The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It has been a task of special difficulty to weld into book form these lectures which originally depended so much upon the living co-operation of lecturer and demonstrators. These lectures were not meant as an encyclopaedic recapitulation of the whole sphere of eurhythmy; they were given just at that point in the evolution of eurhythmy where it became necessary to review all that had been accomplished during the course of many years’ activity, and which had already been carried out into the world by the various teachers; The intention was to examine and correct the results of this work and ‘to gather together a number of guiding lines, developed entirely from out of the nature of eurhythmy itself.’ Rudolf Steiner says in the last lecture of this course that his intention was to give his lectures such a form that they would show ‘how eurhythmy arises out of the feeling life, out of the soul; how a eurhythmic technique must be won from out of the love of eurhythmy, just as everything must in reality arise out of love.’ And indeed his own words streamed forth from a fountain of love, bringing help and aid to the work already accomplished,—the work which from then on was to be based on an even surer foundation. Up to this time there had been no shorthand reports of the teaching by means of which Rudolf Steiner introduced this art to the world. In the year 1912 he gave ten lessons to a seventeen year old girl, who, through the death of her father, was faced with the necessity of assisting in the maintenance of her younger brothers and sisters. She greatly wished to devote herself to some art of movement which was not based upon the materialistic tendencies of the age. This concrete fact proved the impulse for that teaching which has resulted in eurhythmy. I was invited to take part in these lessons; they consisted in the rudiments of sound-formation, and a number of exercises in reality belonging to the educational aspect of eurhythmy,—that is to say the basic principles of standing, walking and running, certain postures and gestures, and a number of staff exercises and rhythmic exercises. From these basic principles several girls, pupils of the first eurhythmist, worked out the educational aspect of eurhythmy; later they passed on to the expression of poems by means of movements corresponding to the sounds. This was the first phase of eurhythmic development. Every now and again, when the work was shown to him, Rudolf Steiner explained and corrected, answering any questions put to him. A second phase of eurhythmic development began when this new art found a foothold in Dornach, at the Goetheanum. The first group of young teachers requested and received a further course, in which more especially teaching about the formation of words, word-relationships, the nature of speech, the structure of poetry was given, as also new group forms. The work was carried out into the world, but the war soon checked its activity. In order to save this art and to rescue the eurhythmists from their enforced inactivity, it became necessary for me to take the work in hand. Destiny brought this task to me quite naturally, for a new style of recitation was necessary for eurhythmy, and I had to find my way into this new method, to understand and develop it. I recognized the great significance of eurhythmy as a regenerating source for all branches of art, and deeply regretted the fact that the eager work of these young eurhythmists should be rendered fruitless by the war. There is no better remedy against the errors of taste of the present day than this new art, which leads us back to the primeval forces, to the creative forces of the universe. It is of untold benefit to mankind. Thus I worked half of the year in Germany with one group of eurhythmists, and the other half of the year at the Goetheanum in Dornach, always supported and assisted by Rudolf Steiner, to whom we could turn with all our questions. The instruction we received from him in the course of time has been gathered together in book form by Annemarie Dubach-Donath, one of our best and most experienced eurhythmists, the second in that line of young girls who devoted themselves to the study of eurhythmy. This book, entitled The Basic Principles of Eurythmy, and published by the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, sets forth and explains these principles, thus building a foundation which is, absolutely necessary if eurhythmy is to be understood, and without which it would always remain incomplete.

We met together to take part in this course as if uniting in a common festival. Many were the questions put to Rudolf Steiner; he recapitulated the teaching, clearing up many things about which we held differing opinions. The whole nature of this course was that of spontaneous improvisation; diagrams were rapidly sketched on the board, exercises demonstrating certain points were carried out by the eurhythmists; everything bore the character of intimate conversation and co-operative work, not of pedantic instruction. This was often the case with the teaching given by Rudolf Steiner to his pupils, but never to such a degree as in this course on eurhythmy. He himself, in all probability, wished the content of these lectures first to be assimilated and experienced, and then later on cast into another form and given to the world through the agency of some other person. Now, however, when he has gone from us, his own words are what we value most. Even here,—when the effect cannot be other than fragmentary, constantly interrupted as the lectures were by practical example and demonstration,—many subtle relationships are brought to light, and we are moved to the heights and depths of our being in a way which would be impossible through the words of another. During his lectures, as he himself delivered them, the cadences of his voice seemed to stream out from spiritual depths, revealing radiant glimpses of cosmic mysteries. And now, even after his death, he still makes for us that sacrifice which he had to make throughout his whole life,—the sacrifice, that is to say, of allowing the disjointed fragments of his spirit to be preserved and written down by another hand. Those who drew life from his spirit demanded this sacrifice. None knew what it cost him. But the sacrifice was made. It has saved for our age the wisdom which reveals the relationship of universe and man; it has preserved for present-day humanity,—no longer able to remember the word of the spirit without the aid of the written record,—that store of knowledge which can raise man ever more and more to the consciousness of the concrete reality of the spirit; it contains the kindling, life-awakening spark.

Among the many branches of the spiritual work of Rudolf Steiner eurhythmy was one of those which he held most dear. It developed quite organically from the smallest beginnings, adding shoot to shoot, and reaching goodly proportions, thanks to the health-giving nurture and tireless labours of its creator. It ennobled those who gave themselves to its study, compelling them more and more to put aside all that is personal; it left no room for caprice. Its inherent laws were rooted in a spiritual necessity; these laws were gladly acknowledged, for in them one experienced necessity, one experienced God. This is why eurhythmy was able to arouse such heartfelt enthusiasm; many eager students banded themselves together in selfless work, so that the field of activity grew ever wider and wider. Side by side with the development of recitation, eurhythmy entered into the realm of music and in this domain also it opened up fresh channels and gave fresh possibilities of expression. A new art of stage lighting came into being, following the laws of eurhythmy, and a new style of dress, simpler, more impersonal, more dignified; these were based upon the experience of the colours, upon what might be called a eurhythmy of colour. In its connection with the drama, eurhythmy led to a means of representing those beings which otherwise had to be represented in a more or less materialistic way. The portrayal of the super-sensible and sub-sensible in earthly life now became possible. Thus, as the years went by, we were able to produce on the stage of the Schreinerei at the Goetheanum all those scenes in Faust in which the supersensible plays a part and which otherwise are either omitted or mishandled. The romantic Walpurgisnacht revealed undreamed of life and intricacy of detail, and the classical Walpurgisnacht also, with its manifold ghostly happenings. Elves, angels, the hosts of heavenly beings were represented in these performances with simplicity and dignity, and in a way entirely convincing. The greater our activity and work the greater was our gain. Every effort which resulted in deeds was rewarded by fresh gifts from our generous teacher. So many possibilities of work arose that we could not keep pace with them in the time at our disposal.

After several years of tireless training and a good deal of stage experience before friendly audiences, the time came for eurhythmy to be carried out into the world. The result was striking; it was received with enthusiastic appreciation or violent opposition,—never with indifference. We were threatened with the ostracism of the cultured world; the press representatives were usually instructed to write from an antagonistic point of view, even if, as they often asserted, they themselves were enthusiastic. Representatives of other branches of art were often deeply impressed, often, also, aggressively ironical. Members of such societies as aim at reforms of all kinds felt their nebulous systems threatened by an unknown but assured and powerful force. Unprejudiced onlookers thanked God that there could be so true and pure an art. Children frequently asked if those were the angels of whom they had been told, and loud ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ of wonderment were often the eloquent testimony of their impressions. This art worked into the quagmire of our modern civilization as a purifying light or flame; the lovers of darkness gave vent to their opprobrium,—those who wished to rise up out of the low-lying levels of our civilization felt as if cleansed and purified. The power of the spirit manifested itself in this art and its effect was purifying and invigorating.

It so chances that I am writing these words in England. The life of London, the capital of the world, has been working upon me, the quintessence of that element in our modern civilization which has produced the predominance of all that is physical in life, of all that can serve our material well-being. The business life of this world-centre, its industrial and commercial life, rushes noisily on its way. That to-day is a matter of course. But the menace to humanity is this: everywhere one hears the shrill sound of the wireless, the rasping of the gramophone, the whirring of the film; machinery has conquered on all sides, even in the realm of art; the most vital impulses are liable to waver and become mechanized. A performance which I witnessed in the Rudolf Steiner Hall in London, with its beautiful stage, a performance consisting of the interpretation of the music of early composers played on old instruments, had the effect of pictures from a past age. The performers (who were not Anthroposophists), attired in costumes of the period, produced a reposeful music full of feeling and inwardness, a music demanding leisure, which is not to be hurried, which deepens the contemplative life. The effect of such music is somewhat antiquated; but if one can persuade one’s modern nerves to adapt themselves to an earlier attitude, curbing their restlessness, it has a beneficent influence. It has about as much resemblance to the hustle of modern music as the long, flowing dresses of earlier times, still admired by painters, have to the lanky legs of to-day, where the hem of the dress comes well above the knee. The effect of these legs on the stage, when looked at from the stalls of a theatre, is terribly obtrusive. They are shown off with determination; they are meant to be seen. The qualities formerly regarded as feminine and charming are but little in evidence in a modern drawing-room. An actress, if playing the part of a young girl, likes to loll about on some padded sofa; she thrusts out her legs, crossed over each other, and beyond that one has in perspective a little bobbed or shingled head. When one is faced with a whole row of such attitudes, the aesthetic element must really be said to be lacking!

But this is only lack of beauty. What is still worse is that the very speech and gesture has been affected by this mechanical, noisy music, which rattles from all the gramophones, from the wireless, from the pianolas, and which even in many of the best London theatres has taken the place of the orchestra. They carry on their ceaseless noise during the intervals, drumming their hard sounds into the head and deadening the consciousness of the ego. When, at the end of a performance the conventional phrase of ‘God save the King’ is played and the audience rises to its feet, without the slightest pause the music falls into some wild jazz. Where is the need of breathing space or a moment’s consideration?—the machine needs no such thing. But the lack of any transition between two contrasted moods has a stultifying effect upon the soul. Young girls enter the stage, or drawing-room, even in Paris, with that rolling movement of hips and shoulders which negro dances have made second nature. They themselves do not notice this eternal rolling movement of the limbs: the effect is almost that of a wound-up doll, or of hypnosis. In woods, on the sea-shore, everywhere one is horrified by the sound of the gramophone and the sight of partners indulging in this sliding, rolling motion. Dancing, which seemed to be dying out when the decorative elegant French dances lost their charm, when even the waltz and the polka had failed to interest, has come to life again in the crude and primitive form of imitated negro dances. ‘We like the rhythm’ several girls replied, when I inquired what was so fascinating about these dances.—But this rhythm is in reality no rhythm. It is anti-rhythmic, it is an earth force which whirls upwards, an over-emphasized or furtive and indistinct beat, an increased blood pulsation coupled with lowered consciousness. One only needs to look at the figures of the dancers, with their vacant, expressionless faces, to be convinced that this is so,—especially so with the men, who now, young and old alike, have suddenly developed a passion for dancing. These dances appeal to the lower instincts, and for this reason they have as adherents even the most blasé, and those whose souls have become lifeless and barren. But that which was merely animal nature in the case of the negro has with us become mechanical. The demons of machinery here find means of access; they gain a hold on the human being through his movement, through his vitality. They do not only influence his brain, but enter into this externalizing of that which should remain as inner mood of the soul. The mechanical musical instruments exercise their powerful, soul-deadening forces, doing away with all atmosphere and feeling. And this non-rhythmic, mechanical element is even rejected in the manner of speech of modern actors on the stage. The sentences are shot out in a way which is jerky, rough and disjointed; they seem scarcely to belong to the human being, but only to his bony structure. The human being is not himself, active, but is only an automaton functioning through intellect and senses. When, added to this, there is nervous, hysterical emotion, the producer’s requirements may be said to be fulfilled. All this works its way into the souls of our young people, making them barren and empty. What will be the result? What is the outlook for future generations if no reaction sets in? A London newspaper is lying before me; a picture attracts my attention. The picture entitled ‘Urchin Humanity’ depicts a street arab,—cheeky, impertinent, with an old face,—drawing a cart. In the centre of this cart sits Science, holding a gun: Poison Gas. On one side is the figure of Literature, eagerly perusing a book: Detective Romances; on the other side the figure of Art,—she is holding the apparatus for producing films; and below her sits Music, with a gramophone on her knee.—This is our age. Self-knowledge is shown by such a picture, and self-realization,—the only path which can lead to salvation.

One might despair; one might give way to the most drastic Spenglerism, if, in this time of need, the means of salvation had not also been given. Salvation lies in the spiritual work of Rudolf Steiner. He sounded the awakening call which can free humanity from the dangers of becoming animalized, stupefied and mechanized.

That which once, in the ancient Mysteries, was offered to men as Wegzehrung (Sustenance by the Way), as they traversed the path leading to the unfolding of the personality, is now offered to them anew. It is offered at this moment when the personality might be annulled, when that which is human threatens to sink to the level of the sub-human if this gift is not grasped and assimilated in its very essence. The intellect alone cannot aid us here; understanding, left to itself, has led us to Agnosticism, to ‘Ignoramibus’, to ‘Spenglerism’. But if man opens himself to that which is spiritual, if he allows the spiritual to reveal to him his path, the creative forces of the spirit will conquer the seeds of death and transmute those forces of destruction which are now at work in ‘urchin humanity’.

In order to see that which is of really great dimensions one must wait for the discovery of a new apparatus; otherwise it can as little be observed as that which is minute can be observed without the aid of the microscope. The distances of time alone may sometimes give the necessary perspective. The work of Rudolf Steiner towers so immeasurably over what may be grasped and understood at the present day that it is only the moving passage of time, with its widened outlook, which will first make possible a true valuation. It is our duty to apply ourselves to the many and various branches of the work, gradually bringing them into the range of vision; for here, on all sides may be found the life-belts to which we may ding in the surrounding waters of destruction and disintegration.

That which is seemingly limited often proves to be of the greatest significance. Let us begin with education by means of and in art; leg us trace the path leading back to the source from which art had its first beginning. Truly this origin was no mean one. It was the dance of the stars and its reflection in the human sphere that was known as the dance of the planets, as Temple Dancing. Here the creative forces streamed into the human body, building its form, directing it in space, and conjuring up those forces which give to man the possibility of working creatively upon himself.

And out of these forces there arose in man the faculty of leading his inner activity over into works of art, plastic and musical. Such works of art were channels which allowed the divine to radiate down into matter. They were a reflection of the cosmos.

But when the onslaught of materialism silenced the divine forces within man, rendering them powerless, when the human brain became the coffin for dead thinking and was no longer able to grasp the spiritual, then arose a deliverer. He spiritualized the intellect; he freed it from its rigidity; he restored to it its living mobility.

Indeed he brought movement into all domains of human activity. We, however, had no recollection of movement in a spiritual sense, for the movement of matter, which we had laid hold of and mastered, sufficed us, intoxicating us with its rapid motion. We did not notice that the spiritual part of our being was left passive, and that as a substitute we were intoxicating ourselves with the specific movements of sport. By this means also we alienated ourselves ever further from the spiritual impulse of movement.

We must retrace our steps with awakened consciousness; we must observe for ourselves the mighty forces of movement and whither they tend to lead us; then we shall perceive a gathering together of creative activity, the forces of which give form to the organs, and we shall gain the possibility of developing new spiritual organs in ourselves.

In this way we shall conquer the rigidity, the lifelessness, the barrenness, which to-day lead people even of the finest intelligence to the extremes of pessimism.

Once more chance has put a paper into my hand,—in Hanover, where I am writing the conclusion of this foreword. Here one may read: ‘Culture (Kultur), so long as it is strong and full of motive power, works unconsciously. We are compelled to absorb and cultivate a conscious civilization. Is not this from the very outset the signal of an incurable and sterile weakness? Is it not the destruction of that seed from which springs all creative force, so that at most one may only expect a feeble echo of that which may truly be called culture? Is the circle of real culture already completed, so that there only remains for us a civilized mechanism, with perhaps some romantic glimmer remaining from the fullness of light of better days,—which also may soon fade into nothingness?’ (from the Niedersachsenbuch, 1927).

In earlier times the inhabitants of Lower Saxony unconsciously followed a spiritual guidance, and they conquered the land of the Celtic Breton and the Gael.—As Englishmen theirs was the task of developing the consciousness soul, in so far as this is bound up with the actual personality and with physical, earthly surroundings. If the German people could raise the forces of consciousness up into the sphere of the divine ego in man, then they would have fulfilled the task of the German civilization. Then they would give to the world a new culture for which all humanity would render thanks,—whereas people turn from them when, untrue to their mission they imitate the mechanistic civilization, carrying this to its furthest extremes.

The greatest herald of the spirit of Germany proclaimed this to the German people with warning voice ever and again during the catastrophe of the world war, and he uttered these stirring words:

Der deutsche Geist hat nicht vollendet,
Was er im Weltenwerden schaffen soll
Er lebt in Zukunftssorgen hoffnungsvoll,
Er hofft auf Zukunftstaten lebensvoll.
In seines Wesenstiefen fuhlt er machtig
Verborgnes, das noch reifend wirken muss.
Wie darf in Feindesmacht verstandislos
Der Wunsch nach seinem Ende sich beleben,
So lang das Leben sich ibm offenbart
Das ihn in Wesenstiefen schaffend halt!

(The German Spirit has not completed
Its destined gift to World-Becoming.
Hope-filled, it lives in cares which fill the future,
Life-filled, it hopes for deeds on which the future must depend,
And in its deepest being feels
A hidden might which yet must work to ripeness.
Opposing powers, with lack of understanding,
Desire its end. Yet of this wish how shall there be fulfilment
So long as there is manifest that life
Which in the depths sustains creative power!)

This life must be grasped by the German. It does not, however, lie in ‘keeping the race pure’, as the slogan has it. It lies in the realization of his inherent ego forces, of his divine ego forces. But the path to this leads through the realm of consciousness. The consciousness of the personality, metamorphosed and raised up to the undying ‘I’ possesses creative forces; it conceals the spirit in itself and will produce, not the mere echo of past culture, but a virile culture of its own.

It may seem that I have strayed far from the subject of the book which I am introducing, and yet this path leads us back to the inner regions of the temple from which the ancient civilizations arose, at first in Word and in Art,—not unconsciously, but guided by the most exalted spirits. They will come to our aid also, at this epoch when it has become necessary for each individual Spirit-Consciousness to work towards the gradual transmutation of itself into a universal Human-Ego-Consciousness. If we allow ourselves to receive this aid, we shall be in a position to open ourselves to the spirit in every sphere of activity,—in that sphere also which this book illumines with spiritual revelation and human knowledge. Then we shall no longer need to stimulate our slackened nerves by means of decadent negro dances which are hammered into us by machinery, turning us into machines and gradually killing out our finest human qualities; but we shall gain an understanding for a noble art of movement, having its source in the spirit, an art of movement which is the reflection of the Dance of the Stars, and which makes the language of the stars sound visibly within us in purity and truth.

Marie Steiner.
November, 1927.

From the manifold indications and details I have given concerning the Christ Mystery, you will be aware that we must differentiate between what had come to be present in the general course of human evolution at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and what came in through the Mystery of Golgotha. You know that in human evolution we have to do with a continuous stream of forces proceeding from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who belong to man's original nature, and also with two side-streams, the Luciferic stream and the Ahrimanic stream.

Now the point is that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic streams reached a certain climax, the climax of the usefulness of their working within human evolution, just at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and—if one may put it like this—mankind was threatened by the danger of this climax being overstepped, so that the necessary equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces in the whole evolution of mankind might have been lost. If we look at mankind's evolution as progressing in a straight line (see diagram), we can say: To the course of this evolution belong the Lemurian age (we will start there), the Atlantean age, and our own age, the fifth, which we always refer to as the post-Atlantean age. If I draw in the strength of the Luciferic influence as a red line, we can say: In the Lemurian age a certain strength is there which first grows, then decreases, becomes very slight, and disappears entirely in the Atlantean age—to arise again in the post-Atlantean age. So that, strictly speaking, in the Atlantean epoch (I am talking not of the evolution of individuals but of mankind as a whole) very little of the direct influence of the Luciferic is there (see red line in diagram).

But in this Atlantean age the Ahrimanic development was there instead, where I have put in a yellow line. I have to show it as particularly strong in the Atlantean age, and later, in the post-Atlantean times, becoming weaker. I am referring now to historical evolution, and when we characterise anything in this way, we must always pay heed to what I said recently: when Lucifer is working particularly strongly, he calls up Ahriman in the subconscious. Thus, if in our fifth age the Luciferic curve is specially noticeable, this does not mean that because Lucifer is active, Ahriman is somewhat outside our sphere. On the contrary, it means that, because Lucifer is working strongly among the forces of history, Ahriman sets to work particularly in the subconscious regions of man.

You see, therefore, that in man's earthly evolution a kind of waving line is there in the case of Ahriman's activity, just as in that of Lucifer. These degrees of strength of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic both have to be balanced. But in the course of history this state of equilibrium has never come to perfection. There have been times when the Luciferic was working with great strength, and times when the Ahrimanic was doing so.

If we look at the period of human evolution when mankind was approaching the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces was extraordinarily fluctuating, vacillating—no real balance was there. We have on one hand the stream of mankind which is moving towards the Mystery of Golgotha and manifests historically in the evolution of the Semitic peoples. This stream is particularly susceptible to the Luciferic influence, whereby a strong Ahrimanic activity is brought about in the subconscious.

On the other hand, the Greek nature is highly susceptible to the forces of Ahriman, and this brings about great Luciferic activity in the subconscious. We can fully understand the Semitic and Greek cultures—polaric opposites of one another—only by keeping in mind this vacillation in human evolution between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered Earth evolution from without, the influence of Greece was of enormous importance for the people of the West. This influence, however, was already beginning to wane, or, more exactly, it had passed its peak. Greek culture was threatened with a decline which can be characterised in the following way. Precisely through the Ahrimanic intervention experienced by the Greeks, and manifest as a Luciferic element of their art, they had developed a lofty wisdom. And—as we have often said—this wisdom took on a very individual, humanly individual, character. But fundamentally it was at its greatest where there still shone into it out of primeval times the teachings received from actual spiritual Beings.

We know that in those times the Teachers of mankind were those who were inspired, initiated, directly from the spiritual world. But through them spiritual Beings spoke; and, if we look back into those remote ages of mankind's evolution at the beginning of the fifth epoch, we can see into a wonderful primeval wisdom. Among the Greeks it was so highly clarified in its concepts and ideas that in this way it had adapted itself to the nature of man. Whereas in earlier times it was given out through the great Initiates in a more pictorial, imaginative way, with the Greeks it was grasped in ideas, in concepts, and thereby was adapted to the human nature of that time. What is so admirable among the Greeks, however, is that resounding through the philosophy of Plato is an echo of that primeval wisdom which mankind may be said to have received from the very lips of the Gods. But men were threatened with the loss of this wisdom.

When we look back to the period of Greek spiritual development that Nietzsche has called the “tragic age,” we are looking back at the great figures of Greek philosophy, at Anaxagoras, at Heraclitus, and in them we can see the final bearers of a divine wisdom which, however, is already converted into ideas and concepts. Thales is to a certain extent the first to take his stand solely upon natural concepts; he is already at some distance from the directly living impression of the primeval wisdom of mankind which we can still discern in Anaxagoras. Mankind was threatened with the gradual loss of this wisdom. But out of this primeval wisdom there had flowed something which in ancient days gave men the capacity to gain some knowledge about man. Knowledge of man was indeed something in which the Greek and all primeval wisdom were destined to be steeped. The Mysteries were meant to give knowledge of man; from them came the aphorism, “Know thyself!” This ancient knowledge of man, however, was mediated by way of Lucifer, and men worked upon it with the aid of Ahrimanic forces. It was bound up with a state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers.

Now at the time when the ancient world was passing away and from the other side came the Mystery of Golgotha, the Ahrimanic forces began to gain a slight ascendancy; they were then particularly strong. And since the sixteenth century something similar is happening again—a kind of renaissance of the Ahrimanic forces. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the Ahrimanic forces were specially strong. And through them man's life of soul was driven in the direction of the abstract—towards that abstraction which meets us in the thoroughly abstract nature of the Romans. We have now to ask: What would have happened to mankind if the course of evolution had continued on these lines and there had been no Mystery of Golgotha? The result would have been that men would have no longer been able to have any concept, any idea, any perception, of the human personality itself.

This is a fact of extraordinary significance. Because it would no longer have been possible for anything to be said to man by way of the Gods, because even the tradition of this divine source of wisdom concerning human personality was being lost, man was threatened with finding himself ever more and more of a riddle. We must feel the full implications of this truth—without the Mystery of Golgotha, man would have been faced by the threat of becoming an ever-increasing riddle to himself. He would indeed have been able to wring forth wisdom, but only about nature, not about himself. And he would gradually have forgotten his divine origin; he would have had to lose all knowledge of it.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. And among all the diverse points of view from which the Mystery of Golgotha can be characterised, this one must be specially considered—that through the incursion of the Mystery of Golgotha men were given from spiritual heights, which were no longer within their reach on earth, a renewed capacity for grasping themselves as persons. The Christ Impulse brought men the possibility of once more grasping their personalities, but now of doing so through inner forces.

To-day it is extraordinarily difficult for human beings to conceive how men of old arrived at their consciousness of personality, because one thing people refuse to believe is how entirely different for men of old was their conception of the external world. It is impossible to understand such a figure as Julian the deserter, the apostate, in all his world-historic significance. if it is not known that he was one of the last who still saw the sun differently from the way in which it is seen to-day.¹ The man of to-day sees the sun as a physical body. The influence of the moon through its natural effects has stayed with him longer. In the moonlight lovers still stroll and sentimentally dream; in the moonlight imagination grows and flourishes; moonlight is like twilight—and poetry written in that key, both true and false, is still widespread. The same feelings that people still have in moonlight, the men of old had, but much more intensely, when on waking they first caught sight of the sun. They did not talk merely of the sunlight; they said something like this: “Out of this heavenly being there streams into us a radiance which permeates us with warmth and light, making of each one of us a personality.”

This was still felt by Julian the Apostate, and he believed it could be preserved. That was his mistake, and also his great tragedy, for man no longer experienced his personality through the physical rays of the sun. This knowledge of the personality was brought to man by a spiritual path. That which the sun out there in space could no longer give him, the experience that could no longer come to him from outside, now had to rise up from his own inner depths. Christ Himself had to unite His cosmic destiny with mankind, so that in the continual fluctuation of the balance between Ahriman and Lucifer men should not fall away from their onward path.

We must take fully and deeply in earnest that Christ had descended from spiritual heights and has united His destiny with that of men. What does this mean? When before the Mystery of Golgotha men looked into the world of the senses, they saw at the same time a spiritual element there; this I made clear when speaking to you about the perception of the sun. All this was lost to men. They had to receive something in place of it; they had to receive something of a spiritual nature, and at the same time gain from this spirituality an impression of reality in the sense-perceptible world. That is a salient point in the Mystery of Golgotha and its relation to human knowledge.

And this Mystery of Golgotha, which gave lo earth-evolution its real meaning, actually took place in a little corner of the earth, unnoticed by the Romans; and even Tacitus knew practically nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha, although he wrote his excellent work on Roman history a hundred years later. History says really nothing about the Mystery of Golgotha, for the Gospels are not to be reckoned as history. They were written in the way I have shown in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact; they are really Mystery-books applied to life. However much trouble the theologians may give themselves, the Mystery of Golgotha will never be part of the history that applies to other events. For this is exactly what is meant to be characteristic of the Mystery of Golgotha: that historically, by way of history founded on external facts, nothing about it is to be known. Those who wish to know anything about the Mystery of Golgotha must have faith in the supersensible. The Mystery of Golgotha does not admit of historical proof by the senses.

In the same way that men of old looked into the world of the senses and apprehended at the same time the supersensible, so must modern man, if he does not wish to lose his knowledge of the personality, look upon the Mystery of Golgotha as upon the supersensible; that is how he must come to the conviction that this historical event, for which there is no historical evidence, did indeed take place. Whoever does not keep in mind that there is no history concerning the most important historical event in the course of man's evolution, that no external account of this event can be called historical—whoever does not grasp this has no understanding of the whole relation to modern man of the Mystery of Golgotha. For concerning the Mystery of Golgotha modern man is meant to turn to an actuality of which history can tell him nothing. And this actuality is to have an operative effect. For what did we speak of yesterday as coming from Ahriman and Lucifer? We said that Lucifer turns men's hearts from interest in other men. Were only the Luciferic to work in mankind, we should increasingly lose interest in our fellow men. What one or other person was thinking would concern us very little. We can very well take the measure of the Luciferic in a man by asking: Is he interested objectively, tolerantly, in others, or is he interested only in himself? Luciferic natures take very little interest in their fellows; they grow stiff and hard, considering as right only what they themselves think and feel, and they are not accessible to the opinions of others. Had the Luciferic gone on working in human evolution in the same way that it worked up to the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind would have gradually entered on a way that we might characterise as follows: People would have become hard and detached in their souls, each thinking only of his own affairs, each holding his own ideas as conclusive, and having no inclination to look into the hearts of his fellows.

This, however, is merely the reverse side of the loss of personality. For by losing the possibility of recognising man as a personality, we lose also our understanding of the personality of those around us. Just at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching, there were very many people—more than is generally thought—in the Greek and Roman worlds, in Africa, in the West of Asia, who were in a certain sense spiritually proud, people who went through the world as—one cannot say peculiar people—but as proud, lonely men who hugged their loneliness. There were many such, and also those who made it a philosophy not to trouble about other people, but merely to follow the way of their own choice. This was brought about by the Luciferic falling out of balance.

And indeed the Ahrimanic was present in excess. This is best shown in the outlook of the first Roman Emperors, the Julians, of whom the very first, Augustus, was the only one to be initiated, though in a rather questionable way. Among the other Emperors there were some who at best obtained initiation by force, but they all regarded themselves as sons of God; that is, they considered themselves initiates by claiming divine descent.² For the Ahrimanic is particularly revealed by a man not being willing to live among other men as a personality among other personalities, but wanting to develop power in the way I referred to yesterday—wanting to rule by exploiting the weaknesses of others. The two great dangers threatening the world at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, dangers to which men would have succumbed if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come, were lack of interest in other men, and the lust for domination in every individual. The Christ, by uniting His destiny with that of mankind, implanted into humanity something of extraordinary depth. You may perhaps understand me best if I give you an outline of what this really was. As I have shown you, we men possess forces that we develop through our original being. You know that in a certain sense we become clever, through our original being, only in the second half of our life. I have spoken of this fully and repeatedly. But that is not quite all; what I was then referring to as the growth of cleverness in man between birth and death is, strictly speaking, valid only for earthly evolution; we are intended to become still cleverer during the evolutionary stages of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. And the forces we are to develop in the course of the Jupiter and Venus stages are already latent in us.

Now the following has come about. You know that during the first half of life a man is unable to acquire self-knowledge through his original being; he has to acquire it through Lucifer, while his original being goes on developing further. The Luciferic infuses him with self-knowledge during the first half of life; in the second half of life this brilliant self-knowledge is clouded over by Ahriman. With the Christ Impulse, another stream enters man's evolution; it speaks to the very depths of the human being. And if man had to rely on his original forces for developing the faculty that would of itself lead him to those cosmic insights which come into Earth-evolution through Christ, then he would not acquire this faculty until the Venus stage of evolution. Thus, however clever a man might become during his life on earth, up to the time of his death he would never be able to reach the point that can be reached through the Christ Impulse having united its destiny with Earth-evolution.

We live through our earthly life, therefore, without being able to understand the Christ Impulse with the help of our original evolution. From this you can gather the following. There were contemporaries of Christ, His disciples; they went about with Him; through the traditional primeval wisdom they could acquire so much wisdom about Him that later they were able to produce the Gospels—but they could not really understand Him. Right up to their deaths they certainly never reached an understanding of the Christ Impulse. When was it, then, that they could achieve this? After their death, in the time after death. Given that Peter or James, let us say, were contemporaries of Christ, when were they ready to understand Christ? Only in the third century after the Mystery of Golgotha—for up to their deaths they were not sufficiently mature; they became mature only in the third century.

We are touching here on a very important secret which we must bring with all exactitude before our souls. The contemporaries of Christ had first to go through death, had to live in the spiritual world until the second or third century; and then, in the life after death, knowledge of Christ could dawn upon them, and they could inspire those who, towards the end of the second century, or from the third century on, wrote about the Christ Impulse. Hence the writings about the Christ Impulse from the third century onwards take on a special character, for through the Church Fathers they received inspiration, more or less clear or more or less clouded. Thus Augustine, whose authority prevailed throughout the Middle Ages, falls into this period. Hence we can see how the only way in which people could be given an understanding of the Christ Impulse was to be inspired on earth by the Venus wisdom, if I may so call it, which at present man can experience only after death and in subsequent centuries. And it was a piece of good fortune—a foolish expression but there is no better one—that in the second and third centuries this inspiration could begin. For had men been obliged to wait longer, beyond the year 333, they would have become increasingly hardened towards the spiritual world and would have been incapable of receiving any kind of inspiration.

You see, the working of the Christ Impulse into mankind during the centuries of Christian development was bound up with numerous mysteries. And anyone wishing to seek for it again to-day finds the most important elements in knowledge about the Christ Impulse only by achieving supersensible cognition. For the first actual teachers of mankind concerning the Christ Impulse were really the dead, as you have been able to see from what I have now been saying—persons who were contemporaries of Christ, and only in the third century became mature enough to gain a full understanding. This understanding was able to grow during the fourth century, but at the same time the difficulty of inspiring men increased. In the sixth century this difficulty went on increasing, until finally the time came when the inspiring of men through spiritual mysteries concerning the Christ Mystery, and the opposition to it caused by the hardening of mankind, were brought under regulation by Rome. This was done by Rome in the ninth century, in 869, at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was finally done away with. This whole matter of inspiration became too far-fetched for Rome, and the dogma was laid down that man possesses in his soul something of the nature of spirit, but that to believe in the spirit is heresy. Men had to be enticed away from the spirit. This in essentials is what is connected with the Eighth (Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 869, to which I have often referred. It is merely a consequence of this abolition of the spirit when Jesuits to-day—I have mentioned this recently—say: “In earlier times there was indeed such a thing as inspiration, but to-day inspiration is devilish; we may not venture to strive for supersensible knowledge, for then the devil comes in.”

These things, however, are connected with the deepest matters which must interest us if we wish truly to enter into Spiritual Science. They are connected particularly with a certain recognition of the character of wisdom which many so-called spiritual scientists, especially those who foregather in so-called secret societies, do not recognise. A certain deception, one might say, is constantly spread abroad among men—spread abroad by those who know spiritual secrets. This deception is veiled by a false contrast, a false polarity. Have you not heard people saying: “There is Lucifer and his opponent is Christ?” and setting up Christ-Lucifer as polaric opposites? I have shown you that even Goethe's Faust-concept suffers from a confusion between Ahriman and Lucifer; from Goethe's inability to distinguish between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. The second part of my little book, Goethes Geistesart, treats of this.

But behind this there is something extraordinarily significant. The real contrast, imparted by those who wish to speak the truth out of the spiritual world, is between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the Christ Impulse brings in something different. It has nothing to do with the Ahriman-Lucifer polarity, for it works in equilibrium. Something of tremendous importance rests on a recognition of this fact; we will speak of it further tomorrow.

• 1. See Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in Spiritual Worlds, Lecture I, “The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ.” This lecture was given in London, April 24th, 1922. See also Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume IV, Lecture VI, given in Dornach, September 16th, 1924.
• 2. See the lecture cycle: Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (notably lectures 5–8) given in Berlin, March 27th to April 24th, 1917.

Dear attendees! When a person, after a day's work and toils, takes a little time to reflect and tries to find his way in the life of the soul, the question arises as to how the individual facts of life, how the individual experiences are connected with the whole human destiny, with the great goal of human life in general. One of the questions that then arises for the soul is undoubtedly that of the meaning of human knowledge.

When we talk about knowledge, we can initially mean that knowledge which relates to the direct services of practical life, to everything that enables us to get to know the outside world in such a way that we can put it at the service of our practical interests. The question becomes somewhat different when we consider knowledge that attempts to penetrate the deeper foundations of life, the riddles of existence – knowledge that does not lead us to an immediately practical work and activity. It is said that man has an immediate urge to know and that knowledge is valuable in itself. Those who look deeper will hardly be satisfied with such an answer. What value would knowledge have if it were only an inner image, only a repetition of what is outside in the world? Why should that which is weaving in the world be effective in the outer world and be repeated in one's own soul only as in a mirror? Is it really only the satisfaction of a soul urge that pushes for knowledge that reaches beyond the everyday? This question will occupy us today: the goal and destiny, essence and significance of human knowledge.

If we mean the concept of knowledge that many people have today, which consists in saying that knowledge should provide us with a true reflection of what the world is experiencing, then it will not be easy to relate knowledge to the great goals and tasks of human existence. We will have to ask ourselves: Is knowledge really only the repetition of something external? Or is it one of the forces that must work in our soul in order to advance it on the paths it must traverse in its existence in the world?

This question cannot be answered by external science; it can only be answered if we consider the whole human being. External science only provides us with information about what our senses perceive and our minds grasp. But beyond this ordinary science, there is something that is trying to become part of our entire spiritual life today, which can be called spiritual science or anthroposophy.

What does theosophical spiritual science seek to comprehend? It seeks to comprehend the whole human being. Let us first agree on what that means, the whole human being. When we look at a person, we see two strictly separate states within the normal human existence of today. These two states, which life presents to us, are so familiar to the human being that he does not even notice that the greatest riddles of existence are hidden in them. We express these states in the words “waking and sleeping”. We recall that from time immemorial many philosophies have called sleep the little brother of death. We can combine these words with two others, namely with the words “life and death”. In these words we have a large part of what we can count among the riddles of existence.

Let us try, starting from what presents itself to us in the most ordinary way, to understand the changing states of waking and sleeping. In the waking state, we try to comprehend all the impressions that constantly flow into our soul - impressions that our senses transmit to us, everything that fills us with joy, desire and pain, in short, what constitutes what we call our mental life. We see this ebb and flow of drives, desires, passions, and so on, plunging into an indeterminate darkness in the evening. During sleep, it transitions into another state, that of unconsciousness. It would be absurd to say that the human being as a being of soul disappears in the evening and is reborn anew in the morning. We must ask ourselves: where is that which works in us throughout the day, where is it when we let our soul life sink into an indeterminate darkness in the evening? We are immediately pointed to answers that cannot be given from an ordinary, sensory perspective, because that perspective escapes precisely that which hides behind the nocturnal state in the evening. The question of where the soul is at night can only be answered by theosophical spiritual science, because it rises from the knowledge of the sensual to the knowledge of the supersensible, from the visible to the invisible.

We need to come to an understanding about how theosophical spiritual science can arrive at such supersensible insights by once again taking a brief look at what really fulfills our entire life during the day. We can say that we live with our soul during the day through external stimulation, through external impressions. In the evening, the external stimuli fade away, creating the emptiness of the sleeping state. But because a person in the normal life of today's existence can lead a soul life only when external perceptions evoke from his soul that which we are currently experiencing, we can imagine that the inner work of the soul dies, withers away when the external stimuli are not there. Must it be so?

That it need not be so can be seen if one accepts the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. What knowledge of the sensory world is comes about through the stimulus of the sensory world. Supersensible knowledge can only come about through the soul's willingness to unfold work within itself, in order to develop powers and abilities even when there are no stimuli from the external sensory world. The possibility of developing such inner powers is given to us by the method of spiritual schooling. This method is there for those who want to penetrate into the knowledge of the supersensible world. This method can only be briefly hinted at here. Those who want to get to know it thoroughly can find it in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. We shall only briefly indicate here how man can find within himself the abilities to ascend to knowledge of the higher worlds.

The first thing is that man learns to artificially evoke, through a strong willpower, what otherwise only comes in the state of unconsciousness, namely, what man experiences when the sensory impressions cease. He must be able to command all outer impressions to stop; all outer impressions around him must fall silent, just as they do in the evening when we fall asleep. But this moment must take place through his will, in full consciousness. He would be like a sleeper if he could awaken nothing in his own soul. But although all outer impressions fall silent, he learns to unfold strong powers; he draws out of the deep recesses of his soul what slumbers there. No outer efforts are needed; they are intimate soul processes. There is a sinking into strong, vigorous thoughts, which are not given from without, but which the soul forms for itself.

This is meditation or concentration, as it is called – a drawing together of thoughts. Without external impressions we must feel joy and sorrow. The spiritual researcher lets powerful, strong thoughts arise in his own soul, thoughts that have nothing to do with the external world, and these are ideals as well as impulses of the will. These must have a stronger effect than external impressions; the soul must be seized by them intensely and powerfully. If a third element were not added, these perceptions would have the effect of volcanoes. This is that through a strong effort of will an inner calm and quiet can be brought about despite these impulses. Then the spiritual researcher experiences - even if only after a long time - the great moment that can be compared to the moment when a blind person suddenly regains his sight after an operation. Just as the impressions of the external world flood into the soul of the blind man after an operation, so too does everything that was previously unavailable to him.

This fact makes it clear to us that there can only be a supersensible world for us if the organ of perception for it is present. When this organ is awakened, a new world opens up. We must not decide about what we do not know, but only about what we know. These organs, which are necessary for recognizing the supersensible world, are developed through meditation or concentration in the calm of our soul. Then “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears” arise - to use an expression of Goethe. It could now be objected: Yes, it may be that the spiritual researcher experiences a higher world, but what do the spiritual worlds have to do with the others who cannot ascend to them? — That is not correct. The spiritual eye is necessary for recognition [of the supersensible worlds], but to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say, unbiased reason is sufficient, and therefore it concerns all people.

Someone in whom the higher organs are awakened can observe such a phenomenon as sleep. It is a very different state from that of waking. Only part of the human being remains in the physical world during sleep, the other part, the soul-spiritual, withdraws from the physical body when falling asleep and returns to its home, the spiritual world. The spiritual world need not be imagined as a different place; it is all around us. We have human nature, divided into two parts; during waking these are together, but during sleeping they are separated. But human nature is not yet fully explained. We can get a rough idea of the two parts that go out at night by comparing man with the animals that are closest to him of all visible creatures. We also find instincts, desires, and feelings in animals. Even if they are not present in the same perfection, they are still more or less present in animals, and only those who cannot rise to a higher [contemplation] will consider them to be the same as in humans. We need only think of something that is usually not emphasized in external science; we need only remember that, for example, in the German language there is a word that cannot be called to anyone from the outside, [the word “I”]. This name cannot sound [from the outside] to our ear when it means our own self; it must arise from one's own soul life. All true religions have recognized this. This is an announcement of what is essentially the same in man as in the divine. Correctly understood, “I” means the ineffable name of God, because Yahweh, correctly translated, means “I am,” no matter what philology may otherwise interpret. This does not mean that man is to be made a god. Just as a drop of water is not the sea, so man is not God.

That which withdraws itself in the evening divides again into two parts: that which is the carrier of desires, passions, etc., and that which lets all these perceptions flow together in us and works through them - the I. Through the I, man becomes the crown of all creatures on this earth. But that which goes out at night is composed of the I and the astral body. What does a human being leave behind? The physical body, and we have that in common with every mineral. It consists of the same forces. The inanimate mineral, the crystal, takes its form from the forces within it; this is not the case with a living being. In the case of humans, we see that their physical body is subject to chemical laws only in one instance, and only at death. In death, we see what the forces imprinted on the mineral do to the body. In life, it never follows these forces. What remains in bed at night is imbued and permeated by another body, and we call this the etheric or life body. This prevents the body from following the chemical and physical laws; it is a faithful fighter against them.

Now we can ask ourselves: Why does this happen every evening, that a person must return to their spiritual home, so to speak? Why must they withdraw into a spiritual world every evening? In the evening, external impressions fade; we are overcome by fatigue. When the astral body and the ego withdraw into the spiritual world, the person falls into unconsciousness. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and pain, urges, passions and so on. Why does all this disappear from our soul life? How can it be that all this dies away at night? We shall soon understand why this is so. The astral body and the I are the bearers of pleasure and pain, of perceptions and concepts. But in order for this to become conscious to the human being, it is necessary that they are mirrored by the physical body and the etheric body. We perceive nothing but what lives in ourselves. It is like a kind of echo that is produced in us by the physical and etheric bodies. Man does not perceive directly what he feels, but what he experiences is mirrored to him through the astral body and the I, through the etheric and physical bodies. But the work of the astral body involves conjuring up what we call the soul life. The real work is done by the astral body and not by the mirror – just as it is necessary for a person to be active at a mirror in order to create this or that image. The astral body has to work from morning till evening to extract from the physical what we can call the content of our soul. The forces that the astral body needs to work during the day, it must draw from the spiritual world. When these forces are exhausted, fatigue sets in, and it must draw new forces again.

Sleep has a profound significance. In the spiritual world is the source of everything we conjure up during our daily lives. If we look at our daily life in this way, we ask: What is the significance of our daily life if the soul has to draw its strength from the spiritual world? The soul and the ego do not enter the astral world empty, but take something with them from our outer world every evening. Life during the day is not without fruit for the soul's life. We need only look at what is characteristic of our soul in its deepest meaning and what is taken from our daytime life into our nighttime life. This can be seen indirectly when we look at our soul during our youth and in old age. This gives us an idea of development. In youth, we see germinal tendencies, but undeveloped, and later we see our soul transformed, with richer content. How can we transform ourselves? By the soul forming a kind of essence every evening from the external impressions we have received. We carry our daytime experiences into the night, and in the morning that which was the soul's spiritual experience has entered the soul; it joins what is already there, and in this way the soul develops.

You only have to look at people who cannot sleep, and if you are an attentive observer, you will notice how the soul's progress suffers when it cannot get the right amount of sleep. We can only imprint something on our memory if we have had a proper amount of sleep. Only in this way can we develop the forces that lead us ever higher. We imprint in our soul what the world reveals to us during our waking life, and in this way our soul becomes wiser. Knowledge is an important means of developing our soul between birth and death. But let us now ask ourselves how much transformation we can actually achieve. How narrow are the limits within which we find ourselves? We can increase our soul development. We can see this in individual abilities, for example in learning to write. Writing encompasses a whole group of abilities. When we look back, we see what a wide range of abilities were involved, how much work and effort and so on went into learning the art of writing. Or think of the first attempt we made to draw the first letter, of everything that then flowed together into the one skill of writing. From what we experienced then, we extracted an essence, and through such weaving together a soul skill arises.

Whatever has a deeper impact on our lives can only develop within very narrow limits in the time between birth and death. If someone pursues the riddles of the world or has gone through this or that life experience in deep pain, you can even see that reflected in their physiognomy and in their movements. From decade to decade, this is expressed more and more, even in the body. But we can develop in this direction only to a limited extent. Why? Because we have our souls before us like a malleable material, but we cannot work with what our inclinations have created between birth and death into the body, no matter how many experiences we have gathered. Let us take the example of music. If we do not have a finer ear, if we are not musical, we are unable to develop the ability during our lifetime that could change our physicality in this respect between birth and death. We are powerful in the face of the soul, but powerless in the face of the facts of our physicality. But we know that when we face the external world and conjure up all these images, they are born out of our soul - not only, but through its activity, because it could never conjure up such reflections if something were not given from outside. And this outside includes the same forces that make up our physical body. It seems so mysterious to us because we cannot penetrate there. We would have to conjure up a fine musical ear and so on from the same world. It is something like a veil, like a shell. But behind it is something that, if we could master it, would give us the ability to transform our physical body just as much as the astral.

We can gain knowledge, but we cannot utilize it; we cannot transform our body with the knowledge. But there is a possibility to transform our physical body in the same way as the astral one. Even if we recognize the forces, we could not apply them directly, because our physical and etheric bodies are given to us as dense material. Here we want to refer to a law that will be incorporated into modern spiritual life through Theosophy.

In the 17th century, not only laymen but also naturalists believed that worms and fish could arise from mud. If we go back to the 17th century, we find scholarly works that describe how wild animals grew out of other animals – for example, hornets out of a dead ox that had been beaten until it was brittle, bees out of a horse carcass, and wasps out of a donkey carcass. It was [the naturalist] Francesco Redi who first uttered the sentence: Living things can only arise from living things. There must be a germ of something living in order for something living to arise. Redi was almost burned [as a heretic] for saying this. Today, anyone who claims otherwise would be considered backward. Spiritual science says: Spiritual-soul things can only arise from spiritual-soul things. Just as an earthworm does not come from mud, so the spiritual does not come from the inheritance of the father and mother.

We have to distinguish between the environment of the spiritual and the spiritual itself. In spiritual science, this leads us to the law of reincarnation [of what lives spiritually in man]. Today those who have recognized this law are perhaps not exactly called heretics – fashions change. Today the [true] enlightened are declared to be fantasists, dreamers. But in the not too distant future, people will no longer be able to understand how anyone could have believed otherwise. Thus, we see in what comes into existence through birth the repetition of an earlier earthly existence. And what lies between death and birth is a purely spiritual existence. When we look at a child with undeveloped features, we see what it has brought with it from previous lives on earth, and we can understand something that is very important.

Why can we only develop mental abilities during our lifetime? When we wake up, we find the same body with the same organs. But when a person passes through the gate of death, the great moment arrives when he discards his physical body and only what is spiritual and mental remains. Now he is no longer bound to the body. The conditions are quite different than during sleep. In the morning, when we wake up, we find the same physical body; we cannot destroy it and rebuild it. But when the physical falls away at death, what we have taken in knowledge during our life is united with our soul. In accordance with the knowledge and experiences we have had, we can now reshape them and incorporate them into a new body.

Thus, in each life, we build our body according to what we have gained in the last life; we make it the product of our experiences in the last life. Life experience in the present life is our existence in a next life. This is how knowledge works in us; it is one of the most important forces of existence, shaping itself. We are grateful for the knowledge of the last life; it has produced a body in the present life and preserves that with which we have enriched ourselves in the present life, and that will bring us higher in the next life. Now we also understand why there can be a huge difference between different people when we consider the strength and weakness of their cognitive abilities.

Now you will ask: why does man not remember his previous lives? That is also a matter of development. A four-year-old child cannot count. But it would be a false conclusion to say that this is not a human being, because humans can count. Wait until he is ten years old. There comes a time for every person when he begins to remember. One can only remember that which is present. Fichte was right to say that most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than a self. The realization of what the self is is still missing. Just as the flowers can only be recognized through sensory impressions, so can the spiritual only be recognized through spiritual research. From the intimate study of the self, it follows that the self must be there as a conscious idea before one can remember. Only when we have generated the idea of self can we reflect back on ourselves. Thus, knowledge as self-knowledge leads us to build up our memory in such a way that we consciously expand life beyond the life that is enclosed between birth and death. If we can continue to work from life to life, if through knowledge we succeed in shaping ourselves and thus awaken the eternal in us, then the knowledge of development helps us in the shaping of all that is eternal in us. Now we give the work of knowledge and its meaning for our whole life. It brings us immortality and gives us knowledge of our immortality.

Immortality and knowledge belong together. In a particular life, our body appears to be something that has been worked into it from the previous life. We often cannot use the knowledge in this life, but we need it to build a new body. This certainty gives spiritual science a practical meaning in life. It must not remain mere theory, but we must permeate ourselves with it completely. We then see death in a new light. Knowledge has built up our present body. Through the disintegration of our body, we become free from it and gain the opportunity to build a new one. Thus, even if we look at death in pain when it touches others, or with fear when it approaches us, it appears to us in a completely different form. If we can rise to a higher point of view, we can say that we are grateful for death, because it gives us the opportunity to build a new body for ourselves - for a higher life. The old spiritual researchers have always recognized this and also said so. Goethe puts it so beautifully in front of our soul, how we bring in from fresh life what we have worked for in the previous life:

As on the day when you were given to the world
The sun stood in greeting of the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you entered.
So you must be, you cannot escape yourself,
So the Sibyls said, so the prophets said;
And no time and no power can dismember the form that has been stamped, which develops itself alive.

Tomorrow we will attempt to present the final scene of Goethe's “Faust” in eurythmy. It will be apparent that my reflections today and tomorrow will be linked to the end of the second part of Goethe's Faust. We are, of course, dealing with one of the greatest poetic attempts in world evolution, with regard to the entire second part of Goethe's Faust, but especially with regard to the final scene, which is based on the most significant spiritual truths. Nevertheless, as true as it is that Goethe's “Faust” allows for different degrees and levels of understanding, it is also true that one can always go further and further in terms of seeking out what has flowed from Goethe's infinitely rich spiritual life into “Faust” and especially into the second part of “Faust”.

Furthermore, we shall see that the very end of the second part has so many occult truths to reveal to us, if we go to the subtleties in the presentation of the same, as hardly any other writer in the world has tried to reveal so far. And we shall see that these truths are enshrined by Goethe in the second part of “Faust” with a wonderful—to use an apparently pedantic expression—occult-appropriate science.

Now I must frankly admit to you that I would not dare to speak about Faust in the way I want to, if I did not have a Faust and Goethe problem that has never been dormant since 1884. Therefore, perhaps I may be permitted to hint at many things in aphorisms, which would require much more detailed substantiation for anyone who does not start from spiritual science. Nevertheless, I must confess that I do not approach the subject without a certain shyness, especially when it comes to linking occult observations to Goethe's “Faust” or to any other work of literature. For then all the lamentable things that have been done by occultists and non-occultists in the interpretation of poetry arise before my eyes.

One must really be somewhat appalled at the occultistic discussion of poetry when one considers what has been done in the world with regard to such interpretations, whether from the side of science or from so-called theosophists! And so please allow me to send a kind of introduction in advance, from which you can see how little inclined I myself am to dream occult truths, occult insights, into any kind of poetry of the spiritual development of humanity, and how hard I try to present only what can really be considered absolutely established.

Now, it is my custom when I have to talk about a subject to first immerse myself in the subject in a broader sense. When taking occult considerations seriously, it is necessary to immerse oneself in the whole atmosphere in which the subject is placed. And so I endeavored to immerse myself in Goetheanism once again.

For this purpose, I had to procure a great deal of literary material that I had studied decades ago. So I took up Goethe's “Prophecies of Bakis” again. These are thirty-two sayings clothed in enigmatic form, so to speak thirty-two riddles. Now you can imagine that an enormous amount has been written about what Goethe called “prophecies” and over which he poured, so to speak, oriental wisdom – it is a particular food for literary historians. Thus, in the thirty-two riddle verses, the most diverse people have seen the most colossal secrets.

I will give you a characteristic example in a moment. It is the twenty-ninth and thirty-third riddle verse that Goethe coined. It is quite good that we delve into these types of riddle verses before we go to the last scene of “Faust”.

One thing I know and revere, even worship at its feet;
Placed on the crown of the head, it is cursed by everyone.
I know one thing, and it firmly presses the lip shut;
But in the next moment it is the loathing of the world.

It must be said: it sounds quite mysterious! And the thirtieth riddle is:

This is the highest, and at the same time the basest!
Now the most beautiful, and at once the most hideous too.
Drink it up, and taste no deeper:
Beneath the enticing foam the dregs sink to the bottom.

Before we imagine how a theosophist might “interpret” these mysterious verses, let us look at an exoteric. We will not be able to make sense of what he says, but that does not matter; it shows us what is meant by “science”: “A most remarkable turn! Goethe chose this form to conceal and at the same time reveal his meaning.” Another Goethe interpreter has referred to these verses as “Freedom and Love”. The good man is at a loss and now wants to point out an explanation himself. “The highest, and at the same time the most abominable.” That should be: youth. That is both the highest and the most abominable. He says: That solves the mystery by itself.

That is an exoteric! An esoteric could say: You have to go much deeper than that!

One I know and venerate, yes, worship at its feet;
Placed on the crown of the head, it is cursed by everyone.
One I know, and it firmly presses the lips together;
But in the next moment it is the loathing of the world.

This refers to the plant, one could say, which represents the inverted human being. It can be associated with the Logos and Lucifer, or with white and black magic, and so on! Such explanations are widespread in the theosophical literature by the thousands.

Now, the art of familiarizing oneself with spiritual science does not consist in knowing how to apply what one has absorbed in spiritual science to anything at all, but in knowing how to relate to it in the right way – in our case, for example, to Goethe. Spiritual science should not lead us to all kinds of craziness, but should take us to where truth flows. And then one finds that the first two lines of the first verse mean — a slipper, and the last two, a cigar. Goethe hated cigar smoke. Yes, that is the truth, it is not profound, but it is as Goethe meant it. And the solution of the second verse is: spirit. As the spirit it is the highest, in alcohol as intoxication it is the most abominable. It is quite good to demonstrate such a process once, because you really should not be blinded by the art of interpretation and all sorts of profound arts, but you should be guided to where the truth is.

Goethe has also been made into a national chauvinist. But he was not at all. Take the fifth verse:

Two I see! The great one! I see the greater one! The two
rubbing with hostile power, one upon the other. Here are rocks and land, there are rocks and waves!
Which is the greater one, the fate speaks only.

This was taken to refer to the struggle between France and England for control of the continent. However, the commentator quoted above rejects this and says that the French Revolution and the German people are meant. This is quite foolish! What is really meant is life and death!

Now, this matter must be taken very seriously indeed. Just because something can be proved, that is absolutely no proof that the matter is right.

I wanted to say this in advance so that you do not think that I want to fall into the same error when explaining the final scene of 'Faust'. This final scene presents us with what could be called 'Faust's Ascension'. As is well known, Faust has gone through severe aberration, and also through all the possible madness and confusion of the wider, larger world. This is how it should be shown: Faust is to be led under the influence of Ahriman-Mephistopheles through the aberrations of the world, but the deepest thing that is embodied as the eternal in the human breast should not be able to be corroded by that which comes from Mephisto-Ahriman. In the end, Faust should still be able to be absorbed by the good spiritual worlds. That is what Goethe set out to achieve with his Faust epic.

Anyone who has learned something about the spiritual worlds through spiritual science and has little artistic sense within them can generally form an idea of how they would imagine it. For Goethe, who was an artist in the most intimate and highest sense, it was not so easy. He could not simply depict how Faust ascends to heaven and turn it all into an abstract, allegorical construct. For him, that would have been symbolism, a straw he was not willing to use. He wanted art. He wanted something that would endure and be secure in the face of true reality. That is what he wanted to be there. And so it occurred to him: How should I now present this on the stage, so that Faust is led into heaven? One can only place objects of the physical plane into it, they can only hint at something symbolic, but that would be straw, that would be no art! Even with all kinds of machinery one could only represent straw. Goethe first had to seek the means through which Faust can penetrate as a soul into the spiritual worlds. One cannot penetrate into the spiritual worlds through the air, one cannot penetrate through the external physical elements. Where is something real that can provide the means by which Faust can penetrate? That can only be what the spiritual represents on earth. Yes, where is that on earth? That is the consciousness that receives the spiritual! That is, Goethe first had to create a reality of consciousness that would receive the spiritual. He does this by placing people in his scenes, people in whose consciousness the spiritual can be said to live: monks, anchorites, and he layers them on top of each other. And one can say that a soul's ascent into the spiritual worlds is a real process. To present a spiritual process before an ordinary parquet floor would not be real, it is not rooted there; but it is rooted in the souls that Goethe presents. So he first tried to depict the consciousnesses that observe the spiritual process. So he presents the choir and the echo, which can perceive the elementary world of the spirit in the sensual-physical. They have prepared themselves not only to see the outer physical nature, but also within the physical plan the spiritual world into which the soul of Faust must enter.

And now it is described in such a way that only these monks can feel it. For just take the words, they are really not descriptions of physical processes:

Forest, it sways along.

It is as if one feels the elemental world emerging from natural things.

Woods, they sway towards it.
Rocks, they press against it.
Roots, they cling to it.
Trunk close to trunk up to it.
Wave after wave splashes against it.
Cave, the deepest, protects it.
Lions, they slink silently –
friendly around us,
a place consecrated to honor,
a holy love-nest.

There is an echo to this chorus. This is not without significance. It is meant to suggest to us how truly all-encompassing that which comes from elementary nature is.

Now we are led at the same time to something that becomes a wonderful intensification in Goethe. We are presented with three advanced anchorites, the Pater ecstaticus, the Pater profundus and the Pater Seraphicus, three who have attained higher levels than the others, who as anchorites only describe the processes just described. But there is a wonderful progression from the Pater ecstaticus through the Pater profundus to the Pater Seraphicus.

The Pater Ecstaticus is concerned with the lower stages of perfection, with sensory experiences, with being within oneself. The Pater Profundus has already progressed to the point of going from within outwards, of experiencing that which nature lives through as spirit and which is at the same time human spirit. Seen from the spiritual point of view, he stands higher than the Pater Ecstaticus. We can say: the Pater Profundus sees the spirit in the cosmos, which for him simultaneously becomes spirit in man. The Pater Seraphicus sees directly into the world of the spirit; for him it does not reveal itself through nature, but he deals directly with the spirit.

Hence the mysticization of the Pater ecstaticus through inner development. What is said now means nothing but inner states:

Eternal bliss,
glowing bond of love,
boiling pain of the chest,
foaming divine joy.
Arrows, pierce me,
Lances, vanquish me,
Maces, crush me,
Lightning, batter me;
That the vain
All evaporate,
Shine the permanent star,
Eternal love's core.

We have already covered the Pater profundus, which leads to the stage of feeling the spirit through nature.

Like the rocky abyss at my feet
It weighs heavily on the deep abyss,
Like a thousand streams that flow radiantly
To the horror of the foam of the flood,
How straight, with its own powerful drive,
The trunk carries itself into the air:
So it is the almighty love
That forms and nurtures everything.
There is a wild roar around me,
As if the forest and rocky ground were surging!
And yet, lovingly in the roar,
The water rushes to the gorge,
Called to water the valley;
The lightning, which struck down in flames,
To improve the atmosphere,
Which carried poison and haze in its bosom:
Are messengers of love, they announce
What surrounds us eternally,
My innermost being may also ignite it,
Where the mind, confused, cold,
Tormented in dull senses,
A crowd of locked chains of pain.
Oh God! Soothe the thoughts,
Enlighten my needy heart.

Now, in the Pater Seraphicus, there comes an immediate grasp of the spiritual world into which Faust is to be accepted, that is, of the spirits in whose midst Faust is now to enter. For this, a consciousness must first be presented: that is the Pater Seraphicus; he provides the medium through which the blessed boys can appear. And now, again, wonderfully, I would say expertly and appropriately observed:

What a morning cloud floats
Through the firs' swaying hair!
Do I sense what lives within?
It is a young ghostly host.

Goethe has children appear who died immediately after they were born; in the vernacular, they are called midnight babies.

Faust is to join the company of such midnight babies first; they know nothing of the world, their consciousness of the past has been clouded by their birth, and they know nothing of the new world yet. This belongs together with the ascension of Faust. As in the physical world there is no lightning without thunder, so in the spiritual world such an ascension of Faust is not without the blessed boy's realization of himself.

That a lover is present,
Do you feel, so just approach;
But from rugged earthly ways,
Happy ones! you have no trace.

Spiritual beings can only see the physical plane through our eyes and ears, otherwise they see the spiritual. When a ghost sees a hand, it sees the will that moves the hand and the form; if it wants to see the physical of the hand, it must use a physical eye.

Descend into my eyes
world and earthy organ,
You can use them as yours,
Look at this area!
(He takes it in.)
These are trees, these are rocks,
waterfall that crashes
And with tremendous rolling
Shortens the steep path.

The blessed boys are now inside with Father Seraphicus. He gives them so much of his spiritual strength that they can ascend to higher spheres. This shows once again the connection between the spiritual and physical worlds. When we meditate, the spirits also benefit, which is why we should read to the dead. In this way, Pater Seraphicus gives the fruit of his meditation to the boys, and through this they ascend.

Rise to higher spheres,
Always grow unnoticed,
As, according to an eternally pure way,
Strengthen God's presence.
For that is the food of the spirits,
Which in the freest ether reign:
Eternal Love's revelation,
That to bliss unfolds.

To know the “Faust” as here in Goethe a deepest occult truth of a world poem has been incorporated, means to be closer to the occult than any number of “occult” explanations can give.

Now the boys are in their own territory. They have crossed over from the realm of the spirits of form into the realm of the spirits of movement.

Now come the angels, bringing Faust's entelechy, that is, his immortality. They have snatched this member of the spirit world from Mephistopheles and bring it up with the words:

The noble limb
Of the spirit world is saved from evil:
Whoever strives for it,
We can redeem him;
And if he has received love
From above,
The blessed host meets him
With a warm welcome.

The younger angels:

Those roses, from the hands
Of loving, holy penitents,
Helped us win the victory
And complete the great work,
To gain this treasure of souls.
Evil retreated when we scattered,
devils fled when we struck.
Instead of the usual punishments of hell
the spirits felt the torment of love;
even the old master of Satan
was permeated with acute pain.

It is an occult sentence: to Mephisto-Ahriman, love is a consuming fire and a terrible gift of darkness.

Rejoice! It is accomplished.

Now the more perfect angels:

We are left with a remnant of earth
to bear,
And if it were made of asbestos,
It is not clean.
When strong spiritual power
The elements
Gathered up in itself....

What kind of earthly remnant is this? Our soul, when it lives on earth, absorbs through its perceptions, ideas and feelings what is going on on earth, and in so doing, the soul, as it were, draws to itself what lives in the elements of the physical plane. This cannot be separated immediately. Just as corpses used to be wrapped in a fabric made of asbestos to hold the ashes together, Faust's soul has a remnant of the material world that is not pure, even if it is like the asbestos that withstands fire.

No angel parted
The united dual nature
Of the two intimate ones,
Only eternal love
Can separate them.

The angels cover their faces before the incarnation. This is a secret that can only be seen by those entities that can descend deeper than angels who have not experienced the incarnation. Only love can separate this.

Now the angels become aware of the blessed boys. The blessed boys receive what is being led up:

Release the flakes.

Here Goethe again draws on physical processes to characterize spiritual processes. When the Benedictine monks die, they are wrapped in a special garment, the “flocca”, which is brown in color; all Benedictines are buried in the same flocca, hence the word “flakes”.

Here I have tried to take a liberty with respect to what is actually there in Faust. I have said: all this must be revealed to us through consciousness. Up to now, everything passes through the consciousness of the choir, the anchorites. Now Faust himself must ascend through consciousness, but he must ascend through full consciousness, he must fill a new consciousness completely, a new consciousness that is, however, identical with him, for he ascends as a fully developed human being.

Much in Faust is still unfinished, and certainly unfinished is the Pater Marianus, whom Goethe later called Doctor Marianus. This Doctor Marianus is there so that Faust may appear through his consciousness, so I simply let Doctor Marianus be Faust himself. The anchorite Doctor Marianus is at the same time Doctor Marianus and Faust.

Now it is a matter of the profound mystery of love, as permeating the world in the fully Christian sense.

Faust, speaking in a profane sense, has seduced Gretchen, Gretchen has even been executed, she has become innocently guilty, in her there is that innocence which rests enclosed in the mystery of man, and her love is an “eternal, enduring star”. If one wants to express this in an image, one comes to the Mater Dolorosa Gloriosa. She brings with her three penitents, she does not look at the guilt of these three, but at what is innocently guilty in them. To Doctor Marianus this secret is revealed.

Here the view is unobstructed,
The spirit is uplifted.
There women pass by,
Floating upwards;
The glorious one in the middle
In a wreath of stars,
The Queen of Heaven,
I see it in the radiance.
(Enraptured)
Supreme ruler of the world!
Let me in the blue
Stretched out celestial vault
See your secret.
Appreciate what moves the man's chest
Seriously and tenderly
And with holy love
Towards you carry.

Our courage is unconquerable
When you command us,
Suddenly the heat subsides
As you pacify us.
Maiden, pure in the most beautiful sense,
Mother, worthy of honor,
Our chosen queen,
Equal to the gods.

Around her,
light clouds swirl.

Goethe quite appropriately allows the soul to emerge first from the nebulous clouds, and then to solidify into a finished form.

The chorus of penitents follows. It is magnificent that Goethe has taken, I would almost say, love in its sensual form and here has given it a religious transfiguration – for the second time; the Bible has already done so for the first time. Mary Magdalene has loved much in the real sense, but she has simply loved, and Christ sees only love, not sin, and so she also belongs to Christ. Then there is Maria Aegyptiaca and Una Poenitentium, otherwise known as Gretchen. It could also be called Doctor Marianus, otherwise known as Faust.

The blessed boys accept Faust into their circle. Faust seeks to find something of Mary in Gretchen through the Queen of Heaven, so a mystic choir may express what has taken place. This mystic choir contains great, succinct words:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable,
The inadequate,
Here it becomes reality;
The indescribable,
Here it is done;
The eternal feminine
Draws us on.

With this skeleton, I wanted to show you that Goethe really did depict this last scene appropriately, based on spiritual insight, and that he knew how to create the real foundations everywhere: the foundations of consciousness.

As one who is familiar with the subject knows, really understands, so has Goethe described. However, one must immerse oneself in what Goethe wanted. One must be in his intentions, as it were, have the dead Goethe standing before you as a living being. Because some things are not so easy to understand.

Let us visualize the forces that hold the human being together during life on earth, so that we can gain some insight into cosmology during these days. We know, of course, that the human being is structured when we look at the next thing that characterizes him in earthly life: the physical body, the body of formative forces (which can also be called the etheric body), the astral body, and the I.

Let us imagine how we might characterize these four aspects of the human being. The physical body is, after all, what comes to a person through the fact that the forces of the earth work for him, so to speak. In the time that a person goes through between death and a new birth, he does not deal with this physical body. From the remarks I made in the immediately preceding lectures, we have seen that the human being, when it descends from the spiritual and soul realms to a physical embodiment, is, so to speak, spiritually dead and must regain its strength in inwardness by immersing itself in the physical body. But this physical body itself is, as it were, born out of the forces of the earth and connects with that which descends from the spiritual-soul world. But a short time before the human being reaches physical embodiment on earth, he does not yet have the formative forces or etheric body either. This is also only connected to the human being for earthly existence in the same way as the physical body. Only this formative forces or etheric body has a different relationship to the cosmos than the physical body.

If we examine the physical body of man in relation to its forces, we find in it precisely the forces of the earth planet itself. But if we approach the etheric or formative body of man, we find in it more the forces of the cosmos, the forces of the entire universe. On the other hand, the human astral body and the human I contain such forces that are not actually found in the outer space of the universe, which, if we may use the expression, are not of the world to which the earth belongs.

It is actually the case that the earth is constantly striving to take possession of the physical body of the human being and incorporate it into its own being. In contrast, the universe constantly tends to disperse the human being's formative forces or etheric body throughout the world. When a person is in the state between falling asleep and waking up, the forces at work in what remains in bed, in the physical and formative forces, actually work in such a way that the physical body continually, if I may express it this way, wants to connect with the earth. It wants to become similar to the earth, it wants to become completely earthly. The formative forces or etheric body wants to disperse into the universe. And when we rediscover our physical body and our etheric body when we wake up in the morning, it is actually the case that, when we enter our physical body, it tells us: the earth has taken hold of me throughout the night, the earth wanted to shape me into dust. Only because you held me together through your ego and your astral body yesterday and the preceding days on earth have I remained a physical body; the forces of cohesion continued to work in me. Likewise, the formative forces or etheric body says: I have only kept the human form because I have adopted the habit of being like you. Actually, during the night, while you were sleeping, while you were away from me, the forces of the universe wanted to scatter me to the four winds.

Every time we wake up, we basically have to make an effort to properly take possession of our physical body again. It actually wants to lose us from falling asleep to waking up. We do this through the ego. The ego, when trained to do so, can really feel as if it wants to take possession of the physical body anew every morning. The astral body can feel when waking up that it must make the etheric body similar to itself. The etheric body already wanted to take on an inhuman form. The astral body must in turn push it back into the human form. One would like to say: During sleep, the physical body loses its tendency to be possessed by the ego, and the etheric body loses its tendency to have a human-like form. It flutters out. So that in fact the shape that our physical body has is only a result of the I-effect in our human being. In the present state of mind, people do not have much feeling for something that can be expressed in words: when I return to my physical body in the waking state, I first have to take possession of it again. It wanted to get lost, and the etheric body wanted to flutter apart.

But let us assume that there was once a time when people still had a clear sense of this struggle that takes place every time we wake up between the self and the astral body on the one hand, and the physical body and the etheric body on the other. Then, precisely because they would have had this clear perception, they would also have sensed that it would have to be something very special if a person were to suddenly have to leave his physical body and etheric body through some sudden event.

Under normal earthly conditions, when a person leaves his physical body and his etheric body, it is because the physical body, whether through illness or old age, has become very similar to the earth, so that it wants to unite with the earth. Or, through some kind of injury, the physical body has been brought to such a state that the ego can no longer possess it, and so on. But let us assume that the I and the astral body suddenly had to leave the fully healthy and uninjured physical and etheric bodies, so that they still have the tendency to be possessed by the I and to be similar to the astral body in the highest sense. What would have to happen then?

The thought might have dawned on the old person: Yes, then this physical body could not simply disintegrate. It can only disintegrate when it already has the tendencies to disintegrate within itself, as a result of illness or aging or the like. But when the astral body and the I suddenly have to emerge from the fully healthy human organism, in which the body of formative forces is present, then the human-like form would have to remain, because the tendency to be possessed by the I and the astral body is still fully present. The human form would have to remain fully intact. The human being would become like a statue. The physical body could not disintegrate, the etheric body could not become dissimilar because the separation would have been too rapid. The human being would become a statue.

There seems to have been a case of this kind of sensation in reality. You all know the Greek legend of Niobe, who had seven healthy sons and seven healthy daughters and who, out of a sense of abundance, once mocked the mother of Apollo and Artemis because, despite being a goddess, she only had two children: Apollo and Artemis. She refused to sacrifice, and the revenge of the god or the gods came upon her. She had to experience that her seven daughters and seven sons suddenly died, were killed, by the arrows of Apollo and Artemis. She saw the whole field of corpses of her fourteen offspring before her, and her ego and her astral body united in the pain of what she saw around her. You know the figures on the pediment of the statue of Niobe, who becomes a statue herself, surrounded by her seven sons and seven daughters as they meet their deaths. She herself becomes a statue. The physical body and the etheric body must separate from the ego and the astral body. But this physical body and the etheric body, because they were so full of life that Niobe herself could mock the goddess with her two offspring, could not lose their connection to the ego, and the etheric body could not become dissimilar to the astral body. Niobe became a statue.

Such a work of art is certainly the outcome of a deep feeling arising from a world view, of something that was felt to be a truth from the world view of the time. The feeling was simply this: if Niobe had not been so full of life that she could come to mock the goddess Latona, then she could have died with her physical body disintegrating. But she was so full of life that she rebelled against the gods, that she lived so fully in her physical body. And so we see that the Greek genius felt: because of the rapid departure of the ego and the astral body from the physical and etheric bodies, Niobe becomes a statue.

If we look back at the development of humanity, we see that art always follows the feelings associated with the world view of the time in question. But we can see this in many other ways as well. Let us turn our gaze once more to how the human being, upon waking, must take possession of his physical body again, because this physical body wants to become similar to the earth. If Niobe had been able to sleep even for one night after experiencing her pain, she could no longer have become a statue, for the physical body would then already have absorbed the forces to become similar to the earth, that is to disintegrate. Therefore, every morning the human being must again take possession of the physical body, and every morning the astral body must form the etheric body in a similar way, giving it a plastic form again, so that it takes on a human-like shape.

During the Greek development there was a time when it was felt quite vividly that every morning man must develop strength in order to take firm possession of his physical body. The Greeks derived a certain satisfaction from their physical body, and since they knew that they had to take possession of their physical body anew every morning, they felt the need to strengthen the forces that could take possession of the physical body, and also those that could make the astral body strong, in order to make the etheric body similar to it again every morning.

If man, while waking, would consciously follow the whole process that takes place when waking up, he would say to himself every morning: I must not lose my physical body, I must really get back into this physical body! Man would be afraid of not being able to get properly into the physical body. The ancient Greeks knew much about this fear, and they also knew that every night the etheric body has a tendency to split into four different forms: an angelic, a lion-like, an eagle-like, and an ox-like form. Every morning, starting from the astral body, one must endeavor to synthesize these four members of the etheric body, if I may use the expression, in such a way that a real human being is formed again. But the Greeks liked to have life in the physical and etheric bodies. I have often quoted the saying that comes to us from Greece: “Better a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows,” in the underworld. The Greeks loved this physical existence. He also wanted to be strengthened in the possession of his physical body, in the becoming similar of the etheric body to man. And you see, tragedy arose out of this tendency. And Aristotle still gives a definition of tragedy that clearly indicates that basically the Greeks did not think of tragedy as modern man thinks of it. I don't know if anyone else has had different experiences, but I have mostly found that people today believe that tragedies exist because, after spending the whole day dealing with what the day brings, they like to sit down for a few hours in the evening to experience something more or less exciting, which is not a real experience but only an image.

This was not how the Greeks thought at the time when Greek culture was actually gradually emerging. For the Greeks, life was one, and everything they put into it was something that should truly belong to the totality of that life. And tragedy was the means by which man could properly possess his physical body and form his etheric body. And tragedy was so developed that by looking at it man should feel fear and pity. Why should man experience fear in tragedy? He should experience fear because by experiencing this fear his power is strengthened to take possession of the physical body in the right way every morning. And he should feel compassion, because through it his astral body is strengthened each morning to form the etheric body in the right way. “Put me before tragedy, said the Greek, then I am able to properly take possession of my physical body, to properly build up my etheric body, then I am able in the fullest sense of the word to be a right person.” The Greeks wanted to be true human beings in their earthly existence. In addition to the other means of immersing themselves in their culture, tragedy was also intended to help them achieve this. Of course, this presupposes that in those older times people knew how the soul and spirit, the I and the astral body of the human being, are connected with the physical and etheric aspects of the human being.

Aristotle gives a definition of tragedy. He says: “Tragedy is the imitation of an action through which fear and compassion are aroused, so that by arousing fear and compassion, man experiences the catharsis, the crisis of fear and compassion. Crisis, catharsis, is an expression borrowed from the older Greek medicine, the art of healing, and even when Aristotle was already developing Greek culture into pedantry, he still felt that tragedy, in particular, should have something healing, something strengthening for man.

Let us try to understand this term “catharsis”, which also comes from the mysteries – and we have often explained what it means in the mysteries – in our ordinary lives.

When a person becomes ill inside, what actually happens? Suffering and pain arise in the person that are not otherwise present. He begins to feel his organism, to sense it in some way, to sense it in a way that he does not sense it in normal, so-called healthy life. In healthy life, one believes, nothing hurts at first. When one becomes ill, something starts to hurt. But this means nothing other than that the I and the astral body are not properly — forgive the somewhat crude expression — integrated into the physical body and the etheric body. If the person is then led to healing and recovery, the I and the astral body are given the strength to integrate properly again. In the healing process, the I and the astral body gain greater power over the physical body than they had before the healing.

Let us assume that a person falls prey to a lung disease. His I and his astral body are not properly connected to the etheric part of the lungs and to the physical part of the lungs. What happens during the healing process is, again, the correct connection. And the crisis consists precisely in the fact that outside of the correct engagement, the I and the astral body are given the strength to engage themselves correctly again afterwards. What happens in an external way in the illness is what the Greek saw continually happening in an internal way in the human being.

The Greek felt this way: If a person does nothing for himself, then his I and his astral body become more and more alien to the physical and etheric bodies. They can take possession of the physical body less and less and shape the etheric body after themselves less and less. They have to be brought out so that they can then be properly brought back in again. The astral body has to be permeated by visualized suffering, by compassion. And the ego has to be permeated by fear. When the ego experiences fear, it strengthens itself. And the ego survives this fear because it is only presented through the image. So the ego does not perish under fear, it endures the fear, it undergoes the crisis, the catharsis, and as a result has a strengthened power to take possession of the physical body again every morning. Likewise, through compassion, through looking at suffering, the astral body is strengthened, making the etheric body more and more similar.

This shows how in Greece, art was seen as being fully connected to the human being, as the figure of Niobe shows, or as something that should have an effect on the process of becoming and educating a human being. The Greeks always looked at the concrete human being, and one can say that since the time of the Greeks, the essence of the human being has actually been lost by the human being himself.

This is particularly evident when we turn our gaze to young Goethe. Even in his youth, Goethe really does get to know a great deal about the world around him, the way people think and feel. And he even became familiar with the way extraordinarily significant, ingenious people try to imagine the world. But for Goethe — as I have already discussed here — it is a struggle to grow into his cultural environment. Because we know, of course, that over the last four to five centuries, the cultural world has become intellectualistic, and Goethe felt this intellectualism, which has poured over everything. He expressed this in Faust: philosophy has become intellectualized, jurisprudence has become intellectualized, medicine has become intellectualized, and even theology has become intellectualized. Faust has studied all of these. But the mere thought that lives in all of this is something that is alien to reality. He wants to relate the spiritual foundations of existence to himself. That is basically Goethe's feeling. Of course, Goethe had to admit that modern man was becoming increasingly intellectual, because that was the way the times were developing. The development of humanity had just reached this point. But for him it was a struggle, because thought does not fully embrace the human being. He felt alienated from the world by seeing the world around him develop as a mental one.

One of those people who, at the time when Goethe was young, strove energetically and with a certain matter-of-factness towards intellectualism, was Lessing. Goethe could have met Lessing in Leipzig. He avoided it because Lessing was too intellectual for him. Herder, later in Strasbourg, was not. Despite his intellectualism, Herder had arrived at a comprehensive worldview full of feeling and emotion. Goethe could relate to that. Lessing, on the other hand, seemed to him to be a little eerily intelligent. He avoided him.

In this context, it is easy to understand how, at a certain age, Goethe could no longer help but break out of this world in which one wants to think about everything. At a certain point in Weimar, Goethe would have liked to get out of his entire skin, even though he was doing extremely well; even though he was idolized at the Weimar court, he could not stand it. He could not stand the whole situation. He also could not bear this: Herder was studying Spinoza. Spinoza, however, is basically a whole thought machinery, a wonderful one, but one does get away from the world when one spins oneself into this thought machinery.

And so he had to go to Italy, because he wanted to discover man. He wanted to discover man in the feeling of Greek art, of ancient art, which had become alien to modern man. Goethe longed to discover, to experience the human being. And basically, the whole of anthroposophy is nothing more than a world view that arises from the longing to find the human being in his or her entirety, to answer the question: what exactly is this human being? How does he or she relate to life?

But as a result, more and more things gradually become vividly clear that have been placed in the development of civilization out of a full feeling for the human being, such as tragedy or a work of art like the Niobe Group. Take this Niobe Group. Niobe, in her soul, that is, in her ego, in her astral body, lives completely outside herself; they radiate completely out into the sphere from which her pain comes. The soul is torn out by the pain. The body is still permeated by the forces of the ego and the astral. The form remains, the form holds firmly together. She becomes a statue, Niobe.

Take the opposite case: there is no reason at all for the ego and the astral body to leave the physical and etheric bodies, and yet they are driven out because the physical and etheric bodies are destroyed from the outside, because they are taken from the ego and the astral body. So the ego and the astral body have to leave. But in that the physical body and ether body are destroyed from the outside, they take on a form which, on the one hand, follows the destructive force and, on the other hand, makes it literally visible how the ego and the astral body are pushed out. With Niobe, this does not have to be the case; there it is suddenly there. But suppose that Niobe, instead of gazing at the field of corpses of her offspring, did not rush out of her physical and etheric bodies, but that something happened to her physical and etheric bodies that forced the soul out. Then one would not see in the physical and etheric bodies how they become statues, how they freeze, as it were, in matter, in formed matter, but one would see how the I still works in there, how the astral body still endeavors to form the etheric body. You also formed that in Greece: this is Laocoon. You can understand Laocoon when you are imbued with the realization that it is the opposite of Niobe, that the physical body and the etheric body are being destroyed from the outside and how the whole thing fights with the I and with the astral body, which are being pushed out. So that in every form, in the shaping of the mouth, in the shaping of the face, in the holding of the arms, in the forms that the fingers take, you can see from Laocoon that the situation I am talking about is being depicted.

We must come to such realizations again, because otherwise the intellectualism that has been so deeply justified for the more recent period will remove man from a true view, from a true knowledge of nature, from reality.

Just think how Lessing tried to explain the Laocoön Group. He basically explained it only in purely external terms. Of course, I say this with all due respect for the great Lessing. But if you take his explanation, it says: When a poet talks about Laocoon, Laocoon is allowed to scream, because you don't see how he opens his mouth when he screams. But when the sculptor forms him, you see how he opens his mouth. You're not allowed to open your mouth. That is purely external: the poet should do it one way, the sculptor another! Of course, Lessing's achievement is something extraordinarily significant. One can say: with all due respect, one must treat these things, but one must be clear about the fact that in Lessing's treatment of the Laocoön Group there is nothing of what now explains the whole figure of Laocoön from the situation. For this it is necessary, as I said in the introduction to these considerations, to survey in the appropriate way the forces that hold man together in his four limbs.

This overview has been completely lost in the age of intellectualism. This age of intellectualism basically no longer knew what to do with what it means to be human. And so, in the age of intellectualism, all sense of proportion was lost. This is what Goethe felt so strongly and what led him to actually loathe it when intellectualism itself extended into art. The young Goethe could not stand the whole style of Corneille-Racine art because there intellectualism forms the dramatic in an intellectualistic way.

In contrast to this, Goethe turns to Shakespeare, who creates out of all the contradictions of nature. Therefore, Goethe finds that Shakespeare is something like the interpreter of the world spirit itself. Goethe feels this very deeply because he feels this incursion of intellectualism. I have often pointed out that Hamlet can be seen as a student of Faust. That Hamlet – Shakespeare's Hamlet, of course, not Saxo Grammaticus' – could have sat at the feet of Faust in Wittenberg during the ten years when Faust led his students around by the nose, that was immediately clear to Goethe. Of course, he did not spell out the details; but anyone who would now say, “Thank God I studied philosophy, law, medicine, and, for my own good, theology,” would naturally not be able to feel an intimate pleasure when he finds, say, the Dane Prince artistically shaped in front of him, speaking the monologue “To Be or Not to Be” and speaking of that land from which no traveler has returned from, despite the fact that the ghost of old Hamlet himself spoke shortly before, who must therefore have an awfully short memory if he cannot remember at the moment he speaks the monologue that he just spoke to his father, who returned from that unknown land!

An intellectual would not do that, of course. And I have met intellectuals like that. They said: Yes, “Hamlet” was not written by a single poet either, the monologue was written by someone else and then it was all mixed up. That's how it was done with Homer too!

It can be easily proved that a whole series of people could have written “Hamlet” because of the contradictions that are everywhere, for such contradictions do in fact exist. And Goethe felt that the reality was richer than the impoverished intellectualism. And so he is perfectly understandable.

If you want to have a good laugh at everything that is terrible in “Hamlet” and what just testifies that Shakespeare can be caught on a contradiction every moment, then you just need to read Professor Rümelin, the famous Heidelberg Rümelin, who pointed out all these things in detail in his essay on Shakespeare. But there is a difference between what Goethe felt about art, to the extent that he called the speaking artist the interpreter of the world spirit, and what is handed down as science, even in Heidelberg.

And if you compare what Lessing said about Laocoön and the beautiful comments on it by Goethe, you will not find in Goethe's remarks what leads to a real understanding, because Goethe did not yet have anthroposophy, but you will find significant progress compared to Lessing's discussions.

You will discover indications everywhere in Goethe of what I have just explained. So that you can say, for example, “Everything I have said about the Laocoon Group is evident from Goethe's comments on it.” And that is why it can be said that, in the right continuation, Goetheanism necessarily leads to anthroposophy, right down to the last detail.

“Spiritual science aims to show what can be gained in widening one's spiritual horizons. It can be said that for the purpose of gradually entering into the whole outlook inherent in spiritual research, anyone immersing himself in Herman Grimm?s spirit has the finest precepts.”—Rudolf Steiner, GA 62

This is a lecture, given by Rudolf Steiner, entitled Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers der Gegenwart, Herman Grimm, und die Geistesforschung and contained in the volume Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung (Results of Spiritual Research) GA 62. The series in which this lecture was given at the Architektenhaus in Berlin, may be said to underline its overall importance for Rudolf Steiner: Held January 16th 1913 subsequent to a lecture January 30th on Raphael. Also known as, Herman Grimm, Contemporary Culture and Spiritual Developments, and Anthroposophy.

This single lecture is the 8th of 14 lectures in the lecture series entitled, Results of Spiritual Investigation, published in German as, Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung. Translated by Peter Stebbing

Translated by Peter Stebbing

It could easily appear as though what is set forth here as spiritual science stood in isolation to what is otherwise proclaimed and of a tone-setting nature in the cultural life of the present. However, it can only appear so to one who conceives of this spiritual science in a somewhat narrow-hearted sense, seeing in it nothing more than a sum of teachings and theories. On the other hand, whoever recognizes it as a spiritual stream open to new sources will become aware that parallels can be drawn to modern cultural life in various ways. It will be seen that this manner of viewing life called spiritual science can be applied to other, in some degree related directions. A direction of this sort is the subject of today's considerations—as represented by a prominent personality of modern cultural life, the art historian and researcher Herman Grimm.

Herman Grimm [the son of Wilhelm Grimm of the Brothers Grimm] was born in 1828 and died in 1901. He appears indeed as a quite characteristic figure of modern life, and yet he is, at the same time, so distinctive and unique as to stand apart. Today's considerations can connect especially well onto this personality. To anyone having occupied himself with Herman Grimm, he appears as a kind of mediator between all that relates to Goethe, and to our own spiritual life.

By reason of his marriage to the daughter of a personality, who stood close to the circle of Goethe, namely the sister of the romantic poet Clemons von] Brentano,[ Bettina Brentano [1785-1859], Herman Grimm was connected in a quite special sense with everything associated with the name of Goethe. Herman Grimm was related to her in that she was his mother-in-law, the same Bettina Brentano who had brought out Goethe's remarkable exchange of letters with a child. Bettina Brentano's unique memorial shows us Goethe enthroned like an Olympian, a musical instrument in his hands, while she presents herself as a child grasping at the strings. From the Frankfurt circle of La Roche, in her relation to Goethe she was able (like few others) to enter into Goethe's spirit. Even if some things as presented in the letters are inexact, being colourfully mixed together in various ways—a combination of poetry and truth—it still has to be said: Everything in this remarkable book, Goethes Brefwechsel mit einem Kinde [Goethe's Exchange of Letters with a Child], grew in a heartfelt manner out of sensing Goethe's whole outlook. In a wonderful way, it grants us an echo of his wisdom-imbued worldview. Bettina Brentano was married to the poet Achim von Arnim [l781-1831], who had contributed to bringing out the fine collection of folk poems called Des Knabens Wunderhorn [1806] [The Boy's Magic Horn]. By virtue of the connection with this circle—as mentioned, Gisela Grimm, Herman Grimm's wife, was one of the daughters of Bettina von Arnim—Herman Grimm grew up from youth onwards, as it were, amid personalities who stood in close proximity to Goethe. In all that he took up in his education, Herman Grimm absorbed something of an immediate, elemental spiritual breath of Goethe. Thus, he felt himself as belonging to all those who had stood personally close to Goethe, even though he was still a child the time of Goethe's death [in 1832J, rather than one who had “studied” Goethe and Goetheanism. Herman Grimm counted as having taken into himself, in a direct and personal way, something of Goethe's essential being, his magical power, his natural humanity.

With inner participation, Herman Grimm experienced the development of German cultural life during the decades of the mid-nineteenth century. In doing so, he established, so to say, his own “kingdom” within this German cultural life. He can be called a spirit who, in an individual manner, starts out from whatever stimulated him, that furthered the development of his own powers. In this way, out of the whole range of cultural life, a realm subdivided itself for Herman Grimm that suited his aims, a realm in which he felt at home. Within this domain in which Herman Grimm felt himself at home, he understood himself to be, lo to say, the spiritual “governor” with respect to Goethe. Goethe's spirit appeared to him as though it lived on. And in seeking out what derived from Goethe and what was compatible with him in cultural life, entering into this, it was always the essence of Goethe that he sought. This then became a yardstick for him in evaluating everything in cultural life.

These were decades of struggle in German cultural life, decades in which everything to do with Goethe receded, following his death. So much else of immediate everyday concern stood in the forefront, rather than what proceeded from Goethe. During that period, numerous other things asserted themselves in the cultural life of Germany, while little was heard of Goethe. On account of his connection with Goethe, Herman Grimm regarded himself as one whose task it was, quietly yet actively to cultivate and carry over Goethe's ethos to a future time that he certainly hoped would come, a time in which Goethe's star would shine out once more in the European spiritual firmament.

In that he regarded himself as, so to say, the “governor” of Goethe's spiritual domain, Herman Grimm stood somewhat apart in his relation to cultural matters. It seemed appropriate, if not self-evident to see him as having the air of a “lord.” Even in his stature, his physiognomy, his gestures, in his conduct, there was something about him suggestive of an aristocrat. And, it can be said: For anyone not accustomed to looking up to someone as to a lordly personality, Herman Grimm's whole demeanour as though compelled acknowledgement of the aforementioned status. I still fondly recall being together with Herman Grimm in Weimar, which he often liked to visit. On one occasion, he invited me as his only guest to a midday meal. We spoke about various matters that interested him. We also talked—and I was pleased that he wanted to have this conversation with me—about his comprehensive life-plans. And when a certain time had passed after the meal, he said, in his inimitable, humorous and quite natural manner, such that one accepted it from him as something innate, “Now, my dear Doctor, I wish graciously to dismiss you!” As though a matter of course, it actually made a self-evident impression on me. And it accorded with Herman Grimm's whole manner of conducting himself, so that, one granted him a certain air of lordliness.

Herman Grimm's whole lifework bears something of the same attribute. One cannot take up one of his major or minor writings, with their harmonious and so succinctly constructed sentences without feeling: all this affects one as though the author's personality stood behind it, regarding one with soulful participation. This contributes to the wonderful quality in Herman Grimm's writings. In every respect they are the product of his soul-imbued personality and have their immediate effect as such. In this way, his style takes on a certain justified, noble pathos. However, this noble pathos is mitigated everywhere by the individual, human element that breaks through. One accepts his style despite its elegance. Everywhere, one senses his origins in having sincerely absorbed Goethe's spirit. Yet this is not all; it becomes apparent that with him the Goethean element has undergone something of the development of German Romanticism. We sense in Herman Grimm's style a liberation from all that can broadly be termed “commonplace” or “customary.” We have the impression of a singular personality secluded within himself.

Herman Grimm's orientation could possibly have led to a certain one-sidedness, had something else not played a part, binding him closely to tradition; Herman Grimm was, after all, the, son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm. Known for inaugurating modern linguistic research, these two collected the German fairy tales that have in the meantime profoundly permeated German life. They listened to the sagas and fairy tales told them by simple folk, that were almost forgotten and remembered by only a few remaining souls. Brought to life again by the Brothers Grimm, they now live on.

Despite a refined style in everything he produced, Herman Grimm also had close ties to popular tradition, combining this with what might otherwise have been a one-sided direction. We still have to stress something further by which he appears harmonious and complete. In taking up the works of Herman Grimm, we encounter something of his adaptability—a capacity to connect with the various spiritual phenomena in which he immersed himself in the course of his life. A certain isolation is required for someone to submerge themselves fully in the phenomena and facts of past centuries. This adaptability, this quality of “softness” with regard to Herman Grimm acquires its “skeleton,” however, its necessary “hardness,” by reason of something else that intervened in his upbringing. Both his father and his uncle belonged to the “Göttingen Seven,” who in the year 1837 submitted their proclamation protesting the abolition of their country's constitution. They were consequently expelled from the University of Göttingen. Thus, already as a child, Herman Grimm experienced a significant event and its aftermath. For there were consequences both for his father and his uncle, in that they not only lost their positions, bur their daily bread as well, at the time. Herman Grimm often referred to how he had experienced historical change in this way, even already as a nine-year old boy, and not merely via book-learning.

At a time when little was said of Goethe in Germany, attention having been diverted to other things, Herman Grimm viewed himself as a representative of Goethe's ethos. But he did experience a resurgence of interest in Goethe and was himself able to contribute to it. At the beginning of the seventies of the nineteenth century, he was able to hold his famous Goethe lectures [“Goethe-Vorlesungen” 1874-75] at the University of Berlin, also published in book form. Anyone getting hold of it as a young person, and able to find the right relation to it, will undoubtedly speak of it in later years as being of special significance. And, as set forth in this book, Herman Grimm clearly shows himself as someone who knew the various ramifications of Goethe's soul life.

We gain a clear sense of how Herman Grimm viewed a personality such as Goethe. We find nothing of a small-minded biographical compulsion—to flush out all manner of more or less indifferent traits. Rather do we find an immersion in everything that was important for Goethe's development—the endeavour to pursue what Goethe experienced in life, what lived in his soul, and how this re-constituted itself, taking on form to become a creation, of Goethe's phantasy. How, he asks, in forgetting everything of a particular life experience, did this re-arise for Goethe to become the product of creative phantasy—a new experience?

Thus, in Herman Grimm's interpretation, Goethe raises his life-experiences a stage higher, to a sphere of pure spiritual contemplation. We see Goethe ascend to spiritual experiences. Herman Grimm demonstrates this with regard to each of Goethe's works. And we gladly follow him in pursuing this course, since with Herman Grimm nothing intrudes that can otherwise so easily enter into such a portrayal—that a single soul-force, e.g., reason or phantasy, becomes paramount, as it were, and one no longer feels the connection to immediate life. Herman Grimm goes no farther than he can go as an individual in contemplating Goethe's work. In the end, we are led by Herman Grimm to the point where the work takes its start from Goethe's life experience. One feels oneself transported everywhere into unmitigated spiritual life. Goethe becomes a sum of spiritual impulses. This breath of the spiritual extends throughout Herman Grimm's Goethe book.

What Herman Grimm ascribed to Goethe in this way has its roots deep in Herman Grimm's spiritual configuration. Long before commencing these considerations that led to his lectures on Goethe, a grand, a colossal idea had stood before him—the idea of viewing occidental cultural life as a whole in the same way he had done, individually, with regard to Goethe. The idea stood before his mind's eye of following three millennia of western cultural life so as to reveal everywhere how human sensibility transforms everyday events in the physical world to what the human soul experiences upon ascending to the realm of “creative phantasy,” as Herman Grimm called it. Thus, he becomes a unique kind of historian. For Herman Grimm, history was, so to say, something altogether different from what it is for other modern historians.

History is, after all, customarily studied in that documents, materials, are first collected, and from these the attempt is made to present a picture of humanity's development. Although materials, external facts, were of enormous importance for Herman Grimm, they were nonetheless not at all the main thing. He often entertained the thought: Could it not be that for some epoch or other precisely the most significant documents, the decisive ones, have disappeared without a trace—lost, so that one actually passes by the truth most of all in focussing too conscientiously and exactly on the documents? Hence, he was convinced that, in abiding most faithfully by external documents, one is least of all capable of providing a true picture of human development. Only a falsified picture could arise in keeping strictly to external documents alone.

However, something else has arisen in the cultural life of humanity. What took place outwardly, what happened has, thanks to leading individualities, undergone a spiritual rebirth. This is evidenced by personalities who have transformed it artistically, who have utilized it for cultural purposes. Thus, in looking back for instance to the time of ancient Greece, Herman Grimm said to himself: Some documents exist concerning this Greek age, but these are insufficient to enable one to understand the Greek world. Yet what the Greeks experienced has found its rebirth in the works of Greek art, has been re-enlivened by significant Greek personalities. Immersing oneself in them, letting the Greek spirit affect one, a truer picture of the Greek world is attained than in merely assembling external facts. In this way, the facts themselves disappeared, so to say, for Herman Grimm. One is inclined to say, they melted away from his world-picture. What remained in his world-picture was a continuous stream of what he called the creations of “folk-phantasy.”

In contemplating Julius Caesar, for example, he not only took account of the historical documents, he considered what Shakespeare had made of Caesar as of equal significance, comparable to what is contained in the existing documents. Through characteristic human beings he looked back at the age in question. For Herman Grimm, the course of humanity's development became something always handed on from one personality to another, seeing it as a spiritual process encompassed by what he termed creative phantasy. Proceeding from this point of view, he sought to gain a picture of the creative folk-phantasy at work in western culture—a sense of the actual course of events in the development of humanity, so as to be able to say: The epochs of western culture follow one upon the other, supersede each other—from the earliest epochs up to the present, i.e., from the oldest times to which he wished to return, up to his own period, the age of Goethe. They therefore represent an ongoing stream, the influence of folk phantasy within western cultures.

Starting out from this urge, he turned his attention early on to that grandiose phenomenon of western cultural life, Homer's “Iliad.” This occupied him for a period of time during the 1890s, leading to his truly exemplary book, Homer. One gladly takes up this volume again and again in wanting, from a modern viewpoint, to immerse oneself in the beginnings of the Greek world. Adopting his general standpoint, it shows us Herman' Grimm from another side. His gaze is directed to the world of the gods as depicted in Homer's “Iliad”—to the battling Greek and Trojan heroes, and the question arises for him: How do matters actually stand with regard to this interplay of the world of the gods with the normal human world of warring Greek and Trojan heroes? This becomes a question for him. It is indeed striking, what a tremendous difference there is in the Homeric portrayal, between the humans walking around and the nature of those beings described as immortal gods. And Herman Grimm attempts to present the gods in Homer's sense as portraying, so to say, an “older” class of beings wandering on the earth. Even if Herman Grimm, in his more realistic way, sees these beings as “human beings,” he does look back into a culture that in Homer's time had long lost its significance, a culture that had been superseded by another, to which the Greek and Trojan heroes belong. Thus, Herman Grimm has an older and a younger class of humanity play into one another in Homer's “Iliad;” and what has remained over of real effects of a class of beings that had lived previously, enters for Herman Grimm (in Homer's sense) into what takes place between Greece and Troy.

Herman Grimm saw the further progress of humanity in this way—as a continual supplanting of older cultural cycles by newer ones and an interplay of older cycles with newer ones. Each new cultural cycle has its task, that of introducing something new into the general development of humanity. The old remains extant for a while and still interacts with the new.

It can be said that what Herman Grimm investigated, to the extent possible in the last third of the nineteenth century, has now to be set forth once more from the point of view of spiritual science. He did not look further back than the Greek age. For this reason, he was unable to arrive at what recent spiritual research describes in looking to the lofty, purely spiritual beings of primeval antiquity, exalted above the human being. He did, however, frequently touch upon results of recent spiritual research—as nearly as anyone can without conducting such research themselves.

In going back to earlier stages in the development of humanity, we attempt, in spiritual research, to show that we do not arrive at the animal species in the sense of the Darwinian theory that is interpreted materialistically nowadays. Rather, we attempt to show that we come to purely spiritual ancestors of the human being. Prior to the cycle of humanity in which human souls live in physical bodies, there is another cycle of humanity in which human beings did not yet incorporate themselves in physical bodies. Herman Grimm leaves the question undecided, so to say, as to what was actually involved with the “gods,” before human beings stepped onto the earth. However, he does recognize the ordered sequence of such cycles of humanity. And this results in an important point of contact with what spiritual science presents. That he takes account of such regular periodic stages taking place ~~ brings him especially close to us.

He attempts to extend his spiritual observations over three millennia. The first millennium for him is the Greek millennium. With Herman Grimm, one is inclined to say, there is something like an undertone in his manner of characterizing the Greeks, as though he were to say: In looking to the Greeks, they do not appear constituted like human beings of today, particularly in the oldest periods. Even someone like Alcibiades [ca. 450-404 B.C.] appears to us like a kind of fairy-tale prince, it is as though one beheld what is superhuman. Still, out of this Greek world that, as already mentioned, Herman Grimm presents as being altogether unlike the later human world, there towers ell that arose in the subsequent Greek world end in what follows, becoming the most important constituent of our cultural life. And finally, at the end of the first thousand years contemplated by Herman Grimm, the most significant impulse in humanity's development stands before his soul: the Christ impulse.

Herman Grimm is sparing in what he has to say about the figure of Christ, just as he is restrained in various other matters. But the occasional observations he makes show that he would as little go along with those who would “dissolve” Christ, as it were, to the point of a mere thought impulse, as he would go along with those who want to see Christ Jesus only in human terms. He emphasizes that two kinds of impulses actually proceed from the figure of Christ—one of colossal strength, that continues to work on throughout the further development of humanity—and the other impulse which consists in immense gentleness. Herman Grimm sees the entire second millennium of western cultural development taking shape in such a way that the Greek world is as though absorbed by the Christ impulse and the resulting mixture of Christianity and Greekness is incorporated into the Roman world, overcoming it. Out of this something quite unique arises. That is his second millennium, the first Christian millennium. The Roman element is not the main thing for him, but rather the Christian impulses. Everything of a political or external nature disappears for Herman Grimm in this millennium. He looks everywhere at how the manifold Christ impulse makes itself felt. His conception of Christ is neither narrow. nor small, but broad. When a book on the life of Jesus, La Vie de Jesus [1863], by Ernest Renan was published, Herman Grimm referred to it in the periodical he edited at the time, “Künstler und Kunstwerke” [Artists and Works of Art]; he attempted to show how pictorial representations of the Christ figure had undergone changes over the centuries both in the visual arts and in literature. He sought to demonstrate how the Christ impulse undergoes changes. He pointed out that people had always conceived of the Christ impulse according to their own outlook. In Ernest Renan he saw an instance of someone in the nineteenth century who conceived of Christ once again in a narrow sense only.

In Herman Grimm's view, Christianity needed about a thousand years to send its impulses into the rivulets and streams of western spiritual life. Then came the third millennium, the second Christian one, in which we still find ourselves today. It is the millennium at the dawn of which spirits such as Dante and Giotto arose, as also artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and so on, followed by the works of Shakespeare and Goethe. These cycles in the development of humanity, an ongoing stream_, he spoke of as an expression of the being of creative phantasy. Again and again Herman Grimm sought to present in lectures give to his students, this rhythmically subdivided, ongoing stream of humanity's development. Herman Grimm aimed to show how single creations had their place within the unbroken flow.

Thus, for him, Michelangelo, along with Raphael, Savonarola, Shakespeare and others, such as Goethe, were in a manner of speaking the spiritual constituents that become explicable on seeing them against the background of the ongoing stream of creative phantasy. For Herman Grimm this was especially apparent at the source, in the ninth or the tenth century before our era, with Homer. Thus, Herman Grimm addresses himself in an immediate way to the human soul, in drawing our attention to a specific work of art—be it Raphael's “'Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” a painting, of the Madonna, or one of the creations of Leonardo da Vinci, or. later, of Goethe. He grants us the feeling of standing as though directly within the unique qualities of the particular work. In considering with him the arrangement of colours, the figures and their gestures, while standing inwardly before the work of art, there emerges for us something like a tableau of the entire progress of humanity—now called forth by a single entity in that onward-flowing, all-encompassing stream of creative phantasy—over three millennia.

Thus, with Herman Grimm, one is first conducted into the intimate aspects of the work of art in question and is then led up to the summit from which the total stream can be surveyed. However, that is not something he considered in a theoretical manner. It seemed entirely natural for Herman Grimm to look at the totality of the onward flowing spiritual stream of humanity's development in this way. As he explained it to me, as mentioned at a midday meal, with his whole soul. he actually lived, as a matter of course, within this spiritual stream, and he could not look at a single phenomenon in any other way than as though it were excerpted from this mighty stream of humanity's development.

The whole of western cultural development, seen as folk phantasy, stood before his soul, though not as a general abstract idea, but filled with real content. He saw himself as inwardly connected with this luminous content extending over millennia, such that everything he wrote appears to one as individual segments of an enormous work. Even in only reading a' book review by Herman Grimm, one has the impression as though it were cut out from a colossal work setting forth the whole development of humanity. One feels oneself positively placed before such a colossal work, having opened it, and as though one were reading a few pages in it. It is the same with an article or an essay by Herman Grimm. And one comprehends how Herman Grimm could say of himself, in the evening of his life, in writing the preface to his collection of Fragments, that the idea had floated before him of a portrayal of the ongoing stream of folk phantasy, and that therein the whole of western culture had appeared to him, A particular subject he had pursued appeared as if it had been taken out of a finished work. However, he placed no more value on what had been printed than on what he had only written down, and on what he had written down, no more value than on what lived in his thoughts.

In referring to this, one would like to add a further impression, without putting it into an abstract formula—having been fond of Herman Grimm, remaining so, and in valuing his work and the kind of person he was. Herman Grimm was never able to reach the point of actually carrying out what stood before his mind's eye as something so beautiful, so colossal, so magnificent that even his works on Homer, on Raphael, on Michelangelo, on Goethe, appear to us as fragments of this comprehensive, unwritten work. We read the lines of the introduction to the Fragments mentioned above with a certain feeling of wistfulness. He states there that, though it would most likely not come about, it would perhaps be feasible to rework into a book what he had to say to his students year after year—and newly revised every year—concerning the progression of European cultural life in the last form these lectures took. One reads these lines today the more wistfully, as it did indeed not come to such a rewriting. We had to see Herman Grimm pass away, knowing what lived in his soul intended for present-day culture—having this sink with him into the grave.

We have characterized the sweeping cultural horizons underlying Herman Grimm's written works. Spiritual science intends to show what can be gained in widening one's spiritual horizons. It can be said that for the purpose of gradually entering into the whole outlook inherent in spiritual research, anyone immersing himself in Herman Grimm's spirit has the finest precepts. Apart from the breadth of his horizons, we see how he approached the phenomena, how his thoughts and feelings led him to everything he wrote in his comprehensive works on Homer, Raphael, Michelangelo and Goethe. And, bearing in mind what is set forth in his other writings, one sees that Herman Grimm distinguishes himself in significant ways from other spirits, in possessing attributes belonging to the kind of soul-deepening we have spoken of in describing the path the soul has to take in order to enter the spiritual worlds.

We have stressed that for the spiritual path, the intensity of soul-forces has to become greater. Deeper soul-forces are to be called forth that otherwise slumber. Inner strength, inner courage and boldness are required to a greater extent than in ordinary life; concepts are to be grasped more sharply. The soul needs to identify itself more fully with its own being, with the forces of thinking, feeling and willing. Initial signs of this are evident everywhere with Herman Grimm, by which he was, for example, in a position to describe works of art in such an intimate and personal way, as in the case of Raphael and Michelangelo. This is a precursor, however, to further illuminating the spiritual world. The basis of Herman Grimm's historical research does not lie in what is nowadays called “objectivity,” but in his allying himself with the cultural phenomena he portrays, as accords with the spiritual world. In this way, wholly forgetting itself and yet in a rare sense conscious of itself, the soul immerses itself in the corresponding cultural manifestation.

This becomes particularly evident when he directs his attention to a single cultural phenomenon, such as Raphael, elevating this to the overall stream of human spiritual life. His impressions then become bold, powerful ideas—and what others do not venture to say with the same shade of feeling, or with the same subtlety of ideas, Herman Grimm does venture, becoming in this way a representative of the spirit. And he then stands before us with such boldness that we are sometimes reminded of the Gospel writers. It is just that they wrote more in keeping with mysticism, while Herman Grimm wrote in the sense of a modern spiritual discourse. Just as the Gospels reach upward to attain the horizon of mankind as a whole, so Herman Grimm reaches upward with his Raphael book to the horizon of mankind as a whole.

It is miraculous when, in his audacious way—seemingly tearing his soul out of himself and striding as though alongside Raphael—as in an overall stream of evolution—he erupts in words that can truly tell us more than any mere presentation of world history: “Raphael is a citizen of world-history; He is like one of the four rivers that according to the belief of the ancient world flowed out of Paradise.”

In letting such a sentence duly affect one, Herman Grimm's perception of Raphael takes on an altogether different character, compared to what other authors have to say. Hence, for Herman Grimm, the various personalities of history merge into the overall stream of spiritual life. It could also be said, he brings the highest spiritual spheres down to the personal element. And in speaking the following heartfelt words, Herman Grimm further expresses his relation to leading cultural figures:

“If, by some miracle, Michelangelo were called from the dead, to live among us again, and if I were to meet him, I would humbly stand aside to let him pass; if Raphael came by, I would follow him, to see whether or not I might have the opportunity of hearing a few words from his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo one can confine oneself to reporting what they once were in their day; with Raphael one has to start from what he is for us today. Concerning the two others, a slight veil has passed over them, but not over Raphael. He belongs among those whose growth is as yet far from being at an end. we may imagine that Raphael will present ever new riddles to future-generations of humanity.” [Fragments, Vol. II, p.170]

This counts as a characteristic mood, rather than as something normally objective in the sense of what is normally demanded nowadays. But if does describe matters in such a way that we feel ourselves transposed, in an immediate way to what had lived in Herman Grimm's soul in writing- such sentences. It becomes understandable that such a spirit had to struggle in coming to terms with such a world-historical figure as Raphael. Oddly, as he himself relates, it was quite different for him, in describing the life of Michelangelo. The portrayal of the life of Michelangelo by Herman Grimm is a marvellous document, though in some respects perhaps, it counts today as having been surpassed. Seen against the background of the life of that time, the figure of Michelangelo stands out significantly from other figures—as also from the unique description of the city of Florence. Herman Grimm places a tableau before us in contrasting two spiritual entities, Athens and Florence. With that, the weaving together of three millennia as characterized by Herman Grimm, appears as a mighty background upon which Dante and Giotto appear, along with other painters of that time—followed by figures such as Savonarola, and finally Michelangelo himself, evident.

It becomes evident that Herman Grimm responded differently to Raphael and his surroundings than to Goethe, while presenting everything with no less familiarity. In the case of Herman Grimm's Goethe portrayal, we sense everywhere that he had grown up as a spiritual descendant of Goethe. With his Michelangelo portrayal, we feel how he enters into everything personally, wandering the streets, visiting every palace in Florence. ... other matters, as it were. Besides personally acquainting himself with other matters, he succeeds in standing as it were, before Michelangelo, and in depicting his actual manner of working. All this is as though cast from the same mould.

This differs from what he presents concerning Raphael. There we sense a wrestling with the material, with the spiritual image of Raphael. It is as though Herman Grimm were never able to achieve satisfaction. He describes having taken up the material again and again, while nothing appeared adequate to him of what he had already published. That was true even of his last works—of what he finally attempted as a portrayal of Raphael's personality. This remained a fragment, appearing in the collection of essays entitled Raphael as a World Power, from which the sentences derive that were just read out.

Why did Herman Grimm struggle with the material, precisely in the case of Raphael? It is because he could only present something to his own satisfaction in uniting himself completely with the material. In Raphael, however, he saw a spirit characterized in the words quoted: “Raphael is a citizen of world-history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of paradise.” And thus, with every statement applied to him, Raphael grew to giant size. Herman Grimm could never be satisfied, since he could not capture this “world-power” in a book. If the comprehensive breadth and grace of his spirit is evident in the portrayals of Homer, Michelangelo and Goethe with his Raphael discourse we see the profound uprightness, the profound honesty of Herman Grimm's personality.

Whoever takes up his book on Homer will possibly find it not scholarly enough. But Herman Grimm states on the very first page, that this book is not meant to be a contribution to Homer research. As already set forth; here, Herman Grimm could conduct himself in this and similar matters much like a spiritual “lord.” Thus, it appears quite natural that, in collecting his ideas on Goethe for publication, he boldly started out from the view that every other book he had come across concerning Goethe fell short. What seems like brazenness to some, can be taken for granted in the context of his literary and artistic abilities.

That is how he relates to everything in cultural life. Hence for those who adhere to the standpoint of erudite scholars, Herman Grimm's Homer book may seem intolerable. All the many questions that have been raised concerning Homer—whether or not he actually lived, whether the “Iliad” was put together from so and so many details, and so forth—all that did not concern him. He took it as it was. In this way, however, it became clear to him how wonderfully it is composed, how what comes later always refers to what preceded it. Everything that shows this inherent composition appears to us inwardly coherent. But apart from that, what appears most salutary for a spiritual researcher, is his immersion in the soul-life of the Homeric heroes. Everywhere, we see Herman Grimm's soul-imbued style extend to the soul-life of Homer's heroes. Everywhere we see the Achilles-soul comprehended, the Agamemnon-soul, the Odysseus-soul, and so on. As a description of souls, this book is overpowering in its effect, in spite of the familiarity of the stylistic presentation! We are led not only to the heights of historical contemplation, but also deep into the souls of the single Homeric figures, some scholars will inevitably say, Herman Grimm has taken the “Iliad” at face value, with disregard for the whole of Homer research and all preliminary study, accepting it verse for verse! Indeed, he does so—quite “amateurishly”—and the dry conclusion could then be: There someone has written a book without any preliminary study.

Did Herman Grimm in fact write this book without any preliminary study? Anyone concerning himself with the works of Herman Grimm will find the preliminary studies, only they look different from the preliminary studies of the usual experts. The preliminary studies of Herman Grimm lay in soul studies, in immersing himself in the secrets of the human soul. And one can convince oneself that no one could have shed such light on the Homeric heroes without those preliminary studies. Herman Grimm looks for what held sway in Homer's Phantasy. But what he says reveals him to be the finest knower of human souls. We may expect remarkable things of him in considering the way viewed Homer's heroes—from Achilles to Agamemnon to Odysseus. How did he find the words to write, in his Homer book and other works, what can seem to the researcher so uncommonly spiritual? He was able to do so on account of quite definite preliminary studies. And these are to be found among the works of Herman Grimm's first period.

Above all, we have the wonderful collection of novellas [1862] that is perhaps less read today than other modern products of its kind. However, these should be read by those who take an interest in spiritual things. As a collection of novellas, it is an intensive attempt to get to know human souls, to fathom human secrets and the soul's activity beyond the physical plane. The first of these novellas, “The Singer,” belongs to Herman Grimm's earliest phase as an author. In this work it is shown how a man acquires a deep, passionate yearning for a woman of a broad spiritual nature. However, these two personalities are never able to come together. The woman sends this ardent man away from her social circle, while everything lives on in the man's soul in the way of impulses that drew him to her. On the other hand, what proceeds from his soul saps at his bodily strength. Set forth as corresponds to spiritual research, we see him gradually destabilized in his soul. He is taken in by a friend to live on his estate, becoming, however, entangled again in the woman's “net.” The friend recognizes that it is high time to fetch this person his friend adheres to so completely. She does come—but too late. Whereas she is in front of the house, the individual concerned shoots himself.

And now comes something, taken up unreservedly in spiritual research, which Herman Grimm so often touches upon in artistic expression, but allows to devolve into indefiniteness. Briefly and succinctly he describes how, in the singer's imagination the deceased lives on. The scene is unforgettable in which, feeling her entire guilt in the death of this man, she sees him approaching from the realm of the dead, night after night. This now fills the content of her soul. It is not described as being a mere figment of her imagination, but in the sense of someone who knows there are secrets that reach beyond the grave. It is a wonderful description, that tells how the friend plants himself in front of the woman when she says the deceased comes to her—continuing right up to her final letter to the friend, in which she expresses that she herself now feels close to death. For her, the deceased, to whom she was so closely bound, had drawn her towards him from the realm of the dead. Probably no modern author has found the right tone, in touching on the spiritual world with such sincerity.

In spiritual research we present how, in going through the portal of death, what otherwise always remains united with the human being—also in sleep—the so-called etheric body, raises itself along with the higher soul-members, out of the physical body, passing over into the spiritual world. In the field of spiritual research, we draw a picture of how the corpse-remains behind and how the human being with his ether body loosens himself, step by step, one member after the other, from the physical body. The etheric body is then for a time the enclosure for the higher soul-members of the human being. That is an idea with which those who approach closer to spiritual research can become more and more conversant. In what follows we shall be able to consider in what an admirable way the artistic soul of Herman Grimm touches upon these facts of the spiritual world. This will lead us again to the question as to why, for deeper reasons, Herman Grimm did not develop his cultural discourse into a comprehensive work.

Apart from his novella, Herman Grimm wrote a further work, a novel, Unüberwindliche Mächte [1867], [Insurmountable Powers], in which, as with his work in general, his refined style leads us to a contemplation of the world and of life. Particularly remarkable is what might be called the clash of two cultures in miniature. The one world adheres to title, status and rank. Deriving from an old lineage, an impoverished count lives in the afterglow of his hierarchical status. Wonderfully contrasted in this novel is the way in which the world of old prejudices and rankings encounters the New World. The quite different views and notions of America play into this. The individual identifying himself with hierarchical prejudices, whom Herman Grimm calls Arthur, encounters Americans. He meets Emmy, the daughter of Mrs. Forster, who has grown up with American values. We see this count passionately enraptured by Emmy.

It would be impossible even to outline the rich content of this novel adequately. We encounter the whole contrast of Europe and America. In addition, there is the contrast of the old Prussian milieu and the newly constituted Prussian milieu arising as the outcome of wars. It is a tremendous cultural “painting” in which the characters are featured, and from which they emerge. Only this much can be indicated: that, as a result of the confluence of these streams, Arthur, the count, dies a tragic death right before he was to marry Emmy. A deluded relative considers himself the rightful heir to the count's lineage, seeing the count as a bastard. Stung with envy and jealousy, he opposes the count, and on the eve of his marriage, the count is shot down by this individual.

Someone wanting to contemplate this novel merely rationalistically might consider it as concerned with the unbridgeable prejudice outstanding, However, the expression “insurmountable powers” can perhaps hardly seem more justified than when Herman Grimm, unintentionally indicates the idea of karma, the idea of the causal connection of destinies in human life—as though knotted together one after another. We see him depict forces at work in destiny that can only come into play in working over from earlier embodiments—from previous earth-lives. He does not describe this in speaking theoretically of “forces” or of “karma,” but in simply letting the facts speak for themselves, giving expression to these powers that, then appear in a certain way corresponding to the ideas of spiritual research. We see a karmic destiny unfold; we see insurmountable karmic powers come to expression. And we see something further:

Emmy remains behind. The final glance that fell into Arthur's eyes as he lay there, his heart shot through, was when she bent over him and their eyes met in a certain expression. An utterance of Herman Grimm remains unforgettable, in saying, the spirit gave way at the moment his eyes assumed the peculiarity of appearing as no more than physical instruments. But now we encounter once more Herman Grimm's penetration of worlds that lie beyond death—what one would like to call his chaste penetration of worlds out of which souls work on, in remaining real once they have gone through the portal of death.

In a brief concluding chapter, Herman Grimm shows us Emmy gradually becoming infirm. It is entirely characteristic of his close connection to matters of soul and spirit, that he describes Emmy's approaching death. She is brought to Montreux. Montreux and its surroundings are uniquely described. However, Herman Grimm does not describe Emmy's passing like authors who have no relation to spiritual matters, but rather as someone taking account of how the secrets of death, of the realm beyond, speak to the soul. I would render something incomplete if I did not add in conclusion Herman Grimm's own words on the death of Emmy:

“This was Emmy's dream.

“Between midnight and morning, she believed she woke up.

“Her initial glance at the window, through which a pale light streamed in, was free and clear and she knew where she was. She also heard her mother, who slept next to her, breathing, However, a moment later, with a sense of pressure she had never felt before, overwhelming anxiety overcame her. It was no longer the thoughts that had tormented her during the last few days, but as though a giant hand were holding all the world's mountains over her by a thin thread, and that at any moment the fingers holding them could loosen, and the whole mass would fall down on her, to remain lying on her eternally. Her eyes wandered hither and thither looking for a glimmer of light, but there was none; the light of the window extinguished, her mother's breathing no longer audible, and stifling loneliness all around, as though she would never come alive again. She wanted to call out, but could not; she wanted to touch herself, but not a limb obeyed her. All was completely silent, completely dark; no thoughts could be grasped in this frightful, monotonous anxiety: even memory was taken from het—and then, at last a thought returned: Arthur!

“And wondrously now, it was as if this one thought had transformed itself into a point of light that became visible to the eyes. And to the extent the thought grew to become boundless longing, this light grew, spreading out, and suddenly, as though it sprang apart and unfolded itself, it took on form—Arthur stood before her! She saw him, she recognized him at last. It was surely he himself. He smiled and was close beside her. She did not see whether he was naked, nor whether he was clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well; it was he himself, no mere phantom that had taken on his form.”

Thus, Herman Grimm has the one who has long since gone through the portal of death approach her, now a seeress; at the moment of her death she approaches the deceased, addressing his soul: “She did not see whether he was naked, nor whether he was clothed: but it was him, she knew him too well; it was he himself, no mere phantom that had taken on his form.”

“He stretched out his hand to her and said, ‘Cornel’ Never had his voice sounded as sweet and enticing as now. With all the strength she was capable of, she tried to raise her arms towards him, but she was unable to do so. He came still closer and stretched out his hand closer to her, ‘Come!’ he said again.

“For Emmy it was as though the power with which she attempted to bring at least a word over her lips, would have been capable of moving mountains, but she was not able to say even this one word.

“Arthur looked at her, and she at him. With only the possibility of moving a finger, she would have touched him. And now, most terrible of all: he appeared to shrink back again! ‘Come!’ he said for the third time. Sensing he had spoken for the last time, that the terrible darkness would break in again upon his heavenly gaze, filled now with a fear that tore at. Her as frost splits trees, she made a final attempt to raise her arms to him. It was impossible to overcome the weight and the cold that held her captive—but then, as a bud bursts open, from which a blossom grows before our eyes, there grew out of her arms, other shining arms, out of her shoulders, gleaming new shoulders. And lifting these arms toward Arthur's arms, his hands grasping her hands, and floating slowly backwards, drawing her after him, the whole magnificent figure with him, rose out of Emmy's.”

The emergence of the etheric body out of the physical body cannot be described more wonderfully, in having been undertaken by a pure artist-soul. That was a spirit, that was a soul that lived in Herman Grimm, of which we may say that it came close to what we seek so eagerly in spiritual research. Herman Grimm provides evidence that, in approaching the -twentieth century, the modern human being sought paths to spiritual life.

So we turn gladly to Herman Grimm, wanting only to continue further on the same path. We see him elevate the creations of Raphael, the creations of Michelangelo, the experiences of Goethe, the Greek-soul of Homer, to the stream that he sees flowing onward as “creative phantasy” through millennia. We then know how close Herman Grimm was, in his entire feeling and perception, to what lives and weaves as the soul-spiritual behind all physical reality. For when Herman Grimm refers to his “creative phantasy” we are not dealing with total abstraction. In so far as it is still perhaps a matter of residual abstraction, to that extent it can seem necessary to break through the thin wall separating Herman Grimm from the living spirit, effective not only as creative phantasy, but living as immediate spirit_s effective behind the entire sense world. It could appear a form of unwarranted restraint, to say no.- more than Herman Grimm in speaking of the continual onward working of the phantasy of humanity. After all, as an artist, he touched so intimately on the still living soul that has gone through the portal of death. Hence, it will not be difficult for us, where Herman Grimm speaks of creative phantasy, to see the living spirit that, as spiritual researchers, we seek behind the sense world.

Perhaps it will not seem unjustified if it is even asserted that-, for a spirit that struggled so honestly and uprightly for truth—wanting to approach this creative phantasy ever and again—it was, after all, too much of an abstraction for him. It urged him to grasp the living spiritual element, and for that reason the great work he intended could not come about—since if it had been written, it would have had to become a work that portrayed the spiritual world not merely as creative phantasy, but as a world of creative beings and individualities.

Spiritual research has not been placed into the modern age arbitrarily. It is demanded by seeking souls of our time—seeking souls to whom, as we have seen, Herman Grimm.so-clearly and. characteristically belongs. In this way we can become aware that with spiritual research we do not stand as alien and isolated in modern cultural life. We have been able to look to Herman Grimm as to a related spirit. Even if he does not share the same standpoint completely, we do nonetheless stand—or can at least stand, immeasurably near to him. It is better to contemplate such a figure as a whole, rather than scrutinizing every detail—to look at the harmony of soul with which Herman Grimm can affect us, its mildness and then again keenness and strength of soul, with which he can likewise affect us. We may treat this or that question differently from Herman Grimm, but I know that it is not altogether out of keeping with his style, if I summarize what I actually wanted to say in the following words; One could arrive at the thought—let us call it for that matter a delusory thought, one that could be entertained as a beautiful illusion: If higher spirits, other-worldly spirits wanted to acquaint themselves prefer with what happens on the earth by means of reading, they would prefer most of all to read such writings as those in which Herman Grimm depicts the earthly destinies of human beings.

This feeling can reverberate as though from almost every line of Herman Grimm's writings, lifting one upwards to a sphere beyond the earth. One then feels so akin to this personality that, if one were to characterize what has been said today concerning Herman Grimm, a beautiful saying could come to mind that he himself employed in eulogizing his friend Treitschke [Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian, 1834-56] whom he valued so much.

“With what existential joy did this human being stand in life. What courage he showed in battle. What a gift lie had for language. How new his latest book. How little could those take exception to his ‘elbows’ in the general exchange of ideas. They too will join in declaring: ‘Yes, he was one of ours!’”

These words are at the same time the last words that Herman Grimm wrote and had printed, as we know from the publisher of his works, Reinhold Steig. And I should like also, in conclusion, to summarize this evening's considerations with the words: With what existential joy did Herman Grimm stand in life; how mild—and yet how individual! How little can even those distance themselves from him, if they but understand themselves aright, who differ from him in their ideas and in other ways! And, proceeding from whatever field of investigation, how closely allied to him must those feel who seek paths to the spirit! What kinship to him must they feel, when his mild figure appears before them—prompting them to break out in the words: Yes, he was one of ours!

If you recollect what was to a certain extent the climax and principal goal of our last lecture, you will be able to place before your souls how completely different the human entity was as regards his innermost self before the Mystery of Golgotha from what it was after that event. I did not try to put general characteristics before you, but examples from spiritual science, examples that showed us souls of olden times and souls belonging to modern times, characteristic examples by means of which we can see how certain souls of former times appear again, transformed and metamorphosed. The reason for such a great change will become evident only from the study of the whole course of these lectures. But at present one thing only may be pointed out by way of introduction, which has often been referred to in our lectures when they touched on similar subjects, namely, that the full consciousness of the human ego, which it is the mission of the earth planet to develop and bring to expression, actually made its appearance only through the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is not perhaps quite accurate, though not far wrong, to say that if we go very far back in evolution, human souls were not yet truly individualized; they were still entangled in the group-soul nature. This was particularly the case with the more prominent among them, so we may say that such natures as Hector or Empedocles were typical group-soul representatives of their entire human community. Hector grew out of the soul of Troy. He stands as an image of the group soul of the Trojan people in a particular form, specialized but nevertheless just as rooted in the group soul as Empedocles. When they were reincarnated in the post-Christian era, they had to face the necessity of experiencing the ego-consciousness. This passing over from the group-soul nature to the experience of the individual soul causes a mighty leap forward. It causes souls so firmly embedded in the group-soul nature as Hector to appear like Hamlet, i.e. wavering and uncertain, as though incapable of dealing with life. On the other hand it causes a soul like that of Empedocles, when it reappears in post-Christian times as the soul of the Faust of the sixteenth century, to become a kind of adventurer who is brought into various situations from which he was only with difficulty able to extricate himself, and who is misunderstood by his contemporaries and even by posterity.

Indeed, it has often been emphasized that in developments such as those here referred to, all that has taken place since the Mystery of Golgotha is not particularly meaningful. As yet everything is only at the beginning; only during the future evolution of the earth will the great impulses that may be ascribed to Christianity make themselves felt. Over and over again we must emphasize the fact that Christianity is only at the beginning of its great development. If we wish to play a part in this great development, we must enter with understanding into the ever increasing progress of the revelations and impulses which originated with the founding of Christianity. Above all we are required to learn something in the immediate future; for it does not take much clairvoyance to see clearly that if we wish for something definite to enable us to make a good beginning in the direction of an advanced and progressive understanding of Christianity, we must learn to read the Bible in quite a new way. There are at present many hindrances in the way, partly because of the fact that in wide circles biblical study is still carried on in a sugary and sentimental manner. The Bible is not made use of as a book of knowledge, but as a book of common use for all kinds of personal situations. If anyone has need of it for his own personal encouragement, he will bury himself in one or the other chapter of the Bible and allow it to work on him. This seldom results in anything more than a personal relationship to the Bible. On the other hand, the scholarship of the last decades, indeed that of virtually the whole nineteenth century, increased the difficulty of really understanding the Bible by tearing it apart, declaring that the New Testament is composed of all kinds of different things that were later combined, and that the Old Testament also was composed of many different parts which must have been brought together at different times. According to this view, the Bible is made up of mere fragments which may easily produce the impression of an aggregate, presumably stitched together in the course of time. This kind of scholarship has become popular; very many people, for example, hold that the Old Testament is combined out of many single parts. This opinion disturbs the serious reading of the Bible that must come in the near future. When such a serious way of reading the Bible is adopted, all that is to be said about its secrets from the anthroposophical viewpoint will be much better understood.

For example, we must learn to take as a whole the Old Testament from the beginning up to the point where the ordinary editions of the Bible end. We must not let ourselves be led astray by all that may be said against the unity of the Old Testament. Then, if we do not merely read it in a one-sided way seeking for personal edification, and do not read one part or another from any particular point of view, but allow the Old Testament, just as it is, to influence us as a whole, combining our consideration of the contents with all that must come into the world precisely from our anthroposophical development of the last few years—if we unite all this with a certain artistic spiritual feeling so that we gradually come to see the artistic sequence, how the threads interweave and are disentangled, not as if it had been composed in an external kind of way, but with deep artistry, then we shall gradually perceive what a mighty, inwardly spiritual dramatic power lies in the whole structure and composition of the Old Testament. Only then do we appreciate the glorious tableau as a uniform whole, and we shall no longer believe that one piece in the middle comes from one source and one from another. We shall then perceive the unitary spirit of the Bible. We shall see how from the first day of creation the continuity of progress is under the control of this unitary spirit from the time of the patriarchs through the time of the judges, and through that of the great Jewish prophets and kings until the whole soars to a wonderful dramatic culmination in the book of the Maccabees,¹ in the sons of Mattathias, the brothers of Judas who fought against the king of Antioch. In the whole there lives an inner dramatic force that reaches a certain culminating point at the end. We shall then feel that it is not a mere phrase when we say that a man who is equipped with the occult method of observation is seized by a peculiar feeling when he comes to the end of the Old Testament and has in front of him the seven sons of the Maccabean mother and the five sons of Mattathias. Five sons of Mattathias, with the seven sons of the Maccabean mother making the remarkable number twelve, a number we notice everywhere when we are led into the secrets of evolution.

The number twelve appears at the end of the Old Testament as the culminating point of the whole dramatic presentation. First this feeling comes upon us when the seven sons of the Maccabees die a martyr's death, how one by one they rise up and one by one are martyred. Observe the inner dramatic power shown here, how the first victim only hints at what comes to full expression in the seventh in his belief in the immortality of the soul, how he hurls these words at the king, “You reprobate, you refuse to hear anything about the Awakener of my soul.” (II Maccabees, Chap. 7.) If we allow the dramatic crescendo of power from son to son to affect us, we shall see what forces are contained in the Bible. If we compare the sugary sentimental method of study prevalent hitherto with this dramatic, artistic penetration, the Bible is of itself able to arouse religious ardor. Here, through the Bible, art becomes religion. And then we begin to notice very remarkable things. Most of you may perhaps remember, for it happened in this very place, that when I gave here the course on St. Luke's Gospel the whole magnificent figure of Christ Jesus sprang forth from the fusion of the two souls, the souls of the two Jesus children. The soul of the one was none other than the soul of Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism. You may still have before your spiritual eyes the fact that in the Jesus boy described in the Gospel of St. Matthew is the reincarnated Zarathustra.

What kind of fact do we have here? We have the founder of Zoroastrianism, the great initiate of antiquity, of the primeval Persian civilization, who passed through human evolution up to a certain point and appeared again among the ancient Hebrew people. Through the soul of Zarathustra, we have a transition from the ancient Persian to the element of the ancient Hebrew people. Yes indeed, the external, that which takes place in the history of the world and in human life, is really only the manifestation, the externalization of inner spiritual processes and of inner spiritual forces. What external history relates can therefore be studied by considering it as an expression of the inward and spiritual, of the facts which move in the spiritual realm. Let us place before our souls the fact that Zarathustra passed over from Persia into the old Hebrew element. Now let us consider the Old Testament—we really only need to study the headings of the chapters. That the matter stands with Zarathustra as I then related is the result of clairvoyant research: it results if we follow his soul backward in time. Now let us contrast this result not only with the way the Bible represents it, but also with the results of external investigation.

The ancient Hebrew people founded their kingdom in Palestine. That original kingdom was divided. First it passed into Assyrian captivity, then into the Babylonian. The ancient Hebrew people were subjugated by the Persians. What does all this mean? World historical facts do indeed have a meaning; they correspond with inner processes, spiritual soul-processes. Why did all this take place? Why were the ancient Hebrew people guided in such a way that they passed over into the Chaldean, into the Assyrian-Babylonian element, and were set free again by Alexander the Great?² To put it briefly, it is because this was merely the external transition of Zarathustra from the Persian to the Jewish element. The Jews brought him to themselves. They were guided to him, even being subjugated by the Persian element, because Zarathustra wanted to come to them. External history is a wonderful counterpart of these processes, and anyone who observes these things from the point of view of spiritual science knows that external history was only the body for the transition of the Zarathustra element from the old Persian element, which at first actually included the old Hebrew element. Then, when the latter had been sufficiently permeated by the Persian element, it was lifted out of it again by Alexander the Great. What then remained was the milieu necessary for Zarathustra; it had passed over from one people to another.

When we glance over this whole age—we can naturally emphasize only a few single points—we see it reaching its apex in the old Hebrew history, through the period of the kings, the prophets, the Babylonian captivity, and the Persian conquest up to the time of the Maccabees. If then we really wish to understand the Gospel of St. Mark, which is ushered in by one of the prophetic sayings of Isaiah, we cannot fail to be struck by the element of the Jewish prophets. Starting from Elijah, who reincarnated as John the Baptist, we could say that these prophets appear to us in their wonderful grandeur. Let us leave out of consideration for the moment Elijah and his reincarnation as the Baptist, and consider the names of the intervening prophets. Here we must say that what we have obtained from spiritual science allows us to observe these Jewish prophets in a very special way. When we speak of the great spiritual leaders of the earth in ancient times, to whom do we refer? To the initiates, the initiated ones. We know that these initiates attained their spiritual height precisely because they went through the various stages of consecration. They raised themselves stage by stage by means of cognition to spiritual vision, and thus to union with the true spiritual impulses in the world. In this way they were able to embody in the life of the physical plane the impulses they themselves received in the spiritual world. When we meet with an initiate of the Persian, Indian, or Egyptian people our first question is, “How did he ascend the ladder of initiation within his own national environment? How did he become a leader, and thus a spiritual guide of his people?”

This question is everywhere justifiable, except when we come to the prophets. At the present time, there is certainly a sort of theosophical tendency to mix everything together and speak about the prophets in the same way as we speak of other initiates. But nothing can be known by doing this. Let us take the Bible (and recent historical research shows that the Bible is a true and not an untrue document); consider the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, through Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and study what it relates of these figures. You will find that you cannot bring these prophets into the general scheme of initiation. Where does the Bible relate that the Jewish prophets went through the same kind of initiation as other initiates belonging to different peoples? It is said they appeared when the voice of God stirred in their souls, enabling them to see in a different way from ordinary men, making it possible for them to make indications as to the future course of the destiny of their people and the future course of the world's history. Such indications were wrung from the souls of the prophets with elemental force. It is not related of them, in the same way as it is related of other prophets, how they went through their initiation. The spiritual vision of the Jewish prophets seems, so to speak, to spring from their own genius, and this they relate to their own people and to humanity. It was in this same way that they avowed their prophesies and acknowledged their prophetic gifts. Just consider how a prophet, when he has something to announce, always makes a point of proclaiming that God has communicated through some mediator what is to happen—or else that it came to him like a direct elemental truth. This gives rise to the question, leaving Elijah and his reincarnation as the Baptist out of consideration, “What position do these Jewish prophetic figures occupy, who externally are placed side by side with the initiates of other nations?” If you investigate the souls of these prophets in the light of spiritual science or occultism, you come to something very remarkable. If you make the effort to compare what history and religious tradition relate with what I am about to communicate to you as the result of my spiritual investigation, you will be able to verify this.

We find that the souls of the Hebrew prophets are reincarnations of initiates who had lived in other nations, and who had attained certain stages of initiation. When we trace backward one of these prophets, we arrive at some other people and find an initiated soul who remained a long time with this people. This soul then went through the portal of death and was reincarnated in the Jewish people. If we wish to find the earlier incarnations of the souls of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, and so on, we must seek them among other peoples. Trivially speaking, it is as though there were a gradual assembling of the initiates of other peoples among the Jewish people, where these initiates appear in the form of prophets. This is why these prophets appear in such a way that their gift of prophecy appears to proceed elementally from out of their own inner being. It is a memory of what they acquired here or there as initiates. All this emerges, but not always in the harmonious form it had in earlier incarnations, for a soul that had been incarnated in a Persian or Egyptian body would first have to accustom itself to the bodily nature of the Jewish people. Something of what was certainly in this soul could not come forth in this incarnation. For it is not always the case that what a man has formerly acquired reappears in him as he progresses from incarnation to incarnation. Indeed, through the difficulties caused by the bodily nature, it may come forth in an inharmonious way, in a chaotic manner.

Thus we see that the Jewish prophets gave their people many spiritual impulses, which are often disarrayed, but nonetheless grandiose recollections of former incarnations. That is the peculiarity to be observed in the Jewish prophets. Why is this? It is because in fact the whole evolution of humanity had to go through this passageway, so that what was achieved in its parts over the whole world should be brought together in one focal point, to be born again from out of the blood of the people of the Old Testament. So we find in the history of the old Hebrew people, as in that of no other, something that may be found also in tribes but not in peoples that had already become nations—a state of homogenity, the emphasizing of the descent of the blood through the generations. All that belongs to the world-historical mission of the Old Testament people depends upon the continuity of the stream of blood through the generations. Hence anyone who had a full right to belong to the Jewish people was always called a “son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” meaning a son of that element that first appeared in the blood of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was in the blood that flowed through this people that the elements of initiation of other peoples were to reincarnate. Like rays of light coming from different sides, streaming in and uniting in the center, the incarnating rays of the various peoples were collected together as in one central point in the blood of the old Hebrew people. The psychical element of human evolution had once to pass through that experience. It is extremely important to keep these occult facts in mind, for only thus can we understand how such a Gospel as that of St. Mark is from its beginning based upon the element of the Old Testament.

But now what occurs at this gathering, as we might call it, of the initiation elements of the various peoples in this one center? We have yet to see why it took place. But if we now take the whole dramatic progress of the Old Testament into consideration, we shall see how the thought of immortality is gradually developed in the Old Testament through the taking up of the initiation elements of the different peoples and how it appears at its very summit precisely in the sons of the Maccabees. But we must now allow this to influence our souls in its full original significance, enabling us to envision the consciousness man then had of his connection with the spiritual world. I wish to draw your attention to one thing. Try to follow up the passages in the Old Testament where reference is made to the divine element shining into human life. How often it is related, for example in the Book of Tobit (Tobit, Chapter 5), when something or other is about to happen—as when Tobit sends his son to carry out some business or other—the archangel Raphael appears to him in an apparently human form.³ In another passage other beings of the higher hierarchies appear. Here we have the divine spiritual element playing into the world of man in such a way that man sees the divine spiritual element as something external, met with in the outer world. In the Book of Tobit, Raphael confronts the person he has to lead in just the same way as one man encounters another when he approaches him externally. We shall often see if we study the Old Testament that connections with the spiritual world are regulated in this manner, and very many passages in the Old Testament refer to something of this kind. But as we proceed, we observe a great dramatic progression, finally reaching the culminating point of that progression in the martyrdom of the seven sons of the Maccabees who speak out of their souls of a uniting, a reawakening of their souls in the divine element. The inner certainty of soul about their own inner immortality meets us in the sons of the Maccabees and also in Judas and his brothers who were to defend their people against the king of Antioch. There is an increased inner understanding of the divine spiritual element, and the dramatic progress becomes ever greater as we follow the Old Testament from the appearance of God to Moses in the burning bush, in which we see God approaching man externally, to the inner certitude springing up in the souls of the sons of the Maccabees, who are convinced that if they die here they will be reawakened in the kingdom of their God through what lives within them.

This shows a mighty progression, revealing an inner unity in the Old Testament. Nothing is said at the beginning of the Old Testament concerning the consciousness of being accepted by God, of being taken away from the earth and being part of the Divinity. Nor are we told whether this member of the human soul that is taken up by God and embodied in the divine world is really raised. But the whole progress was so guided that the consciousness develops more and more, so that the human soul through its very essence grows into the spiritual element. From a state of passivity toward the God Yahweh or Jehovah, there gradually comes into being an active inner consciousness of the soul about its own nature. This increases page by page all through the Old Testament, though it was only by slow degrees that during its progress the thought of immortality was born. Strange to say, the same progress may also be observed in the succession of the prophets. Just observe how the stories and predictions of each successive prophet become more and more spiritual; here again we find the dramatic element of a wonderful intensification. The further we go back into the past, the more do the stories told relate to the external. The more we advance in time, the more we discover the inner force, the inner certainty and feeling of unity with the divine spiritual, referred to also by the prophets. Thus there is a continual enhancement until the Old Testament leads on to the beginning of the story of the New Testament, and the Gospel of St. Mark is directly linked with all this.

For at the very beginning, the Gospel tells us that it intends to interpret the event of Christ Jesus entirely in the sense of the old prophets, so that it is possible to understand the appearance of Christ Jesus by keeping before us the words of Malachi and Isaiah respectively, “Behold I send my messenger before you who is to prepare the way. Hear how there is a cry in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths level.’ ” Thus there is a prevailing tone running through the history of the Old Testament pointing to the appearance of Christ Jesus. It is further related in St. Mark's Gospel—indeed we may distinctly hear it in the words if we so desire. In the same way that the ancient prophets spoke, so essentially does the Baptist speak. How comprehensive and grandiose is this figure of the Baptist if we interpret him in the way the ancient prophets spoke of a divine messenger, of one who in the solitude would show the path that Christ Jesus had to pursue in cosmic evolution. Mark's Gospel then goes on to say, “Thus does John the Baptist appear in the solitude and proclaim baptism for the recognition of human sinfulness.” For in this way should the words rightly be translated. So it is said, “Direct your gaze to the old prophetic nature, which has now entered into a new relation with the Divinity and experienced a new belief in immortality. And then behold the figure of the Baptist, how he appeared and spoke of the kind of development through which we may recognize the sinfulness of man.” Thus is the Baptist directly referred to as a great figure.

But how about the wonderful figure of Christ Jesus Himself? Nowhere else in the world is He presented in so simple and at the same time so grand and dramatic an ascending gradation as in Mark's Gospel. Direct your spiritual gaze at this in the right way. What are we told at the beginning of the Gospel? We are particularly told to turn our attention to the figure of the Baptist. You can understand him only when you take into account the Jewish prophets, whose voice has become alive in him. The whole Jewish nation went up to be baptized by him. This means that there were many among them who recognized that the old prophets spoke through John the Baptist. That is stated at the beginning of the Gospel. We see John standing before us, we hear the voice of the old prophets coming to life in him, and we see the people going out to him and recognizing him as a prophet come to life again. Let us confine ourselves for the moment to the Mark Gospel. Now the figure of Christ Jesus Himself appears. Let us now also leave out of account the so-called baptism in the Jordan, and what happens after that, including the temptation, and fix our attention on the dramatic intensification we meet with in the Mark Gospel.

After the Baptist is introduced to us, and we are shown how the people regard him and his mission, Christ Jesus is Himself introduced. But in what manner? At first we are told only that He is there, that He is recognized not only by men, but He is also recognized by beings other than man. That is the point to be borne in mind. Around Him are those who wish to be healed from their demonic possession, those in whom demons are active. Around Him stand men in whom not merely human souls are living, but who are possessed by super-sensible spirits who work through them. And in a significant passage we are told that these spirits recognize Christ Jesus. Of the Baptist we are told that men recognized him and went out to be baptized by him. But Christ is recognized by the super-sensible spirits, so that He has to command them not to speak of Him. Beings from the super-sensible world recognize Him, so it is said; that being is entering who is not only recognized by men, but His appearance is recognized and considered dangerous by super-sensible beings. That is the glorious climax confronting us directly in the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. On the one side is John the Baptist, recognized and honored by men; and on the other He who is recognized and feared by super-sensible beings—who nevertheless have something to do with the earth—so that they realize that now they must leave. Nowhere else is such an upward dramatic progression presented with such simplicity.

If we keep this in sight, we feel certain things as necessary which usually simply pass unobserved by human souls. Let me draw your attention to a particular passage which, because of the greatness and simplicity of Mark's Gospel, may best be observed in this Gospel. Recall the passage in which the choosing of the Twelve is spoken of at the beginning of the Gospel, and how, when the naming is referred to, it is said that He called two of His apostles the “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). That is a fact that must not pass unnoticed; we must pay attention to it if we wish to understand the Gospel. Why does He call them “sons of thunder?” Because He wishes to implant into them an element that is not of the earth so that they may become His servants. This element comes from outside the earth because this is the Gospel that comes from the world of angels and archangels. It is something new; it is no longer enough to speak of man. He speaks now of a heavenly super-sensible element, the ego, and it is necessary to emphasize this. He calls them sons of thunder to show that those who are His followers are related to the celestial element. The nearest world connected with our own is the elemental world, through which what plays into our world can first be explained. Christ gives names to His disciples which indicate that our world borders on a super-sensible one. He gives them names in accordance with the characteristics of the elemental world. It is just the same as when He calls Peter the “rock-man” (Mark 3:16). This again refers to the super-sensible. Thus through the whole Gospel the entrance of the angelic as an impulse from the spiritual world is proclaimed.

In order to understand this we only need to read correctly, and assume that the Gospel is at the same time a book from which the deepest wisdom can be drawn. All the progress that has been made consists in this: souls are becoming individualized. They are connected with the super-sensible world not only indirectly through their group-soul nature, but they are also connected with it through the element of the individual soul. He who so stands before humanity that He is recognized by the beings of earth and is also recognized by super-sensible beings needs the best element of human nature to enable Him to sink something of the super-sensible into the souls of those who are to serve Him. He requires such men as have themselves made the furthest progress in their souls according to the old way. It is extremely interesting to follow the soul-development of those whom Christ Jesus gathered around Him; the Twelve whom He particularly called to be His own, who, in all their simplicity, as we might say, passed in the grandest way through the development which, as I tried to show you yesterday, is gained by human souls in widely varied incarnations.

A man must first become accustomed to being a specific individuality. This he cannot easily do when he is transferred from the element of the nation in which his soul had taken root into a condition of being dependent upon himself alone. The Twelve were deeply rooted in a nationality which had constituted itself in the grandest form. They stood there as if they were naked souls, simple souls, when Christ found them again. There had been a quite abnormal interval between their incarnations. The gaze of Christ Jesus could rest upon the Twelve, the reincarnated souls of those who had been the seven sons of the Maccabean and the five sons of Mattathias, Judas and his brothers; it was of these that the apostolate was formed. They were thrown into the element of fishermen and simple folk. But at a time when the Jewish element had reached its culminating point they had been permeated by the consciousness that this element was then at the peak of its strength, but strength only—whereas, when the group formed itself around Christ, this element appeared in individualized form. We might conceive that someone who was a complete unbeliever might look upon the appearance of the seven and the five at the end of the Old Testament, and their reappearance at the beginning of the New Testament, as nothing but an artistic progression. If we take it as a purely artistic composition, we may be moved by its simplicity and the artistic greatness of the Bible, quite apart from the fact that the Twelve are the five sons of Mattathias and the seven sons of the Maccabean mother. And we must learn to take the Bible also as a work of art. Then only shall we develop a feeling for the artistic element in it, and acquire a feeling for the realities from which it springs.

Now perhaps your attention may be called to something else. Among the five sons of Mattathias is one who is already called Judas in the Old Testament. He was the one who at that time fought more bravely than all the others for his own people. In his whole soul he was dedicated to his people, and it was he who was successful in forming an alliance with the Romans against King Antiochus of Syria (I Maccabees, Chap. 8). This Judas is the same who later had to undergo the test of the betrayal, because he who was most intimately bound up with the old specifically Hebrew element, could not at once find the transition into the Christian element, needing the severe testing of the betrayal. Again, if we look at the purely artistic aspect, how wonderfully do the two figures stand out: the grand figure of the Judas in the last chapters of the Old Testament and the Judas of the New Testament. It is remarkable that in this symptomatic process, the Judas of the Old Testament concluded an alliance with the Romans, prefiguring all that happened later, namely the path that Christianity took through the Roman Empire, so that it could enter into the world. If I could add to this something that can also be known but that cannot be given in a lecture to an audience as large as this, you would see that it was precisely through a later reincarnation of Judas that the fusion of the Roman with the Christian element occurred. The reincarnated Judas was the first who, as we might say, had the great success of spreading Romanized Christianity in the world. The treaty concluded by the Judas of the Old Testament with the Romans was the prophetic foreshadowing of what was later accomplished by another man, who is recognized by occultists as the reincarnation of that Judas who had to go through the severe soul-testing of the betrayal. What through his later influence appears as Christianity within Romanism and Romanism within Christianity is like a renewal of the alliance concluded between the Old Testament Judas and the Romans, but transferred into the spiritual.

When we have such things as these before us, we gradually come to the conclusion that, considered spiritually and leaving everything else aside, human evolution is itself the greatest work of art that has ever existed; only we must have the vision to see it. Ought it therefore to be regarded as so unreasonable to look at the human soul in this way? I think if we contemplate one or the other of these dramas with their clear raveling and unraveling, while lacking the capacity for perceiving its structure, we shall see nothing but a sequence of events following one after another. External history is written somewhat in this way. Seen thus, human evolution does not appear as a work of art; nothing emerges but a succession of events. But mankind is now at a turning point when it must interpret the inner progressive shaping of events, their raveling and unraveling in the evolution of humanity. Then it will appear that the evolution of humanity clearly and distinctly shows how individual figures appear at definite times and give impulses while entangling or unraveling the plot. We only learn to understand how man is inserted into human evolution when we come to know the course of history in this way. But because it is all raised from the condition of a mere joining together to that of an organism, and then to more than an organism, everything must really be put in its proper place and the distinctions made that in other domains are taken for granted. It would not occur to any astronomer to equate the sun to the other planets. He would as a matter of course keep it separate and single it out as a separate entity within the planetary system. In the same way, a man who sees into human evolution places a “sun” as a matter of course among the great leaders of humanity. Just as it would be utter nonsense to speak of the sun of our planetary system as being on a par with Venus, Jupiter, or Mars, so it would be nonsense to speak of Christ in the same way as the Boddhisattvas or other leaders of humanity. This should be so obvious that the very idea of a reincarnation of Christ would be ridiculous, and such an assertion could not be made if things were simply looked at as they are. But it is necessary really to go into the questions and grasp them in their proper form, and not to accept the dogma of any sectarian belief. When we speak of Christology in a true cosmological sense, it is not necessary to show a preference for the Christian above any other religion. That would be the same as if some religion in its sacred writings stated that the sun was the same as the other planets, and then someone came along and said, “No, we must place the sun higher than the other planets, and some people opposed this by saying, “But this is favoritism toward the sun!” This is not favoritism, it is only recognizing the truth.

So it is also in the case of Christianity. It is simply a question of recognizing the truth, a truth that every religion on the earth today could accept if it chose to do so. If other religions are in earnest in their tolerance for all other religious creeds and do not use that tolerance as a pretense, they will not object that the West has not adopted a national god, but a God in whom no nationality plays a part, a God who is a cosmic being. The Indians speak of their national gods. As a matter of course their ideas differ from those of people who have not adopted a Germanic national god, but accept as a God a Being who was, to be sure, never incarnated in their own land, but in a distant land and in a different nation. We might perhaps speak of a Western-Christian principle in opposition to an Indian-Eastern one, if we wished to put Wotan above Krishna. But that is not the case with Christ. From the beginning He belonged to no nation but stood for the truth of the most beautiful of the spiritual scientific principles, “to recognize the truth without distinction of color, race, nationality, etc.”

We must acquire the capacity to look at these things objectively. Only when we recognize the Gospels by recognizing what underlies them shall we truly understand them. From what has been said today about the Mark Gospel in its sublime simplicity and its dramatic crescendo from the person of John the Baptist to that of Christ Jesus, we can see what this Gospel actually contains.

• 1. The two books of the Maccabees are to be found in the Apocrypha, but not in the King James Version of the Bible. The heroic deeds of Judas Maccabaeus are recorded in Book 1, and the story of the martyrdom of the sons of the widow in Book 2.
• 2. The Israelites in Babylon were of course allowed by Cyrus to go home after his conquest of that city, and his Persian successors followed the same policy (II Chron. 36:22, Ezra 1. See also the rest of the book of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai, especially for the rebuilding of the temple). However, if the paragraph is taken as a whole, it seems evident that Steiner was thinking of the general dispersion of the Jews in the Hellenistic world in the centuries following the conquests of Alexander, a dispersion that in the end provided a suitable milieu for the reborn Zarathustra. As far as is known to history, Alexander himself did not play any significant part in the liberation of the Jews. (Editorial note.)
• 3. The reference is to the wonderful journey by Tobias, the son of Tobit, who goes to a far land to bring back a wife after he has freed her from a demon. He does this with the aid of Raphael who also shows him how to cure his father of blindness.

Certain dread concerning the destiny of humanity in the future may come over one who enters with feelings into the thoughts which occupied us at the close of our last lecture. A picture of this future of humanity was brought before us which on the one hand was great and powerful, filling one with bliss, showing the future condition of the man who has understood the mission of our present age upon the earth, who has received the Christ-spirit and is thereby able to keep pace with the necessary spiritualization of our earth, a glorious blessed picture of those men who are called in exoteric Christianity the “Redeemed,” and, not quite appropriately, the “Elect.” But the opposite picture had also to be put before you, the picture of the abyss in which is found a humanity which was not in a position to receive the Christ-spirit, which remained in matter, which excluded itself, so to speak, from the spiritualizing process leading into the future; and this portion of humanity which has fallen away from the spiritualized earth, and, in a certain sense apart from it, advances towards a frightful fate. When the beast with the seven heads and ten horns glowers at us from the abyss, the beast led astray by the other frightful being, the two-horned beast, this picture gives rise to fear and horror, and many aright ask: “Is it not hard and unwise on the part of Providence to lead a number of men to such a frightful fate, and in a way, to condemn them to the abyss of evil?” And the question might arise, “Would it not have been more fitting for a wise Providence to have averted this frightful fate from the very beginning?”

In answer to these questions, we might, to begin with, say something abstract, theoretical—and it already signifies a great deal for one who can grasp this theoretical statement is his feeling: It is extremely wise that Providence has taken care that this terrible fate is possible for a number of men. For if it were impossible for man to sink into the abyss of evil, he would not have been able to attain what on the one hand we call love and on the other freedom; since to the occultist freedom is inseparably connected with the idea of love. It would be impossible for man to develop either love or freedom without the possibility of sailing down into the abyss. A man unable, of his own free decision, to choose good or evil, would be a being who would only be led on a leading-string to a good which must be attained of necessity and who had no power to choose the good of his own fully purified will, by the love which springs from freedom. If it were impossible for man to follow in the trail of the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible for him to follow God out of his own individual love. It was in accordance with a wise Providence to give the possibility of freedom to the humanity which has been developing through our planetary system, and this possibility of freedom could be given on no other condition than that man himself has to make the free choice between good and evil.

But this is only an empty theory, you might say, and man rises but slowly to the point where he not only says this in words and accepts it in moments of speculation as a kind of explanation, but also experiences it in his feeling. Seldom does man now rise to the thought, “I thank thee, O wise Providence, that thou hast made it possible for me to bring thee a love which is not forced but springs up free in my own breast: that thou dost not force use to love thee, but that thou hast given me tine choice of following thee.” Nevertheless, man has to rise to this feeling if he wishes really to feel this theoretical explanation. We can, however, offer additional comfort, or, rather, another quieting assurance, from a clairvoyant observation of the world. For it was stated in our last lecture that at the present day, he alone has au almost unalterable tendency to the abyss who is already entangled in some way in the prongs of the two-horned beast, which leads men to the practice of black magic. Even for such as now fall into the arts of black magic it will still be possible to withdraw in the future. But those who do not come at all into any contact with black magic arts (and this is for the time being the case with most people), these may have nevertheless a certain tendency in the period following the War of All against All, towards final evil, but the possibility in the future of turning back again and following the good will be far greater than the compulsion unconditionally to follow evil.

From these lectures it may be seen that for those who now turn to a spiritual conception of the world, in order to live beyond the great War into the sixth epoch (which is represented by the opening of the seals), there is the possibility to receive the Christ-principle. They will be able to receive the spiritual elements which are laid down in the age signified by the community at Philadelphia, and in the near future they will manifest a strong tendency towards becoming spiritual. Those who turn to-day to a spiritual view receive a powerful disposition to enter upon the upward path. One must not fail to recognize how important it is even at the present time that a number of persons should not turn a deaf ear to the anthroposophical world conception, which is bringing to humanity in a fully conscious manner the first germs of spiritual life, whereas formerly this took place unconsciously. That is the important thing, that this portion of humanity should take with it the first conscious tendencies towards the upward movement.

Through a group of people dedicating themselves to-day to the foundation of a great brotherhood which will live over into the epoch of the seven seals, help will be provided for those others, who to-day still turn a deaf ear to the teachings of Spiritual Science. For the present, we have still to go through many incarnations of the present souls before the great War of All against All, and again up to the decisive point after the great War. And afterwards in the epoch of the seals we also have to go through many changes, and men will often have the opportunity to open their hearts to the spiritual world-conception, which is to-day flowing through the anthroposophical Movement. There will be many opportunities, and you must not imagine that future opportunities will only be such as they are to-day. The way in which we are able to make the spiritual view of the world known to others is still very feeble. Even if a man were now to speak in such a way that his voice were to sound forth directly like the fire of the spirit, that would be feeble as compared with the possibilities which will exist in later and more developed bodies in order to direct our fellow-men to this spiritual movement. When humanity as a whole will have developed higher and higher in future ages, there will be very different means through which the spiritual conception of the world will be able to penetrate into men's hearts, and the most fiery word to-day is small and weak compared with what will work in the future to give all souls the possibility of the spiritual conception of the world—all the souls now living in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual conception of the world.

We are at the beginning of the spiritual movement, and it will grow. It will require much obduracy and much hardness to close the heart and mind to the powerful impressions of the future. The souls now living in bodies which have the heart to hear and feel Anthroposophy, are now preparing them-selves to live in bodies in the future in which power will be given them to serve their fellow-creatures, who up to that time had been unable to feel this heart beat within them. We are only preparing for the preparers, as yet nothing more. The spiritual movement is to-day but a very small flame; in the future it will develop into a mighty spiritual fire.

When we bring this other picture before our minds, when we let it enter right into our feelings, then there will live in us a very different feeling and a very different possibility of knowledge concerning this fact. To-day it is what we call black magic into which men can, in a certain way, fall consciously or unconsciously. Those who are now living thoughtlessly, who are quite untouched by the spiritual conception of the world, who live in their comfortable everyday torpor and say, “What does it matter to me what these dreaming Anthroposophists say?” these have the least opportunity of coming into the circle of black magic. In their case they are now only neglecting the opportunity to help their fellow-men in the future in their efforts to attain the spiritual life. For themselves they have not yet lost touch. But those who to-day are beginning in an unjustifiable way to oppose the spiritual life, are really taking up into themselves in the very first beginnings the germs of some-thing one might call black magic. There are very few individuals to-day who have already fallen into black magic in the frightful sense in which this horrible art of humanity must really be spoken of.

You will best understand that this really is so if I give you but a slight indication of the way in which black magic is systematic-ally cultivated; then you will see that you may search high and low among all your acquaintances and you will find no one of whom you could believe that he was already inclining to such arts. All the rest is fundamentally only the purest dilettantism which may be easily got rid of in future ages. It is bad enough that in our day things are sometimes praised with the intention to defraud people—which in a certain sense is also the beginning of the art of black magic. It is also bad that certain ideas are percolating, which—although they do not absolutely belong to the black art—nevertheless mislead people; these are the ideas which rule the world to-day in certain, circles and which can flourish amidst materialistic thought, but which although not without danger, will not be irreparable in the next epochs. Only when a man begins to practise the ABC of black magic is he on the dangerous path to the abyss. The ABC consists in the pupil of a black magician being taught to destroy life quite consciously, and in doing so to cause as much pain as possible and to feel a certain satisfaction in it. When the purpose is to stab or to cut into a living being with the intention of feeling pleasure in that being's pain, that is the ABC of the black arts. We cannot touch upon the further stages, but you will find it horrible enough when you are told that the beginning in black magic is to cut and stab into living flesh, not like the vivisector cuts—this is already bad enough, but the principle of vivisection finds its overthrow in the vivisector himself, because in kamaloca he will himself have to feel the pain he has caused his victims, and for this reason will leave vivisection alone in the future. But he who systematically cuts into flesh, and feels satisfaction in it begins to follow the precipitous path of black magic, and this draws him closer and closer to the being described as the two-horned beast.

This seductive being is of quite a different nature from man. It originates from other world periods; it has acquired the tendencies of other world periods and will feel deep satisfaction when it meets with beings such as those evil ones who have refused to take up inwardly the good which can flow from the earth. This being has been unable to receive anything from the earth; it has seen the earthly evolution come but has said, “I have not progressed with the earth in such a way that I can gain anything from earthly existence.” This being could only have got something from the earth by being able to gain the rulership at a certain moment, namely, when the Christ-principle descended to the earth. If the Christ-principle had then been strangled in the germ, if Christ had been overcome by the adversary, it would have been possible for the whole earth to succumb to the Sorath-principle. This, however, did not take place, and so this being has to be content with those who have not inclined towards the Christ-principle, who have remained embedded in matter; they in the future will form his cohorts.

Now in order to understand these hosts more clearly we must consider two ideas which in a certain sense may serve as a key to certain chapters of the Apocalypse. We must study the ideas of the “first death” and the “second death.” What is the first death and what is the second death of man, or of humanity? We must form a clear picture of the ideas which the writer of the Apocalypse connected with these words. To this end we must once more recall to mind the elementary truths concerning human existence.

Consider a human being of the present day. He lives in such a way that from morning when he awakes until evening when he falls asleep he consists of four principles: the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the “I.” We also know that during his earthly existence man works from his “I” upon the lower principles of his being, and that during the earth existence he must succeed in bringing the astral body under the control of the “I.” We know that the earth will be followed by its next incarnation, Jupiter. When main has reached Jupiter he will appear as a different being. The Jupiter-man will have thoroughly worked from his “I” upon his astral body; and when to-day we say, The earth-man who stands before us in the waking condition has developed physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I,” we must say of the Jupiter-man: he will have developed physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I” but he will have changed his astral body into spirit-self. He will live at a higher stage of consciousness, a stage which may be described as follows: The ancient dim-picture-consciousness of the Moon, which existed also in the first epochs of the earth-consciousness, will again be there with its pictures as clairvoyant consciousness, but it will be furnished with the human “I,” so that with this Jupiter-consciousness man will reflect as logically as he does now with his day-consciousness on the earth.

The Jupiter-man therefore will possess spiritual vision of a certain degree. Part of the soul-world will lie open to him; the will perceive the pleasure and pain of those around him in pictures which will arise in his imaginative consciousness. He will there-fore live under entirely different moral conditions. Now imagine that as a Jupiter-man you have a human soul before you. The pain and pleasure of this soul will arise in pictures before you. The pictures of the pair of the other soul will distress you, and if you do not remove the other's pain it will be impossible for you to feel happy. The pictures of sorrow and suffering would torment the Jupiter-man with his exalted consciousness if he were to do nothing to alleviate this sorrow and thus at the same dine remove his own distressing pictures which are nothing but the expression of the sorrow around him! It will not be possible for one to feel pleasure or pain without others also feeling it.

Thus we see that man gains an entirely new state of consciousness in addition to his present “I”-consciousness. If we wish to understand the importance of this in evolution we must once more turn our attention to man when asleep.

During this condition the physical body and etheric body lie on the bed, and his “I” and astral body are outside. During the night (if we speak somewhat inexactly) he callously abandons his physical and etheric bodies. But through being able to liberate himself during the night from his physical and etheric bodies, through being able to live at night in the spiritual world, it is possible for man during this earthly existence to work transformingly from his “I” upon his astral body. How does he do this?

To describe this clearly let us take man in his waking state. Let us suppose that in addition to his professional work and duties he devotes a short time to higher considerations in order to make the great impulses his own which flow from John's Gospel, from the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God ...” Let us suppose that he allows to rise within him the great pictures brought before him in John's Gospel, so that he is always filled by the thought: “At the beginning of our era a Being lived in Palestine whom I wish to follow. I will so order my life that everything may be approved by this Being; and I will consider myself as a man who has taken this personality as his ideal.” But we need not intolerantly think that John's Gospel alone may be taken. It is possible in many other ways to immerse oneself in something which can fill the soul with such pictures; and although in a certain way we must describe John's Gospel as the greatest revelation which has originated in humanity, which can exercise the most powerful effect, we may, however, say that others who devote themselves to the Vedanta wisdom or immerse themselves in the Bhagavad Gita or in the Dhammapada, will also have sufficient opportunities in following incarnations to come to the Christ-principle just through what they have thus acquired. Let us suppose that during the day a man fills his mind with pictures and ideas such as these, then his astral body is laid hold of by these thoughts, feelings and pictures, and they form forces in his astral body and produce various effects in it. Then when man withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies at night, these effects remain in the astral body, and he who during the day has been able to immerse himself in the pictures and feelings of John's Gospel has produced something in his astral body which during the night appears in it as a powerful effect. In this way man works to-day during the waking consciousness upon his astral body.

Only the Initiate can become conscious of these effects to-day, but men are gradually developing towards this consciousness. Those who reach the goal of the earth evolution will then have an astral body completely permeated by the “I,” and by the spiritual content which it will have formed. They will have this consciousness as a result, as a fruit of the earth evolution, and will carry it over into the Jupiter evolution. We might say that when the Earth period has thus come to an end man will have gained capacities which are symbolically represented by the building of the New Jerusalem. Man will then already look into that picture-world of Jupiter; the spirit-self will then be fully developed in him. That is the goal of the earth evolution. What, then, is man to gain in the course of his earthly evolution? What is the first goal? The transformation of the astral body. This astral body which to-day is always free of the physical and etheric bodies at night will appear in the future as a transformed portion of the human being. Mau brings into it what he gains on the earth; but this would not be sufficient for the earth evolution. Imagine that man were to come out of the physical body and etheric body every night and were to fill his astral body with what he had acquired during the day, but that the physical and etheric bodies were untouched by it. Man would then still not reach his earthly goal. Something else must take place; it must be possible for man during his earthly evolution to imprint, at least in the etheric body, what he has taken into himself. It is necessary for this etheric body also to receive effects from what man develops in his astral body. Man cannot yet of himself work into this etheric body. Upon Jupiter, when he has trans-formed his astral body, he will be able to work into this etheric body also, but to-day he cannot do this; he still needs helpers, so to speak. Upon Jupiter he will be capable of beginning the real work on the etheric body. Upon Venus he will work upon the physical body; this is the part most difficult to overcome. To-day he still has to leave both the physical and etheric bodies every night and emerge from them. But in order that the etheric body may receive its effects, so that man shall gradually learn to work into it, he needs a helper. And the helper who makes this possible is none other than Christ, while we designate the Being who helps man to work into the physical body as the Father. But man cannot work into his physical body before the helper conies who makes it possible to work into the etheric body. “No man cometh to the Father, but by me.” No one acquires the capacity of working into the physical body who has not gone through the Christ-principle. However, when he has reached the goal of earthly evolution, man will have the capacity—through being able to transform his astral body by his own power—to work upon the etheric body also. This he owes to the living presence of the Christ-principle on the earth. Had Christ not united him-self with the earth as a living being, had he not come into the aura of the earth, that which is developed in the astral body would not be communicated to the etheric body. From this we see that one who shuts himself up by turning away from the Christ-principle deprives himself of the possibility of working into his etheric body in the way that is necessary during earthly evolution.

Thus we shall be able to characterize in another way the two kinds of men which we find at the end of the earth's evolution. We have those who have received the Christ-principle and thus transformed their astral body, and who have gained the help of Christ to transform the etheric body also. And we have the others who did not come to the Christ-principle; who also were unable to change anything in the etheric body, for they could not find the helper, Christ. Now let us look at the future of mankind. The earth spiritualizes itself, that is, man must lose completely something which he now un his physical existence considers as belonging to him. We can form an idea of what will then happen to man if we consider the ordinary course of his life after death. He loses the physical body at death. It is to this physical body that he owes the desires and inclinations which bind him to the ordinary life; and we have described what man experiences after death. Let us take a person who is fond of some particularly dainty food. During life he can enjoy this, but not after death. The desire, however, does not cease, for this is seated, not in the physical body but in the astral body, and as the physical instrument is absent it is impossible to gratify this desire. Such persons look down from kamaloca to the physical world which they have left; they see there all that could give them satisfaction, but they cannot enjoy it because they have no physical instrument for the purpose. Through this they experience a burning thirst. Thus it is with all desires that remain in man after death and are related to the physical world, because they can only be satisfied through physical instruments. This is the case every time after death; each time man sees his physical body fall away, and as something remains in him from this physical body it still urges him to the ordinary world of the physical plane, and until he has weaned himself from this in the spiritual world he lives in the fire of desire. Now imagine the last earthly incarnation before the spiritualization of the earth, the laying aside of the last physical body. Those who are now living on the earth will have progressed so far through the Christ-principle that, in a certain way, it will not be very difficult for than to lay aside the very last physical body; they will, however, be obliged to leave something, for all that can give pleasure from the objects of this earth will have disappeared once and for all from the spiritual earth. Think of the last death possible in our earth evolution, think of the laying aside of the last physical body. It is this last death of the incarnations which in the Apocalypse is called the first death, and those who have received the Christ-principle see this physical body as a sort of husk which falls away. The etheric body has now become important to them for, with the help of Christ, it has become so organized that it is for the time being adapted to the astral body and no longer desires and longs for what is below in the physical world. Only through all that has been brought into the etheric body through the help of Christ do men continue to live on in the spiritualized earth. Harmony has been produced between their astral and etheric bodies by the Christ-principle.

On the other hand there are those who have not received the Christ-principle. These do not possess this harmony. They too must lose the physical body, for there is no such thing in the spiritual earth. Everything physical must first be dissolved. It remains as desires for the physical, as the unpurified spiritual, as the spiritual hardened in matter. An etheric body remains which the Christ has not helped to be adapted to the astral body, but which is suited to the physical body. They are the souls who will feel hot fires of desire for physical sensuality; in the etheric body they will feel unappeasable, burning desire by reason of what they have had in the physical life and which they must now do without. Thus, in the next period, after the physical has melted away, we have men who live in an etheric body which harmonizes with the astral body, and we have others whose etheric body lives in discord because they desire what has fallen away with the physical body.

Then in the further stage of evolution there comes a condition where the spiritualizing of the earth has proceeded so far that there can no longer be even an etheric body. Those whose etheric body completely harmonizes with the astral body lay aside this etheric body without pain, for they remain in their astral body which is filled with the Christ-Being. They feel the laying aside of the etheric body as a necessity in evolution, for they feel within them the capacity to build it up again for them-selves because they have received Christ. Those, however, who in this etheric body desire what belongs to the past cannot retain this etheric body, when all becomes astral. It will be taken from them, it will be torn out of them, and they now perceive this as a second dying, as the “second death.”

This second death passes unnoticed over those who have made their etheric body harmonize with the astral body through the reception of the Christ-principle. The second death has no power over then. But the others feel the second death when they have to pass over into the future astral form. The condition of humanity will then be such that those who have reached the goal of evolution will have entirely permeated their astral body with Christ. They will be ready to pass over to Jupiter. Upon our earth they have made the plan of the Jupiter evolution. This is the plan which is called the New Jerusalem. They live in a new heaven and a new earth, that is, Jupiter. This new Jupiter will be accompanied by a satellite, composed of those who are excluded from the life in the spiritual, who have experienced the second death and are, therefore, unable to attain the Jupiter consciousness.

Thus we have such men as have pressed forward to the Jupiter consciousness, who have attained to spirit-self; and such beings as have thrust away the forces which would have given them this consciousness. They are those who only upon Jupiter have attained to the “I”-consciousness of the earth, who exist there, so to speak, as man now exists on the earth with his four members. But such a man can develop himself only on the earth, the earth alone has the environment, the ground, the air, the clouds, the plants, the minerals which are necessary to man if he wishes to gain what may be gained within the four members. Jupiter will be quite differently formed, it will be a new earth, soil, air, water, everything will be different. It will be impossible for beings who have only gained the earth consciousness to live a normal life; they will be backward beings.

But now comes something more for our comfort. Even on this Jupiter there is still a last possibility, through the strong powers which the advanced will have, to move those fallen beings to turn back and even to convert a number. Only with the Venus incarnation of the earth will conic the last decision, the unalterable decision. When we reflect upon all this, the thought we recently considered will be seen in a new light. It will no longer call forth anxiety and disquietude, but only the determination: “I will do everything necessary to fulfil the earth mission.”

When we consider all this in the right way, a mighty picture of the future of humanity opens up before us and we get some idea of all that was in the illuminated soul of the writer of the Apocalypse who wrote down what we, in a faltering way, can discover from a study of it. Every word of the writer, indeed every turn of expression, is significant. We must only try to understand it clearly. Thus, according to our last lecture, in 666 we are referred to the beast with the two horns, and then a remarkable statement is made, “Here is Wisdom! Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.” An apparent contradiction, but one of the many contradictions which are to be found in every occult work and exposition. You may be sure of one thing; that an exposition which runs so smoothly that the ordinary human intellect can find no contradiction is certainly not based on an occult foundation. Nothing in world-evolution is so shallow and trivial as that which the human intellect, the ordinary intelligence perceives as free from contradiction. One must penetrate more deeply into the substrata of human contemplation and then the contradictions will disappear. One who observes how a plant grows from root to fruit, how the green leaf changes into the petals, these into the stamens, etc., may say, “Here we have contradictory forms, the flower-leaf contradicts the stem-leaf.” But one who looks more deeply will see the unity, the deeper unity in the contradiction. So it is with what the intellect can see in the world. It is precisely in the deepest wisdom that it sees contradictions. Hence it must not disturb us when here in the Apocalypse we meet with an apparent contradiction: “Let him that hath understanding ponder over the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”

We must once more consider by what means it may be possible for a man to be led astray by the two-horned beast. We have pointed out that since the middle of the Atlantean epoch man has slept through the higher spiritual development, so to speak. This sleep still exists at the present time. But it was necessary. If it had not entered in, that which we call the intellect would never have been developed. Man did not possess this before our epoch, he acted from other impulses. His pictures drove him to action, without reflection. He had lost this ancient gift of spiritual vision and in its place he has developed intellect and thereby descended into matter. This has drawn a veil over the spiritual world, but at the same time the intellect has been acquired. This may be a great hindrance to the spiritual development. At the very last it will be nothing else but this misguided intellect, this misguided intelligence, which can prevent man from coming to the Christ-principle; and if those who at last succumb to the two-horned beast could look back upon what has dealt them the worst blow they would say, “The tendency to descend into the abyss only came later, but that which darkened the Christ-principle for me was the intellect.” Let him who has this intellect reflect upon the number of the beast; for only through man having become man, that is to say, through his being gifted with this ego-intellect, can he succumb to the beast 666. For the number of the beast is at the same time the number of a man. And only one possessing intellect can perceive that this is so. It is the number of that man who has let himself be misled by his intellect. Deep truths such as these are concealed in these things.

Thus you see that the writer of the Apocalypse gives you a great deal when you reflect upon the various intimations we have given. He expresses many of the truths known to Spiritual Science. He gives what he promises. He leads man to the vision of what is to come; to the vision of the beings and powers which guide the world. He leads us to the spirit in the first seal, and to the form presented in the last seal. Here we see how the regular form of the New Jerusalem is revealed to him spiritually. The regularity of the New Jerusalem is indicated in the last chapter by its description as a cube. To describe all that is in this last picture would take us too far.

It is now necessary to point out for what purpose the Apocalypse was written. I should indeed have to say a great deal if I were to describe this in detail, but you cm at least take away with you one hint, one which we find at a certain part of the Apocalypse. The writer of the Apocalypse says: A time will come when that high degree of consciousness will actually have developed, when man will see the beings who direct the world, the beings represented by the Lamb and by the appearance of the Son of Man, with the flaming sword. We are referred to this in tones which contain within them that assurance of which we have spoken. The writer of the Apocalypse, who is a great seer, knows that in ancient times men were gifted with a dim clairvoyance. We have described this and have seen how at that time inns were the companions, so to speak, of beings in the spiritual world, and themselves saw the spiritual world. But who has lost this gift of seership? Who? We must now put this forward as an important question. We have seen that fundamentally it was lost by those men who were led to the physical plane, the physical life, when the second half of the Atlantean epoch began. Man looked upon the solid formation of our earth, upon the clearly outlined objects of our earth. The ancient clairvoyance disappeared; he became self-conscious, but the spiritual world was closed to him. The formations which un ancient times filled the air like an ocean of mist, disappeared; the air became clear, the ground distinct. Man descended to the visible earth. This took place comparatively late, it coincided with the attainment of the present intellect, the present self-consciousness of man. Now let us remember what has been said about this earth as well as about the great Event of Golgotha. If some one had observed the earth at that time from a distance with spiritual vision at the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, he would have perceived that its whole astral aura changed. The earth was then permeated by the Christ-force. Through this event the earth will be able to reunite with the sun. This power will grow. This is the power which preserves our etheric body from the second death. Christ becomes the Earth-spirit more and more, and the true Christian understands the words, “He who eats my bread treads me underfoot”; he considers the body of the earth as the body of Christ. The earth as a planetary body is the body of Christ; of course at present this is only at its beginning. Christ has still to become the Earth-spirit; He will smite himself fully with the earth, and when the earth later unites with the sun, the great Earth-spirit, Christ, will be the Sun-Spirit.

The body of the earth will be the body of Christ; and men must work upon this body. They began this when they entered upon the earth; they have worked upon this earth with their forces. In all traditions one can fund something which is little noticed because little understood. Thus, for example, in the Persian tradition we find that since the time men lost clairvoyant consciousness they have become beings who have pierced the earth. While they live in the phases which they pierce the earth—that is, while they work upon the earth—during this time when they pierce the body of Christ they do not see with clairvoyant consciousness the guiding powers and, above all, they do not see the Christ face to face. But the writer of the Apocalypse refers to the time when not only those who at that time had spiritual vision will see the spiritual, but when humanity will again have come to the stage where it is possible to see the Christ-Being himself. All will see him, including those who have pierced him, these who had to pass through a portion of their evolution in cultivating the earth, in the piercing of the earth, they will see the Christ. For these sayings are such that they lead those who gradually learn to unveil them deep into the imaginative world of the Mysteries, of the Apocalyptic language.

What, then, did the Apocalyptist wish to write, what did he wish to represent? This question will be answered if we briefly refer to the origin of the Apocalypse. Where do we first fund what is written down in the Apocalypse? If you could look back into the Mysteries of ancient Greece, into the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, if you could go back into the Mysteries of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Persia and India, you would find the Apocalypse everywhere. It existed, it was there. It was not written down, but lived from one generation of priests to another, through the generations of the Initiators, where the memory was so vivid that one could master such abundant material. Memory even in much later times was far better than ours; we need only remember the singers of the Iliad, how they went about and sang their songs from memory. It is comparatively not long ago, that memory has deteriorated so much. In the Mysteries these truths were not written down, but they lived from generation to generation of the Initiators. Why was the Apocalypse written? It was intended to serve as an instruction for those who brought the pupils into Initiation. At that time the one who was to be initiated was led out of the physical body and remained as if dead. But when he had been led out, the Initiator enabled him to see in his etheric body that which later through the Christ-impulse he would be able to see spiritually in the physical body. Thus the ancient Initiates were the prophets who could point to Christ; and they did so. They were able to do this, because Christ is shown in this Apocalypse as due to appear in the future. The Mystery of Golgotha had never yet taken place where a person in the physical body could set forth the whole drama of Initiation historically. Where then could the possibility of this Event of Golgotha be comprehended? At a certain stage the Initiates had comprehended it outside their body. That which took place on Golgotha had taken place before in another consciousness. There might have been thousands there, and yet the Event of Golgotha could have passed by them unnoticed. What would it have been to them? The death of an ordinary condemned person! It was only possible to understand what took place on Golgotha where the contents of the Mysteries were known. The Initiators could say, You can understand the one whom we have shown you during the three and a half days, whom the prophets announced to you, if you use the means which the Mysteries can give you. The Apocalyptist had received the tradition of the Mysteries orally; he said, “If I am permeated with what can be experienced in the Mysteries, Christ appears to me.” Thus the Apocalypse was nothing new; but its application to the unique Event of Golgotha was something new. The essential thing was that for those who have ears to hear it was possible, with the help of what is in the Apocalypse of John, to penetrate gradually to the true understanding of the Event of Golgotha. This was the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse. He received the Apocalypse from the ancient Mysteries; it is an ancient sacred book of humanity and has only been presented externally to humanity by the disciple whom the Lord loved and to whom he bequeathed the task of announcing his true form. He is to remain until Christ comes; so that those who have a more illuminated consciousness will be able to understand him. He is the great teacher of the true Event of Golgotha. He has given to man the means by which he can really understand the Event of Golgotha. At the beginning of the Apocalypse the writer says (I have tried to translate the first few words in such a way that they convey the true meaning): “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto his servant, to show in brief what must needs come to pass. This is put in symbols and sent through an angel to his servant John, who wrote these things.” He wishes to describe it in brief; what does this mean? It means in other words: “If I were to describe in detail all that will take place from now up to the goal of the earth evolution, I. should have to write a very great deal, but I will show it to you in a short sketch.” This the translators who could not penetrate into the spirit of the Apocalypse have translated as “to show what must shortly come to pass.” They thought that what is described in the Apocalypse was to happen in the near future. But it ought to read: “I will briefly describe what will take place.” The original text fully admits of the true interpretation I have tried to give in the introduction to Seals and Columns.

We have said much in these lectures concerning this ancient sacred record of the human race, much concerning the secrets which the Lord imparted to humanity by the disciple whom he loved. You may have learnt from this that the Apocalypse is a profound book full of wisdom, and have perhaps many tines during these considerations been troubled because much in it is so difficult to understand. Now I should like to say one thing at the close of our studies. All that I have been able to say to you corresponds exactly to the intentions of the writer of the Apocalypse, and was always taught in this way in the schools which have kept to the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse. But it is by no means all that could be said and one can go much deeper into the truths, into the foundations of the Apocalypse. And if we were to penetrate fully into all the depths, what I have been able to say to you would seem only like a first superficial presentation. It cannot be done in any other way, we can at first give only a superficial presentation. One must go through this. One has to begin with the elementary things, and then, when one has gone a little further, greater depths will be found. For below the surface there is a very great deal of which we have been only able to unveil a very little. If you go further along the path which in a certain way you have begun by turning your attention to the exposition of the Apocalypse of John, you will gradually penetrate into the depths of the spiritual life. You will come into depths which cannot possibly be expressed to-day, because they could not be brought into consciousness, because no one has yet ears to hear. The ears must first be prepared to hear, by such explanations as have now been given. Then they will gradually be there, cars able to hear the Word which flows at such profound depths through the Apocalypse. If you have been able to receive a little of what could be imparted, you must be aware that only the most superficial things could be given, and of these only a few observations. May it give you the impulse to penetrate more and more deeply into what can only be surmised through these lectures. If I were to say only what can be said about the surface, I should have to lecture for still many, many weeks. These lectures could only be a stimulus for further study, and those who feel the impulse to penetrate more deeply into the Apocalypse will have received them in the right way.

I have already indicated a few of the symptomatic forces that play a part in the development of contemporary history. I have only time to discuss a few of these impulses. To discuss them all—or even the most significant—would take us too far. I have been asked to give special attention to specific impulses of a symptomatic nature. This can be deferred until next week when I will willingly speak of those symptoms which have special reference to Switzerland and at the same time I will attempt to give a sketch of Swiss history.

Today, however, I propose to continue the studies we have already undertaken. I concluded my lecture yesterday with a picture, albeit a very inadequate picture, of the development in recent times of one of the most significant Symptoms of contemporary history—socialism. Now for many who are earnestly seeking to discover the real motive forces of evolution, this social, or rather socialist movement occupies the focus of attention; apart from socialism they have never really considered the Claims of anything else. Consequently people have failed in recent times to give adequate attention to the very important influence of something which tends to escape their notice. Even where they searched for new motives they paid no attention to those of a spiritual nature. If we ask how far people were aware of the impulses characteristic of modern evolution we can virtually discount from the outset those personalities who in the nineteenth century, and more especially in the twentieth century, were largely oblivious of contemporary evolution, who belonged to those circles which were indifferent to contemporary trends. The historians of the old upper classes were content to plough the old furrows, to record the genealogy of dynasties, the history of wars and perhaps other related material. It is true that studies in the history of civilization have been written, but these studies, from Buckle to Ratzel, take little account of the real driving forces of history. At the same time the proletariat was thirsting for knowledge and felt an ever-increasing desire for education. And this raised the three questions I mentioned yesterday. But the proletariat lacked the will to explore the more subtle interrelations of historical development. Consequently, up to the present, a historical symptom that has not been sufficiently emphasized is the historical significance of the natural scientific mode of thinking.

One can of course speak of the scientific mode of thinking in terms of its content or in relation to the transformation of modern thinking. But it is important to consider in what respect this scientific thinking has become a historical symptom like the others I have mentioned—the national impulse, the accumulation of insoluble political problems, etcetera. In fact, since the beginning of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, the scientific mode of thinking has steadily increased amongst wide sections of the population. It is a mistake to imagine that only those think scientifically who have some acquaintance with natural science. That is quite false; in fact the reverse is true. Natural scientists think scientifically because that is the tendency of the vast majority of people today. People think in this way in the affairs of daily life—the peasant in the fields, the factory worker at his bench, the financier when he undertakes financial transactions. Everywhere we meet with scientific thinking and that is why scientists themselves have gradually adopted this mode of thought. It is necessary to rectify a popular misconception on this subject. It is not the mode of thinking of scientists or even of monistic visionaries that must engage our attention, but the mode of thinking of the general public. For natural science cannot provide a sufficiently powerful counterpoise to the universalist impulse of the church of Rome. What provides this counterpoise is a universal thinking that is in conformity with the laws of nature. And we must study this impulse as symptom in relation to the future evolution of modern man.

Text-books of history, rather thoughtlessly, usually date the birth of modern times from the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and printing, etcetera. If we take the trouble to study the course of recent history we realize that these symptomatic events—the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, and the art of printing, etcetera—did in fact inspire seamen and adventurers to pioneer voyages of exploration, that they popularized and diffused traditional knowledge, but that fundamentally they did not change the substance of European civilization in the ensuing centuries. We realize that the old political impulses which were revived in the different countries nonetheless remained the same as before because they were unable to derive any notable benefit from these voyages of discovery. In the newly discovered countries they simply resorted to conquest as they had formerly done in other territories: they mined and transported gold and so enriched themselves. In the sphere of printing they were able increasingly to control the apparatus of censorship. But the political forces of the past were unable to derive anything in the nature of a decisive impulse from these discoveries which were said to mark the birth of modern times. It was through the fusion of the scientific mode of thinking—after it had achieved certain results—with these earlier inventions and discoveries in which science had played no part that the really significant impulse of modern times arose. The colonizing activities of the various countries in modern times would be unthinkable without the contributions of modern science. The modern urge for colonization was the consequence of the achievements of natural science in the technical field. It was only possible to conquer foreign territories, as colonization was destined to do with the aid of scientific inventions, with the application of scientific techniques. These colonizing activities therefore first arose in the eighteenth century when natural science began to be transformed into technics.

Applied science marks the beginning of the machine age, and with it a new era of colonization which gradually spreads over the whole world. With technics an extremely important impulse of modern evolution is born in the Consciousness Soul. Those who understand the determinative factors here are aware that the impulses behind worldwide colonial expansion, that these colonizing activities and aspirations are directly related to the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. This epoch, as you know, will end in the third millenium, to be followed by the epoch of the Spirit Self, and will as the result of colonization bring about a different configuration of mankind throughout the world. Now the epoch of the Consciousness Soul recognizes that there are so-called civilized and highly civilized men, and others who are extremely primitive—so primitive that Rousseau was captivated by their primitive condition and elaborated his theory of the ‘noble savage.’ In the course of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul this differentiation will cease—how it will cease we cannot now discuss in detail. But it is the function of the Consciousness Soul to end this differentiation which is a heritage from the past.

Armed with this knowledge we see the connection between wars such as the American Civil War and modern colonizing activities in their true light. When we bear in mind the importance of these colonizing activities for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul then we gain insight into the full significance of isolated symptoms in this field. And these colonizing activities are inconceivable without the support of scientific thinking.

We must really give heed to this scientific thinking, if, from the point of view of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, we wish to penetrate to the true reality of human evolution. It is a characteristic of this modern scientific thinking that it can only apprehend the ‘corpse’ of reality, the phantom. We must be quite clear about this, for it is important. The scientific method starts from observation and proceeds to experimentation, and this applies in all spheres. Now there is a vast difference between the observation of nature and the knowledge which is confirmed by experimental proof. Observation of nature—with different nuances—was common to all epochs. But when man observes nature he becomes one with nature and shares in the life of nature. But, strangely enough, this communion with nature blunts the consciousness to some extent. One cannot live the life of nature and at the same time know or cognize in the sense in which the modern Consciousness Soul understands this term. One cannot do both at the same time any more than one can be asleep and awake at the same time. If one wishes to live in communion with nature one must be prepared in a certain sense to surrender one's consciousness to nature. And that is why the observation of nature cannot fathom its secrets, because when man observes nature his consciousness is somewhat dimmed and the secrets of nature escape him. In order to apprehend the secrets of nature he must be alive to the super-sensible.

One cannot develop the Consciousness Soul in a semiconscious state, a state of diminished consciousness, and therefore modern natural science quite instinctively attempts to dispense with observation and to depend upon experimentation for its findings. Experiments have been undertaken even in the fields of biology and anthropology. Now in experimentation the first consideration is to select and assemble the material, to determine the order of procedure. In experimental embryology for example, the order of procedure is determined not by nature but by intellection or human intelligence; it is determined by an intellectual faculty which is detached from nature and is centred in man. ‘We murder to dissect’—our knowledge of nature is derived from experimental investigation. Only what is acquired experimentally can be exploited technically. Knowledge of nature only becomes ripe for technical exploitation when it has passed through the indirect process of experimentation. The knowledge of nature which hitherto had been introduced into social life had not yet reached the stage of technics. It would be monstrous to speak of technics unless it is concerned purely with the application of experimentation to the social order or to what serves the social order.

Thus modern man introduces into the social order the results of experimental knowledge in the form of technics; that is to say, he brings in the forces of death. Let us not forget that we bring forces of death into our colonizing activities; that when we construct machines for industry, or submit the worker to the discipline of the machine we are introducing forces of death. And death permeates our modern historical structure when we extend our monetary economy to larger or smaller territories and when we seek to build a social order on the pattern of modern science as we have instinctively done today. And whenever we introduce natural science into our community life we introduce at all times the forces of death that are self destructive.

This is one of the most important symptoms of our time. We can make honest and sincere pronouncements—I do not mean merely rhetorical pronouncements—about the great scientific achievements of modern times and the benefits they have brought to technics and to our social life. But these are only half truths, for fundamentally all these achievements introduce into contemporary life an unmistakably moribund element which is incapable of developing of itself. The greatest acquisitions of civilization since the fifteenth century are doomed to perish if left to themselves. And this is inescapable. The question then arises: if modern technics is simply a source of death, as it must inevitably be, why did it arise? Certainly not in order to provide mankind with the spectacle of machines and industry, but for a totally different reason. It arose precisely because of the seeds of death it bore within it; for if man is surrounded by a moribund, mechanical civilization it is only by reacting against it that he can develop the Consciousness Soul. So long as man lived in communion with nature, i.e. before the advent of the machine age, he was open to suggestion because he was not fully conscious. He was unable to be fully self-sufficient because he had not yet experienced the forces of death. Ego-consciousness and the forces of death are closely related. I have already tried to show this in a variety of ways: In ideation and cognition, for example, man is no longer in contact with the life-giving, vitalizing forces within him; he is given over to the forces of organic degeneration. I have tried to show that we owe the possibility of conscious thought to the process of organic degeneration, to the processes of destruction and death. If we could not develop in ourselves ‘cerebral hunger’, that is to say, processes of catabolism, of degeneration and disintegration, we could not behave as intelligent beings, we should be vacillating, indecisive creatures living in a semiconscious, dream-like state. We owe our intellection to the degenerative processes of the brain. And the epoch of the Consciousness Soul must provide man with the opportunity to experience disintegration in his environment. We do not owe the development of modern, conscious thinking to a superabundant vitality. This conscious thinking, this very core of man's being grew and developed because it was imbued with the forces of death inherent in modern technology, in modern industry and finance. And that is what the life of the Consciousness Soul demanded.

And this phenomenon is seen in other spheres. Let us recur to the impulses to which I drew attention earlier. Let us consider the case of England where we saw how a specific form of parliamentary government develops as a certain tendency through the centuries, how the self-dependent personality seeks to realize itself. The personality wishes to emancipate itself and to become self-sufficient. It wishes to play a part in the life of the community and at the same time to affirm its independence. The parliamentary system of government is only one means of affirming the personality. But when the individual who participates in parliamentary government asserts himself, the moment he sacrifices his will to the vote he surrenders his personality. And, rightly understood, the rise of parliamentary government in England in the centuries following upon the civil wars of the fifteenth century provides ample evidence of this. In the early years of the democratic system society was based upon a class structure, the various classes or ‘estates’ not only wishing to affirm their class status, but to express their views through the ballot-box. They were free to speak; but people are not satisfied with speeches and mutual agreement, they want to vote. When one votes, when speeches are followed by voting, one kills what lives in the soul even whilst one speaks. Thus every form of parliamentary government ends in levelling down, in egalitarianism. It is born of the affirmation of the personality and ends with the suppression of the personality. This situation is inescapable; affirmation of the personality leads to suppression of the personality. It is a cyclic process like life itself which begins with birth and ends in death. In the life of man birth and death are two distinct moments in time; in the life of history, the one is directly related to the other, birth and death are commixed and commingled. We must never lose sight of this.

I do not wish you to take these remarks as a criticism of parliamentary government. That would be tantamount to insinuating that I said: since man is born only to die he ought never to have been born—which is absurd. One should not impute to the world such foolishness—that it permits man to be born only to die. Please do not accuse me of saying that parliamentary government is absurd because the personality which gives birth to this system proceeds to destroy the system which it has itself created. I simply wish to relate it directly to life, to that which is common to all life—birth and death, thus showing that it is something that is closely associated with reality. At the same time I want to show you the characteristic feature of all external phenomena of a like nature in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, for they are all subject to birth and death.

Now in the inner circles of the occult lodges of the English speaking world it has often been said: let us not reveal to the world the mystery of birth and death, for in so doing we shall betray to the uninitiated the nature of the modern epoch! We shall transmit to them a knowledge that we wish to reserve for ourselves. Therefore it was established as the first rule of the masonic lodges never to speak openly of the mystery of birth and death, to conceal the fact that this mystery is omnipresent, above all in historical phenomena. For to speak of this is to open the eyes of the public to the tragedy of modern life which will gradually be compelled—a compulsion to which it will not easily submit—to divert man's attention from the results of work to the work itself. One must find joy in work, saying to oneself: the external rewards of work in the present epoch serve the purposes of death and not of creative life. If one is unwilling to further the forces of death, one cannot work with modern techniques, for today man is the servant of the machine. He who rejects the machine simply wishes to return to the past.

Study the history of France and the attempts made to thrust inwards the emancipation of the personality, ending in that disastrous suppression of the personality which we observe in the final phase of the French Revolution and in the rise of Napoleonism. Or take the case of Italy. From what hidden springs did modern Italy derive that dynamic energy which inflamed the nationalism to the point of sacro egoismo? One must probe beneath the surface in order to discover the factors underlying world events. Recall for a moment that important moment before the birth of the Consciousness Soul. This dynamic energy peculiar to modern Italy is derived in all its aspects from that which the Papacy had implanted in the Italian soul. The significance of the Papacy for Italy lies in the fact that it has gradually imbued the Italian soul with its own spirit. And, as so often happens to the magician's apprentice, the result was not what was intended—a violent reaction against the Papacy itself in modern Italy. Here we see how that for which one strives provokes its own destruction. Not the thoughts, but the forces of sensibility and enthusiasm, even those which inspired Garibaldi, are relics of the one-time Catholic fervour—but when these forces changed direction they turned against Catholicism.

People will understand the present epoch only if they grasp the right relationship between these things. Europe witnessed those various symptomatic events which I have described to you. And in the East, as if in the Background, we see the configuration of Russia, welded out of the remnants of the Byzantine ecclesiastical framework, out of the Nordic-Slavonic racial impulse and out of Asianism which is diffused in a wide variety of forms over Eastern Europe. But this triad is uncreative; it does not emanate from the Russian soul itself, nor is it characteristic of that which lives in the Russian soul. What is it that offers the greatest imaginable contrast to the emancipation of the personality?—The Byzantine element. A great personality of modern times who is much underrated is Pobjedonoszeff. He was an eminent figure who was steeped in the Byzantine tradition. He could only desire the reverse of what the epoch of the Consciousness Soul seeks to achieve and of what it develops naturally in man. Even if the Byzantine element had made deeper inroads into Russian orthodoxy, even if this element which stifles everything personal and individual had gained an even stronger hold ... the sole consequence nonetheless would have been a powerful age for the emancipation of the personality. If, in the study of modern Russian history, you do not read of those events which it has always been forbidden to record, then you will not have a true picture of Russian history, you will be unaware of the really living element. If however you read the official version, the only version permitted hitherto by the authorities, you will find everything which pervades Russian life as an instrument of death. It appears here in its most characteristic form because Russian life is richest in future promise. And because Russian life bears within it the seeds of the development of the Spirit Self, all the external achievements of the era of the Consciousness Soul hitherto bring only death and destruction. And this had to be, since what seeks to develop as Spirit Self needs the substratum of death.

We must recognize that this is a necessity for the evolution of the Consciousness Soul, otherwise we shall never grasp the real needs of our time. We shall be unable to form a clear picture of the destructive forces which have overtaken mankind if we are unaware that the events of these last four years are simply an epitome of the forces of death that have pervaded the life of mankind since the birth of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

Characteristically the dead hand of scientific thinking has exercised a strange influence upon one of the most prophetic personalities of recent time. In contemporary history the following incident is symptomatic and will always remain memorable. In the year 1830 in Weimar, Soret¹ visited Goethe who received him with some excitement—I mean he betrayed excitement in his demeanour—but not with deep emotion. Goethe said to Soret: ‘At last the controversy has come to a head, everything is in flames’. He made a few additional remarks which led Soret to believe that Goethe was referring to the revolution which had broken out in Paris in 1830 and he answered him accordingly. But Goethe replied: ‘I am not referring to the revolution; that is not particularly important. What is important is the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire in the Academy of Sciences of Paris’—Cuvier was a representative of the old school which simply compares and classifies organisms—a way of looking at nature that is concerned above all with technique—whilst Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire has a living conception of the whole course of evolution. Goethe saw Saint-Hilaire as the leader of a new school of scientific thinking, different from that of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Cuvier belongs to the old school of thought; Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire is the representative of a scientific outlook which sees nature as a living organism. Therefore Goethe saw the dawn of a new epoch when Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire prepared the ground for a new scientific thinking which, when fully developed, must lead to a super-sensible interpretation of nature and ultimately to super-sensible, clairvoyant knowledge. For Goethe this was the revolution of 1830, not the political events in Paris. Thus Goethe showed himself to be one of the most prescient spirits of his time. He showed that he sensed and felt what was the cardinal issue of our time.

Today we must have the courage to look facts squarely in the face, a courage of which earlier epochs had no need. We must have the courage to follow closely the course of events, for it is important that the Consciousness Soul can fulfil its development. In earlier epochs the development of the Consciousness Soul was not important. Because the Consciousness Soul is of paramount importance in the present epoch, everything that man creates in the social sphere must be consciously planned. Consequently his social life can no longer be determined by the old instinctive life; nor can he introduce solely the achievements of natural science into social life for these are forces of death and are unable to quicken life; they are simply dead-sea fruit and sow destruction such as we have seen in the last four years. In the present epoch the following is important.

Sleep, of course, is a necessity for man. In waking life he is in control of his normal free will ... he can make use of this free will for the various things he encounters through Lucifer and Ahriman, in order to develop guide-lines for the future. When he falls asleep this so called free will ceases to function; he continues to think without knowing it, but his thinking is no less efficacious. Thinking does not cease on falling asleep, it continues until the moment of waking. One simply forgets this in the moment of waking up. We are therefore unaware of the power of those thoughts that pour into the human soul from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up. But let us remember that for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul the gods have abandoned the human soul during sleep. In earlier epochs the gods instilled into the human soul between sleeping and waking what they chose to impart. If they had continued to act in this way man would not have become a free being. Consequently he is now open to all kinds of other influences between sleeping and waking. At a pinch we can live our waking life with natural science and its achievements, but they are of no avail in sleep and death. We can only think scientifically during our waking hours. The moment we fall asleep, scientific thinking is meaningless—as meaningless as speaking French in a country where no one understands a word of French. In sleep only that language has significance which one acquires through super-sensible knowledge, the language which has its source in the super-sensible. Supersensible knowledge must take the place of what the gods in former times had implanted in the instinctive life. The purpose of the present epoch of the Consciousness Soul is this: man must open himself to super-sensible impulses and penetrate to a knowledge of reality. To believe that everything that our present age has produced and still produces without the support of super-sensible impulses is something living and creative and not impregnated with the forces of death is to harbour an illusion, just as it is an illusion to believe that a woman can bear a child without fecundation. Without impregnation a woman today remains sterile and dies without issue. Modern civilization in the form it has developed since the beginning of the fifteenth century and especially in respect of its outstanding achievements, is destined to remain sterile unless fertilized henceforth by impulses from the super-sensible world. Everything that is not fertilized by spiritual impulses is doomed to perish. In this epoch of the Consciousness Soul, though you may introduce democracy, parliamentary government, modern finance economy, modern industrialism, though you may introduce the principle of nationality the world over, though you may advocate all those principles on which men Base what they call the new order—a subject on which they descant like drunken men who have no idea what they are talking about—all these things will serve only the forces of death unless they are fructified by spiritual impulses. All that we must inevitably create today, forces that bring death in all domains, will only be of value if we learn how to transform these forces by our insights into the super-sensible.

Let us realize the seriousness of this situation and let us remember—as we have learnt from our study of the symptoms of recent history—that what man considers to be his greatest achievements, natural science, sociology, modern industrial techniques and modern finance economy, all date from the fifteenth century. These are destructive agents unless fructified by spiritual impulses. Only then can they advance the evolution of mankind. Then they have positive value; in themselves they are detrimental. Of all that mankind today extols, not without a certain pride and presumption, as his greatest achievements, nothing is good in itself; it is only of value when permeated with spirit.

This is not an arbitrary expression of opinion, but a lesson we learn from a study of the symptoms of modern history. The time has now come when we must develop individual consciousness. And we must also be aware of what we may demand of this consciousness. The moment we begin to dogmatize, even unwittingly, we impede the development of the consciousness. I must therefore remind you once again of the following incident. I happened to be giving a course of lectures in Hamburg on The Bible and Wisdom.^T1 Amongst the audience were two Catholic priests. Since I had said nothing of a polemical nature which could offend a Catholic priest and since they were not the type of Jesuit who is a watchdog of the Church and whose function is to stick his fingers in every pie, but ordinary parish priests, they approached me after the lecture and said: we too preach purgatory; you also speak of a time of expiation after death. We preach paradise; you speak of the conscious experience of the Spirit; fundamentally there are no objections to the content of your teaching. But they would certainly have found ample grounds for objection if they had gone more deeply into the matter—a single lecture of course did not suffice for this. And they continued: You see the difference between us is this: You address yourself to a certain section of the population which is already familiar with the premises of anthroposophy, people who are educated and are conversant with certain concepts and ideas. We, on the other hand speak to all men, we speak a language which everyone can understand. And that is the right approach—to speak for all men. Whereupon I replied: Reverend fathers (I always believe in respecting titles) what you are saying is beside the point. I do not doubt that you believe you speak for all men, that you can choose your words in such a way as to give the impression that you are speaking for all men. But that is a subjective judgement, is it not? that is what one usually says in self-justification. What is important is not whether we believe we speak for all men, but the facts, the objective reality. And now I should like to ask you, in an abstract, theoretical way: what evidence is there that I do not speak for all men? You claim to speak for all men and no doubt there are arguments that would support your claim. But I ask you for the facts. Do all those for whom you think you are able to speak still attend your church today? That is the real question. Of course my two interlocutors could not claim that everyone attended their church regularly. You see, I continued, that I am concerned with the facts. I speak for those who are outside the church, who also have the right to be led to the Christ. I realize that amongst them there are those who want to hear of the Christ impulse one way or another. That is a reality. And what matters is the reality, not personal opinions.

It is most desirable to base one's opinions on facts and not on subjective impressions; for, in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul nothing is more dangerous than to surrender to, or show a predilection for personal opinions or prejudices. In order to develop the Consciousness Soul we must not allow ourselves to become dogmatists unwittingly; the driving forces of our thoughts and actions must be determined by facts. That is important. Beneath the surface of historical evolution there is a fundamental conflict between the acceptance of what we consider to be right and the compulsion of facts. And this is of particular importance when studying history, for we shall never have a true picture of history unless we see history as a truly great teacher. We must not force the facts to fit history, but allow history to speak for itself. In this respect the whole world has forgotten much in the last four years. Facts are scarcely allowed to speak for themselves; we only hear what we deem to be facts. And this situation will persist for a long time. And it will be equally long before we develop the capacity to apprehend reality objectively. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul what matters in all spheres of life is an objective apprehension of reality; we must strive to acquire an impartial attitude to reality.

What our epoch demands—if we wish gradually to look beyond the Symptoms of history (I will speak more of this in my next lectures)—is that we turn our attention to those spiritual forces which can restore man's creativity. For, as we have seen, the most characteristic feature of all phenomena today is a decline in creativity. Man must open himself to the influences of the super-sensible world so that what his Spirit Self prepares may enter into his ego; otherwise the paths to the Spirit Self would be closed to him. Man therefore must familiarize himself with that which is pure spirit, with that which can penetrate to the centre of his psychic life. The moment he is prepared to turn his attention to this centre of his soul life through a sensible study of the symptoms in history, he will also be prepared to examine more objectively the events at the periphery.

In man there exists a polarity—the psychic centre and the periphery. As he penetrates ever more deeply into his psychic and spiritual life he reaches this centre. In this centre he must open himself to those historical impulses which I have already described to you. Here he will feel an ever increasing urge for the spirit if he wishes to become acquainted with historical reality. In return however, he will also feel a desire to strive towards the opposite pole at the periphery. He will develop an understanding for what is pressing towards the periphery—his somatic nature. If in order to understand history we must look inward, as I have indicated, to the underlying symptoms, then in order to understand medicine, for example, hygiene and medical health services we must look outwards, to cosmic rhythms for the source of pathological symptoms.

Just as modern history fails to penetrate to spiritual realities, so modern medicine, modern hygiene and medical health services fail to penetrate to the symptoms which are of cosmic provenance. I have often emphasized the fact that the individual cannot help his neighbour, however deep his insight into current problems, because today they are in the hands of those who are looking for the wrong solution. They must become the responsibility of those who are moving in the right direction. Clearly, just as the external facts are true that the outward aspect of James I was such and such, as I pointed out earlier, so, from the external point of view it is also true that a certain kind of bacillus is connected with the present influenza epidemic. But if it is true, for example, that rats are carriers of the bubonic plague, one cannot say that rats are responsible for the plague. People have always imagined that the bubonic plague was spread by rats. But bacilli, as such, are of course in no way connected with disease. In phenomena of this kind we must realize that just as behind the symptoms of history we are dealing with psychic and spiritual experiences, so too behind somatic symptoms we are dealing with experiences of a cosmological order. In other cases the situation of course will be different! What is especially important here is the rhythmic course of cosmic events, and it is this that we must study. We must ask ourselves: In what constellation were we living when, in the nineties, the present influenza epidemic appeared in its benign form? In what cosmic constellation are we living at the present time? By virtue of what cosmic rhythm does the influenza epidemic of the nineties appear in a more acute form today? Just as we must look for a rhythm behind a series of historical symptoms, so we must look for a rhythm behind the appearance of certain epidemics.

In the solfatara regions of Italy one need only hold a naked flame over the fango hole and immediately gases and steam escape from the dormant volcano. This Shows that if one performs a certain action above the surface of the earth nature reacts by producing these effects. Do you regard it as impossible that something takes place in the sun—since its rays are directed daily towards the earth—which has significance for the earth emanations and is related to the life of man, and that this reaction varies according to the different geographical localities? Do you think that we shall have any understanding of these matters unless we are prepared to accept a true cosmology founded upon a knowledge of the soul and spirit? The statement that man's inclination to resort to war is connected with the periodic appearance of sun spots is, of course, regarded as absurd. But there comes a point when statements of this kind cease to be absurd, when certain pathological manifestations in the emotional life are seen to be connected with cosmological phenomena such as the periodic appearance of sun spots. And when tiny creatures, these petty tyrants—bacilli or rats—really transmit from one human being to another something that is related to the cosmos, then this transmission is only a secondary phenomenon. This can be easily demonstrated and consequently finds wide public support—but it is not the main issue. And we shall not come to terms with the main issue unless we have the will to study the peripheral symptoms as well.

I do not believe that men will acquire a more reasonable and catholic view of history unless they study historical symptomatology in the light of super-sensible knowledge which is so necessary for mankind today. Men will only achieve results in the sphere of health, hygiene and medicine if they study not historical, but cosmological symptoms. For the diseases we suffer on earth are visitations from heaven. In order to understand this we must abandon the preconceived ideas which are prevalent today. We have an easy explanation: a God is omnipresent ... but whilst recognizing the presence of God in history mankind today is unable to explain the manifold retardative or harmful phenomena in history. And when we are faced with a situation like the last four years (1914–1918), then this business of the single God in history becomes extremely dubious, for this God of history has the curious habit of multiplying, and each nation defends its national God and provokes other nations by claiming the superiority of its own God. And when we are expected to look to cosmology and at the same time remain comfortably attached to this single God, then this same God inflicts disease upon us. But when we can rise to the idea of the trinity, God, Lucifer and Ahriman, when we are aware of this trinity in the super-sensible world behind the historical symptoms, when we know that this trinity is present in the cosmic universe, then there is no need to appeal to the ‘good God’. We then know that heaven visits disease upon us by virtue of its association with the earth, just as I can evoke sulphur fumes by holding a naked flame over a solfatara. We can only advance the cause of progress in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, when men recognize the validity of spiritual realities. Therefore everything depends upon this one aim: the search, the quest for truth.

• 1. Frédéric Jean Soret (1795–1865). Scientist and author. A frequent visitor in Goethe's house. Notes from his journal were used by Eckermann for his ‘Conversations with Goethe’.
• T1. 5th December, 1908. See Bibl. Nr. 68.

As you are well aware, it is often said today that spiritual science cannot have anything to do with real knowledge, with genuine perception, and that it can only be a matter of faith, a subjective way of believing things to be true. This kind of attitude then leads to a distinction being made between knowledge and belief, as is the general custom. A frequent objection raised against spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is that a kind of subjective knowledge that really can only be a matter of belief—perhaps one should not even call it knowledge but merely the subjective belief that something is true—is to be elevated, jumped up, to the level of certain and exact knowledge, to the level of a genuine science.

This distinction that is made between science and belief is quite a recent development. The view is that science should only concern itself with things perceptible to the senses, or at most with things that can be established and explored on the basis of experiments, and that certain knowledge can solely and exclusively come from such depths. Belief is seen as going beyond the physical realm and it is said that one should never assume that anything that is the subject of belief can be transformed into certain knowledge. Thus we have science on one side, a science limited to the physical world, and a supersensible, non-physical world on the other that may be accepted by anyone who finds it acceptable but cannot be known with certainty and must remain a matter of subjective faith.

Anyone who takes life seriously really ought to feel that the supposed distinction made by so many people between knowledge and belief poses a riddle which must be solved. Fundamentally speaking, however, only initiation science can genuinely show the reason for the efforts that are being made at the present time—and indeed have already been made for a long time, for centuries—to teach humankind the difference between knowledge of the finite, transitory realm of the senses and belief in something that is infinite, permanent, supersensible. You know that everything that is presented here from the point of view of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is thoroughly scientific in spirit and asks to be considered as fully equal to the science relating to the physical world. It represents knowledge, perception, of the supersensible. Initiation knowledge has to look far back into human evolution, however, if it is to help us understand why in the present age humankind has been taught that there is such a difference between knowledge and faith.

Going back a long way in human evolution we come to a time when People had a primal knowledge—we have discussed this a number of times—that was inherited from the gods, as it were. Such things as proof, as demonstrating the truth of something, were not known then. Knowledge came to people at that time when a power arose in their hearts and minds that was not the power of empty, abstract thinking, or something like that, but a power filled with divine light substance, divine life substance, that felt itself to be in communion with divine worlds. Human beings knew that they were connected with divine spheres; they felt this and perceived it the way we perceive colours and sounds outside us. There was no need for proof, for there was perception of the immediate presence. People knew nothing of proof, nor of logical demonstration. All they knew was that as human beings they were filled with what the gods instilled into them. This certainly was ‘knowledge’ in the earliest stages of human evolution, and it had to do with perception of the divine origin of human beings. Knowing themselves to be united with the gods, and being given the Power by their initiates to look up to this union with the gods, people were also aware of the divine origin of man. They were aware that humankind had descended to earth from the world where it had existed as soul and spirit. The divine and spiritual origin of humankind was taken as a matter of course when this primal knowledge existed all over the globe in the early times of human evolution.

This primal knowledge had to develop further, however. If it had remained as it was, people would in a sense have continued to be filled with the divine spirit for ever, but they could not have achieved freedom, the ability to make free decisions. As soon as their arms moved, they would have had to say: ‘A god within me is moving my arms.’ When they were walking, they would have had to say: ‘A god within me is moving my feet.’ Those early human beings certainty. felt like that. They felt, as it were, that a divine spirit was present inside their skin. That is also the origin of the idea that the human body is a temple. In early times a human being was indeed like the earthly home of a god who who descended to earth to take up his abode among human beings. Human beings had to become independent, however. As a result this primal divine knowledge gradually faded and the divine heritage grew less and less. To achieve freedom, human beings had to develop knowledge, perception, thinking, feeling and will activity out of their own resources. In a way the gods abandoned them, but it was for their own good, if I may put it like this. Divine knowledge withdrew so that human knowledge might develop. In later times the whole path to be taken by the divine knowledge that had once existed all over the globe, the path to earthly and human knowledge, had to be watched over from the mystery centres. It was the task of initiates to regulate the way humankind were to be trained, as it were, so that human beings would find the right way of growing out of that ancient divine knowledge and into earthlY and human knowledge.

At a time when much of the original divine knowledge had faded and the mysteries had assumed the task of guiding human beings—by and large instructing them in such a way that the right transition could be made from primal wisdom to human knowledge and ultimately freedom—it happened that a certain number of people came together from the far reaches of the earth to look for a way in which the purpose of guiding humankind in the right way, purposes originating in the mystery centres, could be crossed. Human associations were formed, in a way, that considered it their mission to go against the proper course of progress. We really have to use spiritual science if we want to consider the activity of a widespread association of human beings in post-primeval times. History does not go that fax back and there are no documents to bear outer witness to that time. Such an association developed and adopted the mystery knowledge in a certain way, still using the methods that had been employed in the mysteries to maintain contact with the divine source and origin. By that time however the mystery centres where honest work was being done had long since been concentrating on guiding the transition from the divine knowledge of the ancients to human and earthly knowledge. Thus there was a time in earthly history when the rightful representatives of mystery knowledge were totally involved in guiding the transition from the divine knowledge of the ancients to human and earthly knowledge. That was the healthy feeling and attitude, healthy for that time. Mingled into this was an element arising because a well organized association wanted to restore to humankind an antiquated primal divine knowledge at a time when it was out of date, when the murmur of ancient divine knowledge was no longer supposed to reach human ears. At a time when they had grown beyond the state where they had divine knowledge, people found that there Was a group that still wanted the old knowledge to be widely accessible.

Why did the members of this association in post-primeval times want such a thing? They wanted to strike at the root, as it were, of the knowledge then evolving. They did not want humanity to achieve freedom. Efforts were indeed made in post-primeval times to prevent humankind from developing the faculties that would lead to freedom, and for that purpose the aim was to strike at the root of earthly and physical knowledge. These people, who may be called the 'enemies' of human evolution in post-primeval times, made the distinction between human knowledge and divine knowledge, a divine knowledge that was no longer legitimate at the time. To deluge human beings with divine knowledge, which they had grown out of by that time, meant to induce a dreamy, visionary state of conscious awareness. Vast masses of people lived in that kind of fanciful, visionary state in post-primeval times. Their inclinations to develop human knowledge were stifled. The reason why human knowledge came to be so deficient in many respects as time went on—I have given many examples of this—and why defects have even crept into the development of speech and language, was that a form of divine knowledge was presented to people in a way that appealed to their vanity.

Let us investigate the influences that made people endeavour to befog the minds of the masses and strike at the root of the new knowledge that was evolving and also at the root of a language that arose from the depths of human nature. It has to be said that the individuals concerned were totally under the influence of luciferic powers. Luciferic powers were alive in them, luciferic powers that did not want human thinking, feeling and will activity to descend as far as the earth, as it were. Human beings were supposed to grow more and more physical, but these individuals wanted to keep theft) spiritual, to stop them from achieving their mission on earth. The individuals concerned were the spiritualists of post-primeval times. They were against human progress. The divine intention was that human beings should find ways of letting their souls and spirits enter more and more deeply into physical bodies. The individuals of whom I am speaking wanted to prevent this, however. Considering this in present-day terms—because it is difficult to give an accurate characterization of the state human beings had reached during the post-primeval period—we might say that more than a little of a certain unconscious untruthfulness was apparent in those individuals. The impulse to descend into the material world, to make it part of oneself, had of course been given through the mysteries. The Lucifer-dominated individuals of post-primeval times certainly could not deny this. They therefore did not call themselves 'spiritualists' but actuallY ‘protagonists of the material world’—to put it in present-day terms; these words would have to be translated into the terms in which people thought in primeval times. They told people: 'You will come to materiality if you follow us, if you make use of the power we provide in the form of later divine knowledge, if you use it to strengthen your soul and spirit. You will then find yourselves the conquerors of all that this earth holds for you; you will conquer the earth quickly and easily when you have a share in the power of the gods.' The Lucifer-dominated leaders of certain parts of humanity gave themselves the honourable title ‘fighters for the material world.’

Those individuals created a certain schism between human evolution as it was intended and the wrong notions which they presented to humanity, notions that the ideal was to conquer materiality rather than coming to be at home in it gradually. They said people should make certain divine powers their own by having supersensible knowledge at the wrong time, and that they should use this knowledge to conquer the material world that is perceptible to the senses.

Today we have the reverse picture of what existed in those primeval times. Certain confessions have started to oppose the regular progress of science, the acquisition of knowledge. Science has had its roots damaged, as it were. The result is that science and language show Certain defects throughout the course of Earth evolution. Science has nevertheless come about, for sufficient numbers of people who were under the influence of the true mysteries and corrupted initiation knowledge stood up against the individuals whose real aim was to strike at the root of knowledge and eradicate it. Science has come about. It has taken the road I have often characterized in detail. It reached the level it did by the middle of the 15th century, when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began, and it has continued to the present time. According to present-day initiation knowledge, however, science has now reached a further turning point. Today it is ripe to enter into human freedom, as it were. Essentially modern science still considers only physical things to be valid and exact; it is only prepared to consider things that are perceptible to the senses or may be established on the basis of experiments. As I have often said, this science is now ripe to develop to a point where it can grasp Imagination, the inspired, the intuitive world; where it can find its ways to experience, to grasp the spirit. This science is ordained to grow and in growing to assume the form of spiritual vision. It is ripe for this today.

For the regular progress of science it will however be necessary for humanity to develop an inner attitude that wants to use the same conscientious approach to investigation and research that is used in botany, physics, chemistry and so on to explore the outer world of the senses and make outer science triumph. People must want to use that same attitude when it comes to the inner life of human beings. We must want the attitude and approach used in outer science to be transformed into a way of taking hold of the supersensible world in a living way. I have pointed the way in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, in Occult Science⁵³ and other books of this kind. It has to be clearly understood that the true aim we have at the bottom of our hearts, the only viable aim for spiritual science working towards anthroposophy, differs from Jesuitism, which is more or less its polar opposite. The difference is that Jesuitism in particular wants to keep science, knowledge as such, at the level of pure experimentation and observation. Take a look—but a careful look—at the scientific literature from Jesuit sources. The approach, the way of thinking, is as materialistic as it can be. It aims to keep knowledge entirely in the world of the senses, and strictly separate the knowledge that can only be obtained by observation based on the physical senses and by experimentation from anything that is a matter of belief or revelation. The reasoning is that no bridge shall ever be built between outer knowledge or science and anything to do with faith. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy on the other hand is aiming to do just that, to find the way from a science of the physical, sense-perceptible world to a science of the spirit. This science of the spirit would however apply the same stringent standards as the outer science of the sense-perceptible world.

The picture, then, is as follows: The science of the physical, sense-perceptible world is the root. Supersensible knowledge is to evolve from the same impulses that govern botany, physics, chemistry and so on, except that they will be applied in a different field. In certain quarters it was foreseen that this was to come. It was however in the interests of these people to prevent it happening, and they therefore introduced something into human evolution that now presents itself as a sharp contrast. This is the sharp contrast I have spoken of earlier: the distinction made between ancient ways of knowing that in the regular course of events became human knowledge, human science, and a divine knowledge used to drug human minds. The sharp distinction between knowledge and belief was presented to human minds and the true aim turned into its opposite. Knowledge of the sense-perceptible world was to be firmly retained and given great emphasis. It simply has to be admitted that Jesuit literature on materialistic science is extraordinarily brilliant in the clarity of its reasoning, its sheer readability. The Jesuit literature on the material world is much more brilliantly written than the works of many others writers on the subject today. Father Erich Wasmann's⁵⁴ work on ants, for example, is really good, you will gain more from reading it than from the pedantic, uninspired writings of other scientists. Many more examples could be given. The [work of the] Jesuits would be excellent if they confined themselves to the material world; it is a deliberate aim [of the Jesuits] to use their description of the material world to encourage people to associate knowledge with the materialistic aspect of the physical world only. The intention is to pretend to human minds that the methods used to gain knowledge cannot be used to investigate the supersensible world. In ancient times Lucifer-dominated individuals suggested that human beings would gain mastery of the world if they made use of ancient divine knowledge, yet evolution had already gone beyond this point. Now we have late followers of those people from post-primeval times pretending to the world that it is not possible to extend knowledge to the supersensible sphere and that knowledge cannot go beyond the sense-perceptible world. In those early times the intention had been to drug people with supersensible knowledge. Now human beings of the same ilk want to use all possible means to push humanity into the physical world; they want human beings to be stuck in that world and grasp the supersensible world only with the nebulous impulse of faith. In post-primeval times the aim had been to inundate humankind with an excess of supersensible knowledge. Today those late followers want human beings to have less than the right amount of knowledge in this sphere. Past intent was to provide supersensible knowledge that was no longer appropriate. Present intent is to let people have only sense-bound knowledge, making the supersensible world an area where every individual may hold whatever views he or she likes.

What would be the outcome if the group of people to whom we are referring were to achieve some kind of victory? These are the people who deliberately make a sharp distinction between knowledge and belief. There are of course large numbers of easily led people who come across the diatribe on the 'clear distinction between faith and knowledge' and repeat it; they merely repeat it. What is all this about? The aim is to do the opposite of what those individuals in post-primeval times did in their way. In the old days the intention was to prevent humanity from descending completely and taking up its mission on earth. Today the intention is to keep people tied to that mission on earth to prevent their further development, for which the earth would provide the basis. The very people who are now supporting materialism call themselves ‘spiritualists’, or priests of some faith or other, representatives of the supersensible world. In those ancient times the people offering a life in the spirit that was no longer justifiable called themselves materialists. They did so from the point of view which I have characterized. Today a large number of people who really wish to keep humanity bound to the material world call themselves representatives of the spiritual world. The most powerful source of materialism today does not lie in the ideas put forward by Buechner, Moleschott or Vogt. The most powerful source is Rome and anything that is in any way connected with this centre of materialism. They achieved their aims not by saying: ‘I want to encourage materialism’, but by keeping people bound to materialism. This is done by letting them develop faith merely as a nebulous impulse towards supersensible spheres and making sure that no impulse enters into humanity that could lead to comprehension of the supersensible sphere. The idea that Rome might lead the way in conquering the supersensible sphere for humanity is the historical untruth of the present age. This must be clearly and firmly understood. It must also be understood that Protestantism as it has evolved out of Roman Catholicism in recent times contains much that is of Roman Catholic origin. The desire to keep supersensible knowledge nebulous by making it a matter of faith, so that people cannot comprehend the supersensible world, has strongly persisted in the Protestant church. Quite apart from this, the signs of the times may be read to indicate clearly that Rome will overcome the Protestant element, and Rome will continue to make great efforts in the direction I have characterized.

So you see that if one wishes to achieve something in the world that goes against the normal progress of humanity one calls oneself by the opposite name, as it were. Humanity must learn to get beyond putting its trust in mere names, and it is indeed in the process of doing so. Humanity must go to deeper sources than merely living in words and phrases. Basically this is already beginning to happen. Imagine someone calls and you are brought a visiting card on which it says ‘Ernest Miller’. Surely you would not expect to see someone come through the door whose clothes are covered in flour. Nor would you expect ‘Richard Smith’ to come straight from shoeing horses. If you have lived in a village you may still recall people saying ‘There comes the miller’—and that would have been a genuine miller—or 'There comes the smith', meaning a real blacksmith. There names were still more than an outer label. The names we bear have taken a road where it is no longer possible to draw conclusions as to the nature of the individual who calls himself by a particular name. The words that make up people's names give no clue as to the essential characteristics of the person or persons concerned. The name Smith does not tell us whether the person called by that name is a smith or not, nor can we conclude someone is a miller when we hear that his name is Miller. That is the road names have taken. The rest of the language will follow the same road, and people will have to learn to develop their ideas on principles other than words or phrases. You can draw no conclusions as to the nature of a person from the fact that his visiting card says he is Mr Miller. In the same way you will have to get used to the fact that the characteristics of words will not tell you what your ideas about the world ought to be.

If you seriously act in a way that is in accord with the urgent necessity of the present time you find yourself little understood. If I were to present the things I have to present by way of spiritual science in a way that meets the modern desire for scientific terminology, I would not be doing what I have in fact always made efforts to do. This is to present a subject from all kinds of different angles, sometimes more in their material aspect and at other times more in their spiritual aspect, always remembering the principle which Goethe expressed as follows: ‘The truth will certainly never be found exactly half-way between two contradictory statements.’⁵⁵ At the stage we have now reached in our evolution it simply is no longer possible to think that a particular content can be adequately defined by using words to give a one-sided characterization. The subject has to be characterized from different aspects, and the procedure used to characterize it in words must be similar to that used to make a photographic record of a tree, for instance, by taking pictures of it from a variety of angles. The photographs will look very different, but putting them together one sees something that conveys the tree as a whole.

Read the various courses of lectures and you will see that I have adhered to the principle and presented the subject matter from many different angles. If we wish to present the things human beings need today, things that will serve the progress of humankind, we must get into the habit of proceeding in this way. There are certain groups of people who are against this and want to continue to use rigid terminology. Human concerns cannot be defined in rigid terms and that is why we now see forms of socialism developing that want to go further into terminology definition but can only lead to destruction. Concerning events in Eastern Europe, people think the danger has passed now that the Poles have won; before that the Bolsheviks had the upper hand for a time, but the whole has been the most dreadful tragicomedy of human behaviour. The present war between Russia and Poland provides a good demonstration of the extent to which human beings have lost their moral fibre today.

My book Towards Social Renewal was genuinely based on the social life of the present time and the style was chosen to meet the needs of this present-day life. Yet people come and ask for word definitions more or less the way words are defined in most schoolbooks nowadays—much to the detriment of education and training. Words have more and more come away from the original inner experience, and it is increasingly necessary to draw one's conclusions as to the reality from other sources than the words used. After all, when we hear the name Miller we do not base our conclusions as to the nature of the individual on an analysis of the name Miller but on quite different aspects. It will be necessary for human beings to come away from words and judge the existing world by other criteria.

This had been in preparation for a long time, but it has not always been applied in a sense that would be in accord with human evolution. The outcome has been that widespread societies now say: ‘We declare ourselves for Christ’, yet after all the word used need not apply to the spirit they say they are worshipping. The point is not that something or other is called the Christ and that people have ideas about this Christ. The point is the real nature of the spirit towards whom human feelings are turning. And if one develops a very mundane image of this Christ, if one even undergoes militaristic initiation during one's training to learn how the soul has to be prepared before one forms an idea of the Christ, if one is shown the image of Jesus the King, seeing oneself and other followers as King Jesus' army, it may happen that having created such a material image of Christ one then gives the name of Christ to quite a different spirit. The truth is that one's soul is then turned towards quite a different spirit who is wrongfully called Christ. This happens a great deal nowadays and it happens in such a way that people sometimes have a peculiar awareness of it.

Many years ago I had a conversation in Marburg one day with a Protestant clergyman who had travelled a great deal.⁵⁶ We talked of the way the real idea of the Christ has gradually disappeared from modern theology, of the way this modern theology is on the one hand using certain initiation ceremonies to bring Christ down and make Him a physical Jesus even in the picture one has of Him, and how on the other hand certain theologians see Christ only as the ‘simple man of Nazareth’. This Protestant theologian, a man who had travelled widely and seen something of the world, then said to me: 'The younger generation of theologians really no longer have the Christ, they really should no longer called themselves Christians or followers of Christ; they really ought to call themselves Jesuits, except that that name already has another meaning, because all they are left with is Jesus.' Those were not my views but the views of a Protestant theologian who has travelled a great deal. To stop you from developing prejudices and taking too poor a view of theologians, let me add that the man was a Swabian and was also married to a Swabian, a lady from Stuttgart to boot. That is just to stop you from getting prejudiced.

We have tried to see how the separation of knowledge and belief came about. This separation of knowledge and belief also prevents people from knowing that there is a life before birth, or before conception. I also spoke of this yesterday.⁵⁷ All that is permitted is belief in life post mortem, i.e. after death, for that is an idea that can be presented to human minds even if one reckons only with egotistical elements in the human soul. The concept of life before birth, the life we have gone through between our last death and our birth into the present life, needs perceptive insight if it is to be grasped; it is no good putting one's money on egotistical soul instincts if one wishes to teach it. The way people are here on earth is that they do not care to know what they have gone through before; egotistical reasons make them interested to know what will happen after death, however. It is easy to preach on what people may expect after death, therefore, for that appeals to the egotistical instincts in their souls. It is difficult to preach on life before birth; instead one must assume that human beings desire to know the truth and want to live a life that is worthy of human beings. This will of course lead us to see education and then also the whole of life on earth in a new light. Life on earth must be seen as the fulfilling of a mission we have been given before we descended from the spiritual world into physical existence.

This new approach that simply must come to be widely accepted in the outside world, an approach that will also have to create new social forms, has many enemies. You can guess this from various hidden trends. I want to end today be telling you something—this is something I am forced to do—of the murky sources and origins of the elements that want to destroy our spiritual science. The sheer effrontery is staggering and there will be more and more of this unless souls come awake to a much greater degree than has been the case until now.

You know, and our friends here have fought against it, that the abominable slander has been spread about all over Germany and beyond of German officers being betrayed to the Entente due to the efforts of the Threefold Order people and so forth.⁵⁸ I have recently been supplied with copies of some of the abominable documents that are widely distributed at present—fake letters reputedly written by our people, cunningly designed to spread the most dreadful slander, and faked interviews. Their character will be obvious to you as soon as I tell you that one of them concludes with the words: ‘D.H. is not in fact part of the Steiner fraternity. He has merely infiltrated the organization to spy on them, to get on to their tricks. He has reported his findings to a small group of patriotic people, and the word is that Steiner is committing high treason and is in league with the Entente.’ That is just a small sample of the murky work that is being done, and it it much more widespread than you would think.

Another very pretty example comes from someone in this area⁵⁹ whom I once called a swine in a public lecture—because everything this person is instigating against me simply cannot be called by any other name. This person is now using the black art of printing to spread things against me in an article headed ‘Threefold Order Plagiarized’. This says no less than that a lady had created a threefold order some time ago. (The lady was not quite careful enough, however, for she failed to find out from the literature that my threefold order was known before that in certain circles; she gives a time that is somewhat later than the time when I was talking to a great many people about the threefold order in question.) This lady, then, is said to have created a threefold order and to have sent the manuscript to a philanthropic society; it is then said to have gone to Hamburg where the person Concerned kept it for four weeks rather than two, and that I probably read it in that time and took the threefold idea from that manuscript. Of course the lady cannot very well say that there is any agreement between the threefold order I am presenting and whatever she had put in her manuscript. She therefore maintains that the threefold idea was plagiarized from her manuscript, but that it has been messed about. Oh yes. He's pinched my watch, but that one looks quite different! She has now written a work about her threefold order. According to her this consists of the golden section ‘state, cultural sphere, church’, with everything again determined by the golden section. So we get a centralized state and within it two parts—exactly the same as postulated in the threefold order; so the threefold order is a botch job.—if you want to get an idea, let me recommend this work to you; the title is 3:5, 5:8 = 21:34. The secret of clearing the debts in reasonable time’ [English rendering of the original German title] by Elisabeth Mathilde Metzdorff-Teschner,⁶⁰ published by the author in 1920. Maybe you could make amends by saying: ‘We have been working for the threefold order, but we really only did this in Mrs Elizabeth Metzdorff-Teschner's name.’ That is another thing she expects of us, and she is writing letters to all kinds of people.

That is Mr Rohm's source, and the things he writes are now reaching Switzerland where they are presented to the people by every Roman Catholic parish priest. No one of course has even the least idea of the actual source. These articles say something very different, and people find it quite easy to believe, for the idiocy at the source of it is not apparent. That is the way people work nowadays and they know very well what they are doing. They are deliberately working against the sincere efforts that are being made to serve the true progress of humankind. In Switzerland it is above all the Roman Catholic Parish priests who are using that style, reprinting everything that comes from the centres run by Mr Knapp⁶¹ and others, everything disgorged from the rubbish bins of Mr Rohm and so forth. I cannot help remembering that until recently there have been—and indeed still are—many people even among anthroposophists who are faithful subscribers to Mr Rohm's Leuchtturm [Lighthouse]. They keep dishing up Mr Rohm's views, keep coming up with one thing or another

I am sorry, I had to give you some small samples—there are plenty more—so that you can see the methods that are used.

The strength inherent in spiritual science working towards anthroposophy should give anthroposophy the strength to gain more than just names from words—a feeling for the truth. Once you have a feeling for the truth you will find the road, and it lies in a very different region from what people generally find comfortable in the present time. It is a road to be sought in the kind of way I have described today. It would be more comfortable in this day and age to talk of other things rather than refer to the powerful adversaries who are responsible for distinction being made between knowledge and belief and who aim to block the road by which knowledge of the sense-perceptible world can become knowledge of spheres beyond the senses.

• 53. Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß 1910. GA 13. English translation: Occult Science. An Outline. G and M. Adams tr. London Rudolf Steiner Press 1969.
• 54. Wasmann, Erich, entomologist. Major researches on ants. The MS of the lecture is not quite clear at this point, and the German editors have added the words in [ ].
• 55. Literally Goethe said the following:
  ‘It is said that the truth lies halfway between two contradictor), opinions. Far from it! The problem lies in between, it cannot be beheld; life, for ever active, calmly thought’ Maximen und Reflexionen).
  The MS of the lecture had been quoted verbatim in the earlier German edition but has been found to be incomplete and therefore was revised for the German edition on which this translation is based.
• 56. Christlieb, Max, a friend from Rudolf Steiner's time at Weimar who had done much to make The Philosophy of Freedom more widely known when it had just been published. See also Rudolf Steiner and Christlieb Ludwig Kleeberg, Wege und Worte, 2. Aufl. 1961 S. 76 ff. This also refers to the Marburg occasion.
• 57. ‘Die groflen Aufgaben von heute im Geistesleben, Rechtsleben und Wirtschaftsleben. Eine dritte Gegenwartsrede.’ (Major presentday tasks in cultural life, the sphere of rights and in economic life. A third topical talk.) Publ. in Rudolf Steiner: Drei Gegenwartsreden (Three topical talks), Heft 8, Dornach 1952. To be published in GA 335.
• 58. See conclusions of lectures given on 11 and 17 January 1920 in Geistige und soziale Wandlungen in der Menschheitsentwickelung. GA 196, S. 52 & 82 ff. (Cultural and social changes in the evolution of humanity). No record of translation into English.
• 59. Rohm, Karl, editor of the journal Der Leuchtturm, Lorch (Württemberg).
• 60. Further details in E. Uehli, ‘Die gestohlene Dreigliederung’ in Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus 2. Jahrg. Nr. 11 (Sept. 1920).
• 61. Knapp, Alfred, established 'Internationaler Orden fiir Ethik und Kultur' (International Order for Ethics and Culture).