The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Good morning, gentlemen! Anything come up today?

Mr. Dollinger: I would like to ask why it is that people who live near a cemetery are often not so lively and look pale? He gives an example that seems to prove this. I would like to know what the rhythm of their bodies is like – whether it could not also have a beneficial effect?

Dr. Steiner: Well, I think I can give quite a good answer to this question because I lived right next to the cemetery from the time I was eight until I was eighteen – so I must have looked terribly pale back then. It was a little bit true. According to the various details you have given, it would have been true in my case.

Well, the cemetery was the cemetery of a small town – the town had maybe six hundred inhabitants – so it was a moderately sized cemetery. But at least it was right next to the house and the train station where we lived. And the people lived quite close together, as was usual in such places. There was the church, surrounded by the cemetery, and then came the houses: you could always see the state of health of the people who lived around the cemetery. Well, you can say that there were already considerable differences among the inhabitants, and that, for example, the pastor who did not live very far from the cemetery was not pale and not scrawny either, but rather quite corpulent and also quite good-looking. That is my finding from back then.

But the view that one forms here is that if one otherwise establishes health conditions - and that happened in many places where cemeteries were around the churches - one cannot assume that this is terribly harmful. In those places, walnut trees were widespread everywhere at the same time. These walnut trees are such that they also have an extraordinarily strengthening effect on health due to the scent they spread. Now, you just have to assume that there were healthy instincts in those places where it was originally common practice; this has led to the fact that the churchyard is within the village and the people live all around, bringing chestnut or walnut trees, and especially lime trees, into the vicinity. Linden trees and walnut trees, which then have the opposite effect to the harmful effects of the cemetery, have a balancing effect.

Now, this must also be taken into account: If we look more closely at what Mr. Dollinger actually wants to know, namely the effect on the higher bodies, then we must be clear about the fact that actually of these bodies, which I have mentioned, only the physical body and the etheric body have an invigorating effect, while the astral body and the I do not have an invigorating effect, but essentially a paralyzing one; they act as soul and spirit. And from what I have already told you, you will see that the physical body and the etheric body are like a plant; they grow, and in the process the organs develop. If we only had these, the physical body and ether body, we would be constantly unconscious. Otherwise we would lead a sleeping life like plants, if it were not for the fact that there is a constant process of decomposition within us; only because there is always a process of decomposition within us do we not lead a sleeping life like plants. The astral body and the ego break down, which in turn atomizes. There is always a process of building and breaking down in the human being. And the astral body is the one that actually breaks down the most in our human being. And all these waste products that I have spoken of are actually broken down by the astral body and the ego. The etheric body only plays a small part. I have already explained this to you.

Now you see, gentlemen, the cemetery atmosphere that arises is related to what breaks down in the astral body in man, and this then supports the degradation. And man is more degraded when he lives near the cemetery than when he lives somewhere out in the forest. If he lives out in the forest, his constructive powers are stronger; if he lives near the cemetery, his destructive powers are stronger. But if we had no destructive powers, then, as I have already told you, we would remain stupid for life. We need these destructive powers. Then there is something else to consider. I told you: I can talk about this because I experienced it myself, and I experienced it at a young age when so many things are forming. I have always had a tendency to think carefully. Now, I am convinced that I owe this tendency to think carefully to the fact that fate allowed me to grow up near a cemetery. So that, in turn, is good, gentlemen. You also have to take that into consideration.

Isn't it true that the only harmful thing about a cemetery are the corpses in it? The corpses only continue the process of decomposition. When we die, the process of building and breaking down stops. The building process now stops. So the astral body is actually encouraged to think positively when it is near the cemetery. There is no denying that either.

In today's so-called Burgenland, where I grew up, the villages were all built in such a way that the cemeteries were in the middle. Burgenland is the one that has been the subject of so much dispute. There are a few larger towns, Eisenstadt and so on, but they are far apart, so that the villages are spread out everywhere, and the cemetery was in the middle everywhere. And so it is true to say that the people there had a certain rustic shrewdness. And it cannot be denied that this rustic shrewdness actually grew under the influence of the cemetery atmosphere. They kept the harmful things out by planting walnut and lime trees everywhere.

The area was also a wine-growing region. The atmosphere of the grapevine also has a certain balancing effect. The scent of lime blossoms, as you know, is a very strong scent, and the walnut tree also has a very strong scent; this has a more invigorating effect on the astral body. And the atmosphere of the grapevine has a more invigorating effect on the ego. So you already have a very strong effect on the higher bodies of the human being.

But of course, on the other hand, one must not deny how things change with the growth of civilization. Of course, at the moment when the villages become larger, when many houses are built around them and the effectiveness of the trees is impaired by the fact that houses are built around them, the cemetery begins to have a harmful effect, then, of course, there are these pale faces around the cemetery. This can no longer be balanced out and the result is that the cemetery then causes people to suffer from the cemetery atmosphere. This in turn led to a natural instinct: that when the villages had grown into towns, the cemetery was made outside the town.

Now, of course, there is something else to consider. This is the case when the effect goes even further, when it affects the etheric body. You see, everything that rises into the atmosphere as a fine haze affects the astral body and the I. So that also the subtle smell of corpses, which is always present around a cemetery, as well as the scent of walnuts, lime blossoms, horse chestnuts, which has a particularly invigorating effect, can actually only affect the higher bodies; these do not reach the etheric body so strongly.

But the situation with the etheric body is such that water in some area has a particularly strong effect on it. Water has a very strong effect. And the water in the vicinity of a cemetery is very easily permeated by what comes from the corpses. The water is drunk, the water is used for cooking. And if, in a village where the cemetery is close to the houses, the water is affected, no trees will help! Then nature helps very little. And the result of that is that people very easily become consumptive and suffer greatly from it.

You see, I was able to observe that very clearly. There was a place - it was several hours away from where I lived - a small place. Almost everyone lived around the cemetery. The people were very lethargic by nature; they just couldn't. They had flaccid muscles, flaccid nerves, everything about them was flaccid; they were pale. And then the thought occurred to me: where does it come from? And you see, that is very interesting: in our village of Neudörfl, the people who also lived around the cemetery were relatively healthy! Now, that is a big question for someone who really looks at the country in terms of the conditions that affect people. There was a village where the people lived around the churchyard and where they did nothing but plant nut trees; they also planted them, that was a very healthy instinct - but otherwise they often even took the water for cooking from the village stream! There was a row of houses (it is drawn), in between the village brook; there was the churchyard, there was the church; there we lived, there the pastor, there was the schoolhouse; then there was a row of houses, in between a brook, and there were nut trees everywhere. The people simply took the water from the little stream; in the stream, of course, were the remains and bacteria, the bacilli, of what seeped through from the cemetery. That was everywhere. The people, especially those who lived there, were not particularly clean: there were houses with thatched roofs and dung heaps right at the entrance, the pigsty right next to it – a nice connection between the pigsty and the dung heap – and again the descent to the village stream, so that when you came in, you waded in a brownish sauce. Well, you see, it was not exactly, as they say today, hygienically prepared! And yet the people were healthy! You couldn't help but say that they were healthy.

Now, firstly, if the people are healthy, the corpses in the beginning are not as bad as if the people in the village are infected. But that is of less importance. On the other hand, there was a big question: how come the people were healthy and the others were sick or weak and unable to live? - This can be explained by the following. Near this village was another, very small village, but a spa town: there was a spring of acidulous water, carbonic acid water. The whole village got its drinking water from this place. And the drinking water from this place, the carbonic acid water, in turn had a balancing effect on the contaminated water from the cemetery. The others, who lived far away from this acidulous spring, did not have that. So there one could directly study how the carbonic acid water, which, as I have explained to you once, has a particularly strong effect on the ego and on thinking, in turn has an effect on the ego and the etheric body, and in the etheric body in turn balances the destructive effect of what seeped from the cemetery into the village stream.

Of course, if the cemetery remains in cities, it is basically impossible to help transform the cemetery atmosphere, at least as long as spring water is not brought in from afar. If a town is situated in such a way that the cemetery is still in the middle of the town and the water is still drawn from wells, then of course the conditions for health are the worst, because then the etheric body is attacked; and the etheric body is that which cannot be further conquered by the astral body and the I.

You see, the sanitary and hygienic conditions are extremely interesting from this point of view. But of course it must not be forgotten that for people who live around the cemetery, if they are still religious people, if they have not yet lost their faith, the constant sight of the funeral ceremonies always has a warming effect! It has a balancing effect. It has an effect on the ego. It is certainly strengthening. It must be possible to look at this from a health point of view. It also has a balancing effect.

Is that more or less what you wanted to know? Perhaps someone else has something to add.

Well, gentlemen, then I will continue with this question from a completely different point of view. You see, we have already looked at a great deal; today, let us look at the following from the point of view of the insights we have gained.

If you look at the map, you may be interested in the map to the extent that you say: Well, this is where this nation lives, that nation lives there. We are interested in the various nations living side by side. But you can also say: I want to look at the map from the point of view of how humanity has developed. And then the map becomes really quite interesting.

Let us take a closer look at a small part of the map. I will only draw it very roughly. If we move over to Asia, for example, I have drawn it for you in terms of the human races: India, Hindustan; then Arabia; and here we have Asia Minor. Then Asia crosses over into Europe; we come to the islands that look towards Europe. There is Greece. Then we come to Africa. And there we have a river: that is the Nile; there is Egypt - today, as you know, completely dominated by the English -; that was once a free country. Now, you see, today the peoples live everywhere. In India, the Indians are living there, and they are really pulling themselves together. They were ruled by the English for a long time, and of course they still are, but today they are pulling themselves together, and anyone who is insightful enough in England is terribly afraid that the Indians might somehow gain independence. There is a great Indian movement today: the so-called Mahatma Gandhi stirred up such a movement in India and was then imprisoned, but has now been released for health reasons. Likewise, here in Arabia there are people who are more or less ruled by the British; that is still a rather inaccessible region, Arabia. You know, of course, that one of the main causes of the great world war was that they wanted to build a railroad through Turkey, over here, and they were looking for a route to India on one side and to Arabia on the other. Germany wanted to do this, and in doing so, Germany provoked the envy and jealousy of other nations in so many ways because it wanted to build the so-called Baghdad Railway through Turkey, all the way into Asia. - And Syria was there once.

You see, from the most diverse points of view, it is interesting to ask yourself: So there were peoples living everywhere since ancient times; they were very different in their lives. You only need to mention a few things to see how different these people were in their lives. In India, for example, there was a strict caste system, a caste system that makes what the European classes are actually only a shadow of. In India, you were born into a caste. The highest caste was the Brahmins. These were the people who performed the priestly services, who were allowed to learn. So in the oldest times, all the children of the Brahmins actually went to school. They were the ones who could write; that was the highest caste. Although the priests were taken from this caste, the kings were not. The kings were taken from the second caste, the warrior caste. But never could anyone ascend from the warrior caste to the Brahmin caste; that was strictly separated. The third caste were the agriculturists, the country folk; and the fourth caste were those who were actually considered to be manual laborers. Now there was a strict division between these castes. In ancient India, it was considered as bad luck if a person from one caste were to enter another as it would have been if a lion were to become a lamb! The castes were regarded as separate from each other as the individual species of animals are separate from each other. And so people took no offense at all. It would have seemed as strange to them if someone from the third caste had entered the first as if a lion had wanted to become a bull. So that was quite evident, it was an absolute matter of course for people. Now, that was also in India.

Let us now move on to Egypt: there were still castes there too. What I am going to tell you now, gentlemen, can be placed in the period about three thousand or three thousand five hundred years, or perhaps even four thousand years, before the emergence of Christianity. So we have to go back five to six millennia if we want to look back to the time of which I am now telling you. In Egypt, there were also castes, but they were not so strictly adhered to; one or the other could pass from one caste to the other. So it was not so strictly adhered to, but there were still castes in Egypt. On the other hand, in Egypt it was the case that the entire state structure emanated from the priesthood. The priesthood ruled everything. That was also the case in India, but there everything was predetermined by the caste system, whereas in Egypt the caste system was not so strict. But the rule was adhered to that everything that was to become law emanated from the priesthood.

And in a corresponding way, the other peoples who lived in Syria also lived in Asia Minor. They had their peculiarities, they were different.

Now, today, I would like to tell you something else about these very peoples so that you can see what role the things we have learned play in human history. Let us take four of these peoples: first the Indians, then the Egyptians, then those peoples who sat here. The Euphrates and Tigris flow into this gulf, and there was a people who later were called the Babylonians. We will consider these as the third.

And then you know that a people distinguished themselves here who later played a major role in history: the Semites, the Hebrews, the Jews. They moved over to Egypt, later moved back again and then lived here in Palestine – a relatively small people in terms of extent, but a people who played their great role in history. So we can look at them in succession: first the Indians, second the Egyptians, third the Babylonians, fourth the Jews. Let us look at these four peoples today.

You see, it is a particularly characteristic feature of the Indians that they actually look at the people who are there as separately as the animal classes and divide them into four castes. Added to this is the peculiar religion that the Indians had in ancient times. The Indians did not distinguish between the spiritual and material world; in the time when this Indian population first developed in India, they did not distinguish between spirit and body. A tree was not distinguished as it is by many other peoples: there is the physical tree, and there lives a spirit in it - nothing, that was not distinguished. The tree was a spirit at the same time, only a somewhat coarser spirit than man and animal. The animal was also not divided into body and soul for the Indians, but it was soul and so was man. There was no division into body and soul. And when the oldest Indian asked about the soul - and he knew that one breathes in, breathes in the air - there was the air that one breathed in, the spirit. And then he knew: the air is out there; that is the spirit that surrounds the whole earth. And when this spirit, which surrounds the whole earth, begins to flow, to blow, then he called the spirit that moves, that blows on the whole earth: Varuna. But what he had within him was also Varuna. When there was a storm outside, it was Varuna; inside: also Varuna. Today one often hears it said that these Indians had a nature service because they worshipped wind and weather and so on. But one can just as well say that they had a spirit service because they saw everything as a spirit. The Indians had no concept of the body at all. And because of that, every part of the human being was also a spirit for the Indians: the liver was spirit, the kidneys were spirit, everything was spirit. They did not distinguish between body and spirit. That is precisely the secret of ancient Indian wisdom: that no distinction is made between body and spirit. The liver was liver spirit, the stomach was stomach spirit.

Yes, you see, when we look at the stomach today, we find that something must be in the stomach if the stomach is to digest properly; we call the substance pepsin. If it is lacking, then digestion is not done properly; then we have to put in some hydrochloric acid. The Indian said to himself – he did not yet have the name, but he knew that there was a spirit – the stomach is constructed like this: that is the stomach spirit. And the name of the remedy has remained: “stomach spirit.” Of course, today you can take drops for the stomach, no longer “stomach ghost”, but named after the inventor “Hoffmann's ghost” or something like that; but you will still find where it is simply spoken that the ghost concept is still in the words.

So the Indians saw spirit everywhere. And that is why they did not take offense at the caste spirit, because they saw it as something spiritual, just as they saw the division of animals as something spiritual.

If you look at these Indian beliefs, it is interesting that the Indians had a very precise knowledge of all human organs. They saw them only as spirit. The human being was composed of nothing but spirits: lung spirit, stomach spirit, kidney spirit, and so on; they only looked at the physical body. So, looking at the Indians, we can say that they were imbued with a view that focused on the physical body. They saw the physical body as spirit.

1. Indian: physical body spiritual

This is very interesting, because now we have discovered a people who initially had a precise knowledge of the physical body.

Now we move on to the Egyptians. With the Egyptians it is a strange story. The Egyptians had the Nile. The Nile is actually, one could say, the nourishing father of the country. Every year, when July comes, the Nile rises out of its banks, and in October it goes back down again. So the ancient Egyptians actually knew nothing other than: The Nile contains the water; the water recedes during the cold season; the water comes out again, flooding the land and becoming a benefactor to the people. But when the water recedes in October, what remains - they don't need to fertilize! - a very fertile mud. In this mud, the cereals and so on were sown; they then sprouted and were harvested before the Nile flooded again. And so the Nile actually prepared the farmland for them every year. So the Egyptians were deeply imbued with the beneficence of water. They have dealt with what water is in nature in many ways. You see, we admire our engineering skills today because they can channel. Yes, thousands of years before us, the Egyptians were already very good at channeling! Of course, when the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded everywhere, it may have come to places where it shouldn't have been. So the Egyptians created Lake Moria in the most ancient of times – an entire lake! It did not exist by nature, but was created to bring the flooding into the right channels. What was superfluous water was collected in this Lake Moria. So actually artificially the Egyptians have ruled nature. But as a result, their attention was extremely drawn to the water.

Now, I have already told you in answer to Mr. Dollinger's question that water has an enormous influence on the etheric body of man. And with the instinct that the Egyptians still had, they developed the doctrine: Man does not consist only of a physical body, but he also has an etheric body. - It is interesting, you see: In the back of beyond in India were the oldest peoples; many of these oldest peoples came via Arabia and only then immigrated to Egypt. In Egypt there was a kind of old culture: everything came from India. When the Indians migrated to Egypt, they recognized the beneficial effect of water. But they said to themselves: This does not work on the physical body that we got to know in India, but on a still higher body of the human being. And so the Egyptians - the Indians too - mainly through what they experienced with water, actually discovered the etheric body.

The fact that the Egyptians discovered the etheric body is the reason why they developed their entire religion, because it is a religion of the etheric body. If you take the most important thing from the Egyptian religion, the following legend is the result. These Egyptians said - and this was something that the Egyptians told everywhere, as the stories of the Gospels were told in a certain period in Europe: There is a high God; they called this high God Osiris. This high God is the benefactor of mankind. He is actually the originator of everything that comes to man through the element of water. But he has an enemy. He works for the benefit of man; but he has an enemy. And this enemy lives in the hot wind that comes from the desert. There was the desert (pointing to the drawing). So they had two deities: Osiris and Typhon, Osiris and his enemy, Typhon. All that they saw in nature, they also saw in human life. But they did not ascribe it to the physical body, as the Indians did, but to the etheric body. Then they continued the saga: One day Typhon killed Osiris and carried him off. And Isis, the wife of Osiris, retrieved the body and buried the various limbs in different places. Monuments were then erected over them. And since then, Osiris has been ruler over the dead. Once he was ruler over the living, then he became ruler over the dead. The Egyptians were already thinking about death.

Now you know – I have already told you – a few days after death, the etheric body of the human being leaves; then the person gradually comes to consciousness again. This is expressed in the legend that Osiris leaves and is brought back by Isis. The human being regains consciousness after death.

So you can say: the Egyptians realized that man has an etheric body. - That's very interesting! The Indians, they still took the physical body as spiritual. The Egyptians, they came up with the etheric body and took that as spirit:

2. Egyptians: etheric body spiritual Osiris Typhon Isis

And everything the Egyptians believed in, everything they worked for, was actually for the etheric body. That dominated their entire view.

You see, gentlemen, you have at least seen one thing in the Egyptians: their mummies. I mentioned them to you the other day; I said: When medieval physicians spoke of mummies, it was something spiritual; I explained that to you. But today, when people speak of mummies, they only mean these Egyptian mummies. The corpses were embalmed, finely embalmed, and preserved. Yes, but why was that? The Egyptians knew only of the etheric body and kept the physical body so that when the person lives again, he will find his physical body again. If they had already known about the astral body and the ego, they would not have believed that one must keep the physical body. They only knew the etheric body, which is very spiritual. If they had known about the ego and the astral body, they would have said: They are building their own physical body. But they only knew the subtle etheric body, so they believed that you had to preserve the physical body so that the person could find it again when they returned. So the Egyptians discovered the etheric body.

Now we come to the third, the Babylonians. They developed something very large and strong, namely, well-developed thinking, so that much of the thinking of the Babylonians is still preserved today; but what they developed particularly strongly was astronomy. They built their great stargazings from which they observed the stars. And there they saw that man does not only depend on what is on earth, but depends on what is in the stars. They particularly sought the influences of the stars on people and, above all, made their observations about how the year was divided. The year, in turn, has a great influence on people through the stars. The Babylonians were the first to leave the earth and develop astronomy, the knowledge of the influence of the stars on people, into a particular science. And that's how they came up with the idea of dividing everything into sixties and twelves and so on.

They divided money into sixty and twelve, for example. The decimal system only came later. But today you can still find this old Babylonian division into twelve in the English shilling. So this numerical division was first brought down from heaven by the Babylonians. Now, what does the world of the stars have a particular influence on in humans? On the astral body, gentlemen. The astral body is completely under the influence of the world of the stars. But because today's star science wants nothing to do with the astral body, it does not seek to observe the stars in their influence on man. What is calculated in today's astronomy really has no particularly strong influence on man. But the Babylonians had a fine star science. And through this they discovered the astral body of man. That is the wonderful thing. So that we can say that the Babylonians discovered the astral body spiritually.

3. Babylonians: spiritual astral body.

The astral body even got its name from this. First, the Babylonians discovered it. And because they discovered it from the stars, from the astral - astrology, astronomy, star science, star knowledge - it was called the astral body. So you see, the successive peoples discovered one after the other out of the spirit: the Indians the physical body, the Egyptians the etheric body and the Babylonians the astral body.

If you look at what the Babylonian legends are based on, you find that they are all based on the stars. You just have to not be deceived by today's science and its books. There is one scholar who says: Originally, all religions originated from a star service. Therefore, one must see the star service as the origin of all religions. Another comes and says: Oh no, religions all originated from nature worship. The wind and weather were worshipped. A third says: Religions all originated from the elements, from water and its effects. Yes, gentlemen, but why do people say that? The person who tells you that religion comes from serving the stars has studied nothing but the Babylonian period. Now he believes that what was true of the Babylonians was true everywhere. The person who tells you that religion comes from the elements has studied nothing but the Egyptians. Now, in turn, he is Egyptianizing everything. And he says: All religions have arisen from the worship of wind and weather. This is due to the fact that people are limited, that they only study individual things. Religions arise from the most diverse.

Now there is something else, I told you, a small people there in Palestine: the Hebrews, the Jews. You see, they lived among these other nations, and they were not satisfied by the other nations at all. You can read in the Bible, in the Old Testament, how the Jews are unsatisfied everywhere and how they come up with a completely invisible, spiritual essence. The physical body is, of course, completely visible. The etheric body expresses itself in the floods, in the water effects of the Nile; they are there. The astral body of the Babylonians is no longer visible on earth, but if you study the stars, you will find the astral body. The Jews no longer wanted any of this, but only an invisible God. This invisible God, what is he? He is the one who has an effect on the human ego. So:

4. Jews: I spiritual (Yahweh)

The Jews came upon the ego as a spiritual being and called it Jahve.

And now you have history! You can read as much as you like in history books: you will not understand how the ancient peoples progressed. You are told about all kinds of things, about all kinds of wars and kings, which creates a motley chaos in the human mind; you don't know what it actually is. Then, at most, religions are still told about, but you don't know where they come from. But if you now know that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego, and that these have been discovered one after the other by people, and that their views of life depended on it, then you will find out in this respect: the Indians discover the physical body, the Egyptians the etheric body, the Babylonians the astral body, the Jews the ego. Little by little it comes out that man has these different bodies. This did not just fall from the sky, but people discover it according to their living conditions.

The Indians, through whom many peoples have passed, so that they are racially diverse, come into the physical body. The Egyptians, who had a lot to do with water, come to the ether and thus to the etheric man. The Babylonians, who took over everything they needed for the astral body from the other peoples, where the priests came up with the idea of building high towers: they came up with astronomy. And the Jews, who were always wandering – you can follow this in the stories of Abraham, Moses and so on – were reluctant to worship anything visible in the heavens and the earth: they came up with the invisible Yahweh, who is the creator and enforcer of the human ego.

That's when you start to make sense of it all! That's when you see how, little by little, man discovers himself. Then it continues. We also want to look at that. So, gentlemen, today is Saturday – we'll see each other again next Wednesday.

Today I would like to address myself to a subject specifically requested by our friends here, a subject having great significance for modern spiritual life. It shall be considered from the standpoint I have often taken when speaking of things of the spirit. As a rule, it is difficult to speak of such a unique and deeply significant subject unless it be assumed that the audience keep in mind various things explained in other lectures given on the foundations of spiritual science. This science is neither widely recognized nor popular; in fact, it is a most unpopular and much misunderstood spiritual stream of our day. Misunderstandings can easily arise especially with a subject like the one chosen today, because the opinion is far too widespread that anthroposophy might undermine this or that religious creed, thereby interfering with what someone may hold precious. Anyone willing to go into anthroposophy in any depth sees that this opinion is completely false. In one sense, spiritual science aims to develop further the way of thinking that entered human evolution through natural science. By strengthening the human soul, it seeks to make this kind of thinking fruitful. The way spiritual science must proceed differs significantly, however, from the way taken by natural science. Anthroposophy takes its start, not from the world perceived by the external senses, but from the world of the spirit. Questions pertaining to the spiritual life of the soul must therefore be considered from the standpoint of spiritual science. Undoubtedly for many in our time the most important question in the spiritual life of humanity pertains to the subject of today's lecture, that is, Christ Jesus.

To ensure that we shall understand each other at least to some extent, I would like to make a few preliminary observations before moving on to any specific questions. Spiritual science, though it is the continuation of natural science, makes entirely different demands on the human soul. This fact accounts for the misunderstanding and opposition spiritual science encounters. The kind of thinking derived from natural science is tied up with a problem that more or less concerns human souls today when they consider higher aspects of life. This is the problem of the limits to knowledge. Spiritual science in no way belittles the most admirable attempt of philosophers to ascertain the extent of human thought and knowledge. Thinkers who judge on the basis of what can ordinarily be observed in the soul easily conclude that human knowledge can go so far and no farther. It is commonly said, “This fact can be known; that other cannot.”

On this issue spiritual science takes a completely different stand because it takes into consideration the development of the human soul. Granted, in ordinary life and science the soul does indeed confront certain limits of knowledge. The soul, however, may take itself in hand, transform itself and thereby acquire the possibility of penetrating into spheres of existence radically unlike those usually experienced.

Here I can only indicate what in earlier lectures and in such books as An Outline of Occult Science and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, I have already explained, namely, that the soul can completely change itself. Through practicing certain exercises, the soul may bring about an infinite enhancement of its inherent forces of attention and devotion. Ordinarily, the soul-spiritual life uses the human body like an instrument. Just as hydrogen is bound to oxygen in water, so is this life closely connected with the body, within which it works. Now, just as hydrogen may be separated from oxygen and shown to have completely different qualities from water, so may the soul, through the exercises described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, separate itself from the body. By thus turning away from and lifting itself out of the body, the soul acquires an inner life of its own.

Not by speculation or philosophy but by devoted discipline can the soul emancipate itself from the body. To live as a soul-spiritual being, apart from the body is the great experience of the spiritual investigator. Here I can only indicate things I have elaborated elsewhere.

Today my task is to show how the spiritual investigator must regard the Christ Jesus Event. Statements of religious creeds concerning this event are derived from experiences of the soul in its life within the body. The statements of the spiritual investigator come from clairvoyant experiences of the soul as it lives independently of the body in the spiritual world. In this condition the soul can survey the whole course of mankind's evolution.

What the spiritual investigator thereby learns of Christ Jesus calls for a certain way of speaking, because the investigator acquires his knowledge in immediate spiritual vision while living separated from his body. Yet he can communicate this knowledge only indirectly by turning his attention to the things of this world. His description, however, must convey what he has experienced in spiritual vision. Thus, what follows in way of explanation of certain processes in man's external life is not meant to be taken metaphorically. It is intended rather to express something in which spiritual science must come to an understanding with natural science. In respect to one point in particular it is most important to come to terms with present-day thought.

In natural science it is admitted that a mere descriptive enumeration of single events in nature is inadequate. It is recognized that the scientist must proceed from a description of natural phenomena to the laws invisibly animating them. These laws we perceive when we relate phenomena with each other, or when we immerse ourselves in them. In this way they reveal their inner laws. In the treatment of historical facts, however, this natural scientific method is not easily applied.

Now, as a rule, I am disinclined to speak of personal matters, but in the following case I can speak of something objective. The title of my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, which was first published many years ago, was not chosen without due reflection. It was selected to indicate a certain way of observing things. It was not entitled The Mysticism of Christianity because I did not intend to deal with this topic, nor was it entitled Christian Mysticism because I did not intend to write on that theme, the mystical life of the Christian, either. What I sought to show was that the Christ impulse, the entrance of Christianity into mankind's development, can be comprehended only by perceiving how the super-sensible plays into the development ordinarily described in history. As these facts are accessible only to spiritual vision, they can be called mystical. They are mystical while at the same time having occurred on earth.

The origin and development of Christianity can be understood only when we realize that facts in history arrange themselves as do facts in our solar system, where the sun has the major role and the other planets less important parts. This arrangement can be recognized when facts are seen from a natural scientific standpoint. In the field of history, however, facts are rarely so viewed. Here, the succession of facts is easily described, but the fact that the way of contemplating the historical facts differs from the way of contemplating scientific facts is lost sight of.

There is a law in natural science whose validity is more or less acknowledged by all, despite this or that detail of it being open to dispute. This law, first formulated by Ernst Haeckel, has become fundamental to biology. It states that a living being recapitulates in its embryonic life, passes through stages of development that resemble those of the lower animals such as the fishes. This is a law recognized in science.

Now there is another law, which can be discovered by spiritual vision, that is of great importance in mankind's development. Because it is valid only in the sphere of spiritual life it presents a rather different aspect than the law just mentioned, but it is as true as any in natural science. It enables us to say what is undoubtedly true, that humanity has passed through many stages in its development, and that as it has passed from one epoch to another, from one century to another, it has taken on various forms. We need only assume that the epochs known to history were preceded by primeval ones. At this point we may ask if the life of humanity as a whole can be compared with anything else. Of course, any comparison concerning mankind's development must be the outcome of spiritual-scientific observation. External facts must be used as a language, as a means of communication, to express what the spiritual investigator perceives. What he perceives is that mankind's development as a whole may be compared with the life of a single man.

The experiences of mankind in ancient cultures—in those of Egypt and China, Persia and India, Greece and Rome—were different from those of our time. In those ancient epochs man's soul lived in conditions different from those of today. Just as in the individual human life the experiences of childhood are not the same as those of youth or old age, so in these cultures mankind's experiences were not the same as ours are today. Human development passes through various forms in the various ages of life.

The following question now arises. What stage in the individual life of man may be compared with the present epoch of humanity? This question can be answered only by spiritual science. Anthroposophy stands upon such a foundation that it can say that when man enters his life on earth he does not inherit everything from his mother and father that belongs to his being. We can say that man descends from a life in the spirit to an existence on earth, and that the spiritual part of his being follows certain laws whereby it connects itself with what is inherited from the parents. Further, we can say that the spiritual part helps in the whole growth and development of the human body. We see how the soul and spirit takes hold of and works upon physical substance. The wonderful mystery of man's gradual development, the emergence of definite traits from indefinite, capacities from incapacities, all bear witness to the sculpting power of these spiritual forces. Through spiritual science we are lead to look back from this present life to former lives on earth. We see that the way our soul-spiritual being prepares the bodily organization and the course our destiny takes depend[s] upon what we have elaborated and gained for ourselves in former lives.

Exact spiritual-scientific investigation shows that during the whole ascending course of our lives, up to our thirties, the fruits won from former lives on earth and brought with us from the spiritual world still exercise an immediate influence upon our physical existence and destiny. Our soul, being connected with the external world, progresses as we experience life on earth. From these experiences a soul-spiritual kernel forms itself within us. Up until our thirtieth to thirty-fifth years we arrange our lives in accordance with the spiritual forces we have brought with us from the spiritual world. From the middle of our lives onward the forces of our soul-spiritual kernel begin to work. This seed, containing what we have already elaborated, continues to work within us for the rest of our lives.

Even after a plant has faded away, the forces capable of producing a new one survive. These forces are like the soul-spiritual forces we gain for ourselves in the first half of life and that predominate in the second. When, in this second period of life, our senses weaken, our hair turns gray and our skin becomes wrinkled, our external life may be compared with a dying plant. Yet, in this period what we have prepared since our birth, what we have not brought with us from a preceding life but have rather elaborated in this life, grows ever stronger and more powerful. It is the part in us that passes through the portal of death, that casts off life as something faded. It is that part in us that passes over into the spiritual world. At an important moment in our life, when the fresh forces of our youth start to wane, we begin to cultivate something new on earth, that is, a soul-spiritual seed that passes through death.

We may now ask ourselves what period in human life can be compared with the present epoch, considering the whole development of humanity. Can our present age be compared with the first part of human life, with the first thirty to thirty-five years, or with the latter part. Spiritual-scientific observation of the present age reveals that our existence in the external world can in fact be compared only with the period of human life lying beyond the thirtieth to thirty-fifth years. Human development on earth has already passed the middle part of life. We need only compare the experiences of mankind in our present culture with experiences undergone in the Egyptian-Babylonian or Greco-Roman cultures. We need only point to our mighty and admirable technical and industrial achievements to show that man has now severed himself from what is directly and instinctively connected with his body.

Men in ancient cultures faced the world as a child does. The child's life is an ascending one, completely dependent upon the body. Mankind's life today, in contrast, is mechanical, cut off from the body. History, science, philosophy and religion all show that mankind in its evolution has reached a point lying beyond the middle of life. Modern pedagogy, with its efforts to be established on rational lines, especially bears out this fact. Modern pedagogy differs markedly from ancient pedagogy. Children growing up under our artificial education become severed from the direct impulses of humanity. An earlier education, one in an epoch lying before mankind's middle life, was derived from intuition and instinct. Observation of the riddles of education strongly confirms the fact that humanity has now passed beyond the point of maturity. We may now ask ourselves what point in humanity's evolution corresponds to the point in the individual life of man that lies between the thirtieth and thirty-fifth years.

When the spiritual investigator, objectively observing the evolution of humanity, turns his gaze on ancient times, he finds a trend that culminates in the Greco-Roman epoch. He finds that then humanity as a whole reached that age corresponding to the thirtieth to thirty-fifth years in the life of an individual man. The individual man may use a surplus of vital forces in his body to live beyond the descending point in his life and to cultivate up until his death a soul-spiritual kernel. In the life of humanity as a whole, however, things take a different course. When the youthful forces of humanity cease to flow, as it were, a new impulse is needed for its further development, an impulse not lying within humanity itself. Even if we know nothing whatsoever of the Gospels or of tradition, we need only look at mankind's historical development to discover in the Greco-Roman epoch the entrance of such an impulse. There, at a certain moment, the turning point of man's whole earthly development occurred. A completely new impulse entered the course of man's evolution, when its youthful forces were on the wane. An examination of the ancient mysteries will throw more light on this historical fact.

These mysteries, which existed in every culture and which to some extent have reached our knowledge through literature, were functions performed at centers that served both as schools and churches. Through cultic rites intended to transform the everyday life of soul, these functions enabled men to attain to higher knowledge. These mystery schools took different forms in different countries, but at all centers those souls whom the leaders of the schools believed capable of development received training.

In the mysteries man's soul life was not regarded as it is today. In this ancient viewpoint, which anthroposophy must renew, the soul was deemed unfit in its ordinary state to penetrate into those spheres where its inmost being flows together with the very source of life. The ancients felt that the human soul had to prepare itself for knowledge by undergoing a certain moral and esthetic training. They thought that through this inner training the soul could transform itself and thereby acquire forces of knowledge surpassing those of ordinary life. The soul then became capable of perceiving those mysteries that lie behind external phenomena.

There were basically two kinds of center[s] where pupils were trained to acquire spiritual wisdom and a vision of life's mysteries. Pupils of the first kind, under the guidance of the centers' leaders, especially developed the psychic life. During spiritual vision they could free themselves from the body. The Egyptian and Greek mysteries offered this kind of training. The other kind existed in the Persian mysteries of Asia Minor.

Pupils of these Egyptian and Greek mysteries were trained to turn their senses away from the external world and thus eventually to enter the condition man ordinarily falls into unawares when he is overcome by sleep, when sense impressions cease. The soul of the pupil was led completely into his inner self, and his inner life was given a strength and intensity far surpassing that required to receive merely sense impressions. After pursuing his exercises for a long time, the pupil reached a certain stage in his inner life when he could say to himself, “Man learns to know his real being only when he has torn himself away from his body.” The strange but distinct mood evoked in the pupil's soul gave rise to an experience he could characterize with the words, “In everyday life, when I use my body to connect myself with the world of the senses, I do not really live within my full human nature. Only when I have a deeper experience of myself within my own being am I a man in the fullest meaning of the word.” This experience impressed on him that man can know his spiritual essence by penetrating into his innermost soul. He thereby could draw near to God, the primeval source of his being. Within himself he could feel that point where his soul life united with the divine source of existence.

It must be added that this type of training resulted in an increase of egotism, not a decrease. The leaders of the mysteries thus set great store upon a schooling in human love and unselfishness. They knew that through the wisdom of the mysteries a pupil could indeed unite with his god even though he were insufficiently prepared, but they realized that he could do so only at the price of increased egotism. By withdrawing from the sense world and entering the spiritual world he could experience the human self, the human ego, far more strongly than is usually the case. The men in these mysteries who, by strengthening their inner lives perceived God, remained useful members of human society only if they had first passed through a spiritual development grounded in a sound preparation of the moral life. This, the Dionysian initiation, led man to experience within himself what lies at the base of all human nature, that is, Dionysos.

In the other type of initiation, practiced mainly in Asia Minor and Central Asia, man was led to the secrets of life by an opposite method. He had to subdue all his inner soul experiences, to free himself of the cares and troubles, the passions and instincts of his personal existence. He could then experience the outer course of nature far more intensely than is normally done. Whereas we normally experience only winter and summer, the disciples of these initiation centers had to experience, in a special way, the change from one season to another. Even as our hands share in the life of our bodies, so did the disciple have to share in the life of the earth. When the earth grew cold, when its plant covering began to fade, he had to feel within his soul its life of sadness and desolation. He had to share in these experiences as a member of the whole organism of the earth. Too, he could share in the rising life of spring and of the earth's awakening at midsummer, when the sun stands at its highest point on the horizon. He felt those forces of the sun in union with the whole earth.

In this kind of initiation the disciple's soul was drawn out of his inner being, whereby he could participate in the events of the cosmos and raise himself to the soul-spiritual essence permeating the universe. His experience differed markedly from ordinary contemplation of nature because he felt he lived within the very soul of the universe. In not a bad but a good sense, he was beside himself. He was, though one hesitates to use this word because it has taken on an unpleasant connotation, in ecstasy. Upon achieving this union with the cosmos he could say to himself that through living in the universe and through experiencing its most intimate soul-spiritual forces, he had come to realize that everywhere the final goal of the cosmos is the creation of man. Did man not exist, the whole creation could not fulfill its end, because he was the meaning of the cosmos.

It is one thing to say this; it is quite another to experience it. The disciples of the mysteries felt this fact because they entered into the life of the universe with an enhanced selfconsciousness. Indeed, this proud sense of self was indispensable to their experience of the cosmos. Whereas egotism resided in man's penetration into his spiritual being, pride lay in his union with the soul-spiritual essence of the world. Therefore, those who prepared the disciples for such an experience took care that they did not completely fall prey to pride.

In ancient times, all the truths constituting man's knowledge were acquired through the mysteries on the one or the other path. Humanity's course of development was then on the ascent. Man was unfolding fresh forces and lived in the stage of childhood, as it were. He had to learn through the mysteries how to reach the spiritual worlds. Ancient civilizations always revealed one of these two sides: that derived from man's strengthening his inner life, and that derived from his surveying the whole universe, which enabled him to say that all this pointed to the human being, to the soul-spiritual part he bears within him. Such a disciple of the second kind of initiation could also say when he looked out into the world's spaces, “There, in the wide reaches of the universe, something lives that must enter into me if I am to fully know myself as a human being. But when I live on the earth, unable to look out into the wide world, the spirit cannot come to me, and I cannot really know myself as man.”

Humanity then entered an epoch in which its youthful forces became exhausted. The whole human race reached an age corresponding to the thirtieth to thirty-fifth years in the life of the individual man. In this epoch the ancient mysteries, which existed to help humanity in its youth, had lost their meaning. Furthermore, something happened that is most difficult to understand even now. When man attempted to rise to the soul-spiritual essence of the cosmos, this essence no longer drew near him; he could no longer experience the god within himself.

When the ancient Persian surpassed his ordinary state of consciousness, he could feel how God descended upon his soul, how his soul became permeated by the God of the universe. Humanity always had this possibility so long as it possessed its youthful forces. But in the Greco-Roman epoch this possibility ended. Then, everything prescribed in the ancient mysteries to bring inspiration to man became ineffectual, because humanity was receptive to this inspiration only in the time of its youth. Something else now arose. What man could no longer receive because individual human nature had lost the capacity of receiving it even with the help of the mysteries, now entered into the whole evolution of humanity. One human being had to come who could directly unite the two initiation paths.

Purely from the standpoint of spiritual science, apart from all the Gospels, we now see Christ Jesus entering the evolution of the world. Let us imagine someone who knows nothing whatsoever of the Gospels, knows nothing of traditions, but who has entered modern civilization with a soul permeated by spiritual science. Such a person would have to say to himself, “There came a time in the evolution of the world and in the history of humanity when man's receptivity for spiritual life ceased.” But humanity has preserved its soul-spiritual life. How can this be? The soul-spiritual essence that man once took into himself must have entered the evolution of the earth in some other way, independently of man. A Being must have taken into himself what the mystery disciples once received through the power of a most highly developed soul life. In sum, a human being must have appeared who inwardly possessed what the one mystery path enabled the soul to experience directly, namely, the spiritual essence of the external world, the spirit of the universe.

Spiritual science thus regards Christ Jesus as one who inherently possessed those strengthened powers of soul formerly acquired by disciples of the one mystery path. With these powers of soul he could take into himself from the cosmos what the disciples of the other mystery path had once received. From the standpoint of spiritual science we can say that what the disciples of the ancient mysteries once sought through an external connection with the Godhead came to expression in immediate form and as historical fact in Christ Jesus. When did this happen? It happened in that age when the forces that were already exhausted in humanity as a whole were also exhausted in the life of the individual human being. In his thirtieth year of life Jesus had reached the age humanity as a whole had then attained. It was in this year that he received the Christ. Into his fully developed, inwardly strengthened soul he received the spirit of the cosmos. At the turning point of human evolution we discover that a man has taken into his soul the divine-spiritual essence of the universe. What was striven for in the ancient mysteries has now become an historical event.

Let us proceed, bearing in mind indications of the Gospels concerning the life of Christ Jesus from the Baptism in the Jordan to His Resurrection. Spiritual science enables us to say that in this period something completely new entered the evolution of humanity. In the past, man made a real contact with the divine essence only through the mysteries. What was thus experienced in the mysteries went out into the world as revelations, to be accepted in faith. In the event we are now considering, the contact with the spiritual-divine essence of the cosmos happened in such a way that within the man Jesus, Christ entered the stream of earthly life for a period of three years. Then, at the Mystery of Golgotha, a force that formerly lived outside the earth poured itself out into the world. All the events through which Christ passed while living in the body of Jesus brought about the existence of this power in the earthly world, in the earthly part of the cosmos. Ever since that time this power lives in the same atmosphere in which our souls live.

We may term one of the two types of initiation sub-earthly and designate the other, in which man took up the spirit of the cosmos, super-earthly. In either case, man had to abandon his human essence to make contact with the divine essence. The Mystery of Golgotha, however, concerns not only the individual human being but the whole history of man on earth as well. Through this event humanity received something completely new. With the Baptism in the river Jordan something formerly experienced by every disciple of the mysteries entered a single human being, and from this single human being something streamed out into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth, enabling every soul that would do so to live and be immersed in it. This new impulse entered the earthly sphere through the death and resurrection of Christ. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha man lives in a spiritual environment, an environment that has been Christianized because it has absorbed the Christ impulse. Ever since the time when human evolution entered upon its descent, the human soul can revive itself; it can establish a connection with Christ. Man can grow beyond the forces of death that he bears within him. The spiritual source of man's origin can no longer be found on the old path; it must be found on a new path, by seeking a connection with Christ within the spiritual atmosphere of the earth.

The Christ Event appears to the spiritual investigator in a special light. It may be of interest to describe what he can actually experience after he has so changed his soul that he can perceive the spiritual world. The spiritual investigator can behold a variety of spiritual processes and beings, but he sees them in a special way, depending upon whether or not he has experienced the Christ impulse during his physical existence. Even today one may be a spiritual investigator without having made any inner connection with the Christ impulse. One who has passed through a certain soul development and attained to spiritual vision may thereby investigate many mysteries of the world, mysteries lying at the foundation of the universe; yet even with this vision, it is possible that he still cannot learn anything of the Christ impulse and of the Being of Christ. If we establish a connection with Christ while in the physical body, however, before the attainment of spiritual vision, if this connection is established through feeling, then this experience of Christ that we have gained while in the body remains with us like a memory when we enter the spiritual world. We perceive that even while we lived in the body we had a connection with the spiritual world.

The Christ impulse thus appears to us as the spiritual essence given to man at a time when the ancient inheritance no longer existed in human evolution. What the individual human being experiences after his thirtieth to thirty-fifth years, the whole of humanity experienced at the beginning of our era. Humanity, which unlike the individual human being does not possess a body, would have lost its connection with the divine-spiritual world had not a superearthly Being, a Being who descended to the earth from the cosmos, poured out his essence into the earth's evolution. This act enabled man to restore his connection with the spiritual world.

I realize that I am presenting things that are even less popular with the public than are the principles of spiritual science. Today I can give but a few indications, which in themselves cannot produce any kind of conviction. In regard to the Christ impulse I can only point out the direction taken by spiritual science, which seeks to be a continuation of natural science. The thoughts I have just presented must gradually enter into human evolution, which they will the more spiritual science enters into it. Unlike many other things being advanced today, spiritual science is not easy. It assumes that before attaining to certain definite experiences the soul must first transform itself.

In respect to the Christ experience in particular, spiritual science points out the significant fact that in the ancient mysteries man could find a connection with the divine essence only by going out of his own being. To experience the divine essence he had to abandon his humanity, become something no longer human. After the turning point of human evolution, however, the wonderful and significant possibility arose that man no longer needed to go out of himself in the one direction or the other. Indeed, man lacked the strength to do so. Nor could he in his youth anticipate a time when this would be possible since humanity had already reached a definite age.

The Mystery of Golgotha enabled man to transcend his ordinary human essence while still retaining his humanity. He could now find Christ by remaining man, not by increasing his egotism or pride. It now became possible for man to find Christ by deepening and strengthening himself in his own being. With Christianity something entered human evolution that enabled man to say to himself, “You must remain a human being; you must remain man in your inmost self. As a human being you will find within yourself that element in which your soul is immersed ever since the Mystery of Golgotha. You need not abandon your human essence by descending into egotism or by rising into pride.”

Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha the quality that each human soul now needs, the quality that in past epochs could be found only outside humanity, must be found in humanity itself, within the evolution of the earth. This deepest and most significant human quality is love. Man in his development must no longer follow the course of strengthening his soul on the one mystery path that leads to egotism, because ever since the Mystery of Golgotha it is essential that man acquire the capacity of transcending egotism, of conquering egotism and pride. Having done this, he can experience the higher self within him. A path of development must now be followed that does not lead us into egotism and pride but that remains within the element of love. This truth lies at the foundation of St. Paul's significant words, “Not I, but Christ in me.”

Only after the Mystery of Golgotha did it become possible to objectively experience Christ as that element enabling man to unite with the divine essence. A pupil of the ancient mysteries may indeed have anticipated St. Paul's words, but he could not have experienced their fulfillment. The mystery disciples and their followers could say, “Outside my own being is a god who pours his essence into me.” Or else they could say, “When I strengthen my inner being, I learn to know God in the depths of my own soul.” Today, however, each human being can say, “The love that passes over into other souls and into other beings cannot be found outside my own being; it can be found only by continuing along the paths of my own soul.”

When we immerse ourselves lovingly into other beings, our souls remain the same; man remains human even when he goes beyond himself and discovers Christ within him. That He can be thus found was made possible by the Mystery of Golgotha. The soul remains within the human sphere when it attains to that experience expressed by St. Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me.” We then have the mystical experience of feeling that a higher human essence lives in us, an essence that enwraps us in the same element that bears the soul from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation. This is the mystical experience of Christ, which we can have only through a training in love.

Spiritual science shows how it became possible for the human being to have this inner, mystical experience of Christ. By way of comparison, we find in Western philosophy the thought expressed that had we no eyes we could not see colors. Our eyes must be so built that they can perceive colors; there must be an inner predisposition to colors in our eyes, so to speak. Had we no eyes, the world would be colorless and dark for us. The same reasoning applies to the other senses. They too must be predisposed for the perception of the external world. From this argument Schopenhauer and other philosophers have concluded that the external world is a world of our representations. Goethe has coined the fine motto, “Were the eye not sun-like it could never perceive the sun.” We might say further, “The human soul could never understand Christ were it not able so to transform itself that it could inwardly experience the words, ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’”

Goethe had something else in mind when he expressed the truth that were the eye not sun-like it could not see the sun, namely, that our eyes could not exist had there been no light to form them from the sightless human being. The one thought is as true as the other: There could be no perception without eyes and also no eyes without light.

Similarly, it can be said that did the soul not inwardly experience Christ, did it not identify itself with the power of Christ, Christ would be non-existent for the soul. How can the human soul perceive Christ unless it identifies itself with Him? Yet the opposite thought is just as true, that is, man can experience Christ within himself only because at a definite moment in history the Christ impulse entered the evolution of humanity. Without the historical Christ there could be no mystical Christ. The assertion that the human soul could experience Christ even if Christ had never entered the evolution of mankind is a mere abstraction. Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha it was impossible to have a mystical experience of Christ. Any other argument is based on a misunderstanding. Just as it would be impossible for us to have the mystical experience of Christ without the historical Christ, even though the historical Christ can be discovered only by those who have experienced the mystical Christ.

Through spiritual science we are thus led to a vision of Christ not based upon the Gospels. Through spiritual science we can perceive that in the course of history Christ entered the evolution of humanity, and we know that He had once to live in a human being so that He could find a path leading through a human being into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth.

Spiritual research thus leads us to Christ, and through Christ to the historical Jesus. It does this at a time when external investigation, based upon external documents, so often questions the historical existence of Jesus.

The thoughts I have here presented may of course meet with opposition, but I can fully understand it if some say my statements appear to them like a fantastic dream.

From a spiritual contemplation of the whole evolution of humanity we can, through spiritual science, come to a recognition of Christ, and through Christ's own nature we can recognize that He once must have lived in a human body. Spiritual-scientific investigation necessarily leads to the historical Jesus. Indeed, it is possible to indicate with mathematical precision when Christ must have lived in the man Jesus, in the historical Jesus. Just as it is possible to understand external mechanical forces through mathematics, so is it possible to understand Jesus by regarding history with a spiritual vision that encompasses Christ. That Being Who lived in Jesus from his thirtieth to thirty-third years gave the impulse humanity needed for its development at a time when its youthful forces were beginning to decline.

In recapitulation, I can say that a new understanding of Christ is a necessity today. Spiritual science not only tries to lead us to Christ; it must do so. All the truths it advances must lead from a spiritual contemplation of man's development to a comprehension of Christ. Men will experience Christ in ever greater measure, and through Christ they will discover Jesus.

Thus, I have tried to day to take my start from the evolution of humanity, directing your gaze from Jesus, upon whom many look with skepticism, to Christ. In future, Jesus will be found on that path we may characterize with the words, “Through a spiritual knowledge of Christ to an historical knowledge of Jesus.”

These lectures dealing with the nature of eurhythmy are given in response to a request from Frau Dr. Steiner, who believes it to be necessary, in order to lay the foundation of an exact eurhythmic tradition, to recapitulate in the first place all that has been given in the domain of speech-eurhythmy at different times to different people. To this repetition fresh material will be added in order to widen the field of eurhythmic expression. Such material will, however, not be set apart in separate chapters, but will be given in connection with each individual point as this comes under discussion.

I shall endeavour to deal with eurhythmy from its various aspects; not only from the artistic side which naturally calls for our first consideration here, but also from the point of view of education and healing.

The first lecture will be in the nature of an introduction and this will be followed by a lecture dealing with the first elements of speech-eurhythmy. In every branch of eurhythmic activity it is necessary above all that the personality, the whole human being of the eurhythmist should be brought into play, so that eurhythmy may become an expression of life itself. This cannot he achieved unless one enters into the spirit of eurhythmy, feeling it actually as visible speech. As in the case of all artistic appreciation, it is quite possible for anyone to enjoy eurhythmy as a spectator, without having acquired any knowledge of its essential basis, just as it is quite unnecessary to have studied harmony or counterpoint to be able to appreciate music. For it is an accepted fact of human evolution that the healthily developed human being carries within him a natural appreciation and understanding of art.

Art must work through its own inherent power. Art must explain itself. Those, however, who are studying eurhythmy, whose duty it is in some way or another to bring eurhythmy before the world, must penetrate into the actual essence and nature of eurhythmy in just the same way as, let us say, the musician, the painter or the sculptor must enter into the nature of his own particular art. If we wish to enter into the true nature of eurhythmy we must perforce enter into the true nature of the human being. For eurhythmy, to a far greater extent than any other art, makes use of what lies in the nature of man himself. Take for example various other arts, arts which need instruments or tools for their expression. You find no instrument or tool so nearly akin to the human being as the instrument made use of by the eurhythmist. The art of mime and the art of dancing do indeed to some extent make use of the human being as a means of artistic expression. With the art of mime, however, that which is expressed through the mime itself is merely subordinate to the performance as a whole, for such a performance does not depend entirely upon the artistic, plastic use of the human being. In such a case this same human being is made use of in order to imitate something or other which is already represented in man here upon the earth.

Further, in the case of the art of mime, we find as a rule that the gestures are used mainly to emphasize and render clearer something which is made use of by man in everyday life; that is to say, mime emphasizes speech. In order to bring a more intimate note into speech, gesture is added. Thus we are here concerned with something which merely adds in some small measure to the scope of that which is already present in man on the physical plane.

In the art of dancing—if we may use the word ‘art’ in such a connection—we have to do with an outpouring of the emotions, of the will, into movements of the human body, whereby are only further developed those possibilities of movement inherent in the human being and already present elsewhere on the physical plane. In eurhythmy we have to do with something which can nowhere be found in the human being in ordinary physical life, but which must be through and through a creation out of the spiritual worlds. We have to do with something which makes use of the human being, which makes use of the human form and its possibilities of movement as a means of expression.

Now the question arises:—What is really expressed in eurhythmy?—This you will only understand when you begin to realize that eurhythmy is actually a visible speech. With regard to speech itself the following must be said. When we give form to speech by means of mime, the ordinary speech itself provides us with a picture, with an image; when, however, we give form to speech itself, to sound as such, we find that the latter contains within it no such image. Speech arises as a separate, independent product from out of the human being himself. Nowhere in Nature do we find that which reveals itself in speech, that which comes into being through speech.

For this reason eurhythmy must, in its very nature, be something which represents a primeval creation. Speech—let us take this as our starting point—speech appears as a production of the human larynx and of those organs of speech which are more or less connected with it. What is the nature of the larynx? This question must eventually be brought forward, for I have often shown how in eurhythmy the whole human being must become a sort of larynx. We must therefore put to ourselves the question: Of what significance is the larynx? Now if you look upon speech merely as a production of the larynx, you will gain no conception of what is really proceeding from it, of what is being fashioned within it. Here it would perhaps be well to remind ourselves of a remarkable tradition which to-day is little understood, and of which you find some indication when you take the beginning of St. John’s Gospel: ‘In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word’. The Word.—Of course that which we to-day imagine to be the Word is something which gives not the slightest sense to the opening sentences of this Gospel. Nevertheless they are continually quoted. People believe they can make something out of them. They do not, however, succeed. For it is an undeniable fact that the conception of a word as held by the man of to-day is often truly expressed by his saying something of this kind:—What is a name but mere sound and smoke, mist and vapour?—In a certain sense he values the word itself little in comparison with its underlying concept. He feels a certain superiority in thus being able to value the word little in comparison with the thought. When, therefore, one puts oneself in the position of the man of to-day, and considers his conception of a word, the beginning of St. John’s Gospel has indeed no meaning. For consider the Word?—we have so many words, which word? It can only be a definite, concrete word. And what is the nature of this Word? That is the question.

Now behind this tradition which is indicated in the beginning of this Gospel lies the fact that man once had an instinctive knowledge of the true nature of the Word. To-day, however, this knowledge has been lost. To primeval human understanding the idea, the conception, ‘the Word’ comprised the whole human being as an etheric creation.

All of you, as Anthroposophists, know what we mean by the etheric man. We have the physical man and we have the etheric man. Physical man, as he is described to-day by modern physiology and anatomy, consists, both outwardly and inwardly, of certain forms of which one is able to make diagrams. Here, however, one naturally does not take into consideration the fact that what one draws is only the very smallest part of the physical human being, for the physical body is at the same time fluidic; it consists also of air and warmth. These constituents are naturally not included when one is speaking of the human being in physiology and anatomy. Nevertheless it is possible to gain some idea of the nature of the physical body of man.

We have, however, the second member of the human being,—the etheric body. If we were to attempt to draw the etheric body something extraordinarily complicated would come to expression. For the etheric body can just as little be represented as something static as can lightning. It is impossible to paint lightning; for lightning is in continual movement, lightning is in continual flow. In portraying lightning one must attempt to show it in continual flow and movement. And the same holds good with the etheric body. The etheric body is in continual motion, in continual activity.

Now these movements, these gestures which are continually in movement,—of which the etheric body does not indeed consist, but out of which it continually arises and again passes away,—do we find them anywhere in the world, do we come up against them anywhere? Yes, we do. This was no secret to a primeval and intuitive knowledge. We have these movements,—and here, my dear friends, I must ask you to take what I am saying quite literally,—we have these movements in the sound formations which embody the content of speech.

Now review mentally all the sounds of speech to which your larynx gives form and utterance, inasmuch as this formative principle is applied to the entire range of articulate speech. Bear in mind all the component elements which issue from the larynx for the purpose of speech. You must realize that all these elements, proceeding as they do from the larynx, really form the component parts of that which is brought to outer expression in speech. You must realize that these sound-formations consist of definite movements, the origin of which lies in the structure and form of the larynx and its neighbouring organs. They proceed from the larynx.

But these movements do not of course appear simultaneously. We cannot utter all the sounds which make up the content of speech at the same moment. How then could we utter all that makes up the content of speech? We could do so,—paradoxical us this may sound it is nevertheless a fact,—we could do so if for once we were to utter one after the other all the possible sounds from a, b, c, down to z. Try to imagine this. Imagine that someone were to say the alphabet aloud, beginning with a, b and continuing as far as z, with only the necessary pauses for breathing. Every spoken sound describes a certain form in the air, which one does not see but the existence of which must be presupposed. It is possible, indeed, to think of these forms being retained, fixed by scientific means, without actually making a physical drawing of them.

When we utter any particular word aloud,—‘tree’ for example, or ‘sun’,—we produce a quite definite form in the air. If we were to say the whole alphabet aloud from a to z, we should produce a very complicated form. Let us put this question to ourselves:—What really would be the result if someone were actually to do this? It would have to take place within a certain time,—as you will learn in the course of these lectures. It would have to take place within a certain time, so that, on reaching z, the first sound would not have completely disintegrated, that is to say the a-sound must still retain its plastic form when we have reached the sound z. If it were actually possible in this creation of air-forms to pass from a to z in such a way that the a-sound remained when the z-sound were reached, thus creating in the air an image of the whole alphabet, what would be the result? What sort of form should we have made? We should have created the form of the human etheric body. In this way we should have reproduced the human etheric body. If you were to repeat the alphabet aloud from a to z—(one would have to do this in exactly the right way; the alphabetical order of sounds in general use to-day is no longer quite correct—but I am speaking now of the underlying principle)—the human etheric body would stand before you.

What then would really have taken place? The human etheric body is always present. Every man bears it within himself. What do you do therefore when you speak, when you say the alphabet aloud? You sink into the form of your own etheric body. What happens then, when we utter a single word, which of course does not consist of all the sounds? Let us picture to ourselves the human being as he stands before us. He consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. He speaks some word. He sinks his consciousness into his etheric body. He forms some part of the etheric body in the air as an image, in much the same way as you, standing before a physical body, might for instance copy the form of a hand, so that the form of the hand were made visible in the air. Now the etheric body does not consist of the same forms as those which make up the physical body, but in this case it is the forms of the etheric body which are impressed into the air. When we learn to understand this rightly, my dear friends, we gain an insight into the most wonderful metamorphosis of the human form, an insight into the evolution of man. For what is this etheric body? It is the vehicle of the forces of growth; it contains within it all those forces bound up with the processes of nourishment, and also those forces connected with the power of memory. All this is imparted to the airy formations when we speak.

The inner being of man, in so far as this is expressed in the etheric body, is impressed into the air when we speak. When we put sounds together, words arise. When we put together the whole alphabet from beginning to end, there arises a very complicated word. This word contains every possibility of word-formation. It also contains at the same time the human being in his etheric nature. Before man appeared on the earth as a physical being he already existed as an etheric being. For the etheric man underlies the physical man. How then may the etheric man be described? The etheric man is the Word which contains within it the entire alphabet.

Thus when we are able to speak of the formation of this primeval Word, which existed from the beginning before physical man came into being, we find that that which arises in connection with speech may indeed be called a birth,—a birth of the whole etheric man when the alphabet is spoken aloud. Otherwise, in the single words, it is a partial birth, a birth of fragments, of parts of the human being. In every single word as it is uttered there lies something of the being of man. Let us take the word ‘tree’ for instance,—what does it mean when we say the word ‘tree’?

When we say the word ‘tree’ it means that we describe the tree in some such way as this. We say: That which stands there in the outer world, to which we give the name ‘tree’ is a part of ourselves, a part of our own etheric being. Everything in the world is a part of ourselves; nothing exists which cannot he expressed through the being of man. Just as the human being when he gives utterance to the whole alphabet really gives utterance to himself, and consequently to the whole universe, so, when uttering single words, which represent fragments of the Collective Word, of the alphabet, he gives expression to something which is a part of the universe. The entire universe is expressed when the whole alphabet is repeated from beginning to end. Parts of the universe are expressed in the single words.

There is one thing, however, about which we must be quite clear when we think over all that lies behind sound as such. Behind sound as such there lies everything that is comprised in the inner being of man. The activity manifested by the etheric body is representative of inner experiences of the soul in the nature of feeling. We must now find our way to these feelings themselves which are experienced in the human soul.

Let us take the sound a as a beginning.¹ To-day one learns to utter the sound a when one is in that unconscious dreamy condition in which one lives as a very small child. This experience is later submerged when the child suffers harm at school as a result of receiving wrong teaching in sound and language. When one learns to speak as a child there is really present something of the great mystery of speech. It remains, however, in a state of dreamy unconsciousness.

When we utter the sound a we feel, if our instinct is at all healthy, that this sound really proceeds from our inmost being when we are in a state of wonder and amazement.

 German English a, ah (as in father) e, a (as in say) i, ee (as in feet) ei, i (as in light) au, ow (as in how) eu, oi (as in joy 

Now this wonder is of course again only a part of the human being. Man is no abstraction. At every waking moment of his life he is something or other. One can of course allow oneself to become sluggish or stupefied, in which case one cannot be said to be anything very definite. But the human being must always be something, even when he reduces himself to a state of torpor; at every minute of the day he must be something or other. Now he is filled with wonder, now with fear, or again, let us say, with aggressive activity. The human being is no abstraction; every second he must be something definite. Thus there are times when man is a being of wonder, a being filled with amazement. The processes at work in the etheric body when man experiences wonder are imprinted into the air with the help of the larynx when he utters the sound a. When man utters the sound a he sends forth out of himself a part of his own being, namely the quality of wonder. This he imprints into the air.

We know that when a physical man appears upon the earth, he appears,—if he is born in accordance with the ordinary possibilities of development,—as a complete human being. This complete human being comes forth from the womb of the mother. He is born as physical man with a physical form. If all the sounds of the alphabet were uttered from a to z there would arise an etheric man, only this etheric man would be imprinted into the air, born from out of the human larynx and its neighbouring organs.

In the same way, when the child is brought into the world, when the child first sees the light, we must say: From out of the womb and its neighbouring organs there has arisen a physical man.

But the larynx differs from the womb of the mother in that it is in a continual state of creation. So that in a single word fragments of the human being arise; and indeed, if one were to bring together all the words of a language (which even in the case of a poet of such rich vocabulary as Shakespeare never actually occurs) the entire etheric man as an air-form would be produced by means of the creative larynx, but it would be a succession of births, a continuous becoming. It would be a birth continually taking place during the process of speech. Speech is always the bringing to birth of parts of the etheric man.

Again the physical larynx is only the external sheath of that most wonderful organ which is present in the etheric body, and which is, as it were, the womb of the Word. And here again we are confronted with a wonderful metamorphosis. Everything which is present in the human being is a metamorphosis of certain fundamental forms. The etheric larynx and its sheath, the physical larynx, are a metamorphosis of the uterus. In speech we have to do with the creation of man, with the creation of man as an etheric being.

This mystery of speech, my dear friends, is indicated by the connection which we find between the vocal and sexual functions, a connection clearly illustrated in the breaking of the male voice.

We have therefore to do with a creative activity which, welling up from the depths of cosmic life, flows outwards through the medium of speech. We see revealed in a fluctuating, ever-changing form that which otherwise withdraws itself into the mysterious depths of the human organization at the moment of physical birth. Thus we gain something which is essential for us in our artistic creative activity. We gain respect, reverence, for that creative element into which we, as artists, are placed. Theoretical discussion is useless in the realm of art. We cannot do with it; it merely leads us into abstraction. In art we need something which places us with our whole human being into the cosmic being. And how could we penetrate more deeply into the cosmic being than by becoming conscious of the relation existing between speech and the genesis of man. Every time that a man speaks he produces out of himself some part of that which existed in primeval times, when the human being was created out of cosmic depths, out of the etheric forces, and received form as a being of air before he acquired fluidic form, and, later still, his solid physical form. Every time we speak we transpose ourselves into the cosmic evolution of man as it was in primeval ages.

Let us take an example. Let us go back once more to the sound a, this sound which calls up within us the human being in a state of wonder. We must realize that every time the sound a appears in language there lies behind it the element of wonder. Let us take the word Wasser (water), or the word Pfahl (post), any word you like in which the sound a occurs. In every instance, when you lay stress on the sound a in speech, there lies in the background a feeling of wonder; the human being filled with wonder is brought to expression in this way by means of speech. There was a time when this was known. It was, for example, known to the Hebraic people. For what really lay behind the a, the Aleph, in the Hebrew language? What was the Aleph? It was wonder as manifested in the human being.

Now I should like to remind you of something which could lead you to an understanding of all that is really indicated by the sound a, all that the sound a really signifies. In ancient Greece there was a saying: Philosophy begins with wonder. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, the love of knowledge, begins with wonder.—Had one spoken absolutely organically, really in accordance with primeval understanding, with primeval instinctive—clairvoyant understanding, one might equally well have said:—Philosophy begins with a.—To a primeval humanity this would have meant exactly the same thing.—Philosophy, love of wisdom begins with a.

But what is it that one is really investigating when one studies philosophy? When all is said and done one is really investigating man. Philosophy strives after self-knowledge, and this self-observation begins with the sound a. It is, however, at the same time a most profound mystery, for it requires great effort, great activity, to attain to such knowledge of the human being. When man approaches his own being and sees how it is formed out of body, soul and spirit, when he looks upon his own being in its entirety, then he is confronted by something before which he may say a with the deepest wonder. For this reason a corresponds to man in a state of wonder, to man filled with wonder at his own true being, that is to say, man looked at from the highest, most ideal aspect.

The realization that man, as he stands before us as a physical being, is but a part of the complete human being, and that we only have the real man before us when we perceive the full measure of the divinity within him,—this realization, this wonder called up in us by a contemplation of our own being, was called by a primeval humanity: A. A corresponds to man in his highest perfection. Thus man strives towards the a, and in the sound a we are expressing something which is felt in the depths of the human soul. Let us pass over from a to b, in order to give at least some indication of that which might lead to an understanding of this primeval word, which is made up of the entire alphabet. Let us pass over to b. In b we have a so-called consonant; in a we have to do with a vowel sound. You will feel, if you pronounce a vowel sound, that you are giving expression to something coming from the inmost depths of your own being. Every vowel, as we have already seen in the case of the vowel a, is bound up with an experience of the soul. In every case where the sound a makes its appearance, we have the feeling of wonder. In every case where an e makes its appearance we have an experience which can be expressed somewhat as follows:—I become aware that something has been done to me.

Just think for a moment what creatures of abstraction we have become, how withered and lifeless our nature. Just as an apple or a plum may shrivel up, so have we become shrivelled up as regards our experience of language. Let us consider how, in speaking, when we pronounce the sound a and proceed from this sound to the sound e (which constantly happens) we have no idea that we are passing over from the feeling of wonder to the feeling: I become aware that something has been done to me.

Let us now enter into the feeling of the i-sound. With i we have, as it were, the feeling that we have been curious about something and that our curiosity has been satisfied. A wonderful and far from simple experience lies at the back of every vowel sound. When we allow the five vowel sounds to work upon us we receive the impression of man in his primeval strength and vigour. Man is, as it were, born again in his true dignity when he allows these five sounds consciously to work upon him, that is to say when he allows these sounds to proceed out of his inmost being in full consciousness. Therefore it is true to say:—We have become quite shrivelled up and think only of the meaning of a word, utterly disregarding the experience behind it. We think only of the meaning. The word ‘water’ for instance means some particular thing and so on. We have become utterly shrivelled up.

The consonants are quite different in their nature from the vowels. With the consonants we do not feel that the sounds arise from our inmost experience, but we feel that they are images of that which is outside our own being.

Let us suppose that I am filled with wonder, that I say a. I cannot make an outer image of the sound a, I must give utterance to it. If, however, I would give expression to something which is round in its form, like this table, for example, what must I do if I do not wish to express it in words? I must imitate it, I must copy its form, (corresponding gesture). If I would describe a nose without speaking, without actually saying the word ‘nose’ but still wishing to make myself understood, I can, as it were, copy its form, (corresponding gesture). And it is just the same in the forming of the consonants. In the consonants we have an imitation of that which exists in the external world. They are always an imitation of external forms. But we express these forms by constructing them in the air, producing them by means of the larynx and its neighbouring organs, the palate, for example. With the help of these organs we create a form which imitates, copies something which exists outside ourselves. This is even carried into the actual form of the letters, but of this we shall speak later.

When we form a b (it is, by the way, impossible to pronounce this sound without the addition of some vowel) when we form a b it is the imitation of something in the external world. If we were able to hold fast the air-form which is created by b (we must, of course, speak the sound aloud) we should have something in the nature of a shelter. A protecting, sheltering form would be produced. Something would be produced which might be likened to a hut or a house. B is an imitation of a house. Thus when we begin with a, b, we have, as it were, the human being in his perfection, and the human being in his house: a, b.

And so, if we were to go through the whole alphabet, we should, in the consecutive sounds, unfold the mystery of man. We should express the human being as he lives in the cosmos, the human being in his house, his physical sheath. If we were to pass from a, b to c, d, and so on, every sound would tell us something about the human being. And on reaching z we should have pictured in sound the whole of human wisdom, for this is contained in the etheric body of man.

We see from this that something of the very greatest significance takes place in speech. In speech the human being himself is fashioned. And one can indeed give a fairly complete picture of the soul life of man when one brings to expression his most fundamental feelings. I, O, A. These sounds represent practically the whole content of the human soul in its aspect of feeling: I, O, A.

Let us for a moment consider all that proceeds from the human being when he speaks. Let us suppose that somebody repeats the alphabet; when this is done the entire etheric body of man comes into being, proceeding from the larynx, as from the womb. The etheric body is brought into being. When we look at the physical body of man we know that it has come forth from the organism of the mother, it has come forth from a metamorphosis of the larynx, that is to say, from the mother’s womb.

But now let us picture to ourselves the complete human being as he comes into the world with all his different attributes; for that which is brought forth from the organism of the mother cannot remain unchanged. If the human being were to remain unchanged through his whole life, he could not be said to be a man in the true sense of the word; there must be a continual development. The human being at the age of thirty-five, let us say, has gained more from the universal, cosmic being than was his as a child. We may picture the whole human being in some such way as this. Just as speech proceeds from out of the larynx, the child from out of the womb, so the fully developed human being at about the age of thirty-five is born, as it were, from out of the cosmos in the same way in which the words which we speak are spoken out of us. Thus we have the form of man, the complete human form, as a spoken word.

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The human form stands before us,—that most wonderful of earthly forms,—the human form stands before us and we ask the divine spiritual powers which have existed from the beginning: How then did you create man? Did you create him in some such way as the spoken word is created when we speak? How did you create man? What really took place when you created man?—And if we were to receive an answer to our question from out of universal space, it would be some such answer as this: All around us there is movement, form, constantly changing and of infinite variety: such a form (a was here shown in eurhythmy), such a form (e was shown), such a form (i was shown)—all possibilities of form in movement proceed from out of the universe, every possibility of movement that we out of the nature of our being are able to conceive and to bring into connection with the human organization.

My dear friends, one can indeed say that these possibilities of movement are those which, becoming fixed, give man his physical form as it is when he reaches full maturity. What then would the gods do if they really wished to form man out of a lump of earth? The gods would make movements, and as a result of these movements, capable of giving form to the dust of the earth, the human form would eventually arise.

Now once more let us picture the eurhythmy movements for a, for b, for c, and so on. Let us imagine that the gods, out of their divine primeval activity were to make those eurhythmic movements which correspond to the sounds of the alphabet. Then, if these movements were impressed into physical matter, the human being would stand before us. This is what really lies behind eurhythmy. The human being as we see him is a completed form. But the form has been created out of movement. It has arisen from those primeval forms which were continually taking shape and again passing away. Movement does not proceed from quiescence; on the contrary, that which is in a state of rest originates in movement. In eurhythmy we are really going back to primordial movement.

What is it that my Creator, working out of primeval, cosmic being, does in me as man?

If you would give the answer to this question you must make the eurhythmic movements. God eurhythmetizes, and as the result of His eurhythmy there arises the form of man.

What I have said here about eurhythmy can indeed be said about any of the arts, for in some way or another every art springs from a divine origin. But in eurhythmy most especially, because it makes use of the human being as its instrument, one is able to penetrate most deeply into the connection existing between the human being and the cosmic being. For this reason one cannot fail to appreciate eurhythmy. For just suppose that one had no real conception of the nature of human beauty, as this is expressed in the outward human form, and then suppose that one had the opportunity of being shown how in the beginning, God created the beautiful human form out of movement, and one saw the repetition of those divine creative movements in the eurhythmic gestures, then one would receive the answer to the question: How did human beauty come into being?

Let us think of the child, the incomplete human being, who has not yet attained to his full manhood. How shall we help the gods, so that the physical form of the child shall be rightly furthered in its development? What shall we bring to the child in the way of movement? We must teach him eurythmy, for this is a continuation of divine movement, of the divine creation of man.

And when illness of some kind or another overtakes the human being, then the forms corresponding to his divine archetype receive injury; here, in the physical world, they become different. What shall we do then? We must go back to those divine movements; we must help the sick human being to make those movements for himself. This will work upon him in such a way that the harm his bodily form may have received will be remedied.

Thus we have to look upon eurhythmy as an art of healing, just as in ancient clairvoyant times it was known that certain sounds, uttered with a special intonation, reacted upon the health of man. But in those days one was shown how to affect the health by a more or less roundabout way, by means of the air, which worked back again into the etheric body. If one works more directly, if one makes the patient actually do the movements corresponding to the formation of his organs,—the point being, of course, that one knows what these movements really are,—(e.g. certain movements of the foot and leg correspond to certain formations right up in the head),—when one reproduces all this, then there arises this third aspect of eurhythmy, curative eurhythmy.

This introduction was necessary in order that all of you, as active eurhythmists, may gain a fundamental feeling and perception of what you are doing. You must not take eurhythmy as something which can be learned in the ordinary conventional way, but you must think of it as something which brings the human being nearer to the Divine than would otherwise be possible. The same applies indeed to all art. You must permeate yourselves through and through with this feeling. What then must be considered as an essential part of all eurhythmic teaching? The right atmosphere must enter into it, the feeling for the connection between man and the divine spiritual powers. This is essential if you would become eurhythmists in the true sense.

• 1. Owing to the fact that a number of German examples and quotations have had to be retained in the translation of these lectures, the German pronunciation of the vowel sounds has been consistently used throughout.

Note: The transcript of the four “faculty” lectures are deficient. It shows not only noticeable gaps; the author of the transcript is also not familiar with the topic of the lectures. He often made summaries in haste as far as he understood the lecturer. That is why some connections shifted. Although notices of other participants were used, the deficiencies of the text could not be essentially corrected except for some big misunderstandings.

If the theosophical movement has to really intervene in the whole modern culture, it cannot limit itself unilaterally to spread any doctrine, to communicate knowledge concerning this or that, but it has to deal with the most different cultural factors and elements in the present. Theosophy should be no mere doctrine, it should live. It should flow into our acting, feeling and thinking. Now it is in the nature of things that such a movement addressing the heart of the modern culture immediately intervenes where we deal with the leadership in the spiritual life, if it should be capable of surviving. Where else should we look for the leadership of the spiritual life today than in our universities? There really all those should co-operate who work at least if you look at the matter idealistically as bearers of our culture, of our whole spiritual life, who work in the service of truth and progress and in the service of the spiritual movement generally. They should collaborate with young people who prepare for the highest tasks of life.

This would be the big and significant influence that the universities must have on the whole cultural life, the significant influence which comes from them as something authoritative because one cannot deny it, although one may also struggle against any authority in our time: our universities work authoritatively. And it is right in certain respect, because those who have to teach our young people about the highest cultural problems have to be determinative of all questions of the human existence. Thus it is really logical if the whole nation looks at that which the members of the faculties say in any question. That's how it is. Nevertheless, in all our faculties one regards what the university lecturer says about a matter as authoritative.

Thus it seems to me natural that we as theosophists ask ourselves once: how must we position ourselves to the different branches of our university life? No criticism should be offered to our university institutions; this should not be an object of this talk. What will be discussed in this and the following talks should simply give a perspective how the theosophical movement if it is really capable of surviving, if it can really intervene in the impulses of the spiritual movement , can possibly have a fruitful effect on our university life.

A university has four faculties: the divinity (in Germany theological) faculty, the faculty of law, the medical faculty and the arts (in Germany: philosophical) faculty. Indeed, as well as the high educational system is today, we have to include still other colleges in the sense of our present way of thinking and approach to life as a continuation of the university, as it were, namely the colleges of technology, the art colleges etcetera. That will be discussed later in the talk about philosophy. We have to deal with that faculty which in the first times, in the midst of the Middle Ages acquired a leading position in the modern education. In this time, theology at the universities was the “queen of sciences.” Everything that was otherwise done formed a group round the theological scholarship.

The university had arisen from that which the Church had developed in the Middle Ages: from the monastic schools. The old schools had a kind of supplement for that which one needed as worldly knowledge; however, the central issue was theology. These teachers, priests and monks who had experienced the clerical education were active until the end of the Middle Ages. Theology was called the “queen of sciences.” Is it now not quite natural, if you consider the matter in the abstract, ideally to call theology the queen of sciences, and had it not to be this queen if it fulfilled its task in the widest sense of the word? In the centre of the world that stands certainly which we call the primal ground of the world, the divine, in so far as the human being can grasp it. Theology is nothing else than the teachings of this divine. All other must trace back to divine primal forces of existence. If theology wants really to be the teachings of the divine, you cannot imagine it as that it is the central sun of any wisdom and knowledge, and that from it the strength and the energy is emitted to all remaining sciences. In the Middle Ages, it still was in such a way. What the great medieval theologians had to say about the world basically got its light, its most significant strength from the so-called holy science, from theology.

If we want to get an idea of this thinking and of this philosophy of life in the Middle Ages, we can do it with a few words. Any medieval theologian considered the world as a big unity. The divine creativity was on top, at the summit. Below, the single forces and realms of nature existed, dispersed in the manifoldness of the world. What one knew about the forces and realms of nature was the object of the single sciences. What led the human spirit to the clarification of the loftiest questions, what should lighten what the single sciences could not recognise came from theology. Hence, one studied philosophy first. It encompassed all worldly sciences. Then one advanced to the science of theology. The medical faculty and that of law stood somewhat differently in the university life. We can easily conceive an idea how these faculties interrelate if we look at the matter in such a way: philosophy encompassed all sciences, and the divinity faculty considered and dealt with the big question: what is the primal ground, and which are the single phenomena of existence?

This existence proceeds in time. There is a development to perfection, and as human beings we are not only put into the world order, but we ourselves co-operate in the world order. On the one side, the philosophical and the theological faculties consider that which is, which was, and which will be, on the other side, the medical faculty and that of law consider the world in its emergence, the world how it has to be led from the imperfect to the perfect. The medical faculty addresses more the natural life in its imperfection and asks how it should be made better. The law school turns to the moral world and asks how it must be made better. The whole life of the Middle Ages was one single body, and something similar must certainly come again. Again the whole unity, the universitas has to become a living body that has the single faculties as the members of the common life. The modern university is more an aggregate, and the single faculties do not deal a lot with each other. In the Middle Ages, everybody who studied at the university had to acquire a philosophical basic education, that which one calls a general education today, although one has to admit that just those who leave the university today are characterised by the absence of general education.

This was the basis of everything. Also in Goethe's Faust one finds said: the collegium logicum first, then metaphysics. Nevertheless, it is also correct that somebody who generally wants to be introduced into the secrets of the world existence, into the big questions of culture, must have a thorough education in the different branches of knowledge at first. It is no progress that this studium fundamentale has completely disappeared from our university education. In a large part is that which one can know lifeless nature: physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, mathematics etcetera. Not before the student had been introduced into the teachings of thinking, into the laws of logic, into the basic principles of the world or into metaphysics, he could ascend to the other, higher faculties. For the other faculties were called the higher ones with some right. Then he could advance to theology.

Someone who should be taught about the deepest questions of existence had to have learnt something about the simple questions of existence. But also the other faculties presuppose such an educational background. The situation of law and medicine would be much better if such a general previous training were maintained thoroughly, because someone who wants to intervene in the jurisprudence must know how the laws of the human life are generally. It must be understood lively what can lead a human being to the good or to the bad. You must be grasped not only in such a way as you are grasped from the dead letter of law, but you must be grasped like from life, like from something with which you are intimately related. These human beings must have the circumference first because the human being is really a microcosm in which all laws are living. Hence, one has to know the physical laws above all. Thus the university would have to be, correctly thought, an organism of the whole human knowledge. However, the divinity faculty would have to stimulate any other knowledge. Theology, the teachings of the divine world order, cannot exist at all unless it is inserted to the smallest and biggest of our existence, unless one deepens everything into the divine world order.

But, how should anybody be able to say anything about the divine world order who knows nothing about the minerals, nothing about the plants, animals and human beings, about the origin of the earth, about the nature of our planetary system? God's revelation is everywhere, and there is nothing that does not express the voice of the divinity. The human being has to link everything that the human being has and is and acts to these loftiest questions which the theological science should treat.

Now we must ask ourselves: does the divinity faculty position itself in this way in life today? Does it work in such a way that its strength and energy can flow from it to all remaining life? I would like to give no criticism, but an objective portrayal of the relations if possible. In the last time, even theology is brought somewhat into discredit, even within the religious movement. You have maybe heard something of the name Kalthoff (Albert K., 1850–1906, Protestant theologian) who has written Zarathustra sermons. He says that the religion must not suffer from the letters of theology; we do not want theology, but religion. These are people who are able to find the world of religious world view from their immediate conviction.

Now we ask ourselves whether this view can persist whether it can be true that religion without theology, sermon without theology is possible. In the first times of Christianity and also in the Middle Ages, this was not the case. Also in the first centuries of modern times, it was not in such a way. Only today, a kind of conflict has happened between the immediate religious effectiveness and theology, which has apparently turned away somewhat from life. In the first times of the Christianity, somebody was basically a theologian who could see up to the highest summits of existence because of his wisdom and science. Theology was something living, was something that lived in the first Church Fathers, that animated such spirits like Clement of Alexandria, like Origenes, like Scotus Erigena and St. Augustine; it was theology that animated them. It was that which lived like lifeblood in them. If the words came on their lips, they did not need to confide any dogma, then they knew how to speak intensively to the hearts. They found the words which were got out of any heart. The sermon was permeated with soul and religious currents. But it would not have been in such a way unless inside of these personalities the view of the loftiest beings in the highest form had lived in which the human being can attain this.

Such dogmatism is impossible which discusses every word in the abstract that is spoken in the everyday life. But somebody who wants to be a teacher of the people has to have experienced the highest form of knowledge with wisdom. He must have the resignation, the renunciation of that which is immediate to him; he must strive and experience what introduces him into the highest form of knowledge in loneliness, in the cell, far from the hustle and bustle of the world where he can be alone with his God, with his thinking and his heart. He must have the possibility to look up at the spiritual heights of existence. Without any fanaticism, without any desire, even without any religious desire, but in purely spiritual devotion that is free of everything that also appears, otherwise, in the longing of the religions. The conversation with God and the divine world order takes place in this lonesome height, at the summit of the human thinking.

One has to develop, one has to have attained resignation, renunciation to lead this lofty soliloquy and to have it living in oneself and to let work it as lifeblood in the words which are the contents of the popular doctrines. Then we have found the right stage of theology and sermon, of science and life.

Someone who sits below feels that this flows out of depths that it is got down from high scientific heights of wisdom. Then it needs no external authority, then the word itself is authority by the strength which lives in the soul of the teacher, because it settles in the heart by this strength to work with the echo of the heart. One achieved the harmony between religion and theology, and at the same time one tactfully distinguished theology and religious instruction. But anybody who has not climbed up to the theological heights who is not informed about the deepest questions of the spiritual existence will not slip that in his words which should live in the words of the preacher as a result of the dialogue with the divine world order itself.

This was really the opinion that one had in the Christian world view about the relation between theology and sermon for centuries. A good sermon would be that if a preacher steps only then in front of the people, after he has occupied himself with the high teachings of the Trinity of God, of the divinity and of the announcement of the Logos in the world, of the high metaphysical significance of Christ's personality. One must have accepted all these teachings that are understandable only for someone who has dealt with them for many, many years. These teachings may establish the contents of philosophy and other sciences at first; one has to make his thinking ripe for this truth. Only then one can penetrate these heights of truth. To someone who has achieved this, who knows something about the high ideas of the Trinity, of the Logos the Bible verses become something in his mouth that wins another liveliness than it has at first without this preceding theological schooling. Then he freely uses the Bible verses, then he creates that current from him to the community within the Bible verses which causes an influence of the divine creativity in the hearts of the crowd. Then he not only interprets the Bible but he handles it. Then he speaks in such a way, as if he himself had participated in the writing of the great truths which are written in this ancient religious book. He looked into the bases from which the great truths of the Bible originated. He knows what those have felt who were once much more influenced by the spiritual world than he is, and what is expressed in the Bible verses as the divine world government and human order of salvation. He has not only the word that he has to comment and to interpret, but behind him the great powerful writers stand whose pupil, disciple and successor he is. He speaks out of their spirit and he himself puts their spirit, which they have put into it, into the writing now.

This was the basis of developing authority in this or that epoch. As an ideal the human being had it in mind, it was often carried out. However, our time has also brought about a big reversal here. Let us consider the big reversal once again, which took place from the Middle Ages to the modern times. What happened at that time? What made it possible that Copernicus, Galilei, Giordano Bruno could announce a new world view? This new movement became possible because the human being approached nature immediately that he himself wanted to see that he did not rest on old documents as in the Middle Ages, but went straight to the natural existence. It was different in the medieval science. There the basic sciences were not derived from an unbiased consideration of nature, but from that which the Greek philosopher Aristoteles had schemed. Aristoteles was the authority during the whole Middle Ages.

One taught referring to him. The lecturer of metaphysics and logic had his books. He interpreted them. Aristoteles was an authority.

This changed with the reversal from the Middle Ages to the modern times. Copernicus himself wanted to scheme what is given by the immediate view. Galilei shone on the world of the immediate existence. Kepler found the big world law according to which the planets orbit the sun.

That's how it was in the past centuries. One wanted to see independently. One also told in anecdotes what occurred to Galilei: there was a scholar who knew his Aristoteles. One said something to him that Galilei had said. He answered that this must be different: I must have a look at Aristoteles, because he said it differently, and, nevertheless, Aristoteles is right. The authority was more important to him than the immediate view. But the time was ripe, one wanted now to know something independently. This does not require that everybody is immediately able to acquire this view fairly quickly, but it only requires that people are there who are able to approach nature that they are equipped with the instruments and tools and with the methods, which are necessary to observe nature. Progress thereby became possible. One can interpret what Aristoteles wrote; but one cannot progress thereby. Somebody can progress only if he himself progresses if he himself sees the things.

The past four centuries applied this principle of self-knowledge to all external knowledge, to everything that spreads out before our senses. First in physics, then in chemistry, then in the science of life, then in the historical sciences.

Everything was included in this self-observation, in the external looking of the sensory world. One withdrew from the principle of authority. What has not been included in this principle of own knowledge was the view of the spiritually effective in the world, the immediate knowledge of that which is there not for the senses, but only for the mind. Hence, something appears during the last centuries, concerning this science and wisdom of the mind that one could once not speak of. Now we could go back to the oldest times. We want to do it, however, only to the first times of Christianity. There we have a science of the divine, then a great doctrine of the world origin which reaches down to our immediate sensuous surroundings. If you look at the great sages of former centuries, you can see everywhere how this way is taken from the highest point down to the lowest existence, so that no gap is between that which is said by the divine world order in theology and what we say about the sensory world. One had a comprehensive view of the origin of the planets and our earth. But one does no longer need to inform this today. However, someone who observes the development in the course of time can also accept that one goes beyond our wisdom. Time goes beyond the form of our science as we have gone beyond the former forms.

What existed at that time was a uniform world edifice that stood before the soul, and the basis of the soul was the spirit. One saw the primal ground of existence in the spirit. That comes from the spirit which is not spirit. The world is the reflection of the infinite spirit of God. And then that comes from the spirit of God which we find as higher spiritual beings in the different religious systems and also that which is the most powerful on this world: the human being, then the animals, the plants and the minerals. One had a uniform world view of the origin of a solar system up to the formation of the mineral. The atom was chained together with God himself although one never dared to recognise God himself. One sought the divine in the world. The spiritual was its expression. Those who wanted to know something about the highest heights of existence strove for educating themselves in such a way that they could recognise the sensory world. They wanted to conceive ideas of that which is above the sensory world, of the spiritual world order. They could ascend from the simple sensory knowledge to the comprehensive knowledge of the spiritual that way. If we look at the ancient cosmologies, we find no interruption between the teachings of theology and what the single worldly sciences say about the things of our existence. Link is attached to link continuously. One had started from the core of spirit up to the circumference of our earthly existence.

One took another path in modern times. One simply directed the senses and what is regarded to be arms of the senses, as strengthening instruments of sense-perception, to the world. In brilliant, tremendous way one developed the world view that teaches us something about the external sensory world. Everything is not yet explained, but one can get an idea already today how this science of the sensuous things advances. However, something was thereby interrupted, namely the immediate connection between the world science and the divine science.

The picture of the world origin, of cosmology which is the most usual even today even if it is disputed, is found in the so-called Kant-Laplace world view. In order to orient ourselves, we want to say a few words about it to see then what signifies such a Kant-Laplace world view to us. It says: once there was a big world nebula, rather thin. If we could sit on chairs in space and watch, and if it were somewhat visible for finer eyes, this world nebula is organised perhaps because it cooled down. It establishes a centre in itself, rotates, pushes off rings which form to planets, and in this way you know this hypothesis such a solar system forms, which has the sun as a spring of life and heat. However, what is developed that way must find an end in such a way, as it develops. Kant and others admit that again new worlds form et etcetera.

What is now such a world view that the modern researcher tries to compose from the scientific experiences of physics, chemistry etcetera? This is something that would have to be sense-perceptible in all stages. Now try once to really imagine this world view. What is absent in it? The spirit is absent. It is a material process, a process which can happen in microcosm with an oil drop in water at which you can look with your eyes. The process of world origin is made sense-perceptible. The spirit was not involved in the origin of such a solar system. Hence, it is not surprising that the question is raised: how does life originate, and how does the spirit originate? Because one originally imagined the lifeless matter only which moves according to its own principles.

What one has not experienced one can get out impossibly of the concepts. One can only get out what has been put in. If one imagines a world system which is empty which is devoid of spirit, then it must remain inconceivable how spirit and life can exist in this world. The question can never be answered out of the Kant-Laplace theory how life and spirit can originate. The science of modern times is just a sensuous science. Hence, it has taken up that part of the world in its theory of world origin which is a section of the whole world. Your body represents you in your entirety as little as matter is the whole world.

Just as it is true that life, feelings, thoughts, impulses are in your body which one cannot see if one looks at your body with sensuous eyes, it is true that the spirit is also in the world. However, it is also true that the Kant-Laplace theory shows the body only. As little as the anatomist who shows the structure of the human body is able to say how a thought can arise from the blood and the nerves if he thinks only materially, just as little anybody who thinks the world system according to Kant-Laplace can get to the spirit one day. As little as somebody who is blind and cannot see the light can say anything about our sensory world, as little as anybody who does not have the immediate view of the spirit can explain that something spiritual exists besides the physical body. The modern science lacks in the view of the spiritual. The progress is based on its one-sidedness, just in this way the human being can reach the unilaterally highest height. Because science confines itself to the sensuous, it reaches its high development. However, it becomes an oppressive authority, because this science has founded ways of thinking. These are stronger than all theories, stronger than even all dogmas.

One gets used to searching science in the sensuous, and thereby the fact creeps into the ways of thinking of the modern human being since four centuries that the sensuous became the only real to him. Hence, one generally believes that the sensory world is the only real one. Something that is justified as a theory became way of thinking, and someone who looks deeper into this thinking knows which infinitely suggestive strength such an active way of thinking has on the human beings for centuries. It worked on all circles. Like a human being who is exposed to suggestion, the whole modern educated humanity is exposed to the suggestion that only that which one perceives with the senses, can grasp with the hands is the only real. Humanity has given up from regarding the spirit as something real. But this has nothing to do with a theory, but only with the accustomed forms of thinking. These sit much, much deeper than any understanding. One can prove this by epistemology and philosophy which are not sufficiently developed in us, unfortunately. The whole modern science is influenced by these modern ways of thinking. With somebody who speaks today about the origin of the animals and about the origin of the world this way of thinking sits in the background, and he can't help giving such a colouring to his words and concepts that they make the powerful impression by themselves that it is real.

It is different with that which one merely thinks. One has to advance so far today to recognise the deeper reality in that which one only thinks. One has to become capable to behold the spirit. This is not to be attained with books and talks, not with theories and new dogmas, but with intimate self-education, which intervenes in the customs of the soul of the modern human being. The human being has to recognise first that it is not absolutely necessary to regard the sensuous-real as the only real, but he has to realise that he exercises something that was stimulated for centuries. One thinks this way. It flows into the original feeling of the human beings. These are not aware that they have illusions because they got them from the beginning. This impression works too strong, even on an idealist, so that he emphasises and lets flow the things into the souls of his fellow men that only the sensuous-real is the real.

With this transformation of the ways of thinking the development of theology took place. What is theology? It is the science of the divine as it is handed down since millenniums. It scoops from the Bible as the science of the Middle Ages scooped from Aristoteles. But it is just the teaching of theology that no revelation continues forever, but that the world and the words of the old revelations change. In the doctrine of the Catholic Church, the immediate spiritual life does no longer flow; it depends there on whether there are persons from who the spiritual life can still flow. If we grasp it this way, we have to say that also theology is subject to the materialistic thinking.

Once one did not understand the Six-day Work in such a way, as if it had happened purely materially in six days. One did not have the odd idea that one has not to study Christ to understand Him, but one has only pointed to the fact that the Logos was incarnated once in the human being Jesus. Unless one advanced so far, one did not arrogate a judgement to recognise what lived there from 1 to 33 A.D. Today one sees in Jesus – he is also called the “simple man from Nazareth” only a man like anyone, only nobler and more idealised. Theology has also become materialistic. These are the essentials that the theological world view does no longer look up to the summits of spirit, but wants to understand purely rationally, materialistically what happened historically. Nobody can understand the life work of Christ who looks at it only as history who only wants to know how that looked and spoke who strolled in Palestine from 1 up to 33 A.D. And nobody can make a claim to say that in him anything else did not live than in other human beings. Or is anybody able to argue away what he says: to me all power is given in heaven and on earth? But one wants to understand the matters historically today.

What was spoken in a speech on the 31st May, 1904 with a pastoral conference in Alsace-Lorraine is very typical. There a professor Lobstein from Strassburg held a talk Truth and Poetry in our Religion; a speech which is deeply likeable and shows how the materialistic theologian wants to find the way with the external research. Someone who approaches the Gospels with materialistic ways of thinking tries to understand first of all, when they were written. There he can rely only on the external documents, on that which the external history delivers as material. However, what was handed down comes basically from a much later time than it is normally assumed. If one takes the external word, one gets around to saying: the Gospels are inconsistent with each another. One has put together the three Synoptics who can be reconciled; one has to consider the St. John's Gospel separately. Hence, it has become for many something like a poem. One has also examined the epistles of Paul and has found that only this or that part is authentic. These facts constituted the basis of the religious research.

Hence, the religious history or dogma history became the most important science. Not the experience of the dogmatic truth is important today, but the religious history, the external representation of the events at that time. One wants to investigate this. However, it should not depend on this at all. This may be important to a materialistic history. but it is not theology. Theology does not have to investigate, when the dogma of Trinity originated, when it was pronounced first or was written down, but what it means, what it announces to us, what it may offer as living, as fertile to the inner life.

Thus it has come that one talks as a professor of theology about truth and poetry in our religion. One has found that there are contradictions in the writings. One has shown that some matters do not agree with the natural sciences; these are the miracles. One does not try to understand them, but one simply says that they are not possible. Thus one got around to introducing the concept of poetry in the Holy Scripture. One says that it does not lose any value, but that the story is a kind of myth or poetry. One must not be under the illusion that everything is fact, but one must come to recognise that our Holy Scripture is composed of poetry and truth.

This is based on a lack of knowledge about the nature of poetry. Poetry is something else than what the human beings imagine as poetry today. Poetry arose from the spirit. Poetry itself has a religious origin. Before there was poetry, there were already events like the Greek dramas to which the Greeks pilgrimaged like to the Eleusinian mysteries. This is the original drama. If it was practised, it was science for the Greeks, but also spiritual reality at the same time. It was beauty and art at the same time, however, also religious edification. Poetry was nothing else than the external form which should express truth of the higher plane, not only symbolically, but really. This forms the basis of every true poetry. Therefore, Goethe says: poetry is not art, but an interpretation of the secret physical principles that would never have become obvious without it. That is why Goethe calls only someone “poet” who is anxious to recognise truth and to express it in beauty. Truth, beauty and goodness are the forms to express the divine.

Hence, we cannot speak about poetry and truth in religion. Our time does no longer have correct concepts of poetry. It does not know how poetry streams from the spring of truth. Hence, every word wins something from it. We have to get again to the correct concept of poetry. We have to understand what poetry was originally and apply it to that which theology has to investigate. We probably say: ye shall know them by their fruits. Where to has theology got ? In a book which made a great stir in the last time, and which the people have accepted because a modern theologian has written it I mean What is Christianity? (1901) by Harnack (Adolf H.,1851–1930, Protestant theologian) there is a place, and this place reads: “the Easter message tells of the miraculous event in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea that, nevertheless, no eye has seen, of the empty grave into which some women and disciples looked, of the phenomena of the transfigured Lord glorified so much that his followers could not recognise him immediately , then also of speeches and actions of the risen Christ; the reports became more and more complete and confident. However, the faith in Easter is the conviction of the victory of the crucified over death, of God's strength and justice and of the life of that who is the first-born among many brothers. As to St. Paul, the basis of his faith in Easter was the certainty that “the second Adam” had come from heaven, and the experience that God revealed his son as a living one to him on the way to Damascus.”

The theosophical world view tries to lead the human beings upwards to understand this great mystery. The theologian says: Today we do no longer know what happened, actually, in the Garden of Gethsemane. We also do not know the quality of the messages about the events that the disciples deliver to us. We also do not know how to estimate the value of the words about the risen Christ in the epistles of Paul. We cannot cope with it. But one thing is certain: the faith in the risen Saviour started from these events, and we want to keep to the faith and do not care about its basis. You find a concept in the modern dogmatism that is strange for someone who looks for reasons of truth. One says: one cannot explain it metaphysically. No contradiction is possible, but also no explanation. There remains only the third, the religious truth.

In Trier, they once put up the Holy Robe of Jesus in the belief that the robe can work miracles. This belief has disappeared, because every belief can be held only by the fact that it is confirmed by experience. However, there remains the fact that some have experienced this; there remains the subjective religious experience.

Those who say this are allegedly no materialists. In their theory, they are not, but in their ways of thinking, in the way as they want to investigate the spiritual. This is the basis of the spiritual life of our idealists and spiritists. They all have accepted the materialistic ways of thinking. Also those are materialists who want to sit together in a meeting room and want to look at materialised ghosts. Spiritism has become possible because of our materialistic ways of thinking. Today, one visits the spirit materialistically. All idealistic theories are of no avail, as long as the knowledge of the spirit remains a mere theory, as long as it does not become life.

This requires a renewal, a renaissance of theology. It is necessary that not only faith exists, but that the immediate intuition flows in it with those who have to announce the word of the divine world order. The theosophical world view also wants to lead from the belief in the documents, in books and stories to an observation of the spirit by self-education. The same way which our science has taken shall be taken in the spiritual life, in the spiritual wisdom. We have to arrive at the experience of the spiritual again. Science, even wisdom, decides nothing here. Not by logic, not by contemplation you can investigate anything. The logic of your soul invents a sensuous world system. However, spiritual experience fills our understanding with real contents. It is the higher spiritual experience that has to fill our concepts with spiritual contents. That is why a renaissance of theology takes place only if one understands the word of the apostle Paul: all wisdom of the human beings is not able to understand the divine wisdom. Science itself is not able to do it. Just as little the external life can grasp this spiritual world. Any reflection cannot lead to the spirit; as little as anybody who sits on a distant island finds great physical truths without instruments and without scientific methods one day.

To the human beings something must occur that goes beyond wisdom that leads to the immediate life. As well as our eyes and ears inform us about the sensuous reality, we must experience the spiritual reality directly. Then our wisdom can reach it. Paul did never say: wisdom is the precondition to reach the divine. Not before we have found the whole world wisdom, we are able again to bring together the whole. Not before we have a spiritual system of world evolution again as we have a materialistic one on the other side we must not have the old faith, but behold, here and there , then the sensuous and the spiritual unite in a chain, and one will be able to descend again from the spirit to the teachings of the sensuous science.

The theosophical world view wants to bring that. It does not want to be theology, not a bookish knowledge and also not the interpretation of any book, but it wants experience of the spiritual life, it wants to give communications of the experiences of this spiritual life. The same spiritual strength also speaks to us today that once spoke with the announcement of the religious systems. It has to be the task of that who wants to teach something of the divine world order that he looks for the rise where he can speak again lonely in the heart with the spiritual heart of the world. Then the reversal takes place in our faculty which took place from the Middle Ages to the modern times in the fields of the external natural sciences. Then it occurs that if anybody announces anything of the spirit, and someone faces him with the words: however, one reads that differently in the scriptures, he eventually convinces him or not. Perhaps, he also says to him: however, I believe more in the scriptures than in that which quite a few people may tell about the immediate experience. But the course of the spiritual life cannot be impeded. May there be many inhibitions, may those be ever so reluctant who work for theology in the sense of the mentioned medieval follower of Aristotle today, the reversal which must take place here cannot be impeded. As knowledge has risen from faith up to watching, we also ascend from faith to the watching in the spiritual realm, and behold in theosophy. Then there is no belief in letters, no theology, then there will be lively life. The spirit of life will let those participate who can hear it. The word will forge ahead and find the popular expression. The spirit speaks of the spirit. Life will be there, and theology will be the soul of this religious life.

Theosophy has this vocation concerning the divinity faculty. If theosophy represents a movement that wants to be capable of surviving, that can make life and lifeblood flow into the letters of the scholarship, then we have a certain mission. Who understands the matter in such a way does not regard us as adversaries of those who have to announce the word. If the theologians seriously dealt with the intentions of the theosophical movement, if they got involved in our intentions, they would see something in theosophy that could inspire and animate them. Not fragmentation, but the deepest peace could be between the theologically and theosophically striving human beings. One will recognise this in the course of time. One will overcome the prejudices against the theosophical movement and understand how true it is what Goethe said:

Who has science and art,
Has religion too;
Who doesn't have both,
Shall have religion.

Theosophy does not fight against any religion in any way. Somebody is a right theosophist who wishes that wisdom may flow into those who are appointed to speak to humanity, so that it should not be necessary that there are theosophists who tell something about the immediate religious view. Theosophy can welcome the day with pleasure when one speaks of wisdom in the sites from which religion should be announced. If the theologians announce the right religion that way, one does no longer need theosophy.

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

In the festival of Christmas we have something given to us that directs the thoughts of all circles of Christian people straight to the very deepest problems of the evolution of man upon earth. Regard the events of history from whatever aspect you will, examine them and try to arrive at an understanding of evolution, search how you will for the meaning of man's evolution on earth,—in all history you will find no thought that has such power to lift the soul to the contemplation of the whole becoming of man as the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha, as the thought that is contained in the Christian festival.

If we look back to the beginning of man's evolution upon earth, and then follow it up through the thousands of years that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, we shall find through that time that, no matter how great and grand the achievements of the peoples in the various nations, all these achievements constituted in reality a kind of preparation—they were a preparatory stage for that which took place for the sake of mankind at the Mystery of Golgotha. Again, if we study what has happened since the Mystery of Golgotha, there too we shall find we can only understand it when we remember that the Christ who went through the Mystery of Golgotha has taken active part in the evolution of man ever since.

Many things in human evolution may at first appear incomprehensible; but if we investigate them without narrow-mindedness or prejudice—for instance, prejudices of the kind which believe that unknown divinities come to man's help just where he considers that help is needed, without his having himself to move a finger,—if we leave aside such views, we shall find that even the most distressing events in the course of the world's history can show us how the evolution of the earth has acquired significance and meaning through the fact that Christ has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. It is good if we study the Mystery of Golgotha—the Christmas Mystery is contained in it—from points of view which can reveal, as it were, the meaning of the entire evolution of man. We know the intimate connection between what takes place in the ethical-moral sphere of man's evolution and what takes place in nature, and a certain understanding of this link between life in nature and the world's moral order enables us to approach also another relationship which we have been contemplating for many years—namely, the relationship of the Christ to that Being whose outer reflection appears in the sun. The followers and representatives of the Christian impulse were not always so hostile as they often are today toward the acknowledgment of this relationship between the Sun-Mystery and the Christ-Mystery. Dionysius, the Areopagite, who has often been mentioned here, calls the sun God's monument, and in Augustine we continually find allusions—even in Scholasticism we find such allusions—referring to the fact that the outwardly visible stars and their movements are images of the divine-spiritual existence of the world. And we must grasp the Christmas Mystery in a far wider connection than is usually done, if we would grasp just that which concerns us most of all in view of the important tasks of the present age. I should like to remind you of something of which I have spoken repeatedly in the course of many years. I have told you how we look back upon the first post-Atlantean age, filled with the deeds and experiences of the ancient Indian nation; how we look back upon the ancient Persian epoch of post-Atlantean humanity; then upon the Egyptian-Chaldean, and upon the Greco-Latin, and at last come to the fifth epoch of the post-Atlantean humanity, our own. Our epoch will be followed by the sixth and by the seventh. And I have drawn your attention to the fact that the Greco-Latin, the fourth epoch of post-Atlantean humanity, stands, as it were, in the centre, and that there are certain connections—you can read of this in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind—between the third and the fifth epochs, that is between the Egyptian—Chaldean epoch and our own—and that there is also a certain connection between the ancient Persian epoch and the sixth, and between the ancient Indian and the seventh epoch of post-Atlantean humanity. Certain things repeat themselves in a special way in each of these epochs of life.

Once I pointed out that the great Kepler, the successor of Copernicus, had a feeling that his solar and planetary system repeated—of course in a way suited to the fifth post-Atlantean age—what was contained in the world-picture of the Egyptian Mysteries. Kepler expressed this in a certain connection very radically when he said that he had borrowed the vessels of the ancient Egyptian teachers of wisdom and carried them over into our modern times. Today, however, we will consider something which had a central place in the cults performed by the Egyptian Mystery-priests—the Isis-Mysteries. In order to call up before our minds the spiritual connection between the Isis-Mystery and that which lives in Christianity, we need only cast our eyes upon Raphael's famous picture of the Sistine Madonna. The Virgin is holding the child Jesus, and behind her are the clouds, which are really children's faces. We can imagine that the child Jesus has come down to the Virgin from the clouds, through a condensation, as it were, of the thin cloud-substance. But this picture which has arisen out of an entirely Christian spirit is, after all, a kind of repetition of what was revered in the Egyptian Isis-Mysteries, which portrayed Isis holding the child Horus. The theme of this earlier picture is entirely in keeping with that of Raphael's picture. Of course we must not be tempted to interpret this in the superficial way in which it has been done by many people since the 18th century and throughout the 19th century right up to our own days—namely, to consider the story of Christ Jesus and all that belongs to it merely as a metamorphosis, a transformation, of ancient pagan Mysteries. From my book Christianity as Mystical Fact you already know how these things must be considered, but in the sense in which it is explained there we can point to a spiritual relationship between that which arises in Christianity and the old pagan Mysteries.

This Isis-Mystery has as its chief content the death of Osiris and the search of Isis for the dead Osiris. We know that Osiris, the representative of the Sun-Being, the representative of the spiritual sun, was killed by Typhon, who is none other than the Ahriman of the Egyptians. Ahriman kills Osiris, throws him into the Nile, and the Nile carries the body away. Isis, the spouse of Osiris, sets out on her quest and finds him in Asia. She brings him back to Egypt, where Ahriman, the enemy, cuts the body into twelve parts. Isis buries these twelve parts in various places, so that from now on they belong to the earth.

This can show us how profound was the connection between the heavenly and the earthly powers in the conception of Egyptian wisdom. Osiris is, on the one hand, the representative of the Sun-Powers. After having passed through death he is, in various places simultaneously, the force which matures everything that grows out of the earth. The ancient Egyptian sage is quick to imagine how the Powers which shine down to us from the Sun, enter the earth and become part of the earth, and how, as Sun-Powers buried in the earth, they hand over once more to man what matures out of the earth. The Egyptian myth is founded upon the story of Osiris—how he was killed, how his spouse Isis had to set out on her quest for him, how she brought him back to Egypt and he then became active in another form, from out of the earth. One of the Egyptian pyramids depicts the whole event in a most significant manner. The Egyptians not only wrote down in their own particular writing what they knew as the solution to the great cosmic secrets, they also expressed it in their architectural constructions. They built one of these pyramids with such mathematical precision, that its shadow disappeared in the spring equinox owing to the position of the sun—the shadow disappeared into the base of the pyramid and only reappeared in the autumn equinox. The Egyptians tried to express in this pyramid that the forces which used to shine down from the sun are now buried in the earth and stimulate the forces of the earth, so that the earth may produce the fruit which mankind needs.

This, then, is the idea we find present in the minds and hearts of the ancient Egyptians. On the other hand, they look up to the sun, they look up to the lofty Sun Being, and they honour Him. At the same time, however, they relate how this Sun Being has been lost in Osiris, and has been sought by Isis, and how the Being has been found again and is able hereafter to continue his activity in a new and changed way.

Many things which appeared in the Egyptian wisdom must be repeated in a different form during the fifth post-Atlantean age. We must learn more and more to contemplate, upon a spiritual-scientific basis, the Mysteries of the Egyptian priests in a form which is suited to our own age, in the light of Christianity. For the Egyptians, Osiris was a kind of representative of the Christ Who had not yet appeared. They looked upon Osiris as the Sun-Being, but they imagined that this Sun-Being had disappeared and must be found again. We cannot imagine that mankind could lose the Sun-Being, the Christ, Who has now passed through the Mystery of Golgotha; for He came down from spiritual heights, connected Himself with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and now remains connected with the earth. He is present, He exists, as the Christmas carol proclaims each year anew: “Unto us a Saviour is born.” It expresses thereby the eternal, not the transitory nature of this event—that Jesus was not only born once at Bethlehem, but is born continually; in other words, He remains with the life of the earth. The Christ, and what He means for us, cannot be lost.

My dear friends, it is not the Osiris, but the Isis legend that has to be fulfilled in our time. We cannot lose the Christ and what He gives in a higher form than Osiris; but we can lose, and we have lost, that which we see portrayed by the side of Osiris—Isis, the Mother of the Saviour, the Divine Wisdom, Sophia. If we wish to renew the Isis legend, we cannot take it in the form in which it has been transmitted to us—Osiris who is killed by Typhon-Ahriman and carried away by the waters of the Nile, who must be found again by Isis, in order that his body, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman, may be sunk into the earth—no, my dear friends, we must somehow find the Isis legend again, the content of the Isis Mystery, but we must form it out of Imagination, suited to our own times. An understanding will come again for the eternal cosmic truths, when we learn to create in the world of Imagination, as the Egyptians did. We must find the true Isis legend.

Because the Egyptian lived before the Mystery of Golgotha, he was permeated by luciferic powers. If luciferic powers are within man and stir his inner life, moving and weaving through it, then the result will be that the ahrimanic powers will appear to him as an active force outside. Thus the Egyptian who was himself permeated by Lucifer rightly sees a world-picture in which Ahriman-Typhon is active. Now, we must realise that modern man is permeated by Ahriman. Ahriman moves and surges within him, just as Lucifer moved and surged within the Egyptian world. And then, when Ahriman works through Lucifer, man sees his picture of the world in a luciferic form. How does it appear to him? This luciferic picture of the world has been made, it has become increasingly popular and has been adopted in all circles of thought that consider themselves progressive and enlightened.

If we would understand the Christmas Mystery, we must bear in mind that Lucifer is the power who wants to hold back the world-picture in an earlier stage. Lucifer is the power which tries to bring into the modern world-conception that which existed in earlier stages of evolution; he tries to give permanence to that which existed in earlier periods. All that was moral in earlier periods also exists of course today. But Lucifer strives to sever the moral forces as such (the significance of the moral forces lies in this: that they are there in the present, working as seeds for the future), Lucifer strives to sever all moral forces from the world-picture; he only allows the laws of nature, the necessary and natural aspect, to appear in this world-picture. Thus the impoverished human being of modern times possesses a wisdom of the world in which the stars move according to a purely mechanical necessity, devoid of morality; so that the moral meaning of the world's order cannot be found in their movements.

This, my dear friends, is a purely luciferic world-picture. Just as the Egyptian looked out into the world and saw in it Ahriman-Typhon as the one who takes Osiris away from him, so we must look at our luciferic world-picture, at the mathematical-mechanical world-picture of modern astronomy and of other branches of natural science, and we must realise that the luciferic element rules in this world-picture, just as the typhonic-ahrimanic element ruled in the Egyptian world-picture. Just as the Egyptian saw his outer world-picture in an ahrimanic-typhonic light, so modern man, because he is ahrimanic, sees it with luciferic traits. Lucifer is there, Lucifer is active there. Just as the Egyptian imagined that Ahriman-Typhon was active in wind and weather and in the snowstorms of winter, so modern man, if he wishes to understand things, must imagine that Lucifer appears to him in the sunshine and in the light of the stars, in the movements of the planets and of the moon. The world-conception of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, is a luciferic conception. Just because it is in keeping with our ahrimanic forces of knowledge, its content—please note the distinction—its content is a luciferic one.

When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the divine Sophia, the wisdom that sees through the world and enables man to comprehend the world, worked in a twofold way:—in the revelation to the poor shepherds in the fields, and in the revelation to the wise men from the East. This was the twofold working of the divine Sophia, the heavenly wisdom. This wisdom, which was still to be found in its later form among the Gnostics, and which the early Christian Fathers and Teachers of the Church learned from the Gnostics and used to enable them to understand the Mystery of Golgotha—this wisdom could not be continued into our times, it was overwhelmed and killed by Lucifer, just as Osiris was killed by Ahriman-Typhon. We have not lost Osiris—the Christ—we have lost that which for us takes the place of Isis. Lucifer has killed it But the Isis-Being killed by Lucifer was not sunk into the earth, as Typhon sunk Osiris into the Nile; Lucifer carried the Isis-Being, the divine wisdom whom he had killed, out into the world's spaces; he sunk her into the world's ocean. When we look out into this ocean and see the stars moving only according to mathematical lines, then we see the grave of the world's spiritual essence; for the divine Sophia, the successor of Isis, is dead.

We must give form to this legend, for it sets forth the truth of our times. We must speak of the dead and lost Isis, the divine Sophia, even as the ancient Egyptians spoke of the dead and lost Osiris. We must set out in search of the dead body of the new Isis, the dead body of the divine Sophia, with a force which, although we cannot yet rightly understand it, is nevertheless in us—with the force of the Christ, with the force of the new Osiris. We must approach luciferic science and seek there the coffin of Isis; in other words we must find in that which natural science gives us something which stimulates us inwardly towards Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. This brings to us the help of Christ within—Christ, Who remains hidden in darkness if we do not illuminate Him with divine wisdom. Armed with this force of the Christ, with the new Osiris, we must set out in search of Isis, the new Isis. Lucifer does not cut Isis in pieces, as Ahriman-Typhon did with Osiris; on the contrary, Isis is spread out, in her true shape, in the beauty of the whole Universe. Isis shines out of the cosmos in an aura of many shining colours. We must learn to understand Isis when we look out into the Cosmos; we must learn to see this Cosmos in an aura of shining colours. But just as the Ahriman-Typhon cut Osiris into pieces, so Lucifer blurs and washes out the colours in all their clear distinctness, blends and merges into one single whole the parts which are so beautifully distributed over the heavens, the limbs of the new Isis which go to make the great firmament of the heavens. Even as Typhon cut Osiris in pieces, so Lucifer blends the manifold colours that stream down to us from the whole aura of the cosmos into a uniform white light that streams through the universe. It is that light which Goethe combated in his Theory of Colours, repudiating the statement that it contains all the colours, which in truth are spread out over the marvellous and manifold and secret deeds of the whole cosmos. But we must pursue our search until we find Isis, and when we have found her, we must learn how to place out into the universe what we are then able to discover and to know. We must having a living picture in our minds of all that we have acquired through the newly-found Isis, so that the whole heavens become for us spiritual again. We must understand Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan from within. We must bear out into the heavenly spaces that which Lucifer has made of Isis, just as Isis buried in the earth parts of the body of Osiris, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman. We must realise that through the force of the Christ we can find an inner astronomy, which reveals to us once more the origin and life of the cosmos, as grounded in the force of the spirit. And then, when we have this insight into the cosmos, awakened through the newly-found power of Isis, which is now become the power of the divine Sophia, then will the Christ, Who has united with the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha, become active within us, because then we shall know Him. It is not the Christ we lack, my dear friends, but the knowledge and wisdom of the Christ, the Sophia of the Christ, the Isis of the Christ.

This is what we should engrave in our souls, as a content of the Christmas Mystery. We must realise that in the 19th century even theology has come to look upon the Christ merely as the Man of Nazareth. This means theology is completely permeated by Lucifer. It no longer sees into the spiritual foundations of existence. External natural science is luciferic; theology is luciferic. Of course if we are speaking of the inner aspect of the human being we can just as well say that in his theology man is ahrimanic. Then in the same way we must say of the Egyptian that he is luciferic, just as we say of him that his perception of the external world is ahrimanic.

The Christmas Mystery must be grasped anew by modern man. Let him realise that first of all he must seek Isis, in order that Christ may appear to him. The cause of the misfortunes and troubles in modern civilisation is not that we have lost the Christ Who stands before us in a far greater glory than Osiris did in the eyes of the Egyptians. We have not lost Him and need not to set out in search of Him, armed with the force of Isis—what we have lost is the wisdom and knowledge of Christ Jesus. This is what we must find again, with the help of the force of Christ which is in us.

This is how we must look upon the content of the Christmas festival. For many modern people Christmas is nothing but an occasion for giving and receiving presents, something which they celebrate every year through habit. The Christmas festival has become an empty phrase like so many other things in modern life. And it is just because so many things have become a phrase, that modern life is so full of calamities and chaos. This is in truth the deeper cause for the chaos in our modern life.

My dear friends, if in this community, we could acquire the right feelings for everything which has become words, has become a phrase in modern life, and if these feelings could enable us to find the impulses needed for a renewal, then this community, which calls itself the anthroposophical community, would be worthy of its existence. This community should understand how terrible it is in our age that such things as the Christmas festival should be kept up as a mere phrase. We should be able to understand that in future this must not happen, and that many things must be given a new content, so that instead of acting out of old habits, we act out of new and fresh insight. If we cannot find the inner courage needed for this, then we share in the lie which keeps up the yearly Christmas festival merely as a phrase, celebrating it without any true feeling. Do we really rise to the highest concerns of humanity when we give and receive presents every year at Christmas out of habit? Do we lift ourselves up to the highest concerns of humanity when we listen to the words—which have also become a phrase—spoken by the representatives of this or that religious community? We should forbid ourselves to continue in this inner hollowness of our Christmas celebrations. We should make the inner decision to give true and worthy content to such a festival, which should raise mankind to the comprehension of the meaning of its existence. Ask yourselves, my dear friends, whether the feelings in your hearts and souls, when you stand before the Christmas tree and open the presents which are given out of habit, and the Christmas cards containing the usual phrases—ask yourselves whether there are living in you feelings that can raise mankind to an understanding of the sense and meaning of its evolution on earth! All the trouble and sorrow of our time is due to this—we cannot find the courage to lift ourselves above the phrases of our age. But it must happen, a new content must come—a content which can give us entirely new feelings that stir us mightily, even as those were stirred who were true Christians in the first Christian centuries, and who knew that the Mystery of Golgotha and the appearance of Christ upon the earth was the highest which man could experience. Our souls must again acquire something of this spirit

Oh, my dear friends, the soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it is willing to experience the new Isis legend within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and transfers her body into the cosmic spaces, which have become a mathematical abstraction, or the grave of Isis; then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery through the impulse given by the inner force of spiritual knowledge, which places into the lifeless sky that which stars and planets reveal through an inner life, so that they appear as monuments of the spiritual powers that surge through space. We look in the right spirit towards the ‘manger’ when we first let the powers that surge through space kindle our feeling, and then look at that Being Who came into the world through the Child. We know that we bear this Being within us, but we must understand Him. Just as the Egyptians looked from Isis to Osiris, so we must learn to look again to the new Isis, the holy Sophia. The Christ will appear in spiritual form during the 20th century, not through an external happening, but inasmuch as human beings find that force which is represented by the holy Sophia. The present age has the tendency to lose this Isis-force, this force of the Mary. It was killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of mankind. New forms of religion have in part exterminated just this view of the Mary.

This is the Mystery of modern humanity. The Mary-Isis has been killed, and she must be sought, just as Osiris was sought by Isis; but she must be sought in the wide space of heaven, with that force that Christ can awaken in us, if we give ourselves to Him in the right way.

Let us picture this rightly, let us immerse ourselves in this new Isis legend which must be experienced, and let us fill our souls with it. Only then shall we experience in a true sense this Holy Eve of Christmas, leading us into Christmas Day, the Day of Christ. My dear friends, this anthroposophical community can become a community of human beings united in love because of the search in which they set out together. Let us realise this most intimate and dear task, let us go in spirit to the manger and bring to the Child our sacrifice and our gift, in the knowledge that something altogether new must fill our souls, in order that we may undertake the tasks which can lead mankind out of barbarism into a new civilisation.

To this end it must really be so among us that one helps the other in love, so that a real community of souls arises in which envy and all such things disappear, and in which we do not look each at our own particular goal, but face together, united in love, the great goal which we have in common. The Mystery which the Christmas Child brought into the world contains this—to look at a goal in common, without discord among us. For the common goal implies union and harmony. The light of Christmas should shine as a light of peace, a light that brings peace outside, only because first of all it sheds an inner peace into the hearts of men. We should understand this and say together: Let us realise this and work together with love in the great task. Then, and only then, shall we understand Christmas. If we cannot realise this, we shall not understand Christmas. Let us remember that when we do sow discord, this discord hinders us in understanding the One who appeared among us on Christmas Eve. Can we not pour this Christmas Mystery into our souls, as something which unites our hearts in love and unity? We cannot do this, my dear friends, unless we understand what Spiritual Science really means. Nothing will grow out of this community if we merely bring into it ideas and impulses we have collected from all comers of the world, where phrase and routine hold sway. Let us remember that our community is facing a difficult year, that all forces must be gathered together, and let us celebrate Christmas in this spirit. Oh, my dear friends, I should like to find words which appeal deeply to the heart of each one of you on this evening. Then each one of you would feel that my words contain a greeting which is at the same time an appeal to kindle Spiritual Science within your hearts, so that it may become a force which can help humanity to raise itself up again from its terrible oppression.

These, my dear friends, are the aspects from which I have gathered the thoughts which I wished to give you. Be sure that they are meant for each one of you, as a warm Christmas greeting, as something which can lead you into the New Year in the very best way. In this spirit, accept my words as a warm and loving Christmas greeting.

Isis-Sophia
Des Gottes Weisheit,
Sie hat Luzifer getötet
Und auf der Weltenkräfte Schwingen
In Raumesweiten fortgetragen.

Christus-Wollen
In Menschen wirkend;
Es wird Luzifer entreißen
Und auf des Geisteswissens Booten
In Menschenseelen auferwecken
Isis-Sophia,
Des Gottes Weisheit.

Isis-Sophia
Wisdom of God:
Lucifer has slain her,
And on the wings of the world-wide Forces
Carried her hence into Cosmic space.

Christ-Will
Working in man:
Shall wrest from Lucifer
And on the boats of Spirit-knowledge
Call to new life in souls of man
Isis-Sophia
Wisdom of God.

Despite the fact that a number of new members of this Esoteric School are present today who have not attended the previous classes, it will not be possible to repeat the introductory words. Therefore, I must insist that if the new members receive the verses from other members in the manner I will describe later, at the end of the lesson, then those who give the verses to the new members are duty bound to inform them of the conditions for membership in the School. So now we must immediately continue where we left off the last time.

*

First, however, let our souls again hear the words which resound from all thebeings and events of the world to unbiased hearts and minds [Gemüte]. Everything in the following words was said to human beings in the past, is said to then in the present, and will be said to them in the future:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?

Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

We have seen how the person who follows these words coming to him from all the things of the world and from all the events of the world, feels the desire to leave the majestic, illustrious sensory world and enter into the world beyond the yawning abyss of being, which at first confronts the human soul as black, night-cloaked darkness. But the hope exists that in order to truly solve the riddle of humanity, what shines and is radiant in earthly life must become dark in order for the light which is in that other world, in which one's own self finds its being, comes from what appears at first as black, night-cloaked cosmic darkness.

And we have seen as we approached the path leading there in thought and feeling, the figure of the Guardian of the Threshold luminously emerged as though from a spiritual cloud-like form. We heard him speaking: for everything spoken here resounds from spiritual worlds on behalf of Michael, the leader of humanity's spiritual path in our times. For this School is the true Michael School. And he also spoke about human self-knowledge. But then he used words which at first are dismaying for the soul.

The Guardian calls us to stand close to him. He looks at us with earnest countenance. And he shows us how our willing, our feeling, our thinking appear before the countenance of the gods as imaginations. There this willing, this feeling, this thinking is not yet human; it is still animal-like. There the self-knowledge is dismaying, even shattering.

But we must pass through knowledge of that self, which is the result of the errors embedded in us by our times, our cosmic time, in order to press forward to true self-knowledge.

This erroneous self-knowledge, the knowledge of the self which we carry within us from the spirit of our times, is shown to us by the Guardian by letting the first of the beasts, which represents willing, to arise from the yawning abyss of being. Then, raising his hand and pointing to the yawning abyss of being, he lets the second beast arise, representing feeling. Again pointing to the yawning abyss of being, he lets the third beast emerge, which represents thinking.

They arise one after the other thus:

The first beast—the true spiritual form of our willing, created by the fear of knowledge, which can only be overcome by having the courage for spiritual knowledge.

And then the second beast—born from the hate of spiritual knowledge, which at the present time is in the subconscious of the Gemüt [soul, heart or mind] of all people, which can only be overcome by the right enthusiasm for knowledge, for the right heartfelt blaze of knowledge; whereas today nonchalance and tepidity in respect of knowledge, yes, hate of knowledge due to nonchalance and tepidity is in the hearts.

And then the third beast—created in its ghostly nature by doubt about the spiritual world that today gnaws at the souls' roots, and which can only be overcome if knowledge awakens in itself the strength to create in one's own soul [Gemüt] the things of the spiritual world beyond.

And the Guardian at the yawning abyss speaks the following words after we have come quite close:

Yet you must beware of the abyss;
Otherwise its beasts will devour
You, if you pass by me in haste.
Your cosmic age has placed them there
In you as enemies of knowledge.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
bony head, the scrawny body,
All its skin is a dull blue;
Your fear of creative spiritual being
Begot the monster in your willing;
Your fearless knowledge alone overcomes it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
Mockingly it lies with warped countenance,
Yellow with gray spots is its body;
Your hate of spiritual revelation
Begot this weakling in your feeling;
Your burning thirst for knowledge must subdue him.

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begot this ghost within your thinking;
To creative knowledge must it yield.

Only when you have overcome all three
Will wings sprout from your soul
To carry you over the abyss
Which sunders you from the knowledge fields
To which your heart desires to reach
By consecrating itself to strive for healing.

[The mantra, with underlining's, is written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian speaks at the abyss:

Yet you must beware of the abyss;
Otherwise its beasts will devour
You, if you pass by me in haste.
Your cosmic age has placed them there
In you as enemies of knowledge.

Behold the first beast, the crooked back,
bony head, the scrawny body,
All its skin is dullish blue;
Your fear of creative spiritual being
Begot the monster in your willing;
Your fearless knowledge alone overcomes it.

Behold the second beast, it bares its teeth,
mockingly it lies with a warped countenance,
Yellow with gray spots is its body;
Your hate of spiritual revelation
Begot this weakling in your feeling;
Your burning thirst for knowledge must subdue him.

Behold the third beast, with cloven muzzle,
Its eye is glassy, posture slouching,
Dirty-red its form appears to you;
Your doubts in the power of spiritual light
Begot this ghost within your thinking;
To creative knowledge must it yield.

Only when you have overcome all three
Will wings sprout from your soul
To carry you over the abyss
Which sunders you from the knowledge fields
To which your heart desires to reach
by consecrating itself to strive for healing.

When the Guardian shows us this - the shattering picture of our own being which at first confronts us as the answer to the call “Oh man, know thyself!”—, once the Guardian has shown us this picture, he approaches us in order to give us a further clarification that can begin to support us again: a clarification about the third beast, which is interwoven with our thinking; about the second beast, which is interwoven with our feeling; about the first beast, which is interwoven with our willing. And he gives us a certain teaching in what he then says. He draws our attention to how we should feel about our earthly thinking.

My dear sisters and brothers, one feels, even exoterically, that this thinking by which we acquire the things and events of the world is something abstract, something shadowy, something unreal. What is then this thinking?

We must place what this thinking really is before our souls in pictures. We imagine ourselves in front of a corpse which has recently been abandoned by a human soul and spirit. We observe this corpse. As it is now, it can never have come into being in the world. It can be nothing of itself. It can only be the remains of a living human being, who was once within it, who must have first transfigured it. The corpse lies in the coffin. Let us keep this picture in mind.

Our psychic-spiritual life, which is our own true humanity, was living before it descended from the divine-spiritual world by means of conception and birth into a physical human earthly body. There above in the divine-spiritual world it was no shadowy, abstract thought, but a psychic-spiritual living, interweaving, creating, acting being. It was alive there. Then it descended into a human body; but it died by descending. And the thinking that we have between birth and death is the corpse of the living thinking we had before descending into earthly being.

Only, my dear sisters and brothers, when we feel our thinking this way, do we feel it esoterically in the right way and struggle upward to overcome the ghostly form of the third beast, do we ascend more and more to the purely angelic form of true thinking, the dead afterimage of which lives and pulses and interweaves and acts in our physical earthly body.

As long as we consider thinking as something living, we are not experiencing the truth; only when we consider our body as the coffin of dead thinking, and we feel it deeply, are we experiencing the truth. This is what the Guardian of the Threshold at the yawning abyss of being tells us, whose words we will then hear, words which can serve us as a mantric verse. He says it to us with special intimacy.

And when we turn from thinking and observe our feeling, then we must see and feel how normal feeling, which we believe is alive in us between birth and death, is only half alive, how it continually consumes and kills something in us, how in fact it makes us spiritually hollow. Thinking is dead, and feeling is half alive, it is basically only an image-form in us. And only when we feel that this earthly feeling is a weak, half-living reflection of the solar power that emits cosmic feeling throughout the entire cosmos as general universal love, then only do we feel correctly about feeling. This the Guardian of the Threshold tells us privately, in intimacy.

And only when we feel that our will, although it lives in us, is continually tempted and attacked by spiritual opposing powers, so that its strength does not serve the divine above, but the physical below; only when we feel these opposing powers, who wish to divert us in our will from our actual divine task and completely enmesh us in earthly existence, then we will feel how these opposing powers, by usurping our will, want to bring the future of the earth under their power. If they were able to do it, if we were not alert enough to dedicate our will to the Divine, and not to the Ahrimanic earthly powers, then the earth would become problematic for the gods to whom it has belonged from the its very beginning.

The Guardian tells us this as a clarification of the three beasts:

The third beast's glassy-eyed gaze,
It is the evil counter-image
Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking the spirit-forces
Which before its earthly life
Was alive in fields of spirit.

The second beast's mocking countenance,
It is the evil counter-force of feeling,
Which hollows out your own soul
And creates an empty life in it
Instead of spirit-content which,
Before earthly existence was the soul's,
Enlightened by the sun's spirit power.

The first beast's bony spirit:
It is the evil creating power
Of will, which from your own body
Estranges your strength of soul
And devotes it to the opposing powers,
Who would steal in future time
Cosmic being from godly being.

[The mantra is written in the blackboard, with underlining.]

The Guardian speaks:

The third beast's glassy-eyed gaze,
It is the evil counter-image

—it is only an “image”—

Of thinking, that denies itself
In you and chooses death,
Forsaking the spirit-forces
Which before its earthly life
Was alive in fields of spirit.

The second beast's mocking countenance,
It is the evil counter-force of feeling,

—first is “image”, the second “force”—

Which hollows out your own soul
And creates an empty life in it
Instead of spirit-content which,
Before earthly existence was the soul's,
Enlightened by the sun's spirit power.

The first beast's bony spirit:

—the escalation: “image”, “force”, “power”—

It is the evil creating power
Of will, which from your own body
Estranges your strength of soul
And devotes it to the opposing powers,
Who would steal in future time
Cosmic being from godly being.

And the Guardian at the abyss of being leads us ever closer to true self-knowledge, which can only be ours if light arises beyond in the black, night-cloaked darkness. Therefore in the most varied ways he shows us what he first showed us in the forms of the beasts, what he then showed us in the form as it pertains to this mantric verse, and what he now once again describes, in order that we come ever and ever closer to self-knowledge, for us to have wings to cross the abyss of being, for with human feet, with heavy human feet, that is, with the outer illusions, with maya-reality, we cannot cross.

After having given us this mantric verse in confidence, the Guardian now indicates to us how we should further feel about thinking, how we should not feel it as a being; for then we are still weaving illusions if in this thinking that we have as human beings on the earth we see anything else but seeming. Selfhood being, that is, our true, real being, hides itself in thinking, doesn't live in thinking—the Guardian says. One can do nothing else but submerge into the seeming of thinking ever more, until one reaches, by submerging deeply, ever further, into the immeasurable cosmic ether, in which one at first dissolves with the soul.

If our selfhood at least feels wavering in the world's seeming, then we should revere the leading beings of the higher hierarchies who guide us. Here we feel that we need these leading beings of the higher hierarchies.

Then the Guardian exhorts us to turn from thinking to feeling, to perceive the streaming feeling in us. Thinking is still naught but seeming. But what we feel stands at least halfway close to our being. We come deeper into our own being when we feel than when we think; but we are not yet there. We are in half of our own being when we are feeling; for feeling has something unclear in it, and it is also never firm: seeming and being are intermixed in feeling. The selfhood which we seek—selfhood in the good sense of the word is—tends towards seeming. We should now submerge into seeming, into a being that is only apparent, into a seeming that energizes itself to half a being; there cosmic forces hold us, which are not mere seeming, but halfway to being: cosmic soul forces. There we should ponder in this interweaving of our own being in weaving cosmic ether; there we should ponder the living power of our own soul, which we cannot ponder by thinking because thinking is seeming.

Then we should submerge in the will, which we feel to be the being hidden in us. We cannot grasp it. But the will acts as thrust and force: being. This will climbs up from all the seeming and creates our own being, our own true being. We should turn our lives towards it. It is filled with the power of the cosmic spirit. Our own being should grasp the cosmic creative power, which fills all space, all times, all spiritual domains, and submerge in the will.

At the edge of the abyss the Guardian speaks:

See in yourself the weaving thoughts:
Cosmic seeming confronts you,
Selfhood as such hides from you;
Plunge down beneath the seeming:
Etheric essence flows in you;
Selfhood being should revere the
Guiding nature of your spirit.

Perceive within the flow of feeling:
Where seeming and being within you merge,
Your selfhood tends towards the seeming;
So plunge down in seeming being:
And in you are the cosmic-psychic forces;
The selfhood, it should then ponder
Your own soul's powers of life.

Let act in you the thrust of will:
Which climbs up from all the seeming
With your own self creating;
Turn your life in full toward it:
Filled it is with cosmic force of spirit;
Your own self should truly grasp
Creative cosmic power in the spirit-I.

I will write this mantra on the blackboard next time, and explain it with its characteristics.

But now let us turn again to all that has spoken to the human being in the past, to what speaks in the present, to what will be spoken in the future, what will be required of him as the most holy on his life's path: self-knowledge.

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the Cosmic-Word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it firm in spirit.

Who speaks with such cosmic might?
Who speaks with such depth of heart?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through weaving waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

It's you yourself who,
In feeling space, in experiencing time,

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In the soulless void of space
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destructive flow.

The next esoteric lesson of this First Class will be next Thursday at eight o'clock.

*

I must also say that the verses, which are given as mantric meditation verses from the Guardian of the Threshold on behalf of Michael, are only for members of this School. Those who for any reason could not acquire them personally, may receive them from another member of the school who has them. However, permission must be requested in each case from either Dr. Wegman or from me. This is not merely an administrative measure, but means that everything in our anthroposophical movement must be based on reality from now on. And this statement begins with the permission as a real fact, not as a mere administrative measure. The verses may not be sent by mail. Only the person who is to give the verses to another may request permission from Dr. Wegman or from me. Not the one who is to receive them, but the one who gives. One asks someone who can give them, and that one then asks.

If anyone has written down something other than the verses themselves, then I ask them to only keep it for eight days and then burn it, in order that the content of the School, which only has meaning when the Michael stream flows through it, not get outside and thereby become ineffective. It is a fundamental occult axiom, which must be observed.

And we are in an earnest occult School, in the real School of Michaeli, and thus give what flows through this school in the Michaeli Sign: [drawn on the blackboard]

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and give it in the sense of the Rose Cross, with the symbol of the Rose Cross:

Ex deo nascimur[the lower seal is drawn on the blackboard]

In Christo Morimur [the middle seal is drawn on the blackboard]

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus [the upper seal is drawn on the blackboard]

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And while making this seal and sign we think of Christian Rosenkreuz:

[beside the lower seal is written:]

I revere the Father

[beside the middle seal is written:]

I love the Son

[beside the upper seal is written:]

I unite with the spirit

Per signum Michaeli:

[the michael sign—above red—is made]

[as each of the seal gestures is made, the following is spoken:]

Ex deo nascimur

In Christo morimur

Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus

Dear friends, once again our thoughts must first of all be for those who are at the front, having to meet the challenge of our time with their bodies and their whole being. Let us therefore direct our thoughts to the spirits who are protecting the men who are at the front.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already passed through the gate of death in the course of these events, we say:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And the spirit we have sought in our endeavours for so many years, the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ spirit, the spirit of courage, the spirit of strength, the spirit of unity, the spirit of peace—may he rule over everything you are asked to do these days.

More than at other times the serious purpose of our spiritual efforts must live in our souls during these days, these weeks—a seriousness which enables us to be aware how everything we aim for in our spiritual movement has to do with all that is truly human. We are aiming for something that addresses itself not just to human existence as it is for the moment, an existence that will pass with human physical body. We are speaking of laws, of forces in soul and spirit, that directly address the higher self in man, a higher self which is more than the self that may wither away with the body and its existence. We have frequently spoken of ‘Maya’ when referring to outward appearances, and it has often been stressed that outward appearances, the processes of physical life, become Maya because man does not properly penetrate them with his mind, his perceptive faculties. He therefore does not sense, does not perceive, what is really significant; the real essence of the things perceptible to the outer senses. Man uses his perceptive faculties to draw a veil, a tissue of deception, over the events of the physical world. This makes them become Maya.

There is one particular great truth that we should have in mind these days as we look for love and understanding, for a loving comprehension of what is happening all around us—an insight that, fundamentally speaking, is at the centre of everything we aim for in spiritual science. In our day this has to present itself to our souls with the full gravity and moral weight inherent in it. It is the realization—and this has by now become the simplest and most elementary fact in our spiritual life—that life on earth recurs. The fact that in the course of time our souls progress from body to body. The part of man that is eternal hastens from body to body through man's successive incarnations on earth. On the other hand, there is the part that has to do with human existence in a physical body, the part present on the physical plane that provides the configuration. the formation, the particular stamp to human existence in an outer physical body.

One particular thing that provides the outer stamp, determining the character of a person as it were, in so far as he is living in a physical body on the physical plane, is what may collectively be referred to as nationality. This is something we should never forget, especially today. If we turn the mind's eye to what we call man's higher self, the concept of nationality loses significance. For when we pass through the gate of death everything encompassed by the term ‘nationality’ is among the things we cast off. And if we do in all seriousness want to be what we think people with spiritual aims should be, it is proper to remember that in passing through successive incarnations the human being belongs not to one but to a number of different nationalities. The part of him that links him to a particular nationality is among the things that are cast off, have to be cast off, the moment we pass through the gate of death.

Truths that belong to the realm of the eternal do not have to be easily understood. Indeed, they may well be truths which at times go against our feelings—truths we achieve with difficulty particularly in difficult times, and also find difficult to achieve and retain in their full strength and clarity in difficult times such as these. A true anthroposophist must do this, and it will be exactly in this way that he arrives at a real understanding of the physical world around him. The basic elements for such understanding have already been presented in our anthroposophical work. You will find that the lecture cycle on folk souls' in a sense contains everything needed to gain insight into the way human beings, in so far as they are in the eternal realm, are connected with their nationalities. Those lectures were of course given in peacetime when souls are more ready and prepared to accept objective, unvarnished truths. Perhaps it will be difficult to take these truths as objectively today as they could be taken in those days. Yet this is the very way in which we can prepare our souls to develop the strength they need today, if even today we are able to take these truths objectively.

Let us bring before our mind's eye the picture of a warrior going through the gate of death on the field of battle. We need to understand that this is very much a special case, to go through the gate of death like this. We need to understand that entrance is made into a world that we are seeking with every fibre of our souls in spiritual science, so that it may bring clarity even into physical life. Let us remember that death means the entrance into that spiritual world and that it is not possible to take other life impulses directly into that world, for they would bear no fruit. The only life impulses we are able to take there are those that animate the efforts of our hearts and minds and in the final instance aim to join all peoples on the earth in brotherhood. Then a simple popular saying can be seen in a new way in the light of anthroposophy. It is the proverb which says ‘Death is the grand leveller’. It makes them all equal—Frenchmen. Englishmen, Germans and Russians. That is indeed true. Considering this in relation to what is going on all around us on the physical plane today, we shall indeed become aware of the solid ground that enables us to overcome Maya in this field and look to events for their essential meaning.

Consider it in relation to the feelings of antipathy and hatred that fill the hearts of the peoples of Europe at present. Consider it in relation to all the things peoples in the different regions of European soil feel about the others, expressing it in spoken and written words. And let us also see in our mind's eye all the antipathy coming to full fruition in our time.

How should we see these things with the eye of truth? Where in this field do we find something that will take us beyond Maya, beyond the great illusion? We do not get to know about each other on earth by an approach that considers everything that is generally human as something abstract. We get to know one another by getting in a position where we are able really to understand the peculiar qualities of the peoples who are spread out over the whole earth, to understand them in concrete terms, in what they are in particular. We do not get to know a person in this life by simply saying: He is a human being like myself and must have all the same qualities that I have. No, we have to forget about ourselves and really consider the qualities of the other person.

In the lecture cycle on the folk souls I showed how the different aspects of the soul within us—the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul, the spiritual soul, the ego and the spirit-self—are distributed among the nations of Europe and how every nation fundamentally represents a one-sided aspect. I also said that the different nationalities will have to work together, to become the soul of Europe as a whole, just as the different aspects of our own soul need to work together. Looking at the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas we find that the national element comes to expression in the sentient soul. In France, it comes to expression as intellectual or mind soul. Moving on to the British Isles we see it coming to expression as spiritual soul. In Central Europe the national element comes to expression as ego. When we finally look to the East of Europe, that is the region where it fully emerges as spirit-self—though that is not quite the right way of putting it, as we shall see later. What comes to expression there is something that lies in the national character. But the eternal in man goes beyond what is national and this is what human beings are looking for when entering more deeply into the spirit. Compared to this, the national element is a mere garment, an outer envelope, and the more a person is able to gain insight into this the higher he will ascend. In so far as man lives in the physical world, he does live in the outward trappings of what is national and this gives his body its configuration and, fundamentally speaking, also provides the configuration for certain qualities, character traits.

Today we see the members of different nations facing one another in dislike, in hatred. I am not at this point speaking about what is going on in the combat situation. I am speaking of what is going on in the feelings, the passions, of human souls. Here we have a soul. It needs to prepare for its reception into a spiritual world through which it will now have to pass between death and its next birth, a world that will guide it towards an incarnation that will belong to quite a different nationality from the one it is now leaving. This is a fact which shows very clearly, in the best and most powerful way, how man resists the higher self that is within him. Consider some real ‘nationalist’ today, someone with national feelings who directs his antipathy very particularly against the members of another nation and, indeed, may be ranting and raving against this other nation in his own country. What is the meaning of such ranting and raving, of such antipathy? It signifies a premonition—My next incarnation will be into this nationality! The higher self has already at subconscious level established links with the other nationality. This higher self is resisted by that part of us which on the physical plane. This is man raging against his own higher self. Wherever the ranting and raving is worst, wherever the hatred felt against other nationalities is greatest and where the most lies are told about them, someone seeing things not as Maya but in truth can perceive the true reason, which is that a great many members of the nation that rages most, is most cruel in its attitudes and lies the most, will have to assume that other nationality at their next incarnation.

That is the full seriousness of what we teach, the moral greatness that lies behind it. There is much in man—very much, infinitely much—that wants to resist having to recognize his higher self, the part of him that is eternal. This is what makes it so tremendously difficult to speak objectively at the present time. It certainly is a strange phenomenon that before this war started infinitely appreciative comments reached us from England, appreciative of the German character, German competence and particularly the intellectual life in Germany. I attempted to give examples of this in my last public lecture.5 It is possible to give many more examples, and this shall also be done. What was going on there?

From the occult point of view, there had been an instinctive feeling that an element was being striven for in Central Europe that had to do with regaining youth—I spoke of the Faust type of soul in that last public lecture—a search for the spiritual, preparing for the spiritual, something the whole of Europe would one day turn to, truly turn to. This is something people were instinctively aware of in times gone by. The desire has been to understand what is going on in Central Europe. Yet being wholly bound up with the national element, we shall only be able to relate to this in full understanding in the life between death and rebirth. Then it will be possible to relate to this and understand, and the way will be found to the teachers of Central Europe. It is embarrassing to speak of this now for it may appear like boasting in someone who comes from Central Europe. Yet the objective truths must be told. So there is an instinctive feeling for something that will be looked for in the life between death and rebirth: a uniting with souls that have striven for what is altogether human—with the Goethe soul, the Schiller soul, the Fichte soul. [Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German idealist philosopher.] There has been some awareness of the fact that, having passed through the gate of death, we shall look above all for the Goethe soul, the Fichte soul, the Schiller soul and other souls that had their last incarnation in Central Europe. This fact had come to expression instinctively, and now once more, for the last time, infinitely passionate nationalistic feeling is rising against it. When we realize that the words so often heard now from the west and the north west are but covering up this feeling of resistance we shall have come to understand the truth, to replace Maya, misconception. We shall then understand how earth man, having eternal man within him, does not want what the eternal man within him wants; how the love he must feel in eternity is in the temporal world transformed into hatred.

We shall find that the best way of achieving love in understanding, and understanding in love, will be to get to know the characteristics of European peoples' using the means spiritual science is able to provide. We are allowed to do so in so far as we are always addressing the higher self in man. And all who want to share in our way of thought or feeling will recognize this higher self and therefore be able to listen to everything that has to be said with regard to the outer garb, knowing that we are speaking of the outer garb.

In a certain sense every nation has its specific mission.—In due course we shall be able to enter the building in Dornach and find that the sequence of columns, their capitals and the architraves above them, express in their forms what comes to expression in the impulses we discern in Europe. But I am not going to talk about this now for it is best to talk about it when we have the building before our eyes. That is what I did there a few days ago.⁶—If we consider the impression our soul may gain even without seeing the building, we note above all that the inhabitants of the southern peninsulas—Italy and Spain—are, in a way, bringing back in their modern mission the elements that in the past had appeared in the third post-Atlantean epoch, in Egypto-Chaldean civilization. As soon as we grasp this, we gain a true insight into the soul of an Italian or Spanish national. This can be traced down to specific details. It is possible to say that we find in reality what we have previously perceived in the spirit. What were the characteristic features of Egypto-Chaldean civilization? This is something we have spoken of many times. They had a feeling for the great, cosmic astrology. Stars and constellations were not seen the way we see them today. Instead, spiritual entities were perceived and the constellations were seen as their physical exterior. The spiritual was seen in everything. If this is to be repeated as the mission of a nation in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha it has to be repeated in such a way that it now is part of the inner soul—that the great cosmic tableau seen by the Egyptians and Chaldeans now presents itself as though born anew out of the soul. This is nowhere more evident than in Dante's Divina Comedia, a work representing the high point of culture on the Italian peninsula. [Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321.] Even in details, the elements of ancient Egypto-Chaldean culture emerge again as though born out of the soul, resurrected in the inner life.

The essence of Greek culture is today found in the French nation, down to the character of their leading personalities. Voltaire [1694–1778] for instance can be understood only if one compares him to a real Greek. And if you consider the form Corneille [1606–16841] and Racine [1639–1699] gave to their works you can see how they were wrestling with the Greek form. This is of great significance in the history of civilization. The struggle with outer form, with what Aristotle [384–322 BC] established with regard to form, lives on in Racine and Corneille. If we look to French culture to find again the culture of the intellectual or mind soul that set the tone in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, we should find what was best in that culture. With the intellectual or mind soul coming to grips with the world, we should find exactly what relates to this. The greatest poet therefore, beyond compare in that respect, will have to be one whose creative work arises out of the intellectual or mind soul. A nation achieves greatness where its incomparables are brought to the fore. And the French poet who is unsurpassable is Molière [1622-1673]. With him the French soul reached its true, characteristic height—there it is unsurpassable. An echo of this was still alive in Voltaire.

An element that repeats nothing of the past but belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, something that has come up new in this epoch as it were, is the British soul. The principal aim of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is to develop the spiritual soul, to bring it out. The spiritual soul is particularly in evidence in the essential nature of the British folk soul. It is characteristic of the British soul that it faces events. Fourteen, fifteen years ago, when I was writing the first edition of my Riddles of Philosophy⁷ I struggled to find a term to describe the British philosophers and it then became clear to me that they are onlookers in life. They face things the way the spiritual soul faces life as an onlooker. And the greatest creative spirit in the British soul, the man who stood there and faced the British character traits giving expression to all of them, down to the very depths of the soul, was Shakespeare. There the British soul is incomparable, in the onlooker mode.

Moving on to Central Europe we find ‘...what is forever evolving, and never actually is...’ as I have already described it in the public lecture. It is the ‘I’ as such, the innermost part of man. How does this relate to the elements of man's soul? It relates individually to the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul and the spiritual soul, developing links with all of them. Let us consider this in the case of Goethe. We note how he longed to go to Italy. And as it was in his case so all the best minds of Central Europe always longed for Italy, to achieve fertilization of the ego and let it conceive from the sentient soul. And the ego also exchanges forces with the intellectual or mind soul. Let us try and observe how that close bond between ego and intellectual or mind soul has really always been there through the centuries. Note how Frederick the Great [1712–1786], that most German of princes, really only spoke and wrote in French, how he had a special appreciation of French culture. This is evident, for instance, from his relationship with Voltaire. We can also note how the German philosopher Leibniz [1646–1716] wrote his works in French. That is exactly how the ego relates to the intellectual or mind soul. And when the ego is from the depths of the soul seeking the thing it strives for, something pushes up from the depths of the ego, from unfathomable depths of the ego: the spiritual soul tries to grasp it. This can be seen in the case of Goethe. I have often shown how he tried to grasp the way organisms evolve one from another. He established a whole system for organisms. That arose from the depths of the ego. But it is not immediately compreshensible. People need something that is easier to understand, they need things presented the way they arise from the spiritual soul. So they did not take up what Goethe had to offer but took up Darwin [1809–1882]. We still have not reached the point today where we are able to give recognition to Goethe's Theory of Colours.⁸ Transposed into the spiritual soul in Newton's [1642–1727] work it became what is currently accepted as the science of physics.

These things indicate the way in which individual, in this case national, characters are facing one another. We rise above the outer Maya which holds men captive and come to the truth when we learn to look at things in the light of spiritual science. We come to a truth that will show us that just as individual soul forces are warring with each other in a human being so the soul forces incorporated in the folk souls are at war with each other. It is not by chance that now in our day—when the teaching I have just presented has emerged—war makes its appearance as the great teacher, telling mankind in such a bloody, such a terrible way the very thing we are also telling them in spiritual terms. It is not by chance that whilst we are able to discuss this here there rages outside what is probably one of the bloodiest struggles ever. Fundamentally speaking, it represents the same truths but we must first penetrate them in their Maya to understand them as they really are.

In speaking about these things we must for once remove from the words that are spoken every nuance of feeling, of sympathy or antipathy, and use words merely for characterization. Then we shall understand things rightly. For these are things contained within the self of man, in so far as it is wrapped in the national element. We can follow this through in detail. To begin with, to prepare for what we must come to understand, let me say the following.

Let us take a Central European living in the ego culture. In my public lecture I said that the Central European aspires to his god in such a way that he will be joined to him. He wants to be united with his god. With regard to the thinking process, we can make the I generally say: ‘Man thinks’. Yet the statement ‘Man thinks’ really says very little indeed. We need to learn to look more carefully with the aid of spiritual science. We must gradually learn not to speak thoughtlessly but instead put things in the right way. For people who do not really care about the reality of things it is, of course, all right the way one just says it, but it is right only to say: ‘the Central European or Scandinavian thinks’—with ‘thinking’ here considered an activity because it is the evolving of thought that matters. ‘The ensouled being thinks’—that is what matters in Central Europe and in the Nordic countries. Man is so bound up with thought that this thought is the product of the soul's own activity, that the soul's activity consists of nothing else but the soul being caught up in thought.

The same cannot be rightly said for the Frenchman. In that case we have to say: ‘He has thoughts’. For ‘thinking’ and ‘having thoughts’ are not the same—there is a subtle difference. My Riddles of Philosophy can help to make this clear. In Western Europe people have thoughts. Thoughts are something that comes; they are given just as sensory perceptions are given. That is how it is with thoughts. They enter into the soul, they are fully alive in it, people have them, even grow intoxicated with them, are delighted to have them. One accusation made against the Germans is that their thoughts show a certain coldness. That may well be. A German has to form them first in his individual soul. They need to be warmed through there and only stay warm for as long as they are part of the immediate activity.

So much in preparation. For, indeed, the expression of individual national characteristics will always be found to show something coming alive that has already been put forward in the principles of spiritual science, something you will find in my lectures on folk souls. Let us consider individual expressions of national character.

The Italian and the Spanish character is determined by the sentient soul. We can observe this in life down to the finer detail. Everywhere we come upon the sentient soul. (This does not, of course, refer to life in the higher self.) As soon as a native of those countries is wholly within his national element he is within the sentient soul. This is particularly attached to everything connected with home and sensitive to everything that is not home but, rather, ‘alien country’. If you try, for instance, to understand all that is part of the national element in Italy you will find that an Italian sees another person who is not Italian as a foreigner who lives abroad. All the struggles that took place in Italy during the 19th century had specifically to do with home territory. Here we have a recapitulation of Egypto-Chaldean culture.

Next let us consider the people of Western Europe, those living on French soil. (Remember, we need to rid ourselves of anything to do with sympathy and antipathy.) They are recapitulating Greek civilization. Their attitude to someone from another country will be like that of the Greeks—they will call him a barbarian. Greek civilization is recapitulated here. We can understand this even if the wildest feelings of antipathy are raging. There always is a nuance present of the way people in ancient Greece considered non-Greeks.

The English people have the specific mission to nurture the spiritual soul and this comes to full expression in materialism. Here we specially need to rid ourselves of all antipathy. The nurturing of materialism results in men being simply positioned next to each other in space. This is something that was not experienced in the past: awareness of the rival. The spiritual soul is conscious of another person as its rival in physical life.

What is the situation as regards the Central Europeans, including the Scandinavians? It would be most interesting to go into full detail of this another time. What does a German feel when face to face with another national, in the position where the Italian sees the foreigner, the Frenchman the barbarian and the Englishman his rival? One needs to find the pregnant phrase always for these things. A German faces his opponent—this may also be in a duel and may have nothing at all to do with any feeling of antipathy even—it is merely an matter of fighting for existence or for something connected with one's existence. The enemy need not be denigrated in the least. Again it is possible to observe this even in fine detail. This war in particular shows how the German national faces his enemy as though in a duel.

Let us now turn to the East. We have spoken of the sentient soul coming into its own on the two southern peninsulas, the intellectual or mind soul among the French, the spiritual soul in the British Isles. In Central Europe and up north in Scandinavia the national element comes into its own in the I, the ego. It shows differentiation between different regions but overall is experienced by what is called the ego soul. As I have said, it lives as spirit-self in the East. How do we characterize the spirit-self? It approaches man, comes down upon him. In the ego, man is striving. In the three soul aspects, man is also striving. The spirit-self on the other hand descends. It will one day descend upon the East as a true spirit-self. These things are true, as we have often said. But it needs preparation, preparation to the effect that the soul conceives, that it becomes well versed in its conceiving.

Surely the Russian people have done nothing else so far but conceived. We have had the works of Soloviev, the greatest Russian philosopher, translated within our movement.⁹ If we consider his works in depth we find that it is all Western European culture and philosophy. It is a little different because it has been born out of the Russian folk soul. What is it that is approaching in the Russian soul in contradistinction to western European culture? Italy and Spain are a recapitulation of the third post-Atlantean epoch, the French people a recapitulation of the culture of ancient Greece. The Briton shows the new element that has come in, something we very definitely acquire on the physical plane. In Central Europe it is the ego that has to emerge clearly. In Russia we have receptiveness, conception. First it was Byzantine Christianity that was received, descending like a cloud and then spreading. And western European culture was received even during the reign of Peter the Great [1672–1725]. At present, one would say, only the material basis for conception is there. What we do have there is a reflection of Western European culture, and the soul's work consists in preparing itself for conception, making itself receptive. The Russian folk-soul will only be in its right element when it realizes that Western European elements have to be received the same way as the ancient Germans, for instance, received the Christian faith, or the way the Germanic people took in Greek culture through Goethe. It will be a while yet. The physical element in the people of the East is reacting against the things that need to be taken in, and so the East is still resisting what will be coming towards it. The spirit-self has to descend.

The element coming across from the West is not the spirit-self—but the soul uses it, in a way, to prepare, to practise, receptiveness. And how does a Russian see another national? As someone who stands in opposition, someone descending upon his consciousness. And so the person who is a foreigner to the Italian, a barbarian to the Frenchman, a rival to the Briton and an opponent to the German is a heretic in Russia. That is why, fundamentally speaking, the Russians have only fought religious wars until now—all their wars have so far been religious wars. The aim was to liberate all nations or bring them to the Christian faith—the Balkan countries and so on. And even now Russian country people feel the other person to be ‘evil’ incarnate. They see the other person as a heretic and always believe they are fighting for the faith—even today! These things are true down into detail and we come to understand them if we are truly willing really to look into things. And so we may also ask what it is we see confronting us in the East of Europe.

The way he is in physical life, man is in a way unjust to his higher self. Someone living in the intellectual or mind soul, a person whose imagination is particularly well developed, will ‘have’ thoughts. The concept of how he should appear to himself, in so far as he is a particular national, presents itself before his higher self. He feels that it is his glory; a third self as it were, a national self which stands between him as a higher self and as a national person. He fights on the basis of this. After death he first of all has to be overcome this unless he has already overcome it beforehand through spiritual science. He must pass through something that first of all presents itself to his soul as the Inspiration of his own image of himself.

Someone living in the spiritual soul as a national will above all be inclined towards the things the spiritual soul has made its own in the physical world. This will be like a grievous memory in the world that lies between death and rebirth.

The Central European is a seeker. This is evident even from derogatory remarks made by his enemies who may say he is fit only to plough the fields and search among the clouds. However far he may have advanced, he is, even here, seeking the self in. spirit. In the efforts he makes during his progress on earth he will therefore, in a sense, try already get rid of whatever has to be got rid of when we go through the gate of death and enter the spiritual world.

Someone who has been in a Russian body during his last incarnation must first of all, on passing through the gate of death, assume the consciousness of an angelos, merge into the inner being of an angelos—unless he has gone through a different preparation with spiritual science—and share in all that comes down from the hierarchies above him.

All these are reasons why we may say that if we look to the West of Europe it seems natural that strife arises out of the very nature of men in so far as they are nationals, for the national element is connected with something that is an outer covering. It is quite natural for strife to arise. In the spiritual world anything that rightfully belongs there can spread without hindrance. But external means have to be used to assert the image one has of oneself. It needs to be able to spread in order to emerge. Anything looking for competition must of course be able to spread. It is perfectly understandable that strife comes from the people who represent the spiritual soul. If we are really seeking the I, the ego, in Central Europe, let us see if the qualities of the ego can already be brought to bear.

I have already stressed, for example, that the ego needs to be fanned to life again every morning. It is in an unaroused state when we enter into the sphere of sleep with it and needs to be fanned to life again every morning when we wake up. If I may refer to Austria—I heard it said even when I was young that Austria would one day fall apart when occasion arose. We knew different; it might have any amount of centrifugal force within it but it was held together from outside, it could not fall apart. Let us consider Germany. Does it show the ego character in its outer aspect, in its form? It is a fact of considerable import that for much of a century the Germans have pressed for unification. They did not achieve this from the inside. It took an external impulse, not from inside Germany but from outside, from the centre of France, to let the Germany of today come into being in accord with the ego character. We can only understand the world if we consider it in the light of spiritual science. Fundamentally speaking, the ego does not have the inclination to hit out; for the overweening forces from the physical plane would then go over into the spiritual sphere. This is something we could demonstrate over and over again in German history, in the history of Austria and the history of the Scandinavian peoples. The feeling is right, therefore, that a German, or a Central European, has to be made to come out in war. Fundamentally speaking, he is unable to start a war of his own accord. If he goes to war out of initiative, he does it the way the initiative does it in the ego, and there have of course been such wars in the interior. That is what we must feel the attitude of Central Europe to war to be.

And what emerges in the East for someone able to get a feeling for national character? For the Russian it is the most unnatural thing in the world to wage war. If he were to know himself he would feel it to be most unnatural for him to wage war. We of the West cannot become Tolstoyans, however well we understand all things Russian. But for the Russian it is unnatural to wage war. War has to be imposed on him, for it is totally against the national character. A Russian feels towards war the way he feels about religious war—it is something coming from outside. War cannot be made plausible to him for he would rather pray for what is to come to him. It is therefore quite natural to look for the motives that causes Russians to go to war not in the national character but in the motives imposed on them from outside. More than anywhere else we have to say in this case that it is not the people who make war—it is the people only in an external sense and seemingly—but rather whatever it is that they have to turn against most of all. In Russia war is always a 'Maya', illusion, in the worst sense. This is why we can state clearly and precisely what I posed as a question in my public lecture: Who could have prevented the war?—If we actually want to talk of the possibility of its being prevented.—For the French, war has been something natural since 1871 and it would not be natural to speak of their being able to prevent it. Anyone forced to fight his rivals naturally does not have the right to be indignant when neutrality has been breached in some place or other, and in this case the indignation needs to be reinterpreted into the national element. But it is natural for him to go to war. We cannot take that amiss. In that case war can no more be rejected than when, in interpreting the nature of living creatures, one has to find a different phrase out of the element of the spiritual soul than from the the standpoint of the ego and therefore speaks of the 'struggle for survival'. Goethe did not coin that phrase, because from the ego point of view it does not apply. But where it is a question of war being a falsehood, where it even has to be reinterpreted first into a religious war, there we have to say that it has risen externally and therefore could also have been prevented externally. Looking into all the depths one is able to look into—the war has indeed been a necessity but that is another thing—we have to say: It is true that Russia could have stayed an onlooker, and the war could have been prevented. If Russia had remained an onlooker the war could have been prevented. For here a war has been grafted onto a national character when basically it is something quite unnatural.

Such things, as we speak about them, come from the spiritual world. They arise from it. But it is always possible to verify them, to confirm them, in the outside world. Anything we arrive at out of the spiritual world finds confirmation in the outside world. We could say that it would be a natural gesture for the Russian national character to pray and wait for what is to come. It is very strange; even Russian intellectuals are waiting in expectancy—I have already referred to this—in the feeling that something belonging to the future has to come towards them. What will have to come for them still lies far ahead in the future and we have seen how there is refusal to accept what has to be taken up now. It is perhaps more than just an outer symbol that now, when battles are being fought on the Black Sea, the Russian still looks in that direction—to see an embodiment, as it were, of what he may expect in the spirit—pointing to the Hagia Sophia.¹⁰ Merezhkovsky [1865–1941] describes two visits he has made to the Hagia Sophia. He felt the Hagia Sophia to be the outer symbol, as it were, of something he did not know in his feelings but was expecting, and he called it the Christianity that is to come for the Russians. He would have seen it rightly if he had realized that it is a Christian faith that has gone through the Faust nature which will have to take hold of the Russian people. But that is something he does not yet know. He believes it is the Hagia Sophia which represents it. What is his attitude to the Christian faith? If we consider what Soloviev has to say on this, then I am able to say that he shows a certain understanding of it. For when problems were once again created for him by St Petersburg and the Holy Synod, he said: ‘Ah, that is how you fare when you have problems in getting them to understand what you want to say. The one side calls me a liberal Western European atheist, the other an orthodox believer, and others again even consider me a Jesuit.’ He concluded by saying: ‘Amazing what you can turn into when seen through the eyes of the Petersburg blackguards.’ These are not my words but those of a good Russian citizen, a Russian who shows us that it is not easy to rid oneself of feelings of sympathy or antipathy. But let us assume the Russian intellectual is left to himself. As I said, it is a world of expectancy, a natural mood of looking for what is to come, something not to be achieved with the sword and with cannon. That is why the Pan-Slavonic movement is such a lie. Left to himself, Merezhkovsky gave himself up to his feelings when face to face with the Hagia Sophia. He did however confuse it with the Christian faith of the Western European which has gone through the strivings of Faust. And how does he speak of it?

I have tried to find a succinct formulation for the feelings different nations may be seen to have towards war, saying that a Russian believes he is going to war for the sake of religion, an Englishman for competition, a Frenchman for the glory, an Italian or Spaniard for his homeland and a German to fight for existence. And we are therefore able to say that Italy wants to preserve the homeland; France conceives of its own idea of [glory] as the national ideal; the Englishman takes action and does business¹¹ the German aspires; the Russian prays—and that comes naturally. I am not speaking of external prayer, for it is a matter of the heart. What was it then Merezhkovsky said at the end of his book, which I mentioned the day before yesterday?¹²

The Hagia Sophia—brilliant, sad and flooded with the amber-coloured light of ultimate mystery—lifted up my soul which had fallen and was frightened. I looked up into the dome that is like the vault of heaven, and I thought: There it stands, made by the hand of man, and in it men are coming close to the triune god on earth. This close approach has been made and more still of this shall come in time to be. Surely those who believe in the Son must come to the Father who is the world. And surely those must come to the Son who love the world, which the Father also loved so much that he gave his Son for it. For they offer their souls for him and for their friends; they have the Son because they have Love, only they do not know the name.

They do not have it as a whole. And he concluded:

And I felt impelled to pray for them all, in the temple that at this hour belongs to the heathen but is the only temple for the future, to pray that my people be given that true, conquering strength: pray for conscious belief in the triune god.

So there you have the prayer. There you have the anomaly of a fight that goes from East to West.

In making this attempt to gain inner understanding of what meets us here, in attempting to escape from Maya and enter into the truth, we can indeed say to ourselves that were are not pursuing an abstract anthroposophy that is afraid to see. For it would be fear of seeing the truth if we were to shrink from seeing national characters in their true foundations, because of our ‘First Principle.’¹³ We are exactly following that Principle if we approach man as he is and endeavour really to look into his soul. Then we are most of all addressing the immortal aspect of man and we shall then also find the part of him that goes beyond the national, that goes towards the eternal, and the fine feelings that turn to the eternal in man. And then we shall find a way of bringing about what after all has to be brought about. For do you think progress and the good of mankind will not suffer if the temper now prevailing among nations is to persist? Tempers which in any case are merely born out of Maya? From the point of view of the necessity which demands that men get to understand one another again, that there shall be a continuation of what in a certain sense had already been started, arising from Central Europe, it is essential that this atmosphere we live in—a spiritual atmosphere that is one of such dreadful tumult today—receives also other elements into it and not only those of tumult. We cannot help but sense, if we have entered into spiritual life, the tumult that exists in the spiritual atmosphere today. The more deeply one has entered, the more one will be sensitive to this. Profoundly disturbing things may arise out of the spiritual life. The occultist has been able to learn much, but never has so much been experienced that was so deeply disturbing and has such impact as in the last three months.

Many is the time I have stressed the occult truth that things presenting themselves one way in the physical world are the opposite by nature in the spiritual world. Some of our friends will also be able to recall how often I have said that war was hanging in the spiritual air and was really only being held off by something which is a spiritual impulse also in physical life—by fear. Force of fear held it back for as long as it was astral by nature. Fear stopped it from breaking out earlier. Externally speaking, the war started of course with the assassination in Sarajevo. That, too, has its significance. That is what is so disturbing in this affair. We are among ourselves here, and so it must also be possible to say these things. The individual personality who was murdered on that clay [Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, assassinated on 28 June 1914] and went through the gate of death afterwards presented an appearance I had never before seen myself nor heard described by others. I have on several occasions described the appearance of souls as they pass through the gate of death. This soul however showed a peculiar feature. It was like a centre of crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear elements crystallizing around it, as it were, until war broke out. Afterwards it showed itself to be something quite different. Where before it had been a great cosmic force attracting all fear, it had then become something that was the opposite. The fear which had prevailed here on the physical plane had held everybody back. But once this soul had ascended to the spiritual plane it acted in the opposite way, bringing war.

It profoundly disturbs the soul to experience such things. And there are many such things that now exist within the heaving swell of the astral impulses that rise up into the spiritual world from the hearts and minds of men. And among ourselves I am able to say that I have never experienced anything like the things I experienced in these last months, something that stirred up the waves in human souls to such a dreadful extent. From this it is of course apparent what is going on in the spiritual atmosphere. And if that which has to be in the spiritual atmosphere is indeed to come about, thoughts must enter into that atmosphere that can only arise from souls that have grasped the spiritual world. Pleading with utmost passion, therefore, your souls are asked to conceive ideas, ideas we try to stimulate with reflections like those of today or of the last occasion. These are ideas arising from spiritual insight and only souls that have gone through spiritual science are able to send such thoughts up into the spiritual world. The souls will need such thoughts now whilst war is in progress, and even more so afterwards. For thoughts are reality!

The great wish is to send the most fervent prayer into the spiritual world that whatever arises out of this war and after it may originate not from human Maya but from the truth and from spiritual reality. The more you send such thoughts up into the spiritual world the more you are doing for what shall be the fruit of these worldwide struggles, and the more you are doing for what is needed for the whole evolution of mankind.

This prayer, then, shall be the culmination of all I intended to present to your souls with these thoughts. If the questions we have considered have truly entered into our souls, if our souls, as souls that have now lived in spiritual science, allow to stream up into the spiritual world that which brings peace to man. then our spiritual science has stood the test in these fateful times. It will have stood the test to the effect that our fighters out there have not in vain given full rein to their courage; that the blood of battle has not flowed in vain. Then the suffering of those who mourn, the sacrifices which have been made, will not have been in vain in the world. Then spirit fruit will grow out of these fateful days, all the more so to the extent human beings are able to send thoughts like those I have indicated up into the spiritual world.

I want to make it clear that the words I am about to speak form a sevenfold structure, making a kind of mantram. Please note that in the last but one line the words ‘Lenken Seelen’ should be taken to mean ‘wenn Seelen lenken’ (if souls turn).

This is what I wanted to put before you: that these events, which speak so much of reality, appear in the right light to us if we rise above Maya and to the true reality. Oh, the souls will be found that are able to see our present time in that way. Souls will be found if they are found also in the sense Krishna was teaching¹⁴ with regard to warrior-souls. And if it should truly prove possible for souls that have gone through spiritual science to send thoughts to fructify the spirit up into the spiritual world in these difficult, fateful days, then the right fruit will develop out of all that is happening in those hard struggles and cruel sacrifices. And so I am able to let the things I wanted to put before your souls today culminate in what I would so much like to see as the state of consciousness, the innermost consciousness, of souls that have gone through spiritual science:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 6. Rudolf Steiner, ‘Der Dornacher Bau als Wahrzeichen geschichtlichen Werdens und kiinstlerischer Umwandlungsimpulse’ (1914) Dornach 1937 (Proposed for GA 287).
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, Die Rätsel der Philosophie in ihrer Geschichte als Umriss dargestellt. (GA 18) Riddles of Philosophy. Tr. F. Koelin. Anthroposophic Press, 1973.
• 8. ‘Goethe's Theory of Colours’ in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schrifien, hersg. und kommentiert von Rudolf Steiner ( GA 1c).
• 9. Soloviev, Vladimir: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works), tr. Harry Kohler, with an introduction by Rudolf Steiner; Stuttgart 1921. Also Gedichte von Wladimir Solovjeff tr. by Marie Steiner, 2nd edn (Dornach 1949).
• 10. Santa Sophia. the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom, principal church of Constantinople, Built by Justinian in 532 –7, it was converted into a mosque when Constantinope fell to the Turks in 1453 (translator).
• 11. The German verb handeln means both ‘to act, to take action’ and ‘to trade’ (Translator).
• 12. Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Der Antnarsch des Pöbels (Tr. H. Horschelmann) Munich & Leipzig 1907.
• 13. First Principle: When he established the Anthroposophical Society in 1912/1913, Rudolf Steiner formulated the First Principle as follows: ‘The Society provides for all people to work together in brotherhood who consider the basis of their work together in love to be a common spiritual element that is in all human souls, irrespective of differences of creed, nationality, class, sex, etc.’
• 14. In the Bhagavad Gita. See also lecture of 1 September 1914.

Yesterday I endeavored to show how the material to be presented here regarding Goethe's most intimate opinions and views on the development of the human soul is not arbitrarily worked into his works, and in particular into the material with which we are particularly concerned, his fairy tale of the green snake and the Beautiful Lily, but I have tried to show how the whole basis on which to build, the explanation of this fairy tale and Goethe's more intimate worldview, can be gained from a historical consideration of Goethe's life, from a historical tracing of the most important impulses of Goethe's ideas. I may say that an attempt has been made to establish the foundations for what is to be given today in a more freely developed form on the subject. If we allow the fairy tale we spoke about yesterday to arise before our soul, it appears to be completely immersed in mystery. And one would like to say that either one must assume that Goethe wanted to put a lot of mystery into this fairy tale, as he put a lot of mystery into the second part of his “Faust,” according to his own sayings, or that we could regard this fairy tale — which is quite impossible — as a mere play of the imagination. If the latter were not already excluded by Goethe's whole way of thinking, one would have to say that such an assumption is particularly prohibited by the fact that Goethe placed this fairy tale at the end of his story “Conversations of German Emigrants”. For it is basically the same idea that we found characteristic of Goethe's entire life yesterday, and which also lives in these “Conversations of German Emigrants,” which were written in the last decade of the eighteenth century. And from what immediately precedes the “fairy tale,” we can once again discern the theme of this fairy tale.

We are presented with the conversations of people who have been forced to emigrate due to events in their French homeland, who look back in the most diverse ways on what they have experienced in terms of sadness. We see how the entire story comes to a head to show what people who are, in a sense, uprooted from their circumstances and surroundings can go through in the solitude of their souls; what people in such a situation can gain by reflecting on their emotional experiences, by self-observation. We need only highlight a few examples to show how Goethe brings everything to a head, how a soul that becomes a fighter within itself, that often asks itself through various prompts: What kind of guilt have I accumulated, how have I hindered the soul's development? How such a soul tries to find out about itself. First we meet an Italian singer who is to reveal her fate to us in this story because her destiny can serve to illustrate a human soul that, in a certain respect, must remain on the surface of world observation. A human soul that, although it attentively follows what is going on around it because it is forced to by its circumstances, is not yet mature enough to distinguish between what, in a sense, may be called an accident and the spiritual necessity of things. It does not yet know how the phenomena of life must be connected so that we can assume the presence of spirit and spiritual laws in our environment. This Italian singer behaved in such a way towards a man that he became seriously ill as a result of her repulsive behavior, and that he is actually dying because of her behavior. So she is summoned to his deathbed. She refuses to come to his deathbed. He must die without having seen her. Now, in the time following his death, many things happen that give a soul, which would have to be characterized in the same way as that of the Italian singer, something to think about; so much to think about that she does not really know what to make of what is going on, which could still be seen as connected with my whole behavior, with the whole way in which I behaved towards the dead man in relation to his fate. After death, something very strange happens. She hears all kinds of noises in her rooms, the furniture dances, and she is even slapped in the face by an unknown, invisible hand, so that she is really frightened by the strangeness and horror of these events. Is the dead person somehow there, wanting to assert himself because of the way I behaved towards him?

A cupboard's top breaks open, and it is strangely revealed that at the very moment that cupboard's top broke open in this room, a cupboard in France, made by the same carpenter, burst into flames in its rooms. Mind you, my friends, it would never occur to me to try to explain these things in the light of a spiritual worldview, nor to suggest that Goethe wanted to express that there was something in such events that could give cause, for all I care, to assume all sorts of hidden spirits or the rumbling of the dead.

Goethe merely wanted to show that there are certain souls that are so little enlightened that they do not know what to do with such strange events, that are not enlightened enough not to say: these things are nothing; but they are also not superstitious enough to say: the dead man is certainly stirring, but rather those who, because they are not developed, can only have an indefinite feeling about such things. We see how the soul fares in the external world, depending on its stage of development, which Goethe already demonstrates by steering the stories in “The Sorrows of German Emigrants” in the direction of “fairytales”. He shows us how a person is put in the position of having to heal a lady of her sensuality, her passion. He suggests the path of having her fast, of guiding her through asceticism, so to speak, in order to dampen the ardent passion in this way. This is another indication of what a soul can go through in order to experience development. Continue – and now notice how Goethe does indeed lead the matter upwards in stages. First, he shows a soul that is really digging around in the vague in the Italian singer; he shows an already more real thing in the lady that I just mentioned: It is indeed the case that many people come to a purification of their passions, to an upward development of their soul through fasting. Here we are moving from the indefinite into the definite, into reality, and this is fully the case when we ascend into the reality of human soul development in the physical world, as we see in the third story related by Goethe. He shows how a person is initially somewhat unscrupulous, and thus stands at a subordinate level of soul development, to the point where he says: What belongs to my father also belongs to me. The practical result of this is that he commits theft at his father's checkout. He grows, so to speak, precisely through this act. His soul ascends, and he becomes, precisely by doing this wrong deed, a kind of moral center for all the humanity that then groups around him. Thus, already in his stories, which lead up to the “fairy tale,” Goethe shows us how he wants to depict soul development, the soul's ascent from certain subordinate stages to higher stages of knowledge and world view.

Now, as we saw yesterday, we are dealing with soul forces that are represented by the figures, the beings of the “fairytale”, and with the play of soul forces, which is to gradually purify itself into harmony, even into a symphony of soul forces, as the soul rises higher in the deeds performed by the figures and persons of the “fairytale”. In what happens in the 'Märchens', we are dealing with will-o'-the-wisps that want to be ferried across from the other side of the river to this side by the ferryman. They are initially filled with gold, but the ferryman does not want their gold as a reward because the river would be thrown into wild turmoil if gold pieces were to fall into it. Rather, he must demand fruits of the earth: three onions, three artichokes, and three cabbages. The will-o'-the-wisps have the ability to shake gold around them, and we have seen how they encounter the snake, which they call their aunt from the horizontal line, while they themselves are beings from the vertical line. By sprinkling gold, they give the snake something that becomes fruitful and beneficial within it, because the snake, by connecting the pieces of gold with its own substance, becomes inwardly radiant. That which it could not see before and which has something to do with the secrets of soul development, that it can illuminate that within itself.

When I tried for more than twenty years to gain access to this fairy tale in every possible way, it was above all a liberating thought in the confusion of questions that arise from the “fairy tale” when it became clear that above all I had to pursue the gold. Gold plays a role of the most diverse kind in this fairy tale. First in the will-o'-the-wisp. The will-o'-the-wisp scatter it around; there it shows itself in a certain way as something that we may address as not beneficial in certain respects. In the snake, the gold becomes beneficial. Then again in the golden king, who is made entirely of gold, then we find it again on the walls of the hut where the old man with the lamp lives, and there the will-o'-the-wisp lick it down and make themselves thicker and more substantial by licking the gold down from the walls. So the gold comes up several times, and one time we are pointed to the fact that this gold has something to do with the power of the human soul, by being pointed to the temple, which is first below and then above ground, that the golden king represents the bringer of wisdom. It is something that we do not need to interpret or explain, but where we can say: Here Goethe himself says: the golden king refers to the giver, the bringer of wisdom. So the gold must have something to do with wisdom. It is the gold, by filling the being of the golden king, that makes him a wise being, that leads him to bestow the gift of knowledge

Know the Highest!

— this is transferred from the golden king to the youth, and the youth is thereby quickened. Gold is therefore something that the Giver of Wisdom is able to instill in man. The will-o'-the-wisps, if they represent a soul-power, must represent the soul-power that is able to receive wisdom, for they have the gold within them, the soul-power that can also cast wisdom aside. We learn how this wisdom can be stored by the fact that on the walls of this symbol of wisdom, gold, was stored for a long, long time before the will-o'-the-wisps licked it. We cannot help but say, since we know how well founded it is to see soul forces in the individual forms, that the will-o'-the wisp represent the abstract intelligence, the pure power of the intellect, which is capable of acquiring a certain amount of wisdom through what is usually called external science, what is called speculation, external experience. And now we also understand why gold, wisdom, plays such a role in the pure intellect of the will-o'-the-wisps: the person who absorbs what knowledge, science and wisdom is with the pure intellect absorbs it above all in order to have something personal with it, in order to be able to use it personally. We can look into Goethe's soul and recognize the way he related to something when we become aware of how he often congratulated himself, so to speak, for never having been in a position to officially represent as a teacher the science to which he so devotedly dedicated his time , that he was only able to give the world some of his wisdom when he was inwardly impelled to do so, was not called upon to cast wisdom aside as one casts aside clothing when one is destined to become a teacher or an abstract bearer of wisdom.

In this way, Goethe presents human wisdom in the Irrlichtern that has developed one-sided intelligence and power of reason, and it is a peculiarity that – however much it may be denied – abstract knowledge, mere intelligence, especially when it increasingly moves into wisdom – and abstract intelligence can absorb vast amounts of wisdom – that this leads to vanity, to wanting to be able to deal with concepts everywhere. We are speaking entirely in Goethe's spirit when we realize why we still contrive such wise thoughts and think so cleverly: abstract concepts and ideas that are not drawn from the depths, from the richness of life, are unsuitable for ultimately leading us into true communion with the eternal riddles of existence. Where we need something that goes straight to our hearts from the eternal riddles of existence, we need something other than abstract ideas and concepts, as products of mere intelligence. When we stand before the boundary that separates the two realms, the realm of the sensually physical world, into which we feel transported, and the realm of spirituality, the realm of the supersensible, when we feel ourselves at this boundary, we are we are repelled by all abstract concepts and ideas. Indeed, these abstract concepts and ideas are not even capable of making comprehensible to us what is closest to us, for they alienate us from what is closest to us. How far removed the abstract thing is from grasping even the most everyday things that surround it; so it is incapable of giving in its concepts and ideas to that stream to which we are drawn when we want to cross over into the supersensible world. For concepts and ideas are not good for that. If you want to get to the very source of life, then it rears up and does not let us get close. Therefore, the river has no use for the gold that the will-o'-the-wisps are able to give, and we are told that none of them have ever confessed or served time. They are from the vertical line, while the old crone is from the horizontal line. This indicates how man removes himself from the ground through abstract concepts and ideas and cannot reach the ground of everyday life, which he is supposed to understand. We see how plastic these abstract figures of the will-o'-the-wisp are. But are ideas and concepts, are philosophical explanations under all circumstances that which separates us from the true source of existence? No, they are not, if man has the capacity to live in such a way that he combines his own life forces with things. Not to go out into the realm of abstract concepts and ideas, but to move correctly within things, to become a spirit, as Faust became one when he said:

Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
You only allow coldly amazed visitors, granting me to look into their deep chests as into the bosom of a friend. You lead the line of the living before me, and teach me my brothers in the silent bush, in air and water.

Where man truly enters into an inner communion with the beings of nature, where he does not sever himself with all the powers of his soul from the beings of nature, there the same concepts that alienate him from the world when they become abstract serve him to penetrate ever deeper and deeper into existence. We must not, so to speak, turn things around and say: because abstract concepts and ideas alienate the abstract being from the true essence of things, concepts and ideas are worthless in general. No, on the contrary, where they fall into the soul power that rises, lives in and with things in a certain community, in such a soul power they are full of light at the same time. Therefore, gold, which in a certain sense is without blessing in the will-o'-the-wisps, becomes such a blessing, the light in the snake that lives in the clefts and has the horizontal line, clings to the earth. If man clings to the earth, if he loves all things, if he immerses himself in things, if he, to use the much-maligned word, “mystically” immerses himself in things, then clear ideas serve to guide him through things. Therefore, you can also see – I don't know how many of you have had such an experience, but it can be had – that sometimes scholastically presented philosophies seem cold and sober, but that the same ideas, when they come to us from simple primitive people who live outside as herb gatherers, root gatherers or the like – and who are usually very interested in the secrets of existence – to what lofty ideas such people, mystically united with nature, sometimes come. We shall see how, in the case of primitive people who are in communion with nature, ideas become luminous that are worthless, sober, frosty in the case of abstract people. Thus we are led away from the will-o'-the wisp that abstract intelligence presents to us, to that soul power that is deeply rooted in us and that has the mystical urge to plunge into things, as it were. This is vividly and vividly depicted to us, as the snake moves through the crevices: Man, in fact, even if he does not enlighten himself with concepts, does not live in abstract ideas, comes close to the heart of things, like the snake to an underground temple, where, because it cannot shine, it first perceives only through touching certain forms that it only later examines in the light. Man, when he has only an appreciation of the mysterious workings of the forces of nature, comes to the heart of nature and can experience something of what lives in the things around us. We experience this with the snake, which shows us how it is a representative of those soul forces in man that can live without ideas under certain circumstances, only then not illuminated by the light of knowledge, but which nevertheless lovingly delve into things and come to a certain understanding of the riddles of the world. When the balance is restored by the fact that ideas and concepts are absorbed into these mystical powers of our soul, then the time comes when a person who is lovingly inclined towards things also finds that which he previously only sensed from the sources of existence; that he can also illuminate it through his own inner light. Yes, he is only led deeper into it.

You may recall a significant saying of Goethe's, where he says:

If the eye were not solar,
How could we behold the light?
If the power of God does not live in us,
How can we be enraptured by the divine?

Where Goethe immediately points out how we must respond to the eye of the light, which is intended to illuminate the secrets of nature, if it is to shine back again, reflecting the secrets of nature within it, as it were. Therefore, we must absorb the preparation for knowledge within us, as the snake absorbs gold, then we penetrate into what otherwise remains dark, as man, when he inwardly preserves the sense, the open heart, for the spiritual, sees the insights more clearly, how he can only then also see the spiritual in his environment.

And so the snake enters the underground temple. Here Goethe indicates to us in a wonderful way that there are subterranean places for the life of the human soul. One can only characterize such things as Goethe presents here if one enters somewhat more intimately into the strange workings of the human soul in its development. It can then be felt how our soul, before it is able to explain the things of the world outside and to prove the divine life and weaving of the spirit in all things, has to be inwardly certain that there is such a divine source, that there is a supersensible behind all that is sensible. She can experience the certainty of this supersensory within herself and yet be unable to see this supersensory shining throughout the universe. Oh, it is a lofty goal to behold the spirit in its form, as it is the creative source of all that surrounds us in the great world, as all that surrounds us in the great world wells up from the spirit. To do this, man must first develop the highest powers of the soul within himself.

The supersensible, which sleeps hidden in the normal human consciousness as a higher self, must first be evoked by man in order to ascend to the higher level of his spirit's development. One can sense that something like this exists. But then one also comes to another realization: if one has any sense of reality, of true existence, one must say to oneself: I can only reach my ultimate goal if I see how everything lives and is permeated by the spirit, how spirit is in all things. But I myself, as I stand in the world with my sensual body, so I am, as it were, crystallized out, born out of the spirit — out of which I am born, without my being involved, which I can ultimately achieve again through the highest knowledge. In a mysterious way, unconscious to myself, I have come from this land of the supersensible, into which I want to penetrate again through my knowledge. There we have the other shore, of which the “fairytale” speaks, the land beyond the river, where the beautiful lily dwells, which represents the highest world and life view, which represents the soul power to which man can develop. From there comes the mysterious being, the ferryman, who brings the will-o'-the-wisps over from the other side. Through real powers, man is transported into this world, where he stands as if surrounded by darkness – hence the mysterious words spoken by the ferryman, who brings us from the transcendental world to the land on this side of the river, who may only bring the beings across, but no one over. In no way can man return to where he came from except through birth. Other paths must be taken.

Then the will-o'-the-wisps ask how they can enter the realm of the beautiful lily, that is, how a single soul power can merge into the harmony of soul powers in such a way that it ascends to the highest. The snake then suggests two means: One is that which can be given by itself, when it allows itself to be transported by the Serpent at midday, when the sun is at its highest point. The will-o'-the-wisps say: 'That is a time when we do not like to travel. Yes, why? It is simply quite beyond the grasp of the Abstract-Lover, who wants to live only in abstract ideas and concepts, who wants to achieve everything only through combinations and conclusions, to make the transition as represented by the snake, through mystical devotion to things, through seeking mystical communion with things. This mystical communion cannot always be attained either. I recall that a great mystic of the Alexandrian school confessed in his old age that he had only experienced that great moment a few times in his life, when the soul feels ripe to delve so deeply that the spirit of the infinite awakens and that mystical moment occurs in which the God in the breast is experienced by the human being himself. These are moments at noon, when the sun of life is at its highest, when something like this can be experienced, and for those who always want to be ready with their abstract ideas, they say: anyone who ever has real thoughts must reach the highest level, for them such midday hours of life, which must be seen as a grace of earthly life, are no time to travel. For such abstract thinkers, there must always be a moment to solve the riddles of the world. Then the snake points out another way they can get across, namely through the shadow of the giant, that strange being that can do nothing for itself, cannot carry the slightest weight, not even a bundle of rice on its shoulder. At dusk, when half-light spreads, when the giant lets the shadow fall over the river that separates the sensual from the supersensual, then people can also cross over. What kind of a strange being is this giant? If we want to understand this giant, we must bear in mind that Goethe was well aware of those powers of the soul that lie, so to speak, below the threshold of consciousness. In the case of normal people, these powers only emerge during dreams. However, if we speak in a spiritual scientific sense, they belong to the subordinate clairvoyant powers that not attained through the development of the soul, but which occur particularly in primitive souls in the form of presentiments, second sight, and all that is connected with a soul that has not yet progressed very far, from which a certain uncontrollable and uncontrolled clairvoyance wells up.

Through such clairvoyant powers, there is no denying that a person can get some ideas about the supernatural world, and many people today still prefer to come to the supernatural world through such ideas or through spiritualistic images than through development, through the real upliftment of the soul into the land of the supernatural. What belongs to the realm of the subconscious, to the realm of the soul, that is not illuminated by what one can call clear mind, what one can call the light of insight, what one can call self-control, what is also like dream-like knowledge in life, is represented to us in this giant. In fact, one cannot truly recognize anything through this subconscious, because it is very weak compared to real knowledge, something that cannot be controlled anywhere, something that cannot be relied upon, so to speak.

If you wanted to personify this subconscious, you couldn't do better than a human being who is unable to carry the slightest weight. Through such subconscious knowledge, man — if he wants to develop it alone — is not able to recognize in a controlled way the slightest thing that stands on a sure basis, that has weight for our world view. But the shadow of this subconscious plays a great role in the whole of cultural life. Oh, that shows through everything — and only one word needs to be spoken to [characterize] the shadow, which for many human souls actually leads satisfactorily into the realm of the supersensible: the word 'superstition'. If countless people did not have superstition, which is the shadow of the subconscious, which prefers to operate not in the light of clear ideas but in the twilight, they would have no idea of the supersensible world, and for countless people today superstition is still the shadow of the subconscious, which leads them in the twilight hours of the soul life into the realm of the supersensible. One need not even enumerate the various manifestations of superstition in the history of civilization; one need only consider how people come to Theosophy, to spiritual science, which seeks to convey something to us from the supersensible world, something that only those people can comprehend who are willing to make great efforts to lift their soul higher. We want to ascend to the higher beings. But many make themselves comfortable, they want the spirits to descend to us instead of us rising to them. They are happy when a medium is found somewhere who, from the realm of the subconscious, testifies to the existence of the supersensible world. Not only inferior minds pay homage to what flourishes so abundantly as “spiritualism,” but even scholars who do not want to admit that the soul can be raised to the heights of the spirit through its own development. It is not said that the things that happen are not true, but distinguishing between truth and error is extremely difficult, and only for the initiated is it possible to exercise scientific control.

Goethe wants to point out this shadow of the subconscious, this whole vast realm that eludes wise self-knowledge and self-control, this power of the soul. But he does not point it out like a polemicist – Goethe was never a polemicist – he is aware that every power of the soul, at its level, even if it has to be suppressed at another level, has its importance, so he does not say: Beware of the giant, but he even finds it useful here to have the snake give the advice to the erring ones that they should have themselves translated by the giant's shadow at dusk. Strangely enough, this advice is repeated today when scholars do not want to bite into theosophy. Then well-meaning people come and say: let a spiritualist session convince you of a supersensible world, then you will be introduced to it in a plausible way. But superstition plays a great role in attracting attention, in directing the human mind to the supersensible world, and it must be clearly understood that Goethe, who wanted to present the entire field of soul forces as in a symphonic harmony, really believed, as this superstition, when it does not degenerate into wild superstition, has its good reason in the soul forces, which do not all come with sober, clear concepts, but first say to themselves: We can penetrate deeply, deeply into the secrets of things - but we would rather first hold it with intuitions of their secrets. First sense these secrets, do not immediately find our way into sharp contours! This intuitive restraint in relation to things is very important, since it should play a part in the entire life and weaving of our soul development.

Goethe wanted to show that what was expressed so clearly in outer nature was expressed in a higher way in the forces of the soul. I do not want to point out how Goethe, if he had not written a poem, a drama, a Wilhelm Meister, a Werther, would have been a shining personality for all time through his scientific discoveries. That in addition to his better-known scientific discoveries, he found a certain law that was not thought up or speculated by him, but which we will see is deeply rooted in the things themselves, like a leitmotif in all of nature's work, and which could be called the law of balance, in all external natural things as well. That nature has a certain measure of development for every being, can alter it on one side or the other, and can allow multiplicity and diversity to emerge from it. Look at the giraffe! Nature has used a certain measure of forces for the giraffe's activity, using more strength for the development of the front body, the neck, which is why the hindquarters are stunted! Look at the mole! Here nature devotes all its forces to the body, which is why the little feet remain stunted. Goethe showed how one can understand the difference in form between a dromedary and a lion and how different organs result from applying uniform measures in one direction one time and in the other direction another time. We see how a typical structure expresses itself in its diversity: in one case, the lower jaw develops teeth; in another, the lower jaw remains toothless and horns develop. When Goethe enunciated this law, it was naturally thought to be the saying of a poet who understood nothing of natural science, who was a layman, a dilettante. But in 1830, in the French Chamber, during his dispute with Cuvier, a French naturalist drew attention to this law under the name “balancement des organes”. The future will have much to say about this “balancement des organes” because it leads deep into the formal properties of the various entities. Goethe also applied this law to spiritual life. He recognized that there is also such a thing in the soul that expresses the individual at a higher level in the individual soul forces, so that he says: There are human beings who develop the special quality that is represented by the will-o'-the-wisps. They represent will-o'-the-wisps in life itself, false prophets who can do no other than communicate what they have learned to others and pour out their gold. Other people who can place a mystical light in nature, like the snakes that submerge themselves in nature. In short, Goethe wanted to show how, in general, normal life in the outer world, souls present themselves in such a way that they develop one-sided powers. How man can reach the higher level of knowledge by inwardly representing the type of the human soul, a balance, a right interaction of all soul forces, linked to the most sober soul force, the sense of foreboding. Not as superstition does, which loses itself in foreboding and lets the power of intelligence be enslaved by the foreboding of the nature of things.

On the one hand, Goethe shows how man can become one-sided, but he also shows how, if he wants to attain higher knowledge, he must strive towards that summit, which is symbolized by the beautiful lily, the inner harmonious balance and the interaction of the individual soul forces.

Now we know that the serpent, having received, so to speak, the inner radiance within, comes into the subterranean temple. Now it can distinguish between those spiritual worlds that approach man, that must inspire man, that can give strength, and those that the human soul must properly have within it if it is to ascend to a higher existence. There are certain powers in the human soul that it must have if it is to ascend to a higher level. But if a person wants to attain this higher level without having found the right path at the right time through the inspiration of these world powers, if he wants to grasp the highest that can be achieved in knowledge and world view prematurely, then this world view is something that can kill, confuse and paralyze him in his soul. Therefore, the youth who wants to unite with the lily before he is ripe, he will first be paralyzed, yes, killed. That is, Goethe has vividly expressed what he once expressed in a short saying:

Everything that frees our minds without giving us mastery over ourselves is corrupting.

There is a high level of human development through which the human soul can grow together with the fruits of all knowledge. It stands before us like a distant prospect. Our striving must be directed towards maturing, towards shaping ourselves in such a way that we are in the right mood, in the right inner state, and do not receive the highest in an immature way. So the youth is killed first and is to be led first through the endowment of soul powers, represented by the kings. Before he can connect with the beautiful lily, the snake leads him to the three kings. Meaningful conversations surround these kings like secrets. The golden king is the supersensible power that can be kindled in our soul, which gives the right wisdom so that the power of wisdom harmonizes with the other soul forces. The silver king represents piety. And for Goethe, piety means something quite different than in the ordinary sense.

Those who know Goethe also know that for him, the cult of beauty and art were intimately connected with religious feeling; therefore, beauty is what always makes him feel pious, so that for him the king of wisdom is represented by gold. The king who is endowed with the soul power that generates religion through beauty is the silver one. But that which is to permeate our impulses of will, that which wants to penetrate us in the ordered life of the soul as the power of the will, is represented by the brazen king.

Our soul forces must be under our complete control, so that we can distinguish them, so that we see the world in the right way, full of wisdom, and our feelings do not play tricks on us. That the life of feeling is not overcome by the life of wisdom and the life of wisdom in its turn by the life of the will and vice versa, but that the three soul powers arise separately, specified in the higher soul life. As for the fourth king, it may be said that every human being has wisdom, piety and willpower within him, but that they are mixed together in a chaotic way, like gold, silver and ore. Then a higher age of development begins for the soul when this chaotic mixing of soul powers ceases, and man is not even pushed by an impulse of will, at one time his feelings run away with him, at another time he is led by wisdom alone. No, when the non-chaotic, as it happens through the fourth king, is mixed, when man clearly separates within himself the realm of soul power, that of wisdom, that of the feeling of beauty, that of the religious mood, that that is imbued with the good will to do good, so that he rules over this realm and is not driven by it, then he will come to that point in time when one can say: It is time, I must undertake something else. A soul that is led unprepared before the realm of wisdom, beauty and power would hardly see anything of these things.

The man with the lamp represents a soul force that, in a certain sense, prepares people for wisdom, beauty and strength. It is the peculiarity of this lamp that it can only shine where there is already another light. What kind of light comes from the lamp of the old man? The same light, the light of religious world view, which must precede the actual wisdom knowledge, radiates from our hearts, even if we have not yet penetrated into things. It is a light that can only shine where other light is already present. Religions can only produce faith where they arise through this or that preparation, or where they are adapted to what people feel under the climate, certain cultural epochs and so on. There, therefore, the serpent, which wants to penetrate through mere inner mystical soul power to wisdom, piety, power, must encounter the kings, the soul forces, with the light of faith, which leads the soul to higher knowledge, which prepares the soul. Thus Goethe shows how the right time must approach. How it must first be guided by the light of faith and how it can then, when the soul has prepared itself, guided by the light of faith, ascend to an age where it has experienced many things. How it can come to the direct grasp of the soul power in its separateness as well as in its harmonious interaction. It is shown how man can prepare himself here on the physical plane on this side of the river. How on the other side, if man connects himself prematurely with the heights of human emotional life, he suffers damage in his soul, so to speak, perishes.

And now the strange figure of the old man's wife with the lamp. This woman, who is described to us as all too human, who is chosen by the will-o'-the-wisps to pay with fruits of the earth — she represents primitive human nature, which cannot rise to knowledge, but when connected to the man with the lamp, with the light, she can believe. What is the light of faith capable of? It can transform stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones. This is all characterized by the fact that the lamp-black pug that has eaten the gold that the will-o'-the-wisps have shaken off is transformed into precious stones by the old man's lamp. This shows the power of faith, this completely wonderful power of faith, this advancement of higher knowledge. Or how it is able to show us all things in such a way that they really present their divine aspects in a certain way. That they show what is in them even before they have reached the supersensible in them through knowledge. The dead stones show: what is endowed with wisdom is transformed into gold by the light of this lamp. This means that faith is able to already sense in things what wisdom later recognizes in full light, and how all things are not as they appear to us in the sensory world, but that they have a deeper side. This is symbolically indicated by how the light of faith in the old man's lamp transforms all things. Man, if he remains in his healthy nature, cannot attain to science, to knowledge, then he actually has something in him that is much more connected with the mysterious forces that stand at the border of the supersensible. Compared to the person who has come to abstract science and easily becomes a doubter and skeptic. How he loses his footing, becomes insecure, nervous about all knowledge. How secure some original primitive nature is, as represented by this old woman, who is so in touch with nature, who can give what the will-o'-the-wisps cannot give. Such people have an original feeling through which they are aware of the connections with the infinite, the divine, which lives and weaves in all nature as the supernatural. That is why, when learned people with their doubts come to some original people, there comes that compassionate smile that says: No matter how clever you are, no matter how much you know about nature with your learning, we know what you do not know; certain knowledge brings us together with that from which we ourselves originate. The woman can pay, which the will-o'-the-wisps cannot.

The human being must attain not only emotional certainty. He is connected with a supersensible realm, as is represented by the rule of the temple with the kings, where there is not only an inner, mystical sense of security, but the human being must ascend so that he is truly introduced to the realm of the supersensible, sees the spiritual life and activity. The temple must be transported from the underground into the overground. The temple of knowledge itself must rise above the boundary line, above the river between the supersensible and the sensual world. And it is conceivable that a soul which has worked on itself in this way, has gone up the stages of development, has those holy midday moments of life in a certain way in hand, can pass through them into the spiritual and over into the sensual world. That it can draw attention to how the Divine-Spiritual reigns when an event of external nature is shown and can point again to the pure Divine-Spiritual that is in the supersensible realm, so that it is achieved that not only exquisite, particularly favored spirits can cross the river. This is to be achieved through spiritual science in modern culture. Goethe is a prophet of theosophy in his “Fairy Tale,” in that he shows that not only the favored mystical natures, who have innate mysticism, have midday moments of life when they can cross over the river and find the realm of the supersensible in the bright sunshine of life, but that there is a soul development that everyone can undergo. Every soul, naturally, even though it is laborious and full of renunciation, can all wander over and across, from and to the transcendental realm, when what the mystery of faith is has occurred.

“How many secrets do you know?” – “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The revealed,” replied the old man.

This saying [of the revealed secret] often occurs in Goethe because Goethe, like all true mystics, was of the opinion that there is nothing spiritual that does not experience itself externally, materially, somehow, that one can find connections between the material and the spiritual everywhere. It is only a matter of finding the right point, the right place in the universe where the spiritual expresses itself externally, physiognomically. The secret, apparently! Not so much how to seek the spiritual in a roundabout way, but to connect with things, like the snake. And one also finds a way into the spiritual through communion with the material world. The revealed secret is the one that can be found everywhere and to which only a certain maturity of the soul belongs. The three secrets are none other than how wisdom, beauty and piety and virtue should live in us, not separately. Characteristically, a fourth is necessary, which the old man cannot know. But he can know that it is time to say it! What does the snake whisper in the old man's ear? That she is willing to sacrifice herself, that she is willing to sacrifice her own body, just to build a bridge over the river out of what arises from her.

The great secret of the sacrifice of the lower soul forces, which should only be the path to the higher self: I want to sacrifice all that which is connected with the lower entities of nature, which I have sought, obedient to the laws of the world. Those who do not have this dying and becoming remain only a gloomy guest on the dark earth.

First, man must go through all that leads him to the events and facts of nature, in order to then offer up what he has gained and experienced with his lower self as a sensual being, and ascend.

Jakob Böhme expressed this mystery beautifully:

He who does not die before he dies
will perish when he dies.

He who enters the supersensible world through the gate of death without having killed the lower powers of the soul, without having died to the lower self before passing through the physical gate of death, would not prepare himself in this embodiment to see the true spiritual being before death!

The soul saves itself from ruin in the lower self when it becomes like the snake, which does not merely remain in the clefts, but sacrifices itself. This means that there is a power of the soul in us that can connect with all nature beings. This power must first be sacrificed, however, for the sake of higher knowledge, so that what must first be sacrificed is all that is lower egoism, all that base selfishness, in order to attain higher freedom. Thus that which first led us into the realm of this world itself becomes the path to the beyond. We ascend into the supersensible world only over that which we have sacrificed ourselves. The will-o'-the-wisps are only able to unlock the gate. They have the keys. Science has the keys, as Mephistopheles has the keys to the realm of the mothers; he can unlock, but not lead into, the real secrets. We can recognize the value of the sciences, appreciate the intelligent and abstract in human life, for it leads us to the gate. But then the higher soul forces must begin if we want to be admitted into the temple. Thus we see how these will-o'-the-wisp actually play out their role to the end, and how Goethe, in the development of his fairy tale poetry, captures the meaning of the soul forces down to the last details. The “fairytale” is such that with this kind of explanation, every word, every sentence is proof that a deeper meaning is being introduced into the fairy tale. Through the effect of the lamp, the old man's house is lined with gold. What remains of religion, of the different religions? Tradition!

Let us try to imagine the whole thing in concrete terms in our cultural process. Let us go to our libraries and search in the historical works on this and that religion. How much of the gold is stored there, how much is illuminated by the light of the lamp, how the abstractions come in, licking up the gold, gleaning the history of religions from the books and making new ones out of old books. Even where wisdom becomes history, stored up in libraries, the will-o'-the-wisps can nourish themselves on it; they even walk around full of erudition with what comes first from these sources. It agrees less with the pug, the natural creature, the unlearned one, who dies from this wisdom and must first be revived. First, through the light of the lamp, he is transformed into precious stones and can be transformed from precious stone through contact with the lily. The lily can enliven everything that has gone through death, that has undergone this – what does not have this dying and becoming – a bright guest must have become this on this earth. He who wishes to endure the touch of the lily must have passed through the death of the lower self.

Thus the young man only becomes ready to come into contact with the beautiful lily after he has been killed. He can only enter the Temple of Wisdom after the snake has sacrificed itself. When all this has happened, the young man can then be led to the temple. When the sacrifice has been made, the soul is led upwards from its subterranean existence to the realization that everything is permeated and interwoven by the spirit. Then the temple is led from below upwards, and the human being is endowed with that which the individual soul powers can give him. Wisdom gives him that which is expressed in the sentence of the golden king:

Recognize the Highest.

The symbol is the oak wreath. The silver king gives him the sceptre and says:

Feed the sheep

as a sign of his endowment with the power of piety. The king of brass hands him the sword and shield and tells him:

Keep your sword at your left side, and your right hand free.

Right-hand virtue is not aggressive in its approach, but it stands strong and firm on its feet, and when it is a matter of human dignity and human destiny, it is ready to defend these and to work in the world in human love and beneficial human action. Now the young man unites with the beautiful lily. The individual powers of the soul are illuminated by true love. But the soul can only feel this when it has risen above ordinary love, when it is absorbed in love for the spiritual. Wisdom, beauty, piety, virtue, they develop and promote the soul's development. Love not only has to grow, it invigorates, shapes and harmonizes everything. It lifts the soul up a step. There we then see how the human being, when he ascends, when he finds himself in that temple where he can experience knowledge, how he comes to see, but now in holy awe, how the small temple in the large temple sees the highest, the secret of secrets, the human being himself, how he passes over as a spiritual being from the spiritual world to the hut of the , where man is placed as a small world, as a small temple in the larger temple, showing so beautifully when the soul moves up to the steps of higher knowledge, then he attains the secrets of the world through wisdom, piety, and virtue. What Goethe so beautifully felt as the Spinozian love of God, the development of the highest powers of the soul, comes to the riddles, the secrets of the world, but as the highest of the secrets, which we only see again as a small temple in the great, the secret of man himself and his connection with the divine being. The giant comes last, also groping around, and then becomes the hour hand of time. Our knowledge becomes spiritual, it dissipates when we ascend in our soul life, and what is external materialism is the consciousness of those laws that work mechanically. The giant basically stands for the subconscious, for everything that comes from the forces of the soul that also work in the subconscious. This may only remain in one when we look up at what is the utmost for our inwardness, how the times follow one another, what the outer rhythm of time is. This has its ultimate justification, and mere mechanical knowledge has a justification there. One would like to say: Goethe may have had in mind when he came up with this idea of the giant, who finally becomes the hour hand of the world, what superstition has been done with the art of numbers, the various structures in space, what is only a superstitious shadow of a greater knowledge that has remained from the old days of the old worldviews. But one thing remains as justified: to use what has been recognized to form a kind of chronometer for the processes that surround people.

Thus, in a certain respect, we find everything that Goethe felt was necessary for the development of the soul's powers translated into vivid images. If you want to ascend to the highest, then you must develop the soul's powers in such a way that it can only be expressed symbolically in rich, meaningful images. Then you will come close to what Goethe wanted to say when you try to gain an insight into these images from the whole of Goethe's world view. But you must be aware that what is contained in the fairy tale is infinitely richer than I have said, and that all of this is actually only a suggestion of the kind in which Goethe's fairy tale should be sought and felt. But perhaps it is possible to get a sense of the inner wealth and greatness from which Goethe created with such immeasurable productive power. How right he is when he says that the true, the beautiful, the truly artistic can only be an expression of the general truth that permeates the world and that people can recognize. And this was also what lived in Goethe as a conviction, what led him from step to step in restless pursuit; this is what draws us to Goethe, so to speak. Goethe is one of those minds that work like only the very greatest.

You read a work by Goethe once in your life. You think you have understood it. After five years you read it again and realize: I didn't understand it then, but only now. Then again after five years, and you realize how much you have discovered that you couldn't see before because you weren't mature enough. Only now, after you have experienced so much yourself, only now can you understand the work. Five years later you read it again, and then perhaps you are so happy that you say to yourself: At the time you did not understand it; you must, you can wait until you become more mature and more mature, to be completely satisfied as you grow into it more and more. This feeling is only experienced by the most exquisite minds in the development of humanity. In such people we see the leaders of human culture. One gets an inkling of the infinity of the soul's content by being able to penetrate ever deeper into it. Then one counts him among those spirits about whom, summarizing today's reflection, we can say:

Like stars shining
in the sky of eternal being
are the spirits sent by God.
May all human souls in the realm of becoming on earth
succeed in seeing their flames of light!