allow me to express the impression that our last conversations left on me, it is this: what is yours in these works, what emerges pure and unclouded from your observation and view of nature, I am assured of the most beautiful benefit for all those who are aware that one will never penetrate the wonderful depths of human nature and worldly life without the living imagination..."

Circle of Friends

[ 10 ] The times that Uhland spent with his university friends were times that he himself described as "beautiful, joyful". Justinus Kerner, the rapturous Swabian poet, Karl Mayer, Heinrich Köstlin, a physician, Georg Jäger, a naturalist, and Karl Roser, Uhland's later brother-in-law, were all part of the circle. In 1808, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, who was personally close to a number of Romantics and lived entirely according to their views, joined the circle. Uhland's poetry during this period bears the hallmark of the Romantic spirit in many respects. He sings of figures and circumstances from the world of medieval legends and history; he immerses himself in the emotional worlds of these prehistoric times and reproduces them characteristically. Even in the poems that do not refer to the Middle Ages, a romantic tone prevails as the basic mood. This tone sometimes takes on a rapturous, sentimental character. It is expressed, for example, in the song "Des Dichters Abendgang". The poet indulges in the delights of the sunset on a walk and then carries the impression of it home with him:

But when around the sanctuary,
The dark clouds roll down,
Then it is done, you turn back,
blessed by the miraculous.
In silent emotion you will go,
You carry the blessing of the song within you;
The light that you saw there,
Shines mildly around you on dark paths.

[ 11 ] Moods of a similarly romantic spirit are expressed in the songs: "An den Tod", "Der König auf dem Turme", "Maiklage", "Lied eines Armen", "Wunder", "Mein Gesang", "Lauf der Welt", "Hohe Liebe", and others from Uhland's student days. And the same romantic imagination prevails in the romances and ballads that Uhland wrote at the time: "Der Sänger", "Das Schloß am Meere", "Vom treuen Walter", "Der Pilger", "Die Lieder der Vorzeit" and others.

[ 12 ] And yet: for all the romantic mood in Uhland's character and for all the sympathy he had for the Romantic movement, there is a contrast between him and Romanticism proper. This grew out of a kind of contradictory spirit. Its main proponents wanted to oppose artistic poetry, as represented by Schiller, and the Enlightenment with something that was deeply rooted in popular life and the mind. Through study and scholarship, they came to the times in which, in their opinion, the spirit of the people and natural piety of the heart prevailed. In Uhland's case, the folkloristic and depth of feeling was present from the outset as a fundamental trait of his nature. If one therefore finds in many Romantics, for example in de la Motte Fouque and Clemens Brentano, that their striving for the Middle Ages, for the original folklore, has something sought after about it, that it often even appears only like an outer mask of their nature, then these traits are something quite natural in Uhland. He had never distanced himself in his thinking and feeling from the simplicity of the folk spirit; therefore he never needed to seek it. He felt comfortable and at home in the Middle Ages because the best aspects of it coincided with his inclinations and feelings. With such inclinations, it must have been quite an experience for him when Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (1805) in Heidelberg, in which they collected the most beautiful flowers of folk poetry.

Journey to Paris. Diary

[ 13 ] In 1810, the poet had completed his studies, his state and doctoral examinations were behind him. He could think about looking around the world and searching for the nourishment for his spirit that he craved. Paris had to attract him. There were the manuscript treasures of old folk and heroic poetry, which could give him the deepest insight into the connections between the life and work of the past. The journey to the French capital and his stay there had a lasting effect on his entire life. He left Tübingen on May 6, i8io and arrived back home on February 14 of the following year. From i810 to 1820, Uhland kept a detailed diary, which was published by J. Hartmann. These notes are invaluable for understanding his personality, especially those relating to the Paris trip. Silent as Uhland generally is, he also proves to be in this diary. Feelings and thoughts are only sparsely interspersed between the purely factual details that are recorded. These are all the more significant. They give us a deep insight into his soul. He traveled via Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Mainz, Koblenz, Trier, Luxembourg, Metz, Verdun and Chalons. He writes: "My stay in Karlsruhe, which lasted from Monday to Sunday (May 7 to 3), will always be a precious memory for me." There he met the poet of the "Alemannic poems", Johann Peter Hebel. This genuinely folksy personality attracted Uhland immensely. He later wrote about his stay in Karlsruhe when he was in Koblenz: "Evening memories of Karlsruhe with tears." A diary entry that refers to the Rhine trip shows how Uhland liked to pursue mysterious connections in life and build his contemplative imagination on them: "Old view of Bacharach. The jolly, unknown journeyman with the post horn, which he blew badly, but whose notes were transfigured in the echo. The traveler from Breslau who suddenly emerged with his flute. Singing and music on the ship. Strange coincidence with my song: the little ship." Three months earlier, he had written the poem "Das Schifflein" ("The Little Ship"), in which he had described the experience, which now really came before his eyes, from his imagination. The diary shows us in many places that Uhland also pursued such things in later life, which cast a mysterious spell on the imagination, although they seem to defy rational contemplation. On April 3, 1813, for example, he wrote down a dream he had had. A girl was tempted by a reckless lover to enter the attic of a house and have herself played on a piano which, according to an old legend, must never be played because the player and the person who hears the notes will immediately age and die. Uhland sees himself in the company of his beloved. He feels the age within him; and the scene ends terribly. Uhland writes: "One could explain this dream as follows: the piano is the sin that lurks hidden somewhere in even the most pious home, waiting to be appealed to. The girl's lover is the devil, he knows how to handle the sin so that at first it sounds quite innocuous, ordinary. The sound becomes sweeter and sweeter, more and more enticing, holds fast with magical power, then it becomes terrible, and in wild storms the once pious and peaceful house perishes." Particularly characteristic in this respect, however, is a note from March i, 1810. "Night's idea for a ballad: the legend that those close to death believe they hear music could be used in such a way that a sick girl thought she heard a spiritual, supernatural serenade outside her window, as it were." This idea stuck so firmly in his mind that he expressed it on October 4 in Paris in a poem entitled "Serenade". This poem describes a dying girl who does not hear "earthly music", but who believes that "angels are calling me with music". Compare this with what Uhland wrote down on 8 June 1828 with reference to a dream, and you will recognize how such traits reveal something lasting in his character: "Among the surprising phenomena of a future world will also be that, just as we will have heavenly thoughts and feelings, so also for the expression of these a new organ will open up to us, a heavenly language will break out of the earthly one. The splendor and pomp of the present language cannot give us an idea of this, nor can the calm and (animated) silence of the language of the older German poets, just as in my song heaven wants to open up in the silence of Sunday morning, just as only when it is completely silent can the sounds of the aeolian harp or the harmonica be heard." At the same time, this shows how Uhland's whole way of imagining things had to lead him to the "silence and language of the older German poets", with whom he felt so closely related.

[ 14 ] In Paris, Uhland found what he was looking for. He immersed himself in old French and Spanish literature. The substantial essay "Das altfranzösische Epos", which appeared in the journal "Die Musen" in 1812, was the first result of these studies. He conceived the idea of a poem: "The King of France's Book of Fairy Tales", which, however, was never realized. He meets the poet Chamisso and spends pleasant days with him. He also meets Varnhagen again. A note dated November 17, 1981 shows what Uhland was pursuing with his studies in Paris: "Certain conception of the tendency of my collection of old French poetry: mainly saga, heroic saga, national saga, living voice, with the artistic, the bourgeois, etc." He is persistent in copying manuscripts. It is hard to say what fruit Uhland would have gained from his stay in Paris if it had not been curtailed from the outside. He needed the permission of the King of Württemberg to stay abroad. Unfortunately, his father had to inform him in December that royal permission for a further stay would not be granted. However, the poet not only became acquainted with the treasures of the Paris library, but also with the other treasures and beauties of the great cosmopolitan city. From his notes and letters we can see how he made it a point to study life and art, and how his view broadened. - What Paris meant to him is clear from the gloomy mood that initially afflicted him after his return. The prospect that he would now have to take up some kind of legal position added to this mood. One bright spot, however, was his acquaintance with Gustav Schwab, the poet of popular romances and songs and splendid writings on virtue, who was studying in Tübingen at the time. He became a loyal, devoted friend to Uhland. The level to which Uhland had worked his way up to in his poetic work is shown by his creations: "Roland's Shield Bearer", "St. George's Knight" and the magnificent "The White Stag", along with many others from this period. However, he had already achieved the high perfection of form that we encounter here earlier, as can be seen from one of his most popular ballads: "Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein", which was written in 1809. On the other hand, the poems written after the Paris period clearly show how his imagination had been enriched by his immersion in the past. He is now not only capable of vividly depicting foreign material, but also of creating a complete harmony of content and manner of presentation in all external aspects of verse and rhythm.

Uhland as a civil servant

[ 15 ] After his return from Paris, Uhland had to look for a job. He had the opportunity to familiarize himself a little with the practical side of the profession by being entrusted with a number of defence cases in criminal matters and also the conduct of civil proceedings in the years i8i1 and 1812. The experience he gained from this did not exactly make the profession of a lawyer seem desirable to him. He was therefore satisfied when he was offered the opportunity to join the Ministry of Justice as an unsalaried secretary, but with the certain assurance that he would receive a salary before the end of the year. He took up his post in Stuttgart on December 22. - The life he now entered had many downsides for him. His official duties brought with them many difficulties. He had the task of dealing with the lectures that the minister gave to the king about the courts. The independent and straightforward manner in which Uhland drafted these lectures caused the minister some concern. After all, he was primarily concerned with creating as favorable an impression as possible with his reports. In addition, Uhland found it very difficult to connect with other people. It so happened that he was not accepted as a member of a circle of friends that met every Monday and Friday evening in a pub under the name "Schatten-Gesellschaft" until September 1813, although he had already attended one of the evenings on December 18, a few days after his arrival. Köstlin, Roser and others belonged to this circle. The strenuous work in the office and the unattractive life meant that Uhland did not feel very encouraged to be creative at the beginning of his stay in Stuttgart. How he nevertheless found his way inwardly and how his personality developed can be seen from statements such as the one in a letter to Mayer dated January 20, 1813: "Of course, I have not yet written any poetry, but in this outward isolation from it, poetry is becoming clearer and more alive to me inwardly, as is often the case with more distant friends."

[ 16 ] External events could only excite Uhland's poetic power to a limited extent. He was able to devote himself completely to them as a character, as a man of action. This is shown by his later self-sacrificing activity as a politician. Poetry was awakened in him, where it bore the most beautiful fruit, by an inner spiritual impulse. That is why the great struggle for freedom, in which his heart was fully involved, inspired him to write only a few songs. However, they show how his personality was interwoven with his people's striving for freedom. The "Lied eines deutschen Sängers", "Vorwärts", "Die Siegesbotschaft" and "An mein Vaterland" are songs with which he joined the chorus of freedom singers. - The salary that Uhland had been promised was not forthcoming for a long time. He grew tired of waiting and was otherwise not very satisfied with his position. For these reasons, he left the service of the state in May 1814. He now set up as a lawyer in Stuttgart. Although this profession also gave him little satisfaction, he felt happier with the external independence he now enjoyed. The source of his poetry also flowed more abundantly again. In 1814, he wrote the "Metzelsuppenlied" and the ballads "Graf Eberstein", "Schwäbische Kunde" and "Des Sängers Fluch".

Edition of the "Gedichtes" and the "Vaterländische Gedichte"

[ 17 ] In the fall of 1815, Uhland was able to publish the collection of his poems. Cotta, who had turned down an initial offer from the publisher in 1809 due to the "circumstances of the time", now agreed to take over the work. If this publication enabled the poet Uhland to become known in wider circles, it would soon provide an opportunity to do so with regard to his personal strength of character and soul. From now on, he actively intervened in the political affairs of his homeland. - In 1805, significant constitutional changes had been introduced in Württemberg. In the course of the turmoil caused by Napoleon in Germany, Duke Friedrich II had succeeded in making Württemberg an independent state and in 1806 he was granted the title of king. During this time, the state had also achieved significant territorial expansion. At the same time, however, the regent deprived the state of its old constitution, which was based on medieval institutions. Even though much of this constitution no longer corresponded to the new times, the Swabian people clung tenaciously to their inherited rights; at least they did not want to have new laws unilaterally imposed on them by the government. An antagonism developed between the king and the people, which lasted through the years of turmoil until the Congress of Vienna in 1815. After the negotiations of this congress, the people hoped for a reorganization of their political conditions in a liberal sense. As early as 1815, the king presented a draft constitution to a convened assembly. However, it met with the approval of neither the nobility nor the people. The latter demanded that completely new conditions should not be created arbitrarily, but that the old conditions should be transformed into new ones by negotiation, with full recognition of the rights of the estates that had been abolished in 1805. A second draft constitution presented by the king in 1816 also failed due to popular resistance. In that year the king died; his efforts to create new conditions in the country, disregarding the old rights, were initially continued by his successor, Wilhelm II. - Uhland's political convictions coincided with those of the people. Just as he clung with reverence to the products of the Middle Ages in intellectual life, so in public life the traditional institutions had something so deeply justified for him that his innermost feelings were outraged when they were arbitrarily and unilaterally shaken. He took the view that no one was authorized to give the people a new right, but that the owners of the "old, good law" must retain it until they themselves create innovations on the basis of it. It was in this sense that he expressed himself in 1816 in the poem: "The old, good right"; he wanted this "right", the "well-deserved fame of centuries proven, which everyone loves and honors from the heart like his Christianity". As in this poem, he expressed his conviction in a number of other poems. They were published from i815 to 1817 in small brochures as "Vaterländische Gedichte". They had a strong effect on his fellow countrymen. People appreciated this man, who was free-minded and democratic at heart, and increasingly revered him as one of the best guardians of Württemberg's national rights. As a result, people longed for the time when he would have reached the necessary age to become a member of the state parliament. Until then, namely until his thirtieth year, he could only work as a writer for the rights and freedom of his country.

"Duke Ernst". Dramatic attempts
"Ludwig the Bavarian". Dramatic plans

[ 18 ] Even before this time, the world also got to know Uhland as a playwright. In 1817, he completed his tragedy "Herzog Ernst", which he had begun in September of the previous year. It deals with the fate of the Swabian Duke Ernst, who repeatedly took up arms against his stepfather, Emperor Conrad II of Franconia (1024-1039), and who met his death in 1030 with his friend Werner of Kyburg while defending his supposed rights against the emperor. Uhland poured all his enthusiasm for the German Middle Ages and his Swabian homeland into this drama. Even if the dramatic liveliness of the work is rightly missed, the warmth of the portrayal and its lyrical power have always been admired. It was performed for the first time in May 1819 at the Stuttgart Court Theater and was a great success. - Uhland developed the greatest dramatic power in the first act, which presents a picture of harrowing entanglements. Gisela, the Emperor's wife, who has given him her sons Ernst and Hermann from her first marriage, asks her husband to release her son Ernst, who has been imprisoned on Gibichenstein for two years, on the day of his coronation as Roman king, where everyone is allowed to beg for favors. Her son had rebelled through youthful exuberance and because he believed he had a right to the Burgundian kingship, because the emperor had claimed this land for the empire. Gisela pleads for a pardon for the sorely tried man, who had a "semblance of right" for himself and whose young heart could easily be outraged. The Emperor is willing to grant the request if Ernst submits and relinquishes Burgundy. The scene in which Ernest appears, gaunt, pale and aged, is poignant. He is to be enfeoffed with Swabia if he renounces Burgundy and hands over his loyal friend Werner, who has always stood by him. He agrees to the first condition; he does not want to become a traitor to Werner under any circumstances. Like Ernst, the Emperor does not abandon the position he has once taken. Ernst and Werner remain loyal to each other. The imperial ban and the church ban hit them both. They are once again at the mercy of misfortune. Everything else now develops with iron consistency until Ernst and Werner's downfall, even if the dramatic life no longer rises to the heights reached in the first act.

[ 19 ] "Herzog Ernst" was not Uhland's first dramatic work, although it was the first that he completed. If you follow his dramatic drafts, you can see how persistently he worked on his perfection in this field of poetry and how he always made new approaches in this direction. One can therefore describe "Herzog Ernst" as the rich fruit of years of striving. At the time of his university studies, he tried his hand at a free adaptation of Seneca's play "Thyestes", which has been preserved. (Cf. Adalbert von Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. r5 ff.) - The plan for an Achilles tragedy dates from the year i805. What Uhland wrote about it to Leo Freiherr von Seckendorf on March 6, 1807, shows how deeply he wanted to delve into the mysteries of life and fate with this drama: "About two years ago I began to draft a tragedy, Achilleus Tod. It was intended to portray the idea that even if fate prevents us from carrying out our decisions, if we have only fully and firmly grasped them within ourselves, they are nevertheless complete. What remains a fragment in reality can be a great whole in the idea. The idea remains untouched by fate. Various reasons, but especially my preference for the romantic, which the Greek ground was not up to, kept me from realizing it." It is a pity that nothing of the draft has survived, for one could gain insight from it into the way in which Uhland's Romantic spirit felt alien to the Greek cultural element. - After less significant dramatic attempts, Uhland became interested in the story of Francesca of Rimini in 1807. He was reading Dante's "Divine Comedy" at the time and thus became familiar with the material. The tragedy he wanted to work out from it occupied him for several years. He abandoned the plan in 1810 for a reason that we learn more about in a letter to Karl Mayer dated February 6, 18io: "I lack the leisure, inner peace and vitality to do anything bigger, for example Franceska; I can only do everything in fragments." The plan and individual scenes have survived (see Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. 91 fl.) - Uhland received the inspiration for a drama "König Eginhard" from an old folk book. As an excerpt book shows, he made excerpts from this folk book in 1809. Justinus Kerner was also attracted to the Eginhard saga. He adapted it into a Chinese shadow play, which was published in Karlsruhe in 1811. The book from which Uhland took the legend is called: "Riesengeschichte oder kurzweilige und nützliche Historie von König Eginhard aus Böhmen, wie er des Kaisers Otto Tochter aus dem Kloster bringen lassen, usw. Item, how the great giants attacked the same kingdom etc. All described in a very useful and instructive way by Leopold Richtern, a native of Lambach in Upper Austria." Part of the Eginhard drama is the dramatic fairy tale "Schildeis", which Uhland published in 1812. - Uhland also attempted to write jocular plays during his student days. "The Uninhabited Island" and "The Bear" are two such plays. The latter is a farce set in Spain, which Uhland wrote together with Justinus Kerner in 1809. The year 1809 also saw the composition of a short comedy, "Die Serenade", which is also set in Spain. On ar. January i810, Uhland informs Kerner in a letter that he is working on a drama entitled "Tamlan and Jannet". It was to be a fairy tale dramatized from a Scottish ballad. A hint in the letter also reveals why this plan did not come to fruition. Uhland writes: "I have worked out the first act and another scene for Tamlan. It is to be three acts. You will receive a few scenes from it. Junker David is a changeling abandoned by the elves instead of the stolen Tamlan. As soon as Tamlan returns, he disappears. The discords dissolve into harmony, Absalon finds the desired music." Uhland drew inspiration for the two poems "Harald" and "Die Elfen" from this material. -

[ 20 ] It is understandable that Uhland had doubts about his dramatic talent after the failure of so many dramatic attempts. We learn of such doubts from a letter to J. Kerner dated 2i. January 1810: "With my inner restlessness, with my other, so varied occupations, nothing greater, more elaborate has been possible for me so far. And my talent for drama?" These words come after the mention of a tragedy sketch, "Benno", which Uhland wrote down in two days at the end of December 1809 (see Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. 289 ff.) - Uhland wanted to deliver a truly romantic drama with his "Eifersüchtiger König" (Jealous King), the idea for which he communicated to his friend Kerner on 2i. January i810: "At last I have sketched a Scottish ballad (in Herder's folk songs) "The Jealous King" into a drama, albeit a slight one at first. The idea is to dissolve the hero and his story into poetry, into legend, precisely into the underlying ballad. Squire Waters leaves his father's house and goes to court; a minstrel joins him as the song that echoes the knightly life of action. Waters pleases the queen. The jealous king throws him into prison and has him executed; the flourishing life has come to an end. The minstrel leaves the court, the song goes out into the country. Water's parents and siblings sit at home by the fireside at night. They have a craving for scary fairy tales. The lost Minstrel enters and sings the ballad of Waters' death. The Queen's love for Waters is to be treated in such a way that she favors her dearest lady-in-waiting's inclination towards Waters, as it were in order to love him directly." Unfortunately, nothing has survived of the execution of this plan, which is rooted entirely in Uhland's romantic sensibility. - In 1814 and 1815, Uhland completed the short drama "Normännischer Brauch". He received the inspiration for it from old French poetry. The basic idea is given by the "Normännischer Brauch", that hospitality is rewarded. - A fragment: "Charlemagne in Jerusalem" was probably written in 1814. A letter from Uhland to J. Kerner dated March 28 reveals that the poet was working on a dramatic adaptation of the Hohenstaufen prince Konradin at the time. The diary shows that in July 1818 he read "Hahn's Reichsgeschichte über Otto von Wittelsbach und Konradin" in order to gain material for his drama. On July 14, he even wrote: "More vivid conception of Konradin". Nevertheless, only one scene was realized. He must have finally convinced himself that the material was not suitable for dramatic adaptation. This can be seen from a letter written on September 30, 1854 to Chief Justice Hein in Ulm, in which he states: "Because I myself, like many others, have once tried my hand at a Konradin, I know from experience that this historical subject seems to be more suitable for drama than it really is." - After so many futile attempts in the field of dramatic art, it must have filled Uhland with deep satisfaction when he wrote the last scene of his "Herzog Ernst" on July 14, 1817. On November 7, 1816, he had complained in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense: "Two poems occupy me, a narrative in stanzas, Fortunat und seine Söhne, on which, however, I have not completed more than two songs in two years, and a 'Trauerspiel', Herzog Ernst von Schwaben, which I cannot begin to complete unless I can hope to work it off in one piece. But my situation still won't allow me to do that." - The legend of the "Weiber von Weinsberg" preoccupied Uhland in 1816 and he wanted to work it into a dramatic farce, but this also remained a fragment. His planned Nibe-Jungen drama, the draft of which dates back to 1817, was also never realized. On the other hand, he was able to send the completed manuscript of the historical play "Ludwig der Bayer" to Munich on May 24, 1818. King Max Joseph had offered a prize for a drama based on Bavarian history, and Uhland had entered his work in the competition. The poet spoke about this drama in a letter to his parents on May 25th: "I have faithfully adhered to history in this and have faithfully used the documents still available. Also, since a play from Bavarian history was expressly requested, there are undoubtedly historians on the commission who are well qualified to judge it." Uhland wanted to express a "symbol of German tribal unity" in the play. It depicts the battle between Duke Ludwig of Bavaria and Frederick the Fair of Austria in 1322. The poet has portrayed a magnificent picture of German loyalty and strength of character in the personality of Frederick, who is captured and released by Louis for the purpose of working for peace in his homeland and who, true to his promise, voluntarily returns to captivity when he fails to mediate. The drama did not receive the prize. But that Uhland himself was satisfied by it is clear from the fact that he devoted himself to new dramatic plans after its completion. One of these is a short play: "Welf", of which only the beginning was written down in 1818, another: "Der arme Heinrich", of which only a small part was also written down in 1818. In 1819, the poet was occupied with "Otto von Wittelsbach" and "Bernardo del Carpio", for which he took the material from Spanish history. He wanted to deal with the heroic deeds of one of the most popular personalities in Spain. He only produced a prose sketch of "Otto von Wittelsbach", a draft of "Bernardo" and two fragments in verse. The last dramatic plan that occupied Uhland was in 1820, when he wanted to deal with the story of Johannes Parricida. From a suggestion he made to Gustav Schwab, we learn that Uhland wanted to put much of his own fate into this play. He said: "It was with him as it was with me. He was unlucky in everything." Nothing is known of an execution of this idea. It was the last to inspire Uhland to create in the dramatic field. The muse of this art never visited the poet again.

Marriage
Uhland as a representative of the people
Walther von der Vogelweide

[ 21 ] The above words about the plan for "Johannes Parricida" show how deeply upset Uhland's soul was at the failure of many a life plan. But just at the time when this disgruntlement seems to have taken hold of the poet's soul most strongly, a happy turnaround occurs in his life. On January 16, 1820, he became engaged to Emilie Vischer, the sister-in-law of his friend Karl Roser. The marriage took place on May 29 of the same year. This marked the beginning of a forty-two-year marriage that made Uhland happy in every respect. One need only read the magnificent work: "Ludwig Uhland's Leben. Compiled from his estate and from his own memory by his widow" to get an idea of the rarest union of souls based on intimate mutual understanding.

[ 22 ] If you want to judge Uhland's character, you need only familiarize yourself with his behaviour on the wedding day. The wedding ceremony was at three o'clock. The bridegroom spent the morning in the Ständehaus, where he also returned after the ceremony. The dutiful man did not want to allow himself a day off, which he would have had to take away from his work as a member of parliament. By this time, the poet was already fully involved in political life. In 1819, he was elected as a deputy from Eßlingen to the Assembly of the Estates, which had been convened to discuss the creation of a constitution. He was also appointed to the commission that had to work on the address of thanks to the king. This address is in fact essentially a work by Uhland. It bears the stamp of his character. It was written in a masculine manner, emphasizing freedom and justice, but sparing all prejudices of those in power. Uhland was a member of the deputation that had to present it. To celebrate the signing of the constitution on September 24, the "Herzog Ernst" was performed in Stuttgart on October 29. Uhland wrote a prologue to it, in which he characterized his relationship to political affairs in a striking and lively manner. In the performance, he brought the events of the present into a meaningful relationship with the facts of his drama. He characterized the time in which his hero lived: "This is the curse of the unhappy land, where freedom and law lie prostrate, that the best and the noblest must consume themselves in fruitless harm ..." "How different, if law and order, freedom and justice had risen up from stormy times and planted themselves firmly!" ... Uhland was also elected to the first state parliament, which convened in January 1820, as a representative of his home town of Tübingen. He held this office for six years with the conscientiousness that characterizes the course of his wedding day.

[ 23 ] In addition to his political work, Uhland devoted himself to the study of German prehistory. During these years, his interest was focused on the great medieval poet Walther von der Vogelweide. He felt a deep affinity with Walther's nature. Like Uhland himself, Walther was also a poetic and political personality. From the German conditions of his time, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he characterized the great singer. But Uhland himself was too pithy a character not to know and to see through everywhere how only a personality of a decidedly individual nature could be affected by the circumstances of the time in the way that Walther was. He knew what belonged to the times and also what belonged to man's own soul. And he took a deep look into the soul of his hero. He portrayed his character with a vividness that is difficult to achieve, how he suffered and what he wanted. How Walther cries out in poetry the cries of pain caused by his time, how he finds solace and healing in his art: Uhland has drawn this with delicate but decisive lines. These are soft outlines through which the image of the personality in Uhland's work presents itself to our souls, but they are outlines that reveal in every point the master of biographical art, who knows exactly how to find the boundary where overly sharp lines distort the character sketch into an arbitrary, if not caricature. And the figure of Walther in Uhland's drawing also becomes a symbol of the German nation. As peculiar as the soul of the individual personality is painted, everywhere we see the threads through which it is connected to the essence of the German national soul. - Uhland was only able to portray Walther von der Vogelweide because his studies were not limited to his narrow circle. He showed the same interest in the whole of German prehistory. During this time, he also worked on a "Representation of the Poetry of the Middle Ages". However, only the section on "Minnegesang" was completed, which was added to his collection "Schriften zur Geschichte und Dichtung" after Uhland's death. The work on "Walther von der Vogelweide" appeared in 1822. How little Uhland pursued these studies as a mere scholar is shown by his behavior on his travels, especially his honeymoon, which he was able to embark on after completing his work for the state parliament on July 8, 1820. The couple traveled throughout Switzerland. Everywhere we find Uhland eagerly endeavoring to get to know the customs, ideas and views of the people, everywhere he pursued the imagination of the country folk in their poetry and legends. What he hears from the mouths of the people themselves enlivens his eager studies, which he undertakes wherever he finds suitable material for his purpose in libraries. - Uhland's research was held in the highest esteem by his learned contemporaries. The explorer of German folklore, Joseph von Laßberg, visited him in 1820 and became his ardent admirer. This was important for Uhland, as Laßberg was in contact with the most important German classical scholars of the time and was also able to arrange written or personal contact with them for Uhland.

Politics and research. University professor

[ 24 ] In addition to the strictest understanding of his duties, Uhland was also characterized by wise moderation in all his actions. This makes his personality appear harmonious in the best sense of the word. Once he had taken on something, he gave himself to it with his whole soul. He put all his energy into it. But he never wanted one side of his profession to be compromised by the other. He lived in his research and at the same time achieved the most extraordinary things as a politician from 1819 to the end of 1826. In the latter year, however, he felt that the politician in him should not be allowed to push back the researcher any further. For this reason, he did not want to be re-elected to parliament in the following years. He wrote to his father in 1825: "It is my considered decision not to accept election this time. By enduring the seven troubled years, I believe I have fulfilled my civic duty in this respect.

[ 25 ] I cannot be expected to exclude myself from any other profession and purpose for another six years, apart from the fact that I would otherwise lack the desire and love that is required above all for such a sphere of activity." He did not allow himself to be re-elected for the time being. All the more reason for his desire to teach to grow ever greater and greater as a result of his research. For a long time, all his hopes in this direction remained unfulfilled. In 1829, the Württemberg government finally decided to appoint Uhland as an extraordinary professor of German language and literature in his home town at the suggestion of the academic senate of Tübingen University. He was now able to move to the latter. His lectures were among the most stimulating imaginable. All who heard them were full of praise and enthusiasm. Uhland was not a brilliant orator; he read his well-thought-out explanations, which were based on the most thorough research, from the manuscripts. Despite this unpretentious manner, he had the most profound effect. He presented his audience with the history of German poetry in the Middle Ages, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as the history of legend and myth among the Germanic and Romance peoples. Particularly useful for his students were the "exercises in oral and written presentation" that he set up. Each participant in these could practise reciting speeches he had written himself or declaiming poems under Uhland's careful guidance, or could submit essays which were subjected to detailed criticism by the teacher. - Uhland's lectures were published after his death in his collected

[ 26 ] writings. They offer a complete picture of his academic work. Strangely enough, he did not deliver his inaugural lecture until the third year of his teaching career, on November 22, 1832. It can also be found in his writings. It deals with the saga of Duke Ernst, whom he was able to depict as clearly and vividly as a scholar at the time as he had previously portrayed him dramatically as a poet.

Death of the parents

[ 27 ] The joy that Uhland's parents felt when their son returned to them was great. But this joy was short-lived. In the spring of 1831, the mother fell ill and died on June 1 of the same year. Shortly afterwards, on August 29, the father followed. The warm relationship between the son and his parents is expressed in the poem "Nachruf" (Obituary), which he sent to their graves. It contained the simple but deeply painful lines: "They let the pious funeral song fade away, fade away; in my breast a gentle sound from you never dies away." And rarely has anyone expressed their grief in such haunting words as those in the obituary: "The death knell sounded so sad to me otherwise, so anxious; since you were rung by it, it has been the sound of home to me."

New political activity. Dismissal from the teaching profession.
"On the myth"

[ 28 ] It was not granted to Uhland for long to remain in a profession that would have met his innermost needs like no other. The people, whose advocate he had been in such a devoted manner for years, demanded his strength anew when the election for the Assembly of Estates to be convened the following year took place in 1832. He was elected deputy for the provincial capital and could not reconcile it with his conscience to deny himself the demands of his country. The French July Revolution had also deeply stirred emotions in Germany. For a man who, like Uhland, was prepared to give his life for justice and freedom at any time, important political tasks were once again at hand. He was one of the personalities in the Chamber who resolutely opposed the dangerous measure by which the government was to be granted special powers to maintain order. Since, in the opinion of Uhland and his friends, the way in which these powers were to be granted infringed on the rights of the people, they voted against them. The result was a dissolution of the chamber and new elections. Uhland was once again appointed to represent the people. The government soon found his work uncomfortable. They wanted to get rid of the deputy by saying that he was indispensable at the university and therefore could not be given leave to fulfill his duties as a deputy. Although he was truly devoted to his teaching position, there was no doubt in his mind that in such a case he would have to let his inclination take a back seat to his duties to the country and therefore take his leave as a professor. He was "very gladly" granted his resignation in May. He now devoted himself with all his strength to the office of representative of the people. A number of important bills were introduced at his suggestion. He only retired from this office again in 1838.

[ 29 ] His dismissal from his teaching post did not interrupt the pursuit of his research work. He was able to present his studies on the "Myth of Thor" to the world as early as 1836. In the following years he wanted to treat the "Myth of Odin" in the same way, but he left the manuscript lying around. It was only published after his death. Both works are as perceptive as they are soulful. Uhland pointed to the peculiarities of the creative popular imagination, which expresses a meaningful view of nature and a religiously deepened spiritual life in the form of myth. These works were complemented by the collection of German folk songs, which occupied him well into his forties. In 1844 and 1845 he was able to publish a large number of collected folk songs. He wrote a treatise explaining the essence of the folk song, which was only published from his estate.

The magic of Uhland's poetry

[ 30 ] In the period from 1816 to 1834, Uhland wrote very few poems. Unless there was a strong inner compulsion, he renounced all poetic activity. He is one of those personalities who are true to themselves in the strictest sense of the word. He probably never forced himself to write a poem. And since the muse only spoke to him at certain times, there are large gaps between the epochs of his poetic production. The year 1834 was another fruitful period. Magnificent ballads and romances belong to this period. "Die Geisterkelter", "Das Glück von Edenhall", "Das Singental", "Die versunkene Krone", "Die Glockenhöhle", "Das versunkene Kloster" were written at this time. He also wrote the songs: "Abendwolken", "Die Lerchen", "Dichtersegen", "Maientau", "Wein und Brot", "Sonnenwende", "Die Malve", "Reisen".

[ 31 ] The unique character of Uhland's poetry appears in these poems in a serene manner. The cozy tone of the songs, the meaningful vividness, the expression of a pure, loving feeling for nature appear in an outer form that has increased to the highest artistry. The ballads are imbued with the high ethical core of the poet's personality. It is part of the essence of Uhland's ballad and romance poetry that one always feels his heart beating, his soul rejoicing and suffering, when he tells facts in his simple, true way. Therein lies the magic of Uhland's poetry. He also puts his innermost feelings into his narrative poems; he always says what he feels about things and people. But by expressing his innermost feelings, he also knows how to let his personality recede behind the depiction. His creations reveal the complete unpretentiousness of a highly sensible man who is allowed to live his life to the full because his manner always appears modest and natural to the highest degree. When he talks about things, it seems as if the things alone speak. He feels so much with the nature and the heart of his fellow man that one always follows his sentiments, even when he speaks entirely from his personal point of view. It cannot be denied that the expression of the poet's feelings impairs the dramatic vividness of the narrative; but Uhland expresses himself in such a simple, truthful, thoroughly natural way that one does not feel the expression of his personality to be lacking in his ballads and romances. - And his feeling for nature is just as simple and great as his feeling for human destinies and actions. His eye looks at the creations of the world with serious joie de vivre. Only rarely does he strike a note of exuberance or exuberant cheerfulness. His outlook on life is always directed towards seeing the majesty and harmony in things. The moods of the times of day and seasons, the graceful and terrifying aspects of natural works and processes elicit the same vivid images and sounds that penetrate the soul. There is rarely anything sentimental in his feelings, although they are always characterized by softness and gentleness. Even in the poems in which he expresses his feeling for nature, the visual and emotional content flow into one another in an unforced manner.

Elected to the National Assembly. The year of the revolution.
The last years of his life. Letter to Alexander von Humboldt

[ 32 ] The satisfaction that the poet derived from his political activities diminished. And he may well have felt a sense of redemption when he made the firm decision not to accept another election as a deputy in 1838. He now lived a quiet, secluded life in his home town, completely devoted to his research. In 1836 he had bought his own house with a garden, from which he was granted a charming view of the wonderful Neckar valley. A number of trips to Austria, southern and northern Germany brought variety to his undemanding scholarly life. In 1846, he met Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, the great German linguists and legend researchers, in person in Frankfurt am Main. -- Then came the turmoil of the revolutionary year 1848, and Uhland was one of the first to tremble with hope for a new era of freedom and national happiness. His fatherland was also gripped by the desire for freedom. Uhland's friend and fellow politician, Paul Pfitzer, with whom he had fought through many a storm in the Diet, was a member of the liberal ministry that was appointed. As a result, Uhland was asked to join the committee that was to prepare a new federal constitution in Frankfurt. Soon afterwards, he was elected to the German National Assembly from the districts of Tübingen and Rottenburg. Because he did not want to be both a representative of the people and a representative of the government, he resigned from the committee and devoted himself entirely to the negotiations of the People's Assembly. He belonged to the liberal center party. For a man like Uhland, who was able to see the situation more clearly than others, cherished expectations soon gave way to bitter disappointment. It did not take him long to realize that the various proposals made for the unification of Germany on a liberal basis had little chance of being realized. These proposals were a mixed bag: Prussian hereditary emperor, directorate, elective emperor, republican constitution. Uhland could draw little courage to intervene in the negotiations from all that was being said at the time. He was not a personality who indulged in hopeless radicalism. In addition to a resolute sense of independence and a noble enthusiasm for freedom, he also had the determined will to strive only for what was possible in the circumstances. Within the realm of the possible, however, he always advocated what was most in keeping with his sense of freedom. Thus, on June 29, 1848, he did not vote for Archduke Johann, but for Baron von Gagern for the office of Reichsverweser. Only rarely did he feel compelled to appear as an orator. When he did, he spoke weighty words. His entire feeling and thinking is expressed in the words he uttered on January 22, 1849 in the course of a speech against a hereditary emperor: "No head will shine over Germany that is not anointed with a drop of democratic ole." Following the King of Prussia's rejection of the German imperial dignity, those members of the parliament who were attached to this idea resigned. The rest of the representatives moved to Stuttgart. Uhland persevered in the rump parliament, despite his opposition to its relocation to Stuttgart. He felt it was his duty to remain among the men who wanted to continue fighting for their ideals. The situation in Stuttgart was the most difficult imaginable right from the start. The majority of the rump parliament was in favor of electing a regency of five people to lead the empire. Uhland was the leader of the opponents of this decision. He had only five like-minded people. He expected nothing from such a form of government. In the following days, the Württemberg government tried to prevent the meetings of the people's representatives by military force because they had decided to raise five million as a levy for the formation of a people's army. Uhland and his friends nevertheless wanted to go to the meeting on June 18. The military prevented them from doing so. They had to give way. So Uhland was one of those who fought the parliamentary battle to the last in those memorable days, and who could say to themselves that they had only given way to violence. - Only once more was Uhland called to the political scene, for a very short time. In 1850, he had to take part in the State Court, which had to pass judgment on the government's actions during the revolutionary period. Here, too, he once again stood up for the rights of the people in vain by advocating the condemnation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron von Wächter, who had not submitted important political decisions to the Estates in accordance with the constitution.

[ 33 ] From then on, Uhland lived only for his scientific and literary work. He devoted himself to his research into the history of legends and began collecting folk songs. He also entered a new field. He wanted to work through the legends of his own homeland. He only managed to carry out a small part of this plan.

[ 34 ] Until the last days of his life, Uhland retained the full vigor that was always characteristic of him. His domestic happiness was always unclouded; he took great pleasure in bringing up two foster sons. One was Wilhelm Steudel, whom he took into his home as a fifteen-year-old boy. The father of the prematurely orphaned child was Uhland's friend, Dean Steudel in Tübingen. In 1848, the son of Uhland's sister, who had already died in 1836, lost his father. Uhland also devoted himself to the upbringing of this boy. - The poet was deeply saddened by the death of his old faithful friend Justinus Kerner in February 1862. It is not unlikely that a cold at the funeral was the cause of his fatal illness. He was unable to recover and died on November 13, 1862. The funeral services held in many places proved that Uhland's work had gradually come to be fully appreciated. The poet was loved in the widest circles of the people, the scholar of legends and myths was held in high esteem by his peers, the politician with his genuinely masculine sense of independence was revered as a role model. In the last period of his life, he proved this sense in a rare way. In December 1853, he was made a Knight of the Order pour le m£rite. He rejected the dignity with the significant words: "I would be in irreconcilable contradiction with literary and political principles, which I do not flaunt but have never denied, if I were to accept the honorary position that has been conferred on me and which is also associated with an elevation in rank. This contradiction would be all the more cutting as, after the shipwreck of national hopes, on whose planks I have floated, it would not suit me well to be adorned with decorations, while those with whom I have gone together in many and important things, because they went on in the last disruption, are doomed to the loss of homeland, freedom and civil honor, even to the death sentence." He addressed these proud words to Alexander von Humboldt, who informed him of the award. Humboldt did everything in his power to persuade the poet to accept. He remained unbending. He also rejected the order for science and art intended for him by the Bavarian king.