The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Is the knowledge of what Theosophy teaches something that is of particular importance and significance for wider circles, or is Theosophy something that can only be intended for a few who are particularly interested in it? This question leads to a topic that is rarely discussed, but which needs to be discussed: this is the so-called sacramentalism and the special task of our present root race. The question is: What is sacramentalism, and how does our purely human task relate to it? One might ask: What does it matter to some workman who works all day in a carpenter's shop that Lohengrin was once an emissary of the Holy Grail, inspiring the major cultural movements of the Middle Ages? What, after all, is the significance for the masses of all this talk of lofty spiritual and idealistic goals? The whole question is answered when one understands the essence of sacramentalism.

Today, building on the ideas of the Greeks, I would like to talk about the emergence of our present, post-Atlantean root race in relation to the previous, Atlantean root race, and tie in a few other things about the significance of sacramentalism. You all know the legend of Daedalus and Icarus and also the legend of Theseus. I would like to touch briefly on the tremendously profound meaning contained in the Daedalus-Icarus saga. It is said that once upon a time there lived a man named Daedalus who was able to create works of art that came to life, statues that could see and hear, and machines that moved themselves. Daedalus understood all of this. He was respected throughout the land, but he was also extremely ambitious. He had a nephew, Talos, whom he taught and who soon surpassed him in certain respects. We are told that Talos was able to operate potter's wheels and that he also mastered certain arts that were foreign to Daedalus. Talos studied a snake's jaws, for example, and had the idea of forming a saw from the snake's teeth. Thus he became the inventor of the saw. If we compare the character traits of Daedalus with those of Talos, we will see that Daedalus is concerned with things that have already become alien to our fifth root race. Talos, on the other hand, invents things that belong to the technical skills of the fifth root race. If we draw a comparison with the fourth root race, the Atlanteans, we see how the Atlanteans were able to use the vril force, just as we use steam to power locomotives, machines and so on. This art was lost in the post-Atlantean period. In contrast, our time has the modern ability to assemble inorganic objects into machines. The saga wants to show us this transition. Daedalus then manages to make a kind of wing with which he can rise above the earth. His son Icarus also wants to do this, but he does not succeed and perishes in the attempt. This juxtaposition is intended to show, from the Greek spirit, that the different epochs of our earth's development have different tasks. If one epoch of the earth's development were to take on a task that is only suitable for another, it would perish in the attempt. Everything in its place, everything in its time.

Now the Greek saga has linked something else to the saga of Daedalus. After Daedalus has killed Talos, he goes to Crete to Minos. There is a monster there, the Minotaur. The Minotaur is in contrast to the Sphinx. The Minotaur has the head of a bull with a human body, the Sphinx has a human head with an animal body. The Minotaur was to be restrained in his devastating effects. Daedalus was to banish him; he could do this by building him a labyrinth. The Minotaur had to be fed with humans. Every nine years, seven youths and seven maidens had to be sacrificed to him. The Theseus saga is connected to the Minotaur saga. Theseus was the son of Aegeus. The latter had decreed that Theseus should retrieve the sword and sandals from under a large piece of rock, which his father had hidden there. After Theseus had accomplished various things in Athens, he went to Crete to overcome the Minotaur and free the city of Athens from the delivery of the seven youths and the seven virgins. In Crete, the Greeks were always looking for something very special. It was also in Crete that Lykurgus is said to have studied and received his constitution for a kind of communist community and brought it to Sparta, because in Crete there is said to have been a constitution that was native to all ancient priestly states; they were remnants of the old Atlantean priestly communism, which renounces all personal property. A kind of communism is connected with every original foundation of religion. Even Plato still sees Crete as the seat of an exemplary constitution. This priesthood is a remnant of the old Atlantean structure. Daedalus was able to avert what was harmful in Crete because he was familiar with Atlantean life. In the Minotaur, we see the representative of black magic in Crete. This should now stop. Now the Athenians no longer want to send the seven youths and the seven virgins to Crete. Theseus' ship set out with black sails. After overcoming the Minotaur, he wanted to hoist a white sail instead of the former black one. The black magic should become white. With the help of Ariadne's thread, Theseus succeeds in the undertaking and returns to Athens, [but he forgot to set the white sails]. However, the Greeks were not yet so far that they were completely worthy of the white path. Love should rule in the Ariadne thread. But in those days, Christianity was already foreshadowed in such a way that the love principle - Ariadne - is stolen by Bacchus, who has not yet developed this principle, which is to be spread by Christianity. Theseus, like Hercules, was considered a hero, a sun-runner, an initiate in the sixth degree.

Such a legendary complex became popular knowledge in Greece. The people as such knew these legends. Why did the priests try to put the secrets of the world into the legends? Every priest would have regarded it as something unholy, indeed as an impossible profanation, to incorporate anything into poetry that did not have a deep meaning. At the same time, the priest was aware that the deep meaning could not easily be understood by the people. The people were told the fable, the fairy tale, the myth; in them lay the deep meaning. This is the basic characteristic of all the poetry of the ancients. The further back we go, the deeper the meaning becomes. There was no poetry in those times that did not have a deep meaning. Only later times departed from this priestly view and produced works that had nothing more of these spiritual secrets. Even at the market, only things that flowed out of the spiritual life were to be presented. If we keep this in mind, we can say that there was no other leadership than that of the priests at that time. It was only later that the priestly king was replaced by the secular king. This marks the transition from the old priestly kingdoms to secular kingdoms - archont means steward-king.

An example of this view is the legend of the founding of the Roman state. In ancient times, history was not thought of in terms of narrating external events. Only since Herodotus has history been told as a chronicle. This did not exist before. Everything was presented symbolically. What eyes saw and ears heard was supposed to mean something higher, it was supposed to be the expression of the spiritual. When the priest tried to explain where the Romans had come from, he told us the following: Whenever something like this is realized, the seven sacred principles come into effect in the world. Everything happens in the sequence of the seven principles. First, the divine founder rises from heaven. Then the priest takes out that which is alive in the matter; this then lives as Kama. Then the manas, the mind, is born in the kama. The body, which is itself a holy thing, lives in heaven. It is only unholy when it is misused. These are the four lower principles. Then the three upper ones must come in. Something more perfect, more complete, must enter.

So it was with the founding of the city of Rome. First came Romulus; he came from heavenly spheres, he was the founder. Rome was a founding city of ancient Troy. King Numitor of Alba Longa was the descendant of Aeneas, who had landed in Latium with Trojan refugees. We only need to understand the words: “alba longa” is the white, long dress of the Catholic priests. Amulius means: the unproclaimed, the priest. So Rome was a city of priests as a daughter city of Troy. Numitor is the man of will. He is initially banished to the forest, but becomes the progenitor of the founders of the city of Rome. Romulus is the founder of Roman civilization, the first king. He is also placed among the gods under the name Quirinus. The second king is Numa Pompilius. The third king is Tullus Hostilius; he is the representative of Kama; war reigns there; what in Theosophy is called Kama-Rupa develops. The fourth king is Ancus Martius; he is the representative of Kama-Manas. Technical things are done there. When the fourth principle was ripe, the Etruscan culture was summoned. Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king, brings in Manas. He built the large buildings and water pipes. That which is called Manas is represented in Tarquinius Priscus. The sixth principle is Budhi. It brings about the blessings of human coexistence through love and justice. Servius Tullius is the sixth king of the Romans. He was the one who created order, who gave laws that corresponded to those of the Etruscans. The seventh king is Tarquinius Superbus, the exalted one, but he fell down.

This is how the priest saw the emergence of the city of Rome. This was not an interpretation, but a reality. The cities were governed in such a way that the seven principles were the guidelines for ruling. If something is to flourish on earth, then it must be created in the order of the seven principles. Never would a priest have done something that only his successor should have done. This was all recorded in the books of the temples, which were called the Sibylline Books. That was the plan of history, so to speak. The priests had to follow the Sibylline Books.

Here we are dealing with the realization of spiritual powers that lived in this priestly culture. We see that the world was guided and directed by spirituality. It was only later that the understanding of spiritual governance was lost. We are told about the Etruscan main god Tages, who is said to have risen from the earth while ploughing the fields. Technical buildings and arts and crafts were the characteristics of the Etruscan culture. Every stone of the Etruscan architecture shows that there is something special about it. The aim was to be able to carry the greatest loads with the least material. This is the principle on which Etruscan architecture, vaulted and arched structures, is based. This spiritually guided culture has descended to the physical plane. Personal efficiency now takes precedence. All consciousness of the connection between the lowest activity and the spiritual has ceased. For the occultist it is clear whether a person in a particular position has heard something of the divine intentions and purposes and has absorbed something of what has flowed from the spiritual, because such a person also does the most mundane thing in a completely different way than another person who has not. The consecration that flows from the higher spheres onto earthly life does not flow in the same way for those who are only attached to the physical plane. It is the essence of sacramentalism that man imbues everyday life with spiritual consecration. The purpose of the old legends was to put people's souls into the right vibrations so that they were filled with spiritual power. The simplest action of a naive mind can be sanctified by this. This is something that is effective and will always be effective. Anyone who knows this also knows that a reversal is necessary in our culture. No matter how hard we try to bring harmony and order to this physical plane, it will fail as long as we work only on the physical plane; if harmony is created on one side, disharmony will arise on the other. But if you allow the spiritual to take effect, you will see that everyday life is approached in a completely different way. This is sacramentalism.

This thought also underlies Christian sacramentalism: healing from a spiritual point of view. A sacrament is a physical act performed in such a way that it symbolically expresses a spiritual process. It is a symbolism that has its justification on higher planes. Nothing in the sacrament is arbitrary. Every detail is a reflection of a higher occult process. Anyone who wants to understand a sacrament in which the ceremony is a reflection of a spiritual process must familiarize themselves with the underlying occult process, which is hidden from the outer eye. In every sacrament, something intellectual is not the only thing that takes place, but something that has a real, occult meaning. Take, for example, the occult significance of fire. There was no fire in the earliest developmental epochs. It could only arise when the earth was compacted to such an extent that this fire could be struck out of earthly matter. Therefore, the invention of fire is described to us as a process of our fifth root race.

Prometheus brought fire from heaven to earth. The creation of fire has given our culture its character. Imagine what it would be like if we had no fire. In the first epochs, people had no fire. Our development owes everything intellectual, everything technical to fire. Fire is what leads down to the physical plane. We owe material culture to fire. The priests therefore had to see something special in fire. Thus, in the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Persian magicians saw in fire above all that which must work in the sacrament. What did the Persian priest ceremonially realize on his altar? Occultism knows that there were seven Zoroasters. The Zoroaster of history is the seventh. The Persian magician had a special way of producing fire. This process was the image of the great cosmic origin of fire. There stood the Persian magician with his thyrsus and performed his ceremonies, which every occultist knows well, but only the occultist. This process was a reflection of the great cosmic origin of fire. When the priest schools no longer understood how to create fire with the thyrsus, they at least sought to find a natural fire. At first, they created fire through lightning, and then they propagated it through the so-called eternal fire, which could only be ignited when two logs were laid together. The fire obtained from nature was considered more potent than the artificially produced one. When there was an outbreak of animal disease in England in 1826 and in Hannover in 1828, people took wood and rubbed it to make a fire, because they believed that the herbs cooked in it would be more potent.

Man must infuse spiritual life into every action and every step; and to reintroduce this is the task and aspiration of the spiritual movement. The sacramentalism of earlier times must return. One must know that it is different to act out of the spirit than to act out of the material. To let spiritual life flow out again is our goal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I should like in these three days to speak on a subject which is generally looked at from a more formal angle, as if the attitude of the philosophic view of life to Christianity had been to a certain extent dictated by the deep philosophic movement of the Middle Ages. As this side of the question has lately had a kind of revival through Pope Leo XIII's Ordinance to his clergy to make “Thomism” the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, our present subject has a certain significance. But I do not wish to treat the subject which crystallized as mediaeval philosophy round the personalities of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, only from this formal side; rather I wish in the course of these days to reveal the deeper historical background out of which this philosophic movement, much underrated to-day, has arisen. We can say: Thomas Aquinas tries in the thirteenth century quite clearly to grasp the problem of the total human knowledge of philosophies, and in a way which we have to admit is difficult for us to follow, for conditions of thought are attached to it which people to-day scarcely fulfil, even if they are philosophers. One must be able to put oneself completely into the manner of thought of Thomas Aquinas, his predecessors and successors; one must know how to take their conceptions, and how their conceptions lived in the souls of those men of the Middle Ages, of which the history of philosophy tells only rather superficially.

If we look now at the central point of this study, at Thomas Aquinas, we would say: in him we have a personality which in face of the main current of mediaeval Christian philosophy really disappears as a personality; one which, we might almost say, is only the co-efficient or exponent of the current of world philosophy, and finds expression as a personality only through a certain universality. So that, when we speak of Thomism, we can focus our attention on something quite exceptionally impersonal, on something which is revealed only through the personality of Thomas Aquinas. On the other hand we see at once that we must put into the forefront of our inquiry a full and complete personality, and all that term includes, when we consider the individual who was the immediate and chief predecessor of Thomism, namely Augustine. With him everything was personal, with Thomas Aquinas everything was really impersonal. In Augustine we have to deal with a fighting man, in Thomas

Aquinas, with a mediaeval Church defining its attitude to heaven and earth, to men, to history, etc., a Church which, we might say, expressed itself as a Church, within certain limitations it is true, through the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

A significant event separates the two, and unless one takes this event into consideration, it is not possible to define the mutual relationship of these mediaeval individuals. The event to which I refer is the declaration of heresy by the Emperor Justinian against Origen. The whole direction of Augustine's view of the world becomes clear only when we keep in mind the whole historical background from which Augustine emerged. This historical background, however, becomes in reality, completely changed from the fact that the powerful influence—it was actually a powerful influence in spite of much that has been said in the history of philosophy—that this powerful influence on the Western world which had spread from the Schools of Philosophy in Athens, ceased to exist. It persisted into the sixth century, and then ebbed, but so that something remains which in fact, in the subsequent philosophical stream of the West, is quite different from that which Augustine knew in his lifetime. I shall have to ask you to take note that to-day's address is more in the nature of an introduction, that we shall deal tomorrow with the real nature of Thomism, and that on the third day I shall make clear my object in bringing before you all I have to say in these three days.

For you see, ladies and gentlemen, if you will excuse the personal reference, I am in rather a special position with regard to Christian mediaeval philosophy, that is, to Thomism. I have often mentioned, even in public addresses, what happened to me once when I had put before a working-class audience what I must look upon as the true course of Western history. The result was that though there were a good many pupils in agreement with me, the leaders of the proletarian movement at the turn of the century hit on the idea that I was not presenting true Marxism. And although one could assert that the world in future must after all recognize something like freedom in teaching, I was told at the final meeting: This party recognizes no freedom in teaching, only a rational compulsion! And my activity as a teacher, in spite of the fact that at the time a large number of students from the proletariat had been attracted, was forced to a sudden and untimely end.

I might say I had the same experience in other places with what I wanted to say, now about nineteen or twenty years ago, concerning Thomism and everything that belonged to mediaeval philosophy. It was of course just the time when what we are accustomed to call “Monism” reached its height, round the year 1900. At this time there was founded in Germany the “Giordano-Bruno-Bund” apparently to encourage a free, independent view of life, but au fond really only to encourage the materialistic side of Monism. Now, ladies and gentlemen, because it was impossible for me at the time to take part in all that empty phrase-making which went out into the world as Monism, I gave an address on Thomism in the Berlin “Giordano-Bruno-Bund.”

In this address I sought to prove that a real and spiritual Monism had been given in Thomism, that this spiritual Monism, moreover, had been given in such a way that it reveals itself through the most accurate thought imaginable, of which more recent philosophy, under the influence of Kant and Protestantism has at bottom not the least idea, and no longer the capacity to achieve it.

And so I fell foul also of Monism. It is, in point of fact, extraordinarily difficult to-day to speak of these things in such a way that one's word seems to be based sincerely on the matter itself and not to be in the service of some Party or other. I want in these three days to try once more to speak thus impartially of the matters I have indicated.

The personality of Augustine fits into the fourth and fifth centuries, as I said before, as a fighting personality in the fullest sense. His method of fighting is what sinks deep into the soul if we can understand in detail the particular nature of this fight. There are two problems which faced Augustine's soul with an intensity of which we, with our pallid problems of knowledge and of the soul, have really no idea.

The first problem can be put thus: Augustine strives to find the nature of what man can recognize as truth, supporting him, filling his soul. The second problem is this: How can you explain the presence of evil in a world which after all has no sense unless its purpose at least has something to do with good? How can you explain the pricks of evil in human nature which never cease—according to Augustine's view—the voice of evil which is never silent, even if a man strives honestly and uprightly after the good?

I do not believe that we can get near to Augustine if we take these two questions in the sense in which the average man of our time, even if he were a philosopher, would be apt to take them. You must look for the special shade of meaning these questions had for a man of the fourth and fifth centuries. Augustine lived, after all, at first a life of inner commotion, not to say a dissipated life; but always these two questions ran up before him. Personally he is placed in a dilemma. His father is a Pagan, his mother a pious Christian; and she takes the utmost pains to win him for Christianity. At first the son can be moved only to a certain seriousness, and this is directed towards Manichaeism. We shall look later at this view of life, which early came into Augustine's range of vision, as he changed from a somewhat irregular way of living to a full seriousness of life. Then—after some years—he felt himself more and more out of sympathy with Manichaeism, and fell under the sway of a certain Scepticism, not driven by the urge of his soul or some other high reason, but because the whole philosophical life of the time led him that way. This Scepticism was evolved at a certain time from Greek philosophy, and remained to the day of Augustine. Now, however, the influence of Scepticism grew ever less and less, and was for Augustine, as it were, only a link with Greek philosophy. And this Scepticism led to something which without doubt exercised for a time a quite unusually deep influence on his subjectivity, and the whole attitude of his soul. It led him into a Neoplatonism of a different kind from what in the history of philosophy is generally called Neoplatonism. Augustine got more out of this Neoplatonism than one usually thinks. The whole personality and the whole struggle of Augustine can be understood only when one understands how much of the neoplatonic philosophy had entered into his soul; and if we study objectively the development of Augustine, we find that the break which occurred in going over from Manichaeism to Platonism was hardly as violent in the transition from Neoplatonism to Christianity. For one can really say: in a certain sense Augustine remained a Neoplatonist; to the extent he became one at all he remained one. But he could become a Neoplatonist only up to a point. For that reason, his destiny led him to become acquainted with the phenomenon of Christ-Jesus. And this is really not a big jump but a natural course of development in Augustine from Neoplatonism to Christianity. How this Christianity lives in Augustine—yes—how it lives in Augustine we cannot judge unless we look first at Manichaeism, a remarkable formula for overcoming the old heathenism at the same time as the Old Testament and Judaism.

Manichaeism was already at the time when Augustine was growing up a world-current of thought which had spread throughout North Africa, where, you must remember, Augustine spent his youth, and in which many people of Western Europe had been caught up. Founded in about the third century in Asia by Mani, a Persian, Manichaeism had extraordinarily little effect historically on the subsequent world. To define this Manichaeism, we must say this: there is more importance in the general attitude of this view of life than in what one can literally describe as its contents. Above all, the remarkable thing about it is that the division of human experience into a spiritual side and a material side had no meaning for it. The words or ideas “spirit” and “matter” mean nothing to it. Manichaeism sees as “spiritual” what appears to the senses as material and when it speaks of the spiritual it does not rise above what the senses know as matter. It is true to say of Manichaeism—much more emphatically true than we with our world grown so abstract and intellectual usually think,—that it actually sees spiritual phenomena, spiritual facts in the stars and their courses, and that it sees at the same time in the mystery of the sun that which is manifest to us on earth as something spiritual. It conveys no meaning for Manichaeism to speak of either matter or spirit, for in it what is spiritual has its material manifestation and what is material is to it spiritual. Therefore, Manichaeism quite naturally speaks of astronomical things and world phenomena in the same way as it would speak of moral phenomena or happenings within the development of human beings. And thus this apposition of “Light” and “Darkness” which Manichaeism, imitating something from ancient Persia, embodies in its philosophy, is to it at the same time something completely and obviously spiritual. And it is also something obvious that this same Manichaeism still speaks of what apparently moves as sun in the heavens as something which has to do with the moral entities and moral impulses in the development of mankind; and that it speaks of the relation of this moral-physical sun in the heavens, to the Signs of the Zodiac as to the twelve beings through which the original being, the original source of light delegates its activities. But there is something more about this Manichaeism. It looks upon man and man does not yet appear to its eyes as what we to-day see in man. To us man appears as a kind of climax of creation on earth. Whether we think more or less in material or spiritual terms, man appears to man now as the crown of creation on earth, the kingdom of man as the highest kingdom or at least as the crown of the animal kingdom. Manichaeism cannot agree to this.

The thing which had walked the earth as man and in its time was still walking it, is to it only a pitiful remnant of that being which ought to have become man through the divine essence of light. Man should have become something entirely different from the man now walking the earth. The being now walking on earth as man was created through original man losing the fight against the demons of darkness, this original man who had been created by the power of light as an ally in its fight against the demons of darkness, but who had been transplanted into the sun by benevolent powers and had thus been taken up by the kingdom of light itself. But the demons have managed nevertheless to tear off as it were a part of this original man from the real man who escaped into the sun and to form the earthly race of man out of it, the earthly race which thus walks about on earth as a weaker edition of that which could not live here, for it had to be removed into the sun during the great struggle of spirits. In order to lead back man, who in this way appeared as a weaker edition on earth, to his original destination the Christ-being then appeared and through its activity the demonic influences are to be removed from the earth.

I know very well, that all that part of this view of life which is still capable of being put into modern language, can hardly be intelligible; for the whole of it comes from substrata of the soul's experience which differ vastly from the present ones. But the important part which is interesting us to-day is what I have already emphasized. For however fantastic it may appear, this part I have been telling you about the continuation of the development on earth in the eyes of the Manichaeans—Manichaeism did not represent it at all as something only to be viewed in the spirit, but as a phenomenon which we would to-day call material, unfolding itself to our physical eyes as something at the same time spiritual.

That was the first powerful influence on Augustine, and the problems connected with the personality of Augustine can really only be solved if one bears in mind the strong influence of this Manichaeism, with its principle of the spiritual-material. We must ask ourselves: What was the reason for Augustine's dissatisfaction with Manichaeism? It was not based on what one might call its mystical content as I have just described it to you, but his dissatisfaction arose from the whole attitude of Manichaeism. At first Augustine was attracted, in a sense sympathetically moved by the physical self-evidence, by the pictorial quality with which this philosophy was presented to him; but then something in him appeared which refused to be satisfied with this very quality which regarded matter spiritually and the spiritual materially. And one can come to the right conclusion about this only if one faces the real truth which often has been advanced as a formal view; namely, if one considers that Augustine was a man who was fundamentally more akin to the men of the Middle Ages and even perhaps to the men of modern times than he could possibly be to those men who through their soul-mood were the natural inheritors of Manichaeism. Augustine has already something of what I would call the revival of spiritual life. In other places I have often pointed, even in public lectures, to what I mean. These present times are intellectual and inclined to the abstract, and so we always see in the history of any century the influences at work from the preceding century, and so on. In the case of an individual it is of course pure nonsense to say: something which happens in, let us say, his eighteenth year is only the consequence of something else which happened in his thirteenth or fourteenth year. In between lies something which springs from the deepest depths of human nature, which is not just the consequence of something that has gone before in the sense in which one is justified in speaking of cause and effect, but is rather something which is inherent in the nature of man, and takes place in human life, namely, adolescence. And such a gap has to be recognized also at other times in human evolution—in individual human evolution, when something struggles from the depths to the surface; so that we cannot say: what happens is only the direct uninterrupted consequence of whatever has preceded it. And such gaps occur also in the case of all humanity. We have to assume that before such a gap Manichaeism occurred, and after such a gap occurred the soul-attitude, the soul-conception in which Augustine found himself. Augustine could simply not come to terms with his soul unless he rose above what a Manichaean called material-spiritual to something purely spiritual, something built and seen in the spiritual sphere; Augustine had to rise to something much more free of the senses. So he had to turn away from the pictorial, the evidential philosophy of Manichaeism. This was the first thing that developed so intensively in his soul. We read it in his words: the heaviest and almost the only reason for error which I could not avoid was that I had to imagine a bodily substance when I wanted to think of God.

In this way he refers to the time when Manichaeism with its material spirituality and its spiritual materiality lived in his soul; he refers to it in these words and characterizes this period of his life thus as an error. He needed something to look up to, something which was fundamental to human nature. He needed something which, unlike the Manichaean principles, does not look upon the physical universe as spiritual-material. As everything with him struggled with intensive and overpowering earnestness to the surface of his soul, so also this saying: “I asked the earth and it said: `I am not it,' and all things on it confessed the same.”

What does Augustine ask? He asks what the divine really is, and he asks the earth and it says to him, “I am not it.” Manichaeism would have: “I am it as earth, in so far as the divine expresses itself through earthly works.” And again Augustine says: “I asked the sea and the abysses and whatever living thing they cover:” “We are not your God, seek above us.” “I asked the sighing winds,” and the whole nebula with all its inhabitants said: “The philosophers who seek the nature of things in us were mistaken, for we are not God.”

(Thus not the sea and not the nebula, nothing in fact which can be observed through the senses.)

“I asked the sun, the moon, and the stars.” They said: “We are not God whom thou seekest.”

Thus he gropes his way out of Manichaeism, precisely out of that part of it which must be called its most significant part, at least in this connection. Augustine gropes after something spiritual which is free of all sensuousness. And in this he finds himself exactly in that era of human soul-development in which the soul had to free itself from the contemplation of matter as something spiritual and of the spiritual as something material. We entirely misunderstand Greek philosophy in reference to this. And because I tried for once to describe Greek philosophy as it really was, the beginning of my Riddles of Philosophy seems so difficult to understand. When the Greeks speak of ideas, of conceptions, when Plato speaks of them, people now believe that Plato or the Greeks mean the same by ideas as we do. This is not so, for the Greeks spoke of ideas as something which they observed in the outer world like colours or sounds. That part of Manichaeism which we find slightly changed, with—let us say—an oriental tinge, that is already present in the whole Greek view of life. The Greek sees his idea just as he sees colours. And he still possesses that material-spiritual, spiritual-material life of the soul, which does not rise to what we know as spiritual life. Whatever we may call it, a mere abstraction or the true content of our soul, we need not decide at the present moment; the Greek does not yet reckon with what we call a life of the soul free from matter; he does not distinguish, as we do, between thinking and outward use of the senses. The whole Platonic philosophy ought to be seen in this light to be fully understood.

We can now say, that Manichaeism is nothing but a post-Christian variation (with an oriental tinge) of something already existing among the Greeks. Neither do we understand that wonderful genius who closes the circle of Greek philosophy, Aristotle, unless we know that whenever he speaks of concepts, he still keeps within the meaning of an experienced tradition which regarded concepts as belonging to the outer world of the senses as well as perceptions, though he is already getting close to the border of understanding abstract thought free from all evidence of the senses. Through the point of view to which men's souls had attained during his era, through actual events happening within the souls of men in whose rank Augustine was a distinctive, prominent personality, Augustine was forced not just only to experience within his soul, as the Greeks had done, but he was forced to rise to thoughts free from sense-perceptions, to thoughts which still kept their meaning even if they were not dealing with earth, air and sea, with stars, sun and moon; thoughts which had a content beyond the sense of vision.

And now only philosophers and philosophies spoke to him which spoke of what they had to say from an entirely different point of view, that is, from the super-spiritual one just explained. Small wonder, then, that these souls striving in a vague way for something not yet in existence and trying with their minds to seize what was there, could only find something they could not absorb; small wonder that these souls sought refuge in scepticism. On the other hand, the feeling of standing on a sound basis of truth and the desire to get an answer to the question of the origin of Evil was so strong in Augustine, that equally powerful in his soul lived that philosophy which stands under the name of Neoplatonism at the end of Greek philosophic development. This is focused in Plotinus and reveals to us historically what neither the Dialogues of Plato and still less Aristotelian philosophy can reveal, namely, the course of the whole life of the soul when it looks for a greater intensiveness and a reaching beyond the normal. Plotinus is like a last straggler of a type which followed quite different paths to knowledge, to the inner life of the soul, from those which were gradually understood later. Plotinus must appear fantastic to present-day men. To those who have absorbed something of mediaeval scholasticism Plotinus must appear as a terrible fanatic, indeed, as a dangerous one.

I have noticed this repeatedly. My old friend Vincenz Knauer, the Benedictine monk, who wrote a history of philosophy and who has also written a book about the chief problems of philosophy from Thales to Hamerling was, I may well say, good-nature incarnate. This man never let himself go except when he had to deal with Neoplatonism, in particular with Plotinus, and he would then get quite angry and would denounce Plotinus terribly as a dangerous fanatic. And Brentano, that intelligent Aristotelian and Empiric, Franz Brentano, who also carried mediaeval philosophy deeply and intensely in his soul, wrote a little book: Philosophies that Create a Stir, and there he fumes about Plotinus in the same way, for Plotinus the dangerous fanatic is the philosopher, the man who in his opinion “created a stir” at the close of the ancient Greek period. To understand him is really extraordinarily difficult for the modern philosopher.

Concerning this philosopher of the third century we have next to say this: What we experience as the content of our understanding, of our reason, what we know as the sum of our concepts about the world is entirely different for him. I might say, if I may express myself clearly: we understand the world through sense-observations which through abstraction we bring to concepts, and end there. We have the concepts as inner psychic experience and if we are average men of to-day we are more or less conscious that we have abstractions, something we have sucked as it were out of things. The important thing is that we end there; we pay attention to the experiences of the senses and stop at the point where we make the total of our concepts, of our ideas. It was not so for Plotinus. For him this whole world of sense-experience scarcely existed. But that which meant something to him, of which he spoke as we speak of plants and minerals and animals and physical men, was something which he saw lying above concepts; it was a spiritual world and this spiritual world had for him a nether boundary, namely, the concepts. While we get our concepts by going to concrete things, make them into abstractions and concepts and say: concepts are the putting-together, the extractions of ideal nature from the observation of the senses, Plotinus said—and he paid little heed to the observation of the senses: “We, as men, live in a spiritual world, and what this spiritual world reveals to us finally, what we see as its nether boundary, are concepts.” For us the world of the senses lies below concepts: for Plotinus there is above concepts a spiritual world, the intellectual world, the world really of the kingdom of the spirit. I might use the following image: let us suppose we were submerged in the sea, and looking upward to the surface of the water, we saw nothing but this surface, nothing above the surface, then this surface would be the upper boundary. Suppose we lived in the sea, we might perhaps have in our soul the feeling: This boundary would be the limit of our life-element, in which we are, if we were organized as sea-beings. But for Plotinus it was not so. He took no notice of the sea round him; but the boundary which he saw, the boundary of the concept-world in which his soul lived, was for him the nether boundary of something above it; just as if we were to take the boundary of the water as the boundary of the atmosphere and the clouds and so on. At the same time this sphere above concepts is for Plotinus what Plato calls the “world of ideas” and Plotinus throughout imagines that he is continuing the true genuine philosophy of Plato. This “idea-world” is, first of all, completely a world of which one speaks in the sense of Plotinism. Surely it would not occur to you, even if you were Subjectivists or followers of the modern Subjectivist philosophy, when you look out upon the meadow, to say: I have my meadow, you have yours, and so and so has his meadow; even if you are convinced that you each have only before you the image of a meadow, you speak of the meadow in the singular, of one meadow which is out there. In the same way Plotinus speaks of the one idea-world, not of the idea-world of this mind, or of another or of a third mind. In this idea-world—and this we see already in the whole manner in which one has to characterize the thought-process leading to this idea-world—in this idea-world the soul has a part. So we may say: The soul, the Psyche, unfolds itself out of the idea-world and experiences it. And the Soul, just as the idea-world creates the Psyche, in its turn creates the matter in which it is embodied. So that the lower material from which the Psyche takes its body is chiefly a creation of this Psyche.

But precisely there is the origin of individuation, there the Psyche, which otherwise takes part in the single idea-world, becomes a part of body A, and body B, and so on, and through this fact there appear, for the first time, individual souls. It is just as if I had a great quantity of liquid in one mass, and having taken twenty glasses had filled each with the liquid, so that I have this liquid, which as such is a unity, thus divided, just so I have the Psyche in the same condition, because it is incorporated in bodies which, however, it has itself created. Thus in the Plotinistic sense a man can view himself according to his exterior, his vessel. But that is at bottom only the way in which the soul reveals itself, in which the soul also becomes individualized. Afterward man has to experience within him his very own soul, which raises itself upward to the idea-world. Still later there comes a higher form of experience. That one should speak of abstract concepts—that has no meaning for a Plotinist; for such abstract concepts—well, a Plotinist would have said: “What do you mean—abstract concepts? Concepts surely cannot be abstract: they cannot hang in the air, they must be suspended from the spirit; they must be the concrete revelations of the spiritual.”

The interpretation therefore that ideas are any kind of abstractions, is therefore wrong. This is the expression of an intellectual world, a world of spirituality. It is also what existed in the ordinary experience of those men out of whose relationships Plotinus and his fellows grew. For them such talk about concepts, in the way we talk about them, had absolutely no meaning, because for them there was only a penetration of the spiritual world into souls. And this concept-world is found at the limit of this penetration, in experiencing. Only when we went deeper, when we developed the soul further, only then there resulted something which the ordinary man could not know, which the man experienced who had attained a higher stage. He then experienced that which was above the idea-world—the One, if you like to call it so—the experience of the One. This was for Plotinus the thing that was unattainable to concepts, just because it was above the world of concepts, and could only be attained if one could sink oneself into oneself without concept, a state we describe here in our spiritual science as Imagination. You can read about it in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It. But there is this difference: I have treated the subject from the modern point of view, whereas Plotinus treated it from the old. What I there call the Imagination is just that which, according to Plotinus stands above the idea-world.

From this general view of the world Plotinus really also derived all his knowledge of the human soul. It is, after all, practically contained in it. And one can be an individualist in the sense of Plotinus if one is at the same time a human being who recognizes how man raises his life upwards to something which is above all individuality, to something spiritual; whereas in our age we have more the habit of reaching downwards to the things of the senses. But all this which is the expression of something which a thorough scientist regards as fanaticism, all this is in the case of Plotinus, not something thought out, these are no hypotheses of his. This perception—right up to the One which only in exceptional cases could be attained—this perception was as clear to Plotinus and as obvious, as is for us to-day the perception of minerals, plants and animals. He spoke only in the sense of something which really was directly experienced by the soul when he spoke of the soul, of the Logos, which was part of the Nous, of the idea-world and of the One. For Plotinus the whole world was, as it were, a spirituality—again a different shade of philosophy from the Manichaean and from the one Augustine pursued. Manichaeism recognizes a sense-supersense; for it the words and concepts of matter and spirit have as yet no meaning. Augustine strives to reach a spiritual experience of the soul that is free from the sense and to escape from his material view of life. For Plotinus the whole world is spiritual, things of the senses do not exist. For what appears material is only the lowest method of revealing the spiritual. All is spirit, and if we only go deep enough into things, everything is revealed as spirit.

This is something which Augustine could not accept. Why? Because he had not the necessary point of view. Because he lived in his age as a predecessor—for if I might call Plotinus a “follower” of the ancient times in which one held such philosophic views,—though he went on into the third century,—Augustine was a predecessor of those people who could no longer feel and perceive that there was a spiritual world underneath the idea-world. He just did not see that any more. He could only learn it by being told. He might hear that people said it was so, and he might develop a feeling that there was something in it which was a human road to truth. That was the dilemma in which Augustine stood in relation to Plotinism. But he was never completely diverted from searching for an inner understanding of this Plotinism. However, this philosophical point of view did not open itself to him. He only guessed: in this world there must be something. But he could not fight his way to it.

This was the mood of his soul when he withdrew himself into a lonely life, in which he got to know the Bible and Christianity, and later the sermons of Ambrosius and the Epistles of St. Paul; and this was the mood of his soul which finally brought him to say: “The nature of the world which Plotinus sought at first in the nature of the idea-world of the Nous, or in the One, which one can attain only in specially favourable conditions of soul, why! That has appeared in the body on earth, in human form, through Christ-Jesus.” That leapt at him as a conviction out of the Bible: “Thou hast no need to struggle upward to the One, thou needest but look upon that which the historical tradition of Christ-Jesus interprets. There is the One come down from heaven, and is become man.” And Augustine exchanges the philosophy of Plotinus for the Church. He expresses this exchange clearly enough. For instance, when he says, “Who could be so blind as to say: 'The Apostolic Church merits no Faith” the church which is so faithful and supported by so many brotherly agreements that it has transmitted their writings as conscientiously to those that come after, as it has kept their episcopal sees in direct succession down to the present Bishops. This it is on which Augustine, out of the soul-mood described, laid the chief stress:—that, if one only goes into it, it can be shown in the course of centuries that there were once men who knew the Lord's disciples, and here is a continuous tradition of a sort worthy of belief, that there appeared on earth the very thing which Plotinus knew how to attain in the way I have indicated.

And now there arose in Augustine the effort, in so far as he could get to the heart of it, to make use of this Plotinism to comprehend that which had through Christianity been opened to his feeling and his inner perception. He actually applied the knowledge he had through Plotinism to understand Christianity and its meaning. Thus, for example, he transposed the concept of the One. For Plotinus the One was something experienced; for Augustine who could not attain this experience, the One became something which he defined with the abstract term “being”; the idea-world, he defined with the abstract concept “knowing,” and Psyche with the abstract concept “living,” or even “love.” We have the best evidence that Augustine proceeded thus in that he sought to comprehend the spiritual world, with neoplatonic and Plotinistic concepts, that there is above men a spiritual world, out of which the Christ descends. The Trinity was something which Plotinism made clear to Augustine, the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.

And if we were to ask seriously, of what was Augustine's soul full, when he spoke of the Three Persons—we must answer: It was full of the knowledge derived from Plotinus. And this knowledge he carried also into his understanding of the Bible. We see how it continues to function. For this Trinity awakens to life again, for example, in Scotus Erigena, who lived at the court of Charles the Bald in the ninth century, and who wrote a book on the divisions and classification of Nature in which we still find a similar Trinity: Christianity interprets its content from Plotinism.

But what Augustine preserved from Plotinism in a specially strong degree was something that was fundamental to it.

You must remember that man, since the Psyche reaches down into the material as into a vessel, is really the only earthly individuality. If we ascend slightly into higher regions, to the divine or the spiritual, where the Trinity originates, we have no longer to do with individual man, but with the species, as it were, with humanity. We no longer direct our visualization in this bald manner towards the whole of humanity, as Augustine did as a result of his Plotinism. Our modern concepts are against it. I might say: Seen from down there, men appear as individuals; seen from above—if one may hypothetically say that—all humanity appears as one unity. From this point of view the whole of humanity became for Plotinus concentrated in Adam. Adam was all humanity. And since Adam sprang from the spiritual world he was as a being bound with the earth, which had free will, because in him there lived that which was still above, and not that which arises from error of matter—itself incapable of sin. It was impossible for this man who was first Adam to sin or not to be free, and therefore also impossible to die. Then came the influence of that Satanic being, whom Augustine felt as the enemy-spirit. It tempted and seduced the man. He fell into the material, and with him all humanity.

Augustine stands, with what I might call his derived knowledge, right in the midst of Plotinism. The whole of humanity is for him one, and it sinned in Adam as a whole, not as an individual. If we look clearly between the lines particularly of Augustine's last writings, we see how extraordinarily difficult it has become for him thus to regard the whole of mankind, and the possibility that the whole fell into sin. For in him there is already the modern man, the predecessor as opposed to the successor; there lived in him the individual man who felt that individual man grew ever more and more responsible for what he did, and what he learnt. At certain moments it appeared to him impossible to feel that individual man is only a member of the whole of the human race. But Neo-Platonism and Plotinism were so deep in him that he still could look only at the whole of humanity. And so this condition in the whole man, this condition of sin and mortality—was transferred into that of the impossibility to be free, the impossibility to be immortal; all humanity had thus fallen, had been diverted from its origin. And God, were He righteous, would have simply thrown humanity aside. But He is not only righteous, He is also merciful—so Augustine felt. Therefore, he decided to save a part of mankind, note well, a part. That is to say, God's decision destined a part of mankind to receive grace, whereby this part is to be led back from the condition of bondage and mortality to the condition of potential freedom and immortality, which, it is true, can only be realized after death. One part is restored to this condition. The other part of mankind—namely, the not-chosen—remains in the condition of sin. So mankind falls into these two divisions, into those that are chosen and those who are cast out. And if we regard humanity in this Augustinian sense, it falls simply into these two divisions: those who are destined for bliss without desert, simply because it is so ordained in the divine management, and those who, whatever they do, cannot attain grace, who are predetermined and predestined to damnation.

This view, which also goes by the name of Predestination, Augustine reached as a result of the way in which he regarded the whole of humanity. If it had sinned it deserved the fate of that part of humanity which was cast out. We shall speak tomorrow of the terrible spiritual battles which have resulted from this Predestination, how Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism grew out of it. But to-day I would add as a final remark: we now see how Augustine stands, a vivid fighting personality, between that view which reaches upward toward the spiritual, according to which humanity becomes a whole, and the urge in his soul to rise above human individuality to something spiritual which is free from material nature, but which, again, can have its origin only in individuality. This was just the characteristic feature of the age of which Augustine is the forerunner, that it was aware of something unknown to men in the old days—namely individual experience. To-day, after all, we accept a great deal as formula. But Klopstock was in earnest and not merely the maker of a phrase when he began his “Messiah” with the words: “Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man's salvation.” Homer began, equally sincerely: “Sing, O Goddess, of the wrath. ... “: or “Sing, O Muse, to me now of the man, far-travelled Odysseus.” These people did not speak of something that exists in individuality, they interpreted something of universal mankind, a race-soul, a Psyche. It is no empty phrase, when Homer lets the Muse sing, in place of himself. The feeling of individuality awakens later, and Augustine is one of the first of those who really feel the individual entity of man, with its individual responsibility. Hence, the dilemma in which he lived. The individual striving after the non-material spiritual was part of his own experience. There was a personal, subjective struggle in him. In later times that understanding of Plotinism, which it was still possible for Augustine to have, was—I might say—choked up. And after the Greek philosophers, the last followers of Plato and Plotinus, were compelled to go into exile in Persia, and after they had found their successors in the Academy of Jondishapur, this looking up to the spiritual triumphed in Western Europe—and only that remained which Aristotle had bequeathed to the after-world in the form of a filtered Greek philosophy, and then only in a few fragments. That continued to grow, and came in a roundabout way, via Arabia, back to Europe. This had no longer a consciousness of the idea world, and no Plotinism in it. And so the great question remained: Man must extract from himself the spiritual; he must produce the spiritual as an abstraction. When he sees lions and thereupon conceives the thought “lions” when he sees wolves and thereupon conceives the thought “wolves,” when he “sees man and thereupon conceives the thought” man these concepts are alive only in him, they arise out of his individuality. The whole question would have had no meaning for Plotinus; now it begins to have a meaning, and moreover a deep meaning.

Augustine, by means of the light Plotinism had shed into his soul, could understand the mystery of Christ-Jesus. Such Plotinism as was there was choked up. With the closing by the Emperor Justinian of the School of Philosophy at Athens in 529 the living connection with such views was broken off. Several people have felt deeply the idea: We are told of a spiritual world, by tradition, in Script—we experience by our individuality supernatural concepts, concepts that are removed from the material How are these concepts related to “being?” How so the nature of the world? What we take to be concepts, are these only something spontaneous in us, or have they something to do with the outer world? In such forms the questions appeared; in the most extreme abstractions, but such as were the deeply earnest concern of men and the mediaeval Church. In this abstract form, in this inner-heartedness they appeared in the two personalities of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Then again, they came to be called the questions between Realism and Nominalism. “What is our relationship to a world of which all we know is from conceptions which can come only from ourselves and our individuality?” That was the great question which the mediaeval schoolmen put to themselves.

If you consider what form Plotinus had taken in Augustine's predestinationism, you will be able to feel the whole depth of this scholastic question: only a part of mankind, and that only through God's judgment, could share in grace, that is, attain to bliss; the other part was destined to eternal damnation from the first, in spite of anything it might do. But what man could gain for himself as the content of his knowledge came from that concept, that awful concept of Predestination which Augustine had not been able to transform—that came out of the idea of human individuality. For Augustine mankind was a whole; for Thomas each separate man was an individuality.

How does this great World-process in Predestination as Augustine saw it hang together with the experience of separate human individuality? What is the connection between that which Augustine had really discarded and that which the separate human individuality can win for itself? For consider: Because he did not wish to lay stress on human individuality, Augustine had taken the teaching of Predestination, and, for mankind's own sake, had extinguished human individuality. Thomas Aquinas had before him only the individual man, with his thirst for knowledge. Thomas had to seek human knowledge and its relationship to the world in the very thing Augustine had excluded from his study of humanity.

It is not sufficient, ladies and gentlemen, to put such a question abstractly and intellectually and rationally; it is necessary to grasp such a question with the whole heart, with the whole human personality. Only then shall we be able to assess the weight with which this question oppressed those men who, in the thirteenth century, bore the burden of it.

In the scene in which he is the gravedigger's assistant, the poet has the Danish prince Hamlet speak about the value of the dead Caesar in view of a great and significant historical figure. The poet's Hamlet is disturbed and brooding:

The great Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole, well enough, from the harsh north.
Oh, that the earth, to which the world has trembled,
Might bar the wind and weather with a wall.

It is not surprising that these ideas should occur to Hamlet in memory of the great Caesar, when in his gloomy mind the thought could be conceived that of all the body, the human being, of all that exercised the power of the will, nothing remain of the body, of the human being, of all that exercised the power of will, nothing but a heap of external matter, which, broken down into its atoms and dissolved, could be used to “glue a wall” here or there; but this same train of thought is quite indicative of the prevailing mood of our time. There is an excellent manual by Huxley about physiology, in the sense of our current scientific understanding, which has also been translated into German. Right on one of the first pages, you will find a reference to the words of Hamlet that have just been spoken to you, but said in all seriousness at the end of the “First Lecture”:

It is impossible to follow with any degree of certainty these wanderings, which are more changeable and extensive than those devised by the ancient sages who believed in the doctrine of transmigration; but it is probable that sooner or later some, if not all, of the scattered atoms will be gathered into new forms of life. The sun's rays, penetrating the plant world, combine some of the wandering atoms of carbonic acid, water, ammonia and salts to produce plants. Plants are devoured by animals, animals devour each other, man devours both plant and animal; and so it is easily possible that atoms, which once formed an essential part of the busy brain of Julius Caesar, now enter into the composition of Caesar, the negro in Alabama, or of Caesar, the house dog of some English household.

We do not want to think dogmatically and reason logically, but consider how a distinguished nineteenth-century naturalist like Huxley could arrive at such conclusions based on his innermost feelings. We no longer want to ask: What becomes of the physical components when a person's body turns to dust? but we want to turn our attention to the will embodied in the human being, to his self-aware ego, and pay attention to the paths that this soul-spiritual takes, although otherwise the person feels compelled to ask, not which path the spirit takes, but which of the outer material takes.

We will soon see that there is an intimate connection between the prevailing mood of the time and the approval of winning the hearts of the people when they are told that they can become happy, or at least healthy, if they follow certain rules, eat only this or that, bathe in a special way, dress in a reformed manner, and so on; but But they react badly when one speaks to them of the fact that the spiritual content of ideas, truths, and insights with which we fill our soul become living forces to harmonize our inner being, our whole life, to make it strong and resistant to all possible attacks and to strengthen us to fulfill our life's tasks.

By way of explanation, I would just like to point out how fear and anxiety make people pale, how feelings of shame make them blush, and how the soul affects the body and also has a wider effect than is generally assumed. But if you continue to point out that the thoughts of a spiritual worldview lead us up to spiritual heights, that a correct way of thinking of this kind has a healthy effect on people, both spiritually and physically, we find strong doubt or outright disbelief in the vast majority of our contemporaries, and in many cases only because people of our time have become too lazy to think in order to apply the mental and spiritual effort necessary to work through such views. Both Huxley's book and the experiences to be made everywhere in life show in a characteristic way that our age has come to believe only in the outwardly material and the obvious. The nineteenth century brought us these conditions.

Spiritual science is now far from rejecting the tremendous achievements of natural science, which this century has handed down to us along with an almost incalculable wealth of facts. However, it is necessary to point out that certain concepts have crept into the hearts of people and become ingrained there, becoming, so to speak, fashionable, so that it is difficult for them to decide to believe in the spiritual without trying to imagine it materially. But as a result, humanity is threatened with a mental chaos in the near future, a confusion with regard to the most important things, of which I will pick out only one and therefore refer again to Huxley's “physiology”, namely the concept of life, as far as it is obvious and, so to speak, self-evident. So [there] is said:

But in reality, the immediate cause of death is always the cessation of the activities of one of three organs: the brainstem, the lungs or the heart.

Thus, a man can be instantly killed by injury to a part of the brain called [...] medulla, as can be caused by hanging or breaking the neck. Or death can be the direct result of asphyxiation by strangulation, hanging or drowning, or in other words by the inhibition of respiratory processes. Finally, death occurs immediately when the heart stops pumping blood around. These three organs, the brain, the lungs and the heart, are therefore somewhat fancifully called the triad of life.

Ultimately, however, life has only two feet on which it rests, the lungs and the heart; for death by the brain is always only the indirect consequence of the effect that injury to this organ has on the lungs or the heart. The brain's activities cease when either breathing or circulation has ended. But if blood circulation and respiration are artificially maintained, then one can remove the brain without causing death.

So if Huxley thinks he can preserve life with these means, then under certain restrictions there is no objection to it, but I would still like to raise the question of whether this can actually still be called life. Probably everyone present would say thank you for such a life. Therefore, a statement of this kind in a scientific work that delves deeply into the most essential concepts proves that today's world has forgotten how to think about concepts such as “life” in an accurate way.

But anyone who, as is right, realizes that the thoughts and feelings that we predominantly harbor can make the body healthy or sick will also soon become aware of how difficult it is to pass on clear concepts into the future. With inadequate concepts in our soul about life and death, about spirit and soul, we are placed in a state of mind that soon makes us doubt everything possible in us, paralyzes the spiritual forces in us and prevents us from adequately fulfilling our duties in life; more and more it will become desolate in the soul and spirit of man, such a one will finally be plunged into powerlessness and despair. The attentive observer foresees that humanity can be brought into a dire situation on this path, and he can see that the beginnings of this are already being made in some places, especially when the most advanced science is compatible with such concepts that have an almost murderous effect on our soul and spirit and thus also on our body.

Alongside this, something else arises, namely a need that is suppressed again by a chaos of concepts, but which nevertheless stirs anew in the soul and occupies the mind: people talk so much about development from imperfect life conditions to more perfect ones, but where it would be most necessary to talk about these things, people do not want to believe in them when it comes to the human soul. But this human soul has ever new needs from epoch to epoch, always wanting to live in more advanced circumstances; the soul of the twelfth century is still different from that of the nineteenth century. It is not a matter of external things, of schooling and erudition, but of the different way and conception of life that develops for the soul from epoch to epoch.

This evening, we can only touch on the subject of life; it is significant that almost every person feels the need to develop certain things emotionally and intellectually, which in earlier cultural epochs were accepted on trust. In the past, whole epochs were far more dominated by certain general judgments, and all souls were generally occupied with the same ideas. Today, on the other hand, the urge to be independent is increasingly asserting itself in the souls of people, to find the points of reference within themselves, to tap into themselves the reason and source of existence, in the face of moral commandments and judgments of all kinds.

Our time, however, suffers from the fact that many people allow this need to rest in many respects, or entirely, on the ground of the soul. It cannot arise because it is drowned out by the chaos of life; and such people then go under in their belief in authority - which seems all the more terrible because it invokes the materially intangible - by always repeating that “science” has established and proven this and that. The vast majority of people cannot follow up and investigate for themselves how it has been established, and that is why the authority of science has grown into a formidable general magnitude.

These two schools of thought are in conflict with each other. If spiritual science wants to establish a proper relationship with these two powers, it must pursue the strict goal of making it possible for people to satisfy, in the truest sense, the deep needs that arise within them. I would like to point out that in earlier decades, questions about the destiny of the soul, the origin of man, and the sources of all spiritual life were approached quite differently than they are today. I would like to draw your attention to a leading personality in whom this can be seen in his unique spiritual constitution, in his feelings and perceptions. Goethe, who I have in mind here, rarely expressed himself on this subject without any particular external inducement, but on the occasion of the funeral of Wieland, whom he greatly revered, he spoke to a person close to him about what he thought about the fate of the soul after death. Goethe replied to the question put to him:

[Wieland will now] do nothing small, nothing unworthy, nothing incompatible with the moral greatness that he has maintained throughout his life. [...] The destruction of such high powers of the soul can never be a question in nature under any circumstances; nature never treats her capital so wastefully [...] As for the personal survival of our soul after death, this is how it is in my view. It does not contradict the many years of observation that I have made about the nature of our and all beings in nature; on the contrary, it even emerges from them with new conclusiveness. But how much or how little of this personality deserves to continue, by the way, is another question and a point that we must leave to God.

Goethe then develops a certain hierarchy of souls, which he calls monads here, that makes them suitable for various activities; he considers these monads to be immortal and, in their higher development, to be actively involved in the development of the world system, and then continues:

I am certain that I have already been here a thousand times as you see me now and hope to come back a thousand more times. [...] But this does not mean that by limiting our observations of nature, limits are also set to our faith. On the contrary, given the immediacy of divine feelings in us, it can easily happen that knowledge must appear as a patchwork, especially on a planet that has been torn out of its full context with the sun, leaving all and any observation incomplete, which is precisely why it is only through faith that it receives its complete complement. [...] As soon as one starts from the principle that knowledge and faith are not there to cancel each other out, but to complement each other, then the right thing will be worked out everywhere.

Goethe actually mastered the natural science of his time; he also enriched it through a way of thinking that was alive in the spiritual. That is why it is all the more interesting to experience how all these things are reflected in Goethe's view, how the life of the soul after death could be shaped according to his needs, based on all his long personal and scientific life experiences, and to see how Goethe, according to his spiritual worldview, was far removed from the modern materialistic worldview that was increasingly being developed. So it is up to everyone to form an idea of the spiritual world view through their entire mental configuration.

At that time, the now widespread and scientifically promoted worldview of “monism” was not yet known. People were not yet so anxiously concerned that a gap should not open up between humans and higher animals [...]; rather, they believed in this gap in a physical sense, and if they wanted to bridge it, they thought in deeply materialistic terms [...]. People wanted to have something materially distinct, since they could not find it in the idea that something spiritual could be found as a distinguishing factor. So they searched the entire body, the soft tissues and the skeleton, and found a special intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw of animals, which humans apparently did not possess. With that, they believed that they had discovered the long-sought, exalted difference between humans and animals, and gullible, materialistically-minded people were inclined to accept this without further ado. Goethe studied these conditions and found that the premaxillary bone was present before birth, that is, in the developing human being, but that it gradually fused completely with the adjacent parts until birth. We find more details about this in Goethe's scientific writings, in which he devotes a special treatise with detailed illustrations to the study of the “ossis intermaxillaris” and defends his discovery against Soemmerring 1785 and Camper in special letters, in which he also emphasizes, however, that the difference between humans and higher animals is not to be found in the individual material, but in the spiritual, which towers mightily above the animal. If we take into account what Goethe – according to Johannes Falk – said on Wieland's funeral day about soul and spirit, their transformations and fates after death: how he had reflected during his long life, and when he now compares what he believes he has found with what can be observed scientifically, sensually, then the two are reconciled without contradiction. At that time, one could still say this as a scholar, as a true naturalist, without finding oneself in conflict with the views of the life of the soul in its special field and that of the material side of life. Even in the mid-nineteenth century, this was still the case with a pioneering naturalist who was mentioned by name, who did more than anyone else for the knowledge of the transformation of animal life forms, but who, by showing their development, came to the conclusion of saying:

I believe that all organic beings that have ever lived on this earth have descended from an original form, into which the Creator breathed life.

That was Charles Darwin. He, too, was able to look unhindered into the spiritual world without coming into conflict with the results of his research. It should be noted that the English original contains these words, but the first German translation and its subsequent editions do not. In such a short time, it was no longer possible to connect the view of the spiritual world with Darwinism, which was already much more harshly conceived. Thus, in all so-called popular presentations, we hear and read today that anyone who still clings to the influence of a spiritual world is a fantasist and a fool, since Darwin himself showed that everything spiritual is a function of the physical. Of course, nothing is easier than to refute spiritual science in this way if one translates it into the view. If this or that part of the brain becomes diseased, then, in a certain analogous relationship, the soul becomes ill; if the brain gradually wears out, then the soul is also worn away, and so the soul is to be thought of as inseparably united with matter as a form of expression. Darwin has, after all, done away with the spiritual world anyway - although this is not the case.

We live today in a time when it is already a serious pursuit of truth to make a confession, as Goethe did, and yet to come to terms with science, as Goethe did, who was able to maintain the soul as existing quite rightly. Today it seems impossible to reconcile external, material science and adherence to the spiritual world. Today we live in an age that has accumulated an almost unmanageable amount of empirical results, where it is impossible for the individual to find his way around the ever more and further divided scientific disciplines, where it is completely dizzy, to orient himself exactly about what science has “established”, just as it is difficult to determine for himself what gives him an accurate judgment, a healthy general view of spiritual science.

So here comes this spiritual science and claims that it possesses and applies the same way of thinking and logic as every other science of today, which not only assumes that the soul contains the normal power of knowledge of everyday and scientific life, which, so to speak, every normal can apply, but it adheres to the conviction that forces lie dormant in the human soul that can be developed so that life in the spiritual world will be revealed to the person concerned, as it is to the observer endowed with eyes and the other senses of the external, material environment.

Not everyone can develop their spiritual eyes and ears in life and become a spiritual researcher, but nor can everyone work in a laboratory, be an astronomer and so on, not everyone needs to work as a researcher in such ways. Only a few can achieve it to a sufficient extent, but they can proclaim it to others, and every person has something in their soul that prevents them from devoting themselves to all that is communicated in blind faith; these are: logic and a healthy sense of truth. The messages he receives can enlighten him; he can measure them against life, test them and gain experience from them, to see whether they have a healing and beneficial effect there and in themselves.

In this way spiritual science places itself in life. Through the power of his soul, the human being makes himself an instrument of spiritual scientific research. However, the demand that all results be proven to everyone with absolute certainty and at any time is just as impossible for spiritual science as it is for external material science and its researchers. The latter say that their science demands absolute objectivity, not inward-soul things and experiences, but anyone who speaks in this way does not know spiritual scientific research in its true essence.

When someone, apart from external impressions, delves into the inner soul life, he will first encounter his own inner soul experiences, which are different for each individual, but in reality the soul gradually takes different paths. The budding spiritual researcher will at first bring nothing to his fellow human beings that concerns him alone; he must first develop to the point where he feels that he has now entered with his ego into a completely new realm that has nothing to do with his personality as such. Then his spiritual insights will show the same objectivity as, for example, our sensory eye shows us that the rose before us is not green but red, as other healthy eyes can also see. Then the inner soul experience is transformed into complete objectivity, then the spiritual researcher feels that his experiences are independent of his subjective feelings, and he has attained a certainty in his vision from which the results of spiritual research have been proclaimed here on many occasions.

Our time demands objectivity. This must be respected, but first we must consider its effect in terms of a healthy sense of truth. After all, the entire body of external science speaks a clear language; for our time, it demands recognition of those results that are obtained through research methods as set out in “Mysterium des Menschen” by Ludwig Deinhard , wherein it is shown that science, which to some extent approaches spiritual science with its methods, nevertheless also achieves harmony between external research with its means and internal research through the method of spiritual science. The book shows us the need of the present time to get what is needed from the field of spiritual science, which makes it possible for man to place himself with certainty in the position he has to fill in life.

We have indicated that it is the spirit that gives strength to the human being, not a particular place of residence or a particular remedy, but in the long run only that world view that leads to the center of the spirit. The science briefly characterized above feels compelled to take on the role that natural science previously had for humanity.

Most of those present know how spiritual science demonstrates the truth of a concept, although a large part of the educated world shrugs its shoulders compassionately at it, namely re-embodiment. It may be recalled that speaking disparagingly about it will have the same fate as the assertion of the earlier natural science that hornets developed from a horse carcass, without their eggs, as was taught in the seventeenth and partly still in the eighteenth century , in which such assertions were systematically presented, so for example furthermore that from donkey carcasses wasps and so forth developed directly from river mud worms and even fish developed directly until Francesco Redi energetically objected to this and established the principle: Living things can only descend from similar living things; a view that is generally taken for granted today, not only for Du Bois-Reymond and Virchow, while Francesco Redi in the seventeenth century only barely escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno, because he was considered a heretic.

Today, the scientific opinion is that when a person is born, he is solely influenced by his inheritance from his ancestors; but this is an inaccurate observation. Spiritual science postulates that the soul unites with the physical body that the father and mother can offer it. The soul then develops this physical body and, in the further course of development, acquires the means from its surroundings. But the spiritual and mental can be traced back to earlier embodiments; and just as living things can only come from living things, so the spiritual and mental can only arise from the spiritual and mental. Thus, the present life on earth of each person is also the starting point for later lives on earth, and this is how the independence of the human soul is to be explained. The time will come, and it is not far off, when the abilities of a man of genius will no longer be traced back to his physical ancestors alone, as Goethe expresses it when he says:

From my father I have the stature,
the serious conduct of life,
from my mother the cheerful nature
and the desire to tell stories.
ancestor was the fairest's darling,
That haunts me now and then;
ancestor-woman loved jewelry and gold,
That may well twitch through the limbs.
Can the elements not
be separated from the complex,
What then is to be named
original about the whole thing?

Today, people like to point out that genius is not at the beginning, but at the end of a series of developments, and that proves that it is inherited. That's a nice argument! It should be the other way around, because the circumstances are not at all in this context. Man naturally acquires physical properties just as it is natural for him to get wet when he falls into the water. In order to save this strange theory, it is said that the qualities of the father, for instance, remained latent because they did not show up in the son as they did in him. A tile falling from the roof also has the latent potential to kill someone; with such strange assumptions, anything can be proved, and this is also the case with the potential that was not present in the ancestor but has shown itself in the descendant.

There is more sound research in the field of lower life forms. A poor school teacher [monk] in Austrian Silesia [Brno in Moravia] by the name of Mendel found out in his attempts to achieve plant hybridization that the expected properties did not appear in the next generation, but in the generation after that. So people used to be just as patient about actual inheritance as they have now generally disregarded it.

Scientific materialism calls the theosophists fantasists and dualists who understand nothing of monism when they hold the view that the soul uses the powers acquired in the last life to shape a suitable body with the material means at its disposal – a view that is also, and more purely, monistic, namely from the spiritual side. These twisted minds of the spiritual scientists will no longer be burned, we have become too humane for that, but they are trying to expose them to ridicule and destruction by making fun of them. One objection is usually raised against the return of the soul, namely that one cannot remember a past life; one knows nothing about it at all. A four-year-old child cannot yet do arithmetic either, but we allow for his development and in ten years he will be able to do arithmetic.

The same applies to our review of a past life, we are only at the beginning of our development, and here too, as in many other areas, it is at least conceivable that there will be progress before each soul comes to an ever-greater understanding of past lives. In the present life there are short periods of childhood that cannot be remembered, but nevertheless the present self was already present at that time. You will neither want nor be able to deny this, although you are unable to remember it. Thus, the possibility or impossibility of your remembering has nothing to do with your earlier real existence and with the past life of your soul in the decisive sense.

But why can't we remember earlier lives on earth? Our memory in the present body goes back to the point of development where the self experiences itself. At the beginning of our life on earth, this is not yet raised into consciousness, but the moment it happens coincides with the beginning of the possibility of remembering. Thus the ego forms, so to speak, the outer wall; as far as ego-consciousness exists, so far consciousness and memory extend. But from this also arises the possibility of treating this ego in such a way that it is transformed from the state in which it normally exists in man to a higher state. We must therefore overcome our present ego-consciousness; it is not easy to do so, and I will mention just one pointer.

We can free ourselves from looking backwards if we are able to look towards the future. To do this, we must accept everything that flows towards us from the present with composure and calmness, with equanimity, and revere the world's providence without worry. We must be unmoved by praise and blame, joy and pain; our soul must stand still, calmly awaiting everything, whether it portends life or death, pain or pleasure, while venerating the wisdom of the world's guidance. If we are indeed able to see such a perspective in the future, then the result will be a review of the past; our view will then expand first into the last previous and then into earlier earthly lives.

Although a knower today can confirm the suggested effect of such exercises, in addition to the many other necessary and more difficult works, it is easy to judge this as mere theory. But the knower, who speaks from his own experience, will not be deterred by this, whether one wants to hear him and judge his communications correctly, just as little as it deterred Francesco Redi when he was called a heretic, and just as it does not bother those who do spiritual science in a thorough way when they are called fantasists and twisted minds.

On further penetrating into the nature of cultural development, one will also come to the point of asking oneself: What is my position regarding the great development of humanity, especially regarding Christianity? Before Christ, many thousands of years of people had already lived; so what could those who lived with and after him base an advantage on to be allowed to take up the Christ impulse, and not also those who lived before Christ? Today humanity has advanced to such an extent that it can ask such profound questions. Especially in our time, when people are increasingly learning to think scientifically and historically, such questions must arise. Then spiritual science comes along and says: the same soul has lived through the events before and after the appearance of Christ. Such an objection does not exist for the spiritual scientific world view. It is the same souls that go to school in life before as well as after. These ideas, which partly show us relapses as well, will always give us courage and strength to face life anew, in which we can also recognize progress again in sufficiently long periods of time.

Those who have heard me speak on a number of occasions will know why spiritual science can afford to talk about all the branches of the natural sciences and to assess their methods, goals and progress. Goethe was able to say of himself that when he allowed his scientific gaze to ascend into lofty spiritual realms, he could still always recognize the natural sciences in the process. Spiritual science must always feel itself to be a ferment and work in this sense, so that the gulf between the spiritual and the external-materialistic view of science does not become too great, so that harmony can gradually come about, which is able to give the soul joy and strength, forces that offer the prospect of success and progress.

When it is emphasized that a healthy soul can only dwell in a healthy body, this is to be understood to mean that the healthy soul alone was able to prepare a healthy body as its dwelling, but not the other way around. Thus, spiritual science not only eliminates contradictions in theory, but also drives out all timidity and weakness of soul, so that humanity can then grow up healthy and strong to fulfill its tasks. Starting from social cooperation, a healthy ascent to the heights of material and especially spiritual development can then be achieved, as is destined for humanity. Man will then be more and more able to draw the spiritual secrets out of the spiritual worlds and transfer them into the physical world, thus fertilizing life there with them. But the soul is the place where both worlds touch. Humanity can become and remain strong and healthy if it allows what we can summarize in the words: “From worlds far away, mysterious and enigmatic

The rich abundance of material
It flows into the depths of the soul
From the heights of the world, full of content
The spirit's clarifying light.
They meet in man
To form a reality full of wisdom.

It is perhaps not well known, given how the whole make-up of the human soul changes over time, but also how what is considered necessary for the human being in the social life is subject to transformation. I have already repeatedly included such things in previous considerations. For example, I mentioned how it was by no means a general requirement in the ancient Roman Empire that all children learn the basics of arithmetic, but that it was a general requirement that every child who grew up knew the Twelve Tables of the Law. The view of what should be the general opinion, general knowledge within humanity, has changed a great deal over time. These things are connected with the whole development of humanity. In order to understand the necessary things about this, it is necessary to visualize the true nature of the developmental processes of humanity.

Before there was a population, as we now know it, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and also in America, there was an extensive continent where the Atlantic Ocean is now. So essentially, the earth's surface was once the area between Europe, Africa on one side, and America on the other, at a time when most of Europe, Africa, Asia and America were underwater.

We know that this Atlantic continent, as we call it, was submerged as a result of a significant catastrophe, and we have already mentioned several times that migrations took place from this Atlantic continent, which gradually became more and more uninhabitable, to the gradually rising lands that now make up Europe, Asia and Africa. In essence, the population of Europe, Asia and Africa consists of the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans.

Now, however, significant distinctions arose among these populations, and the after-effects of these distinctions are still present. The after-effects of these distinctions can be understood by considering the following: there were certain sections of the population that migrated from the Atlantic continent to the east. We will ignore America for the moment, which was also populated from the Atlantic continent at that time, but we will ignore that. So certain parts of the population moved east. A number of them moved far into Asia, and among the populations that had moved from west to east in this way, those cultures emerged that we have described as ancient Indian culture, ancient Persian culture, ancient Egyptian- Chaldean culture, then the Greek-Latin contemporary culture, and now in Europe the fifth post-Atlantic culture, in which we ourselves live, which began around the middle of the 15th century. But these cultures arose in the following way: certain sections of the population, because of their psychological and physical make-up, found themselves drawn to go furthest across to Asia, while others remained behind in Europe. Later, of course, those migrations took place, of which external history also speaks, through which in turn certain sections of the population of Asia moved across to Europe. But what now forms the European population is partly, but not merely, the descendants of those who later moved over from Asia. Rather, what populates Europe today is also the descendants of those who originally remained behind during the migration from the Atlantic continent to the East. And much of what lives in the European human being can be traced back to the constitutions of body and soul of those who remained behind in Europe, who did not migrate to Asia. In Europe, we are dealing with a confluence of the most diverse population elements. But the fact that certain parts of the population moved over to Asia, while others remained behind in Europe, brought about a significant difference, a significant differentiation of the European-Astatic population. The populations that had originally migrated to Asia in the 8th, 7th, and 6th millennia were of such a nature that they incorporated human spiritual culture, which was able to spread, very strongly into the soul element. Now, one can still see in the population of Asia, which has indeed degenerated in certain respects, that this population has developed the spiritual and also the intellectual element essentially in the soul realm. It can be said, and this is not a figure of speech, but is actually the absolute truth: this eastern population, of which the Asian population is the most outstanding member, has allowed the body to take little part in its development. All that has been invented, that has lived and, to a certain extent, still lives in the culture of Asia, even in its decadence, depends little on the physical properties of the human being; it depends strongly on the properties of the soul. That is why the spiritual culture that emerged in Asia, which no longer exists today and is not appreciated today because the historical documents say little about it, can only be admired by those who are able to truly empathize with the tremendous spiritual insights that the Asian population was once able to achieve thousands of years ago.

What has been handed down historically, what can be recognized from the historical records, does not give a picture of what was once present in this Asia as an ancient wisdom of man. What is dug up today as Chaldean astronomy, as Indian Brahmanic wisdom, as Egyptian wisdom, through these or those documents, through these or those monuments, is all a late product. All these things lead back to a wonderful, magnificent, powerful insight into the spiritual world, lead back to a magnificent, powerful scientific connection that people have seen through, between the earth and the whole cosmos, the whole world of stars. People in Europe today are not at all inclined to understand, even in retrospect, what was known in those ancient times, nor do they appreciate it, because, so to speak, they cannot do anything with it. They have no way of orienting themselves by these things.

But all that wonderful wisdom that once existed in the East lived by the fact that these people received spiritual knowledge with pure souls, with little involvement of the physical body. Then, as you know – and you will find more about this in my book “Mysticism: The Foundation of Christianity” – from all the wonderful wisdom that the ancient Orient possessed, the view that was gained through Christianity emerged. For essentially, what the view of Christianity is, is a legacy of the Orient. But part of the original oriental wisdom came to Europe through the Greeks, and part of it came through the transformation that it underwent through the mystery of Golgotha.

And now please note what is extremely important: that which has been developed in the soul without the physical organization in the East, that wanders over the south of Europe, over Africa, into the rest of Europe, where it meets the population that, with the exception of those who have withdrawn from Asia, were essentially the people left behind during the migrations from Atlantis to the East. And the question must arise among us: what particular constitution did these people who had remained in Europe have, precisely because they had not moved across to Asia, because they had remained in Europe?

This brings us to something tremendously significant. We come to realize or to have to realize that this population, which was left behind in Europe during the migration from Atlantis to the East, received its external and internal knowledge, its insights into the spiritual world and into the social, economic and commercial order of the world through the function of the physical organization. The population of Europe is essentially characterized by the fact that the main part of these Europeans absorbed what they absorbed primarily through the instrument of their body. The people who migrated further east were such that they absorbed more with the soul; they neglected, because it was not given to them to develop the physical function, everything that was to be grasped directly from the world and from the human order through the physical. The Europeans used the physical tools of their brain and the rest of their physical selves to create what they considered their culture. And so we have the strange phenomenon that that which in Asia also developed as Christianity out of a wonderful primal wisdom migrated to Europe and was received under very different conditions in Europe than it was formed in Asia. In Asia it was only formed by the soul; in Europe it was received by the body. Why could it be received by the body? It could be absorbed by the physical because the European bodies were actually formed in such a way that they could become the right tools for the spiritual. The bodies of the Asians were not formed in this way. The population of Europe had retarded in order to make the body receptive to the assimilation of knowledge, of will impulses and so on, under the climatic and other cultural conditions of old Europe.

In the context of the world as a whole, one must have this view of one thing and that of another; but the less good also has its rightful place. Some people cannot understand this. We also try to prove the harmfulness of materialism; but on the other hand, we must recognize that materialism had to come into the 19th century. But now it must be overcome. Some people would like to take the easy way out on such questions. They say: the human body is just the tool in which the soul dwells; the soul is heavenly, the body is earthly, let us stick to the soul. That is a comfortable view of life. But it is to materialism's credit that it has taught people that the physical also has a share in the spiritual, that the body was organized under certain elements of the human race precisely to receive the spiritual. And the most outstanding people were those whom Christianity encountered. In the early days, when Christianity spread in Europe, the bodies of these European people were good instruments for receiving Christianity, because the physical brain, having developed in a certain way from the spiritual world, was a good receiving organ for Christianity. And while in Asia Christianity emerged after centuries or millennia of development in a culture that was only for souls, in Asia this Christianity encountered a decadent culture that was dying out, a soul culture that was good for ancient times but no longer good for the time in which Christianity took hold. In Europe, this Christianity encountered receptive people who were organized through their bodies to grow into this Christianity and to make their bodies into instruments for receiving Christianity; for there was still much spirit in these bodies, cosmic spirit, nature spirit. That is precisely the significance of the native population of Europe in the post-Atlantic period, that there was spirit in the bodies and that Christianity was received with this spirit in the bodies. But this spirit gradually disappeared, this spirit ceased. This spirit did not remain with the European bodies. And that is precisely the most essential thing about the transition that took place in the middle of the 15th century of the Christian era, that essentially the natural spirit that was in the human European bodies began to fade, that the bodies gradually became incapable of understanding from within what they had first received with fresh strength, because with physical strength, as Christianity. As a result, understanding of Christianity gradually declined from the 15th century onwards. Only tradition remained. The underlying conditions are actually misunderstood in ordinary external science. One believes that a human being is a human being, and one believes that one can study this human being by carrying corpses to clinics and anatomizing them. But that is the very least one can learn about a person, for the delicate constitution of these people changes almost from century to century. The human race of one century is fundamentally quite different in terms of its delicate constitution from the human race of the previous century. Because this does not occur in broad terms and cannot be established by rough scientific means, people do not want to know about it. But this human being is a very fine organization, and that which develops in succession over the course of time remains side by side. For gross anatomy, there is a belief, but it is only a belief: if you draw blood from a Westerner and draw blood from an Easterner, you are just drawing blood; blood is blood. But this view that blood is blood is complete nonsense before a truly deeper knowledge of humanity. I can only speak schematically about this matter and today I can only, I would like to say, state the results of extensive research. But these results are extremely important. If I were to draw something schematically – which, of course, would be different if it were drawn schematically rather than in real life – I would have to draw it in the following way. If I were to draw the blood clot in the living human body of a Westerner, I would draw it like this (see drawing a). If I were to draw the blood clot in the vein of a Russian person, I would have to draw it like this (see drawing b).

The relationship between the two line forms reflects the relationship between the inner, material character of the blood in the eastern population and the character of the blood in the western population. But what I have characterized as physical receptivity is connected with blood development. This physical receptivity, as I said, has been exhausted; today, at least for the Western European population and its American followers, the physical no longer yields anything spiritual. Therefore, the spiritual must be sought in another way, in the way that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science indicates. Roughly speaking, we can say that the spiritual substance that emerged from the physical materiality, which essentially served to open up understanding for Christianity in the centuries up to the middle of the 15th century, has dried up. Today, especially in Western culture, we live with dried-up bodies, and what asserts itself is a mere mechanistic culture because it comes from inanimate, dried-up bodily organizations. This change is therefore not just one that today's abstract historians paint, it is one that goes deep into the physical being of the human being.

Most people today are closed to what I have just told you. But just as the Romans learned the Twelve Tables, just as it was later customary to regard the multiplication table as something necessary for a human being, so in the not too distant future, which we must work towards, it will be necessary to have such elementary concepts of human development in general education. Otherwise, every fifteen years or so, there will be a catastrophe in the development of civilized humanity, such as we have had in the last five to six years. The fact that people have closed themselves off to what is about to break in as a new development in civilized humanity is the real reason for the confusion that has arisen in the last five to six years. And if people want to continue living out of their dried-up materialized bodies, then they will, all by themselves, concoct properties out of this dried-up, materialized body, which every fifteen to twenty years lead to such confusion as the confusion we had in Europe in 1914. Today there are only two possibilities: either we come to terms with this influx of a new formation into humanity, and thus also with the influx of a new understanding of Christianity, supported by spiritual science, or we have to reckon with destructive elements entering human social life to a terrible extent.

Our English friends will now go back to England – hopefully not for a while yet – but when they do, they will meet a man whom I once characterized here as a representative of the present time in a special way, because, despite being much older today, he has not progressed beyond the developmental stage of twenty-seven throughout his entire life. There you will meet Lloyd George, who set the tone there, probably still does, a man who was able to set the tone precisely because he remained capable of development only until the age of twenty-seven, then was of course elected to Parliament and has not been capable of development since, so that now, as an old man, he still thinks like a twenty-seven-year-old, that is, immaturely. You will find that such a mind has given rise to particular ideas, for example: So far we have sided with the Russian counter-revolution, it has been defeated; it is no longer profitable to side with the Russian counter-revolution, so we try to come to terms with the Bolsheviks, we try to come to a tolerable peace with them.

This is the typical thinking of a man who is far removed from any understanding of the real laws of life, who has no idea of what is real in the world, and this is how other so-called “statesmen” think - I note that I now always write “statesmen” only in quotation marks. In this context, one must not forget that this “statesman” still towers head and shoulders above the abstract dilettante Woodrow Wilson, by whom the whole world allowed itself to be seduced at a certain moment in European development. In such matters one was indeed, in certain periods, a “preacher in the wilderness”. In the times when the whole world worshipped Woodrow Wilson, I here in Switzerland repeatedly said exactly the same things about Woodrow Wilson that I am saying to you today. Now the world is beginning to realize, too late, how unrealistic Woodrow Wilson's policies are. And people who sat with him at the Versailles Conference were amazed at how little even the most rudimentary instinct for reality this man brought with him from America to Europe.

The things in which one lives today must be viewed from world horizons if one wants to have a say in the smallest things. And one will not be able to view them if one does not make it a principle that a certain education about man must become general education in the very near future, just as the multiplication table began to become part of general education in a certain period of time.

Whether or not social demands arise is not open to discussion, just as it is not open to discussion whether or not an earthquake will occur in a particular region. But how we should relate to such phenomena is open to discussion. No one will be able to gain a proper perspective on such phenomena without a sense of humanity, as indicated above. This is something with which one must penetrate oneself very deeply. And whether the life of the civilized European world will be able to continue or not will depend on whether there will be a sufficiently large number of people who see through the impossibility of a further world regiment that is particularly influenced by such people out of touch with reality as Lloyd George is. You all know that I am not speaking from some kind of jingoistic point of view, from some particular side, but I am speaking from a purely objective point of view, from the observation of objective facts. I have never had anything against Woodrow Wilson or Lloyd George as a German, as a so-called German. Compared to other people today, even Lloyd George is a “great guy”. But he is a man who remains a twenty-seven-year-old, who is incapable of assimilating that which one can only assimilate when the descending evolution takes hold, when one has passed beyond the thirties. For the dried-up European bodies, which do not want to turn to absorb something spiritual, lose the possibility of development in their thirties. They may be members of parliament, even as accomplished and as exceptionally good a member of parliament as Lloyd George, who, as is well known, carried out quite admirable reforms when he was made a minister. Isn't it true that this is what you do to opposition politicians: you take them into the ministry so that they don't cause a nuisance in parliament? At a certain moment in England Lloyd George was also made a minister, at first because they did not want him in the opposition; but he was made a minister by being given a department about which he knew nothing. That is the usual way of dealing with dangerous parliamentarians. And lo and behold, when Lloyd George was given the department he understood nothing about, he developed a feverish activity, introduced reforms that are truly admirable, and the others stood there with long noses.

All these phenomena must be judged today from the standpoint of the laws of human development. In general, it is not pleasant to judge humanity according to its peculiarities, and above all, it is not in people's nature today to respond to other people. That is why people today are happy to be labeled. There is no inclination to go to the trouble of meeting a person to find out if they have abilities, if something lives in their soul that has possibilities for effect. People do not want to get involved in judging people in this way, through direct impressions drawn from life. They need other possibilities. Someone has graduated, he has a doctorate – so he must be a wise man. You don't need to get to know him first, you just need to know: He has passed exams, or he is – I don't know whether one should say: he was – a government councilor. That's nice, he is someone to respect, you don't need to worry about whether he has any possibilities for action in his soul. A government has made one a councilor, with a C, not a fifth wheel on the wagon, with a D. So you need external possibilities. In the future, we will need a truly direct relationship from person to person. No one will acquire this who does not develop his human spiritual powers in an appropriate way. This appropriate way is through spiritual science. For example, if you read my “Secret Science,” you can read what is in it and absorb the content. If you take it in so that you can then recite it quite well by heart, then I would almost find it more useful if you read a cookbook, or if you are not women, some treatise on collective agreements or the like; it will be more useful than if you read my “Secret Science”. This “occult science” only has its significance when reading if, through the special formation of thoughts - which so annoys people that they refuse to deal with what they call “badly stylized” - this way of writing and thinking has an educational effect on the soul's entire makeup, when the how, not the what, shapes the soul. Anyone who allows the “Occult Science” — it could, of course, also be another book — to take effect on them, then goes out into life, will see that he has actually strengthened his inner vision, so that he gains knowledge of human nature from it. Things become something quite different from a mere scholastic assimilation of the subject! Nowadays, when people have read a book, they imagine that they have done what is necessary when they have the content within them, that is, they have it within them in such a way that they can possibly pass an exam. But spiritual-scientific books are never meant in this way. There the most essential thing is not done when one can count the content on the fingers, but there the necessary thing is only done when the things have passed over into the whole soul constitution, into the whole soul condition, when one has thereby developed suitable soul powers for life.

For decades I have said this again and again in the most diverse forms. But the fact that one now knows that man consists of this and this, that there are repeated earth lives and so on, is therefore considered the main thing over wide circles. — But that is not the main thing. The main thing is that through this whole way of thinking something is grasped in man that cannot be grasped by anything else in man. And that which is grasped in this way by the human being must be there. If it is not there, then all the well-meaning people who say, for example, “There must always be a Christianity,” will achieve nothing. For just as you cannot extract magnetism from a non-magnetic piece of iron, so you cannot, if nothing else occurs, extract a Christianity from what becomes of Europeans. It can remain traditional for a time, but people will accept the tradition out of dishonesty. What is needed is for something to be touched in the souls that will lead to a new understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, and with that, to a new understanding of all of Christianity. In ancient pre-Christian times, as I have already mentioned today, there was a widespread, magnificent, admirable primeval wisdom, and anyone who wants to admire pagan wisdom is right to do so. And anyone who wants to admire pagan wisdom even in those times when it already echoes Christian wisdom is even more right to do so. The first Christian fathers were actually wiser, much wiser than their present-day successors. Their present-day successors forbid the reading of the anthroposophical writings. As you know, Catholics have been forbidden to do so by the decree of the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome since July 18, 1919. But the first Christian church fathers said: That which is now called Christianity was always there, only in a different form, and Heraclitus and Socrates and Plato were, in their own way, Christians before the Mystery of Golgotha. This is, of course, an extremely heretical remark for today's members of the Roman Index Congregation, even though it comes from genuine church fathers, very heretical! And yet it must be said: something is being decided. This decree of the Congregation of the Index in Rome, that the reading of anthroposophical books is to be forbidden for Catholics, is actually the right consequence of the development of Roman Catholicism, the development of the Roman Catholic Church, and one must realize that a new spiritual current must come that understands Christianity anew.

As I said, the pre-Christian world view is admirable in a way. But it did not extend to certain things of an earthly nature. And here I touch on something that is of extraordinary importance for the evolution of the earth. With regard to everything that a person bears within himself as a physical human being, human development was actually a given. In the fifteenth millennium BC, still in the old Atlantis, man had developed all the qualities of his physical constitution to a certain extent within himself, and these then hardened more or less slowly. But in terms of the main development, in terms of the development of knowledge, it was different. Something remained, like a great human manifestation, a knowledge of humanity, imparted by the leaders of the mysteries until the event of Golgotha. What the old pagan sages had within them was, so to speak, the mirror image of an even older wisdom, but of a wisdom that could still observe spiritually; but it was all a mirror image. Then the Mystery of Golgotha entered, that is to say, nothing less than something extraterrestrial: the Christ Being. Something that descended to Earth from spheres that are quite extraterrestrial united with a human physical body, the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus something entered into the earthly development of humanity that had not occurred throughout the entire previous evolution of the earth: something cosmic entered into humanity. From the 15th millennium until the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings have essentially lived with their physical constitution through their mental head constitution of ancient inheritance. Now something occurred that, in a certain respect, connected heaven with earth. An extraterrestrial being united with a human body.

Understanding such a mystery was still possible for the most backward people, who had remained in Europe and still had certain natural spiritual qualities in their bodies. It was not possible for the more advanced Asians to grasp this. It was, so to speak, still a gift from God for this European population to have bodies that were receptive to Christianity through their physical constitution. Since the 15th century this has ceased, and therefore spiritual knowledge must be introduced in order to comprehend anew the Mystery of Golgotha. Without insight into these processes of human development, human nature will not advance and must face its downfall, for that which has entered into earthly evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha must simply disappear. Without a renewed spiritual understanding of the connection between Earth and the extra-terrestrial world, the Mystery of Golgotha cannot live on.

Since this fact exists, those who want to remain in the traditional and the old - and you know how numerous they are, because I have always told you from time to time about the ugly attacks that come from that side — turn with particular virulence against the truth proclaimed from spiritual science that one has to do with a Cosmic Christ, with a Christ who is not merely earthly but cosmic. It is strange, but it is nevertheless the case that, for example, the Roman Catholic clergy and Jesuitism are most annoyed that spiritual science speaks of a Cosmic Christ. The fact is that a separation of the spirits is taking place today. And in the face of this, one should not close one's eyes; on the contrary, one should open one's eyes. In order to be able to set up everything that is to be set up for humanity, even in the smallest place where one stands, it is necessary today to have insight into the great circumstances of life.

Please do not say: There is no time for this. — It is also true that people say: People today are so busy, so endlessly busy, that they don't have time to look up at these spiritual truths. — I would like to add up for you how much idle chatter takes place at “five o'clock teas,” at “Jausen” (snacks), at “afternoon teas,” at “Frühschoppen” (morning drinks), in certain areas at “Dämmerschoppen” (evening drinks) — there are also such things — at “Sk and other things, and you would see that a considerable amount of time would be freed up in which people would have the opportunity, if they wanted it, to familiarize themselves with what is so urgently needed for the future development of humanity. It is not a lack of time, it is a lack of interest on the part of people, their lethargy. Encephalitis lethargica is now appearing externally in isolated cases; it has long since infected the souls of people in the wider human environment. The sleeping sickness of souls is a very widespread epidemic. For what is ultimately at issue is having the will to set one's spiritual powers in motion. With few exceptions, anyone who studies at a university today does not really have to exert their thinking. A certain amount of knowledge, mostly experimental results, is imparted, and this can be absorbed. There is no need to use one's thinking power. But this education must be replaced by the fact that the power of thought becomes mobile again, that the whole soul becomes mobile, that assiduity of the inner soul life takes the place of carelessness and drowsiness. One can be very active in the outer life and tremendously drowsy in one's soul life. But this must end in the development of humanity. That it ends is a truly deep, profound necessity. Today people say: First of all, humanity must have bread. - Of course it must have bread. But if we do not think about how to organize things spiritually so that this bread can also be produced tomorrow, then we will only eat what the earth can still produce today, and we will have no bread tomorrow or the day after. With the old way of thinking, you can still have bread today for a while. But figuratively speaking, of course, you will have no bread the day after tomorrow if you do not operate your institutions in accordance with a new spirituality.

Think about this matter, for it is a serious one.

Rudolf Steiner: I think it would be best if the honored attendees could express their views on the matters we have begun to discuss today, so that we can get to know each other's wishes and intentions. You certainly have questions about one or two things based on what I have presented.

Emil Bock: ¹ This afternoon, the participants instructed me to report the results. We initially discussed the various options and finally agreed that all of the options would be considered and then we made it clear: In any case, it is about the collection of people and the collection of money and in which direction we want to organize ourselves and whether we only want to strive for a loose association. We agreed that everyone should take the initiative where it seemed advisable to them and then chose a place to which letters would be sent regularly as soon as the need arose, so that we would move into a circular letter organization. What we can do publicly in a religious way can only happen in church. What we do afterwards, we have to wait and see once we have people. Regarding the question of joining, we have been able to make it clear that joining can only be possible if one of those who are now participating in the course is a guarantor. The central office for these letters would have to be transferred to Berlin, so that the initiative for everything possible must be collected and given from Berlin. The gathering of people could be tackled immediately. Then the preparation of an administrative office: the only question is who should be considered. However, we do not want to collect the money in such a way that it goes under the name of our association, because that would also bring us into the public eye. The idea was considered of whether we could attach our administrative office to the “Kommenden Tag”, or what other possibility might present itself.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, so you thought that it would be best to have a loose union of those who might want to join this committee, a central office in Berlin for collecting letters, and the collection of money in a way that the “Kommende Tag” would initially handle. The latter matter is, of course, something that we would also have to make more tangible. Now, isn't it true that the looser union should also be discussed from the point of view of how quickly those present imagine the matter should proceed? After all, they are mostly older people who will soon be coming out into the world, aren't they?

A participant: Different.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course they are different. But in addition, the situation today is such that it is indeed necessary not to lose time when doing something like this. There is no doubt that, for example, much more would have been achieved by the threefolding movement if time had not been lost all the time. And so I would also think that here it is advisable to try not to lose any time, but of course it cannot be rushed either. Have you formed an idea about how you might be able to go public with the matter at the point in time when you want to start collecting money on a large scale? You want to avoid the public in a certain sense. Do you have any particular reasons for this? Let's try to discuss this question.

A participant: I would just like to say that, from what I have experienced in the various cities so far, I have the feeling that there is actually no reason to avoid the public. The lectures are always only of a spiritual scientific nature. I am convinced that more people would join immediately if it were not just spiritual scientific lectures, but if it were to shape culture.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to hear specifically what your objections to publicity are. The reasons may be very important.

A participant: We have considered that it must come down to a cultural struggle, and that we have to wait with the founding of communities, and also with the proclamation of the idea in general. As soon as a request for money appears in public, it is reason enough for us to be met with the greatest difficulties. These were our reasons for waiting with the church planting itself; because it is about the same thing.

Another participant: We believe that we cannot appear as active participants in the founding of the community...

Rudolf Steiner: Well, yes, wait with the founding of the community... A participant:... with the public appearance.

Rudolf Steiner: But what do we do while we are waiting? The task at hand is to find ten times as many people as there are here. That is what you are aiming for with the letter. I believe that if you do it skillfully, it is not that difficult to get ten times as many people. In particular, among the theological student body, there will probably be ten times as many people. You yourself came together relatively quickly. There will undoubtedly be no shortage of people among the theological students. It all depends on the form in which you try to finance the matter. Of course, it's not an easy thing, because it will only succeed if it is done relatively quickly. And the idea is, of course, quite good to first form a loose union and to seek out, through correspondence, all those students who are inclined towards such a cause. How many are you now?

A participant: Eighteen.

Rudolf Steiner: Eighteen students, ten times as many is 180. As soon as you have 180 to 200, then it would indeed be a matter of getting down to work; and then the question arises as to what could be done to be able to act as quickly as possible. Of course, working through an exemplary cult – as good as it is in itself – is not designed to work quickly. So the question arises as to whether one should not prepare a calm but very clear presentation of the main points, which could be printed, during the collection through correspondence. This does not need to be published , but which would have to be used to collect money, which would be presented by those personalities who are trying to collect the money, to people who are believed to have money for such a thing. How this could be done by the “Coming Day” is, of course, somewhat difficult to imagine. The “Coming Day” could, of course, be involved in the administration, but how the “Coming Day” could advocate for such a cause with its name is a little questionable. Did you mean that the “Coming Day” as the “Coming Day” takes the matter in hand?

A participant: We only saw the advantage in the fact that they already have many addresses and administrative experience. It does not have to be “Tomorrow”. We have to appoint someone to do this who will then work with “Tomorrow” for practical reasons.

Rudolf Steiner: I do understand the matter. It is perhaps not even an impractical idea to think of someone who might be very interested in this matter. One could think of Heisler for this task. One could think of something so that he or someone in the same situation would be the best person for this position. But how do you feel about a kind of calm, objective, purposeful presentation that you would have to disseminate so that people could educate themselves about what they would spend money on.

A participant: I believe – for my part – that at the moment when the decision is made to undertake major financing, the hidden aspect will have to be abandoned in any case.

Rudolf Steiner: But it is possible that someone like Heisler would be entrusted with the financial work, so to speak, and that one would not shy away from letting the matter as such come to the public's attention. On the other hand, I would say that you could avoid having your name and the names of others who join you become known, so that no one needs to know that you belong to this movement if it is somehow a matter of a pastor or preacher within the church. There is no need to be questioned about it. The participants in this loose association need not be brought to the public, but only the idea and the thing as such.

In Heisler's case, it doesn't do any harm, because he won't get a pastorate anyway.

A participant: I am not reflecting on a position within the church.

Rudolf Steiner: You are not reflecting on a position within the church?

A participant: No, I would not do that.

Rudolf Steiner: There are certainly such candidate preachers who are already so compromised that they can quietly let their names be known. Otherwise, the names of this loose association need not be known. Of course, no one denies their affiliation; but it is only necessary to say so when asked. That seems to me, after all, to be the best that can be done. And you don't think that among the younger people already in pastor positions there will be a number of those who would join your circle, who have thus already entered [into a church office]?

A participant: It is questionable to what extent people already have a relationship with anthroposophy.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it would be necessary, though, to have a certain core of personalities who are anthroposophists. But it doesn't really seem necessary to me that everyone should be an anthroposophist. Isn't it true that if there is a certain core of energetic personalities, then the whole thing can take on an anthroposophical character simply through the importance of these personalities, without excluding those who are not anthroposophists. You see, the best anthroposophists are usually those who were opponents at first; or at least the best include those who were opponents and have slowly come to anthroposophy. We must not imagine that many of those who have sought their way to a religious world view in the modern sense can be brought to anthroposophy in the twinkling of an eye by a short reading. There will be a certain reluctance in many. Above all, one will not easily get away from the belief that certain research results of anthroposophy are excluded by dogmatics. Many will still believe that repeated lives on earth are irreligious and un-Christian. And it is not really desirable today to exclude all those who cannot yet see this, because the actual religious relationship must be maintained. Just as one could, I might say, be a good Christian at the time of the founding of Christianity without knowing that the earth was round or that America existed, and on the other hand, Christianity was not shaken by the discovery of America, so someone can be a good Christian without having access to the truth of repeated earth lives. Because basically, an essential thing about being a Christian is one's relationship to Christ Jesus himself, to this very concrete being; that is the essential thing. The essential thing about Christianity is a personal relationship with Christ Jesus. And a doctrine as such, which is certainly secured as a doctrine, which is precisely a doctrine about the world context, cannot actually be the hallmark of Christianity in a person. One is a Christian naturally through one's relationship to Christ, as one is a Buddhist through one's relationship to Buddha, not really through the content of the teaching. One needs the content of the teaching, as we will present it in the sermon, but one is not really a Christian through the content of the teaching. No one today can be a Christian in the sense that one must understand it, who does not have a positive relationship to the supersensible Christ-being.

Therefore Adolf Harnack is no Christian to me. A man who is capable of saying that Christ can be taken out of the Gospels and that only the Father has a place in them is not a Christian. In his view, Christ is no different from Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. If you take Harnack's book The Essence of Christianity and cross out the name of Christ and put the name of Yahweh everywhere, you will see that the meaning is not changed. It simply replaces the faith of Jesus in the Father with the knowledge of the essence of Jesus himself. It actually recognizes only one great teacher about the religion of the Father in the Christ. But that is actually the negation of Christianity, not the essence of Christianity. And that is why I think it is not necessary for us to swear people in, so to speak, to the doctrine of reincarnation or karma, because that is something that people find difficult to come to terms with; they will come to terms with it in time; I just think that since you are anthroposophists yourselves and will be able to win over a large number of anthroposophists, the matter will already have the necessary anthroposophical character. The content of anthroposophy itself ensures that the matter has an anthroposophical character, if it succeeds at all. And it must succeed because it has many conditions for success within itself.

A participant: At the University of Münster, the theologians wanted to free themselves. There you would find theologians who meet our needs. The question is whether there will be many anthroposophists there.

Rudolf Steiner: I believe that the ground was prepared in Münster by Gideon Spicker; he was a professor of philosophy in Münster, after all. You know nothing about him?

A participant: Only that the exams were then designed differently. Another participant: In Leipzig it is exactly the same.

Rudolf Steiner: You are bound to find a prepared soil among the younger theologians.

A participant: The theologians who want to free themselves from the church are mostly people who can no longer accept the Trinity doctrine and do not want to recognize Christ as a supersensible being, or they are people from the community movement.

Rudolf Steiner: If there is a core of anthroposophists, it is not a hindrance if we also have these personalities in the loose association. It seems to be a proof that, for example, Mr. Rittelmeyer came to anthroposophy immediately after he wrote this little work about the personality of Jesus. From this point of view, which you have just characterized, it is actually written. It was written with the intention of presenting Jesus Christ as a strong religious personality, but leaving the whole question of the supersensible, of the symbol and so on, completely out of the discussion. So it was entirely what one might call enlightened Protestantism. And then he joined us and relatively quickly recognized the necessity to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and to come to terms with a supersensible conception of this Mystery of Golgotha. So I believe that if they are just people who are seriously studying — they don't have to be swots, but they have to be serious students — then it doesn't hurt if they come from an enlightened Protestantism. You see, the best candidates you could wish for would actually be those young people – there aren't many of them, there are only a few at most – who have just finished their Catholic theology studies and have broken with the Catholic Church completely; they would be the best candidates you could wish for. There is no denying that Catholic theology, as theology, has an extraordinary amount of substance. People are well trained, and that remains. And then, when they are out – as a Catholic theologian, you are of course kept in iron shackles – when they are out, anything can be done with them. I only mention this – there are not many such people, but just a few – to emphasize the possibility. And then, the enlightened Protestants should not be underestimated.

A participant:... people who strive to have something certain, get so far in science that they can no longer recognize the supersensible being of Christ and yet somehow have a longing for it...

Rudolf Steiner: That was the case with Rittelmeyer. He could not possibly have arrived at anything other than a somewhat stronger and also very spirited Weinel view of the simple man from Nazareth. That was the personality of Christ in Rittelmeyer. And very quickly he had arrived at the supersensible view of Christ. So I believe that you need not fear to bring people up.

A participant: The most difficult question remains that of financing.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the question of finance remains difficult, but it remains difficult until we have the money; it is indeed the case that every new 10,000 marks must present new difficulties. These are difficulties that simply have to be overcome. I do believe, however, that many bitter experiences have to be overcome; many bitter experiences will be made. But I believe that someone like Heisler might not be the wrong person for the job, because, of course, he is embittered by his own fate, but on the other hand he is convinced of the necessity of such things. And he is of a respectable age – excuse me, you are all younger than he is – which one acquires when one has to take on everything that comes along when one collects money. It is not a pleasant thing.

Emil Bock: Now there is still the question of whether anthroposophists who are not theologians could be brought in for our purposes.

Rudolf Steiner: [Do you mean] with this question whether Anthroposophists should be included in this looser association who are not actually in a position to enter the priesthood?

Emil Bock:... who can enter into the situation, who are currently in a different profession.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, of course the question then is what such people should do. At most, they would be considered for fundraising. But it is not easy to muster the necessary enthusiasm for this if you are not involved in the matter. There may of course be individuals, but I believe that these individuals are already so overwhelmed with all kinds of work that they could hardly devote themselves to such a thing in any other way than as a secondary occupation. But I do not actually know of anyone who, without aspiring to a preaching office, even in the freest form, could be useful as an anthroposophist. For anthroposophists are generally so attached to anthroposophy itself, which is something of a religion — yes, how shall I put it? — a kind of religious satisfaction, they are not so much out to regenerate the religious community itself. They would have to be theological anthroposophists, and one would have to look for them among them first. They are certainly not so rare since Rittelmeyer's activity has existed. I think you will find many among theologians; and especially since the book that Rittelmeyer published as a collection, you will find many among theologians. Whether they are all useful is another question. But otherwise, I think it would greatly improve the movement.

Emil Bock: Of course they would have to change tack when they get to know the idea.

Rudolf Steiner: Would many of the students want to change direction? Do you mean students from the Federation for Anthroposophical Higher Education?

A participant: Students who do not study theology because, although they have a strong religious interest, they do not want to study what is currently taught in the church.

Rudolf Steiner: You mean that they would also muster active enthusiasm?

A participant: Yes, if there is an opportunity to work in this sense.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it is definitely possible, if you have looked at the personalities, to join these personalities, to approach them. I have seen that the Federation for Anthroposophical Higher Education Work, especially when it endeavors to spread anthroposophy itself in the individual branches of anthroposophical higher education work, places more emphasis on an interest in natural science than on theology itself. The theologians themselves should be interested in this.

A participant: Will we be able to wait until one of them has completed the specialized theological examination?

Rudolf Steiner: You think it would take too long? A participant: I don't know how necessary it is.

Another participant: There are some of us who have not yet expected to finish with the theological exams, but want to use the preliminary studies to strive towards this goal, which is to be addressed here.

Rudolf Steiner: Now the question is whether those you are referring to, having realized how necessary the matter is, will not turn to the preaching ministry after all, even if they have so far thought that they would not complete the exam but do something else. Of course not. This is connected with a very general cultural idea. You see, the ideas that Spengler described in his 'Decline of the West' are really more well-founded than one might think. They are so well-founded that one can say that if only cultural tendencies were at work, without a new impact, then what Spengler calculates would come about would come about. We are in the midst of a full decline, in a full current of decline. On the other hand, you must not forget the corruption of culture. The corruption of the general intellectual life is not limited to the more educated classes, but is very widespread. It is actually the case that the majority of the population is affected by it, and the religious impulses that may still have existed in the 70s and 80s have already disappeared among the less educated people today. So we are in the midst of a complete current of decline, and it is hardly possible to get out of it unless religious life as such creates new impulses. And so I certainly believe that those who, having undergone theological studies and having the opportunity to do so, should act as priests. It is necessary that precisely those who have studied theology should act as priests, because we need it so badly.

A participant:... but then also within the church?

Rudolf Steiner: Within the church? I would like to stick to what I have said. You can stay within the church if you can gradually lead the members out of the current church communities; you can therefore turn to the establishment of free congregations. I do not believe that the church as such can be reformed or regenerated in any way, that is not the case. The church community is so corrupted that we can only count on the fact that one leads them out [...] and founds something new with them [...] [further gaps in the transcript]. On the other hand, to think of a reform of the church itself, I may say – this is not just my opinion, but this is an objective realization of the facts – that these church communities are doomed. Except for the Catholic Church, of course, which must be understood in such a way that it is not at all doomed, because it works with extensive means and must therefore be regarded as something completely different.

A participant: We are partly philosophers and partly natural scientists, having dropped out of an unsatisfactory course of study in theology. Should we do a doctorate and then turn to studying theology again after the doctorate? Or should it be said that, given our background, we can start religious work right away?

Rudolf Steiner: You see, that is merely a question of the success that we will have. In this respect, we must not underestimate the transitional character of our work. When the Waldorf School was founded, I had nothing in mind but the purely personal suitability of the teachers, and the pedagogy and didactics were developed in a relatively few weeks. Such a thing must simply be possible in the transitional state. I do not believe that any of you who, let us say, failed in their studies of theology, turned to some other field of study, became philosophers or natural scientists, that any of you need to strive for anything other than formally completing the academic program. This is something that is desirable, but not absolutely necessary. It is desirable that the academic side should be concluded in some way, let us say with a dissertation. On the other hand, we do not need to consider in the least that someone would need to return to their theological studies. We must regard it as absolutely right, even for the transitional period, not to adhere to the old system of examinations and the like; of that there is no doubt. If, for example, Mr. Husemann has even finished his studies in chemistry and is preparing his rigorosum in chemistry, then nothing prevents him – if he would otherwise like to become a preacher – from becoming a preacher as a chemist.

You know, the nested study of theology – you don't have to take this as something that might be offensive – it is even a hindrance to the work of the preacher and the pastor in the community. It is a fact that the theological student does not learn enough about the world; he is actually too unfamiliar with what his task is. He is placed in it and is supposed to carry out such agendas as I have described in economic life. So a special course of study like today's 'theology course, where you become an entirely impractical person - I don't want to offend you with that - is not suitable for that. It is actually the case, as I have experienced, that, for example, excellent theological graduates really hardly knew what the Pythagorean theorem says. These are exceptional cases, but they do occur. But quite apart from the fact that they are not up to date in real practical life, which is above all needed, with the discussions about the validity of dogmatics, with the discussions about what is done in theological faculties, with that we certainly do not solve the world's problems. One could even well imagine that non-students with a certain religious genius could also be among us; one could well imagine that.

What we do need, of course, is for you to find the person within you before you leave here, to whom you could, as it were, transfer the secretariat of your loose association. It would be good if we could then stay in contact with this person, precisely from the “Coming Day”. But now you have the Central Office for Letters in Berlin.

A participant: We had thought of another place in Tübingen, which is still close to Stuttgart.

Rudolf Steiner: And what would the tasks of this center be?

A participant: So that these things that could be solved in relation to Stuttgart could be solved through personal contact.

Rudolf Steiner: What other tasks would the central office have? Searching for such personalities and then, don't you think, you are thinking of such a position separately from how Mr. Bock imagines it as a follow-up to the “Kommenden Tag” (The Coming Day).

Emil Bock: First of all, the financing would have to be tackled, work would have to be done in various places. A great deal has to be collected at a central office, so the central office would have to have full authority. We have taken Berlin because that is where most of us are.

Rudolf Steiner: So you would then think of having central offices in Berlin and Tübingen for finding suitable personalities and here in Stuttgart a personality who would prepare the financing?

Well, I can't make any kind of binding statement for the “Kommende Tag” at this moment, but it is my opinion that such a thing, if it is considered, could be done. Could it not be – of course I do not want to give any binding advice regarding the choice of personality, I am only giving Heisler as an example –: If Heisler were commissioned to start with the financing question and this were done in connection with the “Coming Day” , one would have to think about creating the position for Heisler right away, and of course I would have to bring that up for discussion in the “Kommen Tag” so that you would know what could be done on the part of the “Kommen Tag” when you leave here. I think that a lot of transitions from one to the other naturally lead a bit into the unknown. It seems to me that it would not be a bad idea if we were to create such a central office right away, which would start work, so to speak. Of course, it can't be too early, because I appreciate all the reasons against proceeding too quickly. But really, what can be done by such a center after two years or after a year can also be done today. I cannot make a binding statement today on behalf of “Kommendes Tag”, but it seems to me that if it is thought of at all, not under the name of “Kommendes Tag”, but in connection with it, then it would actually have to be done immediately.

A participant: Do we have the material basis? If you employ someone, you have to have the salary for him.

Rudolf Steiner: Well now, the question is of course whether a way out could not be found after all in this direction, whether in a sense the concern would now already be for the salary of this particular person. Will you still be here the day after tomorrow? We can talk tomorrow or the day after tomorrow about how to solve the problem of finding such a person immediately. Of course, it is not possible for you to arrange financing for the person so quickly, as they should take charge of the financing themselves. We can talk about it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But in principle, would you be opposed to starting the matter immediately, if possible?

A participant: I would also like to ask whether we could now agree on the person in charge of the position.

Rudolf Steiner: I will only say this: I always start from real, practical points of view, and there are reasons that could probably make the realization very quick if Dr. Heisler could be considered. With him, the matter could probably be dealt with more quickly than if it were a matter of choosing any other person.

• 1. Note from the editor: Only a few of the participants were known to the stenographer. Therefore, the names of some of the individual participants are missing from his documents. So where it says “a participant” below, this means that the name of the person concerned was not recorded by the stenographer.

Repetition in very formulations helps the listener to comprehend. The use of questions gives the audience a moment to breathe in. Logical trains of thought put the audience to sleep. Unusual formulations and word order keep the listeners attentive. Illustrations and pictures convince and are remembered.

Since today must be our last session, we will be concerned with filling out and expanding upon what has been said; so you must consider this rather like a final clearance at a rummage sale, where what has been left is finally brought out.

First, I would like most of all to say one must keep in mind that the speaker is in an essentially different position than he who gives something he has written to a reader. The speaker must be very aware that he does not have a reader before him, but rather a listener. The listener is not in a position to go back and re-read a sentence he has not understood. The reader, of course, can do this, and this must be kept in mind. This situation can be met by presenting through repetition what is considered important, even indispensable, for a grasp of the whole. Naturally, care must be taken that such repetitions are varied, that the most important things are put forth in varied formulations while, at the same time, this variety of re-phrasings does not bore the listener who has a gift for comprehension. The speaker will have to see to it that the different ways he phrases one and the same thing have, as it were, a sort of artistic character.

The artistic aspect of speaking is, in general, something that must be kept clearly in mind, the more the subject matter is concerned with logic, life-experience, and other powers of understanding. The more the speaker is appealing to the understanding through strenuous thinking, the more he must proceed artistically—through repetition, composition, and many other things which will be mentioned today. You must remember that the artistic has its own means of facilitating understanding. Take, for example, repetition, which can work in such a way that it forms a sort of facilitation for the listener. Differently phrased repetitions give the listener occasion to give up rigidly holding himself to one or another phrase and to hear what lies between them. In this way his comprehension is freed, giving him the feeling of release, and that aids understanding to an extraordinary degree.

However, not only should different means of artistically structuring the speech be applied, but also different ways of executing it. For example, take the speaker who, in seeking the right word for something, brings in a question in such a way that he actually speaks the question amidst the usual flow of statements. What does it mean to address one's listeners with a question? Questions which are listened to actually work mainly on the listener's inhalation. The listener lives during his listening in a breathing-in, breathing-out, breathing-in, breathing-out. That is not only important for speaking, it is also most important for listening. If the lecturer brings up a question the listener's exhalation can, as it were, remain unused. Listening is diverted into inhalation on hearing a question. This is not contradicted by a situation when the listener may be breathing out on hearing a question. Listening takes place not only directly but indirectly, so that a sentence which falls during an exhalation—if it is a question—is really only rightly perceived, rightly taken in, during the subsequent inhalation. In short, inhalation is essentially connected with hearing a content in question form. However, because of the fact that inhalation is engaged by a question being thrown out, the whole process of listening is internalized. What is said goes somewhat more deeply into the soul than if one listens merely to an assertion.

When a person hears a straight assertion his actual tendency is to engage neither his inhalation nor his exhalation. The assertion may sink in a little, but it doesn't actually even engage the sense organs much.

Lengthy assertions concerning logical matters are, on the whole, unfortunate within the spoken lecture. Whoever would lecture as if he were merely giving a reasoned argument has gotten hold of a great instrument—to put his listeners to sleep; for such a logical development has the disadvantage that it removes the understanding from the organ of hearing. One doesn't listen properly to logic. Furthermore, it doesn't really form the breath; it doesn't set it going in varied waves. The breath remains essentially in its most neutral state when a logical assertion is listened to, thus one goes to sleep with it. This is a wholly organic process. Logical assertions are perforce impersonal—but that takes its toll.

Thus, one who wants to develop into a speaker must take care whenever possible not to speak in logical formulae but in figures of speech, while remaining logical. To these figures of speech belongs the question. Also belonging to figures of speech is the ploy of occasionally saying the opposite of what one really wants to say. This has to be said in such a way that the listener knows he is to understand the opposite. Thus, let us say, the speaker says straight out, and even in an assertive tone: Kully is stupid. Under certain circumstances that could prove to be not a very good turn of phrase. But it could be a good formulation if someone said: I don't believe there is anyone sitting here who presumes that Kully is clever! There you have spoken a phrase that is opposite of the truth. But, naturally, you have added something so that you could formulate the opposite to the assertive statement. Thus, by proceeding in this way, and with inner feeling, the speech will be able to stand on its own two feet.

I have just said that the speech will be able to stand on its own feet. This is an image. Philistines can say that a speech has no feet. But a speech does have feet!As an example one need only recall that Goethe, in advanced age, when he had to speak while fatigued, liked to walk around the room. Speech is basically the expression of the whole man—thus it has feet! And to surprise the listener with something about which he is unfamiliar and which, if he is to grasp it, he must go counter to what he is familiar with—that is extremely important in a lecture.

Also belonging to the feeling-logic of the speech is the fact that one does not talk continually in the same tone of voice. To go on in the same tone, you know, puts the listener to sleep. Each heightening of the tone is actually a gentle nightmare; thus the listener is somewhat shaken by it. Every relative sinking of tone is really a gentle fainting, so that it is necessary for the listener to fight against it. Through modulating the tone of speech one gives occasion for the listener to participate, and that is extraordinarily important for the speaker.

But it is also especially important now and then to appeal somewhat to the ear of the listener. If he is too immersed in himself while listening, at times he won't follow certain passages. He begins to reflect within himself. It is a great misfortune for the lecturer when his listeners begin to ponder within themselves. They miss something that is being said, and when—after a time—they again begin to hear, they just can't keep up. Thus at times you must take the listener by the ear, and you do that by applying unusual syntax and sequences of phrasing. The question, of course, gives a different placing of subject and predicate than one is used to, but you ought to have on hand a variety of other ways of changing the word order. You should speak some sentences in such a way that what you have at the beginning is a verb or some other part of speech which is not usually there. Where something unusual happens, the listener again pays attention, and what is most noteworthy is that he not only pays attention to the sentence concerned but also to the one that follows. And if you have to do with listeners who are unusually docile, you will find that they will even listen to the second sentence if you interlace your word-order a bit. As a lecturer, you must pay attention to this inner lawfulness. You will learn these things best if, in your listening, you will direct your attention to how really good speakers use such things. Such techniques are what lead essentially to the pictorial quality of a speech.

In connection with the formal aspect of speaking, you could learn a great deal from the Jesuits. They are very well trained. First, they use the components of a speech well. They work not only on intensification and relaxation but, above all, on the image. I must continually refer to a striking Jesuit speech I once heard in Vienna, where I had been led by someone to the Jesuit church and where one of the most famous Jesuit Fathers was preaching. He preached on the Easter Confessional, and I will share the essential part of his sermon with you. He said: "Dear Christians! There are apostates from God who assert that the Easter Confessional was instituted by the Pope, by the Roman Pope; that it does not derive from God but rather from the Roman Pope. Dear Christians! Whoever would believe that can learn something from what I am going to say: Imagine in front of you, dear Christians, there stands a cannon. Beside the cannon there stands a cannonier. The cannonier has a match in his hand ready to light the fuse. The cannon is loaded. Behind the cannonier is the commanding officer. When the officer commands, 'Fire,' the cannonier lights the fuse. The cannon goes off. Would any of you now say that this cannonier, who obeyed the command of his superior, invented the powder? None of you, dear Christians, would say that! Look now, such a cannonier was the Roman Pope, who waited for the command from above before ordering the Easter Confessional. Thus, no one will say the Pope invented the Easter Confessional; as little as the cannonier invented the gunpowder. He only carries out the commandments from above." All the listeners were crushed, convinced!

Obviously, the man knew the situation and the state of mind of the people. But that is something that is an indispensable precondition for a good speech and has already been characterized in this study. He said something which, as an image, fell completely outside the train of thought, and yet the listeners completed the course of the argument without feeling that the man spoke subjectively. I have also called to your attention the dictum by Bismarck about politicians steering by the wind, an image he took from those with whom he was debating, but which nevertheless frees one from the strictness of the chain of thought under discussion.

These sorts of things, if they are rightly felt, are those artistic means which completely replace what a lecture does not need, namely, sheer logic. Logic is for thought, not for speaking; I mean for the form of speech, not the way of expression. Naturally, the illogical may not be in it. But a speech cannot be put together as one combines a train of thought. You will find that something may be most acute and appropriate in a debate and yet really have no lasting effect. What does have a lasting effect in a speech is an image which grabs, that is, which stands at some distance from the meaning, so that the speaker who uses the image has become free from slavish dependence on the pure thought-sense.

Such things lead to the recognition of how far a speech can be enhanced through humor. A deeply serious speech can be elevated by a humor which, so to say, has barbs. It is just as I have said: if you wish to forcibly pour will into the listeners, they get angry. The right way to apply the will is for the speech itself to develop images which are, so to speak, inner realities. The speech itself should be the reality. You can perhaps grasp what I want to say if I tell you of two debates. The second is not a pure debate, but it still can be instructive for the use of images in a speech which wishes to characterize something.

Notice that those orations that are intended to be witty often acquire a completely subjective coloring. The German Parliament had for some time, in one of its members by the name of Meyer, just such a witty debater. For example, at one time the famous—or infamous—“Lex Heinze” was advocated in this particular Parliament. I believe that the man who gave the speech for the defense was the minister; and he always spoke, as the defender and as one belonging to the Conservative Party, of “das Lex Heinze.” He always said “das Lex Heinze.” Now, no doubt, such a thing can pass. But it was in the nature of the Liberal Party, of which the joker, Representative Meyer, was a member, that it took just such matters seriously. So later on in the debate Meyer asked leave to speak and said somewhat as follows: “The Lord Minister has defended die Lex Heinze [Note 1] and has constantly said ‘das Lex Heinze.’ I didn't know what he was really talking about. I have gone all around asking what ‘das Lex’ is. No one has been able to enlighten me. I took the dictionary and looked—and found nothing. I was about to come here and ask the Minister, when it suddenly struck me to consult a Latin Grammar. There I found it, there stood the statement: 'What one cannot decline must be considered a neuter!”

To be sure, for an immediate laugh it is very good, this coarse wit. But it still has no barbs, it doesn't ignite deeply, because with such a ploy there is aroused subtly and unconsciously in the listener a pity for the afflicted one. This kind of wit is too subjective, it comes more out of a love of sarcasm than out of the thing itself.

Over against this I have always found the following to be a striking image: He who was later to become Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV was, as Crown Prince, a very witty man. His father, King Friedrich Wilhelm III, had a minister who was very special to him, whose name was von Klewiz. [Note 2] Now the Crown Prince could not bear von Klewiz. Once, at a court ball, the Crown Prince spoke to Klewiz and said: Your Excellency, I would like to put to you a riddle today:

The first is the fruit from the field
The second is something which,
when one hears it, one gets a light shock;
And the whole is a public calamity!

Von Klewiz turned red from ear to ear, bowed, and handed in his resignation after the ball. The King called him and said: What happened to you? I can't spare you, my dear Klewiz!—Yes, but, Your Royal Highness, the Crown Prince said something to me yesterday which made it impossible for me to remain in office.—But that is not possible! The dear Crown Prince would not say such a thing, that I can't believe!—Yes, but it is so, Your Majesty.—What has the Crown Prince said?—He said to me: The first is a fruit from the field; the second is something which, if one hears it, one gets something like a light shock; the whole is a public calamity! There is no doubt, Royal Highness, that the Crown Prince meant me.—Indeed, remarkable thing, dear Klewiz. But we will have the Crown Prince come and we will hear how the matter stands.

The Crown Prince was called.—Dear One, yesterday evening you are supposed to have said something very offensive to my indispensible minister, His Excellency, von Klewiz.—The Crown Prince said: Your Majesty, I am unable to remember. If it had been something serious I would surely be able to remember it.—It does seem to have been something serious, though.—Oh! Yes, yes, I remember. I said to His Excellency that I wished to put a riddle to him: The first syllable is a fruit of the field, the second syllable indicates something which, if one perceives it, one gets something like a slight shock; the whole is a public calamity. I don't think that it is a matter of my having offended His Excellency so much as that His Excellency could not solve the riddle. I recall that His Excellency simply could not solve the riddle!—The King said: Indeed, what is the riddle's solution?—Here, then: The first syllable is a fruit of the field: hay (Heu); the second syllable, where one gets a light shock, is “fear” (Schreck); the whole is: grasshopper (Heu-schreck), that is, a public calamity (or nuisance), Your Majesty.

Now why do I say that? I say it on the grounds that no one who tells such a thing, no one who moulds his phrases or figures of speech in such a form, has need of following the matter through to its end; for no person expects in telling it that he has to explain the tableau further, but rather expects each to draw for himself the pictorial idea. And it is good in a speech to occasionally work it so that something is left over for the listener. There is nothing left over when one ridicules someone; the gap is perfectly filled up.

It is a matter of heightening the vividness so that the listener can really get the feeling that he can act on something, can take it further.

***

The audience listens with the speech organs. The speaker must be fully immersed in his topic. He must have thorough knowledge of the events of the time. The movement for the threefold social order cannot be separated from Anthroposophy.

Naturally, it is necessary that one leaves the needed pauses in his speech. These pauses must be there.

Now along this line we could say an extraordinary amount about the form, about the structure, of a speech. For usually it is believed that men listen with their ears alone; but the fact that some, when they especially want to grasp something, open their mouths while listening, already speaks against this. They would not do this if they listened with their ears alone. We listen with our speech organs much more than is usually thought. We always, as it were, snap up the speech of the speaker with our speech organ; and the etheric body always speaks along with, even makes eurythmy along with, the listening—and, in fact, the movements correspond exactly to eurythmy movements. Only people don't usually know them unless they have studied eurythmy.

It is true that everything we hear from inanimate bodies is heard more from outside with the ear, but the speech of men is really heard in such a way that one heeds what beats on the ear from within. That is a fact which very few people know. Very few know what a great difference exists between hearing, say, the sound of church bells or a symphony, and listening to human speech. With human speech, it is really the innermost part of the speaking that is heard. The rest is much more merely an accompanying phenomenon than is the case with the hearing of something inanimate. Thus, I have said all that I did about one's own listening so that the speaker will actually formulate his speech as he would criticize it if he were listening to it. I mean that the formulation comes from the same power, out of the same impulse, as does the criticism if one is doing the listening.

It is of some importance that the persons who make it their task to do something directly for the threefolding of the social organism—or something similar to this—take care that what they have to say to an audience is done, in a certain way, artistically. For basically, one speaks today—I have already indicated this—to rather deaf ears, if one speaks before the usual public about the threefolding of the social organism. And, I would like to say, that in a sense one will have to be fully immersed in the topic, especially with feeling and sensitivity, if one wants to have any success at all. That is not to suggest that it is necessary to study the secrets of success—that is certainly not necessary—and to adapt oneself in trivial ways to what the listener wants to hear. That is certainly not what should be striven for. What one must strive for is a genuine knowledge of the events of the time. And, you see, such a firm grounding in the events of the time, an arousal of the really deeper interest for the events of the time, can only be evoked today by Anthroposophy. For these and other reasons, whoever wants to speak effectively about threefolding must be at least inwardly permeated with the conviction that for the world to understand threefold, it is also necessary to bring Anthroposophy to the world.

Admittedly, since the very first efforts toward the realization of the threefold social order, there have been, on the one hand, those who are apparently interested in the threefold social order but not in Anthroposophy; while on the other hand, those interested in Anthroposophy but caring little for the threefold social order. In the long run, however, such a separation is not feasible if anything of consequence is to be brought about.

This is especially true in Switzerland, some of the reasons for which having already been mentioned. The speaker must have a strong underlying conviction that a threefold social order cannot exist without Anthroposophy as its foundation. Of course, one can make use of the fact that some persons want to accept threefolding and reject Anthroposophy; but one should absolutely know—and he who knows will be able to find the right words, for he will know that without the knowledge of at least the fundamentals of Anthroposophy there can be no threefold organization.

For what are we attempting to organize in a threefold way? Imagine a country where the govern ment has complete control of the schools on the one hand and the economy on the other, so that the area of human rights falls between the two. In such a country it would be very unlikely that a threefold organization could be achieved. If the school system were made independent of the government, the election of a school monarch or school minister would probably shortly follow, transforming within the shortest time the independent cultural life into a form of government!

Such matters cannot be manipulated by formulas; they must be rooted in the whole of human life. First we must actually have an independent cultural life and participate in it before we can assign it its own sphere of activity within society. Only when that life is carried on in the spirit of Anthroposophy—as exemplified by the Waldorf school in Stuttgart—can one speak of the beginnings of an independent cultural sector. The Waldorf school has no head, no lesson plans, nor anything else of the kind; but life is there, and life dictates what is to be done.

I am entirely convinced that on this topic of the ideal independent school system any number of persons, be it three, seven, 12, 13 or 15, could get together and think up the most beautiful thoughts to formulate a program: firstly, secondly, thirdly—many points. These programs could be such that nothing more beautiful could be imagined. The people who figured out these programs need not be of superior intelligence. They could, for example, be average politicians, not even that, they could be barroom politicians. They could discover 30, 40 points, fulfilling all the highest ideals for the most perfect schools, but they wouldn't be able to do anything with it! It is superfluous to set up programs and statutes no one can work with. One can work with a group of teachers only on the basis of what one has at hand—not on the basis of statutes—doing the best one can in the most living way.

An independent cultural life must be a real life of the spirit. Today, when people speak of the spiritual life, they mean ideas; they speak only of ideas.

Consequently, since Anthroposophy exists for the purpose of calling forth in people the feeling for a genuine life of the spirit, it is indispensable when the demand arises for a threefold social organism. Accordingly, the two should go together: furtherance of Anthroposophy and furtherance of the threefold social order.

But people, especially today, are tired in mind and soul. They actually want to avoid coming to original thoughts and feelings, interested only in maintaining traditions. They want to be sheltered. They don't want to turn to Anthroposophy, because they don't want to stir their souls into activity; instead, they flock in great numbers—especially the intellectuals—to the Roman Catholic Church, where no effort is required of them. The work is on the part of the bishop or priest, who guides the soul through death. Just think how deep-rooted it is in today's humanity: parents have a son whom they love; therefore they want his life to be secure. Let him work for the government: then he is bound to be well looked after; then he doesn't have to face the battle of life by himself. He will work as long as he can, then go on to pensioned retirement—secure even beyond his working days. How grateful we should be to the government for taking such good care of our children!

Neither are people so fond of an independently striving soul. The soul is to be taken care of until death by the church, just as work is provided by the government. And just as the power of the government provides the physical man with a pension, so the church is expected to provide the soul with a pension when a man dies, is expected to provide for it after death—that is something that lies deeply in present-day man, in everyone today. Just to be polite I will add that this is true for the daughters as well as the sons, for they would rather be married to those who are thus “secure,” who are provided for in this way. Such seems to be the obsession of humanity: not to build upon oneself, but to have some mystical power somewhere upon which to build. The government, as it exists today, is an example of such a mystical power. Or is there not much obscurity in the government? I suspect much more obscurity than in even the worst mystic.

We must have a sense for these things as we commit ourselves to the tasks to which these lectures are addressed. This course was primarily confined to the formalities of the art of lecturing, but the important thing is the enthusiasm that lives in your hearts, the devotion to the necessity of that effectiveness which can emanate from the Goetheanum in Dornach. And to the degree that this inner conviction grows in you, it will become a convincing power not only for you but for others as well. For what do we need today? Not a mere doctrine; however good it could be, it could just get moldy in libraries, it could be formulated—here or there—by a "preacher in the desert," unless we see to it that the impulse for a threefold social order finds entrance, with minimal delay, to as many minds as possible. Then practical application of that impulse will follow by itself.

But we need to broaden the range of our efforts. A weekly publication such as the Goetheanum will have to be distributed as widely as possible in Switzerland. That is only one of many requirements, in view of the fact that the basic essentials of Anthroposophy must be acquired ever anew; but a weekly of this type will have to find its place on the world scene and work in widespread areas for the introduction and application of the threefold social order. The experience of the way in which the Goetheanum publication thus works will be essential to anyone attempting to assist in the realization of such an order in the social organism.

What we need above all is energy, courage, insight, and interest in world events on a broader scale! Let us not isolate ourselves from the world, not get entangled in narrow interests, but be interested in everything that goes on all over the world. That will give wings to our words and make us true coworkers in the field we have chosen.

In this light were these lectures given; and when you go out to continue your work, you can be assured that the thoughts of the lecturer will accompany you. May such cooperation strengthen the impulse that should inspire our work, if that work, especially in Switzerland, is to be carried on in the right way.

And so I wish you luck, sending you out not into darkness but into where light and open air can enter into the development of humanity—from which you will doubly benefit, as you yourselves are the ones who are to bring this light and openness into the world.

Notes:

Note 1.The proper form was apparently “die,” implying feminine gender. “Das” implies neuter gender.

Note 2.The two syllables of the name are identical in sound with Klee (clover) and Witz (joke).

To broaden the subject matter I have been presenting, let us start by looking back to a period of human evolution when the gaining of insight, as we know it today, was entirely different in character. We have spoken of this before, but a new light may be thrown on things that are already familiar because of the things that have been said in recent lectures.

Human perceptiveness has a completely different character today from the way it was in ancient Greek and Roman times. And the knowledge held in the Orient and in Africa before those times was of a completely different kind again than the insights that were so magnificently presented by the Greeks, made more abstract by the Romans and have in our day become more and more materialistic. At about the beginning of the 8th century BC the nature of human understanding became what essentially it still is today, though with modifications. Until now, we have more or less characterized the earlier way that went before it by saying: It was a kind of instinctive perception. Insight lived not in concepts but in images; these were not entirely like the dream images we see, yet they did not have the clear definition when they lived in human souls which they have in the modern world of concepts, but took more the form of images that passed through the conscious mind.

The contents were also different, relating more to the worlds in which human beings had their origin and in which they still lived, having separated only a little from them. During Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, the human being was still wholly part of the rest of the world. And during earlier stages of Earth evolution, too, the human individual was not yet separate from the general content of the world but felt part of it. When people let go of the intellectual approach, where we use our brain to learn things, and do more or less as is done in certain oriental schools, where breathing processes are used to gain a kind of insight, a situation is created where the clean separation between self and world has disappeared. When people do yoga exercises, which belong to the past but can still be found today, they feel their individual nature to be reduced and subdued, so that they are like a breath in the world.

The nature of perceptiveness was like that in those earlier times, though people were also able to interpret their own inner physical body, in the way I spoke of yesterday, by using their image-based perception. Yesterday we considered how human beings take in the world around them today and retain it in ideas. This becomes an inner life out of which individuals are able to create an image of their world as it has been from birth to the present moment. The organs we have inside us—brain, lungs, liver—are content of the whole world. We can recall something we have experienced from memory and interpret its meaning, so that it lives in us as an idea. And in our internal organs we have the whole world inside us. Ancient wisdom consisted in interpreting the individual organs by relating them to the content of the whole world.

Essentially, the older kind of human understanding which existed until the 9th century BC was such that people gained insight into the content of the world by interpreting the internal physical and etheric nature of the human being. Of course, their view of those internal organs was different from that held by modern anatomists and physiologists. Every individual internal organ related to something in the outside world, yet the organ itself was experienced from inside. Thus the structure of the brain was seen in tremendous images and these in turn were related to the whole sphere of heaven, and people with this ancient way of understanding were able to gain an idea of the whole sphere of heaven, based on indications as to the structure of the brain gained through atavistic perception in images.

Essentially all the ancient wisdom about the world has come from such interpretations of the inner human being. It is not really possible, however, to say that the knowledge and understanding of those times was truly human by nature. True human understanding, which of course is not at all the dry, purely intellectual knowledge people often think it to be, is, after all, unthinkable without intelligence. The wisdom of old, however, was entirely without intelligence produced by human beings, and we cannot really call it “human” understanding. Human beings merely had part in the understanding which other entities had inside them. These were spirits belonging to the hierarchy of the Angels. An Angel would ensoul a human being and the old form of wisdom was really that of the Angel. The human individual merely had part in it by looking into the inner life of the Angel, as it were. This is also why people who had that ancient wisdom were rather vague as to how they got it. They simply said to themselves that it was something which was given to them, for it was the Angel who created insight in them; as they were unable to do this themselves.

Those were not the normal angelic spirits who accompany human beings through several lives on earth. They had luciferic character, for their disposition had remained at the earlier, moon level of development. Thus we are able to say that the ancient wisdom arose when spirits who should have gone through their normal human stage of development on the ancient moon let their soul powers enter into and ensoul human beings, and people would have part in the Angel’s experiences inside them, gaining an extraordinarily sublime insight in this way. The wisdom given to the angelic beings during the moon evolution was at a high level of perfection, but it was not really something which people could put to any real use on earth. People acted more or less out of instinct on earth, we might say they acted like a higher kind of animal. And into this creature shone the sublime wisdom which began to fade away towards the 8th century BC.

This wisdom—definitely luciferic the way it is presented above—really related only to anything that showed the human being to be a citizen of other worlds. With regard to their perceptions, therefore, human beings had not yet really come to earth. They felt themselves to be in higher spheres in their wisdom, and their actions on earth were instinctive.

There followed the development that goes hand in hand with the intellectual or mind soul. Human beings began to let the mind be active in them and evolve concepts. Greek civilization still had the angelic wisdom of earlier times but worked it through with human concepts. Plato’s⁴ wisdom makes such an impression on us because he was subjectively evolving concepts and ideas, but the old instinctive wisdom still shone into the process. His writings therefore are a marvellous combination of the highest wisdom and a way of thinking that was human and individual. Considering Plato’s mind and spirit it would be impossible to imagine him writing his philosophical works in a form other than that of dialogues, for the simple reason that he was definitely aware of a wisdom that had only been an indefinite feeling to earlier people. They would say: The wisdom simply exists; it comes to me and radiates into me. Plato found himself in a form of dialogue with the entity that brought wisdom into him. Experiencing this wisdom in dialogue he also preferred to express it through dialogue.

Soon, however, conceptual thinking became more prevalent. Aristotle⁵ already presented his knowledge in a complex of theories.

As the fourth post-Atlantean age progressed, a civilizatory element gained influence that may be described as follows: People felt that an ancient wisdom had filled human souls in times past. They felt that superhuman entities had come down and brought this wisdom to humanity. But they were also aware that this wisdom was becoming more abstract. They could not longer grasp it; it eluded them.

Roman civilization is characterized by a mind that made everything abstract. The Romans evolved a dry, abstract way of thinking that did not perceive in images and wanted to live only in the forms of the mind. With the Greeks we still feel that the figures of their gods, that is, the elemental principles in the world of nature, had an inner life. The Roman gods were stiff, abstract concepts. Logic gained the upper hand over the imaginative thinking that had still been widespread in ancient Greece. Anything the Romans still had by way of imagination actually came from Greece. The Romans introduced the prosaic, logical thinking that was later to give the Latin language the logical quality that was to govern civilization for ages to come.

One thing continued on, however—in a more living way through Greek culture and a slightly more dead way through Roman culture, into the Christian era and right into the Middle Ages—and that was the tradition of the ancient wisdom. This has persisted more than people are inclined to think today. The world that presented itself to the senses could not be immediately grasped with the mind, but people sought to grasp the traditional element in this way. The result was that an element which before had been luciferic, inwardly enlivening, gained an ahrimanic character that was also outwardly apparent, as a mask. In reality this is a luciferic element which continues by tradition. Romanism continued through the centuries; a strong Germanic element came into it, but the tradition survived and it was essentially luciferic. Its original character was lost because it streamed down into the realm of thought and became formulated in thoughts. We may say that in the Latin language, a luciferic element lives on in an ahrimanic way.

This luciferic element was still very much alive in Greek art. It then became more or less rigid and it is interesting to see how it extended into theology, which had to do with other worlds, yet had no real access to those worlds; all it had was the tradition. A spiritual stream that was essentially luciferic thus brought the ancient perception of other worlds into theology.

The Christian faith also got caught up in the meshes of this theology; it became theology. The language of Rome was made logical, the Christian faith theological. The true life of Christianity was submerged in a luciferic element that bore an ahrimanic mask. The personal and individual element was always there, but it was more instinctive. It was not able to unite fully with the element which came from above. It is particularly interesting to observe this when it was at its most striking, during the Renaissance. There we see a highly developed theology with concepts and ideas of other worlds but no perception. Everything took the form of tradition during the Renaissance. Romanism had preserved the original, ancient wisdom in a theology that had brought it down into the realm of ideas, where it lived on as a luciferic element. Those theologizing elements are still marvellously apparent in Raphael’s wall paintings in Rome, the Disputa, for instance.⁶ Profound wisdom, more or less living on in words, no longer offering perception, but holding true wisdom for those who are able to connect it with perception. We also admire the theology in Dante’s Divine Comedy,⁷ though we know that whilst Dante gained some of the old true perception—thanks to his teacher Brunetto Latini,⁸ as I have shown on another occasion⁹—most of the work represents the traditional, theologizing approach with a strong luciferic element in it. We can also see that the entities which brought the ancient wisdom into the theologizing element also brought the essence of Greek art into the art of the Renaissance, a Greek art that originally had soul quality before and had become more rigid, but still came down through tradition. Goethe¹⁰ was therefore able to perceive the resurrection of Greek art in the art of the Renaissance.

It has to be said that there is a powerful luciferic element in the theology and in the art that have come to us from the past. To be artistic, this art must look for elements that belong to other worlds, and it is not able to descend fully to the human level. Where it does so, it seems to us to have made a sudden leap down to the level of instinct. Looking at Renaissance life, we see that people had ideas of heaven—no vision any more—and were able to bring those ideas to life in their art in a truly marvellous way. Beneath this, however, we see Renaissance life deteriorate to the level of instincts. World history presents magnificent but sometimes also horrific scenes where Pope Alexander VI, for instance, or Leo X, are on the one hand great scholars, having ideas of the most sublime aspects of other worlds, yet on the other hand are unable, as Renaissance people, to let their personal life rise to that level, letting it degenerate to the life of instincts. It is a terrible thing to see those individuals develop a kind of higher animal life on the one hand, and spreading above this a heaven that is luciferic by nature, a heaven presented to human minds in a theology that is truly wonderful and at the same time also entirely luciferic.

With this, we are coming to an age when powers other than those older angelic spirits became involved in human evolution.

Humanity is halfway between the world of the angels and that of the animals. In past ages the human form was quite animal-like, but ensouled with the element I have just described. Without a clue as to the reality of this situation, modern geologists and palaeontologists are turning up ancient human remains that show receding foreheads and animal-like human forms and believe this shows that humans are related to animals. This is quite right if one considers only the outer physical form, but the more animal-like those forms become as we go back in time, the more are they ensouled with original wisdom. If all that modern geologists and palaeontologists are able to say about the remains dug up in some parts of Europe a few years ago is that these were human beings with low skulls, receding foreheads, prominent brows and eye-sockets, anyone who knows the true situation has to say: This human being, who may look animal-like today and to palaeontologists who see only the outer appearance may appear to have evolved from apes, was fully ensouled with an ancient, original wisdom. Another spiritual entity had that wisdom in the human being who merely had a share in it. In the past, therefore, human beings held within them a superhuman principle. They grew increasingly towards this as they evolved out of animal-like forms, finally to become a kind of super-animal which included all the different animal forms. This super-animal offered conditions where an ahrimanic entity that was very different from the usual angelic spirits was able to enter. The human being who combines intellectual thinking with an animal-like organization came to the fore at the time when the wisdom of old was fading and becoming tradition. From the 8th century BC, human evolution took a course, slowly at first, but progressively, where a kind of ahrimanic super-animal nature developed from inside which then also entered the human soul from the other side.

The spirit which meets with the luciferic spirit in the human being, as it were, may be said to be another one who sought to deflect human beings from the true path. The luciferic spirits may be said to be spirits of ire in the human soul who do not intend human beings to be glad to be on earth but draw them away from the earth, over and over again, always wanting to draw them up towards the superhuman. They want him to be an angel who does not have anything to do with the lower functions of the physical organism. It angers the luciferic spirits to see people walk the earth on their two feet who are connected to the earth through their lower functions. They want to strip all animal nature away from people. Today, at the present stage of human evolution, for example, they do not want to let individuals come to physical incarnation; they want to keep them up above in the life that passes between death and a new birth.

The ahrimanic spirits, on the other hand, may be called spirits of pain and suffering. They seek to achieve the human form for themselves but are unable to do so. Essentially these ahrimanic spirits suffer terrible pain. It is as if an animal were to feel dimly: You ought to come upright and be a human being—as if it wanted to tear itself apart inwardly. That is the terrible pain experienced by the ahrimanic spirits. It can only be relieved by approaching human beings and taking hold of their minds. This will cool the pain. These spirits therefore get their teeth into the human mind, digging their claws into it, boring themselves into it.¹¹ Ahrimanic nature involves something that is like painfully letting the human mind enter into you. Ahrimanic spirits want to unite with human beings so that they may come to their senses, as it were.

Thus the human being is the battle ground for luciferic and ahrimanic elements. It would be fair to say that the luciferic element is involved in anything to do with the arts and with abstract theology. The ahrimanic element is like something coming up from the world of matter that has gone through the animal world and painfully seeks to achieve human status, taking hold of the human mind; it is repulsed by the part of the human being that is higher than human nature; again and again it is thrown back, though it wishes to take the human mind for itself. Again and again this element wants to enter into human beings and make them go by the intellect alone, preventing them from developing the higher faculties of Imagination and Inspiration, seeking to keep humanity at their level, so as to ease their own pain.

Everything which has developed during the more recent ahrimanic age by way of materialistic science, a science that comes from the burning pain of material existence that is cooled in the human being, is ahrimanic by nature. We see this materialistic science arise as human beings evolve it. When people give their inner life to this science, Ahriman unites with them through it. Lucifer has a hand above all in the sphere of the arts; Ahriman has a hand in the development of mechanics, technology, anything that seeks to take the human intellect away from people and put it into machine tools and also the machinery of government. This alone has made the developments possible which have arisen mainly from the time of the Renaissance onwards. We might say that luciferic activity came to a kind of dead end during the Renaissance and that ahrimanic activity then took over. We can see how everything since then has gone in the direction of mechanization, and a science divorced from the realm of the spirit.

If the industrial technology and materialistic science which has evolved from Renaissance times and is entirely ahrimanic by nature is allowed to spread without there being any understanding of Christ, it will bind human beings to the earth and prevent them from reaching the Jupiter stage. Yet if we bring understanding of Christ, a new life of the spirit, and Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition to what at present is mere discovery of the physical world, we will redeem ahrimanic nature. This redemption can be presented in images, as I have done in many different ways in my Mystery Plays. Humanity will however be overcome by Ahriman unless understanding of Christ, an understanding that is truly of the spirit and free from all theology, is able to develop. Materialistic science and industrial technology would condemn humanity to earthly death, that is, they would craft a completely different world in which human beings live on as a kind of petrified fossils for the edification of ahrimanic spirits, and this will happen unless spiritual understanding of Christ spreads through the mechanization of our age.

We are thus able to say that Lucifer has a hand in all traditional theology, all art that is stiff and mannered, anything by way of renaissance; Ahriman has a hand in all materialistic science divorced from the realm of the spirit and unable to find the spirit in the world of nature, and in all aspects of human activity that are mechanical and without inwardness. The luciferic angelic spirits who have survived till today on the basis of tradition are only interested in keeping people from actually doing anything at all. They want to keep them confined to the inner life. Human beings have become individuals, but these angelic spirits do not want human actions to flow out into life and activity, into a manifestation of human will impulses. They want to keep people in an introspective frame of mind, to look rather than take action, to be mystics and follow the wrong kind of theosophy. They like people to sit musing all day, pursuing a thread through all kinds of riddles of the world and unwilling to apply the things they have in mind to the real world outside. They want detached observation to lead to a science of the outside world. They are good at creating a science like the one of Father Secchi,¹² who was an excellent astrophysicist, being able to make observations using the microscope and telescope and record them, and who also had something that did not relate to this at all, a sublime wisdom greater than the wisdom of this earth and of the human mind that had been given to him by luciferic spirits. The luciferic spirits nurture this wisdom and in doing so tear the human soul and spirit away from earth existence. And however great our materialistic science may be, it comes to nothing, for it has no inner reality of the spirit. This is of no interest to the luciferic spirits.

These spirits also want art to be as lifeless and devoid of spirit as possible, so that no spirit may enter into the forms created. They want nothing but the revival of things that existed in the past. They make people hate any kind of new style that may truly arise out of the present day. They want to reproduce the old styles because they come from a time when things could still be taken from unearthly realms.

On the other hand it is ahrimanic nature not to let a style or anything of a spiritual nature develop but rather to create utterly prosaic, purpose-designed buildings, mechanize everything and let it serve industry, letting people attach no value to hand-made arts and crafts and merely produce models which machines can reproduce in endless numbers. In the same way Ahriman can manifest in an infinite number of examples in many human beings through the mystery of numbers.

The human beings of today are caught in the midst of this battle. They need to realize that anthroposophy enables them to find and perceive the spirit and is therefore the true gift of Christ. Holding on to this they can keep the balance between luciferic and ahrimanic elements and thus find their way. They have to fight the ahrimanic spirit, for otherwise they must fall to the luciferic spirit. It is important, however, to be watchful when they give themselves up to the streams of Ahriman, lest they fall into a world that is entirely mechanized. The luciferic spirits want to prevent human beings from taking action; they want to make them mystics, given up to thought, who will gradually cease to take an interest in life on earth and can in this way be made remote from this life. The ahrimanic spirits want to keep human beings very much to life on earth. They want to mechanize everything, that is, take it down to the level of the mineral world. If they succeeded they would reshape the world to suit themselves and prevent it from reaching the Jupiter stage. On the other hand they do not want to deprive people of the opportunity to act; on the contrary, they want them to be as active as possible, except that it should all be routine and according to programme. Ahriman is a real programme enthusiast. It is he who inspires people to have endless statutes. He is really in his element if he finds a committee busily engaged in setting up statutes: Paragraph one, two and three—in the first place this is to be done, in the second place something else, in the third place one member has those particular rights, and in the fourth place another member is to do one thing or another. Of course, the members will never think of respecting those rights and may well refuse to do what it says in the statutes. That is not the point, however. Once the statutes exist, it is a matter of acting in the spirit of Ahriman, always pointing to paragraph number such and such.

Ahriman wants people to be active, but within the system, with everything firmly laid down in paragraphs. People should really find a list of things to be done on their pillow when they wake up in the morning and carry it all out mechanically, thinking only with their legs, as it were and not their heads. Lucifer wants them to use their heads and pour their hearts into their heads; Ahriman seeks to make people think only with their legs, pour everything into the legs.

People are caught up in the battle. I am trying to give you a picture of something which essentially is already part of our culture. We see people whose idea of perfection is to sit on folded legs like a Buddha figure and introspectively rise to sublime levels, not using their legs at all, but their heads swelling as they enter into mysterious depths. In the Western world we see others who hardly know how to get more quickly from one office to another, from business to business on their legs, so that we get the impression that it is really quite unnecessary for them to carry a head on their shoulders, for essentially their heads are not involved in their doings. Those are the two extremes in our time—solitary figures sitting thinking with eyes closed so that they may not even see what they themselves are doing, and others who actually don’t need eyes, for they have strings that pull their legs, and at the other end of those strings are the different paragraphs, with people pulled along as if they were part of a mechanism.

Occasionally we see modern people rebel against the ahrimanic trend and complain of the bureaucracy, which is of course entirely ahrimanic, against standardization in education, and so on. But as a rule all that happens is that they slide even deeper into the situation from which they want to escape.

The only thing to take us out of it all it to direct the whole of our minds and hearts to the search for the spirit, to an understanding that brings true spirituality to our thinking, with the true spirit taking hold of the whole human being and not merely the head. This will overcome the ahrimanic element and in so doing redeem it. We are not saying anything against ahrimanic nature, nor against all the situations where keeping of records and making of statutes and paragraphs have their rightful place. But the spirit must enter into it all.

We cannot really avoid using the ahrimanic skills in the present age—taking shorthand, for instance, and using a typewriter. These are highly ahrimanic elements in our civilization. But we can also bring the spirit into it, and in this way raise such ahrimanic influences as stenography and typewriting into the sphere of the spirit, redeeming Ahriman in the process. It is only possible to do this if we bring the life of the spirit fully to mind. People who live as materialists today, using stenography and typewriters, get deeply caught up in the ahrimanic element. You see, it is not my purpose to preach reaction against these things; the demonic world that has come on us is not to be given a bad name; but the demons themselves need to be redeemed.

This may certainly also show itself in individual instances. Basically we may say that the ahrimanic elements which have entered into our civilization in more recent times really only pursue their ahrimanic skills because they are inclined that way. The things they write in shorthand or on typewriters might just as well stay unwritten. We usually know all about it and there is no need to put it down on paper. The content does not matter, for only the ahrimanic skill has some significance. Yet it will be good to have the things that are coming up in the science of the spirit laid down exactly, for it is necessary to express ourselves in a careful, accurate way. And in this respect the ahrimanic element will be able to serve the realm of the spirit well.

It will be of special importance that the modern science of the spirit enters fully into the different human sciences and advances them from natural sciences devoid of spirit to a truly consistent science of the spirit, with the individual sciences as chapters in a unified science of the spirit. This will deahrimanize them, and if details are handled in the right way we gradually come into the stream that I had to present to you today, developing it out of the polarity between the luciferic and ahrimanic elements.

Please do not think it is irrelevant to go into detail the way I have done today. It is good to enter into this to some extent, using the kind of images I have used today, with today’s luciferic individual sitting on crossed legs, and ahrimanic people who rush from office to office, a finger in every pie, and who really don’t need to use their heads to keep their busy lives going.

You may feel more comfortable if abstract ideas are presented to you rather than concrete images, but the modern, anthroposophical science of the spirit must relate directly to life and indeed call a spade a spade. This, after all, is the only way to develop sound, proper ideas and the right inner attitude.

This is what I wanted to add today. The next time we’ll try and use a different approach to the nature of the human being.

• 4. Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BC), Athenian philosopher.
• 5. Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher, scientist and physician.
• 6. Raphael, or Raffaello Santi or Sanzio (1483–1520), Italian painter.
• 7. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), greatest Italian poet.
• 8. Brunette Latini (c. 1210–c. 1295), Florentine statesman, scholar and poet.
• 9. published in How can Mankind Find the Christ Again? (GA 187) Tr. F.E. Dawson, G. Hahn, O. D. Wannamaker. London: Rudolf Steiner Press.
• 10. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist, scientist and statesman.
• 11. Phrase coined by Steiner
• 12. Father Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) Italian astronomer trained as a Jesuit, Professor of Physics, Washington, USA, and from 1849 director of the observatory at the Coliegio Romano.

For many years it has been my duty to give lectures upon Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy.

Those present at the lectures cannot but acknowledge that the foundation of Spiritual Science as presented is not a dreamy, idle pursuit for the few who have withdrawn from the common paths of life; it illumines the deepest problems and mysteries of existence.

Spiritual Science will lead the mind towards spiritual origins. It is destined to give out to man-kind knowledge of the spiritual worlds. At the same time its mission is to make life intelligible, to be a guiding star in work and action, giving us a broader and deeper understanding of what happens in our environment, through a comprehension of the underlying spiritual causes.

The confusion that exists in the average mind and the consequent spirit of dissension, are due to the endless contradictions found in the opinions of famous authorities regarding the problems of human life. Many people have, however, already felt how Anthroposophy widens the vision, and therefore leads to a wise adjustment of opinions.

Two famous modern contemporaries, whose influences are far-reaching, will be brought before us to-day; individualities well suited to present to us the vital contrasts existing in our time. It would be difficult to find two personalities in greater contrast in their thought and feeling and in their standard of right and wrong. On the one hand is the famous, the influential Tolstoy—so strong a personality that no appellation seems adequate to describe his significance for his day and generation. It is difficult to describe him as moralist, prophet, or reformer. But it is evident that in speaking of him something deeply rooted in the innermost depths of human nature is touched; that in his personality something lives which rises from the depths of the human soul—something that cannot be felt in those whose work is merely superficial. The other personality, in so marked a contrast to Tolstoy, is the American millionaire, Carnegie. Why should Carnegie be mentioned in connection with Tolstoy? Just as Tolstoy, out of the depths of his soul, strives to solve the problems of life satisfactorily, even so Carnegie, in his own way, endeavours with a practical and intelligent outlook upon life, to reach guiding principles.

Perhaps it might be said that just as Idealism and Realism are diametrically opposed, so are Tolstoy and Carnegie in relation to each other. As Fichte says, “Your opinion of life depends upon the kind of man you are,” and a man’s point of view is always connected b, finer or coarser threads with his peculiar character and temperament. Between these two personalities we find the greatest possible contrast. There is the wealthy Russian aristocrat, born in the lap of luxury, who through his social position was not only bound to know the external aspect of that life, but obliged to live with and to taste it. He is satiated with the modern way of thinking, which offers only the superficial. He looks up and beyond at the great outspread wings of moral ideals which the majority of mankind, even though admiring and willingly admitting as beautiful, still believe unattainable.

On the other hand we have Carnegie, who was born in simple surroundings, knowing necessity and sacrifice, not equipped with the advantages enjoyed by Tolstoy, but with a will to work with the endless, one may say, ideally-coloured ambition of becoming a man in the broadest sense of the word. Through this attitude towards life Carnegie evolves a kind of realistic idealism, a moral standpoint which reckons from what is seen with physical eyes of the turmoil of experiences in practical life.

Tolstoy, in his radical way, throws down the gauntlet to the modern order of things. His criticism becomes hard as it endeavours to combat modern thought, feeling, and selfish impulses. Carnegie sees life as it has developed historically. The word his soul uses to express his connection with life is “Satisfaction”—satisfaction with the existing order of things. He sees how the differences between rich and poor have arisen and how the differentiation of service has come into being. And everywhere this is his penetrating judgment: It is immaterial whether we find good or evil. Both exist, must exist. They are there and must be reckoned with. Let us work it out. From a realistic conception of things as they are, let us work out an idealism that aims at the great goal of pointing out the right way, within existing conditions, towards such an order of things as will further human progress and development.

This lecture does not “take sides” with either of these lives; but the conditions of their development must be understood in order to explain the contrasts: and if Spiritual Science has any task in regard to these men it must be that of understanding and explaining how these differences are evolved from the underlying principles of existence. It cannot be my task to offer biographical information. Only that will be said which will so illumine the souls of both men that we can enter into a deeper understanding of their personalities.

Tolstoy was from the first a man who did not have to fight for the material necessities of life, but was born in the midst of over-abundant wealth, and could easily have vanished like the many thousands who live within the realm of luxury. For this, however, he possessed too strong an individuality. From childhood only that which touched upon the deepest questions of the soul, and of life, seemed to influence him, though as a boy he did not regard critically the happenings around him but accepted them all as a matter of course. How different his attitude was later in life, when he became a censor of his surroundings.

A long account could be given of how Tolstoy became acquainted with the dark and miserable side of modern social life, especially during his period of army service; how, having learned the misery of war, and the superficiality of the social and literary life of St. Petersburg, he became disgusted with the ethics of the ruling classes. All this is well known. But what interests us more are the great questions which shone out before Tolstoy. Forcing itself more and more into his being, was the question, “What is the centre of life amidst all these conflicting conditions surrounding us? Where is the middle ground to be found?” Religion became for him the great and vital question. He could not at first tear himself from the conventional forms, and though religious considerations grew in importance as he asked himself, over and over again, “What is religion? What does it signify to humanity?” he could not recognize the connecting link between the soul and an unknown spiritual source. It seemed to him that all he had learned of true religion from the men of his own class, had been torn away from its source and had hardened and withered away.

At this time he became interested in the lower classes. As a soldier in the Caucasus he learned to know their inner life and found in them something of the primeval, that had not been torn away from the first cause. His eyes opened to the fact that in the naive existence of these lower, inferior people of the soil, truth and reality must abide more than in the artificialities of the class to which he belonged.

Problem after problem confronted him, none of which he could solve. “Yes; now I have seen those who have departed from the truth, and have become hardened in the periphery. And I have sought a way to religious depths through the souls of primitive people: But the answer to my question founders on the fact that the so-called educated can never be understood nor be in harmony with this primitive state of the soul.” No answer could be found to the burning question. So on and on until the contrasts and contradictions in life become plain. By reading his War and Peace, and Anna Karenina it can be seen how everywhere, even though the artistic form is paramount, the longing to understand life in its contrasts, and most of all the contradictions of the human character, permeate these works.

In later life, after he had become the great moral writer, he said: “The endeavour to portray a character ideally and soulfully created, yet in harmony with reality, has cost me untold misery, and I know that many of my contemporaries have had the same experience.”

It troubled him that such contradictions exist between that which one recognizes as the ideal and that which actually appears; for order and peace should reign in the world. This disturbed him as long as he was artistically active.

Tolstoy was not simply the objective onlooker all this time. He had been in the midst of life. He had experienced all these things, and could feel the intimate pricks of conscience, the inner reproaches that come to all who suddenly realize themselves to have been born into a certain class, and consequently under an obligation to conform to existing customs. It seemed inconsistent to criticize them. Such personalities are often driven to the verge of suicide by the turmoil in their minds.

Infinitely more can be learnt by introspection than by criticism of externalities. As from within outwards the horizon of Tolstoy broadened, until from the keen observation of his nearest surroundings he reached the broad plain where he overlooked the whole evolution of mankind, he saw to how wide and universal an extent the great and pure religious impulses of humanity had degenerated.

Then in all its depth, and in all its strength, the great impulse which was given to the world through Jesus Christ appeared to Tolstoy. But at its side also appeared the great Roman world of the Caesars which made Christianity subservient to power, representing only the outward form which had failed to save humanity and had become a mystery to men. And so his criticisms and his opinions became harsh and warped—and they are surely harsh enough.

It was most difficult for him to understand the contradictions in humanity. On the one side tremendous wealth; on the other dire poverty which resulted in the deplorable stunting of the soul’s life, so that humanity, through restriction of spiritual opportunities, could not find its way to spiritual wisdom specially to that which can be found in the original Christian teaching to which it must eventually penetrate.

Thus this comprehensive problem confronted him, this contrast between the luxury of the ruling classes and the spiritual and mental oppression of the masses. Experience of this problem ripened into a conviction, and he developed into a critic more penetrating perhaps than any before him—a critic who does not tire of describing things as they are, and of doing so in such a way as to impress us with their horror. It is natural to judge his attitude towards life from the trend of his contemplations. He said he would have liked to write a fairy tale with the following contents:

“One woman, having had a very bad encounter with another woman, disliked her intensely and wished to do her the most atrocious wrong. Accordingly she consulted a sorcerer, and acting upon his advice stole a child from her enemy. The sorcerer assured her that if she could take the child, who was born in great poverty, and place it in a home of wealth she could thus fully accomplish her revenge. This she was successful in doing. The child was adopted. It was taken care of according to the manner of the rich—spoiled and pampered. The woman had not expected this development, and was very angry. She went back to the seer to complain that he had given her wrong advice, and had betrayed her. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘you have done the worst one could do to an enemy. When this child develops further and his conscience is awakened to an inner contrast with the outer world, he will know that all he longs for must be in another world: but he will not be able to find it. He will say, “The manner in which I have been brought up has robbed me of the ambition and determination to seek and follow the way which leads to the underlying causes of existence.”’

This results in intense suffering for the developing man. Tolstoy understands the soul torture of such an experience, and appreciates the temptation to suicide created by this inward unrest and uncertainty. This illustration reveals his attitude toward the social order of things.

Now to consider Carnegie, who was the child of a master-weaver. So long as the big factories did not exist the father was able to find work. In the midst of this prosperity Carnegie spent his infancy. Then through the growth of the large factory his father found himself out of work, and was obliged to emigrate from Scotland to America. Only through the most strenuous efforts was he able to provide the absolute necessities of life. The boy was obliged to work in a factory, and as he relates his experiences we recognize in the description the same groundwork, the same depths, that are to be found in the soul experiences of Tolstoy. Carnegie describes what an event it was, his first-earned dollar. He has since become one of the richest men of the day, one who is actually obliged to seek ways and means of using his millions; and he is wont to say, with characteristic frankness: “None of my income has ever given me such a keen satisfaction as those first dollars.”

He worked in the same way for some time to support his family; but something lived within him like a hidden power, shaping his life so that he became a “self-made” man. This brought him supreme satisfaction. Even as a boy of twelve he felt himself fast becoming a man, for he who can earn his own living is a man. This was the thought of his soul. Then he went on to another factory, where he was employed in the office, and later became telegraph boy and earned more. He tells us: “A telegraph boy was obliged to memorise all addresses. I was afraid of losing my position, so I learned every name on the streets.” So once more his position was self-made. Then he stole into the office before hours, with other messenger boys, to practice telegraphy.

There his highest ideal was to become an operator, and he soon achieved it. Then his happiness was increased by finding a friend who lent him a book every Saturday. How eagerly he looked for each new book! Soon followed events of vital importance to him. A high official advised him to take shares in a certain company and thus advance his prospects. By sacrifice and thrift he accumulated the necessary five hundred dollars. Previous to this time had had used all his energy to support those dependent upon him, and he found it possible to make this investment largely through the economies of his mother.

This purchase of ten shares of stock was an event of the greatest importance, for upon the receipt of the first dividends it seemed to come to him, as the solution of a problem, that money makes money. The meaning of capital became clear to him, and this understanding meant the same to him as the working out of any difficult problem to a deep thinker. Before this time money had seemed only the compensation for hard work. Here it is most interesting to observe the result of such an experience upon such a character. From that time he was alert to every opportunity for making money. With the invention of the sleeping-coach Carnegie immediately became interested in it. Thus step by step he seemed to learn to understand and profit by the signs of the times.

The old custom of building bridges of wood was abandoned in favour of iron and steel construction. Of the opportunity offered by this change Carnegie took advantage, becoming richer and richer, until he was known as the “Steel King.” Then moral obligation faced him, and with it the questions, “What is my duty? How shall I distribute this wealth so that it may best fulfil its mission?”

That which Tolstoy experienced does not exist for Carnegie—there is no criticism of life, but instead an acceptance of life’s conditions as they are. What appeared to Tolstoy as utterly in-consistent, Carnegie regarded as natural. Looking back far into ancient times, we find princes living in the most primitive conditions, differing very little from their subjects in their mode of life. No luxury, no poverty, in our acceptance of those terms. Therefore we feel they did not know the things wealth brings, and there was no difference between rich and poor. From this primitive life everything has developed. Stronger and stronger become the contrasts. “It is well,” Carnegie says, “that beside the hut stands the palace, for there is much they should hold in common.”

We must understand his limitations. What struck him forcibly was the personal, brotherly feeling between master and servant under earlier conditions. Our relations have now become impersonal. The employer stands face to face with the employee without recognizing him, without knowing any of his needs. In this way hatred develops. But as it is so, it must be accepted. Carnegie’s view is an absolute endorsement of our outward daily life.

Penetrating more deeply we see that Carnegie is a keen, sharp, practical thinker of his kind, and that he stands in the centre of industrial life knowing all the different channels into which capital flows: therefore he has developed a wise and a sound judgment. It cannot be denied that this man has endeavoured to solve the problem of right living, and there is something in him which persuades us that he experiences a satisfaction with life impossible to Tolstoy.

His practical morality brings up this question: “How must this life be shaped so that that which has arisen of necessity shall have meaning and sense? Old conditions have brought about the custom of inherited wealth. Is this still possible under our present conditions, when capital of necessity produces capital?” he asks himself sharply. He studies life with keen interest and says, “No; it cannot go on in this way.” After considering all sides carefully, he comes to the peculiar and characteristic conclusion that when the rich man regards himself as the distributor of accumulated wealth, for the benefit of humanity, then and then only has his life any significance. He says to himself: “I must not only earn money, not only support my family and relatives, but in so far as I have used my mental powers and forces to bring it together, pouring into my work all my capabilities, this must be turned to the benefit of mankind.” This then is his code, that man, while adapting his powers to the conditions of this age, should earn as much money as possible, but not leave any; he should use it all for the improvement of humanity.

Therefore, “to die rich, dishonours,” is characteristic of Carnegie’s view of life. He says it is honourable at one’s death to leave nothing. Naturally this is not meant pedantically, because the daughter must inherit enough to live upon; but, radically expressed, “to become rich is fate, but to die rich is dishonour.” An honourable man to Carnegie is the one who “makes an end,” completes a life, leaving no uncertainty concerning that which his ability has brought together.

We must recognise the difference between these two characters—Tolstoy and Carnegie. The latter himself feels it and has commented on it in this manner: “Count Tolstoy wishes to carry us back again to Christ; but it is in a way that does not fit in with our present manner of living. Instead of leading us back to Christ, he should demonstrate what Christ would advise man to do under present conditions.’ In the sentence before quoted, “To die rich, dishonours,” Carnegie finds the true stamp of Christian thought. And it is evident that he believes Christ would say that he, not Tolstoy, is right.

We see in all this that Carnegie is a noble man, with a progressive, not an indolent, nature, unlike the many who, with little thought, accept things as they find them. He has sought, in many ways, to solve the problem of the distribution of wealth.

Is it not wonderful that life presents such marked contrasts as those afforded by these two strong personalities who, with the same objective point, pursue such very different courses? To understand this is truly most difficult for some minds. It is not at all marvellous that, on hearing Tolstoy preaching his lofty ideals, some will feel, “Oh, my soul responds to that!” and will sense the uplifting influence. It must be remembered, however, that life has a practical side, and he who is not an abstract dreamer, but in a truly realistic and earnest spirit tries to follow Carnegie’s train of thought, must admit that he is right too.

This shows, too, how impossible it is for the man who gives himself up to the practical side of life to acknowledge the greatest ideal, or to believe in its fulfilment.

Tolstoy succeeds in making what he believes is an absolute defence of the original Christian religion. He criticizes all that has appeared from time to time in the guise of Christianity; he has hoped to find the great impulse, or foundation, of real Christianity. In the simplest way he puts before us this impulse as it appears to him. And when a man understands this impulse, it is clear that he has within himself a spark of the Infinite, the eternal world-illuminating spirit of God. Another conviction is that in this spark is the germ of man’s immortality, and that with this understanding he cannot fail to seek for the higher and deeper nature throughout the whole of humanity. From this comprehension he knows that within himself is the real man, who cannot fail to overcome all that is base and unworthy within his nature. He devotes himself to the cultivation of the spiritual or higher self which lives eternally, the Christ.

How would a man, I will not say Carnegie, but one who considers things from his point of view, regard the philosophy of Tolstoy’s Christianity? He would say: “Oh, it is grand, magnificent, to live in Christ. The Christ within is one’s Self; but under our present conditions such a thing is impossible. How could civic affairs be conducted in accordance with these strict Christian requirements?”

Although the question is not put before the other side in a corresponding way, Tolstoy gives as definite an answer as possible, saying, “What will happen to the outward order of things pertaining to state and historical events is beyond my knowledge; but I am positive that humanity must live in accordance with the true Christian doctrine.” So, for him, the words, “The kingdom of God is within you,” expand into a deep, significant certainty that man may reach the heights, that he may know the Holy of Holies. This certainty, that the soul can know the truth about this or that, is to him a fact. We see in no other character of our time such a strong faith in the inner man, and such a firm belief that through this faith the outward results must eventually be good. For this reason scarcely any one else has professed such a view of the world with such personal, individual sympathy and such conviction as Tolstoy.

Carnegie reasons: “What relations must men sustain one to another?” And: ‘It is not good to give to beggars promiscuously, because it is apt to foster laziness. It is necessary to know the exact needs of those whom one helps. Really, one should help only those who are willing to work.” This is the basis of his philanthropy. He says he knows very well that the man who gives simply to rid himself of the beggar causes more havoc than the miser who gives nothing. We shall not judge in this matter; we are only characterizing.

On the other hand, let us consider Tolstoy. He meets a friend. This man has a great affection for his fellow men, and Tolstoy sees in him a wonderful new birth. Some one robs this friend; sacks of things are stolen, but one sack is left behind. What does the friend do? He does not prosecute the robbers, but carries them the remaining sack, saying, “You certainly would not have taken them had you not needed them.” This Tolstoy understands perfectly, and he be-comes his friend’s admirer. So much for the different ways of looking upon the parasites of society. These men are human brothers. The differences of opinion are the results of the different attitudes of soul. It must be admitted that Tolstoy is not only a hard critic, but having grasped the source of human certainty he has reached a remarkable point in the development of his soul. Herein begins what is foremost in his greatness, shining out for all who can appreciate it.

One result of his strong convictions, that calls forth admiration, is his attitude towards the value of science to the present generation. Because of his ability to look into the souls of men he could see through the vain endeavours and methods of our worldly sciences. Certainly it is easy to understand the teachings of physical and material sciences, and to follow and to realize all that they demonstrate. But what so-called science cannot do is to answer the questions: “How are these different physical and chemical processes united to life?” and “What is life?” So we face the deep scientific problem, the problem of life, and attempt to understand and to solve it.

It is significant to note Tolstoy’s remarks on the attitude of our western science in regard to the riddle of life. “People, who in the name of modern science endeavour to solve this riddle, seem to me like men trying to recognize the different species and habits of trees in this manner. Standing in the midst of the trees they do not even look at them, but taking a glass they gaze at a distant hill, upon which they agree should grow the kind of tree they are endeavouring to understand. So appear to me those who, instead of seeking in their own souls the solution of this problem of life, make instruments, create methods, and try to analyze that which exists in nature around them; more than ever they fail to see what life is.”

Through this comparison Tolstoy reveals what he understands and feels upon these questions. A careful study of his point of view shows that what he has written on the problem of life is of more value than whole libraries of western Europe which treat it from the modern scientific standpoint.

It is good to realize the value of such soul-experiences as Tolstoy’s, and his experience of the certitude of the Spirit is of great importance. We can admire Tolstoy’s way of solving in five lines that which our modern scientific methods fail to solve with long, complicated processes of thought, in whole books. Tolstoy shows great concentration in this power of expressing these great solutions in a few magical strokes, and making great problems intelligible in a few words rather than in the prolix, so-called scientific, philosophical treatises of many modern writers.

Tolstoy stands unique in the depth of his soul-character, and only when this is realised can we comprehend the spiritual reasons for the coming of such a man as he on one side, and on the other such a man as Carnegie—for the latter in his way is as important for his generation. To understand more fully the spiritual sources which lead on the one hand to Tolstoy and on the other to Carnegie, we should regard them from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

The spiritual discoverer sees in the progress of humanity something quite different from that seen by the ordinary man. As the Spiritual Scientist sees in the man standing before him a being of four parts—sees in the physical body the instrument of higher spiritual forces, and behind this the etheric body, the astral body, and the I, or ego—so he sees behind what appears as social order in human life as folk or race or family, the spiritual reality. To-day the “spirit of the people” or the “spirit of the times” has no real meaning. What does he think who speaks of an English, German, French or American “spirit of the people”? Truly, as a rule, only the sum-ming up of so many human beings. To the average mind they are the reality, but the spirit of the people is an abstraction.

There is little realisation that that which appears outwardly as so many human beings is the expression of a spiritual reality, exactly as the human body is the expression of an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego. Humanity has lost what it once possessed—the faculty of being able to see such realities. An old friend of mine, a good apostle of Aristotle, tried to make clear to his class how the spirit can be made manifest in the sense-perceptible. By a simple example Knauer—for it was he—made it clear how spirit exists in matter by saying: “Look at a wolf. He eats, we will say, during his whole life nothing but lambs, and then consists of lamb’s material. However, he does not become a lamb. It is not the nature of the food that is significant, but the fact that in the wolf is living something spiritual which builds and holds together its material form. This is the Real—something which must be recognized or else all study of the outer world is vain.

Examine as man may the outward, material world, if he does not probe to the spiritual he does not come to the source of all life. So it is with the terms “spirit of the people” or “spirit of the times.” For the spiritual discoverer, in the development of Christianity there lives the spiritual reality, not simply an abstract condition. For the spiritual discoverer the sum of humanity is not only that which can be observed in the physical world; behind this lives something spiritual. And for him there is a spirituality, not a bare, unsubstantial abstraction, in the development of Christianity. Beside the Christ is the spirit of Christianity, which is real. This spiritual reality works in a wonderful and subtle way, well illustrated by the following. A peasant once lived who divided his crop. One part he used, and the other he saved as seed, which bore a new crop. This is an illustration which leads us to a law ruling human development; and which proceeds in this way. At certain times are born great impulses which must be sown broadcast. A spiritual impulse, as that of Christianity, given at a certain time, then finds its way to the outer world, taking on this or that form; but perhaps as the outer part of a tree dries up and forms the bark, so the form becomes dry and dies away. These outer forms are bound to die out. And be the impulse ever so strong and fruitful, as surely as it penetrates into the outer world it must disappear like the seed that was used.

Now just as the peasant held something back, so must some part of the spiritual impulse remain, as if flowing along underground channels. Suddenly with primal force this reappears, bringing a fresh impetus to the development of mankind. It is then that a personality appears in whom the impulse, which has been ripening for centuries, is manifested. Such individualities always appear in direct contrast to their surroundings. They must be in great contrast because the surrounding world has become hardened. They are usually inclined to disregard their environment entirely. Seen from a spiritual standpoint, Tolstoy is such a personality; one in whom the Christian impulse is manifest.

These things happen in a forceful way, to break through the shell, and exert a far-reaching influence. Their origin appears wholly radical, and their effects illuminate the world. Such is the law which gives us such seemingly one-sided personalities as Tolstoy. On the other hand, we must expect the contrasting personalities who are not connected with the central stream but wholly absorbed within the peripheral working of the world. Such a person is Carnegie.

Carnegie can look out and over the circle, can think out the best way for humanity; but he does not see that which as spirit pulsates through human life. Tolstoy does, because he seeks so earnestly the inner certainty, the Kingdom of God, in the individual soul. He can do so because in him is personified that true stream which is below the surface bearing itself onwards and unconnected with such material things as may be inherited.

We have physical manifestations but the onlooker does not realize the spiritual within them. We have the spiritual that springs with great strength out of the innermost being of a person, but the onlooker does not understand how this can make itself felt in the world. More and more will humanity find these contrasts and, if another spiritual stream did not appear to reflect again the deep, underlying, spiritual sources making them manifest in the material world, we could not follow Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science leads us into the very depths of spiritual life. It not only traces spiritual life in those powerful impulses which do not unite with deed and fact, it also seeks for it in the concrete, and therefore understands how the spiritual flows into the material. It thus bridges the apparent chasm between the spiritual and material, finding in this way the point of view which brings contrasts into harmony.

Today we wish to learn to understand, from a spiritual point of view, two contrasting personal-ities. Spiritual Science is not only called upon to preach outward tolerance, but also to find that inner light which can penetrate with admiration into the soul of one demonstrating the great Im-pulse that emanates from the spiritual consciousness. This to-day seems improbable if not im-possible and on the whole radical, because it crowds into so small a space that which in the future will be spread far and wide, and which will then present a very different aspect. This Anthroposophy can realize. It can look also with objective eyes upon the present, and the personality of Carnegie, and appreciate him. Life is not a one-sided affair. Life is many sided, and can be appreciated in all its richness only when the great contrasts are fully understood. Bad indeed it would be if the various colours and tones could not be seen as parts of an artistic whole.

Human evolution demands the crystalization of one or the other of these opposites, and so it must be; but with this hope, that mankind may not be lost in the midst of life. There must be a central religion, or Welt-Anschauung, which must solve the many complex problems which now appear so full of contradictions. When Anthroposophy works with this aim in view it will evolve full harmony. Outward harmony can only be the reflection of the inner or soul harmony. And when Anthroposophy shall have accomplished this aim, her true place in modern culture, she will have found that which she is seeking to establish. Anthroposophy desires no theoretical proofs, no speculation; her aim is to prove and demonstrate the truth of her statements in life itself. When she will see the light which she has shed upon life reflected back to her in inner harmony in spite of all contradictions, then she will realize the establishment of her fundamental principles.

{This follows immediately after the lecture.}

TOLSTOY AND THE FUTURE

In Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the Apocalypse of John, given at Nuremberg in June 1908, he spoke in Lecture 7 of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, which follows our own, and took Tolstoy as an example of a man in whom the culture of the future age can already be seen.

These lectures, which are intended to be objective, are far, far removed from any party spirit. But you may compare objectively what is attained as science and philosophy in the European West with what appeared in the East, let us say in Tolstoy. One does not need to be a follower of Tolstoy, but one thing is true; in a book such as Tolstoy’s On 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 makes spiritual culture with the intellect; one chisels out certain details and puts them together to form something that is supposed to make the world comprehensible, and the achievements of Western Europe civilization in this respect will never be surpassed. But if you understand such a book as Tolstoy’s On Life, you will often find condensed into ten lines what in these Western European libraries it takes thirty volumes to say. Tolstoy 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 over-ripe cultures contain something that is drying up and withering, so do rising cultures contain within them fresh life and new energy. Tolstoy is a premature flower of such a culture, one that came far too soon to be fully developed. Hence he has all the faults of an untimely birth. His grotesque and 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 lecture is the second lecture in the lecture series entitled, The Karma of Human Vocation as related to Goethe's Life. It was later published in the lecture series, The Karma of Human Vocation.

From the indications already given [4th November 1916. See Anthroposophical Movement, Vol. IV. No. 37] you will have perceived that it is our intention in this lecture to lead to an understanding of the karma of the individual human being and (in a wider sense) of the whole karma of our time. But human life, particularly when we wish to study it as it concerns each individual one of us, is exceedingly complicated. If we desire to answer the question concerning a man's destiny, we have to follow many threads which connect him with the world, and with the more or less distant past. That will perhaps show you why, now that I wish to explain something that really concerns every one very closely, I am going a longer way round and connecting these studies, which are intended to throw light upon the narrower life of each individual, with the earthly life of one who was important in the world's history: with Goethe. Very many details of Goethe's earthly life have been made accessible to us, and although, of course, the destiny of an ordinary individual is very different from the path of destiny of such an exemplary, world-historic spirit, it is nevertheless possible, precisely from the study of such a life, to gain points of view applicable to each of us. For this reason we will not hesitate to extend these studies a little more, with respect to the special questions which we are considering, and gradually approaching.

If one follows Goethe's life as many of his would-be biographers have done hitherto, one does not notice how hastily man is inclined to establish causes and effects.

The scientists of to-day will point out again and again that man makes many mistakes if he hastily adopts the principle, ‘After a thing,—therefore because of it’—Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,—the principle that because one thing follows after another it must therefore proceed from it as effect from cause. In the domain of natural science this principle is condemned, and rightly so; but in the study of human life we are not yet so far advanced. Certain savage tribes belonging to the valleys of Kamchatka, believe that the water-wagtails or similar birds bring about the Spring, because Spring follows their arrival. Only too frequently, we draw the same conclusion: What follows something, must proceed from it. In Goethe's own descriptions of his life—descriptions of a human life that shines far and wide over humanity—we read that he had such and such a father, such and such a mother, and that in youth he underwent certain experiences which he himself narrates. Thereupon the biographers trace back what he did in later life, whereby he became so important for humanity, to these his youthful impressions—quite in accordance with the principle that because something follows on something else it must therefore proceed from it. That is no wiser than to believe that the Spring is brought by the water-wagtails. In natural science the superstition has been thoroughly condemned; but in the science of the mind, this stage of advancement has yet to be attained. True, it is explained quite plausibly how in his boyhood when the French were quartered in his parents' house during the occupation of Frankfort, Goethe was present when the celebrated Count Thorane, lieutenant to the King of France, arranged theatricals there. Goethe saw how he set the painters to work, and thus, while he was still almost a child, he came into touch with painting and with the art of the theatre. Thus lightly is Goethe's inclination towards art in later years traced back to these his youthful impressions! Nevertheless, in Goethe's case especially we can see his preordained karma working from earliest youth onward. Is it not a prominent feature in Goethe's whole life, how he unites his view of art and of the world with his view of Nature, how everywhere behind his artistic fantasy he has the impulse to strive after the knowledge of the truth in the phenomena of Nature? And do we not see how a strictly preordained karma causes him, even as a boy of six or seven years, to gather minerals and geological substances which he finds in his father's collection, and lay them on a music-stand and make an altar to the great God of Nature? On this altar, composed of many different objects of Nature, he fixes a fumigating candle and kindles the light, not in the ordinary mechanical way, but by catching with a lens the rays of the morning sun. He lets fall the very first rays through the lens on to the candle, thus kindling by the rays of the morning sun the fire which he offers to the great God of Nature. How sublimely beautiful is it to see the mind of this six or seven-year-old boy directed to what lives and moves as Spirit in the phenomena of Nature. Here we see how this trait, which must surely have come from an inborn tendency, could not have originated in his environment. In Goethe especially, what he brought with him into this incarnation worked with peculiar intensity.

If we study the time into which Goethe was born in that incarnation, we shall find a remarkable harmony between his nature and the events of his time. In accordance with the present world-outlook, one is no doubt inclined to say: What Goethe has created—Faust and other works that proceeded from him for the uplifting and spiritual permeation of humanity—all this came into being because Goethe created it out of his inner tendencies. For these creations which were given to humanity by Goethe, it is undoubtedly more difficult to prove that they do not belong to his personality in this simple way. But now consider something else for a moment. Think how futile, in face of certain phenomena of life, is many a mode of study whose authors believe that they are entering thoroughly into the truth. In my latest book, The Problem of Man (Vom Menschenrätsel), you will find de la Mettrie's statement quoted, to the effect that Erasmus of Rotterdam or Fontenelle would have become quite different beings if even only a tiny part of their brain had been different. According to such a way of thinking, we must presume that all that Erasmus and Fontenelle produced would not be in the world if, as de la Mettrie thinks, through a slightly different constitution of their brains, Erasmus and Fontenelle had become fools instead of wise men. Now in a certain respect this may perhaps apply to such works as Erasmus and Fontenelle produced; but consider the same question in another case. For example, can you imagine that the evolution of modern humanity would have run the same course if America had not been discovered? Just think of all that has flowed into the life of modern humanity through the discovery of America! Can the materialist assert that Columbus would have become a different being if his brain had been a little different, so that he would have become a fool instead of a Columbus, and that he would not then have discovered America? Certainly, this much could be said, just as one may say: Goethe would not have become Goethe, Fontenelle not Fontenelle, Erasmus not Erasmus if, for example, during their pre-natal period their mothers had met with an accident and they had been still-born. But we can never suppose that America would not have been discovered even if Columbus had been unable to discover it. You will admit, it is well-nigh self-evident that America would still have been discovered even if Columbus had had a defect in his brain! And so you cannot doubt that the course of the World's events is one thing and the share of the individual human being in these events is quite another; nor can you doubt that the World-events themselves summon those human individuals whose karma specially adapts them to carry out what the World-events require. In the case of America it can very easily be seen; but to one who looks more deeply the case is just the same with the origin of Faust. We should really have to believe in the utter lack of any sense in World-evolution if we were obliged to think that there was no inherent necessity for such a poem as Faust to be produced, even if what the materialists are so fond of reiterating had actually happened—if a slate had fallen on Goethe's head when he was five years old and he had become an imbecile. If you trace the development of spiritual life during the last decades before Goethe, you will see that Faust was an absolute requirement of the time. Lessing is a characteristic spirit; he too wished to write a Faust. He even wrote one scene, which is very beautiful. It was not Goethe's mere subjective needs which called for Faust; it was the Time itself. And one who looks more deeply into things can truly say: As to the course of events in the World's history, there is a similar connection between Goethe's works and Goethe himself, to what there is between Columbus and the discovery of America.

I said that if we study the time into which Goethe was born we notice a certain harmony between the individuality of Goethe and his age. Moreover, this applies to his age in the very widest sense. Remember that in spite of all their great differences (we shall return to this in a moment) there is nevertheless something very similar in the two spirits, Goethe and Schiller, not to mention others around them who were less great than they. You will remember, many things which shine out in Goethe, we also find appearing in Herder. We can, moreover, go much further. If we look at Goethe it does not perhaps at once appear; we will go into that in a moment. But if we look at Schiller, Herder, or Lessing we shall say: their lives certainly became different; but in their tendencies, in their impulses, there is in Goethe, in Schiller, in Herder, and in Lessing undoubtedly a tendency of soul through which, under other circumstances, any one of them could just as well have become a Mirabeau, or a Danton! They really harmonise with their age. In the case of Schiller it can be shewn without much difficulty, for no one can say that Schiller's frame of mind, as the author of The Robbers, or Fiesco, or Intrigue and Love, was very different from that of Mirabeau, Danton, or even Robespierre. It was only that Schiller allowed the same impulses to flow into Literature and Art which Danton, Robespierre, Mirabeau allowed to flow into their political tendencies. But with respect to the blood of the soul which pulses through World-history, there flows in The Robbers exactly the same as in the deeds of Danton, Mirabeau and Robespierre; and this same blood of the soul flowed also in Goethe. Although one might be prone at first to think of Goethe as a man far, far from being a revolutionary, he was not so—not by any means. Only in Goethe's complex nature there was also a special complication of karmic impulses, of impulses of destiny, which placed him in quite a special way into the world, even in his earliest youth.

When we follow Goethe's life with a vision sharpened by spiritual science, we find that, apart from everything else, it is divided into certain periods. The first period runs its course in such a way that we may say: An impulse which exists already in his childhood, flows on further. Then something comes from outside which apparently diverts the stream of his life, namely, his acquaintance with the Duke of Weimar in 1775. Again we see how his sojourn in Rome brings him into a different path of life. Through being able to take the Roman life into himself he becomes quite different. And if we wished to penetrate still more deeply we might say, that after this Roman transformation, a third impulse, coming apparently from without (though, as we shall see, this would not be quite correct in the sense of spiritual science) was the friendly intercourse with Schiller.

If we study the first part of Goethe's life up to the year 1775, we find—although to reach this result we must, of course, observe the various events more attentively than is usually done for such purposes—that in Goethe there lives a very strong revolutionary feeling, an opposition to what is around him. But Goethe's nature is spread over many different things, and as the spirit of revolt, being more spread out, does not manifest itself in him so strongly as it does when concentrated in Schiller's Robbers, the matter is not so noticeable. One who, with the aid of spiritual science, is able to enter into Goethe's boyhood and youth, finds that he possesses a spiritual life-force which he brings with him into his existence through the gate of birth, but which would not have been able to accompany him throughout his whole life if certain events had not taken place. What lived in Goethe as his individuality, was far greater than his organism could really receive and express.

In Schiller's case this can be seen very clearly. The cause of Schiller's early death was simply that his organism was consumed by the mighty life-force of his soul. That is as clear as day. It is well-known that when Schiller died it was found that his heart was, as it were, dried up within him. Only through his strong force of soul was he able to hold out as long as he did; but this great soul-force also consumed the life of his body.

In Goethe this force of soul became still greater, and yet he lived to a ripe old age. How was this possible? In the last lecture I mentioned a fact which played a very important part in Goethe's life. After he had lived a few years as a student in Leipzig, he fell ill, seriously ill, and almost died. We may say that he really looked death in the face. This illness was of course a natural phenomenon connected with his body; but we can never understand a man who works out of the elemental forces of the world, nor indeed can we understand any human being at all, unless we also take into consideration events such as these, which take place in the course of their Karma. What really happened to Goethe when he lay ill at Leipzig. There took place what we may call a complete loosening of the etheric body in which the life-force of the soul had until then been active; this was so loosened that after his illness Goethe no longer had the firm connection between the etheric body and the physical body which he had before. Now the etheric body is that part of our supersensible nature which really makes it possible for us to form concepts, to think. Abstract ideas such as we have in ordinary life, and which are alone appreciated by most materialistically minded people—these we have through the fact that the etheric body is bound up with the physical body very closely, as it were by a strong magnetic tie. This also gives us the strong impulse to carry our will into the physical world. Notably we have this impulse of the will when the astral body also is very strongly developed. If we consider Robespierre, Mirabeau or Danton, we find in them an etheric body firmly united with the physical, but they also have a strongly-developed astral body which in its turn acts strongly upon the etheric body and places these human individualities strongly into the physical world. Goethe was organised in this way too; but in him there was another force at work, and this produced a complication. It was this force which brought it about that through the illness which took him almost to death's door, his etheric body was loosened, and remained so. Now when the etheric body is no longer so intimately bound up with the physical body, it no longer thrusts its forces into the physical, but preserves them within itself. Hence the change which took place in Goethe when he then returned from Leipzig to Frankfort, where he became acquainted with Fräulein von Klettenberg the mystic, and with various medical friends who were devoting themselves to alchemical studies, and where he also studied the works of Swedenborg. At this time he really constructed for himself a spiritual system of the world. Chaotic as yet, it was nevertheless a spiritual system; for he possessed a very deep inclination to occupy himself with supersensible things. This, however, was essentially connected with his illness. And his soul, while carrying into this earth-life the foundations for this force which acts downward like gravity, also brought with it the impulse, through the above-mentioned illness, so to prepare the etheric body that it not merely manifested in the physical, but received the impulse—and not only the impulse but the capacity—to fill itself with supersensible ideas. So long as we consider merely the outer biographical facts in a person's life in a materialistic fashion, we never perceive the subtle connections which exist in the stream of his destiny; but as soon as we go into the connection of the natural events which occur in the body—such for instance as Goethe's illness—with what is manifested ethically, morally and spiritually, it becomes possible for us to have a presentiment of the profound working of karma.

In Goethe the revolutionary force would certainly have manifested in such a way as to have consumed him at an early age, for in his environment it would not have been possible for the revolutionary force to have expressed itself outwardly, and Goethe could not have written dramas like Schiller; so that he would simply have consumed himself. This was diverted through the loosening of the connection—the magnetic link—between his etheric and his physical body.

Here we see something that is apparently a natural event, playing a significant part in the life of a human being. Certainly, such a thing as this indicates a deeper connection than what the biographers mostly bring to the surface. The significance of an illness for the whole individual experience of a human being cannot be explained from hereditary tendencies, but it points to his connection with the universe—a connection which must be conceived as spiritual. You will also observe from this how complicated Goethe's life became; for the way in which we receive an experience makes us what we are.

Goethe now comes to Strassburg with an etheric body that is to a certain extent filled with occult knowledge; and in this condition he meets Herder. Herder's great ideas necessarily took a very different form in Goethe from what they were in Herder himself, who had not the same conditions in his finer constitution.

In Goethe's life, such an event had taken place as that above-described in Leipzig at the end of the 1760's, when he stood face to face with death. But the forces for this had already been preparing for a long time before. Anyone wishing to trace back such an illness to external or merely physical events, has not yet reached in spiritual spheres the point at which the scientists already stand, who say, that if one thing follows on another it must not therefore necessarily be looked upon as its direct result. In Goethe, therefore, this isolating of himself from the world was always there, owing to the peculiar connection between his physical body and his etheric body, which only reached its crisis through his illness.

When the outer world affects a man in whom there is a close connection between the physical body and the etheric, the impressions made upon the physical body pass on at once into the etheric; they become one with it, and the etheric body simply experiences the impressions of the outer world simultaneously with the physical. In a nature such as Goethe's, impressions are of course made on the physical body, but the etheric body, being loosened, does not participate in them at once. The consequence is that such a man can be more isolated from his environment; a more complicated process takes place when ail impression is made on his physical body. Make a bridge for yourselves, from this peculiarity of Goethe's organic structure, to what you know from his biography, namely, that he allowed events—even historical events—to affect him without ever using force with them. Then you will understand the unique way in which Goethe's nature works. As I said: he takes the biography of Gottfried of Berlichingen. He allows himself to be influenced by Shakespeare's dramatic impulses, but he does not make very much alteration in the autobiography of Gottfried, although it is not specially well written; indeed he does not call his drama a Drama, but The Story of Gottfried of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, dramatized. He only alters it a little. This shy and gentle touching of things, not grasping them with force, comes about through the peculiar connection between his etheric and his physical body.

This connection did not exist in Schiller. He therefore presents in Karl Moor thoughts which were truly not the result of any external impression on him, but which he formed quite forcefully—even with violence—out of his own nature. Goethe requires the action of life upon him, but he does not do violence to life; he only gently assists it, and raises what is already living, to a work of art. This is also the case when those conditions of life approach him which he then fashions in his Werther. His own experiences or those of his friend, Jerusalem, he does not bend or mould very much; he simply takes life as it is and helps it on a little, and through the gentle way in which he does so—precisely out of his etheric body—life itself becomes a work of art. But on account of this same organisation of his, he only comes into touch with life indirectly, I might say; and in this incarnation he prepares his karma through this merely indirect approach to life.

He goes to Strassburg. In addition to all that he experiences there, which brings him forward in his career as Goethe, he also experiences in Strassburg, as you know, the love affair with Frederica, the pastor's daughter at Sesenheim. His heart is very, very much engaged in this affair. Various moral objections can be raised, no doubt, to the course of this affair between Goethe and Frederica of Sesenheim—objections which may even be justified. That is not the point at this moment; the point is that we should understand. Goethe indeed goes through all that which in any other person—not a Goethe—not only must have led, but would as a matter of course have led to a lasting union. But Goethe does not experience directly. Through what I have just explained, a kind of cleft is created between his peculiar inner being and the outer world. Just as he does not do violence to what lives in the outer world, but only gently remodels it, so too, his feelings and sensations, inasmuch as he can experience them only in his etheric body:—he does not bring them through the physical body at once into a firm connection with the outer world so as to lead to a very definite event in life, as it would have done for others. Thus he withdraws again from Frederica of Sesenheim. But we should take such a thing as this in its relation to the soul. As he departs for the last time—(you may read of it in his biography)—he meets himself. Goethe actually encounters Goethe! Very much later in his life he tells how he met himself at that time. Goethe meets Goethe; he sees himself. He leaves Frederica; towards him comes Goethe, not in the clothing he is wearing, but in a different dress. And when years later he comes there again and visits his old friend, he recognises that, without premeditating it, he is wearing the suit in which he foresaw himself years ago, when he encountered himself. That is an event one must believe just as fully as one believes anything else that Goethe relates. It would be unseemly to criticise it, in face of the love of truth with which Goethe has presented his whole life.

How, then, did it come about that Goethe, who was so near and yet so far removed from the circumstances into which he had entered—so near that if it had been anyone else it would have led to something altogether different, and so far that he could still withdraw—how did it come about that on this occasion he actually met himself? In a human being who experiences something in the etheric body, this experience may very easily become objectified if the etheric body is thus loosened. He sees it as an external object, it is projected outward. This really took place with Goethe. On a specially favourable occasion, he actually saw the other Goethe—the etheric Goethe who lived within him, and who through his karma remained united with Frederica of Sesenheim. Hence he saw himself as a spectre coming towards him. This event in the deepest sense confirms what may already be seen from the very facts of Goethe's nature.

Here you see how a man may stand in the midst of external events and how we must nevertheless first understand the particular way, the individual way in which he is related to them. For the relation of man to the world is complicated—I mean his relation to the past and the inner connections of what he carries over from the past into the present. But through the fact that Goethe had in a sense torn his inner being from its connection with the body, it was possible for him, even in youth, to cultivate in his soul the profound truths which so surprise us in his Faust. I say ‘surprise’ intentionally, for the simple reason that they really must cause surprise; for I know scarcely anything more foolish than when biographers of Goethe continually repeat the sentence: ‘Goethe is Faust and Faust is Goethe.’ I have often read that remark in biographies of Goethe. It is simply nonsense; for what we really have in Faust, if we let it work upon us properly, actually affects us in such a way that sometimes we cannot suppose that Goethe himself experienced it or even knew of it in the same way; and yet, there it is in Faust. Faust always grows beyond Goethe. This can however be fully understood by one who knows the surprise which an author himself feels when he sees his poem in front of him. We have no right to suppose that the poet must always be as great as his work. This is no more necessarily the case, than that a father must be as great in soul-force and genius as his son. For true poetic creation is a living process, and it can never be affirmed that a spiritual creative genius cannot create something higher than himself, any more than it can be said that a living being cannot produce something greater than itself. Through the inner isolation I have described, those deep perceptions arise in Goethe's soul which we find in his Faust. For a work such as Faust is not merely a poem like other poems. Faust springs forth as it were out of the whole spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilisation; it grows far beyond Goethe himself. And much that we experience regarding the world and its development, rings out to us from Faust in a remarkable manner. Think of the words you have just heard:

‘My friend, the times gone by are but in sum
A book with seven seals protected;
What ‘Spirit of the Times' you call,
Good sirs, is but your spirit after all’

Latham's translation.

People pass too lightly over such a work. One who feels it in all its depths is reminded of many things which can only prove such words true in the very deepest sense. Think of what modern humanity possesses through the knowledge of the Greeks and of Greek culture, through Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. People study this Greek life of culture. Take Sophocles: Is Sophocles a book with seven seals? It may not be easy for some to conceive that even Sophocles may be a book with seven seals. Yet Sophocles, who reached the age of 91, wrote over 80 dramas,—seven of which have been preserved. Do we know a man who wrote 81 dramas or more, when only seven have been handed down to us? Is it not literally true to say: a book with seven seals? How can anyone maintain, from what has been handed down, that he is acquainted with the whole culture of the Greeks, when he must simply admit that 74 dramas by Sophocles, which enraptured and uplifted the Greeks, no longer exist? A great number of the works of Aeschylus, too, have disappeared. Poets lived in Grecian times, whose names are even now unknown. Are not the times gone by ‘a book with seven seals?’ When we consider such an outward fact as this, we are obliged to answer ‘Yes.’ Or again:

‘The joy may well be courted,
Into the spirit of the times transported,
To see what thoughts of old the wise have entertained,
And then, how we at last such glorious heights have gained.’

Latham's translation.

‘Wagner’-natures think that they can easily transpose themselves into the spirit of a wise man—namely, when it is presented to them! It is a pity we cannot make trial of what the valiant critics would write about Hamlet if this play were to appear for the first time now and be put before them on some city stage,—or if a drama by Sophocles were to be performed before them. Perhaps in their case, even that would be of no avail, which Sophocles himself had to do in order to convince at least his relatives of his greatness when he was very old. For he reached the age of 91; and his relatives had to wait so long for their inheritance that they tried to get witnesses to prove that he had grown senile and could no longer control his own property. He could only save himself by writing Oedipus on Colonus. Thereby he could at least prove that he had not yet become senile. Whether that would help with present-day reviewers I do not know, but it helped with them. One who deeply studies such a fact as the tragedy of the 90-year-old Sophocles, will at the same time be able to measure how hard it is to find the way to a human individuality, and in what a complicated way the human individuality is connected with the events in the world. We might bring forward a very great deal to show into what deep layers one has to delve in order to understand the world. And yet, how much of the wisdom required to understand the world is contained in even the very first parts of Goethe's Faust! This is to be traced back to this destiny, which took such a remarkable form, showing in all reality how Nature and the activity of the Spirit are one in human evolution, and how an illness may have not only an outer physical significance but also a spiritual one.

Thus we see how the original karmic impulse which lived in Goethe was strictly continued. Then again, in 1775, there came, as it were from outside, his acquaintance with the Duke of Weimar. Goethe was called from Frankfort to Weimar. What did that signify in his life? We must first understand what an event like this signifies in the life of a human being. Otherwise we can get no further in the understanding of his life. I know how little the people of the present day are inclined really to awaken the soul-forces which are necessary, fully to feel what is contained even in the first parts of Goethe's Faust. In order to write the scenes represented here to-day (Faust, Part I., the Monologue in Faust's study, and the Easter Scene) a wealth of soul is required which, when one realises it, is apt to cause one to remain before it for a long, long time in an attitude of fervent adoration; and it often gives one the deepest pain to see how very dense the world really is; how little able to feel what is truly great. But if once one feels this fully, one will also realise what the human being who is thoroughly imbued with Spiritual Science arrives at in his feeling; for he comes to say: Something tremendous was living in this Goethe; ... it could not possibly go on in the same way.

One must indeed have some such thoughts. Just imagine: Goethe was born in 1749, in 1775 he was, therefore, only 26 years of age, when he carried with him to Weimar in his box the Scene we have seen performed today. A man who lived through such material to such a degree that he can write it, has something in his soul to bear; it weighs heavily upon his soul, for it is a force that wills to lead upward and would almost burst the soul to pieces.

We must be clear about two things, if we would appreciate in the right sense and in the true light the value of these first parts of Faust. One might think that if Goethe had gradually written these scenes from the age of 25 to 50, they would in that case not have strained his soul so much nor been such a heavy burden. Certainly, that would be so; but that is not possible, would not have been possible; for from 30 or 35 years of age the youthful force would have been lacking which was necessary to fashion these things so. He had to write them during those years, in accordance with his individual nature; but he could not go on living in that way. He needed something which was like a quenching, a kind of partial sleep of the soul, to weaken the fire that had burned in his soul when he wrote the first parts of Faust. The Duke of Weimar brought him to Weimar in order to make him Minister there; and he was a good Minister, as I said yesterday. When he was Minister and did a great deal of laborious work that which had burned in his soul could sleep partially and take a rest. There was really a very great difference in his mood before 1775 and after that year; it was like a kind of mighty awakeness followed by a life more dim and toned down. The word ‘torpor’—Dumpfheit—even comes into Goethe's mind when he describes his Weimar life, where he took part in the various events and entered into them far more than he had done before, when he had rather revolted against them. Then it is remarkable that after this duller state, which lasted for ten years, there followed a time in which events approached him more gently. And just as the ordinary life of sleep is not a direct result of the life of the previous day, so too, this sleeping life of Goethe was not an effect of what had gone before. Such connections are much deeper than is usually supposed. I have often pointed out that when the question is asked: Why does a person go to sleep? it is very superficial to answer: Because he is tired. It is an idle, nay, even a sleeping truth, for it is nonsense. Otherwise we should not have the fact that persons who cannot possibly be tired—ladies or gentlemen of private means, for example—doze off to sleep after a heavy meal when they are to listen to something in which they are not particularly interested. They are certainly not tired. It is not the case that we sleep because we are tired, for waking and sleeping are a rhythmic life-process. When the period of sleep, the necessity for sleep approaches, we then grow tired. We are tired because we ought to sleep, we do not sleep because we are tired. I will not go into this any further at the moment.

Think to what a great Order the rhythm of waking and sleeping belongs! It is the reflection in human nature of day and night in the Cosmos. It is, no doubt, more natural to material science to wish to explain sleep as resulting from the fatigue of the day; but the rhythm of sleeping and waking must be explained from the Cosmos, from great cosmic connections. And from great connections it must also be explained why in Goethe's case, after the period during which Faust stormed in the veins of his soul, there followed the ten years of his inwardly-dulled life at Weimar. This directs you at once to his Karma, regarding which, however, we cannot say any more at present.

The ordinary man wakes in the morning, as a rule, just in the same condition in which he goes to sleep at night; but that is only with respect to his own consciousness, in reality it is never so. We never waken exactly as we went to sleep; we are really a little richer; only we are not aware of this enrichment. But when a ‘wave-hollow’ has followed upon a ‘wave-mountain’ as in Goethe during his years at Weimar, there comes the awakening at a higher stage; it must come at a higher stage. The inmost forces strive towards this. And in Goethe also the inmost forces strove to awaken again—out of the Weimar stupor to full life,—in surroundings which could really bring him what he lacked. It was in Italy that he awakened. He could not, in accordance with his particular constitution, have awakened in Weimar itself. In just such a matter as this we can see the deep connection between the creative work of a true artist and his special experiences. One who is no artist can gradually write a drama, page after page, straight off the reel; he can do it quite well. A great poet cannot do this, for he needs to be deeply rooted in life. For this reason Goethe was able to express the very deepest truths in his Faust in comparatively early youth—truths which grew out far beyond his soul-capacities. But he had to express a rejuvenation in Faust. Think of it: Faust had to be brought to an entirely different frame of mind; notwithstanding the fact that he was moulded so deeply. For after all, in spite of all his depth, what he had hitherto taken into his soul had brought him to the verge of suicide. He had to be rejuvenated. A lesser poet may describe quite well, in verses which may, perhaps, be very beautiful, how a man can be rejuvenated. Goethe could not do this until something had taken place; he himself had first to be rejuvenated at Rome. The rejuvenation scene in the ‘Witch's Kitchen’ was therefore written at Rome, in the Villa Borghese. Goethe would not have ventured to write this scene before.

Now, connected with a rejuvenation such as that experienced by Goethe, there is also a dull, dim consciousness (for in Goethe's time spiritual science did not yet exist); it could not be a clear consciousness but only a dim one. ... Special forces, too, are connected with such a rejuvenation—forces which play over into the next incarnation. Experiences belonging to this incarnation intermingle with many things that play over into the next incarnation. When we reflect upon this we are led to a specially deep and significant tendency in Goethe. Allow me at this point to make a personal remark: I have continually occupied myself for decades past—I may say since 1879 or 1880—with Goethe's conception of Nature, and intensely so since 1885-1886; during this time I have come to see that in the impulse given by Goethe to the conception of Nature—regarding which the present natural philosophers, scientists and thinkers really know nothing at all—there is contained something that can be developed further, but only in the course of centuries; so that Goethe, when he comes again, will probably be able in another incarnation to work upon what in this incarnation he could actually have completed, from his own views of Nature. People have as yet no notion of many things contained in Goethe's view of Nature. I have expressed my views on this point in my book Goethe's Weltanschauung(Goethe's Conception of the World) and in my introduction to Goethe's Works on Natural Science in Kürschner's Nationalliteratur. So that I can really say: In his conception of Nature, Goethe has within him something which points to very wide horizons—something inwardly connected with his rebirth, which indeed, in this connection, was not exactly connected with Rome, but with the period of his life which he lived through while he was at Rome. Read once more what I have said in connection with these things: how during his Italian journey he developed his Metamorphosis of plants and animals, the primal plant, the primal animal; and how, when he returned, he took in hand the Theory of Colour which people cannot yet understand to-day; and how he took still other things in hand. Then you will see that this development of his all-embracing conception of Nature is also connected with his rebirth. He did indeed bring all that had arisen within him in the course of his life into connection with Faust, not however in the way an insignificant poet would have done, but as a great one alone can do. Faust experiences the Gretchen tragedy. In the middle of this tragedy we suddenly meet with Faust's conception of Nature, which has many points of similarity with Goethe's great conception of Nature, and is expressed in Faust's words:—

‘Spirit sublime, didst freely give me all,
All that I prayed for. Truly not for nought
Thy countenance in fire didst turn upon me.
This glorious Nature thou didst for my kingdom give,
And power to feel it, to enjoy it. Not
A cold astonished visit didst alone
Permit, but deep within her breast to read
As in the bosom of a friend, didst grant me.
Thou leadest past mine eyes the long array
Of living things, mak'st known to me my brethren
Within the silent copse, the air, the water.‘ ...

Latham's translation.

A mighty conception of the world! Goethe ascribes it to Faust. Goethe only reached this permeation of the soul during his stay in Italy. The scene ‘Spirit sublime, didst freely give me all’ was also written in Rome; Goethe could not have written it earlier. Just these two scenes were written in Rome: the Rejuvenation Scene in the ‘Witch's Kitchen’ and the scene ‘Woodland and Cave:’ ‘Spirit sublime, didst freely give me all.’

You see from this an actual rhythm in Goethe's life—a rhythm which betrays an inner impulse, just as the rhythm of waking and sleeping in man betrays an inner impulse. In a life such as Goethe's we can study many laws with special clarity; moreover, we shall see how the laws we find in great men can also become of importance to the life of each individual. For, after all, the same laws which obtain in the case of a very great man, rule also in each single human being.

The outer forms of the phenomenal world have, in addition to their outer significance, an inner meaning. They are, as it were, symbols of an earlier phase of development. “All that is transitory is but a parable” to him who looks more deeply. To the psychograph, which looks with astral power into the inner becoming, into the soul of the world, the things of the phenomenal world reveal their inner history. The eye of the Dangma sees the transformations of the Logos in a developmental series. The sacred books of the Vedas and the Rosicrucian Chronicle speak of ten such avatars or metamorphoses of our present Sun Logo. For the clairvoyant, the present-day lancelet (Amphioxus lanceolatus) is the memory sign of an incarnation of the Sun Logo and a parable for the foreshadowing of the vertebrates. This can be imagined when one thinks of the signs Sickle, Scorpio, Fish and so on in the calendar, which symbolize processes in the world of the stars. The vertebrae, from which in succession fishes, amphibians, birds and mammals have developed, were present in the Vorahn only in the first stage, just as in the present-day lancelet the organ of touch is indicated by a single nerve cord, from which in later developments the brain of aquatic animals, of fishes, organized itself.

The first metamorphosis of the Sun Logos is expressed by the Rosicrucian Chronicle in the following words:

The single mother substance of spiritual light dawned upon itself. And from the dawning density of matter, a spiritual peculiarity escaped, empathizing with the dawn of matter.

The World Spirit lives in this feeling as the soul, whose body is the waters.

Indian: Matsya = Fish

First Avatar.

The Solar Logos incarnates as an example and guide in the midst of a new phase of development. Originally, the spirit dawned upon itself, spirit and matter are still undifferentiated in each other. Thus, mollusks and worms today show no separate nervous life; sensation permeates all of the unified substance of which they are composed. In the first avatar, the spirit separated from the egg-shaped astral, fine shell of matter and formed a luminous point within it, permeating it with its rays. All development is polar.

And the spirit light generates within itself an even higher spirituality; it brings forth an even finer mental matter – into which the brain later integrates itself – the sentient astral matter is pushed back, enveloping itself protectively at its outermost pole with an even more solid matter, from which the physical matter later develops. This would be the second avatar, the second metamorphosis of the deity, which the Rosicrucian chronicle expresses in the following words:

And feeling escaped from the body of water, drawing to itself the solidity that slumbers in the waters. The material solidity became the suffering of feeling. Trembling, the garment was adapted to the life of the world soul; the soul created harmony in the trembling garment.

The symbol of remembrance of the second avatar is Kurma, the turtle (amphibian). That is why Paracelsus saw animals in the amphibians that are even closer to the deity in their nature. Second third of the second round.

In the third metamorphosis of the Logos, spirituality withdraws even more into itself, astral matter expands, becomes stronger and more solid, and the developing human being lives completely in its powerful strength and might, while the spirit is in a state of slumber. The astral substance first had to become resistant in full selfhood in order to be overcome again later.

The symbol of remembrance for the third avatar, at the beginning of the third round, is called Varaha, the boar. The Rosicrucian Chronicle says:

The Keide should be firm against the storms of the material: it should be a strong cover for its spiritual Lord, and in

Therefore the soul of the world clothed itself in the garment of strong animality.

In the fourth avatar (first third of the fourth round) this beast-man became ruler. Giant in his power of matter, he drew all spirituality into himself and made himself lord of it, protecting it with his mighty strength. A small part remained as a warner, and united with the All-Soul the Soul was symbolized as a dwarf – the Nara-simha, the man-lion's power.

And the strong animality became the Self, self-power streaming through the loins of matter, repelling the power of the enemy from the tender spirit-self that slumbers as a warner in the strong animality of the man-lion.

But the dwarf of the spirit, Vamana, pours his invigorating power through the limbs of the giant, guides him and makes himself the ruler of the man-lion, just as the giant Goliath was ruled by the dwarf David. And now the warner, too, is drawn completely into the material world and loses the last connection with the universal soul. Man is now completely left to his own resources and has reached the extreme degree of separation. In the beginning this spirit, separated in the material, fights in selfishness and arbitrariness against the other separated spirits; it becomes unrestrained because the Warner is missing and the guidance. It is the physical man, and the fifth avatar reads:

And the Warner became the ruler of the strong beast-like nature of man-lion. The dwarf conquered the giant's mighty strength: and he awakened spirit-life in the beast-like nature's massive limbs.

Now the sixth avatar appears as the first lawgiver, and the law now severely punishes the abuse of the warrior's strength. It is the epoch of Parashu-Rama (father of Rama). He leads the warriors and bends them under the harsh but good law.

Sixth Avatar:

From now on, the body's loins should not stretch without the spirit life's judgment. Such stretching, alien to the spirit, would become evil. The spirit life stepped into the midst of the loin-gifted warriors, and the good law wanted to punish the forces alien to the spirit.

Now, as the seventh metamorphosis of the Logos, Rama, the son of Parashu-Rama, appeared, and he softened the hardness and strictness of the commandments in love, and the warriors loved the law in willing obedience. He was the first legendary ideal king of the Indians and all other peoples.

Seventh Avatar:

The spirit's compulsion was strict and stern. So it gave birth to gentleness within itself. In love, hard law was dissolved.

Now Krishna appeared as the eighth incarnation of the god, teaching people to feel love as bliss and living as an example of bliss:

And the seed of love blossomed and bore the fruit of love, which is called bliss. And bliss itself was human.

Up to this point, the human life was an ascent to the height of Budhi, of bliss, but now the path had to be traveled down again, to learn wisdom and to release Manas through work, through karma, and to connect it with Budhi. And so Buddha appeared as a guide and archetype, so far ahead of human development to show them the way. Thus is the name of the ninth avatar: Buddha.

And Bliss sent her son to Earth, who is called the Embodiment of Wisdom. And she dwelled in the mortal body of the king's son. — Buddha.

The tenth avatar: that is, he who is to come; Kalki, says the Indian. The Rosicrucian Chronicle reads:

But when the times are fulfilled, the eye opens, and the destiny of man becomes luminous within, let the luminous figure choose as guide: then destiny itself becomes law and loving volition. He whose eye opens sees living roses growing from the cross.

For the Rosicrucians, Christ was this coming one, Christ as the ever-evolving crystallization into the shining example of evolving humanity, who as Jesus took upon himself human karma and remains connected to the karma of Christianity through ever new incarnation, guiding and directing it until the end of this race.

All the life legends of the Nirmanakayas, the teachers of humanity, are similar, they follow a certain pattern: life, temptation, sacrificial death and transfiguration, chosen for the common purpose of descending into matter: Zarathustra, Hermes, the Druid teachers, Buddha, Christ. The lives of Jesus and Buddha are the same until the transfiguration; from here on, there is a change, and Christ descends the deepest into matter, for he has been given a special task. When Mahaguru's individuality incarnated as Buddha, his teachings had led to misunderstandings and divisions; he had given too much. Once again, Buddha had to incarnate as Shankaracharya, and it was from him that the Tibetan teachers, the Mahatmas, were then trained. These teachers handed over the teaching of theosophy to the public in part, in order to convey to the various religions the esoteric content that underlies them all, and to raise the fallen spiritual level of humanity. When the individuality of the Mahaguru incarnated in Christ, he did not choose, as was his custom, a virgin embryonic matter, pure and free of karma, but descended lower, in order to bring, in full brotherhood with humanity, the densest matter to spiritual transfiguration, laden with karma, as flesh from their flesh. Thus the mystery of Christ came about: that the Mahaguru took possession of the body of a lower Mahatma, a chela of the third initiation, the thirty-year-old Jesus, whose body had already passed through life and formed karma. From now on, the great teacher of humanity appeared as Christ. Up to the transfiguration, the life of Jesus resembles that of the Buddha, but from here the tragedy of the Christ begins. He was destined to experience death on the cross and resurrection in an exemplary and public way, in his own body, which otherwise were only carried out symbolically in seclusion. Through this sacrifice, he was also to uplift the masses and lead them towards redemption from lower matter. Thus, on the one hand, Buddha stands on a higher level because he remained untouched by the lower matter and only taught, and on the other hand, Christ stands higher because he made the greater sacrifice and, by descending into the densest physical matter, brought it back spiritualized.

Christ did not leave any records like other great teachers of mankind. His task was to live these teachings, which were already present, to live in an exemplary way for humanity and thus to release the mystery teachings in order to bring as much of humanity as possible to a faster spiritual evolution. Thus he made the greatest sacrifice for humanity: his enlightened spirit descended into the darkest matter.