The Rudolf Steiner Archive

One spring day in 1860, an autocratic Hungarian magnate, a certain Count Hoyos, who owned several large estates in Austria, dismissed his game-keeper, because this game-keeper, Johannes Steiner wanted to marry Franziska Blie, one of the Count's innumerable housemaids. Perhaps the old Count had a foreboding as to what a great spiritual revolution would be born of this marriage. (The baroque palace of Hom, where it happened, is still in the possession of the Hoyos family, and stands today just as it was one hundred years ago.) So Johannes Steiner had to look for another occupation, and got himself accepted as a trainee telegraphist and signalman by the recently opened Austrian Southern Railway. He was given his first job in an out-of-the-way request stop called Kraljevic (today in Yugoslavia), and there his first child, Rudolf, arrived on February 27, 1861. On the same day the child was taken for an emergency baptism to the parish Church of St. Michael in the neighboring village of Draskovec. The baptismal register was written in Serbo-Croat and Latin, and the entry still can be read today as of one Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius Steiner. “Thus it happened,” Rudolf Steiner writes in his autobiography, “that the place of my birth is far removed from the region where I come from.”

In later life, particularly in his lectures on education, Steiner frequently made the point that the most prodigious feat any man achieves at any time is accomplished by him in the first two or three years of his life, when he lifts his body into the upright position and learns to move it in perfect balance through space, when he forms a vital part of his organism into an instrument of speech and when he begins to handle and indeed to fashion his brain as a vehicle for thought. In other words, when the child asserts his human qualities which set him dramatically apart from the animals.

This initial achievement the boy Rudolf performed in Kraljevic. Kraljevic (meaning King's Village) is situated in the western outskirts of the vast Hungarian plain, the Puszta. Even today endless fields of maize and potatoes extend in every direction, and the solemn monotony of the country is more enhanced than relieved by the lines of tall poplars flanking the primitive, dead straight roads. It is basic three-dimensional space at its severest, domed over by the sky, which local people say is nowhere else so high nor so blue as over the Puszta. One might almost say that nature provided laboratory conditions in which the boy learned to stand, to walk, to speak and to think. One could justifiably say of Rudolf Steiner what the biographer, Hermann Grimm, said of Goethe: “It seems as if Providence had placed him in the simplest circumstances in order that nothing should impede his perfect unfolding.”

From the severity of the Puszta the family moved, when the boy was two years old, into one of the most idyllic parts of Austria, called “the Burgenland” since 1921. Comprising the foothills of the eastern Alps, it is of great natural beauty, very fertile, and drenched in history. It takes its name from the many Burgen, i.e. castles which at different times of history were erected on nearly every hill. During recent excavations coins bearing the head of Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, have been found near Neudörfl, where the Steiners now settled, and where a daughter and a younger son were added to the family.

The management of the Austrian Southern Railway seems to have taken a sympathetic view toward the promising boy, and agreed to move father Steiner as stationmaster to several small stations south of Vienna, so that the eldest son was able to attend good schools as a day student, and finally in 1879 could matriculate at the Technical University of Vienna, then one of the most advanced scientific institutions of the world. Until then Rudolf Steiner's school life had been fairly uneventful, except that some of his masters were rather disturbed by the fact that this teen-ager was a voracious reader of Kant and other philosophers, and privately was engrossed in advanced mathematics.

In his first year at the University Rudolf Steiner studied chemistry and physics, mathematics, geometry, theoretical mechanics, geology, biology, botany, and zoology; and while still an undergraduate two events occurred which were of far-reaching consequence for his further development.

In the train in which the young student travelled daily to Vienna he frequently met a curious personality, an herb-gatherer, who turned out to be a latter-day Jacob Boehme. He was filled with the most profound nature lore to which he had first-hand access. He understood the language of plants, which told him what sicknesses they could heal; he was able to listen to the speech of the minerals, which told him of the natural history of our planet and of the Universe. In the last winter of his public life, in December 1923, Steiner provided something of a historic background for this wisdom, notably in his lectures on the Mysteries of Eleusis. Steiner immortalized the herb-gatherer in his Mystery Dramas, in the figure of “Father Felix.” But “Father Felix” was instrumental in bringing Steiner together with a still more important and mysterious personality.

“Felix was only the intermediary for another personality,” Steiner tells us in his autobiography, “who used means to stimulate in the soul of the young man the regular systematic things with which one has to be familiar in the spiritual world. This personality used the works of Fichte in order to develop certain observations from which results ensued which provided the seeds for my (later) work ... This excellent man was as undistinguished in his daily job as was Felix.”

While these fateful meetings occurred on the inward field of life, a very consequential relationship developed on the outward field. The Technical University of Vienna provided a chair for German literature, which was held by Karl Julius Schröer, a great Goethe enthusiast and one of the most congenial interpreters of Goethe. Schröer recognized Steiner's unusual gifts, and anticipated that he might be capable of doing some original research in the most puzzling part of Goethe's works, i.e. his scientific writings.

Only two years ago, Dr. Emil Bock, of Stuttgart, Germany, one of the most eminent Steiner scholars, discovered the correspondence between Professor Schröer, Steiner, and the German Professor Joseph Kürschner, who was engaged in producing a monumental edition of representative works of German literature from the 7th to the 19th century. In the first letter of this correspondence, dated June 4, 1882, Schröer refers to Steiner as an “undergraduate of several terms standing.” He says that he has asked him to write an essay on Goethe and Newton, and if this essay is a success, as he thinks it will be, “we have found the editor of Goethe's scientific works.” Steiner was then twenty-one years of age. Schröer's letter is reminiscent of the letter Robert Schumann wrote to the great violinist Joachim, after he had received the first visit of the then twenty-one year old Brahms: “It is he who was to come.”

The introductions and explanatory notes to the many volumes of Goethe's scientific works which Steiner was now commissioned to write were much ahead of their time. They blazed a trail into the less familiar regions of Goethe's universal genius which only today begins to be followed up by other scholars.

The young Steiner wrote these, his first works, in outward conditions of great poverty. The family lived in two rooms, which are still shown today. The larger one of the two was kitchen, dining, sitting and bedroom for the parents and his younger brother and sister, and off this larger room a few steps led into a narrow, white-washed, unheated cubicle where the young Steiner worked as in a monk's cell. No wonder that a Viennese celebrity of the time refers to him in his memoirs as one “who looked like a half-starved student of theology.”

However, this first literary success led to Steiner's call to the central Goethe Archives at Weimar, where despite his youth he now became one of the editors of the great Standard Edition (Sophien Ausgabe) of Goethe's Complete Works. This concentrated occupation with Goethe, continued for seven years in Weimar, from 1889 to 1896, had a profound effect upon the unfolding of Steiner's own mind and philosophical consciousness. Goethe was the catalyst which released new mental and spiritual energies in Steiner s own personality. It was during these years that Steiner's fundamental philosophical works were conceived and written.

In 1886 he published An Epistemology of Goethe's World Conception. In 1891 his small concentrated thesis on Truth and Science earned him his Ph.D. In 1896 his comprehensive Philosophy of Spiritual Activity opened a completely new approach to the understanding of the human mind and the nature of thought. It represents the first really fresh step in philosophic thought and in the philosophic interpretation of the human consciousness since Kant. It is no wonder that in those years Steiner began to be looked upon in Germany as “the coming philosopher” upon whom before long the mantle of the dying Nietzsche would fall. But his genius led him a different way.

In his thirty-sixth year—“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,” as Dante calls it, Steiner moved to Berlin, and the next seven years were perhaps the most dramatic period in his life. His new position in Berlin was that of editor of the weekly, Das Magazin für Litteratur, founded in 1832 (something equivalent to the London Saturday Review). He wrote the leading article and the dramatic reviews, occupying in Berlin a position somewhat similar to that of Bernard Shaw (who was five years his senior), with his weekly dramatic criticism in the Saturday Review. This assignment brought Steiner into close social contact with the intellectual and artistic élite of Berlin at the time, and for some years he pitched his tent among them. In the last years of his life, during rare moments of relaxation, he would at times tell stories of this exciting and often amusing period.

Side by side with these literary circles, or perhaps in polarity to them, Steiner was also drawn by objective interest and personal attraction into the camp of Haeckel and the militant monists. To move in this manner abreast of the spirit of the time would be a most interesting experience for anyone. For Steiner it was more. And I must now touch upon that side of his life about which I shall have to speak presently in greater detail. From childhood while for others such “being involved in this or that fashion of thought would be no more than an ideology,” for anyone standing in the spiritual world it means, as Steiner says in his autobiography, that “he is brought close to the spirit-beings who desire to invest a particular ideology with a totalitarian claim.” Steiner refers to his experience as a “Soul's Probation” which he had to undergo. (He later chose The Soul's Probation as the title of one of his Mystery Dramas.) He speaks of the “tempests” which during those years in Berlin raged in his soul, a rare expression in the otherwise very even and dispassionate style of his autobiography. At the end of those “forty days in the wilderness”—which were in fact four years—the thunderclouds lifted, the mist cleared, and he stood, to use his own phrase. “in solemn festival of knowledge before the Mystery of Golgotha.” He had come to a first-hand experience of Christ and His active presence in the evolution of the world.

We have now reached the point where we must venture into the great unknown: Steiner the seer, the Initiate.

It is a plain fact that in some form or other spiritual knowledge has existed throughout the ages. Secret wisdom has never been absent from human history. But in Steiner it assumed a totally new form. In order to appreciate this revolutionary novelty, we must first have a picture of the old form.

The faculty of spiritual perception and secret wisdom is obtained through certain organs in the “subtle body” of man, to borrow a convenient term from Eastern Indian medicine. In Sanscrit these organs are called “chakrams,” generally translated into English as “lotus flowers.” They fulfill a function in the “subtle body” similar to our senses in the physical body. They are usually dormant today, but can be awakened. We can disregard for the moment the rites of Initiation which were employed in the Mystery Temples of the ancient world, and confine ourselves to the survival of more general methods which today are still practiced in many parts of the world. They all have one thing in common: they operate through the vegetative system in man, through bodily posture, through the control of breathing, through physical or mental exercises which work upon the solar plexus and the sympathetic nervous system. I realize that I am presenting a somewhat crude simplification. But nevertheless I am giving the essentials.

Steiner broke with all this. He began to operate from the opposite pole of the human organism, from pure thought. Thought, ordinary human thought, even if it is brilliant and positive, is at first something very weak. It does not possess the life, say, of our breathing, let alone the powerful life of our pulsating blood. It is, shall we say, flat, without substance; it is really lifeless. It is “pale thought,” as Shakespeare called it.

This relative lifelessness of our thoughts is providential, however. If the living thoughts filling the Universe were to enter our consciousness just as they are, we would faint. If the living idea in every created thing simply jumped into our consciousness with all its native force, it would blot us out. Fortunately, our cerebro-spinal system exerts a kind of resistance in the process; it functions like a resistor in an electric circuit; it is a sort of transformer, reducing the violence of reality to such a degree that our mind can tolerate it and register it. However, as a result, we see only the shadows of reality on the back wall of our Platonic cave, not reality itself.

Now one of the magic words in Steiner's philosophy with which he attempts to break this spell, is “Erkraftung des Denkens.” It means putting force, life into thinking, through thinking, within thinking. All his basic philosophic works, notably the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and many of his exercises, are directed to this purpose. If they are followed, sooner or later the moment arrives when thinking becomes leibfrei, i.e. independent of the bodily instrument, when it works itself free from the cerebrospinal system.

This is at first a most disturbing experience. One feels like a man who has pushed off from the shore and who must now strive with might and main to maintain himself in the raging sea. The sheer power of cosmic thought is such that at first one loses one's identity. And perhaps one would lose it for good, if it were not for a fact which now emerges from the hidden mysteries of Christianity. One does not finally lose one's identity because He Himself has walked the waves and extended a helping hand to Peter who ventured out prematurely. Gradually the waves seem to calm down, and a condition ensues which Steiner expresses in a wonderful phrase: “Thinking itself becomes a body which draws into itself as its soul the Spirit of the Universe.”

This is a stage which, broadly speaking, Steiner had attained at the point of his biography which we have reached. Now he made a discovery which was not known to him before. He discovered that this “living thinking” could awaken the chakrams from “above,” just as in the old way they could be stimulated from “below.” Thought which at first in the normal and natural psychosomatic process “died” on the place of the skull, but which through systematic exercises had risen again to the level of cosmic reality, could now impart life to the dormant organs of spiritual perception which have been implanted into man by Him who created him in His image. From about the turn of the century Steiner began to pursue this path with ever greater determination, and gradually developed the three forms of Higher Knowledge which he called Imagination: a higher seeing of the spiritual world in revealing images; Inspiration: a higher hearing of the spiritual world, through which it reveals its creative forces and its creative order; Intuition: the stage at which an intuitive penetration into the sphere of Spiritual Beings becomes possible.

With these unfolding powers Steiner now developed up to his death in 1925, in twenty-five momentous years, that truly vast and awe-inspiring body of spiritual and practical knowledge to which he gave the name “Anthroposophy.” (Incidentally, this word was first coined by Thomas Vaughan, a brother of the English mystical poet, Henry Vaughan, in the 17th century.) Anthroposophy literally means wisdom of man or the wisdom concerning man, but in his later years Steiner himself interpreted it on occasion as “an adequate consciousness of being human.” In this interpretation the moral achievement of Steiner's work, his mission, his message to a bewildered humanity which has lost “an adequate consciousness of being human,” to which Man has become “the Unknown,” is summed up. This monumental work lies before us today and is waiting to be fully discovered by our Age—in some 170 books and in the published transcripts of nearly 6,000 lectures.

Three characteristic stages can be observed in Steiner's anthroposophical period. In a lecture given at the headquarters of the German Anthroposophical Society at Stuttgart (on February 6, 1923) he himself described these stages. Stage one (approximately 1901-1909): to lay the foundation for a Science of the Spirit within Western Civilization, with its center in the Mystery of Golgotha, as opposed to the purely traditional handing down of ancient oriental wisdom which is common to other organizations such as the Theosophical Society. Stage two (approximately 1910-1917): the application of the anthroposophical Science of the Spirit to various branches of Science, Art and practical life. As one of the milestones for the beginning of this second stage Steiner mentions the building of the Goetheanum, that architectural wonder (since destroyed by fire) in which his work as an artist had found its culmination. Stage three (approximately 1917-1925): first-hand descriptions of the spiritual world. During these twenty-five years of anthroposophical activity, Steiner's biography is identical with the history of the Anthroposophical Movement. His personal life is entirely dedicated to and absorbed in the life of his work.

It was during the last of the three phases that Steiner's prodigious achievements in so many fields of life began to inspire a number of his students and followers to practical foundations. Best known today are perhaps the Rudolf Steiner Schools for boys and girls, which have been founded in many countries and in which his concept of the true human being is the well-spring of all educational methods and activities. There are some seventy Steiner schools in existence with well over 30,000 pupils. A separate branch are the Institutes for Curative Education which have sprung up both in Europe and Overseas, and whose activities have been immensely beneficial to the ever increasing number of physically and mentally handicapped children and adults. Steiner's contributions to medical research and to medicine in general are used by a steadily growing number of doctors all over the world, and his indications are tested and followed up in a number of research centers and clinics. Another blessing for humanity flowed from his method of Biodynamic Agriculture, by which he was able to add to the basic principles of organic husbandry just those extras which, if rightly used, can greatly increase both fertility and quality without those chemical stimulants which in the long run poison both the soil and its products.

In the field of Art there is hardly an area he did not touch with the magic wand of creative originality. The second Goetheanum which replaced the first one destroyed by fire shows the massive use of reinforced concrete as a plastic material for architecture a generation before this use was attempted by others. Steiner's direct and indirect influence on modern painting with the symphonic use of color, on sculpture, on glass-engraving, on metal work and other visual arts is too far-reaching for anyone even to attempt to describe in condensed form. Students and graduates of the Steiner schools for Eurythmy and for Dramatic Art have performed before enthusiastic audiences in the cultural centers of the world, ably directed by Marie Steiner, his wife.

To those who have been attracted to this present publication by its title and its reference to Christianity, it will be of particular interest to hear that among those foundations which came into being during the last phase of Steiner's anthroposophical work was a Movement for Religious Renewal, formed by a body of Christian ministers, students and other young pioneers who had found in Rudolf Steiner “a man sent from God,” able to show the way to a true reconciliation of faith and knowledge, of religion and science. This Movement is known today as “The Christian Community” and has centers in many cities in the Old and New World. Apart from the inestimable help this Movement received from him in theological and pastoral matters, Rudolf Steiner was instrumental in mediating for this Movement a complete spiritual rebirth of the Christian Sacraments for the modern age and a renewal of the Christian priestly office.

Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity holds a special place in the story of his remarkable and dedicated life. The book contains the substance of a series of lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in the winter of 1901–1902 in the “Theosophical Library” of Berlin at the invitation of the President, Count Brockdorff. This series had been preceded by another on the German mystics from Master Eckhardt to Jacob Boehme (published in the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner under the title Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age) in which Steiner had ventured for the first time to present publicly some measure of his spiritual knowledge.

After these lectures on the mystics which was something of a prelude, Christianity as Mystical Fact now ushered in a new period in the understanding of the basic facts of Christianity as well as in Steiner's own life.

Compared with the free flow of spiritual teaching on Christianity offered by Steiner in his later works, the book may appear somewhat tentative and even reticent in its style. But it contains as in a nutshell all the essential new elements he was able to develop and unfold so masterfully in his later years.

Steiner considered the phrase “Mystical Fact” in the title to be very important. “I did not intend simply to describe the mystical content of Christianity,” he says in his autobiography. “I attempted to show that in the ancient Mysteries cult-images were given of cosmic events, which occurred later on the field of actual history in the Mystery of Golgotha as a Fact transplanted from the cosmos into the earth.”

It will not be out of place to round off this biographical sketch with a few personal reminiscences of the last four years of his life when I met Steiner as man and Initiate among his friends and students, and saw quite a good deal of him.

What was Rudolf Steiner like?—In the first place there was nothing in the least pompous about him. He never made one feel that he was in any sense extraordinary. There was an astonishing matter-of-factness about him, whether he spoke at a business meeting of the Anthroposophical Society, presided over faculty meetings of the Waldorf School^*, lectured on his ever increasing discoveries in the spiritual field, or spoke in public discussions on controversial subjects of the day.

I attended small lecture courses of less than fifty people, heard him lecture in the large hall of the first Goetheanum, was present at large public meetings when he expounded his “Threefold Commonwealth” ideas in the electric atmosphere of the Germany of 1923, during the occupation of the Ruhr and the total collapse of the German Mark. He was always the same: clear, considerate, helpful, unruffled. In those days he could fill the largest halls in Germany, and his quiet voice was strong enough to be heard without artificial amplification in the last rows of the gallery.

His hair remained jet black to the end; I cannot remember a strand of grey in it. His brown eyes, they sometimes had a shimmer of gold in them, looked with sympathy upon everything. And he possessed a wonderful buoyancy of carriage.

From 1913 Steiner lived permanently at Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland, in a house known locally as “Villa Hansi.” However, he spent most of his time in his studio, which was really nothing but a simple wooden building adjoining the large carpentry-shop where much of the woodwork of the first Goetheanum was prefabricated. In this studio he received an unending stream of callers. One would, perhaps, be shown into the room by a helping friend, but at the end he would always conduct one to the door himself. He put one at ease with such courtesy that one was in danger of forgetting who he was. And he gave the impression that he had no other care nor interest in the world than to listen to one's immature questions.

He would sit on a simple wicker chair, his legs crossed, perhaps occasionally moving one foot up and down. On the lapel of his black coat one might see a slight trace of snuff, because he indulged in the Old-World pleasure of taking snuff, but he neither drank nor smoked. I have never met anyone, and I am sure I shall never meet anyone who seemed so constantly at rest and in action simultaneously, all the time perfectly relaxed and absolutely alert.

The last summer of his life, in 1924, was the most prolific of all. He gave specialized courses on agriculture, on curative education, on Eurythmy. Then followed a summer school in August at Torquay in England; and when he returned to Dornach in early September, he increased his activities still further and gave as many as five, sometimes six different lectures each day. There was a daily course on the New Testament Book of Revelation for the priests of the Christian Community, another on pastoral medicine for priests and doctors combined, another on dramatic art, where I remember him one morning acting singlehanded the whole of Dantons Tod, a drama of the French Revolution by the German writer, Buchner. On another morning he acted the Faust fragment by Lessing. And in addition to all this, he also held lectures for the workmen of the Goetheanum.

Besides these specialized courses, the general lectures and other central activities of the Goetheanum School for the Science of the Spirit continued without interruption.

But the inevitable moment approached when even his resilient body showed the strain of his immense work. Sometimes for the period of a whole week he would hardly sleep more than two hours each night. I believe that he knew what he was doing. He well knew why he burned the candle not only at both ends but also in the middle.

My last memory of him is of the night when I was privileged, together with another friend, to keep vigil at the foot of his bed on which his body was laid out. It was the night before his funeral. The bed stood in his simple studio where he had been confined during the last six months of his life. Looking down on him was the great wooden statue of Christ which he had carved and nearly finished. Even in the literal sense of the word he had laid down his life at the feet of Christ.

The dignity of his features was enhanced by the marble whiteness of death. In the stillness of the night, with only a few candles burning, it was as if ages of human history converged to do homage. With a deep sense of reverence I wondered who he was. I am wondering still.

ALFRED HEIDENREICH

London, England
August 1961

• *. The first Rudolf Steiner School was called the “Waldorf School” because it was sponsored hy the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory in Stuttgart, Germany, and its managing director, Dr. Emil Molt.

In diverse quarters today, people speak of the need for an answer to certain educational questions thus far unanswered. The many endeavors in modern education clearly show this. What I am hoping to convey to you today, at the request of this country’s Anthroposophical Society, is not mere theoretical knowledge. The practical application of spiritual-scientific knowledge that comes from the anthroposophical viewpoint of the human being has already demonstrated its value—at least to a certain extent.

In 1919 Emil Molt took the first steps to open a free school, and he asked me to take care of the practical matters and direction of the school. Thus, the spiritual-scientific knowledge of the human being and the world, which it is my task to represent, became naturally the basis of the education practiced in this school. The school has existed since 1919 and currently offers twelve grades. Students who entered the twelfth grade this summer will take their final exams next year so they can enter a university or other places of higher education. The school offers everything pertaining to the education of children from the elementary school age (that is, after the age of six) until the boys and girls begin higher education.

This school’s practices, which are the outcome of a spiritualscientific worldview, was never intended to revolutionize any previous achievements in the field of practical education. Our goal is not to think up new radical methods, such as those tried in special rural boarding schools, where the creation of very particular conditions was believed necessary before teaching could even begin. Our aim is to continue along the educational paths already marked by enlightened educators at the beginning of the twentieth century. This we attempt not only on the basis of human knowledge during the various stages of earthly development, but out of insight into the whole of human nature in the widest and most comprehensive way possible. This insight includes not only the various physical happenings of earthly life between birth and death, but also what lives and manifests during life as the eternally divine in the human being. It is important to us that we add to what has already been achieved by educational reformers, and also that we offer what can be contributed from a wider, spiritual viewpoint. Furthermore, there is no intention of putting utopian educational ideas into the world—something that, as a rule, is far easier to do than creating something based fully on practical reality. Our aim is to achieve the best possible results under any given circumstances.

Achieving this goal means that the actual conditions one faces, whether urban or rural, must serve as a foundation for the human being that results from a genuine and true art of education, so that students can eventually find a way into current and future social and professional life situations, which will certainly become increasingly complex. This is why Waldorf education offers an education that is strictly practical and methodical, meaning that, essentially, its program can be accomplished in any type of school, provided that the fundamental conditions can be created. So far, events have shown that we have made at least some progress in this direction.

We opened our school under auspicious circumstances. Initially, the manufacturer Emil Molt began it for the children of the workers in his factory. There was, of course, no difficulty in enrolling them. Also, we received children whose parents were interested in the anthroposophical point of view. Still, we began with only one hundred and thirty students. Today, four years later, after the school has grown from eight to twelve grades, we have almost eight hundred students and a staff of over forty teachers. Here in Holland, there have recently been efforts to open a similar small school—but more on that later. There is some hope that the methods used in Stuttgart will also prove worthwhile in Holland. Steps are also being taken in Switzerland to begin such a school, and in England a committee has been formed to start a Waldorf school.

After these introductory remarks I would like to speak about the meaning of Waldorf pedagogy. It is based on a penetrating knowledge of the human being, and on the teachers’ ability, with the help of special preparation and training, to perceive the development and unfolding of their students’ individualities, week by week, month by month, and year by year. From this point of view, the question of Waldorf education has to be seen, primarily, as a question of teacher training. I will try to outline in sketchy and unavoidably abstract form what can be done on the basis of such knowledge of the human being. This abstract form, however, can only be a description. It is important that what is said becomes flesh and blood, so to speak, in the teachers and that this deepened knowledge of the human being arises from practice and not from theory, and thus becomes applicable in a school.

When we observe the growing child, we can easily overlook the significance of changes connected with three fundamental life stages. We may notice various changes during a child’s development, but usually we fail to comprehend their deeper significance. We can distinguish three fundamental stages of human development until about the twentieth year, when formal education ends, or makes way for more specialized education. The first period, which is of a homogeneous nature, begins at birth and ends with the change of teeth around the seventh year. The second life stage begins at the time of the second dentition and ends at puberty. During the third stage, we are concerned with sexually mature young people who nowadays often tend to feel more mature than we can actually treat them if we want to educate them properly. This stage lasts until around the twenty-first year.

Let’s look more closely at the child’s first period of life. To the unbiased observer, a child at this stage is entirely an imitating being, right into the most intimate fibers of the spirit, soul, and physical being; and above all, the child at this stage is a being of will. One will notice that the child becomes, during development, increasingly open to impressions that come from the environment, and pays more and more attention to external things and happenings. But it is easy to deceive oneself in believing that the child’s increasing attentiveness to the external world is due to an awakening of a conceptual life, something that, at such an early age, is not true at all. At no other time in all of life will the human being, due to inborn instinct and drive, want to be freer and more independent of the conceptual realm than during these early years before the change of teeth. During these years the child really wants to repel everything connected with conceptual life in order to freely follow the inclinations of inner nature. The child’s will, on the other hand, tends to merge with the surroundings, to the point where the will manifests physically. Nothing seems more obvious than a child’s tendency to imitate exactly through limb movements the habitual gestures or postures of surrounding adults. This is because the child feels an overwhelming urge to continue in the will sphere what is happening in the environment, right down to fidgeting. In this sense, the child is entirely a being of will. This is true also of the child’s sense perception. We can easily see that the child at that age is a being of will, even in sense perceptions—something that we must learn to see in order to become competent educators. Allow me to give some details:

Among the various sense perceptions are our perceptions of color. Very few people notice that there are really three different elements living in color perception. As a rule one speaks of “yellow” or “blue” as a color perception, but the fact that there are three elements to such a perception usually escapes notice. First, human will is engaged in our relationship to color. Let’s stick with the example of yellow and blue. If we are sufficiently free from psychological bias, we soon notice that the color yellow works on us not only as a perception in the narrower sense of the word, but also affects our will. It stimulates the will to become active in an outward direction. This is where some very interesting psychological observations could be made. One could detect, for instance, how a yellow background, such as in a hall, stimulates an inclination to become outwardly active, especially if the yellow shimmers with a slightly reddish tint. If, however, we are surrounded by a blue background, we find that the stimulus on the will is directed inward, that it tends to create a pleasing and comforting mood, or feelings of humility, thus exerting a tendency toward inner activity. In this case too, interesting observations can be made, for example, that the impression created by blue is related to specific glandular secretions, so that in this case the will is an impulse stimulated by blue and directed inward.

A second element in our investigation of the effects of color perception may be the observation of the feelings stimulated by the color. A yellow or reddish-yellow color gives an impression of warmth; we have a sensation of warmth. A blue or blue-violet color creates an impression of coolness. To the same degree that the blue becomes more red, it also feels warmer. These examples, then, show the impressions of yellow and blue on the life of feeling. Only the third response represents what we could consider the idea of yellow or blue. But in this last element of our mental imagery, the elements of will and feeling also play a part.

If we now consider the education of children from the perspective of an unbiased knowledge of the human being, we find that the will impulses of children are developed first through color experiences. Young children adapt their physical movements according to yellow’s outward-directed stimulation or with blue’s inward-directed effect. This fundamental trend continues until a child loses the first teeth. Naturally, feelings and perceptions always play a part as well in response to color, but during this first life stage the effect of color on the will always predominates.

During the second life stage—from the second dentition to puberty—the experience of esthetic feelings created by color is superimposed over the existing will impulse. Thus, we can see two things: With the change of teeth, something like a calming effect in relation to color stimulation, or in other words, an inner calming from the viewpoint of the child’s innate desire to “touch” color. During the time between the change of teeth and puberty, a special appreciation for warm and cold qualities in color comes into being. Finally, a more detached and prosaic relationship to the concepts yellow or blue begins only with the beginning of puberty.

What thus manifests in color perception is present also in the human being as a whole. One could say that, until the second dentition, the child has a kind of natural religious relationship of complete devotion to the surroundings. The child allows what is living in the environment to live within. Hence, we succeed best at educating (if we can call raising children during these early years “education”) when we base all our guidance on the child’s inborn tendency to imitate—that is, on the child’s own inward experience of empathy with the surroundings. These influences include the most imponderable impulses of human life. For example, if a child’s father displays a violent temper and cannot control his outbursts, the child will be markedly affected by such a situation. The fits of temper themselves are of little significance, because the child cannot understand these; but the actions, and even the gestures, of the angry person are significant. During these early years the child’s entire body acts as one universal sense organ. In the child’s own movements and expressions of will, the body lives out by imitating what is expressed in the movements and actions of such a father. Everything within the still impressionable and pliable body of such a child unfolds through the effects of such experiences. Blood circulation and the nerve organization, based on the conditions of the child’s soul and spirit, are under this influence; they adjust to outside influences and impacts, forming inner habits. What thus becomes a child’s inner disposition through the principle of imitation, remains as inner constitution for the rest of the person’s life. Later in life, the blood circulation will be affected by such outwardly perceived impressions, transformed into forces of will during this most delicate stage of childhood. This must be considered in both a physical sense and its soul-aspect.

In this context, I always feel tempted to mention the example of a little boy who, at the age of four or five, was supposed to have committed what at a later stage could be called “stealing.” He had taken money from one of his mother’s drawers. He had not even used it for himself, but had bought sweets with it that he shared with his playmates. His father asked me what he should do with his boy, who had “stolen” money! I replied: “Of course one has to note such an act. But the boy has not stolen, because at his age the concept of stealing does not yet exist for him.” In fact, the boy had repeatedly seen his mother taking money out of the drawer, and he simply imitated her. His behavior represents a perfectly normal attempt to imitate. The concept of thieving does not yet play any part in a child of this age.

One has to be conscious not to do anything in front of the child that should not be imitated; in all one does, this principle of imitation has to be considered. Whatever one wants the child to do, the example must be set, which the child will naturally copy. Consequently, one should not assign young children specially contrived occupations, as is frequently done in kindergartens; if this must be done, the teachers should be engaged in the same activities, so that the child’s interest is stimulated to copy the adult.

Imitation is the principle of a healthy education up to the change of teeth. Everything has to stimulate the child’s will, because the will is still entirely woven into the child’s physical body and has the quality of an almost religious surrender to the environment. This manifests everywhere, in all situations.

With the change of teeth, this attitude of surrender to the environment transforms into a childlike esthetic, artistic surrender. I should like to describe this by saying that the child’s natural religious impulse toward other human beings, and toward what we understand as nature, transforms into an artistic element, which has to be met with imagination and feeling. Consequently, for the second life period, the only appropriate approach to the child is artistic. The teacher and educator of children in the primary grades must be especially careful to permeate everything done during this period with an artistic quality. In this respect, new educational approaches are needed that pay particular attention to carrying these new methods into practical daily life.

I don’t expect the following to create much antagonism, since so many others have expressed similar opinions. I have heard it said more often than I care to mention that the teaching profession tends to make its members pedantic. And yet, for the years between seven and fourteen, nothing is more poisonous for the child than pedantry. On the other hand, nothing is more beneficial than a teacher’s artistic sense, carried by natural inner enthusiasm to encounter the child. Each activity proposed to children, each word spoken in their presence, must be rooted, not in pedantry, and not in some theoretical construct, but in artistic enthusiasm, so that the children respond with inner joy and satisfaction at being shaped by a divine natural process arising from the center of human life.

If teachers understand how to work with their students out of such a mood, they practice the only living way of teaching. And something must flow into their teaching that I can only briefly sketch here. I am speaking of a quality that addresses partly the teachers’ understanding and partly their willingness to take the time in their work, but mainly their general attitude. Knowledge of the human being has to become second nature to teachers, a part of their very being, just as the ability to handle paints and brushes has to be part of a painter’s general makeup, or the use of sculpting tools natural to a sculptor. In the teacher’s case, however, this ability has to be taken much more earnestly, almost religiously, because in education we are confronted with the greatest work of art we will ever encounter in life—which it would be almost sacrilegious to refer to as merely a work of art. As teachers, we are called on to help in this divine creation. It is this inner mood of reverence in the teacher that is important. Through such a mood, one finds ways to create a more and more enlivening relationship with the children.

Remember, at school young students must grow into something that is initially alien to their nature. As an example, let’s take writing, which is based on letters that are no longer experienced esthetically, but are strung together to make words and sentences. Our contemporary writing developed from something very different, from picture writing. But the ancient picture writing still had a living connection with what it expressed, just as the written content retained a living relationship with its meaning. Today we need learned studies to trace back the little “goblin,” which we designate as the letter a, to the moment when what was to be expressed through the insertion of this letter into one or the other word was inwardly experienced. And yet this a is nothing but an expression of a feeling of sudden surprise and wonder. Each letter has its origin in the realm of feeling, but those feelings are now lost. Today, letters are abstractions.

If one has unbiased insight into the child’s mind, one knows how terribly alien the abstractions are that the child is supposed to learn at a delicate age, written meaning that once had living links with life, but now totally bereft of its earlier associations as used in the adult world today.

As a result, we in the Waldorf school have endeavored to coax writing out of the activity of painting and drawing. We teach writing before we teach reading. To begin with, we do not let the children approach letters directly at all. For example, we allow the child to experience the activity of painting—for example, the painting of a fish—however primitive the efforts may be. So the child has painted a fish. Then we make the child aware of the sound that the thing painted on paper makes when pronounced as a word; we make the child aware that what was painted is pronounced “fish.” It is now an easy and obvious step to transform the shape of the fish into the sound of the first letter of the word F-ish. With the letter F, this actually represents its historical origin. However, this is not the point; the important thing is that, from the painted form of a picture, we lead to the appropriate letter.

The activity of painting is naturally connected with the human being. In this way we enable children to assimilate letters through their own experience of outer realities. This necessitates an artistic sense. It also forces one to overcome a certain easygoing attitude, because if you could see Waldorf children using their brushes and paints, you would soon realize that, from the teacher’s perspective, a measure of personal discomfort is inevitable in the use of this method! Again and again the teacher has to clean up after the children, and this demands a certain devotion. Yet, such minor problems are overcome more quickly than one might assume. It is noteworthy to see how much even young children gain artistic sensibility during such activities. They soon realize the difference between “smearing” paint onto paper somewhat haphazardly, and achieving the luminous quality of watercolor needed to create the desired effects. This difference, which may appear downright “occult” to many adults, soon becomes very real to the child, and such a fertile mind and soul experience is an added bonus in this introduction to writing.

On the other hand, teaching children to write this way is bound to take more time. Learning to write a little later, however, is not a disadvantage. We all suffer because, as children, we were taught writing abstractly and too early. There would be no greater blessing for humanity than for its members to make the transition to the abstract letters of the alphabet as late as the age of nine or ten, having previously derived them from a living painterly approach.

When learning to write, the whole human being is occupied. One has to make an effort to move the arms in the right way, but at the same time one feels this activity of the arms and hands connected with one’s whole being. It therefore offers a beautiful transition, from the stage when the child lives more in the will element, to the second stage when the element of feeling predominates. While learning to read, the child engages primarily the organs used to perceive the form of the letters, but the child’s whole being is not fully involved. For this reason, we endeavor to evolve reading from writing. A similar approach is applied for everything the child has to learn.

The important point is for the teacher to read what needs to be done in teaching within the child’s own nature. This sentence is symptomatic of all Waldorf pedagogy. As long as the teacher teaches reading in harmony with the child’s nature, there is no point in stressing the advantages of one or another method. What matters is that teachers be capable of perceiving what needs to be drawn out of the child. Whatever we need in later life always evolves from what was planted in our childhood.

To sense what wants to flow out of the inner being of the child, to develop empathy with the child between the ages of seven and fourteen, are the things that give children the right footing later in life. In this context, it is especially important to develop mobile concepts in students of that age. Flexible concepts based on the life of feeling cannot be developed properly if teachers limit their subject to include only what a child already understands. It certainly appears to make sense to plead that one should avoid teaching a subject that a child cannot yet comprehend. It all sounds plausible.

On the other hand, one could be driven to despair by textbooks delineating specific methods, and by books intended to show teachers what subject to teach in their object lessons and how to do it so that students are not instructed in anything beyond their present comprehension. The substance of such books is often full of trivialities and banalities; they fail to allow that, at this age, children can glimpse in their own souls what is not sense perceptible at all outwardly, such as moral and other impulses in life. Those who advocate these observational methods do not recognize that one educates not just on the basis of what can be observed at the child’s present stage, but on the basis of what will develop out of childhood for the whole of future life.

It is a fact that, whenever a child of seven or eight feels natural reverence and respect for a teacher who is seen as the gateway into the world (instinctively of course, as is appropriate to this age), such a child can rise inwardly and find support in the experience of a justified authority—not just in what the teacher says, but in the way the teacher acts, by example. This stage is very different from the previous one, when the principle of imitation is the guiding factor until the change of teeth. The early imitative attitude in the child transforms later into inner life forces. At this second stage of life, nothing is more important than the child’s acceptance of truths out of trust for the teacher, because the child who has a proper sense of authority will accept the teacher’s words could only be the truth. Truth has to dawn upon the child in a roundabout way—through the adult first. Likewise, appreciation for what is beautiful and good also has to evolve from the teachers’ attitudes.

At this stage of life, the world must meet the child in the form of obvious authority. Certainly you will not misunderstand that, having thirty years ago written Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom, I am speaking against human freedom. But even the most liberated of individuals should have experienced in childhood the infinitely beneficial effects of being able to look up to the authority of an educator as a matter of course—to have experienced through this respect for authority the gateway to truth, beauty, and goodness in the world. All this can be observed, week by week and month by month.

The child becomes the book where one reads what is needed. In this way one develops a profound sense for what to do with the child, for example, at any significant moment in the child’s life. One such moment is between the ninth and tenth years. Anyone who has become a natural authority for the child will inevitably find, through observing the child, that, between nine and ten, a significant change occurs that can be expressed in many ways. At this point in development, children need something fairly specific, but are not at all conscious of what they need.

Here is the situation: Until this stage children have experienced the authority of their educators entirely unconsciously and instinctively. Now more is required; the students now want to feel reassured that their feeling toward the authority of the teachers is fully justified, given their more mature and critical gift of observation. If at this point a teacher succeeds in keeping the aura of natural authority alive, then later in life, perhaps in the child’s forty-fifth or fiftieth year, there will be times when memories reemerge. Therefore, what was accepted at one time on trust during childhood days, maybe at the age of eight or nine, is considered again, but now with the maturity of one’s life experience. Such a memory may have been slumbering deeply for decades in the unconscious, and now resurfaces to be assessed from the perspective of mature life experience. Such an occurrence is immensely fertile and stimulates a wealth of inner life forces.

What is the secret of remaining young in mind and soul? It is certainly not a nostalgic attitude of reminiscences about “the good old days of youth, when everything used to be so beautiful and not at all how life is now.” It is the inner transformation of the experiences of our young days that keeps us young and makes us valuable to other human beings. This inner transformation represents the fruit of what was planted at one time into our souls when we were children. Impulses that are closely linked to human life and to our bodies are transformed in remarkable ways.

I would like to give just one example of such a transformation. There are people who, having reached a very old age, radiate a wholesome atmosphere on others in their company. They do not even need to speak words of wisdom; simply through their presence, they radiate a feeling of inner well-being on those around them so that their company is always welcome. They spread a kind of blessing. Where does this gift originate?

When we study, we consider only the years of childhood and schooling. In this way, education remains merely an external study. To study it in depth demands an extension of one’s observations and interest over the entire span of life—from birth to death. And if we observe human life from the viewpoint of the kind of education I advocate, we find that this gift of blessing is rooted in an earlier natural veneration for one’s educators, experienced during childhood. I would like to go even further and say that no one can spread arms and hands in inner admiration and reverence, in blessing, unless one has learned to fold hands in admiring or reverent prayer as a child. Over the course of human life, the inner experience of veneration is transformed into an ability to bless at a time of life when such blessing can affect others beneficially.

Once again, only when we include an entire lifetime in our observations can we practice a truly living education. In this case, one would not want to teach children rigid or fixed concepts. If we were to bind a child of five for a time in a tight-fitting garment that would not allow further growth—I am speaking hypothetically of course, for this does not happen—we would commit a dreadful and heinous crime in the child’s physical life. But this is just what we do to the child’s soul life when we teach definitions intended to remain unchanged, definitions that the child’s memory is expected to carry, fixed and unaltered, throughout life. It is most important that we give the child only flexible ideas and concepts, capable of further growth—physical, soul, and spiritual growth. We must avoid teaching fixed concepts and instead bring concepts that change and grow with the child. We should never nurture an ambition to teach children something to be remembered for all of life, but should convey only mobile ideas. Those who are serious about learning the art of education will understand this.

You will not misunderstand when I say it is obvious that not every teacher can be a genius. But every teacher can find the situation where there are some boys and girls to be taught who, later in life, will show much greater intelligence than that of their current teachers. Real teachers should always be aware that some of the students sitting before them may one day far outshine them in intelligence and in other ways. True artists of education never assume that they are intellectually equal to the children sitting before them.

The basis of all education is the ability to use and bring to fulfillment whatever can be gained from the arts. If we derive writing and reading from painting, we are already applying an artistic approach. But we should be aware also of the immense benefits that can be derived from the musical element, especially for training the child’s will. We can come to appreciate the role of the musical element only by basing education on real and true knowledge of the human being.

Music, however, leads us toward something else, toward eurythmy. Eurythmy is an art that we could say was developed from spiritual-scientific research according to the demands of our time. Out of a whole series of facts essential to knowledge of the human being, contemporary science knows only one little detail—that for right-handed people (that is, for the majority of people) the speech center is in the third left convolution of the brain, whereas for those who are left-handed it is on the right side of the brain. This is a mere detail. Spiritual science shows us further, which is fundamental to education, that all speech derives from the limb movements, broadly speaking, performed during early childhood.

Of course, the child’s general constitution is important here, and this is much more significant than what results from more or less fortuitous external circumstances. For example, if a child were to injure a foot during the earlier years, such an injury does not need to have a noticeable influence in connection with what I now have in mind. If we inquire into the whole question of speech, however, we find that, when we appropriate certain impulses rooted in the limb system of speech, we begin with walking—that is, with every gesture of the legs and feet. Within the movements of the extremities—for instance in the feet—something goes through a mysterious inner, organic transformation into an impulse within the speech organs situated at the very front. This connection lives, primarily, in forming the consonants. Likewise, the way a child uses the hands is the origin of habitual speech forms. Speech is merely gestures that are transformed. When we know how speech is formed from consonants and vowels, we see the transformed limb movements in them. What we send into the world when we speak is a kind of “gesturing in the air.”

An artistic pedagogical method makes it possible for us to bring what can flow from real knowledge of the human being into education. Through such a method, those who will educate in the sense of this pedagogical art are made into artists of education. There is nothing revolutionary at the basis of this education—just something that will stimulate new impulses, something that can be incorporated into every educational system—because it has sprung from the most intimate human potential for development.

Naturally, this necessitates various rearrangements of lessons and teaching in general, some of which are still very unusual. I will mention only one example: If one endeavors to practice the art of education according to the Waldorf methods, the natural goal is to work with the life of the child in concentrated form. This makes it impossible to teach arithmetic from eight to nine o’clock, for example, as is customary in many schools today, then history from nine to ten, and yet another subject from ten to eleven, and in this way, teaching all the subjects in haphazard sequence. In the Waldorf school, we have arranged the schedule so that for three to four weeks the same main lesson subject is taught every day from eight to ten in the morning; therefore the students can fully concentrate on and live in one main lesson subject. If what has thus been received is forgotten later, this does not offer a valid objection to our method, because we succeed by this method in nurturing the child’s soul life in a very special way.

This was all meant merely as an example to show how a spiritual- scientific knowledge of the human being can lead to the development of an art of education that makes it possible again to reach the human being, not by an extraneous means, like those of experimental pedagogy or experimental psychology, but by means that allow the flow of life from our own inmost being into the child’s inmost being.

When entering earthly life, human beings not only receive what is passed on by heredity through their fathers and mothers, but they also descend as spirit beings from the spiritual world into this earthly world. This fact can be applied practically in education when we have living insight into the human being. Basically, I cannot think of impressions more wonderful than those received while observing a young baby develop as we participate inwardly in such a gradual unfolding. After the infant has descended from the spiritual world into the earthly world, we can observe what was blurred and indistinct at first, gradually taking on form and shape. If we follow this process, we feel direct contact with the spiritual world, which is incarnating and unfolding before our very eyes, right here in the sensory world. Such an experience provides a sense of responsibility toward one’s tasks as a teacher, and with the necessary care, the art of education attains the quality of a religious service. Then, amid all our practical tasks, we feel that the gods themselves have sent the human being into this earthly existence, and they have entrusted the child to us for education. With the incarnating child, the gods have given us enigmas that inspire the most beautiful divine service.

What thus flows into the art of education and must become its basis comes primarily from the teachers themselves. Whenever people air their views about educational matters, they often say that one shouldn’t just train the child’s intellect, but should also foster the religious element, and so on. There is much talk of that kind about what should be cultivated in children. Waldorf education speaks more about the qualities needed in the teachers; to us the question of education is principally a question of finding the right teachers.

When the child reaches puberty, the adolescent should feel: “Now, after my feeling and willing have been worked on at school, I am ready to train my thinking; now I am becoming mature enough to be dismissed into life.” What meets us at this stage, therefore, is like a clear call coming from the students themselves when we learn to understand them. Anthroposophic knowledge of the human being is not meant to remain a theory for the mystically inclined or for idle minds. It wants to lead directly into life. Our knowledge of the human being is intended to be a practice, the aspect of real life closest to the human soul; it is connected most directly with our duty to the becoming human being. If we learn to educate in this way, in harmony with human nature, the following reassuring thought-picture will rise before us: We are carrying into the future something required by the future! Our cultural life has brought much suffering and complication to people everywhere; it is a reminder of the importance of our work in confronting the challenge of human evolution.

It is often said (ad nauseam, in fact) that the social question is really a question of cultural and spiritual life. Whenever we say that, it should make us aware that the roots of the difficulties in contemporary life are the inner obstacles, and that these must be overcome. Oh, how people today pass each other by without understanding! There is no love, no intimate interest in the potential of other human beings! Human love, not theories, can solve social problems. Above all, one thing is necessary to make possible the development of such an intimate and caring attitude, to effect again direct contact between one soul and another so that social ideas do not become merely theoretical demands: we must learn to harmonize social life in the right way by paying attention to the institution where teachers and children relate. The best seed to a solution of the social question is planted through the way social relationship develops between children and teachers at school. To educators, much in this art of education will feel like taking care of the seed, and through a realistic imagination of the future—it can never be utopian—what they have placed into the human beings entrusted to their care will one day blossom.

Just as we are meant to have before our eyes the entire course of human life when we educate children, with this same attitude we should view also the entire life of society, in its broadest aspects. To work as an educator means to work not for the present, but for the future! The child carries the future, and teachers will be carried, in the same way, by the most beautiful pedagogical attitude if they can remind themselves every moment of their lives: Those we have to educate were sent to us by higher beings. Our task is to lead our students into earthly life in a right and dignified way. Working in a living way with the children, helping them to find their way from the divine world order into the earthly world order—this must penetrate our art of education through and through, as an impulse of feeling and will, in order to meet the most important demands for human life today.

This is the goal of Waldorf pedagogy. What we have achieved in these few years may justify the conviction that a living knowledge of the human being arising from spiritual science can prove fertile for human existence in general and, through it, for the field of education, which is the most important branch of practical life.

Our Fifth Root-Race, the present Post-Atlantean humanity, was preceded by that of Atlantis, on the now submerged continent between Europe and America. The Atlanteans can in no way be compared with the human beings who today inhabit our Earth Globe. For even the remnants of that old race have learnt a variety of things from the later inhabitants of the Fifth Continent and we are therefore unable to reconstruct from them the conditions of that civilisation. At the beginning of the Atlantean civilisation there were no tools. By means of clairvoyant forces it was possible for the Atlantean to make the earth serve his needs. The preparation of metals for such uses only appeared towards the end of the Atlantean Epoch.

A small group was separated off from the population of Atlantis, just as now in the Theosophical Society a separation should once again take place. It was their task to carry over a new civilisation into the Fifth Root-Race. You would find the place where those who were chosen lived, a small colony, in present England and Ireland. At that time this was where the original Semites lived. They were the first people who were in a position to think with their intellect. All the ideas of the Atlanteans were still of the nature of pictures. The rounded shape of the front of the brow, the formation of the part of the brain on which thought depends, first appears with the population of the original Semites, who were in no way similar to the present Semitic race. This original Semitic people who, one can say, discovered thinking, journeyed through Europe into Asia and there founded a civilisation. They formed the Fifth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans. The seven Sub-races of the Atlantean RootRace were as follows: Firstly the Rmoahals, secondly the Tlavatlis, thirdly the original Toltecs, fourthly the original Turanians, fifthly the original Semites, sixthly the original Accadians, seventhly the original Mongolians.

The Fifth Root-Race therefore arose from the Fifth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans. When we look towards Asia we find there as, the First Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, the Ancient Indian race, that people who later journeyed in a more Southern direction and there became the ancestors of the later Indians. The most essential characteristic of this ancestral race, who had travelled towards the north of India, was that it developed no real sense for material culture. It possessed spiritual vision of the highest order combined with a completely undeveloped sense for the material. The ancient Indians were turned away from the world; their souls were completely similar to the Atlanteans, in that they were able to develop a superlative, glorious picture world. Through the practise of Yoga, working from within outwards, they later evolved what today seems to us a learned conception of the world. Of this, what has been handed down as external tradition, only fragments remain. The Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita no longer give any real picture of the mighty conceptions of the Indians, but only echoes. In the Vedanta philosophy also there is only an abstract remainder of the original teaching of the Indians, which was handed down by word of mouth.

Think of the faculty which appeared in the later Kabbalistic teaching in a form which elaborated matters in minute detail with subtle intricacy, think of this faculty applied to lofty cosmic thoughts. When later the Jew was able to apply thought to such things in the Kabbalistic teachings, it followed that the later Jewish occult teaching was only a decadent reflection, an echo of that finely articulated thought system of the primeval Indians. And what the teaching of the Brahmans became is by no means only religion in the sense of later systems, but knowledge, poetry and religion in a single great whole. All this was, as it were the finest flower, the extracted essence of what had developed in the old Atlantean civilisation.

The Europeans also came over from Atlantis to Western and Central Europe and here there developed a quite different teaching. Groups of people settled who were not yet advanced enough to be chosen to found new civilisations, but yet possessed in germinal form what in India came to expression in so magnificent a way, but which here remained at a much earlier stage. What had its start in Europe moved ever further and further towards Asia. A common teaching formed its foundation, but in Europe this remained at a somewhat primitive level.

The Indian teaching was expressed in the Vedas. ‘Veda’ means the same as ‘Edda’, only the content of the Vedas is more finely developed than that which remained here in Europe in a more primitive form as the Edda, which was only written down at the end of the Middle Ages. We must realise that this great primal spiritual teaching underwent a certain modification brought about by the migrating peoples. Its original greatness consisted in grasping the mighty divine unity which was recognised by the spiritual vision of the (ancient) Indians. This was no longer so with the next, the (ancient) Persian Race. In the wisdom arising from this primeval Indian vision the concept of time was almost entirely absent. It was with the Second Sub-Race, the ancient Persian, that the concept of time made its appearance. Time, it is true, was recognised by the Indian but was more uniform; the concept of history, the progression from the imperfect to what is more perfected, was lacking. Thinking was governed by the idea that everything has emanated from divine perfection.

Persian thinking was governed by the concept of time. Zervan Akarana is one of the most important Divinities of the Persians and this is in fact Time. How did one arrive at the concept of time? Whoever seeks above all the primal unity of the Godhead, as in the case of the ancient Indians, must conceive it as the absolute Good. Evil, the imperfect in the world, was for the ancient Indian nothing but illusion; ‘illusion’ was a very important concept. These ancient people said: Nothing whatever exists in the world that is imperfect and evil. If you believe that something evil exists, you have not looked at the world in a way sufficiently free from illusion. Rust, for instance, which eats into iron, is elsewhere very beneficial: you must only consider where it is. When you look at a criminal through the veil of illusion, he will appear to you as such; if however you turn away from illusion you will realise that there is no such thing as evil.—This teaching is inwardly connected with a turning away from the world.

It was otherwise with the Second Sub-Race. There, with the earliest of the Persian peoples, the Good was given a particular place in the World-process, was regarded as the goal. It was said: The Good must be sought for. The world is good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman; and what conquers the evil is Zervan Akarana, Time. This is how good and evil came into the early Persian world-conception as the principle of evolution. The Zarathustran teaching rests on the placing of evil in the world, and on the time-concept. Man is placed into life in order to conquer evil. This conception is connected with the fact that the Second Sub-Race was not one that was estranged from the world, but worked within it. Active, productive in various branches of human work, attention directed to the outer world, concerned as to how someone could himself create good out of the world: this was the Second Sub-Race. With the Persians therefore a whole company of Gods makes it appearance; not characteristics of one God, but a plurality of Gods; because the world, if not regarded as illusion, but as reality, presents a plurality, a multiplicity. The Gods which were venerated there were more or less personal-spiritual Divinities.

The earliest initiates, who founded the ancient Indian teaching, were also the teachers of the Second Sub-Race, the ancient Persian Race. Here they adapted the whole teaching to a working people. They created that religion which was brought to fruition by the various Zarathustras.⁸²

A further initiation advanced towards the Near East: to Egypt, to the Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, these forefathers of the Arabs. There the Third Sub-Race was developed. This Third Sub-Race was such that it now sought to bring both directions—the inner nature of man and the outer world—into harmony with each other. Whether you look for the fundamental conception of this Third Sub-Race in Chaldea or Egypt, everywhere you will find a pronounced awareness of the connection between human work and the forces of Nature. This is an essential difference when compared with the Persian Race. In Persia you have two powers, the good and the evil, which do battle with one another. Now man tries to bring the different nature forces or beings into his service. What developed as Persian religion was mainly built up on human morality and industry. Now in the Third Sub-Race the consciousness developed that one does not master nature only by means of bodily strength and moral behaviour, but best of all through knowledge. In those lands where a skillful agriculture was pursued as in Egypt and Chaldea, there developed a co-ordination of heavenly-spiritual powers with what was carried out by human work. Knowledge of the meteorological environment and the heavenly bodies evolved there. Strength for work was sought for in the knowledge of Nature. So it came about that man directed his gaze to the stars, and astronomy was brought into connection with humanity on the Earth. Man's origin was sought for in the stars. Thus, in this sense we have for the first time to do with science. Now in the Third Sub-Race, instead of inner perception, we have practical knowledge. So we hear of great initiates who taught geometry, the practice of surveying, technical skills. The fructification of human activity with cosmic wisdom brought down from the spiritual world makes its appearance in the Third Sub-Race. With this, something was given which translated the whole conception of human life into a kind of heavenly science. With the different peoples this found expression in various ways. In the case of the Egyptians, Osiris, Isis and Horus were conceived of as representatives of astronomical phenomena.

Three different Sub-Races developed in Asia. Taking their start from Atlantis, a colony led by initiates traveled over to Asia. A special result of this was the ancient Indian civilisation, a second, the ancient Persian; the third result was the Egyptian-Chaldean civilisation: they all had a common initiation-source. In Europe however groups always remained behind which fell away from what culminated with such magnificence in the three great civilisations. These separate cultural streams were distributed in Europe in the most varied way. In Europe too there were initiates who formed Mystery Schools towards the end of the period of which we are speaking: they were called Druids: Drys means Oak. The strong oak was the symbol of the early European priest-teachers, for what dominated the peoples in the North was the thought that their old form of culture would necessarily have to decline. There the Twilight of the Gods was taught and the future of Christianity came to magnificent expression through these Northern prophets in what later became the Siegfried Saga.^83a This may be compared with the Achilles Saga.^83b

Achilles is invulnerable in his whole body with the exception of the heel, Siegfried with the exception of the spot between the shoulders. To be invulnerable in such a way signifies to have been initiated. In Achilles you have the initiate of the Fourth Sub-Race which lies on the ascending curve of man's cultural development: therefore all the upper parts of Achilles are invulnerable; only the heel the lower nature is vulnerable, just as Hephaistos is lame. The German Siegfried was also an initiate of the Fourth Sub-Race, but vulnerable between the shoulder blades. This is his vulnerable spot, first made invulnerable by the One who bore the cross. With Siegfried the Gods reach their downfall, the Northern Gods approach their end (Twilight of the Gods). This gives the Northern saga its tragic note, for it not only points to the past, but to the Twilight of the Gods, to the time which is to come. The Druids gave to man the teaching of the declining Northern Gods. Thus in what was still symbolic form, the battle of St. Boniface⁸⁴ with the Oak represents the battle of the Druids with the old Priesthood.

Everywhere in the North one can point to the traces of what came to expression over in Asia. For instance Muspelheim and Niflheim are a counterpart of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The giant Ymir, out of whom the whole world is made, corresponds to the cutting into pieces of Osiris. In the most detailed way one can follow the connection between the European peoples of the North and the other civilisations. When in the South of Europe the Fourth Sub-Race was developing, the Northern tribes had also made the transition into the Fourth Stage so that in the Germanic peoples Tacitus⁸⁵ found much that was related to the Southern culture. Irmin⁸⁶ for example is the same figure as Hercules. Tacitus also tells us of a kind of Isis worship there in the North. So the older stages of civilisations progressed towards what was to come as Christianity.

So think of Europe, Central Asia and Egypt as sown with the seed of what had developed under the influence of the Initiation Schools. These Initiation Schools sent out from their midst the founder of the Fifth [Fourth] Sub-Race, who had long been prepared in the shelter of the Mysteries. This is the personality who in the Bible is called Abraham. He came from Ur in Chaldaea and developed as an extract of the three older civilisations. The task which was represented in Abraham was to carry into the human realm all that had been held in veneration in the outside world; to create initiates who laid great value on what was human, in order to found the cult of the personality. This brought about personal attributes in the Jewish patriarchs. Here we have to do with duplicity and cunning. Jacob gains his inheritance by employing ruse and cunning in order to take what he wants from his brother. This is the reality out of which our present-day civilisation developed: it is founded on intelligence and possessiveness. In the stories of the Old Testament this is magnificently expressed as a kind of dawning of the new. It would be impossible to present this origin in a more powerful way. Esau is still a hairy man, that means he represents the human type which is still more enmeshed in the physical; Jacob represents one who relies on his intelligence and guile and thereby achieves what is now actually developing in human nature. The overcoming of physical force through intelligence is here inaugurated. The initiators do not always introduce something great into the world, but what must of necessity come about. ‘Israel’ means: He who leads man to the invisible God, who dwells within. Isra-el: El means the goal; Isra = the invisible God. Until then God was visible, whether it was the one who gave the urge towards Good and Evil as with the Persians, whether the God who had his body in the stars, in the Universe: This God was experienced as something visible.

And now we have the Jewish initiation portrayed in Joseph and his twelve brethren. It is a beautiful and powerful allegory. The allegorical now makes its appearance: the intellect, when it wishes to be effective, becomes the recounter of allegories.

How Joseph was initiated was first recounted. He was removed from his normal surroundings, sold for twenty pieces of silver and cast into a pit, where he remained for three days. This indicates an initiation. Then he comes to Egypt where his activities bring new life. And now we have finally indicated the transition which began at that time from the knowledge of God in the stars to the knowledge of man. Joseph was rejected because he had dreams. He had the following dream: Sun, Moon and eleven stars bowed down before him. The eleven stars are the eleven signs of the Zodiac. He felt himself to be the twelfth. The symbolism of the Star-Religion was now led over into the human. In the twelve brothers, the starting point of the twelve tribes' the knowledge of God in the stars was led over into the personal. “Now you surely do not wish to assert,” said his father—“that your brothers will bow down to you.” Here the change is given us. The divine knowledge of the stars is replaced by a knowledge attached to the personal human. This finds its form in the Mosaic law.

Out of the three Ancient Civilisations, through the initiation of the Jewish Patriarchs, this Fourth Civilisation, the primal Jewish, was derived. This we have as the Fourth Sub-Race, for there belong to it also the civilisations of Ancient Greece and Rome. The civilisations of Greece and Rome (Roman law) both become great just through this personal element, until eventually this thought incarnated, reaching its culmination in Christianity. So it is in this lesser racial branch that the actual stream of the Fourth Sub-Race makes its appearance. The Graeco-Latin stream is a higher form of the Judaic; here the cult of the personal is intensified. There is no contradiction between this descent to the deepest point and then the ascent.

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Everywhere [within the Fourth Sub-Race] we can observe this. The personal had actually to come to expression in the way described in the Esau and Jacob Saga in order to find its purification in the beauty of the human culture of the Greeks and the greatness of the human culture of the Romans. In the Odysseus Saga the ancient civilisation of the priests was conquered by cunning. It was out of the civilisations that arose from this that Christianity could first develop, which in truth contains all the ancient cultures in itself and can therefore also absorb them. In accordance with his parentage Jesus Christ was a native of Galilee ... ‘Galilean’ means: ‘The Stranger’, someone who does not really belong; ‘Galilee’ means a small isolated territory where someone could be brought up who, in his native milieu had to take into himself, not only the Jewish, but also all the ancient forms of culture.

Out of the impact between the Romans and the Northern peoples there now developed the Fifth Sub-Race in which we ourselves live. It has still kept an impulse from the old Initiation Schools in the Moorish, and Arabian influence which came over from Asia. It is always the same influence, the same Initiation School. We can trace how the Irish monks, as also those who work in scientific fields, are essentially inspired by the Moorish-Arabian science. This gives the same fundamental character in a new-form, in a way in which it could now be received. It is here that Christianity first finds its real expression. It has merely passed through the ancient Greek civilisation for as long as the Fifth Period of Culture was being prepared; and then finds here firm ground, embodying itself in a whole range of nations. Everything at that time was permeated and inspired by Christianity. Our present time with its materialistic culture is the last radical expression of what was then inaugurated. The birth of this new culture is symbolically presented in the Lohengrin Saga. Lohengrin is the initiator of the ‘city-state’, and the city life which leads up to a new cultural stage is symbolised by Elsa of Brabant.

Into all these streams others penetrate, for instance the Mongolian tribes. What originally came over from the West was related to what came with the Huns from the East. So from East and West something came together that was related: the Mongolian and Germanic tribes. Those who originated from the West were left-behind descendants of the Atlanteans, as were also the Mongolians from the East. Fundamentally both streams were related. It is always one stream which crosses another. Both, however, have a common native ground since they both originated from Atlantis.

Now here in the North, everything that has remained from earlier times took on a more established form. At the same time as the epoch of the Jewish Prophets, in the centuries before Christ, we find here indications of a great, primeval, Atlantean initiate. Wod-Wodha-Odin.⁸⁷ This is a modernised Atlantis, in a new form, an atavism, a throwback into the Atlantean Age. And this happens everywhere, over in Asia also. In Asia W, the sound V, becomes B, Wodha = Bodha = Buddha. Buddhism appears as a throwback into the Atlantean Age. This is why we find Buddhism most widespread with what has remained over from the Atlanteans in the Mongolian peoples. And where the very pillars of its greatness make their appearance in Tibet, there we have a modern, monumental expression of Atlantean culture.

One must get to know such relationships between peoples, then one will also understand history. When Attila,⁸⁸ the fighter for monotheism, appears in Europe, it was Christianity which first halted him, because there he was confronted with something greater than anything the Huns possessed. The monotheism of the Huns was, as the outcome of an Atlantean civilisation, of a magnitude which they found in no other peoples that they encountered on their way. Christianity alone made a forceful impression on them. Many things in historical development are to be understood in the light of these great considerations.

The well-known traveler, Peters,⁸⁹ certainly feels that the old Bodhism and the Wotanism can flow together, but he does not know that we in Europe have not only to be representatives of what comes from the ancient past, but something new, a new spiral. Into the old part of the spiral there strikes the very newest, the wisdom pointing to the future. This is related to the old wisdom as clear day consciousness is related to trance consciousness. With completely clear day consciousness future peoples will develop a spiritual culture which will be different from the old. For this reason Theosophy must not be only what is carried over from the old, from Buddhism and Hinduism; this would certainly collapse. Something new must arise out of the seeds which slumber in the East of Europe, coming together with everything that is being worked out there.

The inherent culture of the future lies in the unfolding of what is now in a seed condition in the Folk-elements of Eastern Europe. We ourselves in Central Europe are the advance post. Eastern Europe must provide the means, the human material for what is here being founded in advance.

The Rosicrucian Schools always taught that Central and Western Europe are only advance posts of what will develop in the European East, what will proceed from the fructification of the Folk element and European knowledge. With Tolstoi everything is fructified through the West European culture, but in a way different from that of others before him. With powerful simplicity he utters what no Kant and no Spencer could have expressed. What there appears over-ripe appears in him as something still unfulfilled. But it is always so with what is in a seed condition. Not out of the fine perfected plant, but out of the seedling does the new, future plant grow.

Whatever one may experience, one can look with complete trust towards the future. For just as the crystal first develops out of an alkaline solution only after it has been vigorously stirred, so also something new can only develop after great upheavals.

• 82. Re the original Zarathustra see note 65. The historical Zarathustra lived in the 6th century BC and according to Alexander Polyhistor and Plutarch, was the teacher of Pythagoras. On the tradition in mystery schools of transmitting the name of the teacher with the teaching, compare Rudolf Steiner on Dionysius the Areopagite in lecture 13.
• 83a. see lecture 22.3.1906, Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods (Typescript).
• 83b. Invulnerability denoted initiation. (See lecture 7 in the cycle on The Gospel of St Mark.)
• 84. In the 8th century St Boniface (actually Wynfrith) emissary from Rome, known as the apostle of the Germans, spread Christianity in Thuringia, Friesland and Hesse and was murdered in 754 by heathen Friesians.
• 85. ... His descriptions are to be found in Germany and its Tribes.
• 86. divine ancestor of the Germanic tribes.
• 87. Rudolf Steiner has spoken in greater detail of this connection, for instance in Universe, Earth and Man lecture 10
• 88. Rudolf Steiner here refers to Attila's penetration into Italy in the year 452 when Aquileia was destroyed and the Roman bishop Leo I went out with his followers against Attila and was able to force him to retreat.
• 89. Traveled especially in Africa where he founded the East African German colonies and the German East African Company. Wrote among other things Das Goldene Ophir Salomos (1895) and Im Goldland des Altertums (1902).

[ 1 ] In his addresses on The Basic Characteristics of Our Present Age and To the German Nation, Johann Gottlieb Fichte seeks to portray the spiritual forces working in the evolution of mankind. Through the thoughts he brings to expression in these addresses, he imbues himself with the feeling that the motive force of his world view streams from the innermost being of the German people (Volksart). Fichte believes he is expressing the thoughts that the soul of the German people must express if it wants to reveal itself from the core of its spirituality. The way in which Fichte struggled for his world view shows how this feeling could live in his soul. It must seem important to someone observing a thinker to investigate the roots from which the fruit of his thoughts have sprung; these roots work in the depths of his soul and are not expressed directly in his thought-worlds, yet they live as the motive forces within these thought-worlds.

[ 2 ] Fichte once expressed his conviction that the kind of world view one has depends upon the kind of person one is. He did so out of his awareness that all the life forces of his own personality had to bring forth—as its natural and obvious fruit—the conceptually strong heights of his world view. Not many people want to get to the heart of this world view because they consider what they find there to be thoughts—estranged from the world—into which only “professional” thinkers need penetrate. This feeling is understandable in someone without philosophical training who approaches Fichte's thoughts as they appear in his works. Still, for someone who has the possibility of entering into the full life of these thoughts, it is not strange to imagine that a time will come when one will be able to recast Fichte's ideas into a form comprehensible to anyone who wants, out of life itself, to think about the meaning of this life. These ideas could then be accessible even to the simplest human heart (Gemüt), however far removed from so-called “philosophical thinking.” For, these ideas have in fact received their philosophical form from the character assumed by the evolution of thought in thinking circles at the turn of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century; but these ideas get their life from experiences that are present in the soul of every human being, To be sure, the time has not yet arrived when it is fully possible to recast Fichte's thoughts from the language of the philosophy of his time into a universally human form of expression. Such things become possible only through the gradual progress made by certain ways of picturing things in man's spiritual life. Just as Fichte himself was obliged to carry his soul experiences to the heights of what one usually calls “abstract thinking”—and finds cold and estranged from life—so today also it is only possible to a very limited degree to carry these soul experiences down from those heights.

[ 3 ] From his early youth until his sudden death while still in the prime of life, Fichte struggled for ever new forms of expression for these soul experiences. In all his struggles, one basic cognitive impulse is evident. Within man's own soul Fichte wishes to find a living element in which the human being grasps not only the basic force of his own existence, but in which there can also be known—in its essential being—what weaves and works in nature and in everything else outside him. In a drop of water, relative to the ocean, one has only a tiny sphere. But if one knows this little sphere in its character as water, then in this knowledge one also knows the whole ocean in its character as water. If something can be discovered in the being of man that can be experienced as a revelation of the innermost weaving of the world, then one may hope, through deepened self-knowledge, to advance to world knowledge.

[ 4 ] Long before Fichte's time, the development of mankind's view of the world had already taken the path that proceeds from this feeling and this hope. But Fichte was placed at a significant point in this evolution. One can read in many places how he received Ws most direct impetus from the world views of Spinoza and Kant. But the way he finally acted in understanding the world through the essential nature of his personality becomes most visible when he is contrasted with the thinker who came forth just as much from the thinking of the Romance peoples as Fichte did from the German: Descartes (1596–1650). In Descartes there already comes to light—out of the feeling and hope described above—the way a thinker seeks certainty in world knowledge by discovering a solid point in self-knowledge. Descartes takes doubt in all world knowledge as his starting point. He says to himself: The world in which I live reveals itself within my soul, and from its phenomena I form mental pictures for myself about the course of things. But what is my guarantee that these mental pictures of mine really tell me anything about the working and weaving of the world in its course? Could it not be the case that my soul does indeed receive certain impressions from the things of the world, but that these impressions are so far removed from the things themselves that in these impressions nothing of the meaning of the world is revealed to me? In the face of this possibility can I say that I know this or that about the world? One sees how, for a thinker in this ocean of doubt, all knowledge can come to seem like a subjective dream, and how only one conviction can force itself upon him: that man can know nothing. But in the case of a person for whom the motive force of thinking has become as alive as the motive force of hunger is in the body: for him the conviction that man can know nothing means for the soul what starvation means for the body. All the innermost impressions about the health of one's soul, in a higher sense, right up to feeling the salvation of one's soul (Seelenheil) are connected with this.

[ 5 ] It is within the soul itself that Descartes finds the point upon which he can base conviction: The mental pictures form for myself of the world's course are no dream; they live a life that is a part in the life of the whole world. Even though I can doubt everything, there is one thing I cannot doubt, for to express doubt in it would belie my own words. For is it not certain that when I give myself over to doubt I am thinking? I could not doubt if I did not think. Therefore I cannot possibly doubt my own experience in thinking. If I wanted, through doubt, to kill thinking: it would just rise up living again out of the doubt. My thinking lives, therefore; it does not stand in some dream world; it stands in the world of being (Sein). If I could believe that everything else, even my own body, gave me only the illusion of being, still my thinking does not deceive me. Just as true as it is that I think, it is true that I am, insofar as I think. It was from sentiments such as these that Descartes' “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum) rang out into the world. And whoever has an ear for such things will also hear the power of this statement resounding in all subsequent thinkers until Kant.

[ 6 ] Only with Fichte do its reverberations cease. If one enters deeply into his thought-world, if one seeks to experience with him his struggles for a world view, then one feels how he too is seeking world knowledge in self-knowledge; but one has the feeling that Descartes' statement, “I think, therefore I am” could not be the rock upon which Fichte, in his struggles, could believe himself secure against the waves of doubt that can turn man's mental pictures into an ocean of dreams. Looking at what Fichte wrote in his book The Vocation of Man (published in 1800), one feels how his ability to doubt lives in a very different part of the soul than with Descartes: “Nowhere is there anything enduring, neither outside me nor within me; there is only unceasing change. Nowhere do I know of any being, not even my own. There is no being. I myself do not know at all and do not exist. Pictures exist: they are all that there is, and they know about themselves in the manner of pictures—pictures that float past without anything there for them float past; pictures that relate to each other through pictures of pictures; pictures without anything pictured in them, without significance and purpose. I myself am one of these pictures; no, I am not even that; I am only a confused picture of the pictures.—All reality transforms itself into a strange dream, without a life that is dreamed about, and without a spirit who is dreaming; transforms itself into a dream that is connected with a dream about itself, My perceiving is the dream; my thinking—the source of all being and all reality that I imagine to myself, the source of my being, my power, my aims—is a dream about that dream,” These thoughts do not arise in Fichte's soul as the ultimate truth about existence, He does not wish, as one might suppose, really to regard the world as a dream configuration, He wants only to show that all the usual arguments for the certainty of knowledge cannot withstand penetrating examination, and that these arguments do not give one the right to regard the ideas one forms about the world as anything other than dream configurations. And Fichte cannot allow that any kind of certainty about being is present within thinking. Why should I say, “I think, therefore I am” since, after all, if I am living in an ocean of dreams, my thinking can be nothing more than “a dream about a dream”? For Fichte, what penetrates and gives reality to my thoughts about the world must come from a completely different source than mere thinking about the world.

[ 7 ] Fichte claims that the distinctive spirit (Art) of the German people lives in his world view. This thought makes sense when one brings before one's soul precisely his picture of that path to self-knowledge which he seeks in contradistinction to Descartes. This path is what Fichte felt to be German; and as a traveler on this path, he differs from Descartes, who takes the spiritual path of the Romance peoples. Descartes seeks a sound basis for self-knowledge; he expects to find this sound basis somewhere. In thinking he believes he has found it. Fichte expects nothing from this kind of search. For, no matter what he might find, why should it afford a greater certainty than anything already found? No, along this path of investigation there is absolutely nothing to be found. For, this path can lead only from picture to picture; and no picture one encounters can guarantee, out of itself, its being. Therefore, to begin with, one must entirely abandon the path through pictures, and return to it again only after gaining certainty from some other direction.

[ 8 ] With respect to the statement “I think, therefore I am,” one need only say something that seems quite simple if one wants to refute it. This is after all the way with so many thoughts a person incorporates into his world view: they are not dispelled by elaborate objections but rather by noting simple facts. One does not undervalue the thinking power of a personality like Descartes by confronting him with a simple fact. The fable of the egg of Columbus is true forever.¹ And it is also true that the statement “I think, therefore I am” simply shatters upon the fact of human sleep. Every sleep, which interrupts thinking, shows—not, indeed, that there is no being in thinking—but that in any case “I am, even when I am not thinking.” Therefore, if only thinking is the source for being, then nothing could guarantee the being of soul states in which thinking has ceased. Although Fichte did not express this train of thought in this form, one can still definitely say: The power lying within these simple facts worked—unconsciously—in his soul and kept him from taking a path like that taken by Descartes.

[ 9 ] Fichte was led onto a completely different path by the basic character of his sense of things. His life reveals this basic character from childhood on. One need only let some pictures from his life arise before one's soul to see that this is so. One significant picture that rises up vividly from his childhood is this. Johann Gottlieb is seven years old. Until this time he was a good student. In order to reward the boy's industriousness, his father gives him a book of legends, The Horned Siegfried. The boy is completely taken with this book. He neglects his duties somewhat. He becomes aware of this about himself. One day his father sees him throwing The Horned Siegfried into the brook. The boy is attached to the book with his whole heart; but how can the heart be allowed to keep something that diverts one from one's duty? Thus the feeling is already living unconsciously in the young Fichte that the human being is in the world as an expression of a higher order, which descends into his soul not through his interest in one thing or another, but through the path by which he acknowledges duty. Here one can see the impulse behind Fichte's stance toward certainty about reality. Perceptual experiences are not what is certain for man, but rather what rises up livingly in the soul in the same way that duty reveals itself.

[ 10 ] Another picture from Fichte's life: The boy is nine years old. A landowner near his father's village comes into town one Sunday to hear the minister's sermon. He arrives too late. The sermon is over. People remember that nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb retains sermons in his soul so well that he can completely reproduce them. They fetch him. The boy, in his little farmer's smock, appears. He is awkward at first; but then presents the sermon in such a way that one can see that what lived in the sermon had utterly filled his soul; he does not merely repeat words; he speaks out of the spirit of the sermon that lives within him entirely as his own experience. This ability lived in the boy: to let light up in one's own self what approaches this self from the world. This was, after all, the ability to experience the spirit of the outer world in one's own self. This was the ability to find within the strengthened self the power to uphold a world view. A brightly-lit, evolving stream of personality leads from such boyhood experiences to a lecture by Fichte—then professor in Jena—heard and described by the gifted scientist Steffens. In the course of his lecture Fichte calls upon his listeners: “Think about the wall,” His listeners made every effort to think about the wall. After they had done this for a while, Fichte's next demand follows: “And now think about the one who thought about the wall,” What striving for a direct and living relationship between one's own soul life and that of one's listeners! What pointing toward an inner soul activity to be undertaken immediately—not merely to stimulate reflection on verbal communications, but rather to awaken a life element slumbering in the souls of his listeners so that these souls will attain a state that changes their previous relationship to the course of the world.

[ 11 ] Such actions reflect Fichte's whole way of clearing the path for a world view. Unlike Descartes, he does not seek an experience of thinking that will establish certainty. He knows that in such seeking there is no finding. In such seeking one cannot know whether one's discovery is dream or reality. Therefore do not launch forth in such seeking. Strengthen yourself instead, by waking up. What the soul experiences when it wants to press forward out of the field of ordinary reality into that of true reality must be like an awakening. Thinking does not guarantee the being of the human “I.” But within this “I” there lies the power to awaken itself to being. Every time the soul senses itself as “I”—in full consciousness of the inner power that becomes active in doing so—a process occurs that presents itself as the soul awakening itself. This self-awakening is the fundamental being (Grundwesenheit) of the soul. And in this power to awaken itself there lies the certainty of the being (Sein) of the human soul. Let the soul go through dream states and states of sleep: one grasps the power of the soul to awaken itself out of every dream and every sleep by transforming the mental picture of its awakening into the image of the soul's fundamental power. Fichte felt that the eternity of the human soul lies in its becoming aware of its power to awaken itself. From this awareness came statements like these: “The world I was just marveling at disappears before my gaze and sinks away. In all the fullness of life, order, and growth that I see in it, this world is still only the curtain—by which an infinitely more perfect world is hidden from me—and the seed from which this more perfect world is to evolve. My belief goes behind this curtain and warms and enlivens this seed. My belief does not see anything definite, but expects more than it can grasp here below or will ever be able to grasp in the realm of time.—This is how I live and this is how I am; this is how I am unchangeably—firm and complete for all eternity; for, this being is not taken on from outside; it is my own one true being and existence.” (Vocation of Man)

[ 12 ] When one looks at the whole way Fichte approaches life and at how permeated all his actions and thinking are with an attitude friendly to life and fostering of life, one will not be tempted to regard a passage like this as proof of a direction in thought hostile to life, that turns away from immediate and vigorous life on this earth. In a letter from the year 1790 there is a sentence that sheds significant light on Fichte's positive attitude toward life, precisely in relation to his thoughts about immortality: “The surest means of convincing oneself of a life after death is to lead one's present life in such a way that one can wish an afterlife:”

[ 13 ] For Fichte, within the self-awakening inner activity of the human soul there lies the power of self-knowledge. And within this activity he also finds the place in the soul where the spirit of the world reveals itself in the spirit of the soul. In Fichte's world view the world-will weaves and works in all existence; and within the willing of its own being the soul can live this world-will within itself. The grasping of life's duties—which are experienced differently in the soul than are the perceptions of the senses and of one's thoughts—is the most immediate example of how the world-will pulses through the soul. True reality must be grasped in this way; and all other reality, even that of thinking, receives its certainty through the light shed upon it by the reality of the world-will revealing itself within the soul. This world-will drives the human being to his activity and deeds. As a sense-perceptible being, man must translate into reality in a sense-perceptible way what the world-will demands of him. But how could the deeds of one's will have a real existence if they had to seek this existence in a dream world? No, the world cannot be a dream, because in this world the deeds of one's will must not merely be dreamed; they must be translated into reality.

Insofar as the “I” awakens itself in its experience of the world-will, it attains firm supports for certainty about its being. Fichte expressed himself on this point in his Vocation of Man: “Without any instrument weakening its expression, within a sphere completely similar in nature to itself, my will must work absolutely in and through itself: as reason it must work upon reason and as something spiritual upon something spiritual; it must work in a sphere for which my will nevertheless does not provide the laws of life, activity, and continuity; this sphere has them in itself; my will has therefore to work upon self-active reason. But self-active reason is will. The laws of the supersensible world, accordingly, would be a will ... That lofty will, accordingly, does not separated from the rest of the world of reason—take a path all its own. There is a spiritual bond between this will and all finite reasonable beings, and this will itself is the spiritual bond of the world of reason ... I hide my face before you and lay my hand on my mouth. I can never see how you are for yourself nor how you appear to yourself, just as certainly as I can never become yourself. After living through a thousand times a thousand spiritual worlds, I will still grasp you just as little as now, within this hut of the earth.—What I grasp, through my mere grasping of it, becomes something finite; and this, even through infinite intensification and enhancement, can never be transformed into something infinite. You are different from the finite not in degree but in kind. Through that intensification they make you only into a greater and ever great man; but never into God, the Infinite, Who cannot be measured.”

[ 14 ] Fichte strove for a world view that pursues all being into the very roots of what lives in the world, and that learns to know the meaning of what lives in the world: learns to know it through the human soul's living with the world-will that pulses through everything and that creates nature for the purpose, in nature, of translating into reality a spiritually moral order as though in an outer body. Such a world view seemed to Fichte to spring from the character of the German people. To him a world view seemed un-German that did not “believe in spirituality and in the freedom of this spirituality,” and that did not “want the eternal further development of this spirituality and freedom.” In his view, “Whoever believes in a standstill, a regression, or a circle dance, or even sets a dead nature at the helm of world rulership” goes not only against any more deeply penetrating knowledge, but also against the essential nature of what is truly German.

• 1. The problem was to stand an egg on end. Columbus's table companions tried to do this without breaking the egg and of course failed. Columbus was more realistic. He flattened one end of the egg. – Ed.

If, as it were, we place the main centers in which the Apocalypticer lets the description of his views culminate before our souls, as we have already done with a few things, the whole composition and the ongoing content of the Apocalypse will become disclosed to us in a very short time. Therefore, we will have to continue our contemplation of its main points and centers today, and tomorrow we will begin to explain its other contents.

Yesterday I pointed out that the Apocalypticer sees something which is breaking in upon what he feels is the real Christianity, something which wants to make Christians renounce Christianity and lead them back to the Father principle that can only take on materilistic and naturalistic forms if it wins through in this epoch.

The Apocalypticer sees and feels the secrets which are connected with a number like 666 more or less consciously, for he sees things and processes in accordance with the secret of numbers, or it would be better to say that he feels them like a musician feels the connection between tones in accordance with the secret of numbers, but who at most only becomes aware of this at certain places. What we'll have to do is to look into the cosmos so that we can get more secrets about 666 from it.

We should consider that the entire Christian revelation is really a sun revelation, and that Christ is a being who comes from the sun. Christ sends Michael and his hosts before him, as Jehova used to send Michael before him in a different way. If we consider that we are living in a Michael age, it will be possible to place the sun mystery which is connected with the Christ impulse before our souls in a very profound way.

The main thing for something deep down in human souls which are combatting Christianity will always be to oppose the idea that the really spiritual part of Christianity is connected with the sun. The opponents of Christianity would like nothing better than if people would completely lose their view about the sun as a spiritual being and only retained the view about the sun's physical existence, as I said in a previous lecture. And in fact the breaking in of Arabism gave rise to the great danger that the secret of the sun as the secret of Christ himself would be forgotten and that the whole evolution of humanity would be deflected away from the Michael direction which should always only as it were prepare for men's Christ-evolution and give them their human understanding.

What happens outwardly in the world order occurs on the background of supersensible processes for the Apocalypticer, who sees behind the scenes of outer historical developments. And so we will try to get an idea of what these supersensible processes which the Apocalypticer sees behind the outer events look like.

If we look at the planets and the sun in our solar system, we have a gathering of beings in each of them. Evolving human beings are assembled upon the earth, and if we want to make a mental image about men on earth which goes deep into our soul, we can, for example, place the Vulcan evolution which will follow earth evolution before our souls, since there is an evolution in time and since we can look at a later point in time when mankind will have reached a much higher stage just as well as we can look at the present one.

You can imagine the spiritual idea someone would have to get of the earth as a world body with a gathering of Vulcan men in it if he had it before him, and yet it would only be the earth with its men at a different stage. It is very important for the human soul to think of the earth as a whole in this way, so that it doesn't take the present stage of humanity upon earth, but what is already contained in this present state in a germinal way, namely, the Vulcan condition which man bears within him, and therefore also is. If we look at the other planets we will find such gatherings of beings everywhere. We have to say that the earth is meant to be the place where human beings evolve, and that's why it's located at the center. We have other planets like present-day Jupiter which shows us that it has an entirely different kind of beings. We meet these beings when we work out our karma between death and a new birth. The same applies to each of the other planets, including the sun. If we think of the totality of beings which are at work in connection with the individual planets we get what is conceived of as the present-day spirituality of each one of these planets, which the teachers in the catholic church called the intelligence of the planet up till the 14th century. We can definitely speak about the intelligence of a planet as a reality, just as we can speak of earth men as a whole as the intelligence of the earth. And up till the 14th, 15th centuries the church teachers knew that each one of these planets not only has an intelligence but also a demon. The totality of the opponents of the intelligences on planets are demons. This also applies to the sun.

Now if we mainly have to look upon Christianity as an evolution which is in accordance with the impulses of the sun genius or sun intelligence, we have to see the sun demon in what opposes the evolution of Christianity. And this is what the Apocalypticer saw. He saw the mighty counter principle of Arabism breaking in behind the scenes of the Christianity which was threatened by maya in two directions as Christianity fled from Rome towards the east and as Christianity had taken on other cognitional forms. But when he looked behind the scenes of the outer Arabian and Islamic deeds it was obvious to him that the sun demon was working there against the sun genius or sun intelligence. Hence he had to present the sun demon as something which works against the actual Christian principle in man, so that if he yields to the sun demon he will not want to make the connection with the divinity of Christ, but he will want to remain in the subhuman element. If the Apocalypticer had been asked what kind of human souls were devoted to the sun demon, he would have pointed to the supporters of Arabism in Europe. It was clear to him that everything which brings men in the direction of bestiality in their views and also gradually in their will impulses has arisen from Arabism. And this is obviously, in them.

The things which happen in the world in a very real way are such that one doesn't always see cause and effect side by side,—the object and that which has the object in view. Therefore, one can ask oneself: What would happen if Arabism or the teachings of the sun demon would gain a complete victory? Mankind would then be unable to have an experience of the conditions which have to be experienced if the working of karma from previous incarnations are to be grasped. When it comes right down to it, everything which flowed out of Arabism was directed against an understanding of transubstantiation. To be sure, it doesn't look like it from an outer point of view, but the sun demon only acknowledges the old Father principle and natural connections, and he wants to make men forget about the kinds of connections that are particularly active in a sacrament like transubstantiation.

And so the Apocalypticer sensed that the sun demon was particularly active around the year 666. He describes him in such a way that every initiate can recognize him. For each of these spiritual beings which one calls the intelligences of the planets, the intelligences of the sun, the demons of the planets and of the sun has a key symbol in the mysteries, and they are also actually present in the latter on special occasions. The sun demon has this sign: The Apocalypticer describes him as the two horned beast. The kind of reading which interprets numbers had become somewhat externalized during the Latin period where one combined Greek and Latin in the mystery language, but it could still interpret them.

The Apocalypticer uses the special kind of reading which was customary at his time. He writes the number 666 = 400, 200, 60, 6. He writes it with the Hebraic letters:

He writes these letters with their numerical values and one reads them from right to left. After one adds the corresponding vowels to the consonants they give the name of the demon who has this sign, the sun demon: Sorat. At that time Sorat was the name of the sun demon, and he describes this sign and we know it very well. The Apocalypticer looks upon everything which works against Christianity in the way that Arabism does as an emanation from those spiritual forces which are represented by Sorat the sun demon.

However, 666 was there once at the time when Arabism shot into Christianity in order to press the seal of materialism upon western culture. It is there a second time after another 666 went by as 1332 in the 14th century. There we have another rising of the beast from the waters of world events. To someone who sees like the Apocalypticer does, world events seem like a continual surging of the 666 epoch. It rises and threatens Christianity's search for true humanity, asserting beast-hood against manhood; Sorat makes his move. In the 14th century we see Sorat the adversary rising up again.

It is the time when the Templar order in Europe wanted to establish a solar view of Christianity which came from the depths of their souls than from orientalism. They wanted to found a view of Christianity which looked upon the Christ as a sun being and a cosmic being again, a view which knew something about the spirituality of planets and stars and of how the intelligences of worlds which are far apart, and not just the beings on one planet, work together in world events. This view knew something about the mighty oppositions which arise through such disobedient beings like the sun demon Sorat, one of the mightiest demons in our solar system. It is basically possession by sun demons which is at work in the materialism of human beings. Of course from a certain point of view it is justified to speak about what would have become of European civilization if the inwardly and outwardly powerful Templar order—although they took their treasures away from them—had been able to carry out its intentions. During the destruction of this order Sorat came to life again in the hearts and souls of those who were the adversaries of the cosmic Christ or of the Christ who looks out into the cosmos, and they weren't satisfied until Jacques de Molay went to his death in 1312.

Sorat mainly came to life again in such a way that he used the views of the Roman church to exterminate the Templars. The emergence of this Sorat at that time was already more visible, for an overwhelming secret hovers around the downfall of this Templar order. If one looks at what went on in these human beings and Templars as they were being tortured before they were executed, one gets an idea of how what had been instigated by Sorat lived in the visions of the tortured Templars, so that they denied their beliefs and so that one had a reasonable accusation from their own mouths. Mankind witnessed a terrible spectacle; the people who advocated something quite different were unable to speak about it while they were being tortured, for various spirits from the hosts of Sorat spoke out of them instead and said the most disgraceful things about the order out of its own members. 666 was fulfilled a second time. It was a time during which all preparations were being made in the spiritual world by Sorat and other recalcitrant demons to prevent the sun principle from coming to the earth. They were at war with Michael and his hosts as Michael prepared for his new reign. He was the earth regent before the Mystery of Golgotha during the time of Alexander and was then relieved by the other archangels,—by Oriphiel, Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Gabriel, and he is now reigning on earth again since the last third of the 19th century in order to go on working for the Christ, in his own particular way. He had worked for the Christ until the end of his previous reign until about the end of Alexander's reign. One could say that Michael is now on the earth, but this time in order to become of use in the preparation for Christianity and for the deeper Christian impulse.

I have described how this Michael impulse was introduced from a spiritual viewpoint at various times and places. I mentioned some of this recently in a lecture, where I pointed out that a really Christian impulsivity was introduced by the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle in 869 under the regency of Michael. And this continued. We have a marvelous spectacle at the beginning of the new age when the consciousness soul took hold, as I mentioned before. If we look up at spiritual events which belong to earth humanity and which go parallel with physical events, we find a supersensible school with Michael as a teacher. Those beings who are supposed to be active for a real further development of Christianity, whether they be souls who weren't incarnated at the time or whether they be other spiritual beings, are gathered around Michael in large numbers in a great, supersensible school in the 14th to 16th centuries, where souls are being prepared who are then supposed to appear on earth at the beginning of the 20th century during Michael's reign. If one looks at what was prepared there, one can see that the Anthroposophical world conception wants to work along the lines of this evolution.

When one looks at ancient mystery wisdom, it follows from what was and is mystery teaching for the prophetic vision of future wisdom that the human beings who as it were accept inner Christianity and spiritualized Christianity and who look towards the sun genius in connection with Christianity will accelerate their evolution and reappear at the end of the 20tn century. For everything we can do now in this age is of great importance if we look at it from the viewpoint of eternity; it is of great importance if we grasp spirituality for the teachings and deeds of human beings in this age; it is a preparation for the great, extensive and intensive spiritual deeds which should be done at the end of the century. After a great deal will have come before, which will be contrary to the spiritualization of modern civilization—after the second 666 stood in the sign of that great upheaval in Europe which was begun by the crusades and which had its outer fact in the appearance and destruction of the Templar knights, everything from the sun genius which is trying to create true Christianity works on, as does everything from Sorat which is trying to work against it. And we have the age of the third 666:1998. We are coming to the end of this century, when Sorat will again lift his head from the waters of evolution very strongly, where he will be the adversary of that vision of the Christ which prepared human beings will already have in the first half of the 20th century through the appearance of the etheric Christ. It will then take almost two thirds of a century until Sorat raises his_ head in a mighty way.

When the first 666 went by Sorat was still hidden in the evolutionary course of events; one didn't see him in an external form; he lived in the deeds of Arabism, although initiates could see him. When the second 666 came he already showed himself in the thinking and feeling of the tortured Templars. He will show himself before the end of this century already, and he will appear in a great many people as a being by whom they will be possessed. One will see people coming up to one and one will not be able to believe that they are really human beings. They will develop in a very strange way even outwardly. They will be intensive, strong natures outwardly with fierce features and a destructive rage in their emotions; they will have a face in which one will see a kind of a beast's face outwardly. Sorat men will also be recognizable outwardly; they will be those who not only ridicule spiritual things,—they will fight it in the most terrible way and they will want to thrust it down into a cesspool. One will see that what is concentrated in a small region in present-day Russian communism will be inserted into the whole earth evolution of humanity.

This is why it is so important that everything which can strive towards spirituality should really do so. Everything which opposes spirituality will be there, for this does not work in accordance with freedom but in accordance with determinism. This determinism is moving in the direction where Sorat will be loose again at the end of this century, when a striving to sweep away everything spiritual will be present in the intentions of a large number of earth souls, whom the Apocalypticer prophetically sees with their bestial faces and their strength of a tiger with respect to the execution of their adversarial deeds against the spiritual. Outbursts of rage against the spiritual are already here today: but they are only the first seeds.

And so we see, if the Apocalypticer saw all of that, and he did see it, for he saw that the true unfolding of Christianity is a sun event, and he saw the development of this abominable possession by sun demons. That hovered before him. And the entry of Michael into the spiritual evolution of humanity at the end of the 19th century and the appearance of the etheric Christ in the first half of the 20th century, will be followed by the appearance of the sun demon before the end of this century. We are living in the Michael age, and if we want to work in the theological field, in religion, we have every reason to learn how to think and feel in an apocalyptic way, especially from the Apocalypse, and not to remain stuck to the mere outer facts but to raise ourselves to the spiritual impulses which stand behind them.

The path is being prepared for the entry of demons who are the followers of the great Sorat demon. For instance, one only has to speak to intelligent people who know, something about the starting point of the world war. No one will object if one says that almost all of the 40 or so people who were responsible for the outbreak of this world war had a dulled consciousness at the moment when it broke out. However, this is always a portal for Ahrimanic, demonic powers to enter. One of the greatest of these is Sorat. These are the attempts from Sorat's side to at least temporarily penetrate human consciousnesses and to wreak havoc and confusion. What is striven for by the Soratic spirits who are pressing into the soul of humanity is not the world war, but what followed it; this is terrible and will become ever more terrible, for instance, look at the present condition of Russia.

We must know that this is the case, for what has the work of priests signified during the ages when true spirituality was on the earth? Never anything else than a standing in the spiritual world with full consciousness and a dealing with the world of gods, and not just a working within earth events. This was the spirit in which the Apocalypticer wrote his Apocalypse. Anyone who wants to lead men into the spiritual must see into the spiritual. Every age must do this in its own way. We only have to look at the inner lawfulness—which no doubt in a somewhat externalized way—makes the succession of Egyptian pharaohs look so logical, and we will see that these pharaohs didn't follow each other in an accidental way, but that each one in the line had his task spelled out for him in ancient writings, and that the impulse for the formulation of his task proceeded from what was later called the revelation of Hermes, although this distorts the Egyptian nomenclature somewhat. This Hermetic revelation was not the one we know today, for this wisdom belongs to the great mysteries where one could speak of revelation as a threefold, holy one—a revelation from the Father, a revelation from the Son and a revelation from the Holy Spirit. All of this points to the fact that it was always a question for the priesthood everywhere of working out of the spirit and into the material world, and this was also the way everyone looked upon the priesthood.

This must become an impulse for priests again, after work out of the spiritual world could not be felt as a reality for a while. People were very far removed from being able to grasp something like the mystery of transubstantiation and therewith the spiritual secrets of Christianity through the education and culture which had gradually been accepted by humanity in the consciousness soul age, and which had taken on such materialistic forms in all fields. For individuals who had to work in a priestly way it was really a kind of a lie with respect to this culture of the age to speak about the deep mystery contents which are connected with something like the transubstantiation. This resulted in the rationalistic discussions about transubstantiation which began during the second Soratic attack and which continued until the third Soratic attack. It's pointless to just give commentaries on the Apocalypse and to make remarks about it. It only makes sense if one becomes an Apocalypticer oneself through this Apocalypse and if one begins to understand one's age through this process of becoming an Apocalypticer to such an extent that one can make the impulses of this age into impulses for one's own work.

However here present-day human beings, including people who are active as priests, must look at the rise of Michael in the seventies of the last century, at the appearance of Christ in the first half of the 20th century and at the threatening rise of Sorat and the Soratians at the end of the 20th century. Let us arrange our lives in accordance with these three mysteries of our time, the Michael mystery, the Christ mystery and the Sorat mystery as understanding human beings who know how to interpret the signs of our time, and we will be able to work in the right way in the field into which karma has led us, as for instance, the priest in his priestly field. We will go on from here tomorrow.

We are transported to Rammenau in Upper Lusatia, a place near Kamenz where Lessing was born. 1769, to be precise. A relatively small house stands by a stream. It is known that the ribbon weaving trade has been hereditary in the family since the time of the Thirty Years' War. The house was not exactly prosperous, but rather quite poor. A stream flows past the little house, and by the stream stands a seven-year-old boy, relatively small, rather stocky for his age, with rosy cheeks and lively eyes that are currently filled with deep sorrow. The boy has just thrown a book into the stream. The book floats away. The father comes out of the house and says something like the following to the boy: Gottlieb, what were you thinking of! You throw into the water something your father bought at great expense to give you great joy! The father was very angry because he had given the book to Gottlieb the other day as a gift, to the boy who until then had learned nothing from books except what one can learn from the Bible and the hymnbook.

What had actually happened? Young Gottlieb had absorbed what he had been given from the Bible and the hymnal with great inner strength, and he was a boy who had studied well at school. His father wanted to give him a treat and one day bought him 'Siegfried and the Horned One' as a present. The boy Gottlieb immersed himself completely in reading 'Siegfried and the Horned One', and as a result he was scolded for his forgetfulness and inattention with regard to everything he had been interested in before, with regard to his schoolwork. This upset the boy. He had grown so fond of his new book, 'Siegfried of the Horns', and took such a deep interest in it. But on the other hand, the thought was vividly present in his mind: 'You have neglected your duty!' Such were the thoughts of the seven-year-old boy. So he went to the stream and threw the book into the water without further ado. He received his punishment because he was able to tell his father the facts and what he had done, but not the real reason for it.

We follow the boy Gottlieb in this age into other life situations. We see him, for example, far from his parents' house, standing outside on a lonely pasture, from four o'clock in the afternoon, gazing into the distance, completely absorbed in the view of the distance that was spread around him. He is still standing there at five, still standing there at six, still standing there when the bells ring for prayer. And the shepherd comes and sees the boy standing there. He pokes him and makes him aware that he should go home with him.

Two years after the event we have just assumed, in 1771, Baron von Miltitz is staying with the landowner in Rammenau. He wanted to come there from his own estate in Oberau on a Sunday to have lunch and to socialize with his neighbors. He also wanted to hear the sermon beforehand. But he arrived too late and was unable to hear the Rammenau preacher, whom he knew to be a decent man. The sermon was already over. He was very sorry about that, and his regret was discussed many times among the guests, the innkeeper and the others gathered. Then they said: Yes, but there is a boy in the village who can perhaps repeat the sermon; they know about this boy. And now nine-year-old Gottlieb was fetched. He came in his blue peasant's smock, they asked him a few questions, and he answered them briefly with yes and no. He felt very little at home in the distinguished company. Then someone suggested that he repeat the sermon he had just heard. He gathered himself together and, with deep inward inspiration and the most heartfelt participation in every word, he repeated the sermon he had heard from beginning to end to his landlord's estate neighbor. And he repeated it so that one had the feeling that everything he said came directly from his own heart; he had absorbed it so completely that it was all his own. With inner fire and warmth, growing ever more fiery and warm, nine-year-old Gottlieb presented the entire sermon.

This nine-year-old Gottlieb was the son of Christian Fichte, the ribbon weaver. The lord of the manor of Miltitz was amazed at what he had experienced in this way, and said that he must ensure the further development of this boy. And the acceptance of such a concern had to be something extraordinarily welcome to the parents because of their meager external circumstances, although they loved their boy dearly. For Gottlieb had many brothers and sisters, and the family had grown quite large. The baron's offer of help was most welcome. The baron was so touched by Gottlieb's story that he wanted to take the nine-year-old boy with him immediately. He took Gottlieb to Oberau near Meissen. But young Gottlieb did not feel at home there at all, in the big house that was so different from what he had been used to in his poor ribbon weaver's cottage. In all the grandeur, he felt utterly unhappy. So he was given to a pastor named Leberecht Krebel in nearby Niederau. And there Gottlieb grew up in a loving environment, with the excellent pastor Leberecht Krebel. He immersed himself in everything that shimmered through the conversations that the brave pastor had with the exceptionally talented boy. And when Gottlieb was thirteen years old, he was accepted at Schulpforta with the support of his benefactor.

Now he was plunged into the strict discipline of Schulpforta. This discipline did not particularly appeal to him. He realized that the way the pupils lived together made it necessary to practice some secrecy and some cunning in their behavior toward the teachers and educators. He was completely dissatisfied with the way older boys were placed there as “senior companions,” as they were called, for the younger boys. Even at that time, Gottlieb had absorbed “Robinson” and many other stories. At first, school life had become unbearable for him. He could not reconcile it with his heart that somewhere where one should grow towards the spiritual world, he felt, there was concealment, cunning, deception. What to do? Well, he decided to go out into the wide world. He set out and just went through. On his way, the thought comes to him, deeply carried by feeling: Have you done right? Are you allowed to do this? Where does he go for advice? He falls to his knees, says a pious prayer and waits until some inner hint is given to him from the spiritual worlds as to what he should do. The inner hint was that he turned back. He turned back voluntarily. It was a great stroke of luck that there was an extraordinarily loving headmaster there, Rector Geisler, who let the young Gottlieb tell him the whole story and who had a deep inner sympathy for Gottlieb; who did not punish him, who even put him in a position that young Gottlieb could now be much more satisfied with himself and his surroundings than he could actually only wish for. And so he was also able to join the most talented teachers.

His aspirations were not easily satisfied. The young Gottlieb, who already longed for the highest at this age, was not actually allowed to read what he had previously heard about by hearsay: Goethe, Wieland, but especially Lessing, were at that time forbidden reading in Schulpforta. But there was a teacher who was able to give him a remarkable reading: Lessing's “Anti-Goeze”, that pamphlet against Goeze, which is supported by inner strength and contains everything that Lessing had to offer as his creed in a high, but free-minded way of thinking, in a free and frank language.

Thus Gottlieb absorbed at a relatively young age what he could from this “Anti-Goeze”. Not only did he appropriate the ideas – that would have been the very least for him – the young Gottlieb also adopted the style, the way of relating to the highest things, the way of finding one's way into a worldview.

And so he grew up in Schulpforta. When he had to write his final examination paper, he chose a literary topic. A strange final paper. It lacked what many young people do: they intersperse their schoolwork with all sorts of philosophical ideas. Nothing of philosophy, nothing of philosophical ideas and concepts was found in this final paper. On the other hand, it was already evident in it that the young man set out to observe people, to look at them into their innermost hearts, and strove for knowledge of human nature. This was particularly evident in this school assignment.

Now, in the meantime, the charitable Baron von Miltitz had died. The generous support that had been offered to the young Gottlieb, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, dried up. Fichte took his school-leaving examination at Schulpforta, went to Jena and had to live there in deepest poverty. He could not participate in any of the student life that was then in Jena. He had to work hard from day to day to earn what he needed for bare survival. And he could only devote a few hours to nourishing his deeply aspiring mind. Jena proved to be too small. Johann Gottlieb Fichte could not support himself there. He thought he would fare better in Leipzig, a larger city. There he tried to prepare for the position that was the ideal of his father and mother, who were devout people: a Saxon parish, a preaching position. He had, I might say, shown himself to be predestined for such a preaching post. He could become so absorbed in the traditions of Scripture that he was repeatedly asked to give short reflections on this or that Bible passage, even in his father's house. He was also asked to do this when he was with the brave pastor Leberecht Krebel. And whenever he was able to spend a short time at home, in the place where his parents' modest house stood, he was allowed to preach there, because the local pastor liked him. And he preached in such a way that what he was able to say was the biblical word in an independent but thoroughly biblical way, as if carried by a holy enthusiasm.

So he wanted to prepare for his rural theological profession in Leipzig. But it was difficult. It was difficult for him to get a teaching position that he thought he could fill. He worked as a tutor and a private teacher. But this life became hard for him. And above all, he was unable to really advance spiritually during this life. He was already twenty-six years old. It was a hard time for him. One day he had nothing left and no prospect of getting anything in the next few days; no prospect that, if things went on like this, he would ever be able to achieve even the most modest profession he had set his mind to. He could only be supported by his parents in the most frugal way; as I said before, it was a family blessed with many children.

Then one day he stood before the abyss, and the question arose like a wild temptation before his soul: No prospect for this life? — He might not have fully realized it, but in the depths of his consciousness, self-chosen death lurked. Then the poet Weisse, who had become a friend of his, came at the right time. He offered him a position as a private tutor in Zurich and made sure that he could actually take up this position in three months. And so, from the fall of 1788, we find our Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Zurich. Let us try to follow him with the gaze of the soul, as he stands in the pulpit of Zurich Cathedral, now completely filled with his own understanding of the Gospel of John, already completely filled with the endeavor to express in his own way that which is expressed in the Bible. So that when one heard his inspiring words resound in the Zurich cathedral, one could believe that someone had stood up who was able to pour the Bible into a completely new word in a completely new way, as if through a new inspiration. Many who heard him in the Zurich cathedral at the time certainly had this impression.

And then we follow him into another phase of his life. He became a tutor in the Ott household, at the “Zum Schwert” inn in Zurich. He only to a small extent submitted to the peculiar prejudiced view that was held of him there. He got on well with his pupils, less well with their parents. And we sense what Fichte is from the following. One day, the mother of the pupils received a strange letter from the tutor. What did this letter say? It said, roughly, that education was a task to which he – he meant himself, Johann Gottlieb Fichte – would gladly submit. And what he knew about the pupils and had learned from them gave him the certainty that he could do a great deal with them. But the education must be taken up at a certain point; above all, the mother must be educated. For a mother who behaves like that towards her child is the greatest obstacle to education in the home. I need not describe the strange feelings with which Frau Ott in Zurich read this document. But the matter was once again postponed. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was able to work in a blessed way in the Ott house in Zurich until the spring of 1790, so for more than a year and a half.

But Fichte was not at all suited to confine what his soul embraced to his profession. He was not at all suited to turn his gaze away from what was going on in the intellectual culture around him. He grew into what was going on spiritually around him through the inner zeal and the inner interest he took in everything that was going on in the world around him. Yes, he grew into all of it. In Switzerland, he grew into the thoughts that filled the minds of all people at the time, thoughts that were passed on from the erupting French Revolution. I would like to say that we can eavesdrop on him as he discusses with a particularly talented person in Olten the questions that were occupying France and the world in such a significantly intervening way at the time; how he found that these were the ideas should now be pursued; how he incorporated everything that occupied him internally, arising from his deep religiosity and keen intellect, into the ideas of human happiness, into the ideas of human rights, of lofty human ideals.

Fichte was not a solitary being who could only develop his soul rigidly out of his inner self. This soul grew together with the outside world. This soul felt, as if unconsciously, the duty of a human being not only to be for himself, but to stand as an expression of what the world wants in the time in which one lives. That was a deepest feeling, a deepest sentiment in Fichte. And so it was that at the very time when he was, one might say, most receptive to the growing together of his soul with what lived and breathed in his spiritual environment, he grew together with the Swiss element, and from this Swiss-German element we always find an influence in the whole of Fichte, as he later works and lives.

One must have an understanding of the profound difference between what lives in Switzerland and what, I would say, lives a little to the north in Germany if one wants to grasp the impression that Fichte's Swiss environment, Swiss humanity and human striving made on him. It differs, for example, essentially from other Germanic peoples in that it imbues everything that is spiritual life with a certain self-confident element, so that the whole cultural element takes on a political expression; that everything is thought in such a way that the person feels placed through the thought into direct action in the world. Art, science, literature, they stand as individual tributaries of the whole of life for this Swiss Germanic spirit.

This was what could also combine with Fichte's soul element in the most beautiful way. He was also a person who could not think any human activity or any human aspiration individually. Everything had to be integrated into the totality of human activity and human thought and human feeling and the whole human world view. In Fichte's work, what he could achieve was directly connected with his increasingly strong and powerful personality. Anyone who reads Fichte today, who engages with his writings, which often appear so dry in content, with the sparkling spirit of individual treatises, individual writings, will have no idea of what Fichte must have been like when he put all his inner fire, his inner presence in what he meant spiritually and what he had spiritually penetrated, into speech. Because what he was flowed into his speech. That is why he tried – it was a failed attempt – to found a school of rhetoric even back then in Zurich. For he believed that by the way the spiritual can be brought to people, one can indeed work in a completely different way than just through the content, however solid it may be.

Fichte also found a stimulating and soul-stirring relationship in Zurich, in the house of Rahn, a wealthy Swiss at the time, who was Klopstock's brother-in-law. And Fichte developed a deep affection for the daughter, Johanna Rahn. He was connected with Klopstock's niece by a close friendship that developed more and more into love. At first, the position as a private tutor in Zurich was no longer tenable. Fichte had to look further. He did not want to somehow become a member of the Rahn family and live off the Rahn family's funds, even though he was now, before he had made a name for himself in the world (he often spoke of this at the time). He wanted to continue to seek his path in the world; we must not say “his luck” when it comes to him, but rather “seeking his path in the world”.

He went back to Germany, to Leipzig. He thought he would stay there for a while; he hoped to find there what could be his real profession, to find that form of spiritual expression that he wanted to make his way in life. Then he wanted to return after some time to freely elaborate what he had united with his soul. Then something unexpected happened that changed all his plans for life. Rahn collapsed and lost all his wealth. Not only was he now tormented by the worry that the people he loved most had fallen into poverty, but he now had to take up his wanderer's staff and move on into the world, had to give up his favorite plans that had opened up to him from the depths of his soul.

Initially, a position as a private tutor in Warsaw presented itself to him. However, as soon as he arrived there and introduced himself, the aristocratess in whose house he was to enter found that the movements of Fichte, which were already then and later firmly and energetically found by some, were actually clumsy; that he had no talent at all for finding his way into any society. They let him know that. He could not bear that. So he left.

His path now led him to the place where he could first believe that he would find a person whom he held in the highest esteem among all the people not only of his own time but of the entire age, and whom he had approached after having been completely absorbed in the world view of Spinoza for a while ; a man whom he had approached by studying his writings, in which he had completely, completely found his way, so that, as the Bible or other writings had once stood before him, so now, in a very special new form, the writings of this man stood before him – namely Immanuel Kant. He made his way to Königsberg. And he sat at the feet of the great teacher and found himself completely absorbed in the way his soul could reflect what he considered to be the greatest teaching ever given to mankind. And in Fichte's soul, what lived in his soul out of his pious mind, out of his musings on the divine governance of the world and on the way in which the secrets of this governance have always been revealed to humanity, to the world, united with what he had learned and heard from Kant. And he developed the thoughts that arose in his soul into a work to which he gave the title “Critique of All Revelation”. Fichte was born in 1762, and was thirty years old when he wrote it. A strange thing happened at that time. Kant immediately recommended a publisher for the work that had so captivated him: “Critique of All Revelation.” The work went out into the world without the name of the author. No one thought it was anything but a work by Immanuel Kant himself. The good reviews flew in from all sides. This was unbearable for Fichte, who in the meantime, again through the mediation of Kant, had been offered a position as a private tutor in the excellent Krockow household, near Danzig, which he now found very appealing, where he could also freely pursue his intellectual endeavors. It was unbearable for him to appear before the world in such a way that when people spoke of his work, they actually meant someone else's. The first edition, soon out of print, was followed by a second, in which he named himself. Now, however, he had a strange experience. Now, to say almost the opposite of what one had said earlier was not possible, at least for a large number of critics; but one toned down the judgment one had had earlier. It was another piece of human knowledge that Fichte had acquired.

After he had spent some time in the Krockow house, he was able to make the plan, in the way he was now placed in the world, not outwardly, but spiritually - he had shown that he was capable of something - to go back to the Rahn house; only in this way he wanted to win Klopstock's niece for himself, now he could do it. And so he went back to Zurich again in 1793. Klopstock's niece became his wife.

Not only did he now continue to work in the deepest sense on what he had absorbed as Kantian ideas, but he also delved further into all that had already occupied him during his first stay in Zurich; he delved into the ideas of human goals and human ideals that were now going around the world. And he wove together the way he himself had to think about human endeavor and human ideals with what was now going through the world. And he was such an independent nature that he could not help but tell the world what he had to think about what the most radical natures were now thinking about human progress. “Contributions to the Correction of the Public's Judgments of the French Revolution” was the book that appeared in 1793.

At the same time as he was working on this book, he was constantly working on the ideas of the world view that he had gained from the Kantian world view. There must be a Weltanschhauung, he said to himself, which, starting from a supreme impulse for human knowledge, could illuminate all knowledge. And this Weltanschhauung, which asks about the highest in such a way that one could never find a higher for knowledge, that was Fichte's ideal.

In a strange way, the circumstances are linked. While he was still busy with the inner elaboration of his ideas, he received a letter from Jena, from Jena-Weimar. Such an impression had been made there by what Fichte had achieved that, when Karl Leonhard Reinhold left the University of Jena, Fichte was invited to take up the professorship of philosophy on the basis of what he had achieved. Those who were involved in the intellectual life of the University of Jena at the time greeted the idea of bringing this spirit, who on the one hand seemed to them to be a sparkling mind, but on the other hand, especially in matters of world view, to be striving for the highest, with the greatest satisfaction.

And now let us try to visualize him as the administrator of the teaching position that has been taken up. What had emerged as his Weltanschauung he wanted to convey to those who were now his pupils, starting from the year 1794. But Fichte was not a teacher like others. Let us first look at what had emerged in his soul. It is not possible to express this directly in his words – that would take too long – but it can be characterized entirely from his spirit. He was searching for a supreme being, one with whom the human spirit could grasp the stream of the world, the secret of the world, at one point, where the spirit was directly one with this stream of the world, with this secret of the world. So that man, by looking into this secret of the world, could connect his own existence with this secret, could thus know it. This could not be found in any external sensual existence. No eye, no ear, no other sense, no ordinary human mind could find it. For everything that can be seen with the senses externally must first be combined by the human mind; it has its being in the external world; one can only call it being if one's being is, so to speak, confirmed by what one observes with one's senses. That is not true being. At least, we cannot form any judgment at all about the true being of that which presents itself only to the senses. The source of all knowledge must arise from the innermost part of the I itself. But this cannot be a finished being, for a finished being within would be the same as that which is given to the outer senses as a finished being. It must be a creating being. That is the I itself, the I that creates itself anew every moment; the I that is not based on a finished existence but on an inner activity; the I that cannot be deprived of existence because its existence consists in its creating, in its self-creating. And into this self-creating flows everything that has true existence. So out of all sensory existence with this ego, and into the spheres where spirit surges and weaves, where spirit works as creativity! To grasp this spiritual life and activity where the ego is united with the spiritual activity and weaving of the world; to interpenetrate with that which is not external, finished existence, but what the ego creates out of the source of the divine life of the world, first as ego, and then as that which is the ideals of humanity, what the great ideas of duty are.

This was how Kantian philosophy had become embedded in Fichte's soul. And so he did not want to present his listeners with a finished doctrine; that was not what mattered to him. Fichte's lectures were not like any other lecture; his teachings were not like any other teaching. No, when this man stood at his lectern, what he had to say there, or rather, what he had to do there, was the result of long hours of meditation, during which he felt that he was inwardly immersed in the divine being, in the divine spiritual weaving and working that permeates and flows through the world, in a state that was elevated above all sensual being. After long inner communion with himself, in which he had communed with the world-spirit of the soul concerning the secrets of the world, he went forth to his listeners. But it was not his intention to impart what he had to impart, but to spread a common atmosphere from himself over his listeners. What mattered to him was that what had come to life in his soul through the secrets of the world should also come to life directly in the souls of his listeners. He wanted to awaken spiritual life, awaken spiritual being. He wanted to draw out of the souls of his listeners self-creative spiritual activity by making them cling to his words. He did not merely impart. What he wanted to give his listeners was something like the following. One day, when he wanted to illustrate this self-creative aspect of the ego — how all thinking activity can become in the ego and how man cannot come to a real understanding of the secrets of the world other than by grasping this self-creative aspect in the ego — as he was grasping the spiritual world with his listeners, as it were leading each spiritual hand into the spiritual world, 'wanted to achieve this, he said, for example: “Imagine a wall, my listeners!” Now, I hope you have now thought of a wall. The wall is now as a thought, as an idea in your soul. Now imagine the one who thinks the wall. Completely abandon all thought of the wall. Think only of the one who is thinking the wall!

Some listeners became restless, but at the same time, in the deepest part of their being, they were seized by the direct way, by the direct relationship in which Fichte wanted to place himself in relation to his listeners. The spirit from Fichte's soul was to grasp the spirit in his listeners.

And so the man worked for years, never giving the same lecture twice, always creating and reshaping it anew. For that was not what mattered to him, to communicate this or that in sentences, but to always awaken something new in his listeners. And he repeated again and again: “What matters is not that what I say or what I have to say should be repeated by this or that person, but that I should succeed in kindling in souls such flames which will become the cause for each person to become a self-thinker; that no one says what I have to say, but that each person is inspired by me to say what he himself has to say. Fichte did not want to educate students, but to educate self-thinkers. If we follow the history of Fichte's influence, we can understand that this most German of German philosophers did not actually educate any students of philosophy; he did not found a school of philosophy. Energetic men emerged everywhere from this direct relationship that he established with his students.

Now, Fichte was aware – and indeed had to be aware, since he wanted to lead the consciousness of man to the point of directly grasping the creative spiritual reality – that he had to speak in a very special way. Fichte's whole manner was difficult to grasp. Basically, all those who somehow participated in his way of teaching had not yet heard anything like what he practiced in Jena at the time. Even Schiller was astonished at this, and to Schiller he once spoke about the way in which he actually imagined his work in his own consciousness, for example as follows: When people read what I say, they cannot possibly understand what I actually want to say the way they read today. He then took one of his books and tried to read aloud what he thought was necessary to express what he wanted to say. He then said to Schiller: “You see, people today cannot recite inwardly. But because what is contained in my periods can only be brought out through true inward recitation, it just does not come out.

Of course, Fichte brought out something quite different from his own periods. What he spoke was spoken language. Therefore, even today, Fichte should be sought in the center of all the soul life to which one can devote oneself as the soul life of the whole German people; even today one should still have the effort to take in, with inner declamation, with inner listening, what otherwise seems so dry and so sober in Fichte.

Thus, as we let Fichte's intellectual development pass before our soul, we stand, as it were, on one of the intellectual summits of his being. And our gaze may well wander back to this remarkable intellectual journey.

We have visited Johann Gottlieb Fichte as he stood before Baron von Miltitz in his blue peasant's smock, a true red-cheeked, stocky peasant child, with no education other than a peasant child could have, but such that this education was already the innermost property of the soul in the nine-year-old. We have here an example of how a soul grows out of the German people, entirely out of the German people, which at first receives nothing but what lives within this German people, lives in the direct way of life of this people. We follow this soul through difficult circumstances, this soul, which is actually regarded as an ideal in the people, but must remain in the people, but must be left to the innermost impulse, the innermost drive of its being. We follow this soul as it rises to the highest heights of human inner activity, work, as it becomes a human shaper in the way we have just been allowed to describe it. We follow the path that a German soul can take, which grows directly out of the people and rises to the highest heights of spiritual being only through its own strength.

Fichte continued his teaching post in Jena until the spring of 1799. There had been all sorts of disagreements before then. For Fichte was certainly not a person who was easy to get along with, a person who would be inclined to make all sorts of detours in life and to make all sorts of soft gestures in his behavior towards people in order to make it easy to get along with him. But one important thing emerges that is significant for German life at that time.

The one person who was particularly pleased – and who agreed with Goethe on this point – was Karl August, who was able to appoint Fichte to his university in Jena. And I believe one can safely say, as an example of Karl August's complete lack of prejudice, that he appointed to his university the man who had applied Kantian philosophy to revelation in the freest way possible, but not only that – he appointed to his university the man who had advocated the freest humanistic goals in the freest, most unreserved way. I believe that one would not do justice to Karl August, this great mind, if one did not point out the high degree of lack of prejudice that this German prince needed at the time to appoint Fichte. A daring act, Goethe called this call. But I would like to say that Karl August and Goethe, who above all were and had to be the soul of this call, took it upon themselves to bring Fichte to Jena against a world of prejudice. I say it would almost be a wrong not to draw attention to the degree to which Karl August's lack of prejudice had developed. And for this purpose, I would like to read a sentence from Fichte's book, which is entitled “Contributions to the Correction of the Opinions of the Public on the French Revolution”: “They” – he means the princes of Europe, including the princes of Germany – “who are mostly educated in inertia and ignorance , or if they know anything, they know a truth expressly fabricated for them; they, who are known not to work on their education once they come to rule, who read no new writing except perhaps some watery sophistries, and who are always, at least during their years of rule, behind their age... .” That was in the last book that Fichte had written – and Karl August summoned this man to his university.

If you delve a little into the whole situation in which Fichte and those who appointed him found themselves, you come to the conclusion that the people who were of the mindset of the great, liberal-minded Karl August and Goethe actually waged a campaign against those who were in their immediate environment and who agreed with the appointment of Fichte as little as possible. And it was a campaign that was not at all easy to undertake, because, as I said, making a scene in the sense that one likes to make a scene in the world was not possible with Fichte. Fichte was a person who, through his crookedness, through his brusqueness, hurt everyone whom one would actually like to not hurt. Fichte was not a person who made a soft movement with his hand. Fichte was a person who, when something was not right for him, made his thrusts into the world with his fist. The way in which Fichte, with his full strength at the time, put what he had to tell the world into the world was not easy for Goethe and Karl August; it was very difficult for them, they groaned a little under it.

And so little by little the thunderstorms drew up. Fichte, for example, wanted to give lectures on morality, lectures that were printed as “Lectures on Morality for Scholars.” He found no hour but Sunday. But that was terrible for all those who believed that Sunday would be desecrated if one were to speak about morality in Fichte's sense to students in Jena on Sunday. And all manner of complaints were made to the Weimar government, to Goethe, but also to Karl August. The entire Jena Senate of Professors expressed the opinion that it caused an enormous stir and discord when Fichte held moral lectures at the university on Sundays – and he had in any case chosen the hour when the afternoon service was held. Karl August had to give way to Fichte's opponents in this matter, too, I would say first. But it would not be good if it were not made clear today how he had done it. Karl August wrote to the University of Jena at the time:

“We have therefore resolved, at your request, that the aforementioned Professor Fichte should only be allowed to continue his moral lectures on Sundays, in the hours after the end of the afternoon service, as a last resort.” The decree explicitly referred to the fact that “something as unusual as giving lectures on Sundays during the hours set aside for public worship” had occurred. But in issuing this decree, Karl August could not avoid adding the words: “We have gladly satisfied ourselves that if Fichte's moral lectures are similar to the excellent essay attached to this, they can be of excellent use.” But it continued to bother people. One could say that the opponents did not let up. And so it came about in 1799 that there was that unfortunate atheism dispute, as a result of which Fichte had to resign his teaching position in Jena. Forberg, a younger man, had written an essay in the journal that Fichte published at the time, which had been accused of atheism from a certain point of view. Fichte thought that the young man had been imprudent in what he had written, and he wanted to make a few marginal notes on it. But Forberg did not agree with this. And Fichte, in his free manner, which he not only used in the big things but in the smallest details, did not want to reject the essay just because he did not agree with it. He also did not want to make marginal notes against the will of the author. But he sent ahead an essay of his own, “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine World Government.” It contained words that were steeped in true, sincere worship of God and piety, words that may be said to have been elevated to the most spiritual level, but elevated to the most spiritual level, to that spiritual, of which Fichte wanted to say that it is the only real thing; that one can grasp reality only if one feels oneself with one's ego moving in the spiritual, standing in the spiritual current of the world. One must then grasp the existence of God not through some external revelation or external science, but in the living activity and weaving. One must grasp the creation of the world by flowing within it, creating oneself unceasingly and thereby giving oneself its eternity.

But Fichte's essay was accused of atheism all the more. It is impossible to recount this dispute, this accusation of atheism, in full detail. It is basically terrible to see how Goethe and Karl August had to take sides against Fichte against their will; but how Fichte cannot be dissuaded, now, I would like to say, from striking out with his fist when he believes that he has to push through what he has to push through. So it comes about that Fichte hears that they want to do something against him, want to reprimand him. Goethe and Karl August would have liked nothing better than to have been able to give this reprimand. Fichte said to himself: To accept a reprimand for what one has to scoop out of the innermost sources of human knowledge would be to violate one's honor - not the honor of the person, but the honor of the spiritual endeavor. And so he first wrote a private letter to the minister Voigt in Weimar, which was then put on file, in which he said: He would never allow himself to be reprimanded; no, he would rather resign. And when Fichte wrote about things of this nature, he wrote as he spoke. It was said: He spoke cuttingly when it was necessary. So he also wrote cuttingly – to everyone, whoever it was. There was no other way to avoid a complete collapse in Jena than to accept the resignation that Fichte had not actually offered, because a private letter had been put on record. So it came about that Fichte had to leave his very beneficial teaching post in Jena in this way.

We see him soon after that appearing in Berlin. We see him there appearing, now grasping the standing of the ego in the weaving and ruling world spirit from a new side: “The Destiny of Man” he wrote at that time. But he wrote it in such a way that he put his whole being, his whole nature, into this work. In this work he wanted to show how those who only look at the world of the senses from the outside, and only combine it with the intellect, lead to a world view that is without substance. How this only leads to a dream of life is the content of the first part. How to get away from seeing the world as a chain of external necessities is the content of the second part. And the content of the third part of 'The Destiny of Man' is the examination of what happens to the soul when it tries to grasp in its inner being that which creates the inner life, and which is thereby not only an imprint but a co-creation in the great creation of all world existence. After finishing the work, Fichte wrote to his wife, whom he had left behind in Jena at the time: “I have never had such a deep insight into religion as when I completed this work ‘The Destiny of Man’.”

With a brief interlude in 1805, during which he stayed at the University of Erlangen, Fichte then spent the rest of his life in Berlin, first giving private lectures in a wide variety of homes, lectures that were very forceful; later he was called to help at the newly founded university, which we will talk about in a moment.

I said that, with a brief interlude in Erlangen, he had now returned to Berlin. For what he had to give people was something he was always drawing from his soul, and casting anew in ideal form. In Erlangen, he presented his scientific theory and his world view with great zeal. It is strange that while he had an increasing number of listeners when he began his lectures in Jena, and the same was true in Berlin, the audience in Erlangen halved during the semester. Well, we know how professors usually accept this decrease; anyone who has experienced this knows that it is simply accepted. This was not the case with Fichte. When the number of students in Erlangen had fallen by half, he spoke out – admittedly only to those who were present, not to those who had left, but he assumed that they would find out – and delivered one of those thunderous speeches in which he made it clear to the people that if they did not want to hear what he had to say to them, they would only be open to external historical knowledge, not to reasonable knowledge. And after he had added what man becomes in life if, as a spiritual seeker, he does not want to acquire this reasonable knowledge, he said: “The time in which I read? I have indeed heard how little satisfaction there is with the choice of the hour. I do not want to take this too strictly, concluding from principles that actually go without saying and that would have to be applied here. I just want to consider those who are affected to be ill-informed and report it better. They may say that it has always been this way. If this were true, I would have to reply that the university has always been in a very poor state... I myself have a similar college to this one in Jena, where I read to hundreds of people from 6-7 o'clock in the summer and winter, which used to get very crowded towards the end. I just have to say: when I arrived here, I chose this hour because there was no other left. Since I have recognized the way of thinking about it, I will choose it with care and do so in the future. The reason for all these abuses is that there is a deep inability to deal with oneself, and a wealth of shallowness and boredom when, after lunch has been consumed at 12 o'clock, one can no longer stand in the city. And if you were to prove to me – which, I hope, cannot be done – that this has been the custom in Erlangen since its founding, that it is the custom throughout Franconia, indeed throughout southern Germany, I will not shy away from replying that, accordingly, Erlangen and Franconia and all of southern Germany must be the home of shallowness and lack of spirit.” He delivered a thunderous speech. You can think of such a thunderous speech as you like, but it is genuinely Fichtian, Fichtian in the way that Fichte wanted to be in it and always was in it in what he wanted to bring to people spiritually; that Fichte did not just want to say something with what he said, but to do something for the souls, to reach the souls. Therefore, every soul that stayed away was a real loss, not for him, but for what he wanted to achieve for humanity. For Fichte, action was the word. He was rooted in the spiritual world, and this enabled him to stand with others in the spiritual world at the same time as in a common spiritual atmosphere; that he really did not just theoretically advocate the proposition: the outer sense world is not the real thing, but the spirit, and the one who knows the spirit also sees the spiritual being behind all sense being.

For him, this was not just theory, but a practical reality, so that later in Berlin the following could happen: He had gathered his audience in his lecture room. The lecture room was near the Spree Canal. Suddenly, a terrible message came: children, including Fichte's boy, had been playing down below, a boy had fallen into the water, and it was said to be Fichte's son. Fichte set out with another friend, and while the audience were all standing around, the boy was pulled out of the water. The boy looked very much like Fichte's son, but he was not. For a moment, however, Fichte had to believe that it was his son. The child was pulled out of the water dead. He took care of the child. Those who know what a close family life there was in Fichte's house between Fichte, his wife Johanna and their only son, who remained the only one, know what Fichte went through in that moment: the greatest horror he could have gone through, and the transition from the greatest personal horror to the greatest personal joy when he could take his son back in his arms. Then he went into an adjoining room, changed his clothes and continued his two-hour lecture in the way he had always given lectures before, completely immersed in the subject.

But not only that. Fichte often provided examples of such engagement in intellectual life. For example, during his time in Berlin, we find him giving lectures that were supposed to be a critique of the contemporary era, a severe indictment of this era. He took a similar approach when reviewing the individual eras of history. That alone, in which he lived, he said, was the one in which selfishness had reached its highest point. And into this age of selfishness he found himself placed as the one who embodied selfishness in the person of Napoleon. Fichte basically never thought of himself as anything other than the opponent in spirit to Napoleon at that time, while the Napoleonic chaos was descending on Central Europe. And there is one characteristic of Napoleon which may be said of him: in the image of the man of Germanic stock, in the blue coat, which was the image of the peasant boy as described earlier, there arose an image of Napoleon, which was just as much the product of the most profound Germanic strength and Germanic outlook as it was of the highest philosophical view of life. We have arrived at a time in human existence, as Fichte said, when we have lost the realization that the spirit and spiritual essence pulsates through the world and also through human life, runs through human development, and that man is only of value in the course of history to the extent that he is carried by what is preserved of moral impulses, of moral world order from epoch to epoch. But they know nothing of this. We have arrived at an age in which we see generation after generation in the world appearing like links in a chain. The best have forgotten, as Fichte said, what must run through these chain links as a moral worldview. Napoleon has been placed in this world. A source of tremendous power, but a human being, as Fichte said, in whose soul individual images of freedom can be found, but never a real idea, a real concept of true, comprehensive freedom, as it works from epoch to epoch in the moral ideal of human beings, in the moral world order. And from this fundamental defect, that a personality which is only a shell, which has no soul-core, can develop such power, from this phenomenon Fichte derived the personality and the whole misfortune, as he said, of Napoleon.

If we compare Fichte, the most powerful German world-view man with his idea of Napoleon, and Napoleon himself, then, in order to make the whole situation clear, we must refer to a saying of Napoleon's, which, as is told, he did on St. Helena after his fall, because it is only through this that the whole situation is fundamentally illuminated: everything, everything would have gone. I would not have fallen against all the powers that rose up against me. There was only one thing I did not reckon with, and that actually brought about my downfall: the German ideologues! Let the little minds talk about the ideology of this or that, this self-knowledge of Napoleon's weighs, I think, more than anything one might want to object to Fichte's idealism, which was, however, thoroughly practical.

That it is not difficult for an idealist like Fichte to be practical at times can be proved by Fichte himself, and in a truly historical way. It became necessary for him to join his father's business as a partner, after his brothers had taken it over. There he was, a partner in the ribbon-making business of his family. His parents were still alive. And now we can see how he fared as a partner in a ribbon-making business. He was a good, careful businessman who really was able to help his brothers, who remained pure business people, a lot. In the face of all those who say, “Ah, these idealists, they understand nothing of practical life, they are dreamers!” — Fichte, speaking from the very essence of his entire existence, was able to say, especially in the lectures he gave on “The Task of the Scholar,” words that must always be repeated in the face of those people who speak of the impracticality of ideals, of the impracticality of the spiritual world in general. When Fichte spoke about the destiny of the scholar, he said the following sentences in the preface: “That ideals cannot be represented in the real world, we know perhaps as well as they, perhaps better. We only claim that reality must be judged by them, and modified by those who feel the strength within themselves to do so. Even if they cannot be convinced of this, they lose very little by it, once they are what they are; and humanity loses nothing by it. It merely makes it clear that the plan for the ennoblement of humanity does not rely on them. The latter will undoubtedly continue on its way; let benign Nature rule over the former and give them rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment and undisturbed circulation of the fluids, and with that - wise thoughts, in due time!” This German man already knew about the meaning of ideals, and also about the meaning of practical life in the right sense. But Fichte was precisely this nature that was turned in on itself. One may call this one-sidedness, but such one-sidedness must appear in life from time to time, just as forces in life must act in such a way that they occasionally overshoot the mark, so that in overshooting the mark they achieve the right result.

Certainly, there was some harshness mixed into Fichte's behavior when he did not just want to give moral lectures to the people in Jena, but also wanted to practically fight all of the students' idleness, all of the drinking, all of the loafing around. He had already gained a certain following among the student body. In addition, a number of people had submitted a petition that this or that association, which was particularly idle, should be abolished. But he was a gruff character, he was a person who did not know how to make soft hand movements, but instead sometimes beat the air roughly with his fist – all of course meant symbolically. So then what happened was that a large part of the Jena student body was quite opposed to Fichte's practical moral effectiveness. And they got together and broke his windows. Which then prompted Goethe, who admired Fichte and was admired by Fichte, to the good joke: Well, that's the philosopher who traces everything back to the ego. It is indeed an uncomfortable way to be convinced of the existence of the non-ego when one's windows are broken; that's what you get for being the non-ego, its opposite!

But all this cannot be proof to us that Fichte's way of philosophizing was not in complete harmony with Goethe's way of philosophizing. And Fichte felt this deeply when, on June 21, 1794, soon after he had begun his lectures in Jena, he wrote to Goethe, sending him the proofs of his Theory of Knowledge: “I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative... (of the purest spirituality of feeling) at the present level of humanity. It is to you that philosophy rightly turns: your feeling is the same touchstone.” And Goethe writes to Fichte when he has received the Theory of Knowledge: ”There is nothing in what you have sent that I do not understand or at least believe I understand, nothing that does not readily follow from my usual way of thinking.” And Goethe continues along the following lines: I believe that you will be able to present to human souls in a proper way that which nature has always been in agreement with, but with which human souls must come to terms. And if today someone who finds that science, which Fichte had printed at the time, dry and un-Goethean, were to claim that Goethe had no sense for this matter, then one would have to reply to him as I did when I published Fichte's letters to Goethe in the Goethe Yearbook in 1894 at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv in Weimar. In the Goethe Schiller Archive, there are excerpts from Fichte's “Wissenschaftslehre” written by Goethe himself, where Goethe wrote down sentence by sentence the thoughts that came to him while reading Fichte's “Wissenschaftslehre”. And finally, one also understands how one of the most German of Germans, Goethe, at that time, out of the purest spirituality of feeling, out of which he sought a new world view, had to reach out to him who, out of reason-energy, as the most German of Germans at that time, sought a philosophical world view. Goethe once put it beautifully when he spoke of his relationship to Kant's philosophy. He said something like this, not literally, but completely in line with the meaning: Kant came along and said that by looking at the world, man could only have sensory knowledge. But sensory knowledge is merely an appearance, merely something that man himself brings into the world through his perception. Knowledge must be set aside; one can only come to freedom, to infinity, to an understanding of the divine-spiritual existence itself through a faith. And what one might undertake, not in order to arrive at a belief, but to arrive at an immediate beholding of the spiritual world, to a living and weaving of one's own creative activity in the creative activity of the divine world spirit, and which Kant believes one cannot undertake, of which Kant says it would be “the adventure of reason.” And Goethe says: Well, then one would have to dare to bravely endure this adventure of reason! And if one does not doubt the spiritual world, but believes in freedom and immortality, in God, why should one not bravely face this adventure of reason and, with the creator of the soul, be able to place oneself in the creative spirituality that pervades and interweaves the world, in the world itself? - Only in a different way from how Goethe wanted to face it, he still found it with Fichte.

And this urge towards spirituality, towards an understanding of the creative wisdom of the world, had to emerge one day, even if it was in a brusque manner, by the creative self experiencing itself as one with the creative world essence within it. And according to Fichte's view, this was to happen through his theory of knowledge. As we have been able to characterize it, it is a direct deed of the German people, for we see Fichte's soul growing up from the German people, and Fichte was aware that basically his philosophy was always a result of his lively interaction with the German national spirit. With that, the German national spirit has presented to the world what it itself had to say about the world and life and human goals. It presented itself in the way that it could only present itself, in that it happened at the first onset of such a rugged personality as Fichte was.

Fichte was not easy to deal with. For example, when the university was founded in Berlin and Fichte was to elaborate the plan, he formed an idea of the university and worked out the plan for this idea in great detail. But what did he want? He wanted to create something so fundamentally new at the University of Berlin, at that time at the beginning of the 19th century, that we may say, without any contradiction arising, that this new thing has not yet been realized anywhere in the world; that the world is still waiting for it to be realized. Of course, Fichte's plan has not been realized, although, as he put it, he wanted nothing more than to make the university an institute that meant “a school of the art of real use of the mind.” So it was not people who know this or that that were to come out of the university, who were philosophers or natural scientists or physicians or lawyers, but people who are so immersed in the overall structure of the world that they can fully master the art of using reason. Imagine what a blessing it would be if there were such a university somewhere in the world! If only an art school could be realized somewhere that would produce people who have brought their inner soul to life so that they can truly move freely in the essence of existence.

But this personality was not easy to handle; it was there to give history a powerful impetus. Fichte also became the second rector of the university. He took such an energetic approach to his job that he was only able to serve as rector for four months. Neither the students nor the authorities involved could stand what he wanted to implement for any longer. But all of this was forged out of German national character, just as it appeared in Fichte. For when he delivered his 'Speeches to the German Nation', about which I have already spoken here repeatedly, not only during the war but also before the war, as well as about the great phenomenon of Fichte in general, he knew that he wanted to tell the German people what he had, as it were, overheard through his meditative dialogue with the world spirit. He wanted nothing more than to stir in their souls that which can stir in the souls of men from the deepest source of Germanness. The way in which Fichte positioned himself in his time and in relation to those whom he wanted to move in the direction of a soul that was equal to the tasks of world existence was not, however, likely to make any impression on shallow, superficial people other than that of curiosity. But Fichte did not want to create that at all. Of course, it is always the easiest thing to do when something like Fichte's spirituality comes into the world, to make fun of it. Nothing is easier than to criticize, to make fun of it. People did that enough. That put Fichte in serious situations. For example, as soon as he came to the University of Jena, he was already in a rather serious situation because he could not really agree with those – well, they were also philosophers. For example, at the University of Jena there was the one who was the senior philosopher. His name was Schmid. He had spoken so disparagingly about what Fichte had achieved up to that point, even though Fichte was now to become his colleague, that it was actually shameful that Fichte was now to become his colleague. So Fichte said a few words in the journal in which Schmid had expressed himself. And so it went back and forth. Fichte actually took up his teaching post in Jena by having the Jena journal in which Schmid had written insert: “I declare that for me Mr. Schmid will no longer exist in the world.” — So he stood next to his colleague.

The situation was a serious one. A less serious, but no less significant one was this: a journal called “Der Freimütige” was published in Berlin at the time. Kotzebue, the “famous” German poet Kotzebue and yet another person were involved in publishing this journal, putting it together. It is actually impossible to find out - I really don't think even the most intimate clairvoyance could find out! what this Kotzebue actually wanted in Fichte's lectures back then. But only for a while could it not be found out. It later became clear because the most malicious attacks on Fichte's lectures appeared in the “Freimütigen”, which at the time was making itself quite important in Berlin. Fichte finally had enough. And lo and behold, he took a number of these “Freimütigen” and tore them apart in front of the audience, tearing them apart in such a way that he - which he could do - poured an invincible humor over what this “Freimütige” had to say. The face of one of the listeners, whose reason for attending was previously unknown, became longer and longer. And finally, Mr. Kotzebue stood up with a long face and declared that he no longer needed to listen to this! He then left and did not return. But Fichte was quite glad to be rid of him.

Yes, Fichte was already able to find a tone that directly grasped the situation, in the way he practically engaged with the life that he wanted to shape as the innermost life of human existence. Although he lived entirely in the spiritual world, he was not an unworldly idealist. He was a man who rested entirely on himself and who took with all seriousness what he found in himself as his essential nature. Therefore, at a certain time, when Napoleon had overcome Prussia and the French were in Berlin, he could not remain in Berlin. He did not want to be in the city that had been subjugated by the French. He went to Königsberg, and later to Copenhagen. He only returned when he wanted to appear as the German man who presented the innermost essence of his nationality, of being a nation, of his national character, to his fellow countrymen in the “Speeches to the German Nation”.

Fichte is rightly perceived as an immediate expression of German nationality, as the expression of that which, as spirit, always lives in our midst, insofar as we are able to grasp Germanness in its spirit, not only in thought, as a philosopher put it so beautifully, who as a philosopher was not at all in agreement agreement with Fichte, Robert Zimmermann, who said: “As long as a heart beats in Germany that can feel the shame of foreign domination, the memory of the brave will live on, who, in the moment of deepest humiliation, under the ruins of the collapsed monarchy of Frederick the Great, in the middle of French-occupied Berlin, occupied Berlin, in front of the eyes and ears of the enemies, among spies and informers, to raise the strength of the German people, broken from the outside by the sword, from the inside by the spirit, and to create it anew in the same moment that the political existence of the same seemed to be destroyed forever, through the inspiring idea of general education, undertook to recreate it in future generations.” Even today, I would like to reiterate that, with regard to the content of much of what is in the “Speeches to the German Nation” and indeed what is in Fichte's other writings, we may have to think quite differently. What is important is that we feel the German spirit flowing through its products, and the renewal of the German spirit with regard to its position in the universe, as it is given in the “Speeches to the German Nation”. That we feel this as the spirit that is in our midst and that we grasp it only in the one example of Fichte, through which he has placed himself in an admittedly initially remote way in the German development. This spirit wanted to place itself in the evolution of the world powerfully and energetically, but deeply inwardly. Therefore, even in the time when his twilight years were already approaching, Fichte found the opportunity, precisely in the most intimate way, to once again cast and renew his entire theory of knowledge, to meditate on it again, and to bring it to his Berlin audience in the fall of 1813, which he had grasped as his deepest thoughts. There he once again, in the manner described, seized the soul of his listeners, casting his gaze on how impossible it is for a person to come to understand existence and its reality without wanting to grasp this existence in the spirit, beyond all sensuality. But to those people who believe they see any true existence in the world of the senses and in what is formed only after the world of the senses, he called out in the lectures that belong to the last that Fichte spoke: “Their knowledge is lost in misunderstanding and empty words; and they praise themselves for it, and quite rightly find that it is so. Take seeing, for example: an image of an object is cast onto the retina. On the calm surface of the water, an image of the object is also reflected. So, in our opinion, does the surface of the water see? What is the added element that must come between this image and the actual seeing that is present with us, but not with the surface of the water? They do not even have a notion of this, because their sense does not go that far. A special sense, a new sense, Fichte says, must be realized within oneself if one wants to experience that being in the spirit that makes all other being comprehensible in the first place. “I am, and I am with all my goals only in a supersensible world!” This is one of the words that Fichte himself coined and which, like a leitmotif, runs through everything Fichte said throughout his life, which he reaffirmed in a different way that fall of 1813. And what was he talking about then? That people must become aware that one can never get behind true being in the way one sees things and the world in ordinary life and in ordinary science. One must become aware that a supersensible sense lives in every human being and that man can merge into a supersensible world, can live into this sense as a creator in his ego in the creative, weaving world spirit. It is, as Fichte says, as if a seeing person comes into a world of blind people and wants to make them understand the world of colors and forms, and the blind people refuse to believe him. Thus, the materialistically minded person, because he has no sense for it, denies the one who knows: I am, and I am in the supersensible world with all my goals and creations. And so Fichte impressed upon his listeners this being in the supersensible, this life in the spiritual, this handling of a supersensible-sensual that he said:

“The new sense is therefore the sense for the spirit; the one for which there is spirit, and nothing else at all, and to which the other, the given being, also takes on the form of the spirit, and is transformed into it, to which therefore being in its own form has indeed disappeared.”

It is a great thing that in this way the confession of the spirit has been made within the German development of thought, before those who wanted to seek what, in the highest sense, the German people have to say when they speak from the innermost part of their being. For it is through Fichte that the German people have spoken. And for Fichte more than for anyone else it is true that the German folk spirit at that stage, as it could speak, spoke to the German people.

Whether we look at him externally, this Fichte, or turn our soul's gaze to his soul, he always appears to us as the most direct expression of German nationality itself, of that which is not only present within Germanness at some time or other, but is always present; which, if only we know how to grasp it, is always among us. Precisely through what Fichte is, how he presents himself to us, presents himself so that we have his image vividly before our soul, we would like to see him, to listen to him in spirit when he creates an atmosphere that spreads between his soul and the soul of his listeners, that we want to be very close to him: that makes us feel we can feel him, I would like to say, like a legendary hero, like a spiritual hero, who, as a leader of his people, can always be seen in spirit if this people only understands him correctly. They can see him by vividly imagining him as one of their best spiritual heroes.

And today, in the age of action, when the German people must struggle for their existence in an incomparable way, the image of the one who , German character, from the highest point of view, but also in the most energetic, in a single way; to describe it in such a way that we can believe in him more than in any other: we have him directly among us when we understand him correctly. For everything in him is so very much of a piece, it presents itself so directly that he stands among us in all his liveliness as we contemplate him; whether the individual trait emerges from the totality of his being or whether we allow the most intimate sides of his soul to affect us, he stands before us as a whole. He cannot be grasped by us otherwise, otherwise he is grasped in a haphazard, superficial way.

Yes, he can be seen how he kindles in his people the soul's devotion to the life-giving powers of the world, working within the creator, how he rises with this soul to experience in the spirit, and how he integrates himself as life into the developmental progress of his people. One need only open the eye of the soul. He will not be understood if he is not understood in this vivid way. But if you open your soul's eye to the greatness of your people, then he is standing among us.

The way he sought to work differently from other teachers, by standing before his audience and not speaking but acting with his words, acting as if it mattered little to him what he said, because it was only meant to ignite the soul of the listener, because something should happen to the soul, something should be done, and because the souls should leave the hall differently than they entered it, — this has the very peculiar effect that he must become alive to us in the way he worked from the people into the people, and that we believe we hear him when he had heard in lonely meditation, by which he well prepared himself for every spoken lecture, what he had heard in his self-talk with the world spirit, now did not present to his listeners, but converted it into the word that is action, so that he released those to whom he had spoken as other people. They had become other people, but not through his power, but through the awakening and ignition of their own power. If we understand him correctly in this way, then we can believe that we hear him keenly, how he wants to grasp the spirit directly with his word, with the sharpness, with the sharp knife of his word, which he previously grasped in the soul, by placing, as has been said of him, not just good, but great people in the world through his care of the soul.

If you really bring to life what he was, you cannot help but hear his words, his words that seem to come from the spirit itself, which in this Fichte only made itself a tool to speak, to speak out of the spirit of the world itself, inspiring, awakening fire and warmth and light. His words were full of heartiness, and they drove courage forward. His words became spirited when they flowed through the ears into the souls and hearts of the listeners; they carried spiritedness out into the world when the fire that these words ignited in the souls of the listeners made these listeners, as we so often hear from those who were Fichte's contemporaries, go out into the world as the most capable men. If you open your spiritual ear, you can hear, if you understand Fichte at all, the one who speaks from the spirit of his people, directly as a contemporary. And whoever has an ear for such greatness of nation will hear it in the midst of us. And rarely will a spirit stand before us in such a way that we can follow everything that it is into every single act of life. Do we not see the duty, the moral world order, as he represented it at the height of his philosophy, when we see the boy, how he, at seven years old, because he has grasped the love for “Horned Siegfried” out of inclination, throws it into the water because he does not feel in harmony with his duties? Do we not see the pensive man preparing for his lectures, who knows how to focus his mind on the secrets of the world, in the boy standing outside in the pasture and letting his gaze wander for hours in one direction into the secrets of nature until the shepherd comes and leads him home? Do we not feel the whole fire that inspired Fichte, that inspired him on his lectern in Jena, and later, when he spoke to the representatives, as he said, of his entire people in the “Speeches to the German Nation”? Do we not feel it already there, where he, repeating the sermon of the country pastor, made an impression on Baron von Miltitz? Do we not feel this spirit very close to us in every single thing, even in the smallest acts of his life, if we are able to feel just a little spiritually? Do we not feel how soulfulness, heartiness, moral courage radiates from this spirit into all subsequent German development? Do we not feel the eternal life that lives there, even if we cannot agree with the individual in the “Speeches to the German Nation”? Although they were confiscated twice by the censor in 1824, they could not be killed. They live today and must live in souls.

How we can see him, this Fichte, in our midst! How we can hear him, if we understand him correctly! We can feel him, if we feel with our soul how he inspires his listeners, how he inspires the entire German nation in its more distant development, how that which he created, what he allowed to flow through the continuous developmental current of his people, must remain immortal! We cannot help it, if we understand him correctly, we must feel this spirit of Fichte among us.

For the modern man there always seems something hazardous in the prophecy of future events. We have already seen that in the seven seals we had to point out facts which are to come in the evolution of humanity, and as we unveil the Apocalypse of John, more and more we shall have to exercise this prophetic art. The question now is: What grounds are there for speaking at all of these things? We already referred in part at the beginning of our lectures to what lies at the basis of this. We said that at a certain stage of initiation the Initiate sees in the spiritual world that which descends later and becomes a physical event. But in the last two lectures we have shown that there is another basis for the prophetic art. We showed how man has developed out of spiritual spheres to his present existence. Now the future is in a certain sense a repetition of the past; not that the things of the past will happen again in the same way, but past events repeat themselves in a changed form.

In our last lectures we pointed out that in the ancient Atlantean epoch man had a kind of clairvoyance, and that, especially during his night condition, he consciously ascended into spiritual worlds; and we must clearly understand that the condition of a certain clairvoyance will be repeated in humanity. Between the Atlantean epoch and that which will come after the War of All against All we have our epoch, which we have described. In a certain way that which existed previously, that which was in the Atlantean epoch, will be repeated after our epoch, but there will be a very great difference. In the Atlantean epoch man had a dreamy, hazy, clairvoyant consciousness, and when he ascended into the higher worlds his clear self-consciousness faded and he then felt himself within the group-soul. After the great War of All against All man will again see into the higher worlds in a certain way. He will again have the former hazy clairvoyance, but in addition he will possess what he has gradually acquired in the external physical world.

Between the Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All man has had to renounce for a time the power to see into the spiritual world. He has had to content himself with seeing only what is around him in the physical world in the so-called waking consciousness. This is now the normal condition. But in its place it has become possible for him fully to develop his self-consciousness, his individual “I,” during this time, to feel himself within his skin as a separate “I”-personality, so to speak. This he has won. Now he also retains this individuality when he again rises into the higher spiritual worlds, and this ascent will be possible to him after the great War of All against All. But this ascent would not be possible if he had not taken part in that great cosmic event in the middle of our epoch which runs its course in the physical world, as was shown in the last lecture. Man would have been obliged to sink down into a kind of abyss had he not been preserved from it by the entry of Christ into our world. We must keep in mind that man has descended completely into the physical world in this epoch of ours.

Let us represent the physical plane by this line; above it what is called the spiritual, the heavenly world, and below it what is called the abyss. Man really reaches the line separating the spiritual world from the abyss in the fourth age, which we have described. We described the ancient Indian age, when man was still, on the whole, in the spiritual sphere. Previously he was above in the spiritual world. In Atlantis he still had a dim clairvoyance. He now comes down and reaches the line during the period of the Roman Empire. In this Empire man became fully conscious as an external sense-being, as a personality. That was at the time when the Roman idea of justice came into the world, when every one's aim was to be a separate personality, an individual citizen. Man had then reached the line. At this point it was possible either to return or sink below it. We have now, in fact, reached a point in human evolution—and all that I am saying is in accordance with the apocalyptic presentation—when in a certain way humanity is confronted by the need for a decision. We have already shown that in our age an enormous amount of mental and spiritual energy is used to provide for the lowest needs; we have shown how the telephone, telegraph, railway, steamboat and other things still to come have absorbed a tremendous amount of spiritual force; they are only used for the mere satisfaction of lower human needs. Man, however, has only a certain amount of spiritual force. Now consider the following: Man has used an enormous amount of spiritual force in order to invent and construct telephones, railways, steamboats and airships, in order to further external culture. This has to be so. It would have gone badly with humanity if this had not come about. This spiritual power has also been used for many other things. Only consider how all social connections have gradually been spun into an extremely fine intellectual web. What tremendous spiritual force has been expended so that one may now draw a cheque in America and cash it in Japan. An enormous amount of spiritual force has been absorbed in this activity. These forces had once to descend below the line of the physical plane, so to speak, which separates the spiritual kingdom from the abyss. For in a certain way man has actually already descended into the abyss, and one who studies the age from the standpoint of Spiritual Science can see by the most mundane phenomena how this goes on from decade to decade, how a certain point is always reached where the personality can still keep a hold on itself. If at this point it allows itself to sink down, the personality is lost, it is not rescued and lifted into the spiritual worlds.

This may be illustrated by the most mundane things. I could prove it to you, for example, in the details of the development of banking affairs in the second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps it is only for future historians to show clearly that a fundamental change then came about which we may describe by saying that in banking affairs the personality was gradually shattered. I should have to draw your attention to the time when the four Rothschild's went out into the world from Frankfurt, one to Vienna, another to Naples, the third to London, the fourth to Paris. The whole of banking affairs was then brought into a personal sphere by the personal talent directed to them. The personality immersed itself in finance. To-day you see banking affairs becoming impersonal, they are passing into joint stock companies; capital is no longer managed by a single personality. Capital begins to control itself. Purely objective forces are working in capital, and there are already forces in this realm which draw the will of the personality to themselves, so that the personality has become powerless. Thus with seeing eyes one can penetrate into these mundane things and one can see everywhere how humanity, as regards the personality, has descended to the lowest depth. Now the personality may save itself and ascend again. It can save itself, for example, by really learning to strengthen its inner soul-forces and depend upon itself and make itself independent of the objective forces of capital. But the personality may also throw itself into these forces, it may in a certain way sail into and plunge into the abyss by allowing itself to be ensnared by the forces active in capital. The most important point of time, when the human personality descends to the earth and would have to turn back again, is the point of time of the appearance of Christ Jesus on the earth. He gave to the earth the power which made it possible for man to rise again; and he rises to the extent to which he has fellowship with Christ Jesus. Humanity will ascend to the point where the understanding dawns of what this event signified, so that for a large part of humanity this Christ impulse becomes the innermost impulse of their being, from which they work in life. Men must learn to understand more and more what Paul said: It is not I who work; but Christ works in me.

Therefore if the impulse which descended to the physical world in the fourth age enters into the hearts of men, if it becomes the impulse behind their activity, then the ascent takes place, and all the souls who find this union with the Christ principle find the way upward. But all the souls who failed to find this union would have gradually to go down into the abyss. They would have gained the “I”; they would have attained egoism, but would not be in the position to rise up again with this “I” into the spiritual world. And the consequence to a man who makes no connection with the Christ principle would be that he disconnects himself from the spiritual ascent; instead of ascending he would descend and harden himself more and more in his “I.” Instead of finding in matter merely the opportunity to develop the “I” and then rise up again, he would only descend deeper and deeper into matter.

Yes, everything repeats itself. The possibility arose for man to enter our physical world. By surviving the Atlantean flood it has become possible for him to create and develop his present human countenance. This is really an image of the spiritual “I”-divinity dwelling in man. Towards the end of the Atlantean epoch the etheric body united with the physical; its forces drew into the physical head and thereby man received his present human countenance, in which the spirit of God is reflected.

Let us suppose that he were to deny that it was the spirit which has given him the human countenance; then he would not use the body as an opportunity to attain the “I”-consciousness and again spiritualize himself; but he would grow together with the body and love it so much that he would only feel himself at home in it. He would remain united with the body and go down into the abyss. And because of not having used the power of the spirit, the external shape would again come to resemble the previous form. The man who descends into the abyss would become animal-like. Thus humanity will realize what we have already indicated. Those who use the life in the body merely as an opportunity to gain the “I”-consciousness will descend into the abyss and form the evil race. They have turned away from the impulse of Christ Jesus, and from the ugliness of their souls they will again create the animal form man possessed in former times. The evil race, with their savage impulses, will dwell in animal form in the abyss. And when up above those who have spiritualized themselves, who have received the Christ principle, announce what they have to say regarding their union with the name, Christ Jesus—here below in the abyss will sound forth names of blasphemy and of hatred of that which brings about the spiritual transformation.

A person who thinks superficially might say at this point: Yes, but very many have lived who have experienced nothing of the Christ-impulse; why should not these have partaken in the impulse of Christ Jesus? This is objected from the materialistic side: Why should salvation only come with Christ Jesus? If persons who are not Anthroposophists say this, it is comprehensible; but if Anthroposophists say it, then it is incomprehensible; for they ought to know that man returns again and again, and the souls which lived in earlier times will return in new bodies in the period after the event of Christ, so that there are none who could not participate in the event of Christ Jesus. The above objection can only be made by one who does not believe in re-embodiment.

Thus we see how the division takes place. There will come a time when those who have striven for spiritualization will be capable of living in the spiritual world, a time when that which they have formerly acquired will be made manifest, when they will bear the name of Christ on their forehead because they learned to look up to Him. Now when the seal is opened man will have imaged in his outward figure what he bears inwardly in his heart. One who inwardly bears Christ in his soul will after the unsealing bear in his face the sign of Christ; his external form will be like Christ Jesus; but those who remain in the civilizations before the appearance of Christ Jesus will have to experience some-thing else. These four civilizations, the ancient Indian, Persian, Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish and the Graeco-Latin were preparatory ages. The soul had to go through the bodies of these civilizations in order to prepare itself for the great event of the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth. During the period of preparation there were two great forces. The forces which brought men together were forces which had their material foundation in the blood. If men had simply been placed side by side in their present form, what was to develop in humanity would never have originated.

Prior to the earth the old Moon was the bearer of our creation. This old Moon was the Cosmos of Wisdom; our Earth is the Cosmos of Love. It is the mission of our Earth to bring men together in love. In the future, when the seventh trumpet has sounded and the earth has dissolved, when it has lost its physical substantiality and is changed into an astral heavenly body, then love, the force of love, will have flowed into the whole human race, into everything earthly. For this power of love must flow in as the earth-mission of humanity—just as you now see the power of wisdom in your environment. We have often drawn attention to that wonderful construction of the thigh-bone. This does not consist of a compact mass, but of many delicate lattice-like structures which are so wonderfully put together that the greater carrying capacity is attained with the expenditure of the smallest amount of material, such as no engineer of the present day can achieve. And if we were to examine everything we should find that the wisdom man has gained in the course of his earthly evolution was already contained in the earth.

How often have we been told in the course of lessons on history that man has made continual progress and that he has grown wiser and wiser! You will remember how these several stages were presented; for example, you were shown that at the beginning of modern times man arrived at the point where he invented gunpowder, paper from rags, wood-pulp, etc. You have experienced pleasure in seeing how mankind has ascended. By means of his intellect man has learned to make paper. One might suppose it was an original invention. But to one who contemplates the world in its totality this appears in a different light. The wasps could do this long before, for the wasp's nest is constructed of material which is exactly the same as paper. Thus thousands of years before in the nest of the wasp there already existed what man afterwards achieved through his subjective wisdom. Not the single wasp is able to make paper, but the group-soul, the ego which holds together the whole group of wasps. It possessed this knowledge long before man. And wherever you look, if you are not blind, you will find wisdom in everything.

Do not imagine that this wisdom had not to develop! The world was not always thus filled with wisdom. It was only during the Moon evolution that it gradually flowed into all that now surrounds us. During the Moon period, that which was all chaos was rearranged so as to acquire wisdom. If you could direct your gaze to the Moon evolution you would find every-thing chaotic, so to speak, but as yet no wisdom. Only in the course of the Moon evolution was wisdom poured into the various beings and creations, so that it was there by the time the Earth came forth from the twilight. All things are now filled with wisdom. And as man to-day looks into his environment and sees wisdom in everything, so will he, when he has reached Jupiter, see all the beings around him in a remarkable way. They will pour out something like the fragrance of blissful love. Love will stream forth from all things, and it is the mission of the earth-evolution to develop this love. Love will then flow through everything, just as wisdom is now in everything. And this love is poured into earthly evolution by man's gradually leaning to develop love.

He was not able to have spiritual love immediately, love had first to be implanted in him at the lowest stage. It had to have a material vehicle, namely, the blood-relationship. The first schooling was to exercise love in the realm of blood-relationship; the separated human beings were brought together through that which coursed through their veins being imbued with love. This was the preparatory school of love; it was, in fact, the great school of love. And the impulse which spiritualizes this love, which does not merely allow it to remain where it works physically, but imparts it to the soul, is the great Christ-impulse in the world.

Now, had only this one impulse of blood-brotherhood operated, human evolution would have taken a strange course throughout the whole of antiquity. The beings who were the guides of the ancient times, and above all Jehovah, led men together in love, so that they united in blood-relationship; but if men had been united only through blood-relationship before the appearance of Christ Jesus, then individual human beings would never have been able to progress to personality. The individual would have been emerged in the tribe. As it was, the individual did very much lose himself in the whole. The consciousness that one is an individual human being has only developed very gradually. In the Atlantean epoch there could be no question of a man feeling himself as an individual being, and this was also the case much later. People do not understand how names were given in ancient times, otherwise they would discover how men then felt. Think of the people of the Old Testament; in pre-Christian times they experienced their “I”—if they wished to feel it aright—by no means in their separate personality. Each one who thoroughly felt the impulse streaming from the Old Testament said: I and Father Abraham are one. For he felt that he was secure in this community which reached back to Abraham, whose blood flowed through all the generations down to the last. Hence he said: “I feel that I am not a lost member when I realize that my blood is the same as that of my Father Abraham.”

And they tried to follow the community back still further. They felt secure in the group-soul. They pointed to Noah, to Adam. It is no longer known what these names signify. It is not known that in those ancient times the consciousness of man was quite different from what it is to-day. A person can only remember with difficulty what happened in his childhood, and memory certainly stops at birth. In the time of the patriarchs a man remembered not only what he himself had experienced but what his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had experienced. This was in his memory, just as with you the remembrance of your childhood. He did not know that his life specially began with his birth. The memory reached back for hundreds of years. No name was given to the separate consciousness, for there would have been no meaning in it. As a person remembered the experiences of his father, grand-father, great-grandfather, etc., a common name included the whole chain. The names Adam or Noah signify the remembrance which passed through several generations. As far as the memory of the experience of Noah extended, the chain was called Noah; this was an inner man, a spiritual being, who lived through several generations. It would have been considered meaningless to give a name to the outer man.

Thus the name Adam applied to a spiritual being, and the individual human being was not yet aware of his “I.” He would have disappeared in such a community but for the impulses which continually attacked this merging in the community, and whose object was to tear man away from the blood-ties and bring him to independence. In his astral body nestled certain spiritual beings who gave him the impulse not to allow his consciousness to become submerged. These were the Lucifer beings. It was they who in the pre-Christian period worked against the unification and it is to them that man owes his independence, his developing personality. It is extremely important to understand that we owe to Jehovah that which strove to unite, and to the Lucifer spirits that which strove to separate. In the early ages of Christianity there was a saying which ran: “Christus verus Luciferus,” i.e. Christ is the true Light-bearer; for Lucifer means the Light-bearer. Why is Christ called the true Light-bearer? Because through him has now become justified what previously was not justified. Previously there was a tearing asunder; men were not mature enough to be independent. Through the “I”-impulse which they received through Christ Jesus they had progressed so far that in spite of the “I” they could develop love of one another. Thus that which Lucifer wished to give to humanity in anticipation, so to speak, when humanity was still not sufficiently mature, was brought to humanity by the true Light-bearer, Christ Jesus. He brought the impulse to independence, but he also brought the spiritual love which unites those who are not related by blood. Through him came the epoch when humanity matured to the point which Lucifer previously wished to bring about. This saying, “Christus verus Luciferus,” was later no longer understood. He alone who rightly understands it learns to know the first teachings of Christianity.

We have therefore to comprehend this impulse in this way; we have to see how humanity was prepared for the standpoint it had to attain. Thus the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Graeco-Latin periods were times of preparation pointing to the great Christ-event. But it is possible for man to harden himself, as it were. Let us imagine a person living at the time of Christ Jesus, and let us imagine that he could consciously decide what he wished to do. If Christ Jesus were to come he could say, “Oh, what was there previously is sufficient for me, I wish to know nothing, I will have no fellowship with Christ Jesus.” He would have in his soul the forces, the impulses, which could be acquired in the time before Christ Jesus, which could be gained through the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Graeco-Latin civilizations. But in cosmic evolution a man ought only to have such impulses until a new one arrives. If he stands still, then he remains behind at this stage. We must not misunderstand historical development; we must not say that the same principle works in all civilizations, for it is not for nothing that one civilization is built up on another. Let us suppose some one wished to sleep through the Christian development. He would then live into the future until after the great War of All against All, but he would have nothing of the great love-principle of Christ which brings the Egos together, which makes communities of individuals. He would have everything which leads the Egos into the abyss. He would have the separating forces. This brings us to a consideration which may give rise to the question: Why does the unveiling of the first four seals provide such a comfortless picture? Because here come forth the men who wish to remain in these four preparatory civilizations in which is contained the old form of Lucifer that drives men asunder. Hence in the unveiling of the seals we are shown, too, how they got the form which they have acquired. They have slept through the event of Christ Jesus and are re-born in the forms which can be given them without the influence of the Christ-principle. Hence there appears again that which indicated the mere intelligence, the mere intellect; the horse appears four consecutive times. The old form of man appears which he obtains by receiving into himself the horse nature. This form appears at the opening of the seals.

And when the fifth seal is opened what is then brought to our notice? Those who in the preceding period have learned to understand the event of Christ Jesus! These are clothed in white garments, they have been passed by, figuratively they have been slain, they are those who are preserved for the spiritualization of the world. Thus it is the union with the Christ-principle which brings it about that men have these white garments and appear when the fifth seal is opened. Here we see a clear indication that the time when Christ appears is an important epoch for mankind; it is the epoch which brings it to pass that after the War of All against All the four ages may appear when those who have remained behind are tormented by the materiality which had proceeded with evolution and to which they have chained themselves; they are tormented by all the evils and torments of the coarsened, hardened materiality. Everything which is now described in the breaking of the seals represents nothing else than the descent into the abyss. While in the fifth seal we are only briefly directed to those who are chosen, we are shown for the rest those who remain in materiality, who go down into the abyss, who assume the forms which existed previously because they did not progress, because they have not acquired the power to transform these shapes.

You may form a picture of it; imagine that your human forms were to-day made of indiarubber; and within this rubber human body is your inner soul power which gives this rubber body its human form. Imagine that we take out the soul-force, then the rubber body would collapse. Men would receive animal forms. At the moment when you draw the soul out of this human body of rubber, man would manifest the animal form. What man has gained for himself is like something which he produces to-day by his own power. If you could observe what he formerly produced in the astral body you would see its likeness to the animal. It is really an inner force such as this which gives the rubber man the present form. Imagine that this power is removed, imagine man not fertilized by the Christ power; he springs back into the animal form. Thus it will happen to those who fall back. They will afterwards form a world beneath the present world, so to speak, a world of the abyss, where man will again have assumed animal shape.

Thus we learn to understand the direction evolution will actually take. That which is now prepared will come out again bit by bit in the future, just as that which was laid down in the Atlantean epoch has come out bit by bit in our epoch. I have said that in the last third of the Atlantean epoch a small colony was formed from which our civilizations have been derived, and from which the two following will also originate. It will be somewhat different in the next epoch which will succeed all these. There will not be a colony limited to one place, but from the general body of humanity will everywhere be recruited those who are mature enough to form the good, the noble, the beautiful side of the next civilization, after the War of All against All. This again is a progress as compared with the earlier Atlantean epoch when the colony developed in one small place, but with us there is the possibility that from all races of the world will be recruited those who really understand the call of the earth mission, who raise up Christ within themselves, who develop the principle of brotherly love over the whole earth; and indeed, in the true sense, not in the sense of the Christian confessions, but in the sense of the true esoteric Christianity which can proceed from every civilization. Those who understand this Christ-principle will be there in the period following the great War of All against All. After our present purely intellectual civilization, which is now developing in the direction of the abyss of intellect—and you will find that this is the case in every field of life—there will come a time when man will be the slave of the intelligence, the slave of the personality in which he will sink. To-day there is only one way of preserving the personality, and that is to spiritualize it. Those who develop the spiritual life will belong to the small band of the sealed from all nations and races, who will appear in white garments after the War of All against All.

We are now beginning to comprehend the spiritual world from our immediately present intellectual civilization. It is the aim of true Anthroposophy, from out of the present intellectual standards, to comprehend the spiritual world, and to gather together those who can understand the call to spiritualize the world. These will not form a separate colony but will be gathered from every nation and will gradually pass into the sixth age, that is to say, not yet beyond the great War, but primarily into the sixth age, for necessities still exist which are connected with old race ties. In our epoch, races and civilizations are still inter-mingled. The true idea of race has lost its meaning but it still plays a certain part. It is quite impossible at present for every mission to be carried out equally by every people. Certain nations are predestined to carry out a particular mission.

The nations which to-day are the vehicles of Western civilization were chosen to lead the fifth age to its zenith; they were the nations who were to develop the intellect. Hence wherever this civilization extends we have predominantly the civilization of the intellect, which is still not yet finished. This intelligence will spread still further, people will exercise still more of their spiritual forces in order to satisfy their bodily needs; to slay one another they will employ much greater spiritual forces before the great War of All against All. Many discoveries will be made in order to be able the better to carry on war, an endless amount of intelligence will be exercised in order to satisfy the lower impulses. But in the midst of it something is being prepared, with which certain nations of the East, the Northern part of the East, are gifted. Certain nations are preparing to emerge from a certain dullness and bring in a spiritual impulse with mighty force, an impulse which will be the opposite pole to intelligence. Before the sixth age of civilization, represented by the Community of Philadelphia, we shall experience something like a mighty marriage of peoples, a marriage between intelligence and intellect and spirituality. At the present time we are only experiencing the dawn of this marriage and no one should understand what is here said as a song of praise to our age; for one does not sing songs of praise to the sun when there are only the first signs of dawn. But we find remarkable phenomena when we compare East and West, when we look into the depths and foundations of the different nations.

Do not let us look upon this as a desire to take sides. These lectures, which are intended to be objective, are far, far removed from any party spirit. But you may compare objectively that which is attained as science and philosophy in the European West with that which appeared in the East, let us say in Tolstoi. One does not need to be a follower of Tolstoi, but one thing is true; in a book such as Tolstoi's about life you may read one page, if you understand how to read it, and compare it with whole libraries in Western Europe. And you may then say the following: In Western Europe one acquires spiritual culture with the intellect; certain ideas are put together out of details which are intended to make the world comprehensible, and the achievements of Western European civilization in this respect will never be surpassed. But if you understand such a book as Tolstoi's Concerning Life, you will often find condensed into ten lines what, in these Western European libraries, it takes thirty volumes to say. Tolstoi says something with elemental force, and in a few lines of his there is the same amount of energy as is assembled in thirty such volumes. Here one must be able to judge what comes forth from the depths of the spirit, what has a spiritual foundation and what has not. Just as overripe civilizations contain some-thing that is drying up and withering, so do rising civilizations contain within them fresh life and new energy. Tolstoi is a premature flower of such a civilization, one that came far too soon to be fully developed. Hence he has all the faults of an untimely birth. His grotesque und unfounded presentations of many Western European things, all that he brings forward in the way of foolish judgment, show that great personalities have the faults of their virtues and that great cleverness has the folly of its wisdom.

This is only mentioned as a symptom of the future age when the spirituality of the East will unite with the intellectuality of the West. From this union will proceed the age of Philadelphia. All those will participate in this marriage who take into themselves the impulse of Christ Jesus and they will form the great brotherhood which will survive the great War, which will experience enmity and persecution, but will provide the foundation for the good race. After this great War has brought out the animal nature in those who have remained in the old forms, the good race will arise, and this race will carry over into the future that which is to be the spiritually elevated culture of that future epoch. We shall also have the experience that in our epoch, between the great Atlantean flood and the great War of All against All, in the age represented by the community at Philadelphia, a colony is being formed, the members of which will not emigrate but will be everywhere; so that everywhere there will be some who are working in the sense of the community of Philadelphia, in the sense of the binding together of humanity, in the sense of the Christ-principle.

First of all I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Mrs. Mackenzie for her kind words of greeting, and to all of you who have made the effort to meet again, at Professor Mackenzie’s invitation, to discuss questions of education.

In the short time available little can be said about the educational methods based on anthroposophy, for their essence is in an educational practice that does not have fixed programs, nor clearly defined general concepts to encompass it. The main intention of Waldorf education is that its teachers should be able to look deeply into the nature of the child from a true and genuine knowledge of the human being, and that in the individuality of each child who has come down into the earthly realm, they should be able to experience a wondrous enigma, which the educator and the world can never hope to understand completely. The teacher’s practical task is to discern ways to approach the mystery, the enigma, that divine guiding spirits present us with each child who joins our contemporary society. The teacher’s task begins at the age when the child discards the baby teeth, around the seventh year, and extends until the eighteenth or nineteenth year when, as a young man or woman, the student either goes out into life or enters higher education.

A few years ago, due to the devastating war, many new ideals, and certainly many illusions as well, emerged in Germany. At that time, the industrialist Emil Molt saw an opportunity to do something important for the workers in his factory. He felt that, by opening a school for their children, he could to some extent help reconcile his workers with their destiny as factory workers, and above all do something about what was then the great social demand of the time—he wanted to begin a school for his employees’ children, where the children, although laborers’ children, would get the best possible education imaginable.

This should make it clear immediately that the education I am representing here was not hatched from some ideas or from any plan for reform; it was, instead, born as a direct answer to a practical life situation. Emil Molt simply declared, “My workers have a total of a hundred and fifty children, and these children must be educated in the best way possible.” This could happen within the anthroposophical movement because, as strange as it may sound to you, anthroposophists are neither theorists nor visionary dreamers, but practical people who take the pragmatic side of life seriously; indeed, we like to believe that practical matters are nurtured especially within the anthroposophical movement. In other words, the idea regarding this education was the direct result of a practical need.

In Stuttgart, where all this happened, the necessary conditions for starting such a school were soon created. At that time, a democratic legislation of schools did not yet exist; that came into force only with the subsequent democratically constituted assembly. We came just in time to begin the school before the emergence of a “free” school legislation, which forced a general levelling of all schools in Germany—paying lip service to freedom by enforcing fixed laws. So we were only just in time to open such a school. I must quickly add that the school authorities have always shown great understanding and cooperation ever since the school was founded. It was fortunately possible to begin “The Free Waldorf school” in complete freedom. Its name arose because of its association with the Waldorf-Astoria Factory.

I do not wish to imply in any way that state-trained teachers are inferior, and certainly not that they are poor teachers simply because they have passed a state exam! Nevertheless, I was granted freedom in my choice of teachers, regardless of whether they were state trained or not. It was left to my discretion whether my candidates would make good and efficient teachers, and it happens that most of the teachers at the Waldorf school, based on the educational principles I wish to speak about, are in fact not state trained.

However, the situation did not remain as it was then. The school was begun with a hundred and fifty students. In no time at all, anthroposophists living in Stuttgart also wanted to send their children to this school because the education it offered was supposed to be very good. Since then (only a few years ago) the school has grown to more than eight hundred children. Several grades, like our fifth and sixth grades, have three parallel classes.

A further step, perhaps not quite as practical (I don’t want to judge this) was that Emil Molt, after deciding to open the school, asked me to provide the school with spiritual guidance and methods. It was only possible to give this guidance based on the spiritual research and knowledge of the human being that I represent. Our fundamental goal is to know the complete human being as a being of body, soul, and spirit, as a person grows from childhood, and to be able to read in the soul of the child what needs to be done each week, month, and year. Consequently, one could say our education is a teaching based entirely on knowledge of the child, and this knowledge guides us in finding the appropriate methods and principles.

I can give only general and sketchy outlines here of what is meant by knowledge of the human being. There is much talk nowadays about physical education, about the importance of not sacrificing physical education to the education of the child’s mind and soul. However, to separate the physical aspect from that of the soul and spirit is in itself a great illusion, because in a young child, spirit, soul, and body form a unity. It is impossible to separate one realm from the other in early childhood.

To give an example, let us imagine a child at school; a child becomes more and more pale. The paling of the child is a physical symptom that the teacher should notice. If an adult becomes increasingly pale, one seeks the advice of a doctor, who will think of an appropriate therapy according to an understanding of the case. Teachers of an abnormally pale child must ask themselves whether this child was already that pale when entering the class, or if the child’s complexion changed afterward. Lo and behold, they may realize that they themselves were the cause of the child’s pallor, because of excessive demands on the child’s memory forces. Consequently they will realize that they must reduce the pressure in this respect. Here is a case where physical symptoms reveal problems in the sphere of the soul. The child becomes pale because the memory has been overtaxed.

Then again, teachers may be faced with a different type of child; this time the child does not turn pale; on the contrary, the complexion becomes increasingly ruddy. This child appears to lack good will, gets restless, and turns into what is usually called a “hyperactive” child. The child lacks discipline, jumps up and down and cannot sit still for a moment, constantly wanting to run in and out. It is now up to the teacher to find the cause of these changes, and, lo and behold, it may be found (not always, because individual cases vary greatly and have to be diagnosed individually) that the child had been given too little to remember. This can easily happen because the appropriate amount of material to be remembered varies greatly from child to child.

As it happens, government inspectors visit our school. The authorities make sure that they know what is happening in our school! At the time when socialism was flourishing, one local director of education came to inspect the school, and I took him around to the various classes for three days. I pointed out that our physical education was intended to develop the students’ spiritual capacities, and that we educate their mental-spiritual capacities in such a way that their physical bodies benefit, because the two form a unity. Thereupon the inspector exclaimed, “But in this case your teachers would have to know medicine as well, and that is not possible!” To which I answered, “I do not think so, but if it were indeed necessary, it would have to be done, because a teacher’s training must ensure that the teacher is capable of thorough insight into the physical and spiritual background of the growing child.”

Furthermore, if one has a child of the type just described, a child who becomes increasingly restless and who does not pale but, on the contrary, becomes flushed, one can think of all kinds of things to do. However, to help such a child, one has to make sure of the right treatment. And the right treatment may be very difficult to find, for insight into human nature must not limit its considerations to a certain period of time, such as from age seven to age fourteen, which is the time when the class teacher is with the children. One must realize that much of what happens during these seven years has consequences that manifest only much later. One might choose the comfortable ways of experimental psychology, which only considers the child’s present state of development to decide what to do, but if one endeavors to survey the child’s whole life from birth to death, one knows: When I give the child too little content to remember, I induce a tendency toward serious illness, which may not appear before the forty-fifth year; I may cause a layer of fat to form above the heart. One has to know what form of illness may be induced eventually through the education of the child’s soul and spirit. Knowledge of the human being is not confined to an experiment with a student in the present condition, but includes knowledge of the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—as well as a knowledge of what happens during various ages and stages of life.

When these matters become the basis for teaching, one will also find them relevant in the moral sphere. You may agree with me when I say that there are some people who, in ripe old age, give off an atmosphere of blessing to those in their company. They needn’t say much, but nevertheless radiate beneficial influence to others merely by the expression in their eyes, their mere presence, arm gestures—saying little perhaps, but speaking with a certain intonation and emphasis, or a characteristic tempo. They can permeate whatever they say or do with love, and this is what creates the effect of blessing on those around them. What kind of people are they?

In order to explain this phenomenon with real insight into human life, one must look back to their childhood. One then finds that such people learned, in their childhood, to revere and pray to the spiritual world in the right way, for no one has the gift of blessing in old age who has not learned to fold his or her hands in prayer between the ages of seven and fourteen. This folding of the hands in prayer during the age of primary education enters deeply into the inner organization of the human being and is transformed into the capacity for blessing in old age. This example shows how different life stages are interrelated and interwoven in human life. When educating children, one educates for all of life—that is, during a person’s younger years one may cultivate possibilities for moral development in old age. This education does not encroach on human freedom. Human freedom is attacked primarily when a certain inner resistance struggles against a free will impulse. What I have been talking about is connected with freeing a person from inner impediments and hindrances.

This should suffice as an introduction to tonight’s theme. When one tries to achieve a more intimate knowledge of human nature, observing it not just externally but also with the inner gaze directed more toward the spiritual, one discovers that human beings pass through clearly defined life periods.

The first three periods of life are of particular importance and interest for education. The first one has a more homogeneous character and lasts from birth to age seven—that is, until the time of the change of teeth. The second period of life extends from the change of teeth to puberty, around age fourteen. The third begins at puberty and ends in the twenties. It is easy to notice external physical changes, but only a trained capacity for observation will reveal the more hidden aspects of these different life periods.

Such observation shows that during the first seven years, roughly from birth to the change of teeth, the child’s spirit, soul, and body are completely merged into a unity. Observe a child entering into this world, with open features still undifferentiated, movements uncoordinated, and without the ability to show even the most primitive human expressions, such as laughing or weeping. (A baby can cry, of course, but this crying is not really weeping; it does not spring from emotions of the soul because the soul realm has not yet developed independently.) All of this makes the child into a unique being, and indeed, the greatest wonder of the world. We observe a baby weekly and monthly; from an undefined physiognomy, something gradually evolves in the physical configuration of the little body, as if coming from a center. Soul qualities begin to animate not only the child’s looks, but also the hand and arm movements. And it is a wonderful moment when, after moving about on hands and knees, the child first assumes the vertical posture. To anyone who can observe this moment, it appears as a most wonderful phenomenon.

When we perceive all this with spiritual awareness, which can be done, it shows us the following: There, in this unskillful little body, spirit is living, spirit that cannot yet control limb movements. This is still done very clumsily, but it is the same human spirit that, later on, may develop into a genius. It is there, hidden in the movements of arms and legs, in questing facial expression, and in the searching sense of taste.

Then we find that, from birth until the second dentition, the young child is almost entirely one sense organ. What is the nature of a sense organ? It surrenders fully to the world. Consider the eye. The entire visible world is mirrored in the eye and is contained in it. The eye is totally surrendered to the world. Likewise the child, though in a different way, is surrendered fully to the environment. We adults may taste sweet, bitter, or acid tastes on the tongue and with the palate, but the tastes do not penetrate our entire organism. Although we are not usually aware of it, it is nevertheless true to say that when the baby drinks milk the taste of the milk is allowed to permeate the entire organism. The baby lives completely like an eye, like one large sense organ. The differentiation between outer and inner senses occurs only later. And the characteristic feature is that, when a child perceives something, it is done in a state of dreamy consciousness.

If, for example, a very choleric father, a man who in behaviors, gestures, and attitudes is always ready to lose his temper, and displays the typical symptoms of his temperament around a child, then the child, in a dreaming consciousness, perceives not only the outer symptoms, but also the father’s violent temperament. The child does not recognize temperamental outbursts as such, but perceives the underlying disposition, and this perception directly affects the finest vascular vessels right into the blood circulation and respiration. The young child’s physical and bodily existence is thus affected immediately by the spiritual impressions received. We may admonish a child, we may say all kinds of things, but until the seventh year this is all meaningless to the child. The only thing that matters is how we ourselves act and behave in its presence. Until the change of teeth, a child is entirely an imitating being, and upbringing and education can be effected only by setting the proper example to be imitated. This is the case for moral matters as well.

In such matters one can have some rather strange experiences. One day a father of a young child came to me in a state of great agitation because (so he told me) his son, who had always been such a good boy, had stolen! The father was very confused, because he was afraid this was a sign that his son would develop into a morally delinquent person. I said to him, “Let’s examine first whether your son has really stolen. What has he actually done?” “He has taken money out of the cupboard from which his mother takes money to pay household expenses. With this money he bought sweets, which he gave to other children.” I could reassure the father that his boy had not stolen at all, that the child had merely imitated what he had seen his mother do several times every day. Instinctively he had imitated his mother, taking money out of the cupboard, because Mother had been doing it.

Whether in kindergarten or at home, we educate the child only when we base all education and child rearing on the principle of imitation, which works until the second dentition. Speaking, too, is learned purely by imitation. Up to the change of teeth, a child learns everything through imitation. The only principle necessary at this stage is that human behavior should be worthy of imitation. This includes also thinking, because in their own way, children perceive whether our thoughts are moral or not. People do not usually believe in these imponderables, but they are present nevertheless. While around young children, we should not allow ourselves even a single thought that is unworthy of being absorbed by the child.

These things are all connected directly with the child as an imitator until the change of teeth. Until then all possibility of teaching and bringing up a child depends on recognizing this principle of imitation. There is no need to consider whether we should introduce one or another Froebel kindergarten method, because everything that has been contrived in this field belongs to the age of materialism. Even when we work with children according to the Froebel system, it is not the actual content of the work that influences them, but how we do it. Whatever we ask children to do without doing it first ourselves in front of them is merely extra weight that we impose on them.

The situation changes when the child’s change of teeth begins. During this stage the primary principle of early education is the teacher’s natural authority. Acceptance of authority is spontaneous on the child’s part, and it is not necessary to enforce it in any way. During the first seven years of life a child will copy what we do. During the second seven years, from the change of teeth until puberty, a child is guided and oriented by what those in authority bring through their own conduct and through their words. This relationship has nothing to do with the role of freedom in human life in a social and individual sense, but it has everything to do with the nature of the child between the second dentition and puberty. At this point it is simply part of a child’s nature to want to look up with natural respect to the authority of a revered teacher who represents all that is right and good. Between the seventh and fourteenth years, a child still cannot judge objectively whether something is true, good, or beautiful; therefore only through the guidance of a naturally respected authority can the students find their bearings in life. Advocating the elimination of a child’s faith in the teacher’s authority at this particular age would actually eliminate any real and true education.

Why does a child of this age believe something is true? Because the authority of the teacher and educator says so. The teacher is the source of truth. Why does something appeal to a child of this age as beautiful? Because the teacher reveals it as such. This also applies to goodness. At this age children have to gain abstract judgment of truth, goodness, and beauty by experiencing concretely the judgments of those in authority. Everything depends on whether the adult in charge exerts a self-evident authority on the child between seven and fourteen; for now the child is no longer a sense organ but has developed a soul that needs nourishment in the form of images or thoughts. We now have to introduce all teaching subjects imaginatively, pictorially—that is, artistically. To do so, teachers need the gift of bringing everything to children at this age in the form of living pictures.

As teachers, we ourselves must be able to live in a world of imagery. For example, let’s imagine that we have to teach a young child to read. Consider what this implies—the child is expected to decipher signs written or printed on paper. In this form they are completely alien to the child. Sounds, speech, and vowels that carry a person’s feelings and are inwardly experienced, are not alien to the child. A child knows the sense of wonder felt at seeing the sun rise. “Ah” (A) is the sound of wonder. The sound is there, but what does the sign that we write on paper have to do with it? The child knows the feeling of apprehension of something uncanny: “Oo” (U).

But what does the sign we write on the paper have to do with this sound? The child has no inner relationship to what has become modern abstract writing. If we return to earlier civilizations, we find that writing was different then. In ancient days, people painted what they wished to express. Look at Egyptian hieroglyphics—they have a direct relationship to the human soul. When introducing writing to the child, we must return to expressing what we wish to communicate in the form of pictures. This is possible, however, only when we do not begin by introducing the alphabet directly, nor reading as a subject, but when we start with painting.

Consequently, when young students enter our school, we introduce them first to the world of flowing colors with watercolor painting. Naturally, this can cause a certain amount of chaos and disorder in the classroom, but the teacher copes with that. The children learn how to work with paints, and through the use of color the teacher can guide them toward definite forms. With the necessary skill, the teacher can allow the shapes of the letters to evolve from such painted forms. In this way, the children gain a direct relationship to the various shapes of the letters. It is possible to develop the written vowels A or U so that first one paints the mood of wonder (or of fright), finally allowing the picture to assume the form of the appropriate letters.

All teaching must have an artistic quality based on the pictorial element. The first step is to involve the whole being of the child in the effort of painting, which is subsequently transformed into writing. Only later do we develop the faculty of reading, which is linked to the head system—that is, to only one part of the human being. Reading comes after writing. First a form of drawing with paint (leading the child from color experience to form), out of which writing is evolved. Only then do we introduce reading.

The point is that, from the nature of the child, the teacher should learn how to proceed. This is the right way of finding the appropriate method, based on one’s observation and knowledge of the child. Our Waldorf school has to do with method, not theory. It always endeavors to solve the wonderful riddle, the riddle of the growing child, and to introduce to the child what the child’s own nature is bringing to the surface. In using this method, one finds that between the second dentition and puberty one has to approach all teaching pictorially and imaginatively, and this is certainly possible. Yet, in order to carry the necessary authority, one has to have the right attitude toward what one’s pictures really represent. For example, it is possible to speak to one’s students even at a relatively early age about the immortality of the human soul. (In giving this example, I am not trying to solve a philosophical problem, but speak only from the perspective of practical pedagogy.) One could say to a child, “Look at the cocoon and its shape.” One should show it to a child if possible. “You see, the cocoon opens and a butterfly flies out! This is how it is when a human being dies. The human body is like the cocoon of a butterfly. The soul flies out of the body, even though we cannot see it. When someone dies, just as the butterfly flies out of the cocoon, so the soul flies out of the body into the spiritual world.”

Now, there are two possible ways that a teacher can introduce this simile. In one instance, the teacher may feel very superior to the “ignorant” student, considering oneself clever and the child ignorant. But this attitude does not accomplish much. If, in creating a picture for the child, one thinks that one is doing so only to help the child understand the abstract concept of immortality, such a picture will not convey much, because imponderables play a role. Indeed, the child will gain nothing unless the teacher is convinced of the truth of this picture, feeling that one is involved with something sacred. Those who can look into the spiritual world believe in the truth of this picture, because they know that, with the emerging butterfly, divine-spiritual powers have pictured in the world the immortality of the human soul. Such people know this image to be true and not a teacher’s concoction for the benefit of “ignorant” students. If teachers feel united with this picture, believing what they have put into it and thus identifying themselves with it, they will be real and natural authorities for their students. Then the child is ready to accept much, although it will appear fruitful only later in life.

It has become popular to present everything in simple and graphic form so that “even children can understand it.” This results in appalling trivialities. One thing, however, is not considered. Let’s assume that, when the teacher stands before the child as the representative and source of truth, beauty, and goodness, a child of seven accepts something on the teacher’s authority, knowing that the teacher believes in it. The child cannot yet understand the point in question because the necessary life experience has not occurred. Much later—say, at the age of thirty five—life may bring something like an “echo,” and suddenly the former student realizes that long ago the teacher spoke about the same thing, which only now, after having gained a great deal more life experience, can be understood fully.

In this way a bridge is made between the person who was eight or nine years old, and the person who is now thirty-five years old, and this has a tremendously revitalizing effect on such a person, granting a fresh increase of life forces. This fact is well-known to anyone with a deep knowledge of the human being, and education must be built on such knowledge.

Through using our educational principles in the Waldorf school in this and similar ways, we endeavor to attune our education of body, soul, and spirit to the innermost core of the child’s being. For example, there might be a phlegmatic child in a class. We pay great attention to the children’s temperaments, and we even arrange the seating order in the classrooms according to temperaments. Consequently we put the phlegmatic children into one group. This is not only convenient for the teachers, because they are always aware of where their young phlegmatics are sitting, but it also has a beneficial effect on the children themselves, in that the phlegmatics who sit together bore each other to death with their indifference. By overcoming some of their temperament, they become a little more balanced.

As for the cholerics who constantly push and punch each other when sitting together, they learn in a wonderfully corrective way how to curb their temperament, at least to some extent! And so it goes. If teachers know how to deal with the various temperaments by assuming, let us say, a thoroughly phlegmatic attitude themselves when dealing with phlegmatic children, they cause in these little phlegmatics a real inner disgust with their own temperament.

Such things must become a part of our teaching, in order to turn it into a really artistic task. It is especially important for students at this age. Teachers may have a melancholic child in their class. If they can look into the spiritual background, in an anthroposophical sense, they may want to find and think through some measure for the benefit of such a child. The education we speak of begins with the knowledge that spirit exists in everything of a physical-bodily nature. One cannot see through matter, but one can learn to know it by seeing its spiritual counterpart, thereby discovering the nature of matter. Materialism suffers from ignorance of what matter really is, because it does not see the spirit in matter.

To return to our little melancholic, such a student can cause us serious concern. The teacher might feel prompted to come up with very ingenious ideas to help the child overcome a particularly melancholic temperament. This, however, can often prove fruitless. Although such a situation may have been observed very correctly, the measures taken may not lead to the desired effect. If, on the other hand, teachers realize that a deterioration of the liver function is at the root of this melancholic nature, if they suspect that there is something wrong with the child’s liver, they will know the course of action necessary. They must contact the child’s parents and find out as much as possible about the child’s eating habits. In this way they may discover that the little melancholic needs to eat more sugar. The teachers try to win the parents’ cooperation, because they know from spiritual science that the beginnings of a degeneration in the liver function connected with melancholia can be overcome by an increased sugar intake. If they succeed in gaining the parents’ help, they will have taken the right step from an educational perspective. It would be necessary to know, through spiritual insight, that an increase of sugar consumption can heal or balance a pathological liver condition.

One must be able to perceive and know the growing child and even the individual organs. This is fundamental in our education. We do not insist on particular external circumstances for our schooling. Whether forest or heath, town or country, our opinion is that one can succeed in a fruitful education within any existing social conditions, as long as one really understands the human being deeply, and if, above all, one knows how the child develops.

These are only a few criteria that I may speak of today, which characterize the nature of Waldorf education and the methods used for its implementation, all of which are based on a spiritual- scientific foundation.

If one can approach the child’s being in this way, the necessary strength is found to help children develop both physically and morally, so that fundamental moral forces manifest also. Barbaric forms of punishment are unnecessary, because the teacher’s natural authority will ensure the proper inner connection between teacher and child. Wonderful things can happen in our Waldorf school to demonstrate this. For example, the following incident occurred a little while ago: Among our teachers there was one who imported all kinds of customary disciplinary measures from conventional school life into the Waldorf school. When a few children were naughty, he thought he would have to keep them in after school. He told them that they would have to stay behind as punishment and do some extra work in arithmetic. Spontaneously, the whole class pleaded to be allowed to stay behind and do arithmetic as well, because, as they called out, “Arithmetic is such fun!” What better things could they do than additional work in arithmetic? “We too want to be kept in,” they declared. Well, here you have an example of what can happen in the Waldorf school where teachers have implanted in their students the right attitude toward work. The teacher of course had to learn his own lesson: One must never use something that should be considered a reward as a punishment. This example is one of many that could be mentioned. It shows how one can create a real art of education based on knowledge of the human being.

I am extremely thankful to Mrs. Mackenzie for giving me the opportunity of at least outlining just some of the fundamentals of education based upon anthroposophical spiritual science. Our teaching is based on definite methods, and not on vague ideals born of mere fantasy. These methods answer the needs and demands of human nature and are the primary justification for our education. We do not believe in creating ideas of what ideal human beings should be so that they fit into preconceived plans. Our goal is to be able to observe children realistically, to hear the message sent to us through the children from the divine-spiritual worlds. We wish to feel the children’s inner affirmation of our picture of the human being. God, speaking through the child, says: “This is how I wish to become.”

We try to fulfil this call for the child through our educational methods in the best way possible. Through our art of education, we try to supply a positive answer to this call.

At the outset of our studies to-day we must deal with a word that in Spiritual Science is very important. In Christian occult science the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom and the Earth the Cosmos of Love. By “Moon” we here mean the Moon Period of the Earth. The reason why the Old Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom is because all that was then developed was filled with wisdom. When the Earth Period succeeded the Moon Period the Cosmos of Wisdom was replaced by the Cosmos of Love. When the Earth came forth from the darkness of Pralaya, the rudiments of the human being which had been developed in former periods reappeared—the physical, etheric and astral bodies. On the Old Moon Wisdom had been implanted in these bodies and their mutual relationships; we therefore find wisdom in the constitution of these three bodies. We find the greatest wisdom in the construction of the physical body, less in that of the etheric body, and still less in that of the astral body. If we thoughtfully observe the human body we discover this wisdom in each organ, in each part. For instance, if we study the upper portion of the human thighbone we find in it a network of cells beautifully constructed with a view to their purpose. No engineer of the present day would be able to produce these two columns, which bear the upper part of the human body with the smallest expenditure of matter and force. Wisdom was implanted in the human body as long as the divine Spirits worked upon it. As a rule the physical body is looked upon as the lowest part of man, unjustly so, for the very greatest wisdom can be seen just in the physical body. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks continually made upon it by the astral body, and so not break up before the time. The pleasures and desires which hold sway in the physical body when tea and coffee and so on are taken, all these are attacks of the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. It has therefore to be so wisely constructed that these attacks can be withstood for decades. Of course the suitable form of the heart could only be discovered by subjecting it to many transformations.

Wisdom lies at the foundation of the construction of the world, and it is for this reason that our intellect can now seek and find it there. But wisdom did not come suddenly into the world, it was only poured in slowly and gradually; and in the same way love will also permeate the Earth very gradually. The purpose of the evolution of our Earth is to be permeated with love. Love has only begun to permeate the Earth to the smallest extent, but it will spread more and more, and at the end of the Earth Period everything will be saturated with love, just as it was saturated with wisdom at the end of the Moon Period.

When the Moon separated from the Earth the force of love was only contained in it seminally. First of all only those who were related to one another by blood loved one another. This state of things lasted for a long time; then the sphere of the activity of love gradually widened. For the perception and exercise of love a certain independence is necessary.

From the beginning of human evolution two forces have always been active: one that draws together and one that separates (Sun and Moon forces). Under the influence of these two forces man was so far developed that his three bodies, together with the bearer of the ego, inclined towards the Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. But a final union could not have come about without the addition of a new cosmic force. This force, which exercised a specially strong influence after the separation of the Moon, came from another planet, which entered into a remarkable relationship with the Earth. This planet, Mars, made a sort of passage through the body of the Earth when the latter began its evolution. Until then iron had been lacking in the Earth, and through its appearance on the Earth the course of evolution was changed at one stroke. It was the planet Mars which brought iron to the Earth, and from that time it was possible for Man to develop warm blood containing iron. Through Mars the astral also received a new principle, the sentient soul, the courageous soul. When Mars entered, the aggressive element developed in the soul. We have now to distinguish in men the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the sentient soul. Red, warm blood was the result of the activity of the sentient soul on the physical body; then the fertilising Ego could gradually be membered into the human being.

“Blood is a very special fluid.” The God of Form, Jehovah, now played a specially important role. He took possession of the newly developed organ, the blood, permeated it with His forces, transformed the aggressive qualities of the courageous soul into the forces of love and made the blood into the physical vehicle of the Ego.

In the beginning each human individual did not possess his own Ego. The same Jehovah-force, the Ego-force, the same Ego worked in all who were related by blood, who preserved the same blood through endogamy (near marriage). A small group of this kind had a common Ego. The individual was related to the whole family as a finger is related to the whole body. In the beginning there were group-souls; the individual felt himself to be part of the family or tribe; and the same Ego lived on through several generations, it was not confined to those who were living at the same time; the common Ego was felt as long as the blood remained unmixed, as long as those who belonged to the same tribe intermarried. Therefore the Ego was not felt as something personal, but as something common to all the members of the tribe. Just as a man now remembers what he has experienced from the time of his birth, the men of that time remembered what the ancestors of the same tribe had done as vividly as if they themselves had experienced it: The grandchild and great-grandchild felt within them the some Ego that had lived in the grandfather and great-grandfather. When we know this we shall understand the secret of the great age of the patriarchs. For example, “Adam” was not the name of a single individual but of the common Ego which flowed through many generations. We have just said that Jehovah made the blood, into the physical vehicle of the Ego. He did this by taking in hand the development of the blood. He expressed His force in the kind of breathing; man became the Jehovah-man through Jehovah giving him the breath. The fact that the man who was supplied with the necessary preliminary conditions had the living breath breathed into him must be taken quite literally. “Jehovah breathed breath into man and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). But this inbreathing of the soul did not take place suddenly, it was a process which lasted for thousands of years. Man thus became a breather of air.

On the Old Moon there was something else in place of the breathing of air. Whereas the man of the present day breathes air in and out and thereby has a source of warmth within himself, his ancestors on the Old Moon consisting of physical, etheric and astral bodies; breathed the substance of warmth or fire in and out. Man's predecessors on the old Moon were fire-breathers. Occult Science looks upon all matter only as the expression of spirit. We breathe in and out not air alone, we breathe in the Spirit it contains. Air is the body of Jehovah just as flesh is the body of man. The remembrance of this is expressed in the German legend of Wotan who rides in the Wind. What was breathed in and out on the Old Moon was also spirit.

Upon the Old Moon there were the same spiritual Beings as live upon the Earth; there they lived in fire, but upon the Earth they have become spirits of air. In cosmic evolution Beings remain behind in their development, just as some pupils are backward at school. The Beings who made the Sun their dwelling-place had developed more rapidly and made the transition from fire-spirits to air-spirits; but a great host of beings had not made this transition. The former now worked upon man as spiritual forces from outside, from Sun and Moon. Man takes them into himself through his breath. Between Man and these highly developed Sun-Spirits there are the spiritual Beings, who, it is true, developed very much further than man upon the Moon, but not as fast as the Sun-Spirits and Jehovah. They were unable as yet to influence man through his breathing, nevertheless they endeavoured to influence him. They were the Fire-Spirits who had not completed their task. They worked in the element of warmth and this existed in man his blood. They lived in this warmth.

Thus in the course of his evolution man was placed between the Air-spirits, who live in his breathing (the highest Spirits who permeate him with Spirit), and the fire-spirits who live in the warmth of his blood. They act in his blood as the opponents of the God Jehovah. Jehovah sought to hold men together by love in small groups, He desired to fill them with the feeling of belonging together. But if love had only existed in this form men would never have become independent beings; they would have had to develop love involuntarily. The Fire-spirits directed their attacks against this, with the result that man gained his personal freedom. The small groups of people were broken up. Jehovah's only interest was to lead people together in love, He worked in the blood as the God of blood-love. The action of the Fire-spirits was different; it was they who brought art and science to men. These Spirits are also called Luciferic Spirits. The further course of the evolution of humanity proceeded under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to man. Under the guidance of the God Jehovah men were to be led together through the principle of blood-brotherhood. The fact that man has become a free citizen of the Earth,—this he owes to Lucifer. Jehovah placed men in the Paradise of Love; then there appeared the Fire-spirit, the Serpent, in the form which man once possessed when he still breathed fire, and opened men's eyes to what still remained from the Old Moon. This Luciferic influence was perceived as a temptation. But those who were instructed in the occult schools did not look upon this enlightenment, as wrong; the great Initiates have not cast the Serpent down but, like Moses in the wilderness, they have raised it. (Numbers 21:8-9).

That which was revealed in humanity was manifested for a long period through Jehovah as blood-love. Beside this worked the Spirit of Wisdom, a principle which has to prepare something different. Love gradually spread from smaller to larger groups of human beings, from families to tribes and peoples. A characteristic example of this is the Hebrew people, which felt itself as a group which belonged together and called all others “Galileans,” i.e. those who did not belong to the blood. But humanity was to receive not only blood-love but spiritual love, which will embrace the whole earth with a bond of brotherhood. The period during which humanity was held together by the love which existed between relations is only to be looked upon as a period of preparation for what was to come later. The action of Lucifer, too, which consisted in splitting apart the bonds which confined human beings, is only the preparation for the activity of a higher Being who was to come. This higher Being was called in the Christian occult schools the true Light-bearer, the true Lucifer, the Christ.

Let us now go back to the period when the Atlantean humanity lived on the Earth. The Earth had quite a different appearance then. Between Europe and America, where now the Atlantic Ocean rolls, there was land, a part of the Earth which now lies at the bottom of the ocean. Modern science is gradually arriving at the knowledge that a continent once existed where the Atlantic Ocean now lies. In Haeckel's magazine, '“Cosmos,” there is an interesting article on “Atlantis.” Atlantis was inhabited by people who were quite different from those of the present day. The relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was then quite different from what it is now. The clairvoyant sees two-points in the human head, one in the etheric brain, the other in the physical brain, between the eyes, about half an inch below the surface. In the man of the present day these two points coincide, but in the Atlantean this was different; the etheric brain projected some distance beyond the physical brain and the two points did not coincide. It may also happen in exceptional cases in people of the present time that these two points do not coincide and the consequence is—idiocy. It was only in the last third of the Atlantean Epoch that these two points came together, and only from that time did man learn to say “I” consciously to himself. Before that time the Atlanteans could not reckon, think logically or form a judgment; but they possessed a wonderful memory, which extended over generations, and they were dimly clairvoyant. They did not see the outlines of physical objects clearly, but they perceived psychic occurrences. When the Atlantean met an animal he perceived clairvoyantly the attitude of the creature towards him whether it was friendly or hostile. For instance, if he saw reddish-brown colour, he turned away for he knew that a hostile influence was approaching; but if he saw a reddish-violet colour he knew that something sympathetic to him was approaching. He also recognised the value of certain foods to him with the aid of this clairvoyance. The animals of the present day, which have preserved this dim clairvoyance, distinguish in a similar way between the plants in the meadows in respect of their value as food or their harmful nature. The kind of vision man now possesses in dreams is a decadent remnant of the clairvoyance of the old Atlanteans. Among the Atlanteans there was not such a clear separation between the consciousness of waking and sleeping as there is in the man of the present day. Their day-consciousness was less clear than ours; but their consciousness during sleep and in dreaming was clearer. During the early part of the Atlantean Epoch there were also times of complete unconsciousness, which were filled with mighty dream-pictures. In those very early times, too, the Atlanteans were unconscious of the act of reproduction. This took place in a state of complete unconsciousness. When the Atlantean awakened, he knew nothing about the act of reproduction; this process was only shown to him in pictorial images. We are reminded of this by the Greek legend which tells of two people who came to Greece and threw stones behind them, and out of these stones men developed. The act of reproduction was veiled in unconsciousness as long as marriages took place between those who were related by blood. It is due to the activity of the Luciferic Spirits, who opened the eyes of men, that men awakened to consciousness and that they recognized the act of reproduction consciously. Men learned to distinguish between good and evil. Because Men now knew about their love and no longer enquired about the blood-relationship they became independent. Then Jehovah was replaced by Christ, Who brought a higher love into the world and made man independent of the members of their tribe and blood-relationships. This universal love is only just beginning; but when the Earth has one day passed on its being to Jupiter, it will be entirely permeated by this spiritual love. It is to this universal love that Christ's statement refers: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26). It is the Christ Who pours out this universal love more and more over the Earth. The evolution of the Earth is divided into two parts through the appearance of Christ Jesus,—the blood, which flowed on Golgotha signifies the replacement of the love of relations by spiritual love. This is the connection between Jehovah, Lucifer, and Christ.

One great advantage of such an important time-symbol as the festival of Easter is that it makes our hearts and souls well fitted to see more and more deeply into the riddle of the nature of man.

Let us once more consider the Oriental legend upon which we threw a little light in the last lecture and regarding which we already know that it contains something important for human life—the legend of Kashiapa, the enlightened pupil of Sakya-Muni, who possessed all the wisdom of the East and regarding whom it was justly said that all his followers could not preserve what he had drawn from Sakya-Muni’s fount of wisdom. The legend says that when Kashiapa was about to die he went to a cave in a mountain and died consciously, and that his body did not putrefy, but it could not be found by any human being until he was able to penetrate into such mysteries through Initiation. And it was prophesied that the vehicle of the ancient Wisdom would appear in a new form as Maitreya Buddha, who, when he has reached the zenith of his earthly existence will go to where the corpse is resting and will touch it with his right hand, and fire will come down from the universe and the undecayed body of Kashiapa will be drawn into the higher worlds. Thus the East is awaiting the appearance of Maitreya Buddha and his action on the body of Kashiapa.

Will it be so? Will he appear? Will Kashiapa’s body be withdrawn by the wonderful fire?

We shall be able to get an inkling of the profound wisdom contained in this as an Easter miracle when we inquire into the miraculous fire that is to take up Kashiapa’s remains.

In the last lecture we observed that Christ announced Himself to Moses in the thunder and fiery lightning of Sinai. For it was none other that said to him, ‘I AM THE I AM.’ He gave His blessing in a prophetic manner as a fiery flash of lightning upon Sinai. And then He appeared in the microcosm in Palestine: The God who announced Himself in the heavens appeared in a human body in the Event of Palestine in the fire that dwells in our blood, and through this Event—if we follow the consequences of what it was to the earth—we find the fire which takes up Kashiapa’s remains.

The progress of the world consists in everything material being spiritualised. The fire appeared materially to Moses in the burning thorn-bush and upon Sinai; through Christ this fire is spiritualised. And who sees the burning fire after the Christ-Event? It is the spiritual eye which is opened by the Christ- Impulse itself and which the Christ-impulse has awakened. Thus the fire worked spiritually. It was perceived again when Saul’s eyes had been enlightened, when he became clairvoyant and recognised in the heavenly fire the One who had accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus both saw the Christ: Moses saw Him in the material fire; but the Christ spoke to the illuminated eye of Saul from the spiritualised fire. As matter is related to spirit, so in the course of the development of the world is the material fire of Sinai related to the fire that streamed towards Saul or Paul.

And what has come into evolution through all this? Let us consider the figures in humanity which were the expression for the Avatars, such as Vishnu, Krishna, etc., who had to appear in order that humanity might find the way back into the spiritual world. In ancient times humanity needed divine power for this. Through the Mystery of Golgotha the power has been given to man to find within himself the forces which raise him up. Christ descended deeper than all, for He used even this earthly body for this. Christ redeemed humanity with human powers; He placed these powers before our souls in the form in which they can be in their original power. What would have happened if Christ had not appeared? If the Enlightened Ones had been able to descend they would at length have found only human beings so steeped in matter that the spiritual powers would not have been able to bring man up again out of the impure matter. The Oriental sages looked out sadly into the future, for they knew that Maitreya Buddha would appear, but the Ancient Wisdom would then have no disciples. And if it had continued in this way, Maitreya Buddha would also have preached to deaf ears, and that which would have been on the earth would have caused Kashiapa’s body to decay, so that Maitreya Buddha would not have been able to carry up Kashiapa’s remains. They pondered sadly as to whether there would be anyone left who would understand Maitreya Buddha. Something had to sacrifice itself in a physical substance, not a God in human form, but a human being who bears God within him, in order that matter may be made into such a purified substance that for future incarnation the ancient wisdom can be intelligible. And it can be understood that the Event of Golgotha has acted in this way for humanity. How deeply has it penetrated into the nature of man and into human existence!

Six hundred years before the Event of Golgotha we see certain occurrences in the human soul and again six hundred years after. One can scarcely present to the human soul a greater or more important time than that sublime period when Buddha was gradually enlightened. He appeared in a royal palace—not in a stable, among poor shepherds. It should be noticed, however, that he went forth from the palace and observed life in its various forms. He perceived that ‘birth is sorrow.’ He searched further with his soul and found a sick man: thus can man become when he is carried to the earthly world by the thirst for existence: disease is sorrow. He found an old man who had gradually lost the use of his limbs: age is sorrow. He saw a corpse: death stood before him with all that it blots out. To be separated from what one loves is sorrow. To be united with what one does not love is sorrow. Not to have what one desires is sorrow.

The teaching regarding sorrow rang out with sublimity and innumerable people learned that they ought to long for release from this earthly existence, because only deliverance from the thirst for existence can lead to the spiritual.

And now let us allow our vision to sweep over a period of 1,200 years, 600 b.c. to 600 a.d. Notice, one thing in the age of Buddha, viz., the corpse and what Buddha felt and taught when he saw this—and then 600 years after the Event of Golgotha I Innumerable souls then turned towards a wooden cross upon which hung a corpse; but from this corpse proceeds the impulse through which life conquers death. It is the opposite pole of what Buddha perceived when he saw a corpse. It is the certainty that existence is not sorrow. Six hundred years after the Event of Golgotha the body of Christ Jesus on the cross was the token of the knowledge of life, the resurrection of life, the victory over death. Although in 600 b.c. the entry into the physical world was sorrow for man, how do the great truths of life now present themselves before the soul? Is birth sorrow? Those who understand the Event of Golgotha, who feel that they are connected with it, gladly enter upon this earth which Christ has entered; and through the union with Christ comes the knowledge that birth is the door to the finding of the Redeemer who also clothed Himself with physical matter. Is disease sorrow? No! Even though humanity cannot yet understand what the spiritual life is which streams in with Christ, and that the one who lets himself be filled with the Christ-Impulse can overcome all disease by the powers he develops within him; for disease is an opportunity to overcome a hindrance, and this man can do through the strength of the Christ-power developed within him. One has to deal with the burden of old age in the same manner. And death is not sorrow, because through the Event of Golgotha death has been overcome. Can separation be sorrow? No! The souls that permeate themselves with the Christ-power know that love can form ties that cannot be severed, and there is nothing in the life between birth and death and between death and re-birth to which we cannot find the way through the Christ-Impulse; Christ brings us together with that which we love. In the same way, being united with what we do not love cannot be sorrow, because the Christ-Impulse teaches us to love all and when we find the way that leads to this, it can no longer be sorrow, for there is nothing else that we do not embrace in love. This is the case also with desire, for desire is so purified by the Christ-Impulse that one only desires what ought to come to one. If it is withheld, then it is for purification and the Christ-power gives one the strength to feel it as a purification. Therefore again it is no longer sorrow.

There is no greater impulse to anew becoming, and also to further development than the Event of Golgotha, which continues to work on and will positively have mighty consequences to the humanity of the future. Christ is the greatest Avatar and when such a Being descends, as the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, something most profoundly important comes into evolution. We sow a grain of wheat in the earth; it germinates: the stalk and ears of wheat grow and the many, many grains are facsimiles of the one grain of wheat we sowed in the earth. It is exactly the same in the spiritual world, for ‘all things transitory are but symbols’ (as below, so above). When the Event of Golgotha had taken place, something happened to the etheric body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth: through the power of Christ they became multiplied and in the spiritual world there have been since that time many, many reproductions of this astral body and this etheric body, and these worked on. When a spiritual individuality descended, it clothed itself with an etheric body and an astral body; and when an individual’s karma allowed it, an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth was woven into him. This was the case, for example, with St. Augustine in the early centuries of our era; into his etheric body was woven a reproduction of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, but his astral body and ‘I’ were his own.

Thus that which had enveloped the God-Man of Palestine was transferred to other human beings who were then to carry the impulse further in humanity. As Augustine had his own ‘I’ and his own astral body, he was subject to all the doubts and waverings that he had such difficulty in overcoming; this came from these still imperfect parts of his being. When he struggled through, he came upon the forces of the image of Jesus of Nazareth in his etheric body and was thereby able to give out truths as a great mystic for some time—and there were many such. Hence the great archetypal ideas were able to flash out in them. These originated from the interwoven copy of the sacred etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth in certain people of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries a.d. In addition to the contents of the teaching of Christ they received interwoven into them an image of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth; therefore they knew from inner enlightenment that Christ lives. It was the same with Paul when he saw. Was it possible for him to have been converted before then through what could be told regarding the Event of Palestine? No one had been able to make a Paul out of Saul and yet the most important impulse went out through him who at that time became a believer through an occult event. Those who wish to have a Christianity without spiritual enlightenment have a curious idea of it!

Again, reproductions of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth propagated themselves in inner enlightenment in other human beings. They could experience Christ, for they bore within them something which came from the historical Christ. Later, in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, people who through karma were ready for it had interwoven into them images of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Such, for example, were Francis of Assisi, Elizabeth of Thüringen, and others. Many, many were called through the continuous activity of Christ to carry it to posterity.

But something else was preserved for later times, viz., the copy of the I or Ego of Jesus of Nazareth. His I or Ego indeed disappeared from the three bodies when the Christ entered into them, but, through Christ, a still higher image remained and still exists to-day. It can be found in human beings who have made themselves ready for this and thereby at the same time for the splendour of the Christ-power and the Christ-Impulse which it bears within it. The physical expression for this is the blood. It is a great mystery. But there have always been those who knew this, who throughout the centuries since the Event of Golgotha have had to take care that humanity gradually matured to receive images of Jesus of Nazareth in the same way that images can be received in the etheric body and astral body. To this end a Mystery had to be founded, so that this ‘I’ could be preserved in secret. A brotherhood was formed, the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail, which guarded this Mystery. This society has always existed, and in it it is said that its Founder took the cup which Christ Jesus used at the Holy Supper and in this cup he caught the blood of the Redeemer which flowed from the cross and collected it in the Holy Grail; that is, he preserved the cup with the Mystery of the image of the ‘I’ or Ego of Christ Jesus in this holy place, in the Brotherhood which consists of the Brothers of the Holy Grail.

To-day the time has come in which, if the hearts of men are opened by a spiritual life, they can rise to the understanding of this great mystery, when looking upon that sacred cup, souls become mature enough to know the mystery of the Christ-Ego, or I that can develop in each human being. In order to receive the Christ ‘Ego,’ or ‘I’ in contemplation upon the Holy Grail one needs to understand that which has here happened as a fact and to take it as a fact. And when mankind has been prepared more and more, the Christ-Ego will develop in them more and more; they will understand in how far the Christ- Ego is the great ideal for humanity. And when humanity has understood this, it will begin to perceive that the certainty of life proceeds from the death upon the Cross of Golgotha. The Christians of the future will understand Christ differently—Christ Who underwent death. They will understand Him as the triumphant Risen One of the Apocalypse, as the Uplifted One Who raises all mankind with Him to the right hand of the Father.

Thus the symbol of Easter points us to the perspective of the whole future of the earth and it shows us that the whole of Christendom will one day from being a Saul become a Paul.

Christ made Himself known to Moses in the material fire on Sinai; He will appear to us in a spiritualised fire. He is with us all the days, even to the end of the world, and He will appear in the spiritual fire to those who have cleared their vision through the Event of Golgotha. They will see Him. Formerly they saw Him differently, but in future they will see the true form of Christ in a spiritual fire. Through Christ having worked down so deeply, even into the physical bony structure or skeleton, He has so purified this physical matter that it will never become what the Enlightened Ones of the East supposed it would, when they thought that the Enlightened One of the future would not find human beings on the earth who would understand Him. Christ was led to Golgotha in order that the fire should not become dross, but that it should be spiritualised. Human beings will understand the fire when they themselves are spiritualised; and thus Maitreya Buddha will find understanding, and humanity will understand the primeval Cosmic Wisdom.

Whither will Kashiapa’s remains be taken and through what will they be rescued? We are told that Maitreya Buddha will touch him with his right hand and he will be withdrawn in a fire.

In Paul’s fire we have to see the spiritualised fire in which will be hidden the body of Kashiapa. In this fire will be hidden all the greatness of the future. We shall see it stream into that which man will become through the Mystery of Golgotha.

A Redeemer meets us in the symbol of the Easter bells; they give us to understand how man ascends or swings himself up to spiritual heights through the Mystery of Easter.

Faust became blind, yet clear light shone within, so that he could work upwards into the worlds where man’s more noble principles will be saved, in the purified spirituality which has flowed into humanity from the Event of Golgotha.