The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Jesus ben Pandira and Initiation among the Essenes. The secret of numbers. Reflection of cosmic conditions in human evolution. The secret of the blood in the line of descent, and the secret of cosmic space

Ww have to realize that Jesus ben Pandira was in no way related to the personality or individuality of either the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew or of the Gospel of Luke, or any other Gospel; he lived a hundred years before the Christ Event, and was stoned and hanged upon a tree. It is most important that he should not be confused with the Jesus of the Gospels.

Of Jesus ben Pandira it need only be stated that neither occult knowledge nor any clairvoyant faculties are necessary to prove his existence, for information in regard to this can be had from the Hebrew Talmud. Confusion with the actual Jesus has occurred at various times, even as early as the second century of the Christian era. Having stated emphatically that Jesus ben Pandira is not to be identified with the Jesus of the Evangelists, it is nevertheless necessary to establish the real historical connection of these two personalities. This is only possible by means of occult investigation; the connection between them only emerges after a study of the evolution of mankind and those who guide it.

Gazing upwards to those beings who lead human development, we come at last to a group of high individualities who, according to Eastern terminology, are called Bodhisattvas—for it is in the East where knowledge of them has been established. There are many Bodhisattvas; they are the great teachers of mankind. From the spiritual worlds they infuse into humanity through the Mystery schools what according to the degree of human ripeness is appropriate to each epoch. Bodhisattvas succeed one another throughout the ages. Two of them are of special interest to present humanity, one, who as son of King Sudhodana became Buddha; and the other, his successor in this dignity, who is still a Bodhisattva. Both Oriental wisdom and clairvoyant investigation agree that the latter's mission will extend over the next two thousand five hundred years, when this Bodhisattva will rise to the higher rank of Buddha as did his predecessor. This, the present Bodhisattva will then be exalted to the dignity of Maitreya Buddha. In the long line of Bodhisattvas we have to recognize the great guiding teachers of evolution, but they should not be confused with the source of their teaching, the source from which they themselves draw what they bestow upon humanity. Rather we have to picture a collegium of Bodhisattvas, and the centre of this collegium is the living source whence this teaching is derived. This living source is none other than He Whom we call the Christ, from Whom all Bodhisattvas receive what in due course they hand on to humanity. A Bodhisattva devotes himself principally to teaching, but upon attaining Buddha-hood he ceases to descend into incarnation, and his mission becomes different. In accordance with all Eastern philosophy it can be said that Gautama Buddha, who, in his last incarnation, was the son of King Sudhodana, has since then only experienced incorporation as far as the etheric body. In the course of lectures on the Gospel of Luke we explained what the next task of this Buddha was.

When the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was born—the Nathan Jesus of whom Luke tells, and who is not to be confused with the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew—the Being of the Buddha, who was then incorporated as far as the etheric body, entered into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. It is therefore possible to say that having incarnated as Gautama Buddha, this Being did not come again as a teacher, but was henceforth present as a living force. He had become an actual force working from the spiritual world into our physical world.

To teach is one thing; to work as a living force with the forces of growth is something quite different. A Bodhisattva is a teacher up to the moment he attains Buddha-hood, from then onwards he becomes a vital force, filling with constructive power everything with which he is concerned. In this way the Buddha entered the organism of the Nathan Jesus as described by Luke. From the sixth century B.C. it is to the Buddha's successor, the coming Maitreya Buddha, that humanity must look for its teacher. His chosen instrument was the circle of the Therapeutæ and Essenes, and he poured down his inspiration especially through his disciple, Jesus, the son of Pandira, the purest, the most noted, the most exalted of them all. Thus we have to realize that the content of this Bodhisattva-teaching streamed forth into humanity through the Essenes.

The actual sect of the Essenes, as regards its profounder teaching, disappeared comparatively soon after the Christ Event, as external history testifies. Hence it need not sound improbable when I say that they were employed as a means for bringing down from the spheres of the Bodhisattvas what was necessary to prepare humanity to grasp the mighty event of the coming of Christ. The most important teaching man had received to aid him in the understanding of the Christ Event had its source in these communities. Jesus ben Pandira was chosen to receive inspiration from that Bodhisattva who was destined to become the Maitreya Buddha, and whose influence was active among the Essenes; he was inspired to impart a teaching that was to make comprehensible the Mystery of Palestine—the Mystery of Christ. External history knows little of the Essenes, more exact information regarding them is only possible with the aid of occult investigation; hence in a society like this I can speak without hesitation of secrets known to the Essenes and Therapeutæ that are needful to an understanding of the Gospel of Matthew.

These communities flourished a hundred years before the Christ Event, and taught how preparation was to be made for it. Their most important feature was the manner of their initiation. It was specially adapted to evoke an understanding, through clairvoyant perception, of the significance of Hebraism and Abrahamism as connected with the Christ Event. This was a mystery peculiar to these communities. The very purpose of their initiation was to impart clairvoyant perception in this connection. A follower of the Essenes had in the first place to attain full appreciation of the significance of what had come to pass in the Hebrew race through Abraham. Through his own individual vision, an Essene had to see in Abraham a true forefather of the race, one in whom a seed had been implanted which then, by means of the blood, percolated from generation to generation, as explained in the last lecture.

To understand how something of such great importance in human evolution could take place through a personality like Abraham, we must keep in mind a most important saying. This saying shows that whenever a man is destined to be a special instrument for human evolution he must be in direct contact with some divine spiritual being.

Those who attended the performance of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, given at Munich, and those who have read it, know that one of the most important dramatic manifestations occurs where the hierophant informs Maria that her mission will only be possible after such an influx from a higher being has taken place. This was actually accomplished in her. What then took place may be called a separation of the higher from the lower principles, which made it possible for the latter to be possessed by a subordinate spirit. All this is to be found in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, and if allowed to act on the soul, and not accepted lightly, it directs our attention to mighty secrets of human evolution.

Abraham having been selected for his great mission, the Spirit that had been recognized in early Atlantis as the Spirit who moved and lived in all the surrounding world had to enter into his inner organism. This happened for the first time in the case of Abraham, and therefore a change in man's spiritual perception then became possible for the first time. A divine Being implanted as it were a germ in Abraham's organism that was to enter all the other organisms descending from him in the direct line.

An Essene of that time would have said: The seed which actually formed the Hebrew people so as to fit them to be the vehicle for the mission of Christ, was first implanted in them by the mysterious Being only to be discovered when they looked back through the generations to Abraham. This Being worked as a kind of Folk-spirit from out the inner organism of Abraham in the blood of the Hebrew people. To reach some understanding of the crowning mystery of human evolution, it is necessary to rise to the Spirit who implanted this seed, and seek him where he was before he had entered into Abraham's organization. In order to rise to this Spirit who had organized and inspired the Hebrew people, to know him in his purity, the Essenes felt it to be necessary to pass through a certain training; they felt they must purify themselves from all that had come to human souls from the physical world since the time of Abraham. And further, an Essene would declare: The spiritual being which man bears within him, and all the other spiritual beings concerned with his development, are only to be seen in their purity in the spiritual world. As found in man, they have become defiled by the forces of the physical world.

From the point of view of the Essenes (which in a certain sphere of knowledge is absolutely correct), every single person then living had impurities in his soul from early times which disturbed his free vision of the Spiritual Being who had implanted the attribute in Abraham which has been described. Every Essene sought in his soul to be purified from what had entered him in this way, and which dimmed his vision of the Being who dwelt in the blood passing through the generations, the Being who could only be rightly seen after much purification. All the methods of their training were directed towards freeing the soul from its inherited tendencies and influences that clouded its vision and hid the spiritual inspirer of Abraham. Not only had man a spiritual being within him, but this being had been sullied through these inherited tendencies.

There is a law in Spiritual Science which was perceived by the Essenes through their clairvoyant investigation and spiritual vision: that hereditary influences only cease to be active when a man has passed through forty-two stages in the line of descent; only then has he purged his soul of inherited influences. What is inherited by man from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother, and so on, becomes feebler the farther back the line is traced; beyond forty-two generations nothing more of this could be found, which means that the influence of inheritance is then lost. By careful training and inner exercises, the Essenes directed their attention towards eliminating the impurities of the forty-two generations. This meant a severe training on a mystical path of forty-two clearly defined degrees or stages. Once these were passed, the Essene knew he was freed from the influences of the world of sense, and had reached the point where he experienced his inner self; where he felt the centre of his being to be united with Divinity. Therefore said he: ‘In going through these forty-two stages I ascend to God—to the God with whom I am concerned.’

The Essenes and the Therapeutæ had a clear vision of man's path to a divine Being who had not as yet descended into matter; they alone knew the truth of the fact which can be described as the ‘Event of Abraham’ they knew it at least in so far as it was concerned with inheritance. They also knew that if a man was to rise to a Being who was to enter the line of inheritance he must reach a place where he was no longer steeped in matter he must pass through forty-two stages of development corresponding to the forty-two generations; then he would find that Being. The Essene knew something more; he knew just as man has to rise through these forty-two stages to reach Divinity, so this Divine Being must descend, in the reverse direction, through forty-two generations if He was to enter into physical humanity. If man required to rise through forty-two stages before attaining to God, God had to descend through forty-two stages in order to become a man among men. So taught the Essenes, and so taught above all Jesus ben Pandira, who was inspired by the Bodhisattva. Having learnt this we know the source whence flowed the knowledge given out by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, and exactly why he traces back these forty-two generations.

Jesus ben Pandira, who instructed the Essenes in these matters, lived a century before these forty-two generations could be completed. He taught them that advance beyond a certain point on their journey through the forty-two stages was only possible if an historical event were connected with it, that any further achievement could only come by grace from above. A time, however, would come, he told them, when this would be a natural event; a man would be born who, through the power in his own blood, would be able to rise so high that divine Spiritual Forces could descend into him, which he had need of in order that he might make fully manifest the Spirit of the Race—the Spirit of Jahve—in the blood of the Hebrew people. Jesus ben Pandira taught them further; that if Zarathustra, he who would bring Ahura Mazdao, were to incarnate in human form, this could only come to pass if this human form had been so prepared that the Divine Spirit ensouling it had passed down through forty-two generations.

It is now apparent that the teaching concerning the descent through the generations with which the Gospel of Matthew begins had its origin among the sect of the Essenes. If these facts are to be fully understood we must refer to something still deeper in this whole connection.

Everything concerned with human evolution confronts us, as it were, from two sides, for the simple reason that man is a two-fold being. Seen during waking consciousness, when the four members of his being are united, the reason for man's dual nature is not at first discernible. But it is easily seen at night when one part, consisting of physical body and etheric body, remains in the physical world, and the other, composed of the astral body and ego, leaves it. Man is made up of these two parts. The human qualities and attributes of the physical world belong to the physical and etheric bodies alone, although the other members have a share in them during the waking state. When awake, man functions by means of his astral body and ego in the other two members; when asleep he leaves them to themselves. The moment that he falls asleep, however, the beings and forces of the cosmos begin to function in, and to permeate, the forsaken members, so that there is a constant influx from the cosmos into the physical and etheric bodies of man. That part of him, however, which is left sleeping in bed, is actually limited to the forty-two generations, during which time it is under the law of inheritance. Beginning with the first generation and taking all that then belonged to physical nature, we shall find at the end, if we trace this through forty-two generations, nothing of what was the most essential in the first case. Thus in six times seven generations are comprised all the active characteristics of the physical and etheric bodies of a man. The inherited tendencies found in these two bodies must be sought for among his ancestors, but only in the forty-two preceding generations; beyond that time they cannot be traced, all belonging to an earlier generation has disappeared.

Human evolution in time is based on a certain numerical relationship. If we consider this more closely we find everything concerning the physical body is limited to forty-two generations, because everything connected with evolution in time is connected with the number seven. The Essenes knew this. An Essene said to himself: ‘Thou must pass through six times seven stages—that is forty-two—thou wilt then have arrived at the last seven which complete the sevenfold count, making forty-nine stages in all.’ What lies beyond the forty-two stages cannot be attributed to the forces and beings active in the physical and etheric body. The whole evolution of these bodies is finished—in accordance with the sevenfold law—after seven times seven generations, but during the last seven of these a complete change has taken place, and nothing of the first generation remains. What we are now concerned with is something entirely new in the realm into which man enters after the forty-two generations. We are now no longer concerned with a human existence but with a superhuman one. The six times seven generations, therefore, are connected entirely with the earth, and the seven times seven that follows is connected with what is beyond the earth; that is fruit for the spiritual world.

Hence the people from among whom the Gospel of Matthew had its origin, expressed their thoughts somewhat in this way: ‘The physical body used by Zarathustra had to be so ripe at the end of forty-two generations that it was already on the verge of becoming spiritualized; it was at the point where deification could take place.’ This could have taken place at the beginning of the forty-third generation, but it did not; this body allowed itself to be used by another being, who, as the spirit of Zarathustra, incarnated on earth as Jesus of Nazareth. In the events capable of providing a fitting body and fitting blood for the soul of Zarathustra, in Jesus of Nazareth, everything was fulfilled in accordance with this mystery of numbers. Everything relating to the physical and etheric body in human evolution has been prepared in this way.

Now, however, there are in man—and hence too in him who was to be the bearer of the Christ-being—not only a physical and an etheric body, but also an astral body and ego. Preparation therefore had to be made not only for a suitable physical and etheric body, but what was needful had also to be done to prepare a suitable astral body and ego. For such a mighty Event not one, but two personalities were necessary. The physical and etheric bodies were prepared in the case of the personality described in the Gospel of Matthew; the astral body and ego were prepared in another personality—the Nathan Jesus, of whom the Gospel of Luke relates. For the early years this was another personality. While the Matthew Jesus received a suitable physical and etheric organism, the Luke Jesus received the appropriate astral-body and bearer of the ego.

How could this come to pass? We have seen that the forces of the forty-two generations had to be prepared in order that the sheaths might come about which were necessary for the Jesus of the Matthew gospel. The astral body and ego had also to be prepared in order to appear later in the appropriate manner. How this happened we shall now explain.

As an introduction to the understanding of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, for whom special preparation had also to be made, let us consider the nature of sleep. The notion, derived from the assertions of lower clairvoyance, that the whole astral and ego-nature of man is contained within the nebulous appearance seen near the body of a sleeping man, is entirely erroneous. For it is a fact that during sleep, when man forsakes his physical and etheric sheaths, he expands, and is spread abroad through the whole cosmos. The mystery of the sleeping state is contained in the fact that the astral body expands through the whole stellar world, attracting towards it the purest cosmic forces; and these forces man brings with him when at the moment of awakening he plunges once more into his physical and etheric bodies. Hence he emerges from sleep strengthened by what he has derived from the whole cosmos.

If man were clairvoyant to-day in the highest sense—and this was the same at the time of Christ Jesus—what must then take place in him? Modern man is normally unconscious during sleep when with his astral body and ego he goes forth from his physical and etheric bodies; clairvoyant consciousness must, however, become capable of perception by means of the astral body and ego, without the aid of the physical and etheric bodies. It will then belong to the world the stars, and will not only perceive this world but actually enter into it. Just as the consciousness of the Essene had to rise through successive stages (at the root of which lay the number seven), so man must surmount the stages which enable him to perceive universal space clairvoyantly.

The dangers attending both courses of development I have often pointed out.

The development of the Essenes was fundamentally a penetration into the physical body and etheric body, that they might find their God. With them it was as if a man on awakening did not see the world around him, but plunged into his physical and etheric bodies in order to realize their forces; therefore to see what was external from within. Man's descent into his physical vehicles on awakening is not a conscious act, for at that moment consciousness is attracted to the environment, and is not directed to the forces within his physical and etheric bodies. The essential fact for the Essene was, that, disregarding his environment, he should dip down into his own physical vehicles and perceive all the forces that in the sense of occult science had their rise in the mystery of the six times seven generations.

Similar and even mightier exertions are necessary if a man is to ascend into the cosmos and discover its secrets. In penetrating into his own inner being he is only exposed to the danger of being overcome by the forces of this being, the desires and passions of its depths, of which he is ordinarily unaware and of which he does not dream. Ordinary training usually prevents knowledge of these forces—his attention being attracted to the emergence of the outer world on awakening, so that he should not be overcome by this. Another danger meets him when he experiences ‘expansion over the whole cosmos.’ He who experiences this moment, by retaining his consciousness during sleep, he who is able to perceive the spiritual world through the instrumentality of his astral body and ego, is confronted by a great danger. Like a man attempting to gaze at the sun, he is blinded and bewildered by the overwhelming grandeur of his experiences.

Just as the different stages of wisdom striven for by the Essenes, in order to learn of the hereditary tendencies in the physical and etheric bodies, were connected with the mystery of numbers (six x seven), so there was a secret number in the Mysteries of the Great World, showing how knowledge of these could be acquired. The best approach to these mysteries is through the stars themselves which, in their movements and groupings into constellations, provide a form of expression—a language. As, by passing through six times seven stages man attains the key to the mysteries of his own inner being; twelve times seven or eighty-four stages are necessary before he can rise to the spiritual mysteries of universal space. When we have surmounted the eighty-four stages we are no longer blinded by the complexity of these spiritual cosmic forces. Beyond these eighty-four stages we have attained that calm wherein a way may be found through the mighty labyrinth.

This was taught to a certain extent among the Essenes. A person having attained clairvoyance during sleep, as just described, could pour his being forth into something that is expressed in the mystery of numbers as twelve times seven. Anyone who has attained to the ‘twelve times seven’ degree is already in spiritual realms, for when he has completed the eleven times seven, he has already reached the verge of the Mysteries. As in the other, the seven times seven, he is already in the spiritual realm; so he is in the twelve times seven. On the latter path the spiritual realm is beyond the eleven times seven stage. Such are the number of the stages to be passed through by the astral body and ego. All this is imprinted in the starry script, seven is the number derived from the planets; they are seven in number; what man has to pass through in cosmic space is derived from the number twelve, the number of the Signs of the Zodiac.

As the seven planets group themselves within, and pass through the twelve signs, so if man is to live into cosmic space he must pass through seven times twelve, or rather seven times eleven stages, to attain spirituality. The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac may be pictured as forming a spiritual periphery in the centre of which is man himself. Now man does not reach the spiritual realm spread around him simply by advancing from a centre outwards; he must expand in spiral form; he must advance, as it were, in seven spiral movements. Each time he completes one spiral turn he has passed through all the twelve signs; he has in this way to pass through seven times twelve points. Man gradually expands in spiral form through the cosmos—this is naturally only an image for what man experiences—and in circling thus, on the seventh journey through the twelve signs, spirituality is reached. Then instead of regarding the cosmos from the central point of his own self; he regards it from the spiritual circumference—from twelve points of view—and from these different aspects he views the external world. It is not enough to see things from one point only, they must be considered from twelve aspects.

He who is in quest of what is divinely spiritual must guide his astral body and ego in this way through eleven times seven stages, and at the twelfth he is in the spiritual world.

If Divinity wished to descend and assume a human ego, it would likewise have to pass down through eleven times seven stages. So when the Gospel of Luke wished to describe the spiritual forces that prepared a human astral body and ego to be the bearer of the Christ, it had to relate how the divine force descended through eleven times seven stages. This is truly told in the Gospel of Luke. Because this Gospel tells of the personality for whom the astral body and ego were prepared, it is not concerned, like the Gospel of Matthew, with six times seven generations, but with eleven times seven successive stages through which is traced down, from God Himself; that which dwelt in the individuality of the Luke-Jesus. These seventy-seven different human stages can be counted in the Gospel of Luke.

Because the Gospel of Matthew describes the mystery of the descent of the divine force which worked constructively within the physical and etheric bodies, the ruling number in it must be six times seven. In the Gospel of Luke, because it describes the descent of the divine force which built the astral body and ego, the number must be eleven times seven. Such is the infinite depth of the origin of these facts as related in the Gospels. These Gospels of Luke and Matthew reveal the secrets of initiation; the descent by certain stages of the Divine Spirit into a human individuality, and correspondingly the successive stages by which an individual can reach forth into the cosmos.

It will be explained in the next lecture how a table of descent is also found in the Gospel of Luke; and why, in an age when the Mystery of Christ was imparted only to a few, it should have been demonstrated that there were seventy-seven generations from God and from Adam, down to the Jesus of this Gospel.

A common prejudice is expressed in the maxim: Human evolution moves forward in regular succession, the unfolding of historical events makes no leaps. This is connected with another prejudice; for we are also told that Nature makes no leaps. This is repeated over and over again; but it is untrue both for Nature and for History. We never see Nature making mighty progress without leaps. Her progress is not gradual; on the contrary, small processes are followed by important results, and the most important of all result from leaps. Many cases could be enumerated in which Nature advances in such a way, that we can observe a transition of forms into their exact opposite.

In History this is particularly important, because there we have two significant occurences, which gradually prepared, but then ebbed away, only to make their eventual advance in a forward leap:

1. The founding of the free cities at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
2. The great inventions and discoveries at the end of the Middle Ages.

History moves very quickly forward at the change from the 11th to the 12th century. New forms of society evolve from old ones. From the fact that many men left their homes, to settle in the cities, sprang up—throughout Germany, France, England, Scotland, and as far as Russia and Italy—cities with new conditions of life, new organisations, laws and constitutions. At the end of the Middle Ages we find the great discoveries, the voyages to India, America, etc., and the world-wide invention of printing. All this shows us what a radical change has been affected through the birth of the new spirit of Science—through Copernicus.

Two incisions were made by this; and if we are to study the Middle Ages thoughtfully, these two occurances must be place in the right light. They appear as leaps, but such an event is gradually prepared, until with the force of an avalanche it breaks forth, and rushes forward in a flood. If we pursue them step by step, it will become clear that these two events had been prepared in the life of the Germani. We shall see through what circumstances it was that such great power was given to the Franks, such influence over the configuration of European relationships. For this purpose we must understand the character of that race, the necessary metamorphosis of industrial relationships, and the powerful penetration of Christianity in the 4th century. These two things indicate the alteration in the life of the Germani. They condition the evolution of the Middle Ages. It would be useless to follow all the wanderings of the Germani, to see how Odoacer dethroned the last West Roman Emperor, how the Goths were driven out of Italy by the Emperor Justinian, how the Longobards seized possession of Northern Italy—we see the same circumstances enacted over and over again.

In the southern regions, where the Gemani found political and industrial conditions already firmly established, the idiosyncrasies of their own tribes disappeared; they lost all significance. We hear nothing more of the Goths, Gepidae, etc., they have vanished, even to their names. In contrast to this, the Franks had arrived at free, not yet fixed, condition, where serious appropriation was as yet non-existent, and through this political configuration, the Franks became the ruling race.

Now we must see how these developed in the empire of the Franks, that which we call the Merovingian kingdom. It was actually nothing but many small kingdoms, formed in the most natural way. The Merovingians remained as victors, after they had overcome the others who were originally their equals. All these kingdoms had been formed in the following way: some little tribe wandered in, subjugated the inhabitants and divided the land in such a way that all the members received small or large properties. Thus all dominion was based on land ownership. The most powerful received the largest domain. For the tilling of these properties, a great number of people were employed, some taken from the inhabitants, but part were prisoners of war, made into workers. Simply through this difference between the ownership of less of more land, were power relationships developed. The largest landowner was the king. His power was based on his property—that is the characteristic trait. Out of these powerful relationships, the relationships of rights were formed, and it is interesting to observe how this came about. Certainly we find among the Germanic tribes, laws founded on customs evolved in ancient times, before we have any knowledge of them. Among the smaller tribes all the people assembled to administer justice; later, the members of the tribe only came together on March 1st, to take counsel about their concerns. But now the great landowner was not responsible to the others for what he did on his own property. True, we find a conservative clinging to the old prescriptive laws among the different tribes. We find them preserved for long periods among the Saxons, Thuringians and Frisians, also among the Cheruscans, whose tribe kept them longer than has been generally believed. It was different where large landowning had developed, because the proprietor, absolute in his own domain, became also irresponsible. This irresponsibility gave rise to a new legal position, in which the jurisdiction of power, the authority of the police, was exercised. If another man committed an offence, he was called to account for it; if the irresponsible one did it, the same offence was looked upon as lawful. What was illegal among those without power, was legal among the powerful. They were able to change might into right.

Now, in this way the Franks could farther extend their power, and, especially in the northeast, could conquer great territories. At a time when war followed war, the less powerful were dependent on the protection of the mightier. Thus arose the fief and vassal system, which called forth a selection of powerful men. Then an arrangement for transferring certain rights by means of contracts sprang up.

The great landed property, the king's estate, required special legal conditions, which could be transferred to others by the king or the owner. Together with the land, the jurisdiction and the police authority would be transferred. King's law and the law of the small vassal came into being. As the result of this innovation we see the development of a powerful official class, not on a basis of stipend, but of land owning. Such justiciaries were the highest judges. In the beginning, when they still had to take into consideration the rights of powerful tribes, they were bound to respect ancient laws. Gradually, however, their position became that of an absolute judicature, so that, in course of time, side by side with the kingdom, there was formed in France a kind of official aristocracy which grew to be a rival of the kingship.

Thus in the 6th century, a rivalry developed between the sovereign and the new nobility, and this attained the greatest significance.

The original governing race, which sprang from the Merovingians, the large land owners, was succeeded by the Carlovingians who had originally belonged to the official aristocracy. They had been mayors of the palace to the ruling race, which had been overthrown by the rivalry of the aristocratic officials. Essentially, therefore, it was the possession of large property that was the basis of power relations; and the strongest moral current of the church, had to initiate its rule in this roundabout way through the large land owner.

It was the characteristic feature of the Frankish Church that, to begin with, it represented nothing but a number of large land owners; we see the rise of bishoprics and abbacies, and of vassals who placed themselves under the protection of the Church, in order to receive fiefs from it. Thus, side by side with the large, worldly land owners, clerical proprietors also arose. This is the reason why we see so little depth, and why the spiritual element which we find in Christianity is essentially due to foreign influence. It was not the Frankish race, but men of the British Isles who succeeded in creating those mighty currents which then flowed out eastwards. In the British Isles, many learned men and pious monks were deeply engaged in work. Real work was being done, as we may see, in particular, by the resumption of Platonism and its alliance with Christianity. We see mysticism, dogmatism, but also enthusiasm and pathos, issuing from here. From here come the first missionaries: Columba, Gallus and Winfried-Boniface, the converter of the Germans. And because these first missionaries had nothing in their mind but the spiritual side of Christianity they were not inclined to conform to the conditions of the Frankish tribes. Theirs was the healing virtue, and they found, especially through Boniface, their chief influence exercised among the East Germani. For this reason, Rome acquired an increasing influence at this time in the empire of the Franks. Two heterogenous elements combined together: the rugged force of the Germani and the spiritual strength of Christianity. They fitted in to each other in such a way that it seems wonderful how these tribes submitted to Christianity, and how Christianity itself modified its nature, to adapt itself to the Germani. These missionaries worked differently from the Frankish kings, who spread Christianity by force of arms. It was not forced into their souls as something alien; their places of worship and sacred customs were preserved; their practices and personalities so respected that old institutions were made use of to diffuse the new content. It is interesting to notice how what is old becomes the garment, what is new becomes the soul. From the Saxon tribe we possess an account of the Life of Jesus: all the details concerning the figure of Jesus were clothed in Germanic dress. Jesus appears as a German duke; his intercourse with the disciples resembles a tribal assembly. This is how the life of Jesus is presented in Heiland.

Ancient heroes were transformed into saints; ancient festivals and ritual customs became Christian. Much of what appears today as exclusively Christian was transferred at that time from heathen customs. In the Frankish empire, on the contrary, we see in ecclesiastical Christianity a means of consolidating power; a Frankish code of law begins with an invocation to “Christ, Who loves the Franks above all other peoples.” In the days when the British missionaries represented the moral influence of Christianity, the influence of the Roman Church also increased considerably. The Frankish kings sought alliance with the papacy. The Longobards had seized possession of Italy, and harassed the bishop of Rome, in particular. They were Aryan Christians. That was why the Roman bishop turned first to the Franks for help, at the same time tendering his influence to the Franks. So the Frankish king became the protector of the pope; and the pope anointed the king. Hence the Frankish kings derived their exalted position, their dignity, from this consecration by the pope. It was an enhancement of what the Franks saw in Christianity. All this took place in the west, in the 7th centure. This alliance between the papacy and the Frankish authority, formed a gradual preparation for the subsequent rule of Charlemagne. Thus we see the accomplishment of important spiritual and social changes. This alone, however, would not have led to an event which proved to be of the greatest importance, a material revolution: the founding of cities. For something was lacking in the Frankish Christian culture, although it had efficiency, intellect and depth.

That which we call Science, purely external Science, did not exist for them. We have followed a merely material and moral movement. What Science there was among them had remained at the same level as at their first contact with Christianity. And just as the Frankish tribes took no interest in the improvement of their simple agriculture, and never thought of developing it economically, similarly the Church only sought to build up its moral influence. Primitive tillage offered no special difficulties, such as, in Egypt, have led to the evolution of physics, geometry and technical science. Everything here was simpler, more primitive; thus the financial trading, which was already in use, gave place again to barter.

So European culture needed a new stimulus, and cannot be understood without taking this stimulus into account. Out of Asia, form the far East, whence Christianity once came, came now this new culture, from the Arabs. The religion founded there by Mahomet is, in its content, simpler than Christianity. The spiritual content of Mohammedanism is, essentially, based on simple monotheistic ideas confined to a divine fundamental Being, whose nature and form is not closely investigated, but to whose will men surrender, because they have faith. Hence this religion produces proud confidence in this will, a confidence which leads to fatalism, to a complete self-surrender. This is how it became possible for these tribes to extend Arabian rule, in a few generations, over Syria, Mesopotamia and North Africa, as far as to the realm of the Visigoths in Spain, so that, as early as the turn of the 7th to the 8th century, Moorish rulers were established there, and implanted their own culture in place of that of the Visigoths.

Thus something quite new, of an entirely different nature, flowed into European culture. The spirit of Arabism culture was not filled with dogma concerning angels and demons, etc., but precisely with that which was lacking in the Christian Germanic tribes namely, with external science. Here we find all such sciences—medicine, chemistry, mathematical thinking—well developed. The practical spirit brought over from Asia to Spain found employment now in seafaring, etc. It was brought over at a moment when an unscientific spirit had established its kingdom there The Moorish cities became centers of serious scientific work; we see here a culture which cannot fail to be admired by all who know it. Humboldt says of it: “This depth, this intensity, this exactitude of knowledge is unexampled in the history of culture.” The Moorish intellectuals had width of outlook and depth of thought; and not only did they, like the Germani, embrace Greek science, they developed it farther. Aristotle also contiuned to live among them, but with the Arabs, it was the true Aristotle who was honoured, with a wide outlook, as the father of Science. It is interesting to see how the Alexandrine culture, started in Greece, continued its existence here, and with this we tough upon one of the most remarkable currents in the human mind. The Arabs laid the foundations of Objective Science. From them, this flowed, in the first place, into the Anglo-Saxon monasteries in England and Ireland, where the old energetic Celtic blood now dwelt. It is strange to see what active intercourse had been introduced between them and Spain, and how, where profundity of mind and capacity to think were present, Science revived through the medium of the Arabs.

And it is a remarkable phenomenon that the Arabs who, to begin with, took possession of the whole of Spain, were soon outwardly conquered by the Franks under Charles Martel a the Battle of Poiters in 732. By this victory the physical strength of the Franks overcame the physical strength of the Moors. But the spiritual strength of the Arabs remained invincible; and just as, once, Greek culture rose triumphant in Rome, so Arab culture conquered the West, in opposition to the victorious Germani. Now, when the science which was needed to extend the horizon of trade and world intercourse, when city culture, arose, we see that it was Arab influence which made themselves felt here. Quite new elements flowing in sought to adapt themselves to the old.

We see expressed by Walther von der Vogelweide the perplexity which may assail anyone who follows, with an open mind, the conflicting currents of the Middle Ages. The poet saw how the Germanic tribes were striving for power, and how an opposing current was flowing from Christianity. That which flowed through the Middle Ages was transmuted by Walther von der Vogelweide into feeling, in the following sorrowful description:

No answer came into my mind
How men might come by these three things,
So that no man need to perish.
Two are honour and worldly goods;
These often do each other harm
The third, the chiefest of them all,
Is simply pleasing God. I longed to have them in one shrine
Alas, that that can never be!
For worldly goods and honour
Dwell not, within one human heart,
Together with the grace of God.
Hindrances are everywhere,
Faithlessness sets endless snares,
Haughty force lays all men low.
Thus Peace and Right are done to death.
Never will the Three find refuge
Till these two are healed and well.

We shall see shortly how difficult it was for the man of the Middle Ages to combine these three things in their heart, and how these three gave rise to the great struggles which rent that age asunder

While it is of vital importance in Spiritual Science to study the whole spiritual life of humanity as it advances from one epoch to another, rising slowly to the surface from hidden depths, it is perhaps of still greater significance to study the culture and civilisation of ancient Egypt. We realise this the more strongly when we try to penetrate deeply into this ancient Egyptian spiritual life.

The echoes sounding to us across the ages seem at first to be as full of mystery as the Sphinx itself, standing there as a memorial of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. The mystery grows deeper still when we find that even external research has recently been compelled to go back to ages more and more remote in order to explain the culture of later Egyptian times of which certain physical evidence is still available. According to external research the prime of Egyptian culture must be dated at least seven thousand years before our era, perhaps even earlier still. This may be one reason for the great interest evinced to-day in Egyptian culture, but another is that man of the present day feels, whether he likes it or not, that there is a mysterious connection between this ancient civilisation and his own aims and purposes. It is not without significance that Kepler, at the very dawn of the development of modern Natural Science should have spoken of the achievements of Science up to that time and his own contributions to knowledge, in words like these: “When I have endeavoured to unravel some of the mysteries of the course of the planets round the Sun, I have tried to peer into the secrets of cosmic space. And it has often seemed to me as though I have actually penetrated to the mysterious sanctuaries of the Egyptians and brought their holy vessels into our modern age. I have felt then that the significance of my message to the world will only be understood in the future.” So strongly did one of the greatest minds of modern times feel himself related to ancient Egyptian culture that he could only express the keynote of his knowledge by speaking of it as a renewal of the wisdom given to the disciples in the secret sanctuaries and places of learning in ancient Egypt, although it was clothed, naturally, in different words. It must therefore be of great interest to us to understand how these ancient Egyptians themselves conceived of their whole culture, of their whole nature as human beings.

A certain very significant incident has been preserved by Greek tradition. It indicates not only what the Egyptians themselves felt but the way in which Egyptian culture was regarded by the civilised world in general in olden times. An Egyptian sage once said to Solon: “You Greeks are still children. All you know is the outcome of your own contemplation and vision; you have no ancient traditions, no wisdom hoary with age, and children you will remain.” Wisdom hoary with age—the significance of this expression only dawns upon us when the light of Spiritual Science is cast upon the whole mode and nature of Egyptian thought and feeling.

In the successive epochs different forms of consciousness have unfolded in humanity. Our consciousness to-day, the way in which we grasp the outer world by means of our senses and the combining of intellect and reason, in short, our scientific mode of thought, has not always been in existence; consciousness has ever been subject to the laws of evolution. Not only is the external world of form subject to these laws but man's qualities of soul and consciousness also. This is an indication of the fact that we can only understand ancient centres of culture if we begin by admitting what Spiritual Science tells us, namely, that in olden times, in the place of our present intellectual consciousness, men possessed a clairvoyant consciousness unlike our waking consciousness and yet unlike the complete absence of consciousness during sleep. Traces of this consciousness of prehistoric man are now only retained atavistically as a waning heritage, in the picture world of dreams. But whereas our dreams are chaotic and meaningless in ordinary life, the picture consciousness of the Ancients was “clairvoyant,” although, indeed, of a hazy, dreamlike nature. The pictures referred not to the physical world but to the spiritual world behind. In reality, all clairvoyant consciousness, that of prehistoric man, as well as the clairvoyance acquired by true discipline in this age, works in pictures and not in the concepts and ideas of outer physical consciousness. The pictures must be related to the spiritual realities lying behind the sense-realities of the physical world.

The marvellous pictures that have come down to us in the mythologies are not merely phantastic concepts of Nature, as materialistic consciousness imagines to-day. On the contrary, these pictures indicate an actual vision of the spiritual world. If we study the old mythologies and legends—not with the materialistic consciousness of to-day, but with a true feeling for man's spiritual achievements—the strange stories related in the mythologies will reveal a wonderful connection with cosmic laws higher than our laws of physics, chemistry and biology. A note of spiritual reality permeates the old mythologies and religious systems.

Now it must be clearly understood that the several peoples built up this world of pictures in different ways, according to their own nature, temperament and race. These picture-worlds represented, to the several peoples, the higher forces underlying the purely external forces of Nature. We must also realise that in the course of evolution there have been many transitional stages between the old clairvoyant consciousness and the objective consciousness of modern man. The ancient clairvoyance grew dim and gradually faded away. Clairvoyant powers decreased little by little in the different peoples and the pictures arising before the souls of those still able to gaze into the spiritual world contained less and less of spiritual force. The higher worlds gradually closed their doors until only the lowest stages of spiritual activity were perceptible to lower clairvoyance. Then, so far as humanity in general was concerned, the old clairvoyance died out entirely. Waking consciousness was limited to the physical world around and to ideas and conceptions of physical phenomena. Thus arose our modern science. The old clairvoyant powers gradually faded as the development of present-day consciousness proceeded—although of course the process varied in the different peoples.

All that we know from olden times, even what external documents have told us in recent Egyptian research (if we understand aright) proves the truth of what Spiritual Science asserts, namely, that the mission of the ancient Egyptian people was to look back to still earlier times when their leading Individualities were able, with their wonderful powers of clairvoyance, to gaze into the spiritual worlds. In the people of Egypt a somewhat feebler clairvoyant power was preserved on into relatively late times. The later Egyptians—down to the last millennia before the Christian era—knew from actual experience of another mode of vision besides that of ordinary daily life, a vision enabling man to see into the spiritual world. But they only knew the lowest images of the realm of which this vision made them aware, and they looked back to olden times when their Priest-Sages were able, in the golden prime of Egyptian civilisation, to gaze into the very depths of the spiritual world.

The mysteries of the spiritual worlds were preserved, more especially by the earlier Egyptians, with great piety and reverence for thousands of years. Those who lived in the later Egyptian epoch could say: “Even now we can still perceive a lower spiritual world; vision of the spiritual world is possible and to doubt it would be as senseless as to doubt that our eyes can behold the external world.” These later Egyptians had, it is true, only a dim perception of the spiritual worlds, but they felt that there had once been an age when their predecessors had gazed more deeply into all that lies behind the physical world. And this old Wisdom-teaching—of which the Egyptian Sage spoke to Solon—was preserved in wonderful scripts in the Temples and on the columns, bearing witness to deep and all-embracing clairvoyant powers in days of hoary antiquity. The Being to whom the Egyptians looked up as the embodiment of the primal glory of that old clairvoyant wisdom, was called by the name of HERMES. And when in later times a man came forth with a message which was to renew the ancient wisdom, he also (according to the custom of Egyptian sages) called himself “Hermes,” and his disciples, believing that he had revived the primeval wisdom of the old Hermes, called this first Being, “the Thrice-Greatest,” “Hermes Trismegistos.” (It was of course, only the Greeks who called him Hermes; among the Egyptians he was known as Thoth). We can only understand this primeval Being if we realise what the Egyptians, under the influence of the later teachings of Hermes or Thoth, took to be the true Mysteries of the Cosmos.

Such beliefs as have been handed down to us from Egyptian times by external evidence seem very strange. Various Gods, of whom the most important are Osiris and Isis, are represented in forms not wholly human; we often find human bodies and animals heads, or an amalgamation of human and animal forms. Wonderful legends of this world of Gods have come down to us and there is something very remarkable in the Egyptian animal-worship, the worship of the cat and so forth. Certain animals were even recognised as being sacred animals; deep veneration was paid to them for they were regarded as the embodiment of higher beings. It is even said that cries of lamentations were uttered at the death of cats. Again, we are told that if an Egyptian saw a dead animal, he dared not approach for fear of being accused of having killed it, in which case he would have been severely punished. It is said too, that in the age when Egypt was subject to Rome, any Roman who had killed a cat was in danger of death, because his act aroused such fury among the Egyptians. This animal-worship is an enigma in the sphere of Egyptian thought and feeling. And again—what a curious impression is made on modern man by the Pyramids, standing on their four-cornered bases, with their triangular sides! Strange indeed are the Sphinxes and everything that is being continually excavated and brought to our knowledge from the depths of Egyptian civilisation. And now we will ask ourselves: of what nature was the life of feeling and ideas among the ancient Egyptians? What had Hermes taught them? How did they acquire all these strange conceptions?

We must realise that all these Legends, especially the more significant, contained a deeper wisdom and their purpose was to convey in picture form, knowledge of definite laws of spiritual life, laws higher than those of external Nature. The Egyptian legend of the God and Goddess, Osiris and Isis, is a case in point. According to the legend, Osiris was a Being who lived in dim primeval times in regions later inhabited by human beings. Osiris is represented in the legend as the benefactor of humanity under whose wise guidance Hermes or Thoth gave the Egyptians their ancient culture. Osiris had an enemy, for whom the Greek name was Typhon. Typhon pursued Osiris, killed him, dismembered the body, hid it in a coffin and threw it into the sea. Isis, the sister and spouse of Osiris, sought unceasingly for him who had been torn from her by Typhon or Seth, and when at length she found the fragments of his dismembered body, she buried them in different places in the land where Temples were then erected. Then, after the death of Osiris, Isis gave birth to Horus. A spiritual ray descended upon Isis from Osiris, who had meanwhile passed into another world. The mission of Horus was to conquer Typhon and, in a certain sense, to re-establish the dominion of a life, which, proceeding from Osiris himself, was again to stream into mankind.

Such a legend must not be analysed merely in the sense of allegory or symbol. It should be used as a means whereby we are led into the whole world of feeling and perception of the old Egyptians; for only so can our understanding of such figures as Osiris and Isis become really living. It is not right to state crudely that Osiris is the Sun, Isis the Moon and so forth. An astronomical interpretation of this kind leads men to believe that the legend only contains symbolical images of certain occurrences in the Heavens. This is not the case. Rather must we go back to the feelings living in the ancient Egyptians and envisage the nature of their upturned gaze to super-sensible, invisible Powers underlying the world of sense, and typified in the figures of Osiris and Isis.

Let us try to conceive what the names of Osiris and Isis conveyed to the ancient Egyptian. He said to himself: “Behind man there is a higher spiritual essence, which does not proceed from his material existence. This spiritual essence has ‘condensed' into material, human existence. The real evolution of man has proceeded from a more spiritual existence. When I look into my own soul I realise that I have a longing for the Spiritual, a yearning towards the spiritual wellsprings of being from which I myself have descended. The forces from which I came forth are still living within me. My highest powers are inwardly related to these primordial Osiris-powers within me, bearing witness that I was once a super-sensible being dwelling in other worlds, in worlds of Spirit. And although this being of Spirit has but a dim and instinctive life, although it had perforce to be clothed with the physical body and its organs in order to perceive the physical world, yet in days gone by this being lived a purely spiritual existence.”

According to the ancient Egyptian conception, human evolution must be regarded as a duality, consisting of the Osiris-forces and the Isis-forces. “Osiris-Isis”—this was the duality. Let us consider our own being, as we now exist. The idea of a triangle, for instance, must have been preceded by active thinking. After having been active in soul, we may then be passive as regards the result of our thinking and conceptual activity. Ultimately we perceive in our soul the form that has been built up by our active thinking. Now the act of thinking bears the same relation to the final thought, the conceptual act to the final concept, the active principle to the product of the active principle there before us, as Osiris to Isis. In short, activity per se is a Father-Principle, a masculine Principle. The Osiris-Principle is male, active—filling the soul with thoughts and feelings. The old Egyptian said to himself: “Man as he stands here to-day has within him substances living in his blood or forming his bones, but these substances were not always within his blood or bones, they were spread over cosmic space. This physical body is a combination of substances which have now passed into the human form, whereas they once filled the Cosmos. The same is true of the powers of thought. The active principle of thought has become the power of ideation in man. Just as the substances in the blood now live in the human form but were formerly spread over cosmic space—so the Osiris-power now living within us as the active principle of thought was once spread over the spiritual universe as the Osiris-power that permeates and weaves in the Cosmos, pouring into human beings, just as in the case of the substances composing blood and bones in the bodily nature of man. Into the thoughts and ideas there flow, from out of the Cosmos, the living and weaving Isis-Powers.”—This is how we must envisage the attitude of soul in the ancient Egyptians towards Osiris and Isis.

This old consciousness could find no expression for such ideas in the world surrounding physical existence on Earth; for everything here was known to be of the world of space and it could offer no outer image of the super-sensible world. And so, in search of some form of language, some kind of script in which to clothe such conceptions as “the Osiris-Power is active within me”—men reached out to the script placed by heavenly bodies in cosmic space. They said: “The super-sensible power of Osiris may be envisaged as the active power of light proceeding from the Sun, living and moving through space. Isis may be seen in the sunlight reflected by the dark Moon—just as the soul is dark when the active principle of thought does not enter. The Moon awaits the light of the Sun in order to reflect it, even as the soul awaits the Osiris-Power to reflect it back as Isis-Power.” But when the old Egyptian said—“The Sun and Moon out there show me how I can best picture the activities of my soul,”—he knew at the same time: there is no mere chance connection between the Sun with its outpouring light and the reflecting Moon, but this radiating and reflected light has some inner connection with the super-sensible forces I feel within my soul.

Although we would not describe a clock as something that drives its hands with the help of little demons, but as a mechanical contrivance, we realise, nevertheless, that the thought of the inventor, the thought proceeding from the soul of a human being is at the back of the construction of the clock. Something spiritual, therefore, is responsible for its mechanism. Just as the hands of a clock are interrelated and dependent upon each other, so did the Sun and Moon appear to the Egyptians as the expressions of a mighty cosmic clock. When we gaze at this mighty clock in space, it seems at first sight to be subject to mechanical laws, yet in the last resort it is subject to those laws which a man felt in his soul when he spoke of the powers of Osiris and Isis. The old Egyptian did not merely say: “Sun and Moon are images of the relation between Osiris and Isis.” He also felt: All that lives in my being was once subject to the mysterious relationship between light and the Sun and Moon.

Again, a relation similar to that between Osiris and Isis and the Sun and Moon was seen to exist between the stars and planets and the other Gods. The Egyptians saw in the positions of the Heavenly Bodies, images of their own super-sensible life, or of traditional experiences of ancient Seers, but in these expressions of the mighty cosmic clock they saw a portrayal of forces within their own souls. Thus the great cosmic clock, with the movements of its stars and the relation of its moving stars to the fixed stars, was a revelation of underlying spiritual, super-sensible forces—forces which had determined the positions of all the stars and had created in a cosmic script, an expression of super-sensible activities.

Such were the feelings in regard to this higher world, feelings which had been handed down to the Egyptians by their traditions of ancient clairvoyance. They knew of the existence of this spiritual world because they themselves still possessed the last remnants of ancient clairvoyance. But now they said: “We have descended from this spiritual world and we are now placed in a world of matter manifesting in physical phenomena, physical processes. We come from the world of Osiris and Isis; the highest qualities within us, the qualities which make us strive towards higher perfection, came forth from Osiris and Isis. These qualities live invisibly within us as energy and power. The physical part of man's being is derived from external circumstances, is taken from the outer world. This physical part of man is but the vesture of Osiris-Isis.”

Now this conception of primeval wisdom was the one dominating feeling in the soul of the old Egyptian; it filled his whole life of soul. A man may imbue his soul with abstract ideas and yet remain untouched in his moral and ethical life; his sense of destiny or his happiness may be quite unaffected. Abstract and mathematical concepts of Natural Science may be so deeply absorbed that a man can discuss electricity and other forces of a similar nature without feeling any need to concern himself at the same time with problems of destiny. Now the feeling of kinship with Osiris and Isis, the vision of the spiritual world existing in ancient Egypt—these things could not be conceived of apart from thoughts of destiny, happiness and moral impulses. For the ancient Egyptian said to himself: “I bear a higher Self within me, but since I have entered into a physical body this higher Self withdraws to the background and is at first not wholly manifest. Osiris and Isis are the primal source of my being; but Osiris and Isis belong to the archetypal worlds, to the golden, holy ages of long ago. The Osiris-Isis nature is now subject to the forces which have condensed outer physical substances into man's body. Osiris and Isis are fettered within the corruptible body, and this body is subject to decay even as the outer forces of Nature.”

The legend of Osiris and Isis must thus be interpreted in terms of the inner life. Osiris, the higher power in man, spread over cosmic space, is overcome by forces which are subject to destruction in the realm of human nature. The Osiris-power living in man is fettered by Typhon—fettered within a form that is the “coffin” of the spiritual nature of man. Into this coffin the Osiris-nature in man disappears and is invisible to the outer world. The mysterious Isis-nature remains, in order that in future ages, after it has been permeated by the power of the intellect, it may again reach the well-springs of man's being. Thus there lives in man a hidden quality which strives to bring Osiris to life again. The Isis-power lives in the human soul in order gradually to lead man back again to Osiris. So long as man remains a physical being he cannot of course be separated from the world of matter, yet it is the Isis-power which enables him, while he remains a physical being in the outer physical world, to maintain in his inner being a striving towards a higher Ego. And according to every true thinker, this higher Ego is there, deeply concealed in all the powers of man. This being—who is not the outer physical man but the man who has an unceasing urge to rise to the light of spirit, who is ever impelled by the hidden Isis-forces—appears as the earthly son of One who did not arise in the earthly world. He is the earthly son of Osiris who remained in the spiritual worlds. This invisible being—the being who strives to reach the Higher Self, was known by the name of Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris.

Thus the old Egyptians looked up with a certain sadness to the Osiris-origin of man, but at the same time they gazed into their innermost being, saying: “The soul has retained something of the Isis-power and this Isis-power gives birth to Horus who has the urge to strive towards spiritual heights. In these heights man finds Osiris.” Man can attain to Osiris in a twofold way. The Egyptian said: “I came forth from Osiris and to Osiris I shall again return. Osiris, my spiritual origin is within me: Horus will lead me back to Osiris his Father; but Osiris can only be attained in the spiritual world. He could not enter into the physical nature of man. In the physical nature of man he was vanquished by the Typhon-forces which are subject to decay because they are forces of external Nature.”

Osiris can therefore only be reached along two paths. One is the path leading through the Portal of Death; the other is the path through the Portal leading not to physical death but to Initiation. The Egyptian therefore said: When man passes through the Portal of Death and has passed the stages of preparation, he comes to Osiris. When he is freed from the sheaths of his earthly body in the spiritual world, the consciousness of his kinship with Osiris awakens within him. The dead man feels that in the spiritual world he may himself be called “Osiris.” And so, after death, everyone was an “Osiris.”

The other path to Osiris—the other path into the spiritual world—is through Initiation. To the Egyptian this path was a means whereby man could learn to know the Invisible, the Supersensible in human nature—Isis, or rather the Isis-power. In the knowledge gleaned from everyday life man does not penetrate to the depths of his soul, he does not reach the Isis-power. Yet there is a means whereby he can pierce through to this Isis-power, whereby he reaches the true Ego and realises that it is enveloped in physical matter. If we follow this path we reach the spiritual home of the Ego. This, then, was the teaching of ancient Egypt: Man must descend into his own innermost being; there he first understands his physical nature—the expression of his Ego. He must force his way through this physical nature. He beholds the outer world, the creation of spiritual, super-sensible Powers, in the three kingdoms of Nature: in the stones with their forms based on mathematical laws, in the plants with their life-filled forms which are the dwelling place of Divine Powers, and in the animals. But when he beholds Man he must penetrate through the outer form to the Isis-powers of the soul.

Part of the Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries, therefore, consisted in showing man how he was clothed in matter. The processes enacted when a man thus plunged into his own nature, were practically the same as occur at death but they were enacted in a different way. The aspirant had to pass in actual life through the Portal of Death, to learn of the transition from physical to super-physical vision, from the physical to the spiritual world—in short the transition experienced in actual death. He had to follow this path of descent into his own inner being, to learn what can only be experienced there. And in this region he learnt, in the first place, how the blood, the physical instrument of the Ego, is formed from Nature. Now the system of nerves is the physical instrument for the soul-activities of Feeling, Willing and Thinking and the instrument of the Ego is the blood. If a man would descend into his instruments—so thought the old Egyptians—he must descend into his physical-etheric sheaths, into the etheric qualities of soul. He must learn to be independent of the forces in his blood upon which he otherwise depends, and, after having first freed himself from these forces, he must then enter into the marvellous processes of his blood. He must learn to know his higher nature in its physical aspect. This he can only do when he is able to contemplate himself as he contemplates an outer object. Now man can only know an object as object if he himself is outside it; thus if he wishes to perceive himself, he must stand outside his own being. That is why Initiation develops forces which enable the soul-powers to have real experiences without making use of physical instruments. The physical instruments are there objectively before man, just as after death his spiritual being looks down at his physical body.

And so the pupil in the Isis-Mysteries was first taught the secrets of his own blood. He passed through an experience which may be described as an approach to the Threshold of Death. This was the first stage of Initiation into the Isis-Mysteries. The pupil had to behold his own blood, to behold himself as object, to plunge down into the sheath that is the instrument of his Isis-nature. In the sanctuaries of Initiation he was led to two Portals, where he was shown in picture form the processes taking place in his inner being. Two doors stood before him, one open, the other closed. These teachings, echoing down to us across the ages, harmonise most wonderfully with what man believes at the present day, although he now gives a materialistic interpretation to everything. The old Seers of Egypt said: “When man is in the underworld he comes to two doors; through two doors he enters into his blood and his inner being.” The modern anatomist would speak of the two entrances lying beside the valves of the heart. If the pupil wished to penetrate into his body he would have to pass through the “open” door, for the “closed” door is there to prevent the blood stream from taking a wrong path. These anatomical phenomena are material images of what the ancient sages experienced in clairvoyant form. The forms were of course not so exact as the structures confronting the modern anatomist, yet they represented what clairvoyant consciousness perceived when it gazed at the inner being of man from without.

The next stage of the Isis-Initiation may be described as follows: The pupil was led through the tests of Fire, Air and Water—that is to say he learnt to know the nature of the sheaths around his Isis-nature. He learnt to know Fire as it courses through his body, using the blood as its instrument; he learnt to know how air enters the body in the form of oxygen; he learnt to know his watery nature. Fire, Air and Water—the warmth of the breath, the fluidity of the blood. And his knowledge of the sheaths, of Fire, Air and Water purified him until he finally attained to his Isis-nature. This again may be expressed by saying: Only when the pupil reached this stage did he feel that he had really “come to himself,” realising his spiritual existence, no longer limited to the human faculties pertaining to the outer world but able to gaze into the spiritual world. In the outer world we can only see the physical Sun by day; at night it is hidden from us by matter. In the spiritual world, however, it is not so; in the spiritual world man beholds the spiritual Powers at the very time the physical eyes are not functioning. In the Isis-Initiation it was said: When a man is purified he beholds the spiritual beings face to face; he can see the Sun at Midnight. That is to say, when darkness prevails, the spiritual life and the primal spiritual Powers behind the Sun are visible to those initiated in the Isis-Mysteries.

Such was the path of the soul to the Isis-powers, the path which might be traversed by those who while still living sought to energise their deepest forces of soul. There were still higher Mysteries—the true Osiris-Mysteries. In these Mysteries man learnt how through the Isis-power he might find himself one with the spiritual super-sensible Power whence he himself had come forth.—He knew Osiris and Osiris arose within his soul.

Now when the old Egyptian wished to depict the relation between Isis and Osiris, he used a script drawn from the movements of the Sun and Moon in the Heavens; he used the relationships of the other starry bodies to express the activities of the other spiritual Powers. His script was drawn from the Zodiac in its condition of comparative rest, and from the Planets moving across the constellations. In all the mysteries thus revealed, the ancient Egyptian saw a spiritual script. He knew: Nothing that is on the Earth can help me to express what man experiences if he goes forth to seek Osiris with the Isis-power within him. The starry constellations themselves must be the script.

Hermes, or Thoth, the mighty Sage of antiquity, was revered by the Egyptians as having had the most profound insight into this relation of man to the Cosmos. It was Hermes who expressed with the greatest sublimity the relation of the stars to these spiritual Powers and to events in the Cosmos. The language of Hermes was the language of the stars themselves. The relation of Osiris to Isis, for instance, could be explained exoterically to the people in the form of legends. Those who were preparing for Initiation were taught in greater detail of the light proceeding from the Sun, its reflection by the Moon, and the marvellous processes enacted by the light passing from the new Moon through different phases to the full Moon. The primal forms of writing were derived from processes taking place in the Heavens. Man little knows to-day that the consonants are images of the Zodiacal constellations, of a cosmic element that is at rest; the relations of the vowels to the consonants are images of the connections between the moving Planets and the Zodiac. The earlier forms of the letters of the alphabet were in this sense derived from the Heavens.

The ancient Egyptians felt that the great Hermes had himself been taught by the Powers of the Heavens and that he expressed, in his own being, the deepest soul life of man. All that was expressed in the deeds of man, even in daily pursuits where mathematical sciences, geometry (which Pythagoras afterwards learnt from the Egyptians), land-surveying and the like, were needed—all these things were traced back to the wisdom of Hermes who had seen the processes and phenomena of Earth to be reflections of heavenly activities as expressed in the stellar script. This script was brought down by Hermes into mathematics and geometry and he taught the Egyptians to find, in the stars, the counterpart of earthly happenings.

Now we know that the whole life of Egypt was deeply bound up with the floods of the Nile, with the deposits swept down by the Nile from the mountainous lands in the South. And we can realise how necessary it was for the Egyptians to know in advance when these floods would occur. They reckoned time according to the stellar script in the Heavens and when Sirius, the Dog Star, was visible in the Sign of Cancer, they knew that the Sun would shortly enter this Sign and that its rays would charm forth all that the flooding of the Nile bestowed upon the soil. They said: “Sirius is the Watcher; it is he who tell us what is to come.” And they looked up in gratitude to the Dog Star, to Sirius, for it was he who enabled them to cultivate their land aright and provide for the needs of their daily life. They looked back to ages of hoary antiquity when mankind had first been taught that the movement of the stars is the expression of the mighty cosmic timepiece.

Thus did the Egyptians take counsel from the stellar script. Hermes, or Thoth, was the great Spirit who, according to the oldest traditions, had given the original script of the Cosmic Wisdom and with the inspiration flowing into him from the stars, had built up the alphabet, had taught men the principles of agriculture, geometry, land-surveying—in short all they needed for their physical life. Physical life, however, is but the body of a spiritual life, a cosmic spiritual life whence Hermes drew his inspiration. Thus all culture and civilisation came to be bound up with the name of Hermes, and indeed the Egyptians felt themselves connected with him in a still more intimate sense.

Suppose, for example, that an Egyptian living in the year 1322 before our era, were looking up to the Heavens. He would behold a certain constellation. The ancient Egyptians had a convenient method of reckoning time-conditions, convenient, that is to say, for purposes of calculation; twelve months of thirty days each, with five additional days—making three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. They had reckoned thus for centuries, for the method was really a mathematical convenience. After three hundred and sixty-five days a year had run its course. Now as we know from Astronomy, this leaves a quarter of one day unaccounted for; that is to say, the Egyptian year fell a quarter of a day too early. If you reckon it out, you will see that every successive year began a little earlier than the last. So month by month the year receded until, after a lapse of four times three hundred and sixty-five years it returned to the beginning. Thus it always happened after a period of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years that the heavenly relationships were readjusted with the earthly calculation. In the course of one thousand, four hundred and sixty years the year receded through a complete cycle. If you reckon this back three times from the year 1322 before our era, you have the epoch to which the Egyptians ascribed their holy primal Wisdom. They said: “In those ancient times men possessed the very highest clairvoyance. Each of the great Solar Years denoted a stage in the waning of clairvoyant power. We are now living in the fourth stage. Our culture has reached a point where we have only traditions of the teaching of antiquity. But we look back through three great Cosmic Years to an age when the greatest of our Sages taught his pupils and successors what we to-day possess—though in much changed form—in writing, mathematics, geometry, the science of land-surveying and astronomy.” At the same time the old Egyptians said: “Our human calculations—which adhere to the convenient numbers of twelve times thirty plus five supplementary days—bear witness how the divine-spiritual world must correct our affairs, for our intellect has estranged us from Osiris and Isis. We cannot reckon the year accurately. But we look up to a hidden world where the Powers guiding the stars correct us.”

Thus even in their Chronology the old Egyptians looked up, as it were beyond the feeble quality of the intellect, to spiritual Beings and Powers living in hidden worlds, who in accordance with deeper laws, supervised protected and watched over all that man has to experience on Earth. And in Hermes, or Thoth, they revered the Being whose inspiration flowed from these watchful Powers of Heaven. Hermes was not only a great Teacher, but a Being to whom the old Egyptians looked up with feelings of deepest gratitude and reverence, saying: “All that I possess comes from Thee! Thou wert there in days of old and lo! Thy blessings stream into the world for the healing of men through those who have been Thy messengers.” Thus both the original source of Power—Osiris—and Hermes, or Thoth,—the Guardian of that Power—were not only known to the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, but their souls were filled with a deep moral feeling, a feeling of reverence and gratitude. All external evidence shows that the wisdom of the Egyptians (especially in very ancient times, and later to a less and less degree) was permeated with religious feeling. All human knowledge was bound up with feelings of holy awe, all wisdom with piety, all science with religion. In the later Egyptian epoch this no longer appears in its purest form. For just as in the successive epochs it is the mission of the several peoples to express the Spiritual in different forms, so do the several civilisations begin to fall into decadence when their prime has been reached. Most of what has been preserved from ancient Egyptian culture belongs to the period of decadence and one can only surmise what lies behind the marvellous pyramids, for instance, and the strange animal cults. The Egyptians knew: The age when wisdom itself was working was preceded by another, when all beings—not only man—descended from divine-spiritual heights. If we would understand the innermost nature of man we must not look at his outer form, but penetrate to his inner being. What we see externally are stages at which primordial creation has remained stationary; such stages are to be seen in the three kingdoms of Nature. The first stage is the world of the minerals and stones—the forms of which are expressed in the Pyramids. The second stage is the world of plants and the inner forces of this world are expressed in the Lotus flower. The third stage is represented by the animal forms, strewn, as it were, along the path to man. Divine forces which have not attained to the human stage have poured and crystallised into the different animal forms. Such were the feelings of the old Egyptian when he beheld the retarded forces of the Gods. He looked back to primeval ages when all creation sprang from Divine Powers. He felt that Divine Powers had remained at an earlier stage of development in the beings of the three lower kingdoms of Nature and had finally risen to human form in his own being. We must always be mindful of the feelings, the consciousness of the old Egyptians, for then we shall realise that their wisdom had a moral effect in their souls. Their conception of the Divine world and Supersensible forces gave rise to a relation to the animals, which only assumed a grotesque form when Egyptian culture entered upon its period of decline. The imperfections of later Egyptian culture were not there at the beginning when it was filled with spiritual revelation. We must not—as is so often done to-day—ascribe primitive and simple conditions to the early stages of civilisations. On the contrary, primitive conditions belong to periods of decadence which set in after the original spiritual treasures have been lost. Barbaric conditions are not to be regarded as the original states of civilisation; they are in reality the result of the decadence of civilisations which have fallen from their spiritual prime.

Such a statement may be a cause of irritation to the science that describes all civilisations as having originated from old primitive conditions such as survive in savage tribes to-day. Primitive states of culture still in existence are to be regarded as stages of decadence; at the beginning of human life on Earth the early civilisations were directly inspired from the spiritual world by the Spiritual Beings standing behind external history. This is what we are told by Spiritual Science.

Again it may be asked: Does the science of to-day, representing as it does, the heights of modern culture, come into collision with this statement of Spiritual Science? I should like here to quote from a recent work by Alfred Jeremias, The Influence of Babylon on the Understanding of the Old Testament, which shows that outer research too has found its way back to an ancient culture permeated with sublime and far-reaching conceptions and that the so-called barbaric civilisations must be regarded as the outcome of decadence. This point is clearly made in the book:

The oldest records, as indeed the whole cultural life of the Euphratean civilisations, postulate the existence of scientific and at the same time religious conceptions not only in the secret lore of the Temples but according to which the State organisation was regulated, justice declared, property administered and protected. The further back we go into ancient times, the more do we find the domination of these conceptions; only when the ancient Euphratean culture enters on its period of decadence do other forces make themselves felt.

External science is here beginning to open up paths which can unite with what Spiritual Science has to introduce into modern civilisation. If it advances along these paths it will gradually abandon the dead image of primitive conditions at the starting-point of human civilisations and will come instead to the Great Individualities. And they appear before us in all sublimity because it was their task to transmit to men who still possessed the power of clairvoyance, the greatest blessings in every branch of culture. And so we look back to mighty figures—to Zarathustra, to Hermes—who appear so sublime because they were the first to give the great spiritual impulses to mankind in those remote ages of which the Sage spoke to Solon. Hermes stands there as a great Guide of mankind. As we contemplate these great Individualities, we feel a strengthening of our own powers. We realise that the Spirit not only lives in the Cosmos but flows into cosmic deeds, into the evolution of man himself. Our own life is fortified, we have greater confidence in our own actions, our hopes and purposes are strengthened by the contemplation of these great Individualities. We who are born in after ages look up to Them, seeking the fulfilment of our own existence in Their mighty powers of soul, understanding our own actions in the light of the eternal Spirit pouring into humanity through Them.

It must be answered, not to meet a human “need to know” but to meet man's universal need to become fully human. And in just what way one can strive for an answer, in what way the ignorabimus can be overcome to fulfil the demands of human evolution—this shall be the theme of our course of lectures as it proceeds.

To those who demand of a cycle of lectures with a title such as ours that nothing be introduced that might interfere with the objective presentation of ideas, I would like, since today I shall have to mention certain personalities, to say the following. The moment one begins to represent the results of human judgment in their relationship to life, to full human existence, it becomes inevitable that one indicate the personalities with whom the judgments originated. Even in a scientific presentation, one must remain within the sphere in which the judgment arises, within the realm of human struggling and striving toward such a judgment. And especially since the question we want above all to answer is: what can be gleaned from modern scientific theories that can become a vital social thinking able to transform thought into impulses for life?—then one must realize that the series of considerations one undertakes is no longer confined to the study and the lecture halls but Stands rather within the living evolution of humanity.

Behind everything with which I commenced yesterday, the modern striving for a mathematical-mechanical world view and the dissolution of that world view, behind that which came to a climax in 1872 in the famous speech by the physiologist, du Bois-Reymond, concerning the limits of natural science, there stands something even more important. It is something that begins to impress itself upon us the moment we want to begin to speak in a living way about the limits of natural science.

A personality of extraordinary philosophical stature still looks over to us with a certain vitality out of the first half of the nineteenth century: Hegel. Only in the last few years has Hegel begun to be mentioned in the lecture halls and in the philosophical literature with somewhat more respect than in the recent past. In the last third of the nineteenth century the academic world attacked Hegel outright, yet one could demonstrate irrefutably that Eduard von Hartmann had been quite right in claiming that during the 1880s only two university lecturers in all of Germany had actually read him. The academics opposed Hegel but not on philosophical grounds, for as a philosopher they hardly knew him. Yet they knew him in a different way, in a way in which we still know him today. Few know Hegel as he is contained, or perhaps better said, as his world view is contained, in the many volumes that sit in the libraries. Those who know Hegel in this original form so peculiar to him are few indeed. Yet in certain modified forms he has become in a sense the most popular philosopher the world has ever known. Anyone who participates in a workers' meeting today or, even better, anyone who had participated in one during the last few decades and had heard what was discussed there; anyone with any sense for the source of the mode of thinking that had entered into these workers' meetings, who really knew the development of modern thought, could see that this mode of thinking had originated with Hegel and flowed through certain channels out into the broadest masses. And whoever investigated the literature and philosophy of Eastern Europe in this regard would find that the Hegelian mode of thinking had permeated to the farthest reaches of Russian cultural life. One thus could say that, anonymously, as it were, Hegel has become within the last few decades perhaps one of the most influential philosophers in human history. On the other hand, however, when one perceives what has come to be recognized by the broadest spectrum of humanity as Hegelianism, one is reminded of the portrait of a rather ugly man that a kind artist painted in such a way as to please the man's family. As one of the younger sons, who had previously paid little attention to the portrait, grew older and really observed it for the first time, he said: “But father, how you have changed!” And when one sees what has become of Hegel one might well say: “Dear philosopher, how you have changed!” To be sure, something extraordinary has happened regarding this Hegelian world view.

Hardly had Hegel himself departed when his school fell apart. And one could see how this Hegelian school appropriated precisely the form of one of our new parliaments. There was a left wing and a right wing, an extreme left and an extreme right, an ultra-radical wing and an ultra-conservative wing. There were men with radical scientific and social views, who felt themselves to be Hegel's true spiritual heirs, and on the other side there were devout, positive theologians who wanted just as much to base their extreme theological conservatism on Hegel. There was a center for Hegelian studies headed by the amiable philosopher, Karl Rosenkranz, and each of these personalities, every one of them, insisted that he was Hegel's true heir.

What is this remarkable phenomenon in the evolution of human knowledge? What happened was that a philosopher once sought to raise humanity into the highest realms of thought. Even if one is opposed to Hegel, it cannot be denied that he dared attempt to call forth the world within the soul in the purest thought-forms. Hegel raised humanity into ethereal heights of thinking, but strangely enough, humanity then fell right back down out of those heights. It drew on the one hand certain materialistic and on the other hand certain positive theological conclusions from Hegel's thought. And even if one considers the Hegelian center headed by the amiable Rosenkranz, even there one cannot find Hegel's philosophy as Hegel himself had conceived it. In Hegel's philosophy one finds a grand attempt to pursue the scientific method right up into the highest heights. Afterward, however, when his followers sought to work through Hegel's thoughts themselves, they found that one could arrive thereby at the most contrary points of view.

Now, one can argue about world views in the study, one can argue within the academies, and one can even argue in the academic literature, so long as worthless gossip and Barren cliques do not result. These offspring of Hegelian philosophy, however, cannot be carried out of the lecture halls and the study into life as social impulses. One can argue conceptually about contrary world views, but within life itself these contrary world views do not fight so peaceably. One must use just such a paradoxical expression in describing such a phenomenon. And thus there stands before us in the first half of the nineteenth century an alarming factor in the evolution of human cognition, something that has proved itself to be socially useless in the highest degree. With this in mind we must then raise the question: how can we find a mode of thinking that can be useful in social life? In two phenomena above all we notice the uselessness of Hegelianism for social life.

One of those who studied Hegel most intensively, who brought Hegel fully to life within himself, was Karl Marx. And what is it that we find in Marx? A remarkable Hegelianism indeed! Hegel up upon the highest peak of the conceptual world—Hegel upon the highest peak of Idealism—and the faithful student, Karl Marx, immediately transforming the whole into its direct opposite, using what he believed to be Hegel's method to carry Hegel's truths to their logical conclusions. And thereby arises historical materialism, which is to be for the masses the one world view that can enter into social life. We thus are confronted in the first half of the nineteenth century with the great Idealist, Hegel, who lived only in the Spirit, only in his ideas, and in the second half of the nineteenth century with his student, Karl Marx, who contemplated and recognized the reality of matter alone, who saw in everything ideal only ideology. If one but takes up into one's feeling this turnabout of conceptions of world and life in the course of the nineteenth century, one feels with all one's soul the need to achieve an understanding of nature that will serve as a basis for judgments that are socially viable.

Now, if we turn on the other hand to consider something that is not so obviously descended from Hegel but can be traced back to Hegel nonetheless, we find still within the first half of the nineteenth century, but carrying over into the second half, the “philosopher of the ego,” Max Stirner. While Karl Marx occupies one of the two poles of human experience mentioned yesterday, the pole of matter upon which he bares all his considerations, Stirner, the philosopher of the ego, proceeds from the opposite pole, that of consciousness. And just as the modern world view, gravitating toward the pole of matter, becomes unable to discover consciousness within that element (as we saw yesterday in the example of du Bois-Reymond), a person who gravitates to the opposite pole of consciousness will not be able to find the material world. And so it is with Max Stirner. For Max Stirner, no material universe with natural laws actually exists. Stirner sees the world as populated solely by human egos, by human consciousnesses that want only to indulge themselves to the full. “I have built my thing on nothing”—that is one of Max Stirner's maxims. And on these grounds Stirner opposes even the notion of Providence. He says for example: certain moralists demand that we should not perform any deed out of egoism, but rather that we should perform it because it is pleasing to God. In acting, we should look to God, to that which pleases Him, that which He commands. Why, thinks Max Stirner, should I, who have built only upon the foundation of ego-consciousness, have to admit that God is after all the greater egoist Who can demand of man and the world that all should be performed as it suits Him? I will not surrender my own egoism for the sake of a greater egoism. I will do what pleases me. What do I care for a God when I have myself?

One thus becomes entangled and confused within a consciousness out of which one can no longer find the way. Yesterday I remarked how on the one hand we can arrive at clear ideas by awakening in the experience of ideas when we descend into our consciousness. These dreamlike ideas manifest themselves like drives from which we cannot then escape. One would say that Karl Marx achieved clear ideas—if anything his ideas are too clear. That was the secret of his success. Despite their complexity, Marx's ideas are so clear that, if properly garnished, they remain comprehensible to the widest circles. Here clarity has been the means to popularity. And until it realizes that within such a clarity humanity is lost, humanity, as long as it seeks logical consequences, will not let go of these clear ideas.

If one is inclined by temperament to the other extreme, to the pole of consciousness, one passes over onto Stirner's side of the scale. Then one despises this clarity: one feels that, applied to social thinking, this clarity makes man into a cog in a social order modeled on mathematics or mechanics—but into that only, into a mere cog. And if one does not feel oneself cut out for just that, then the will that is active in the depths of human consciousness revolts. Then one comes radically to oppose all clarity. One mocks all clarity, as Stirner did. One says to oneself: what do I care about anything else? What do I care even about nature? I shall project my own ego out of myself and see what happens. We shall see that the appearance of such extremes in the nineteenth century is in the highest degree characteristic of the whole of recent human evolution, for these extremes are the distant thunder that preceded the storm of social chaos we are now experiencing. One must understand this connection if one wants at all to speak about cognition today.

Yesterday we arrived at an indication of what happens when we begin to correlate our consciousness to an external natural world of the senses. Our consciousness awakens to clear concepts but loses itself. It loses itself to the extent that one can only posit empty concepts such as “matter,” concepts that then become enigmatic. Only by thus losing ourselves, however, can we achieve the clear conceptual thinking we need to become fully human. In a certain sense we must first lose ourselves in order to find ourselves again out of ourselves. Yet now the time has come when we should learn something from these phenomena. And what can one learn from these phenomena? One can learn that, although clarity of conceptual thinking and perspicuity of mental representation can be won by man in his interaction with the world of sense, this clarity of conceptual thinking becomes useless the moment we strive scientifically for something more than a mere empiricism. It becomes useless the moment we try to proceed toward the kind of phenomenalism that Goethe the scientist cultivated, the moment we want something more than natural science, namely Goetheanism.

What does this imply? In establishing a correlation between our inner life and the external physical world of the senses we can use the concepts we form in interaction with nature in such a way that we try not to remain within the natural phenomena but to think on beyond them. We are doing this if we do more than simply say: within the spectrum there appears the color yellow next to the color green, and on the other side the blues. We are doing this if we do not simply interrelate the phenomena with the help of our concepts but seek instead, as it were, to pierce the veil of the senses and construct something more behind it with the aid of our concepts. We are doing this if we say: out of the clear concepts I have achieved I shall construct atoms, molecules—all the movements of matter that are supposed to ex-ist behind natural phenomena. Thereby something extraordinary happens. What happens is that when I as a human being confront the world of nature [see illustration], I use my concepts not only to create for myself a conceptual order within the realm of the senses but also to break through the boundary of sense and construct behind it atoms and the like I cannot bring my lucid thinking to a halt within the realm of the senses. I take my lesson from inert matter, which continues to roll on even when the propulsive force has ceased. My knowledge reaches the world of sense, and I remain inert. I have a certain inertia, and I roll with my concepts on beyond the realm of the senses to construct there a world the existence of which I can begin to doubt when I notice that my thinking has only been borne along by inertia.

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It is interesting to note that a great proportion of the philosophy that does not remain within phenomena is actually nothing other than just such an inert rolling-on beyond what really exists within the world. One simply cannot come to a halt. One wants to think ever farther and farther beyond and construct atoms and molecules—under certain circumstances other things as well that philosophers have assembled there. No wonder, then, that this web one has woven in a world created by the inertia of thinking must eventually unravel itself again.

Goethe rebelled against this law of inertia. He did not want to roll onward thus with his thinking but rather to come strictly to a halt at this limit [see illustration: heavy line] and to apply concepts within the realm of the senses. He thus would say to himself: within the spectrum appear to me yellow, blue, red, indigo, violet. If, however, I permeate these appearances of color with my world of concepts while remaining within the phenomena, then the phenomena order themselves of their own accord, and the phenomenon of the spectrum teaches me that when the darker colors or anything dark is placed behind the lighter colors or anything light, there appear the colors which lie toward the blue end of the spectrum. And conversely, if I place light behind dark, there appear the colors which lie toward the red end of the spectrum.

What was it that Goethe was actually seeking to do? Goethe wanted to find simple phenomena within the complex but above all such phenomena as allowed him to remain within this limit [see illustration], by means of which he did not roll on into a realm that one reaches only through a certain mental inertia. Goethe wanted to adhere to a strict phenomenalism. If we remain within phenomena and if we strive with our thinking to come to a halt there rather than allow ourselves to be carried onward by inertia, the old question arises in a new way. What meaning does the phenomenal world have when I consider it thus? What is the meaning of the mechanics and mathematics, of the number, weight, measure, or temporal relation that I import into this world? What is the meaning of this?

You know, perhaps, that the modern world conception has sought to characterize the phenomena of tone, color, warmth, etc. as only subjective, whereas it characterizes the so-called primary qualities, the qualities of weight, space, and time, as something not subjective but objective and inherent in things. This conception can be traced back principally to the English philosopher, John Locke, and it has to a considerable extent determined the philosophical basis of modern scientific thought. But the real question is: what place within our systematic science of nature as a whole do mathematics, do mechanics—these webs we weave within ourselves, or so it seems at first—what place do these occupy? We shall have to return to this question to consider the specific form it takes in Kantianism. Yet without going into the whole history of this development one can nonetheless emphasize our instinctive conviction that measuring or counting or weighing external objects is essentially different from ascribing to them any other qualities.

It certainly cannot be denied that light, tones, colors, and sensations of taste are related to us differently from that which we could represent as subject to mathematical-mechanical laws. For it really is a remarkable fact,a fact worthy of our consideration: you know that honey tastes sweet, but to a man with jaundice it tastes bitter—so we can say that we stand in a curious relationship to the qualities within this realm—while on the other hand we could hardly maintain that any normal man would see a triangle as a triangle, but a man with jaundice would see it as a square! Certain differentiations thus do exist, and one must be cognizant of them; on the other hand, one must not draw absurd conclusions from them. And to this very day philosophical thinking has failed in the most extraordinary way to come to grips with this most fundamental epistemological question. We thus see how a contemporary philosopher, Koppelmann, overtrumps even Kant by saying, for example—you can read this on page 33 of his Philosophical Inquiries [Weltanschauungsfragen]: everything that relates to space and time we must first construct within by means of the understanding, whereas we are able to assimilate colors and tastes directly. We construct the icosahedron, the dodecahedron, etc.: we are able to construct the standard regular solids only because of the organization of our understanding. No wonder, then, claims Koppelmann, that we find in the world only those regular solids we can construct with our understanding. One thus can find Koppelmann saying almost literally that it is impossible for a geologist to come to a geometer with a crystal bounded by seven equilateral triangles precisely because—so Koppelmann claims—such a crystal would have a form that simply would not fit into our heads. That is out-Kanting Kant. And thus he would say that in the realm of the thing-in-itself crystals could exist that are bounded by seven regular triangles, but they cannot enter our head, and thus we pass them by; they do not exist for us.

Such thinkers forget but one thing: they forget—and it is just this that we want to indicate in the course of these lectures with all the forceful proofs we can muster—that the natural order governing the construction of our head also governs the construction of the regular polyhedrons, and it is for just this reason that our head constructs no other polyhedrons than those that actually confront us in the external world. For that, you see, is one of the basic differences between the so-called subjective qualities of tone, color, warmth, as well as the different qualities of touch, and that which confronts us in the mechanical-mathematical view of the world. That is the basic difference: tone and color leave us outside of ourselves; we must first take them in; we must first perceive them. As human beings we stand outside tone, color, warmth, etc. This is not entirely the case as regards warmth—I shall discuss that tomorrow—but to a certain extent this is true even of warmth. These qualities leave us initially outside ourselves, and we must perceive them. In formal, spatial, and temporal relationships and regarding weight this is not the case. We perceive objects in space but stand ourselves within the same space and the same lawfulness as the objects external to us. We stand within time just as do the external objects. Our physical existence begins and ends at a definite point in time. We stand within space and time in such a way that these things permeate us without our first perceiving them. The other things we must first perceive. Regarding weight, well, ladies and gentlemen, you will readily admit that this has little to do with perception, which is somewhat open to arbitrariness: otherwise many people who attain an undesired corpulence would be able to avoid this by perception alone, merely by having the faculty of perception. No, ladies and gentlemen, regarding weight we are bound up with the world entirely objectively, and the organization by means of which we stand within color, tone, warmth, etc. is powerless against that objectivity.

So now we must above all pose the question: how is it that we arrive at any mathematical-mechanical judgment? How do we arrive at a science of mathematics, at a science of mechanics? How is it, then, that this mathematics, this mechanics, is applicable to the external world of nature, and how is it that there is a difference between the mathematical-mechanical qualities of external objects and those that confront us as the so-called subjective qualities of sensation, tone, color, warmth, etc.?

At the one extreme, then, we are confronted with this fundamental question. Tomorrow we shall discuss another such question. Then we shall have two starting-points from which we can proceed to investigate the nature of science. Thence we shall proceed to the other extreme to investigate the formation of social judgments.

A week ago, I spoke before you about the idea of Lucifer. In connection with the last talk, I would like to explain something about the same idea and its significance for the human evolution and I may connect with an excellent piece of art, with The Children of Lucifer (1900) by Édouard Schuré (1841-1929, French writer, theosophist).

Someone who regards theosophy only as a sum of teachings and dogmas or the Theosophical Society only as a sect that deals with particular religious-philosophical or other ideas and aims at a corresponding lifestyle that is maybe somewhat surprised about the subject of this talk. However, who regards theosophy as something that one has to regard as deepening of our whole spiritual life, even more, as deepening of our whole culture, finds it comprehensible that theosophy is not only looked for within the narrow borders,, but in all regions, in all branches of life and, hence, also in art above all.

Many people have a point of view that leads them to believe that theosophy is something unworldly, even somewhat life-hostile. Those who believe in such a way have not yet adopted the real basis of the theosophical world movement.

Just a piece of art like Édouard Schure's The Children of Lucifer shows us that the living creating of the artist not only is not impaired by the theosophical deepening, but that the true theosophy and the true theosophical life is just able to inspire art in the most eminent sense and give it exceptionally strong impulses.

Indeed, I would like to link to this drama The Children of Lucifer. However, if we just embark on the mode of formation of this dramatic poetry in our time and on the peculiar structure of the spirit out of which this piece of art has arisen, we are able to look deeper at the theosophical life at the same time.

Schuré has probably drawn the best forces of his work just from the theosophical worldview, and he belongs certainly to the most exquisite authors in the theosophical field. Who wants to find access to the theosophical life from any other point of view than that of the known compendia and smaller manuals can do it with the help of Schuré's works. Already the characteristic how Schuré came to that which should inspire his mind to express artistically what we have in The Children of Lucifer is theosophically extremely interesting.

It is told to us in the fine monument he erected in honour of somebody who had influenced his soul life the conceivably deepest. An extremely interesting fact of the modern cultural life confronts us here. Édouard Schuré published a book and provided it with an introduction that comes from a personality who had deeply looked into the secrets of existence. It is a book in which one recognises the artist. In this book a spirit breathes, which differs from that which we can find, otherwise, in similar writings, a spirit that has immediately processed and taken up real theosophy in himself as life. Schuré calls this personality—Marguerita Albana Mignaty (1827-1887), who wrote about Corregio (Antonio Allegri da C., 1489-1534. Italian painter)—his leader during her life, he calls her the spirit of his soul after her death. One cannot express that more appropriately than he did if one looks into the psychology of Schuré's creating.

In the last third of the 19th century it was granted to some deeper inclined natures to look into true spiritual life once again, after one had understood the word spirit hardly as anything else than a sum of abstractions long time, after one did not connect, actually, anything real with the word spirit long time.

If—on one side—we delve into Schuré's creating and—on the other side—into the mind of that personality which he calls his leader, we are immediately recalled of that which was understood within the Greek mystery view in the aurora of our western cultural life by the concepts of god and of the divine life. The word theosophy originated later. The first to use it was the apostle Paul. However, it was a common property of all deeper recognising people. We need to get involved only in that which existed within the spiritualised Christianity as theosophy, as a divine concept, as a concept of the divine life, and you are able to grasp the fact of the spirit immediately in another way than it is possible with the modern concepts, as they are still quite usual. The Greek understood by god, by the divine being still nothing else than such a being that surmounts the human being, indeed, concerning his qualities, concerning his abilities, but that is similar to the human being. He calls the human being a becoming god, and he understands any god in such a way that he has once gone through the school of humanity. If the Greek looked up at his god, he said to himself, the gods once went through the sufferings and joys, the experience of life, which I have to go through now. They once went through this school of life, which I have finished now, and I soar those spheres of creating later, on which the gods are today.—The Greek calls his gods older brothers in the entire cosmic evolution, and regarded the human being himself as a draft that should become the same once as the gods are today.

This gives another relation to the divine than that which only looks up at something divine, only foresees something in the beyond. As well as here in the physical world for the Greek the external physical realms establish, the sensory physical realms, from the mineral, to the plant and animal realms up to the human realm, the hierarchy, the sequence of the gods outranked the human. He considered the realms beyond the human one as the world of the gods. He did not call that which the Greek should experience in those schools—which were cult sites at the same time, which one called mysteries—abstract, only scientific knowledge of some higher principles, of some forces of nature. The Greek did not understood it symbolically but as something real that the human being associated with the gods in the schools. The mystery pupil did not feel towards the gods, unlike the child feels if it looks up at the adult who has already reached what it itself reaches in a future life epoch. Something completely real was this experience to the Greeks. Hence, theosophy was for those, who coined the word first, not knowledge of the gods, but the knowledge that was obtained in this peculiar way by the contact with the higher spiritual beings. Anybody who was initiated into the mysteries not only obtained knowledge, but he was enabled to associate with the gods, with the spirits, as well as he associates here on our earth with human beings. One called natural knowledge that knowledge that the human being acquires with the senses.

However, one called that knowledge, which one received from the gods, divine knowledge: theosophy. I know very well that the most people of those who think from the modern point of view regard such a phrase, as I have just used it, as nothing but an only poetic picture, as a symbol or something extremely fantastic and superstitious. It is neither this nor that; it is something that the human being can really experience. The human being can bring himself to turn his look to the spiritual beings outranking him as he directs his look to the sensuous beings. These spiritual beings avoid the sensuous eye, like all senses, because they have accomplished the stages of spirituality and do no longer have any existence for the senses. The mysteries of the Greeks aim at this: a development of the human being to get contact with the higher beings.

In the last third of the 19th century, it was granted, as I said, again to some deeper natures to understand something of that which is meant, actually, with such a thing. Above all, a person was part of it like Marguerita Albana. However, I would like to say that such a personality was not initiated by means of that big spiritual art which somebody had to go through who wanted to maintain the contact with the gods within the Greek mysteries. Such a personality was an initiate by nature as there are poets by nature. However, I cannot get involved further in the fact that a soul, which is initiated by nature in the former stages of existence, is already over some experiences, so that that which it experiences now is only recollections of former stages of existence. However, the possibility to behold in the higher world, transforming particular lower forces of our existence, forms the basis of such a spiritual person like Marguerita Albana. What does that mean?

Any means of higher knowledge are transformations of subordinated forces. What still the undeveloped human being had in far-away prehistoric time as undeveloped vague senses can be transformed into the eye which opens the splendour of the sunlight to us. On the other hand, visualise once how imperfect the organ of the ear is on the lower developmental stages! All higher organs that open the marvellous nature round the human being are transformations, metamorphoses of lower forces. Human forces can also today be transformed into higher senses.

Thus, some human beings were equipped with higher senses just in the last third of the 19th century. That is why they could behold into the spiritual environment. What other human beings have only in abstractions or notions, the reality of the divine existence, was to them as certain as the sensuous things to the other human beings. Such personalities could give information of the higher worlds. Just such persons could inspire the receptive nature of Édouard Schuré to the nicest and biggest. Édouard Schuré combined soul, mind, and deep esoteric knowledge with a real Schillerean diction and strength of language in this drama, whose translation you can receive from Marie von Sivers here. The drama The Children of Lucifer is something that is created not only out of the spirit of the present, as it is embodied in few people now, but it is created almost out of the spirit of the next human future. In this work, those who have the disposition and talent may develop something according to the highest and most significant theosophical ideas. Édouard Schuré just realised what took place in the Greek mysteries and in those acts of consecration.

You all know that also within the German cultural life in the last third of the 19th century a breath was to be felt that originated from a kind of understanding of the Greek mysteries. Richard Wagner (1813-1883, German composer) and his circle was inspired by the spirit of the Greek mysteries in certain ways. We still have to speak something about this chapter in the next talks. You know also that one of those spirits who were close-knit with Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900, philosopher), wrote his first work about the Greek tragedy and that he wanted to show how this Greek tragedy came into being from an ancient spiritual life. He did not go as far as Édouard Schuré, not into the mysteries, however, to the gates of the mysteries when he wrote the work The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1869).

Two words faced his mind: the Apollonian, on the one side, and the Dionysian, on the other side. What did Nietzsche mean with these words? He understood two spiritual currents by them.

The Dionysian, he says, is that which completely lives in that element of the human cultural life, which is at one with the cosmic spirit all around. The Dionysian is to Friedrich Nietzsche a rapture that the human being experiences if he completely penetrates his being with that core of the highest spiritual life, which flows through the whole universe. Nietzsche anticipated such a thing that the Pythagoreans called music of the spheres, something of that old choir of which also Goethe speaks while he lets his Faust begin with the words:

In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with tread of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.

Nietzsche anticipated something of that mysterious hearing and listening to that which flows through the universe, which makes the planets dance around the sun, which animates the spheres. He anticipated that in this dance something divine enjoys life and that the human beings can penetrate themselves with the breath of the divine, and that the human being then feels at one with the whole universe. Then, Nietzsche thinks, the human being lives in a kind of rapture, then he experiences what flows through the whole universe, then an echo of that god whom the Greek calls Dionysus lives in him.

As to Nietzsche, this god is that who poured out into the material world round us who is buried in the material world and who celebrates his resurrection then in the human mind, in the human soul. So that the disciple of Dionysus accomplishes his songs, his inspirations under the influence of this god and allows to flow out what one calls the immediate Dionysian art arisen from the divine. Thus, the Dionysus dancer and Dionysus singer was the representative of the divine Dionysian principle in the world. Nietzsche regards this Dionysus drama as the original drama, the later drama originated only from the fact that an image was created, a quiet, dreamlike image of the original Dionysian rapture. The Dionysus disciple receives what arises before his senses, and he can mirror this in serene Apollonian kind. Thus, the Apollonian art is something that was created afterward as an image of the Dionysian art. It is the image, the notion of something that lived in old Greece. Nietzsche pointed already to the primeval times, in which the Dionysus disciples did not only speak of the god, but lived the divine in their movements, in their voices and works as the original artists. Any later art appeared to Nietzsche only as a late echo of this old art. Any science appeared to him only as a shadowy image of the forces represented once by the human beings.

In Richard Wagner's art, Nietzsche saw a renewal of that great art which connects the human beings again with the divine. Therefore, it was clear to Nietzsche that Richard Wagner could not bring human figures on the stage, but that he needed supernatural figures which did not show only what happens in this world, but also what works behind this world in spirit. As well as in the Dionysus drama the Greek artist was able to do it, Richard Wagner's figures, put down on the stage, had also to have outgrown the usual human in the sense of Nietzsche, so that they can embody something about which the human being can say, they are there to that which comes once. In his book Le drame musical. Richard Wagner, son Suvre et son idée (1875), Schuré also created out of this spirit which was round Wagner, and he represented the idea of the musical drama greatly; for Marguerita Albana had introduced him in the true spiritual world, in the spiritual reality. Inkling became reality to him, and with it, he could find the key to the inside of the Greek mysteries. Better than someone else, he was capable to illumine what took place within the holy mysteries of Greece. In his work Sanctuaires d'Orient (1898), he was able to rebuild the so-called Greek original drama with great ingenuity. What was now the Eleusinian original drama?

It is a reproduction of an experience which cannot be experienced at all within the sensuous world which can be experienced only if the human being himself develops to that level where higher senses awake in him where he realises that all physical principle, which he get to know, are real thoughts of the beings whom the Greeks called gods. As well as the human being creates with his thoughts today, and as he puts his thoughts into his works, his older brothers, the gods, put their thoughts into the world of existence.

Let us get into the mind of such a Greek mystery pupil who has been initiated. He said to himself if he could have spoken with our words: look at a piece of art, at a machine, what are they? They are works of human beings, formed according to human thoughts. If you stand before the piece of art, before the machine, you see also the artist, the mechanic through their work, and I understand the work if the principles are disclosed. What are these principles? They are what lived first in the head, in the spirit of a human being.

The thoughts of the mechanic, of the artist are crystallised as it were in the material tool, in the marble piece of art. As I look from the piece of art and from the machine at the artist and at the mechanic, the Greek artist looked from the earth at the higher beings. If he wanted to understand the principles that build up an animal, he said to himself, thoughts of beings of divine nature are therein. As well as the thought of the mechanic is in the machine, the thoughts of a creator, of a god are in the animal, in the crystal, in the starry heaven.—This god is to him a being to whom he feels related, who is on a level that the human being himself reaches once. The Greek regarded the god as a being, which has arisen from a human level, and the human being is a being that once attains a divine level. Thus, he associated with the gods in the mysteries. He associated with the gods like with older brothers, and the feeling, which expresses itself in it, is something quite natural. One has only to settle in such a kind of thinking. From such a kind of thinking, the mystery pupil looks up at those beings that are slumbering, as it were, or are embodied in their thought in the whole nature surrounding us.

The mystery pupils saw the slumbering divine thoughts in the whole nature. The being of the divinity poured out into it, and the human being is there only, so that in him these divine thoughts can recover their very own existence. All thoughts in the soul of the human being are the resurrection of the god in the world. Placed in the universe in such a way, the own human life appears as an after-image of the descent, the suffering and death of the godhead and the grave of the godhead in the matter. The human being is called to redeem the gods again from the matter. This is the way of Dionysus, the way that all gods have taken. Thus, the gods live in their thoughts.

Theosophy calls Dionysus the last-born of the gods. You know that in the legend he is a son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. One says that his divine father snatched him from his mother when Zeus struck her with a streak of lightning. Then, however, the mother of the gods, Hera, became inflamed with jealousy against this child not stemming from her. She set the titans against the child who tore it and scattered the pieces all over the world. Pallas Athena saved its heart only and brought it to Zeus who formed Dionysus anew.

We realise that this god was there already before, and we realise that this divinity has a special relation to the world. What is it? It was shown in the mysteries as the creator of that in the human being, which humanity attained last. The human being appears partially as originating from the hands of the gods. In the first years of his life he also faces us in such a way, because he has not yet formed own existence. Bit by bit he matures and becomes independent. Then he works and forms on his own existence. More and more the strength awakes in him that makes him the creator of his innermost being, the creator of his soul strength and mental power. Now one says within the mystery schools that as it were the last step in the life that the human being receives from nature or from God is connected with the god Dionysus.

There we touch one of the deepest secrets of the Greek mysteries, namely the sexual maturity of the human being. The time, when he comes out of the undifferentiated sexual life to the differentiated one of man and woman, is still the last step which nature accomplishes with the human being leading him to this maturity, where in him the desire awakes for the other sex. What he then makes of this desire, how he refines it, how he penetrates it with soul, and what he makes of love in spiritual respect, this is the own work of the human being. The last step that the gods accomplish with the human being is that they develop him to the young man and woman during puberty. The force that expresses itself everywhere in nature, in any knowledge, in any sensuousness and in all mental forces on the different levels, the mystery pupil also recognises it now in the proclivity of one sex for the other.

How does the human being perceive any way, the Greek mystery pupil asked himself, how does any being perceive anyway? If we imagine an animal eating the plants instinctively, which are useful and necessary for its prosperity, it is a kind of perception. Nevertheless, it is a higher level of percipience if our eye turns to the light and soaks it up as it were. Sensuousness is percipience, vision is percipience, and it is percipience if one sex inclines towards the other. Then the transformation of the lower forces to higher and higher ones takes place. The last step which nature, or God, spoken in the freer sense, has undertaken with the human being can also be transformed. Sensuousness changes into love. It spiritualises itself; it ensouls itself. Dionysus was the god who represented this strength of sexual maturity to the Greek of the mystery. Dionysus did not only have this function with it, because the sexual maturity is still connected with something quite different. Dionysus is understood as the last-born of the gods only with it.

If we look at the human being as he faces us today, we have a being before us in which the more astute human being—and someone who embarks on the theosophical worldview is led to this deeper look bit by bit—sees something that has become man and woman gradually. You need only to read Plato and to take him seriously in order to understand the Greek kind of view and you find how he points to a time when there was not yet man and woman, while the human being was still man and woman at the same time. The biblical legend points also to such an undifferentiated human race, and the Fall of Man is nothing else than the symbolic representation of the sexual differentiation. If we understand that the human being, as he faces us, originated from a bisexual being, we say to ourselves, in the course of evolution, the human being acquired his one-sided sexuality. He developed from the double sexuality to uni-sexuality. He lost half of his productive power. This half has awoken on the other side as the strength of our soul, as the strength of our mind. So that the human being became unisexual—a deeper look into nature shows this—, the human being became productive spiritual-mentally because he has given away half of his physical productive power.

Thereby the human being became capable of self-consciousness and could say to himself “I”, he is an independent being that—if we may express ourselves figuratively—was dismissed from the hands of the gods and became his own creator. Thus, it is connected in the development that the human being feels that strength which forms, indeed, the basis of his egoism that makes him, however, a free, self-conscious being. Hence, on every stage the emancipation of the human being recurs where sexuality finds its further development in any way.

The god Dionysus is the last-born of the gods. That means that the Greeks imagined that he developed the human being up to his present independence. Zeus, Cronus, the older gods, created the human being up to the point when he was a double-sexual being that lived in a vague consciousness, when he was not able to say “I” to himself, when he was without self-consciousness and without freedom. The creator of independence is Dionysus. With it, the divine principle poured out uniformly into the whole nature up to the point when the human being became independent. Then the human being faces us in countless individuals.

Let me illustrate this. If we put back ourselves in the time when the human being was not yet independent when he was still a double-sexual being with dim consciousness. There one could say, as well as my hand is a limb of my own organism, the human being was a limb of the whole divinity in those days. His consciousness still rested in the bosom of the divine consciousness. One could still see through the human being to the divine soul. Now, after the human being became independent, was separated from the divine consciousness, this soul is divided in as many individuals as there are human beings. This was greatly symbolised in the divided god Dionysus, who was dismembered by the Titans. Pallas Athena was the symbol of the human wisdom. We felt her with our hearts, with our higher minds as the common consciousness of the whole humanity. While we feel at one again, a mind of the same kind develops in the whole humanity, the heart of the god Dionysus is saved and again carried upwards to the dwelling of the gods. Thus, the Greek imagined that the god Dionysus led the human beings up to the separation of the sexes and, finally, to sexual maturity. One regarded the proclivity of one sex to the other as one of many forces, which come from the god Dionysus. Then two spiritual currents work on the human being, who stands in the world as a creature of the god Dionysus. These spiritual currents are the starting point of our own culture.

One current is that where the spirit works in the external, serene form and in wisdom to develop the beauty of the external form and the order in the sensuous urge. It should not work fiercely and irregularly, by which Dionysus brought the human being up to the present level, but it should comply in harmony and order. One sees this principle of the external formal creation of Dionysus best of all in the Greek and Roman art, in the Greek beauty and in the Roman statecraft. They introduced order and beauty in the social life of the human beings created by Dionysus as independent beings. The soul which animates and ensouls this urge was refined and deified by Christianity; everything that regulates the human community in such a way that not blind urge, but spiritualised, deified urge prevails is caused by the understood Christianity. Spirit and love are two currents in the human development.

The present development and that of the last millennia face the poet of The Children of Lucifer. He considers what Greek spirit and Roman statecraft created as a living and uplifting principle of the Dionysian human being and on the other side the deepening of the principle of love by Christianity. Now we also understand how Édouard Schuré got around to processing these ideas in a piece of art that he called The Children of Lucifer.

In Dionysia, a city of Asia Minor, the following happened. This city had a cult that was dedicated to the god Dionysus. These Dionysian mysteries were celebrated in Dionysia and had there a mystery site. Then this Dionysian current was intermingled with the second current. It was in the fourth century of the Christian calendar. It was the Roman world domination and made those who were worshippers of Dionysus, who knew that a spark of a divine soul lives in them, members of the Roman statecraft. Now the Greek spirit and the Roman statecraft conflicted with each other. The original spirit must revolt. Why must it revolt? It must revolt because the external form wants to integrate the independent. This can easily become an external order. That which should make order, harmony, and unity easily becomes that which suppresses and subjugates the human freedom and independence. This also applies to the Roman spirit—which was born out of the Dionysian spirit—in the fourth century. These two currents of the human spirit face us in Dionysia: on one side the spirit, on the other side the stiffened state formalism. These are two currents that extend via the Dionysian mysteries to Christianity, which should spiritualise the drive of the human being to the other human being, which should refine the actions of Dionysus and put them in a higher light purifying the mere desire.

However, it degenerated in that time, in the fourth century, to an external formalism that subjugated and suppressed what it should refine. Thus, we look at the subjugating Caesar on the one side and on the other side at the subjugating Christian priest who does not get love out to refine it, but to deaden it. We see how in Édouard Schuré's drama two persons as representatives of the Greco-Roman spirit meet, on one side a young man, who is called Theokles first and then Phosphorus, and on the other side a virgin who was consecrated to the service of Christianity as chaste sacrificial virgin. We see Phosphorus revolting who wants to originate the Dionysian human being in the highest refinement against the solidifying, the Caesar principle, and on the other side the Christian virgin who is not so spiritualised that she is world-enraptured but so spiritualised that she herself is called to work and create in this immediate world. These two persons deepen each other. How nicely, greatly and tremendously the development of these persons is shown. Phosphorus sees the Caesar principle subjugating his hometown on the one side, the Christian principle subjugating it on the other side. On one side, he sees the divine Caesar, on the other side the merely good, world-enraptured shepherd and those who should adore him. He is led to an old person, whom one calls the old man of the unknown god in Greek.

It is a big transformation that our Phosphorus experiences. In a distant canyon, he looks for a landmark, and he encounters one of the temples, which were considered as initiation temples. He meets an old priest there, one of the sages of the unknown god. Which god? That god whom one does not confess whom one does not revere in this or that figure. That god who does not answer if one asks him because everybody must answer to himself what is not to be put into words what lives, however, as a spark in every human being. As true as it is that the human being becomes aware of the divine spark, he can also realise that he is on the way to the big god all his life through. This god forms the basis of that which lives in the stars which is in the human breast, and what still forms the basis of everything that the human being performs on his higher level. For he is not a god of the past, but a god of the future, not a god of the thought of the past or the present, but a god of the thoughts, which the human being once is able to think as the highest on the current developmental level.

That is why he is called the unknown god because the human being cannot serve a god who gives him a completed existence, but because he wants to serve a god who can stand there in perfect figure only in the future. Therefore, the free human being adheres to the divine spark in his breast; therefore, he adheres to that which exists as the dismembered Dionysus at first in the world outdoors. Then he cannot find strength from anything else than from this separated divine spark, the strength of the upward development, then, however, he also knows that this upward development is connected with the passage through knowledge and suffering, with the passage through the bad because the human being is detached, according to his inner spirituality, from the divine. Hence, free forces must emerge in him to lead back this spark to divinity. If we had remained in the bosom of the gods without splitting in the sense of the Dionysus legend, the divinity itself would lead us to godliness. Thus, we appear like apostatised sons of god. This strength in us, which should lead us as sons of Dionysus to this godliness, is Lucifer's strength, the luciferic principle, that light, which the human being freely kindles in himself, in order to find the whole god as a part of the divine being once.

The strength that works in him is the light. Lucifer, the bearer of light, is the teacher and leader who bears the light in the human being and in the whole humanity. All those who develop such an attitude like Phosphorus are the children of Lucifer. Thus, they are not anti-Christian. They are so minded that they say: in Christ, the god appeared who became a human being who descended and enjoyed life in the human body. However, the human being has to develop so that he unfolds the god in himself in such a way that the deified human being meets the incarnate god that the human being who ascends from below finds a similar being. As Christ is now that who descended the deepest from above as the revealing god, Lucifer is the god whom the deified human being meets. Christ and Lucifer belong together, understood in the right sense. Thus, we find Phosphorus, while any Caesarism cannot keep him by any suppression of the free Dionysian principle in the world from rushing to the temple of the unknown god to receive the light that carries him upwards to become a son of Lucifer that way.

As well as Phosphorus pursues this way and raises his mind up to that view which recognises Lucifer as the developmental principle, Kleonis develops from a Christian virgin to a universal principle. She should solely direct her love to the incarnate god. She develops to such a degree that she anticipates that love can be refined in the human being in such a way that the divine love of the incarnate god combines with the human love in the human nature itself. Thus, the Christian virgin soars the point where she can meet the unknown god. Christ has come to life in the Christian virgin because she joins not only in the view and in admiration with the divine, but achieves that she rises to the Christian love. Phosphorus has ascended to the point where the spirit shines to him in the light. With it, the mind of the man and the soul of the woman are on the same level. They now work together on the same level, namely in such a way that always instead of Dionysus the free human couple stands at first which embodies the inkling of a future which should still arise once. Christianity and Caesarism developed to that which unfolded in Dionysia: it subjugated and enslaved the human beings. However, they both stand there upright and freely.

They are expelled. They cannot save the old Dionysia. The old Dionysus, who perishes in Romanism and in the external Christian formalism at first, cannot host both who have got free; they are expelled. While they show the life of the future in the present, they must live in the present. They find the way to the unknown temple again. Where Phosphorus was consecrated, where the star of Lucifer appeared to him, the clear star of Lucifer appears to them in the hour of death, both ways uniting. Lucifer leads the human beings in freedom to the highest development, and we attain the cross of Christ, the symbol of redemption, if the incarnate god touches the deified human being.

Thus, both who got free have to save at death what they have achieved. They cannot save Dionysia. That is the course of human development. This was something that one already experienced in the Greek mysteries in a higher life: that life forever overcomes death, that death is only something apparent with the single human being and something apparent in the entire human culture. Thus, we anticipate at the end of Schuré's drama that that which they both gained in themselves has an everlasting significance beyond the grave. The whole drama ends magnificently, in the sure certainty that the spirit must overcome matter.

As well as death is the winner over life here, one can represent it only if one knows anything about the true and real life of the spirit and knows that death is only something apparent. Someone who does not know that everything dead is something apparent must say to himself, if death were anything real to the noble pair that gained freedom because it was expelled and driven out by the enslaved Dionysia that would perish which they both have taken along. For all those who remained in Dionysia are slaves of a dying human epoch. Apparently, nothing is left. If this semblance were reality, we could no longer believe anyhow in the fact that it has a significance if anybody has purchased a higher life with death. For then this drama would close with nothing. Solely the belief and knowledge that the spirit is real carries this drama, and that from the death of the freed couple a real spiritual blossom sprouts which later works and lives in humanity which has remained, which is planted in the whole spiritual human development. From the death of Kleonis and Phosphorus, a spiritual human flower grows which is there then.

That which the human being experiences by the light and what he recognises lives on. Schuré owes this certainty to the fact that the former Greek world had arisen in him due to Marguerita Albana. He owes to Christianity that he was not only an external artist, but also that he can have a deep look into the spiritual development of humanity. He has shown this sight in his book The Great Initiates. There he has spread out the historical tableau of humanity from Rama (seventh incarnation of Vishnu), Krishna, Hermes, Plato and other initiates up to Christ Jesus. He has shown this human tableau, this spiritual development.

With it, he has delivered a historical consideration which is theosophical in the most eminent sense and which has led countless people in Europe to the theosophical worldview. Out of the spirit of his consideration he created The Children of Lucifer, this little marvellous dramatic work in which in every line and in every scene theosophical spirit lives. Thus, the theosophical worldview becomes life; art becomes the expression of the theosophical spirit if the truth of the spirit is mirrored to us as beauty.

The human beings can create three things at first, Édouard Schuré says. At first, we are concerned with ontology. It leads us to the big principles of the world, but now we look at them—if we are deepened theosophically—not as anything dead, but as abstract divine thoughts. Then we are concerned with mysticism that leads us to the gods and higher beings whom we recognise as our older brothers. Then we are concerned with symbolism that shows us the god in the external sensuous picture and as a shadowy reflection in art. Thus, Édouard Schuré is a real theosophist and a real artist and shows more than all theosophical dogmatics what a theosophical world task consists in.

It is typical that under the title Lucifer the first theosophical journal appeared which we have renewed in our German magazine Lucifer-Gnosis where the whole way of thinking, the future task of the theosophical worldview has been expressed clearly, as it lives artistically in the drama with the title The Children of Lucifer. Only those who regard art as something external misjudge that in this piece of art something lives in the highest degree that has not missed the creative power because of its deepness. If this drama satisfies the artist completely, something of that impetus flows from this drama to the unknown god who works in us all and whose name theosophy just bears. Thus, this drama is the expression of that theosophical attitude which takes the true deepening and the human freedom seriously.

No one can be free in the highest sense of the word who does not find the divine in himself, who is not an associate, not a brother of the divine being. If the human being becomes this, he himself becomes a part of that force which is a bearer of the light that is Lucifer. Then he becomes a child of Lucifer. Those who understand something of the mysterious force working in the universe that one cannot see only with the eyes and perceived with instruments, of the forces that flow through the moral and religious life and work in our whole universe. Those who know a little bit about it speak of the forces that one calls the astral light.

The experts describe it in such a way that it flows through the space like other forces, like gravity, and works on the beings. The astral light flows through all beings; it lives in the higher animals and in the human being generally. If the human being does something and says, I act, or I am driven instinctively—it is in truth the astral light which works and lives in him. He can dedicate himself to this astral light, unconsciously, with dim consciousness. This always happens if passions and instincts press the human being. However, this does not happen if he becomes the bearer of own light if he connects himself with the force of Lucifer. Then he changes this astral light, this creative force in the world into a conscious, creative force in himself. Then he becomes a citizen in the higher spiritual worlds. If he leaves himself to the astral light with dim consciousness, he can say, indeed, the gods live, and they flow through me, but I am destined to emerge from unconsciousness, to let the light appear as something free, to illumine my actions independently with divine forces.

Everything that originates from the twilight of the consciousness, what the bearer of the light does not cause hampers our development. What leads to the aim and to the true human ideal is that which comes from the light, from the real knowledge. Therefore, the human being is only allowed to throw himself really into the stream of life if he has grasped the god in himself if the god is his leader. Theosophical attitude means waking the divine consciousness in oneself and becoming mortal with the aid of the forces which are in the own breast. Marguerita Albana whom Édouard Schuré calls his leader expresses that in a short saying which could be regarded as a motto of the theosophical attitude and which should also close our considerations today:

Trust in the god in your breast, and then leave everything that is in you to the stream of life
(Crois au Divin qui est en toi, et puis prête l'oreille au fleuve de la vie).

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.

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.

These lectures are so arranged that separate themes will be introduced, and then I shall bring in considerations which will lead towards the themes and throw light upon them. One theme, accordingly, resides in what was said about the difficulty of understanding the Being of Christ Jesus. Then we came to the significance of the prophecies of the Sibyls as illustrating one side of human soul life during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Finally, at the close of yesterday's lecture, I introduced the theme of Paul and the olive tree.

I will return to these leading themes, but we must approach them as it were in circles, with our themes inscribed at the centre. What is really meant by the themes will then gradually emerge. Today I would like to say something about the Christ Being as such. We shall then see how in Paul the Christ Being is reflected in a certain definite way.

From earlier lectures we know that the Christ Being can be understood if we follow the evolution of our system back to the Old Sun existence.¹ And on various occasions, in lectures already published, attention has been drawn to the fact that in the Christ Being we have to do with a high spiritual Being—that is the term we will use for the present—for whose own evolution the Old Sun period was especially important. I will not go further into that just now. We will simply look up to the Christ Being as a high spiritual Being. But for understanding human evolution something else is necessary, and we have seen how necessary it is, for in relation to a certain fact the concepts and ideas which in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch aspired to understand the Being of Christ were powerless to do so.

Again and again, especially during the early centuries among the Gnostics, among the Apostolic Fathers and among the persons who contributed in one way or another to the founding of Christianity, this question came up—How was the nature of Christ related to the nature of Jesus? Now we already know that we have to distinguish two Jesus-boys.² Of one of these we need not speak further here, for he can be readily understood from previous anthroposophical explanations. I mean the Jesus in whom lived the Ego of Zarathustra. Here we have a human being who in the second post-Atlantean epoch had already reached a high degree of evolution; who at that time founded the Zarathustrian spiritual stream and then had subsequent lives; who later reincarnated in the Solomon Jesus-child and in him, up to his twelfth year, underwent the development appropriate for so lofty an Ego in that period. We know also that the Zarathustra Ego passed over into the body of the other Jesus-child, on whose nature the Luke Gospel throws some gleams of light.

We must now consider a little this Nathan Jesus child. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that in this child we have not to do with a human being, like other human beings, in the strict sense of the term. We cannot say of this Being that he had previously been incarnated on Earth in this or that individual. We have always emphasised that of the soul-element which has come forth from spiritual worlds in order to live in single individuals on Earth, something as it were remained behind; and that what had thus remained behind appeared in the Nathan Jesus-child. Hence of this child we cannot say that in him there lived an ordinary human ego which had developed in a certain way through earlier incarnations. We have to recognise (this follows from what is said in my book, Occult Science—an Outline) that he had not previously walked the Earth as man. The only question is: Did this Being, whom we will now call simply Jesus of Nazareth, have any previous connection with Earth-evolution?³ We must remember that the Beings and Powers connected with human evolution are not confined to those who incarnate on the Earth itself; there are also spiritual Beings and Powers who belong to the higher Hierarchies. If therefore we say that something of the substance which divided itself among single human souls remained behind, and was then in a certain sense born in the Nathan Jesus-child, we are not saying that this .Being had no previous relation with Earth evolution. We are saying only that he was not related to the evolution of the Earth and of humanity in such a way as to have walked the Earth as man. We must look for him not in the history of the physical Earth, but in pre-earthly spiritual realms. And then, for the kind of observation I have often spoken about—clairvoyant observation—the following is revealed.

Let us recall what is described in Occult Science—how from the Lemurian Age onwards souls gradually came down from the other planets (with the exception of one principal human pair who had stayed on earth) and were incarnated in human bodies throughout Atlantean times. We must accordingly think of Earth-evolution as being such that the souls withdrew from the Earth's cosmic surroundings and at various points of time took up again their evolution on Earth. We know that before the Lemurian Age they had gone away to other planets. But we know also that the evolution of the Earth had been exposed to the attacks of Lucifer, and later to those of Ahriman. Thus the souls of men had to enter into bodies wherein they were exposed in the course of human evolution to the attacks of both these spiritual Beings. If nothing further had come about—if, that is, the human souls had come down from planetary existence into evolution on Earth, there to encounter the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences—then something else would have happened to them as they went through subsequent incarnations; something I did not intimate in Occult Science, for at the present day one cannot say everything in public.

First of all, when the human beings came down from the planets into physical bodies, the development of their senses would have been exposed to a certain danger. We must not think it was a quite simple matter for these human souls to come down from their planetary abodes and assume bodies on Earth, and that after that everything went on normally. Because the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles held sway in these bodies, they were not so organised as to enable human beings to pursue the course of evolution which in fact they did pursue. If these souls had simply gone on using the forces which governed the sense-organs of these bodies, they would have had to use their senses in a peculiar way—a way not really human.

For example, the eye would have been so impressed and affected by a colour that it would have felt itself permeated with intense feeling. At the sight of one colour it would have positively glowed with pleasure; for another colour it would have felt intense, painful antipathy. And so, because of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, the souls descending from the planets would have found no bodies equipped with senses of the right kind. They would have been tormented by sympathy and antipathy; on seeing one colour or another they would have been seized with bliss or repulsed with acute pain, all through their lives. That was how evolution was going; cosmic forces, especially those from the Sun, would have worked on the Earth in such a way as to give the senses this character. Any contemplation of the world, in a spirit of quiet wisdom, would have been ruled out. So a change had to be brought about in the forces which flowed from the cosmic environment into the Earth and had built up the senses of man. In the spiritual world something had to happen so that these forces would not turn the senses into mere organs of sympathy and antipathy, for they would then have been under the sway of Lucifer and Ahriman. Hence the following took place.

The Being of whom we have said that he had not chosen the path down from the planets to the Earth, but had remained behind, the Being who later appeared as the Nathan Jesus-child and who had dwelt from primal ages in the spiritual worlds—this Being resolved (if we may use this expression, for of course all these expressions are taken from human speech and cannot fully convey what one wants to say) while still in the world of the higher Hierarchies to go through a development which would enable him to be permeated for a time by the Christ Being. Thus we have to do not with a man but with a superhuman Being who (if we may speak in this way) lived in the spiritual world and as it were heard the distress of the human sense system crying out to the spiritual world for help, and in response to this cry made himself fitted to be permeated by the Christ.

So it was that in the spiritual worlds the Being who later became the Nathan Jesus-child was permeated by the Christ Being, and then brought about a change in the cosmic forces which were streaming in to build up the human senses. These senses were changed in such a way that instead of being mere organs of sympathy and antipathy, they became organs that human beings could use, and so could look with wisdom at all the nuances of sense-perception. Very differently would the cosmic forces have flowed into mankind if this event, far back in the Lemurian Age, had not taken place in the spiritual worlds. This Being who appeared as the Nathan Jesus-child was then still living (if I may use the phrase) in the Sun-sphere, and because he listened to the human cry of distress, he experienced something which made it possible for him to be permeated by the very Spirit of the Sun, so that the activity of the Sun was modified in such a way that the human sense organs, which derive essentially from solar activity, did not become organs of mere sympathy and antipathy.

Here we touch upon a significant cosmic secret, and one which will enable us to understand much that happened later on. A certain order and harmony, imbued with wisdom, could now flow into the realm of the human senses, and evolution could go on normally for a while. The worst activity of Lucifer and Ahriman had been turned away from the human senses by a deed in the higher worlds.

Later on came a time, in the Atlantean Age, when it once more became apparent that the human bodily constitution could not be a suitable instrument for the further course of evolution. The human vital organs, and their underlying forces in the etheric body, which for a time had developed in a suitably useful way, had fallen into disorder. For the cosmic forces which had worked on them from the surroundings of the Earth, and whose task it was to bring order into these organs—the organs of breathing, blood circulation and so on—these forces would have developed under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman in such a way that the vital organs would have ceased to be usable by human beings on Earth. They would have acquired a quite peculiar character. The forces which provide for these vital organs do not flow in directly from the Sun, but from the seven planets, as they used to be called. The planetary forces worked from the cosmos into man. And it was necessary that these forces, also, should be modified. If they had remained under the sway of Lucifer and Ahriman, the vital organs would have become merely organs of greed or organs of loathing. For example, a man would not have been able to restrain himself from hurling himself greedily upon a given dish, while a terrible loathing would have driven him from another. These are things which unveil themselves as world secrets, as cosmic secrets, when we try to penetrate into them clairvoyantly.

So again something had to happen in the spiritual worlds in order that this destructive activity should not enter into human life. And this same Being, who later appeared as the Nathan Jesus-child and who (as we have explained) dwelt in earlier times on the Sun and was there permeated by the Christ Being, the sublime Sun-Spirit—this Being went from planet to planet, touched in his innermost nature by the fact that human evolution could go no further, as things were. And this experience affected him so strongly, while he was assuming a form of body on the different planets, that at a certain time during the Atlantean evolution the Spirit of Christ permeated him again. And through what was now brought about by the permeation of this Being by the Christ Spirit, it became possible for moderation to be implanted in the vital organs of man. In the same way that wisdom had been given to the sense-organs, so moderation was now bestowed on the vital organs. Thus it came about that when a man breathed in a particular place, he was not impelled to suck in the air greedily, or to recoil with loathing from the air in another place. That was the deed accomplished in the spiritual worlds through a further permeation of the Nathan Jesus-child by the Christ Being, the high Sun-Spirit.

Then in the further course of human evolution a third thing happened. A third confusion would have arisen if the souls had been obliged to continue using the bodies then available for them on Earth. We can put it in the following way.

At this time the physical nature of man was in order. Through the two Christ deeds in the super-sensible world, the human sense organs were in a condition serviceable for man on Earth, and so were the vital organs. But it was not so with the soul-organs, thinking, feeling and willing. If nothing further had happened, these soul-organs would have become disordered. I mean that willing would have been continually disturbed by thinking, feeling would have interfered with willing, and so on. Men would have been condemned as it were to a perpetually chaotic use of these soul-organs. They would have been maddened by an excess of will, or confused by repressed feeling, or there would have been people plagued with fleeting ideas through a hypertrophy of thinking, and so forth. This was the third great danger to which humanity was exposed on Earth.

Now these three soul-powers, thinking, feeling and willing, are coordinated from the surroundings of the Earth, for the Earth itself is essentially the scene of action for the Ego. The working together of thinking, feeling and willing has to be kept in order; not, however, from all the planets, but only from Sun, Moon and Earth, so that through the inter-working of Sun, Moon and Earth, if this is harmonious, man is made fit for the harmonious cooperation of his three soul-powers.

Help for these soul-forces had to be provided from the spiritual world. And now the soul of that Being who later became the Nathan Jesus-child assumed a cosmic form such that his life was in a sense neither on the Moon nor on the Sun, but as though it encircled the Earth and felt a dependence on the influences of Sun, Moon and Earth at the same time. The Earth influences came to him from below; the Sun and Moon influences from above. Clairvoyant observation really sees this Being, in the spring time of his evolution—if I may use that phrase—in the same sphere as that in which the Moon goes round the Earth. Hence I cannot say exactly that the Moon influence came to him from above, but rather that it came to him from the place where he was, this pre-earthly Jesus-Being. Again there rose to him a cry of distress, a cry that told of what human thinking, feeling and willing were on the way to becoming; and he sought to experience completely in his own inner being this tragedy of human evolution. Thereby he called to himself the high Sun-spirit, who now for the third time descended upon him, permeating him. So in the cosmic height, beyond the Earth, there was a third permeation of this Nathan Jesus-child by the high Sun Spirit whom we call the Christ.

Now I would wish to depict for you this third ensouling rather differently from the way in which I described the other two. That which took place through these successive stages of spiritual evolution—or heavenly evolution, I would say—was reflected in the various world outlooks of the post-Atlantean peoples. For it had effects which worked on into later times; the Sun's activity continued to be influenced by the fact that in ancient Lemurian times the Being who afterwards became the Nathan Jesus-child had been permeated by the Christ Being. And the essential thing about the initiation of Zarathustra was that he perceived the activity of the Sun impregnated with this influence. In this way his teaching arose; his initiation had revealed to him—had projected into his soul—what had happened in primeval times.

The third post-Atlantean epoch, which we call the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, came about partly through the reflection in human souls, as a continuing human experience, of the activities that had originated from the permeation by the Sun-Spirit of the Nathan Jesus-Being while that Being was journeying round the planets. From this arose that science of planetary activities which comes before us in Chaldean astrology; people today have a very meagre conception of what it really was. Among the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples of the epoch there developed also that star worship which is indeed known exoterically; it arose because the moderating of planetary influence was still making itself felt at that later time.

Later still, in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, we can see in Hellenism a reflection of planetary spirits who had as it were come into existence because the Being who had been permeated by the Christ journeyed from planet to planet and on each planet became one or other of these spirits. On Jupiter he became the one whom the Greeks later called Zeus; on Mars, the one later called Ares; on Mercury, the one later called Hermes. In the Greek planetary gods there was this later reflection of what Christ Jesus in the super-sensible worlds had made of the planetary beings who were imbued with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles. When a Greek looked up to his heaven of the gods, he came into touch with the adumbrations, the reflections, of the activity of Christ Jesus on the individual planets, together with much else that I have described.

To this was added as a third event the reflection or adumbration of that which the Jesus-Being, in the later post-Atlantean times, had experienced as a celestial Being in relation to Sun, Moon and Earth. If we are to characterise this we can say: The Christ “ensouled” himself in an angelic Being. We say of Christ that he embodied himself in Jesus of Nazareth, but we are speaking now of an event that took place in spiritual worlds: the Christ “ensouled” himself in an angelic Being. And the effect was that human thinking, feeling and willing took an orderly course. This was an important event, coming early in the evolution of humanity: the development of the human soul-powers was brought into good order. The two earlier Christ events had brought order rather into the bodily constitution of man on Earth: what then had had to happen in the celestial worlds for this third event to come about?

It will be easier to recognise this third event if we look for the reflection of it in Greek mythology. For just as the planetary spirits projected themselves into the figures of Zeus, Ares, Hermes, Venus or Aphrodite, Kronos and so on, so was this third cosmic event reflected not only in Greek mythology but in the mythologies of the most diverse peoples. We can understand how it was reflected if we allow ourselves to compare the reflected images with their sources; if, that is, we compare what happened in Greece with what first happened in the Cosmos.

What was it that happened up there in the Cosmos? The need was to drive out something which would have raged chaotically in human souls; this had to be overcome. The angelic Being who was permeated with the Christ had to accomplish the deed of vanquishing and driving out from the human soul that which had to be driven out if thinking, feeling and willing were to be harmonised. And so there arises the picture—let us bring it vividly before our souls—of an angelic Being, dwelling still in the spiritual worlds, who later became the Nathan Jesus-child: he appears to us ensouled by the Christ and thereby rendered capable of special deeds—able to drive out from thinking, feeling and willing the element which would have raged within them as a dragon and brought them into chaos.

A reminiscence of this is preserved in all the pictures of St. George vanquishing the Dragon which are found in the records of human culture. St. George and the Dragon reflect that celestial event when the Christ ensouled the Jesus-Being and enabled him to drive the Dragon out of the soul-nature of man. This was a significant deed, made possible only with the help of Christ in the Being of Jesus, at that time an angelic Being. For this angelic Being had actually to connect himself with the Dragon-nature; to take on as it were the form of the Dragon in order to hold off the Dragon from the soul of man. He had to work from within the Dragon, so that the Dragon was ennobled and brought out of chaos into a kind of harmony. The training, the taming of the Dragon—that is the further task of this Being. And so it came about that the Dragon indeed remained active, but because there was poured into him the influence and power of the Being I have described, he became the bearer of many revelations which proved their worth to human civilisations throughout the course of post-Atlantean evolution. Instead of the chaos of the Dragon manifesting in maddened or bewildered men, the primal wisdom of the post-Atlantean time came forth. Christ Jesus used the Dragon's blood, as it were, so that with His help it could transfuse human blood and thereby make human beings the vehicles of divine wisdom. A significant reflection of this is apparent—even quite exoterically—in Greek mythology from the ninth century B.C. onwards.

It is remarkable how for the Greek mind one particular divine figure emerged from the others. The Greeks, we know, reverenced a variety of gods. These gods were the reflections or projections of the Beings who originated from the journey round the planets of the Being, permeated by the Christ, who later became the Nathan Jesus-child. The Greeks saw them in such a way that when they looked out into cosmic spaces, when they looked up through the light-aether, they rightly ascribed to the planet Jupiter—in an inward spiritual, not an external, sense—the origin of the Being they spoke of as Zeus. So they spoke of Pallas Athene, of Artemis, of the various planetary gods who were the reflections of what we have spoken about. But from these pictures of the various figures of the gods there emerged one figure—the figure of Apollo. The figure of Apollo emerged in a distinctive way: what did these Greeks see in him?

We come to know Apollo if we look at Parnassus and the Castalian spring. To the west of it there was a cleft in the earth, and over this the Greeks built a temple—why? Vapours used to rise up out of the cleft, and when the air-currents were right the vapours crept up the Mountainside like the coils of a snake, like a dragon. And the Greeks imagined Apollo as shooting his arrows at the dragon, as it rose from the cleft in the form of turbulent vapours. Here, in the Greek Apollo, we see an earthly reflection of St. George, shooting his arrows at the dragon. And when Apollo had overcome the dragon, the Python, a temple was built, and instead of the dragon we see how the vapours entered into the soul of the Pythia, and how the Greeks imagined that Apollo lived in these swirling dragon-vapours and prophesied to them through the oracle, through the lips of the Pythia. And the Greeks, that self-conscious people, rose through the stages for which their souls had been prepared; they accepted what Apollo had to say to them through the Pythia, who was imbued with the dragon-vapours. It meant that Apollo lived in the dragon's blood and filled men with wisdom from the Castalian spring. And the place became a meeting-place for the most sacred plays and festivals.

Why was Apollo able to do this—who was he? It was only from spring to autumn that he caused wisdom to flow up from the dragon's blood. Towards autumn he went away to his ancient home in the north, in the Hyperborean land. Farewell festivals were held at the time of his departure, and his return was welcomed in the spring. A deep wisdom resides in this idea of Apollo going north. The physical sun withdraws towards the south; in a spiritual sense it is always the opposite. The story shows that Apollo has to do with the sun. Apollo is the angelic Being of whom we have spoken; he was a reflection, projected into the Greek mind, of the angelic Being who had in fact worked at the end of the Atlantean time and who had been permeated by the Christ. This reflection was the Apollo who spoke wisdom to the Greeks through the mouth of the Pythia. And what was the content for the Greeks of this Apollo wisdom? We might say it was everything that led them, on the most important occasions, to take this or that decision. Again and again people went to Apollo at difficult moments in their lives, with their souls well prepared, and received prophetic guidance from the Pythia, who was stimulated by the vapours in which Apollo lived. And Asklepios, the Healer, is for the Greeks the son of Apollo, the healing god. The weakened form of the Angel in whom Christ once dwelt is a healer on Earth, or for the Earth. For Apollo was never physically embodied, but he worked through the Earth-elements.

And the god of the Muses, above all the god of song and the art of music, is Apollo. Why is this? Because through the power of song and string-music he brings thinking, feeling and willing into harmony. We have only to keep firmly in mind that in Apollo there was a projection of what had happened at the end of the Atlantean time. Something had then worked from spiritual heights into the human soul, and a weak echo of it could be heard in the musical art cultivated by the Greeks under the protection of Apollo. They knew it as an earthly reflection of the ancient art which the Angel-Being, permeated by the Christ, had cultivated in the heavenly heights in order to bring thinking, feeling and willing into harmony. They did not say so openly; only in the Mysteries was the meaning of it understood.

In the Apollonian Mysteries it was said: A high Divine Being once sank Himself into a Being of the Hierarchy of Angels and thereby brought harmony into thinking, feeling and willing. The art of music was a reflection of that happening, especially the Apollonian art which flowed from the sound of strings. The music which demands less of the elements than wind instruments do; which depends in the main only on the skill of human hands; in short, the music that sounds from the strings of Apollo—to this music the Greeks ascribed the musical effects which bring harmony into the soul. And persons who have no inclination for Apollo's music, or do not value it highly enough, were said by the Greeks to carry a bodily mark of their obtuseness in this respect; a sign that they had stayed behind, atavistically, at an earlier stage.

It is remarkable that when a certain man—King Midas—was born with exceptionally long ears, the Greeks said he had come into the world with ass's ears because in his life before birth he had not rightly devoted himself to the influence of the Being whom the Christ had enfilled. Therefore, said the Greeks, he had asses ears, and that was why he preferred wind instruments to string instruments. And when once a child was born who so to speak had no skin—he is known in mythology as the Flayed Marsyas—the Greeks said it was because before his birth he had not paid heed to all that flowed from the angelic Being. For that is how it looks to occult observation: Marsyas was not flayed in his lifetime, but before his birth, and it was then that his misdeed occurred.

Many towns founded by the Greeks as colonies were named Apollonia, because the sites for them had been chosen after consulting the Pythia. The Greeks cherished their freedom and so were not politically united, but they had an ideal unity through the god Apollo, for whom a kind of confederation was founded later on.

We see how the Greeks revered in the god they called, Apollo the Being of whom we have spoken; and we might say that in the Being who truly corresponded to Apollo at the end of the Atlantean time, the Christ was ensouled. Who then was Apollo—not the reflection revered by the Greeks, but Apollo himself? A celestial Being who from the higher worlds poured out healing forces for the soul, paralysing the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. These forces brought about in the human body a harmonious co-operation of brain, breath and lungs with the larynx and the heart, and it was this that came to expression in song. For the right co-operation of brain and breathing with the speech organ and the heart is the bodily expression of harmony in thinking, feeling and willing. The Healer, the celestial Healer, is Apollo. We have seen this Being pass through three stages of evolution, and then the Healer, whom Apollo reflected, was born on Earth and men called him Jesus, which in our language means “He who heals through God”. He is the Nathan Jesus-child, the one who heals through God, Jehoschua-Jesus.

Now, at this fourth stage, this Being made himself ripe to be enfilled with the Christ Being, with the ‘I’. This came to pass through the Mystery of Golgotha. For if this Mystery had not been enacted—if the Being whom we have followed through cosmic ages had not given embodiment to the Christ—then in the course of later time human souls would not have found bodies in which the Ego-force could come to necessary expression on Earth. The Ego had been brought to its highest stage in Zarathustra. The souls who had taken part in the evolution of the Ego would never have found earthly bodies suitable for its further development if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come to pass.

We have now seen the four stages of harmonisation: the harmonising of sense perception, of the life-organs, of thinking, feeling and willing, and the harmonisation in the Ego, this last through the Mystery of Golgotha. You have the connections between the Being who was born as the Nathan Jesus-child and the Christ Being, and the way in which this was prepared. It is now possible, through that which it is permissible to reveal in true Anthroposophy, to understand this kind of growing together, belonging together, of the Christ Being and the human nature of Jesus. This is possible for us. And a healthy development of spiritual life in the future will depend on this—on it becoming possible for more and more people to grasp that which could not be grasped by the thoughts and ideas of the epoch in which the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled.

• 1. See Occult Science—an Outline, Chapter IV. Chapter IV. (Rudolf Steiner Press, London.)
• 2. See, among others, the following references in lecture courses by Dr. Steiner: The Gospel of St. Luke, notably lectures 4 to 7; The Gospel of St. Matthew, notably lecture 6; The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind; Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of St. Matthew's Gospel.
• 3. See lecture given by Dr. Steiner at Pforzheim (7–3, 1914): Pre-Earthly Deeds of Christ.