The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of addressing you from this very spot about subjects related to spiritual science or, as it has become customary to call it, theosophy. Those of you in the audience who have attended several lectures over the past years will have seen that the basis of spiritual science as represented here is such that one can say: Spiritual science or Theosophy should not be considered merely as a dreamy, idle occupation of a few people who are far removed from life, but should rather shine more deeply into the tasks and riddles of life.

On the one hand, it is true that this spiritual-scientific world view is intended to direct our gaze up into the spheres of the spiritual foundations of the world, to convey knowledge of these spiritual foundations of the world; but on the other hand – and it need only be recalled here to the lecture on the education of the child from the point of view of spiritual science, which has been given here — on the other hand, this spiritual-scientific world view has the task of making life understandable, of giving guidelines and guiding stars to action and work in practical life, of providing orientation in the broadest sense precisely about what is going on around us before our eyes and ears, and of giving a deeper understanding of it by drawing precisely this understanding from the deeper, spiritual causes. What we are to deal with today can be considered a contribution in this direction.

What can initially confuse people, what initially causes people all kinds of conflict, is when their world view, when the affairs of life confront them with important personalities, with their opinions, with their thoughts, and when these personalities contradict each other so often. Many of you will have already felt how Theosophy or spiritual science, by broadening one's view, leads precisely to a harmonization of opinions through understanding.

Today we will deal with two contemporary personalities whose work is taking place right among us, whose opinions, so to speak, are going around the world from east to west and from west to east. These are personalities who are so well suited to leading us to the deep contradictions that run through our lives – for perhaps you will not find two personalities who are so opposed in all that they think and feel, in all that they express as being the right thing to do for our needs today – on the one hand we have Tolstoy, the much-mentioned, the effective one, a personality of whom one might say that no term is sufficient to properly encompass what he actually is for the present day; it will hardly suffice to say that Tolstoy is a moralist, if one believes a reformer in certain areas , if one wanted to use the term prophet or the like, but whoever pronounces the name of this personality will always be aware that something very inner to human nature is struck in this, that something lives in this personality that seems to emerge from other depths of the soul than those that move on the surface of existence today – and the other personality that is to be contrasted with it, so to speak, is the American millionaire Carnegie.

Why is Carnegie being contrasted with this personality today? Just as Tolstoy is trying to find a satisfactory solution to life and the riddles of life from the depths of his soul, so Carnegie, in his own way, is also seeking to gain principles of action and direction from the depths of our time, from his practical, one might say, “fundamentally intelligent” view of life. Perhaps one could say – but it sounds almost trivial – that just as idealism and realism have confronted each other in all ages – but with these shades as radically pronounced as possible – so do Tolstoy and Carnegie confront each other.

The great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte once said: “What one's worldview is depends on what kind of person one is.” He was pointing out how a person's worldview is sometimes more subtly and sometimes more coarsely intertwined with their unique character and temperament, with their entire life. And if we first look at the life, the character traits, and the personality traits of the two people we want to talk about, we already have the greatest possible contrast.

The rich Russian aristocrat, who was born into the opulence of life, so to speak, who is virtually forced by his social position in life not only to get to know all sides of this life down to the most superficial outbursts of our present day, but to live with them and savor them, we see how, oversaturated to these contents of life, which are offered on the surface today, he takes refuge in the highest moral ideals, which seem to fly over life endlessly, and of which most people, even if they admire them, will be convinced today that they may be beautiful, but that they can only realize a little in life.

On the other hand, we see Carnegie, born, one might say, out of need and misery, at least educated out of need and misery, familiar with all kinds of privation, with the necessity of doing the most menial of work, endowed with none of the things that life offered to someone like Tolstoy on the surface of today's social order, endowed with an honest will to work, with an one might say, idealistically colored certain ambition to become a whole human being, he worked his way up; Carnegie works his way up through this sphere to a kind, one might say, of realistic idealism, also to a kind of moralism that counts on what is immediately apparent, what can be directly experienced in practical life.

We see how Tolstoy, in the most radical way, throws down the gauntlet, so to speak, to today's social order, how his criticism becomes not only harsh when he speaks of the current social order, but how it seeks to intervene, so to speak, in a devastating way in current thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will.

Carnegie sees how life has developed historically up to our present time and, for his soul, has the one word, so to speak, that expresses everything in relation to his first, most direct relationship to life: Yes, he says to everything that the present has brought us – a full satisfaction with what is around us! He sees how the gap between rich and poor has grown, how the ways of earning a living have changed, and everywhere he is permeated by the judgment: It does not matter whether we find this good or bad, but that it must be so, that we just have to reckon with it, and yet, working his way through – this is the characteristic feature of this personality – working his way through from a realistic view to a kind of idealism that sets itself the great goal of providing guidelines for a good life within these existing conditions, for a life that serves human progress in the most beautiful way, and for a social order that serves human progress and development.

Our consideration should not take sides with one or the other school of thought; it should be clear from the conditions of human development how such contradictions could have arisen. And if Theosophy has a task in relation to such phenomena as these two personalities present, then it is precisely to understand, from the deep foundations of existence, preferably of spiritual development, where such phenomena come from. It is not my intention to teach anything biographical about either of these personalities, only to say what the souls of both can reveal to us so that we can then penetrate to a deeper understanding of them.

From the outset, Tolstoy is a person who does not have to struggle with the external hardships of life, but is born into wealth and abundance, so to speak. He could easily have done so if he had harbored a superficial soul, as so many thousands and thousands more do, lost in wealth and abundance. But his individuality was not suited to that. From the very beginning, from childhood on, what could have an effect on this soul was always that which touched the deepest questions of the soul, of the world view. At first, he accepts life as it presents itself to him. As a boy, he is not yet able to think critically about what is going on around him; what later emerged in him in a monumental way as a critique of today's way of life is far from that. As a boy, he takes for granted what is around him and going on.

But there is already something in the boy like a lightning strike in his soul. One of his childhood friends once came home from high school with a strange message. He said something like, “Yes, someone – maybe a teacher – has made a new discovery, namely that there is no God.” This was something that struck like lightning into this young soul, which had actually taken for granted not only everything external but also the religious life as it played out around him.

That something like this is possible, that presented itself together with another thing to this youthful mind. You only have to put yourself in a child's shoes for once, and you will be able to know that a child's soul could actually believe that such a discovery could possibly be made. And such events have been incorporated again and again into this soul life. And we could give a long description of how Tolstoy, during his military service, in his dealings with the social classes to which he belongs, gets to know all the misery of today's life, how he becomes weary of it, how he the most diverse thoughts, how he, after he had got to know the misery of war and its social history, the literary life in Petersburg, how he became tired of what life is today in other areas of Europe. We could describe all this – it is well known today – but what can interest us are the questions that arose for Tolstoy.

First of all, the question increasingly and more sharply arises in his soul: What is actually a certain center of life in the face of all the confusing circumstances around us, where can a center be found? Gradually, religion becomes an important question for him, and this question becomes all the more significant for him as he is unable to break away from external customs for a long time. But the religious question becomes something deeply incisive for him. More and more clearly and distinctly he asks himself: What exactly is religion for man? And for a long time he is not really clear about how that connecting bond of the soul with some higher world, with an unknown spiritual source, what that bond looks like, where it goes from the soul, etc. Above all, the people he has met in his circles seem to him to be so detached from the religious mood of the soul, so parched in relation to the living source of life.

Not, as I said, to take sides, but only to describe this mood of the soul as clearly as possible. And then, in my opinion, he sees himself as a soldier in the Caucasus, during the siege of Sevastopol, among the lower classes of the population. He gets to know their souls; he delves into such souls in an intimate way. He finds that there is something original in such souls, that they are even less torn away from the original ground, and the problem arises before his soul as to whether there is not more truth and authenticity in the naivety of the existence of lower, subordinate social classes than in the circles in which he had to live. And lo and behold, here too, one mystery after another presents itself to him and he cannot solve any of them. You only need to read something like his unfinished novel “Morning Hours of a Landowner” to see how he wrestled with the question: Yes, now I have seen the people who have broken away from the original source of existence, who have withered away on the periphery; I have sought a path to religious depth from the soul of primitive people, but an answer to this question fails because today's so-called educated people can never communicate with these primitive original states of the soul. In short, there is no answer to the burning questions that existed for him either.

And so it goes on, and so he comes to see all the contradictions and contradictions in life more and more clearly, and one need only go through his original artistic work: “War and Peace”, his novellas, “Anna Karenina” and so on, and one will see how, although the artistic form is always the most important thing at first glance, these works are permeated by the desire to understand life in all its contradictions, and above all to understand the contradictory nature of human character, because that is what confronts him as contradictory. You feel how true it is, what he says later, when he has already turned to a kind of moral writing: “It has caused me unspeakable torment, and I know that it has caused many of my colleagues in literature just as much torment, to depict an ideally psychologically constructed character that is true to reality. It torments him that there can be such a contradiction between what one must imagine as ideal if there is to be salvation and order in the world, and what presents itself to his spiritual eyes in reality. That always tormented him as long as he was still artistically active.

There was something else. Tolstoy was not just an objective observer during the whole period in which the mental torments took place; he experienced life and took part in everything. He also experienced these things inwardly; he could feel the intimate pangs of conscience, the intimate reproaches that a person must make to himself when he suddenly realizes in a certain respect that he was born into certain circles and must take part in everything that happens there, and yet it seems contradictory to him when he judges it. Those personalities who felt this were driven to the brink of suicide; one need only sense what is going on inside such people. Man learns infinitely more through the opportunities he has to criticize himself than through criticism of his surroundings.

And so Tolstoy's view broadened more and more, until he went from a survey of the immediate circumstances to an overview, so to speak, of the entire developmental history of humanity, and there it became clear to him to what extent great and significant, namely religious impulses of humanity have come into decline. Thus, without any intention of being critical, he was confronted with the depth and intensity of feeling of the great impulse given to the world by Christ Jesus, and alongside it the Roman world, the Roman Caesaranism, which had completely subjugated Christianity to the service of power of things that do not serve the salvation of humanity, as the Christian impulse was to and could do, but which bring humanity into the confusion that presented itself to it, and so his view became more and more a criticism of everything that existed, and it is harsh enough. From his historical perspective, he believed that he had to perceive the contradictions of people as the most difficult. On the one hand, the greatest wealth, on the other, the most terrible poverty, which was particularly evident in the stunted development of the souls, so that people in this stunted development of spiritual matters are not able to find their way out of what they experience to the great spiritual treasures, especially to those that can be found in original Christianity, to which they must penetrate!

Thus, the most comprehensive problem for him was the contrast between the ruling upper class of society, with its power and luxury, and the downtrodden masses, oppressed in mind and body. This presented itself to him in the most comprehensive way. And he became a critic, perhaps in a more comprehensive way than any before him, who never tires of describing more and more the way things are, and who is so skilled at describing that the mere description can sometimes inspire shudder.

It is perhaps quite characteristic if we highlight a symptomatic feature from his view of the world, which will immediately show us how he approached the tasks of life. He once said that he would have liked to write a fairy tale with something like the following content: A woman had learned something very bad about another woman and had developed the deepest antipathy towards her as a result. She wanted to do something to her that could not really be compared to anything in terms of evil. She went to a magician and asked for advice. She stole a child from her enemy. The magician told her that she could satisfy her hatred in the most intense way if she could bring this child, who she had stolen from a woman living in the poorest of circumstances and who would have ended up in need and misery there, to a rich house. And indeed, she succeeds in bringing the child to a rich house. The child is adopted. It is cared for in every way in the manner of the rich – it is pampered, and has it pretty good, so to speak. The woman who had brought the child to the rich woman is furious when she finds out; because that is not how she had imagined the child would fare. She goes to the magician and complains that he has given her such bad advice. He, however, says she should just wait. More and more, the child is embedded in luxury. The woman says: The magician has deceived me. But he replied: Just wait. It is the worst thing you have done to your enemy.

The child continued to develop. It becomes conscious and feels an inner contradiction to the external situation. It says to itself: “Everything I long for must be in an unknown world; but I cannot find it. I know that the way I have been cared for has made me too weak to make the decision to take any reasonable path to the foundations of existence. All this becomes the worst inner torment for the developing human being.

Tolstoy knew well how such psychological experiences appear; he wanted to show how this human being was driven to the brink of suicide by this inner turmoil. You can see symptomatically from such a thing how Tolstoy thinks. Much more than from definitions, we can see from Tolstoy's will about social order how he thought about social order. This was the attitude of one of the two personalities we are dealing with today towards the world.

Now let us add the opposite: Carnegie. He is the child of a master weaver. His father has some work as long as there are no large factories. Carnegie's childhood falls precisely during the boom of big industry in this area. His father no longer receives orders. He has to emigrate from Scotland to America. He can only earn the barest necessities with difficulty. The boy had to work in a factory as a schoolboy. He recounts it himself, and one senses the tone of such a description if one has previously delved into the psychological experiences that we have just explored in Tolstoy. He himself describes what an event it was when he received a wage of one dollar and twenty cents for his work for the first time. He later became one of the richest personalities of the present day, one of those who, as we shall see shortly, actually had to find ways of investing their millions; but he can say, and this is significant: No income later, no matter how large it was – and a lot of money passed through his hands – no income gave me as much joy as that first dollar.

And so it goes on. He works in this way for a long time and contributes to the family's upkeep. There is something in him like a hidden strength that works towards him becoming what, in the circles in which he now moves, is called a “self-made man”. This satisfies him, that as a twelve-year-old boy he had the feeling: Now you will become a man, because he feels that you are a man when you can earn something. That was the thought of his soul. Later he will go to another factory, work in an office, and later become a telegraph operator and earn more.

He recounts: “A telegraph operator in America had the task of knowing all the addresses by heart. I was worried about losing my job.” — He quickly learned all the names of an entire street. So he was a “made man” again. Now he sneaks into the office with other messengers before official duty begins. They practice telegraphing. His highest ideal is to become a telegraphist himself. He actually finds employment as such. Now his greatest joy is to find a patron from whom he can borrow a book every Saturday. He waits longingly for such a book.

Now events occur that are significant for him. A higher-ranking railroad official, who has played a major role, gives him the task of working his way out by taking shares in a certain enterprise. With great effort, he raises the $500 that is necessary; he has been contributing to the family's upkeep in the most arduous way for some time. It is only through the efforts of his mother that he is able to raise the $500 to buy ten shares. And now – again, we have to feel what this means emotionally – there comes a day when he receives the first small dividend corresponding to his shares. It strikes him as a mystery, like the solution to a mystery, which he could not have grasped before: that money can make money. The concept of capital dawns on him. This was now as important to him as any idealistic problem is to some thinker. Before that, he only knew the possibility of getting a wage in return for work. That capital can generate money now dawned on him.

And now it is interesting to see the intensity with which such experiences can be absorbed by such a soul. He is making progress. The right thing dawns on him at the right moment. When the problem of the sleeping car arises, he is ready to take part. Step by step, he advances until he finally knows how to exploit the situation in the right way. When the time came to change from building bridges of wood to bridges of iron, he adjusted himself to the new trend, grew richer and richer, and finally became the steel king, who must seek ways - and now he has a practical sense of morality - how he, in relation to his practical sense of morality, must behave with his wealth.

For him, as I said, there is none of what Tolstoy felt: no criticism of life, but an acceptance of life as a matter of course. What Tolstoy found so contradictory is what Carnegie imagines: If we look back at older phases of human feeling, we see that, in primitive conditions, princes do not differ particularly in terms of their lifestyle from those living around them. There is no luxury, no wealth in today's sense, but also none of the things that bring wealth; there is no contrast between rich and poor. In primitive times, however, as development was, this had to develop, and the contrasts became more and more pronounced. It is good, he says, that there are palaces next to the hut; because there is a lot in it that is supposed to be there, we have to understand its necessity.

But he notices how, in primitive conditions, there is a personal, human relationship between master and servant, how everything becomes impersonal in our relationships, how the employer stands in relation to the employee without knowing him, without knowing anything about the servant's spiritual needs, how hatred and so on must develop as a result; but that's how we have to accept it, that's just how it is. So an absolute yes to all outer life!

And when we consider how he is a thoroughly practical and sober-minded thinker of his kind, how he views this life, how he knows all the different chains that capital takes precisely because he is inside it, how he knows many a healthy things to say when you see that, then you have to say: this man, too, has tried to enlighten himself about life, and there is something complacent in him towards Tolstoy; and his practical morality – I use the word deliberately – it presents him with the question: How should our life be shaped if what has developed as a necessity is to have meaning? He says: Well, old conditions have led to wealth being inherited from ancestors to descendants. Is this still possible in our conditions, where capital shoots from capital in such an eminently necessary way? He asks himself this question vividly. He looks at life with penetrating meaning and says: No, it can't be done that way, and by considering all things, he comes to a peculiar view. He comes to the following conclusion; he says to himself that the only way this whole life of the rich man can make sense is if the rich man regards himself as the steward of wealth for the rest of humanity, that the owner of the wealth says to himself: I should not only acquire the wealth, not only have it and perhaps bequeath it to my family members, but rather, I should use what I have acquired, since I have used mental and other powers to bring it together, since I have poured industriousness into it, I should in turn use this industriousness to administer this wealth for the benefit of humanity.

Thus it actually becomes an ideal for him that man, while acquiescing in the conditions of the time, acquires as much wealth as possible, but leaves no wealth behind, but applies it for the good of mankind. Now he comes to a sentence that is characteristic of this world view; the sentence is: 'Died rich dishonored!' So, the ideal he sets for himself is that one may indeed become rich in order to gain the opportunity through wealth to work with it for the benefit of humanity, but he imagines that one must be done with the work of putting wealth at the service of humanity by the time of one's death. He says: It is honorable to leave nothing behind when one dies. Of course, this “nothing” is not to be taken pedantically; the daughters, for example, are to inherit enough to live on, but in radical terms he says: getting rich is a necessity, dying rich is dishonorable. For him, an honest man is one who, so to speak, comes to terms with life and does not leave to some uncertainty what he has acquired through his own hard work.

And now we have to feel the contrast between two such opposing personalities as Tolstoy and Carnegie are. Carnegie himself feels the contrast and he speaks out: Oh, Count Tolstoy wants to lead us back to Christ, but in a way that no longer fits with our lives. Instead of wanting to lead us back to Christ, it would be better to show what Christ would advise people to do today, under today's conditions. In his sentence: He who dies rich is dishonored, he finds the real expression of the Christian idea and lets it be known that he believes that if Christ were to speak audibly to people today, he would agree with him and not Tolstoy.

At the same time, however, we see that this man, Carnegie, is truly a noble nature, and not, as many are who accept circumstances and do not reflect on them, a lazy one. He has not only said what I have presented as the main point; he has sought the most diverse ways to use his wealth and more. It does seem strange at first when life can confront us with such contradictions, when two personalities arise in the same era who, from what one may call an objective world view, come to such different points of view, and the may be quite difficult for the human being, and it is not at all to be criticized from the outset if someone were to say today: Oh, my whole soul goes to where Tolstoy preaches his great ideals; how sublime this personality appears. But I also have to think about the practical demands of life, and if a person is not an abstract dreamer and idealist, but really goes through the thought processes of such a person with a realistic mind, as Carnegie offers them, then you have to say: that is perfectly justified. But it shows me how, for the person who lets the practical demands of life affect him, it is impossible to truly do justice to the ideals, to truly believe in the fulfillment of the great ideals. And so a new conflict can arise for such a person, as it did for Tolstoy.

And now let us try, I would like to say, to delve a little deeper into these two personalities, now from the perspective of the science of the soul. Tolstoy does indeed succeed in fully defending what he believes to be the original Christian teaching; he tries to criticize in the harshest possible way everything that has become of Christianity, that has emerged here and there, and he seeks to find the great impulses of Christianity. Tolstoy presents these impulses of Christianity in a relatively simple way. He says: When man understands these impulses, it is clear that he has within himself a spark of an eternal divine power that permeates the world. And the second thing that becomes clear to him is that this spark contains the essence of his own immortality and that, if he has understanding, he can no longer do anything other than seek a deeper human being in the ordinary earthly human being. And when he follows this feeling, when he realizes that he has to seek a deeper person in himself, then he cannot help but overcome what lies in his lower nature, and so he becomes a strict demands of the other nature, the development of the higher person in himself, the person who follows the Christ. How would a person - I will not say Carnegie himself, but someone who considers what might follow from Carnegie's view of life - how would such a person relate to Tolstoy's position on Christ? He would say: Oh, it is great and powerful to live in Christ, to let Christ come alive in oneself. But he would say to him: In the external circumstances, this cannot be realized. How should the state's circumstances be shaped if one lives according to this strict Christian demand?

Even if the question has not been asked from a different angle, Tolstoy gives the answer as definitely as possible. He says: “What such a view leads to in the external order, for the state, for external historical events, I do not know, that is beyond my knowledge; but that one must live in the spirit of this Christian faith, that is a certainty for me.” And so for Tolstoy the words: “The kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21) into a deep and significant view of the kind of certainty that a person can have about the highest things. The view of an inner certainty gradually takes shape in him, and so he seeks to find this foundation stone in the soul, which makes it possible for the soul to become ruthlessly certain about certain things, about this or this soul says to itself: however strange it may seem, what will become of it if only the outer world view is maintained, because this inner certainty is the only one, it must be fulfilled. It eludes my observations what may follow, but they must be good because under certain circumstances they must arise from the eternal good source of all things.

Perhaps in no other contemporary personality is there such a strong reliance on inner certainty and the firm belief that, in this reliance, whatever may come, good must come. Perhaps in no other contemporary personality is this belief as intense as in Tolstoy. Therefore, no other personality with such a personal, individual share, with such inner truth, has professed such a world view.

And here we have another opportunity to illustrate the state of mind of both. Carnegie reflects: How should people behave towards each other, how should the rich behave towards the poor? And then the thought goes through his mind: It is not always good to give something to someone who begs for it; because it is possible that you might make the beggar lazy - says Carnegie; maybe you are not doing any good by doing so. You should look at the people you support. Actually, only those who have the will to work should be supported. And Carnegie implements this in a whole system. He says he understands very well that the man who gives something just to get rid of the beggar does more harm than the miser who gives nothing at all.

We do not want to judge such things, we want to characterize them, but let us look at a similar situation in Tolstoy: He meets a person who becomes his friend. This friend does not form a worldview, but feelings within himself. Tolstoy sees a peculiar behavior in him – many people today cannot believe such things; but they are true nonetheless. His friend is robbed. Thieves steal sacks from him; they leave one behind. What does the friend do? He doesn't chase after the thieves, but carries the one sack to them as well and says: They certainly wouldn't have stolen if they hadn't needed the things. And in other circumstances, Tolstoy sees this friend – and he becomes his admirer, he understands this very clearly. There you have the view of people who are considered parasites, so to speak, on one side and on the other. Life views intervene in life in this way, and the symptoms on the surface can characterize the mood of the soul.

But now we have to say: Tolstoy is not only a harsh critic of life in relation to all that we have mentioned; but by grasping the fundamental source of human certainty, he is also led to a remarkable point in his soul development, and that is where Tolstoy actually appears to us in his full greatness for the first time – for those who can appreciate such greatness. One thing that flows from this view of certainty, which one cannot admire enough, is Tolstoy's position on the value of science, contemporary science, and then a certain world of ideas about life and other important problems and questions flows out. Because he tried so hard to look inside the human being, he was able to see through all the futility in the methods of our worldly sciences. Of course, it is easy to understand what these sciences achieve, to follow the paths they take, but what these sciences – and here I am speaking entirely in the spirit of Tolstoy – can never do is answer the question: How do these various external, chemical-physical processes fit into life? What is life?

And now we come to what must actually be meant here. Tolstoy comes to a peculiar way of exploring a deep, scientific problem, the problem of life. Please, my dear attendees, look around you at our Western science, where life is spoken of, and make only one comparison to that, which Tolstoy uses in relation to this riddle of life. He says: “People who try to solve the riddle of life in the sense of today's science seem to me like people who want to get to know the trees in their uniqueness and do it this way: they are in the middle of the trees, but don't look at them, but take a telescope and point it at distant mountain slopes, where, as they have heard, there should be trees whose essence and nature they want to explore. “That's how people strike me who carry their soul, the source of their life, within themselves, who only need to look within themselves to see through the mystery of life, but what do they do? They make instruments for themselves, build methods for themselves and try to dissect what is around them, and there they see even less what life is. Through such a comparison, a thinker like Tolstoy - an eminent thinker - shows us that he feels what is important in relation to this question. Those who work their way into this side of Tolstoy's worldview know that what his book “On Life” has to say about the exploration and evaluation of life is worth more than entire libraries of Western Europe written from the standpoint of today's science on the problem of life. And then one also learns to feel what it means to have such spiritual experiences as Tolstoy, what it means to think about certainty as he did. One then learns to admire how things that one, when one is, so to speak, in the scientific method of our present time, has to go through with long-folded trains of thought, has to write whole books, as Tolstoy's are completed in five lines. The value of such a book as this one about the life of Tolstoy cannot be overestimated. Today's scientist may find it to be mere feuilleton; but anyone who is able to adapt their way of thinking to the spirit of these discussions will find a solution to the problem of life that is not available elsewhere.

And so we see, as this observation shows more and more, how Tolstoy's spirit becomes something that concentrates more and more, that with a few strokes is able to conjure up and solve great problems not in many words, but with radiant words of power, in contrast to the long discussions of a scientific and philosophical nature that are otherwise common. Here we are confronted with the very depths of Tolstoy's soul, and only when we know him from this point of view can we begin to understand the profound spiritual reasons why a person can become someone like Tolstoy on the one hand or someone like Carnegie on the other, who seems very plausible to us and is an important personality. We shall understand the spiritual foundations that lead to Tolstoy on the one hand and to Carnegie on the other if we now characterize from the point of view of spiritual science how this spiritual development takes place and is expressed in certain personalities.

The spiritual researcher sees something quite different from the ordinary in the course of human development. Just as spiritual science sees a multi-faceted being in the person standing before us, and sees in the physical body only one facet, only the effect of higher spiritual facets, with the etheric, astral and ego bodies behind them, so she also sees in what confronts us in the social order, in human life, what confronts us externally visible as a people, as a tribe, as a family, the physical body, the physical body of the people, the physical body of the tribe, the physical body of the family, a spiritual reality behind it. When one speaks of the spirit of the people, the spirit of the time, in today's science, these are words that do not mean much. What is the person thinking who speaks of the German, French or English national spirit? For the modern thinker, it is really only the sum of so and so many people; they form the reality, and the national spirit is a complete abstraction, something that one forms in one's mind when one seeks the concept from the many details. People have no idea that what appears to us as so many people is just as much the expression of an etheric body, an astral body and an ego as it is of the human body, and that it is truly also the expression of a spiritual. Today we have lost what we used to possess; it is no longer easy to explain how this spiritual reigns behind the sensual.

An old friend of mine, a good Aristotelian, tried to make his audience understand how the spiritual can be objectified in the sensual appearance by means of a simple example. Vincent Knauer – that was the man – tried to make it clear that spirit prevails in form, by saying: Let us consider a wolf that eats nothing but lambs for a whole lifetime for my sake; it then consists of nothing but lamb matter; but it has not become a lamb because of that. It does not depend on the matter, but on the fact that there is something in the wolf, which stands behind it as the spiritual, which is the essential, which structures and builds up the matter. This is a very real thing, something that one must know, otherwise all study of the external world moves in the insubstantial. No matter how much you examine in the sensual world, if you do not penetrate to the spiritual, then you do not come to the essential.

But it is the same with terms such as 'popular spirit' or 'zeitgeist'. For the spiritual researcher, a group of people is not just what can be observed in the physical world; there is something spiritual living behind it. And so, for the spiritual researcher, there is a spiritual reality, a real spiritual reality, not a mere, insubstantial abstraction in the Christian development, for example. Besides the Christian, there is a spirit of Christianity, which is a substantial reality. Such a spirit works in a very peculiar way; it works in such a way that we can make it understandable in the briefest way by means of a parable. Imagine that a farmer has brought in some kind of harvest and is now dividing it up. He sells one part, one part goes aside to be consumed, one part he keeps back; this is to form the next sowing. It then comes to light again as something new. It would be bad if nothing were kept back; what lies within would die. This is a comparison that leads us to a real law in human development. Development takes place so rapidly that at a certain point in time certain impulses are given; these must become established and spread. If at a certain point in time a spiritual impulse such as Christianity were given, it would become established in the outer world and take on this or that form, but it would dry up and die in the same way that the outer parts of a tree merge into the bark. These outer forms are destined to gradually wither away, no matter how fruitful the impulse is. However, just as the farmer retains something, something of the spiritual impulses must remain, flowing as it were through underground channels and then reappearing with original strength as a fertilizing influence in the development of mankind. Then personalities appear to us in whom such an impulse, perhaps going through centuries, is embodied. Such personalities appear to us in strong contrast to the environment; they must indeed stand in contrast because the environment is what is withering away. Such personalities are often inclined not to take the environment into account at all. From a spiritual point of view, Tolstoy is such a personality in whom the Christian impulse has been kindled for our time. And things are happening powerfully in the world so that they can achieve far-reaching effects. If we seek them out at their source, they appear radically; for they must radiate. And we will no longer be surprised when we know such a law that such personalities appear to us in this one-sidedness, and on the other hand, not be surprised at personalities who cannot have anything at all in them of these central currents, who are completely within the peripheral effects of the world. One such personality is Carnegie. He can see the whole picture and think out the best way to find one's way in it. Carnegie does not see what is pulsating through humanity as the spiritual. Tolstoy, because he seeks inner certainty so strongly, can seek the kingdom of God within, but because that which has spread as a real current under the surface is embodied in him, he can, to a certain extent, have no heart or mind for what is happening around him as it dies away. And so we see such contradictions that cannot come together. We have an external material aspect, and the observer, who is important to us, does not see the spiritual that prevails in it; we have the spiritual that wells up powerfully from the depths of a personality, and we cannot grasp how this can be realized in the external world. Humanity would increasingly come to such contradictions if another spiritual current did not also arise, a spiritual current that can look equally at underlying spiritual causes and at what these spiritual causes become in external reality. And if we follow theosophy from this point of view, it leads into the deepest depths of spiritual life; it does not seek this merely in such powerful impulses that do not organize themselves into ideas and facts, it seeks to get to know this spiritual life in concreteness. Thus it can see how the spiritual flows into reality; it is able to build the bridge between the most spiritual and the most material, and in this way can bring these points of view together in a higher balance. — We shall see another example of this coming together tomorrow.

Today we want to present such contrasts in two personalities and learn to understand them from the point of view of spiritual life. Thus, Theosophy appears to be called upon not only to preach tolerance in an external way, but to find that inner tolerance that looks with admiration into a soul that gives great impulses from the center of life, which today must seem improbable, impossible, and radical because it contains in a concentrated way what must be spread out over a whole area in the future, and what must then look quite different.

Theosophy can see this; it can also look at reality objectively and do justice to another personality like Carnegie. Life is not a monotonous phenomenon, life is a many-voiced phenomenon, and it is only through the expression of all contrasts that it can develop in its richness. But it would be bad if these did not find their harmonious balance. Man's nature will tend to crystallize one or other of the contradictions, and so it must be, but in order that people may not lose their way in human life, there must also be a central world-view that can, in a sense, identify with all contradictions and thereby gain understanding for what appears to be so contradictory.

If Theosophy works in this sense, harmonizing souls in their contradictions, then it will be able to truly establish what external harmony in the world should be. External harmony can only be the reflection of the inner harmony of the soul. If Theosophy can achieve this – and that is its real goal in relation to cultural life – then it will find the proof it seeks. It does not want theoretical proofs, it does not want to be called crazy; it wants to establish what it has to say, to introduce it into life, and then to see how life becomes harmonious and blissful as a result, as what it has to say becomes established in life as guiding principles. When Theosophy can see in life how what it incorporates is reflected back to it and how it makes life appear in such a way that it becomes harmoniously balanced within despite the contradictions, then it sees this as the proof of its principles, its true evidence.

[ 1 ] “The bud vanishes in the breaking of the blossom, and one could say that the former is contradicted by the latter. In the same way, the fruit declares the blossom to be a false existence and replaces it as its truth. These forms are not merely different from one another but they crowd each other out as they are incompatible. Their Quid nature makes them at once into moments of the organic whole in which they not only do not contradict each other, but in which the one is as necessary as the other, and it is only this equal necessity that constitutes the life of the whole.”

In these words of Hegel, the most significant traits of his mode of conception are expressed. He believes that the things of reality carry within themselves their own contradiction and that the incentive for their growth, for the living process of their development, is given by the fact that they continually attempt to overcome this contradiction. The blossom would never become fruit if it were without contradiction. It would have no reason to go beyond its unquestioned existence.

An exactly opposite intellectual conviction forms the point of departure of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841). Hegel is a sharp thinker, but at the same time a spirit with a great thirst for reality. He would like to have only things that have absorbed the rich, saturated content of the world into themselves. For this reason, Hegel's thoughts must also be in an eternal flux, in a continuous state of becoming, in a forward motion as full of contradictions as reality itself. Herbart is a completely abstract thinker. He does not attempt to penetrate into things but looks at them from the corner into which he has withdrawn as an isolated thinker. The purely logical thinker is disturbed by a contradiction. He demands clear concepts that can exist side by side. One concept must not interfere with another. The thinker sees himself in a strange situation because he is confronted with reality that is full of contradictions, no matter what he may undertake. The concepts that he can derive from this reality are unsatisfactory to him. They offend his logical sense. This feeling of dissatisfaction becomes the point of departure. Herbart feels that if the reality that is spread out before his senses and before his mind supplies him with contradictory concepts, then it cannot be the true reality for which his thinking is striving. He derives his task from this situation. The contradictory reality is not real being but only appearance. In this view he follows Kant to a certain degree, but while Kant declares true being unattainable to thinking cognition, Herbart believes one penetrates from appearance to being by transforming the contradictory concepts of appearance and changing them into concepts that are free from contradictions. As smoke indicates fire, so appearance points at a form of being as its ground. If, through our logical thinking, we elaborate out of a contradictory world picture given to us by our senses and our mind, one that is not contradictory, then we gain from this uncontradictory world picture what we are looking for. This world picture, to be sure, does not appear in this form that is free from contradictions, but it lies behind the apparent one as true reality. Herbart does not set out to comprehend the directly given reality, but creates another reality through which the former is to become explainable. He arrives in this fashion at an abstract thought system that looks rather meager as compared to the rich, full reality. The true reality cannot be a unity, for a unity would have to contain within itself the infinite variety of the real things and events. It must be a plurality of simple entities, eternally equal to themselves, incapable of change and development. Only a simple entity that unchangeably preserves its qualities is free from contradictions. An entity in development is something different in one moment from what it is in another, that is, its qualities are contradictory at various times. The true world is, therefore, a plurality of simple, never-changing entities, and what we perceive are not these simple entities but their relations to one another. These relations have nothing to do with the real being. If one simple entity enters into a relationship with another, the two entities are not changed thereby, but I do perceive the result of their relationship. The reality we perceive directly is a sum of relations between real entities. When one entity abandons its relation to another and replaces it by a relationship with a third entity, something happens without touching the being of the entities themselves. It is this event that we perceive, namely, our apparent contradictory reality. It is interesting to note how Herbart, on the basis of this conception, forms his thoughts concerning the life of the soul. The soul is, as are all other real entities, simple and unchangeable in itself. This entity is now engaged in relations with other beings. The expression of these relations is life in thought-pictures. Everything that happens within us—imagination, feeling, will—is an interplay between the soul and the rest of the world of real entities. Thus, for Herbart, the soul life becomes the appearance of relations into which the simple soul-entity enters with the world. Herbart has a mathematical mind, and his whole world conception is derived fundamentally from mathematical conceptions. A number does not change when it becomes the link of an arithmetical operation. Three remains three, whether it is added to four or subtracted from seven. As the numbers have their place within the mathematical operations, so do the individual entities within the relationships that develop between them. For this reason, psychology becomes an arithmetical operation for Herbart. He attempts to apply mathematics to psychology. How the thought-images condition each other, how they effect one another, what results they produce through their coexistence are things calculated by Herbart. The “ego” is not the spiritual entity that we lay hold of in our self-consciousness, but it is the result of the cooperation of all thought-pictures and thereby also nothing more than a sum, a last expression of relationships. Of the simple entity, which is the basis of our soul life, we know nothing, but its continual relation to other entities is apparent to us. In this play of relations one entity is entangled. This condition is expressed by the fact that all these relationships are tending toward a center, and this tendency expresses itself in the thought of the ego.

[ 2 ] Herbart is, in another sense than Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, a representative of the development of modern world conception. Those thinkers attempt a representation of the self-conscious soul in a world picture capable of containing this self-conscious soul as an element. In so doing they become the spokesmen for the spiritual impulse of their age. Herbart is confronted with this impulse and he must admit the feeling that this impulse is there. He attempts to understand it, but in the form of thinking that he imagines to be the correct one, he finds no possibility of penetrating into the life of the self-conscious being of the soul. He remains outside of it. One can see in Herbart's world conception what difficulties man's thinking encounters when it tries to comprehend what it has essentially become in the course of mankind's evolution. Compared to Hegel, Herbart appears like a thinker who strives in vain for an aim at which Hegel believes actually to have arrived. Herbart's thought constructions are an attempt to outline as an external spectator what Hegel means to present through the inner participation of thought. Thinkers like Herbart are also significant for the characterization of the modern form of world conception. They indicate the aim that is to be reached by the very display of their insufficient means for the attainment of this aim. The spiritual aim of the age motivates Herbart's struggle; his intellectual energy is inadequate to understand and to express this struggle sufficiently. The course of the philosophical evolution shows that, besides the thinkers who move on the crest of the time-impulses, there are also always some active ones who form world conceptions through their failure to understand these impulses. Such world conceptions may well be called reactionary.

[ 3 ] Herbart reverts to the view of Leibniz. His simple soul entity is unchangeable; it neither grows nor decays. It existed when this apparent life contained within man's ego began, and will again withdraw from these relations when this life ceases to continue independently. Herbart arrives at his conception of God through his world picture, which contains many simple entities that produce the events through their relations. Within these processes we observe purpose-directed order. But the relations could only be accidental and chaotic if the entities, which, according to their own nature, would have nothing in common, were left entirely to themselves. The fact that they are teleologically ordered, therefore, points toward a wise world ruler who directs their relations. “No one is capable of giving a close definition of deity,” says Herbart. He condemns “the pretensions of the systems that speak of God as of an object to be comprehended in sharply drawn contours by means of which we would rise to a knowledge for which we are simply denied the data.”

[ 4 ] Man's actions and artistic creations are completely without foundation in this world picture. All possibility to fit them into this system is lacking. For what could a relationship of simple entities that are completely indifferent to all processes mean to the actions of man? So Herbart is forced to look for independent tools both for ethics and for esthetics. He believes he finds them in human feeling. When man perceives things or events, he can associate the feeling of pleasure or displeasure with them. We are pleased when we see man's will going in a direction that is in agreement with his convictions. When we make the opposite observation, the feeling of displeasure overcomes us. Because of this feeling we call the agreement of conviction and will good; the discord, we call morally reprehensible. A feeling of this kind can be attached only to a relationship between moral elements. The will as such is morally indifferent, as is also the conviction. Only when the two meet does ethical pleasure or displeasure emerge. Herbart calls a relation of moral elements a practical idea. He enumerates five such practical-ethical ideas: The idea of moral freedom, consisting of the agreement of will and moral conviction; the idea of perfection that has its basis in the fact that the strong pleases rather than the weak; the idea of right, which springs from displeasure with antagonism; the idea of benevolence, which expresses the pleasure that one feels as one furthers the will of another person; the idea of retribution, which demands that all good and evil that has originated in a person is to be compensated again in the same person.

Herbart bases his ethics on a human feeling, on moral sentiment. He separates it from the world conception that has to do with what is, and transforms it into a number of postulates of what should be. He combines it with esthetics and, indeed, makes it a part of them. For the science of esthetics also contains postulates concerning what is to be. It, too, deals with relations that are associated with feelings. The individual color leaves us esthetically indifferent. When one color is joined to another, this combination can be either satisfactory or displeasing to us. What pleases in a combination is beautiful; what displeases, is ugly. Robert Zimmermann (1824 – 1898) has ingeniously constructed a science of art on these principles. Only a part of it, the part that considers those relations of beauty that are concerned with the realm of action, is to be the ethics or the science of the good. The significant writings of Robert Zimmermann in the field of esthetics (science of art) show that even attempts at philosophical formulations that do not reach the summit of cultural impulses of a time can produce important stimulation's for the development of the spirit.

[ 5 ] Because of his mathematically inclined mind, Herbart successfully investigated those processes of human soul life that really do go on with a certain regularity in the same way with all human beings. These processes will, of course, not prove to be the more intimate and individually characteristic ones. What is original and characteristic in each personality will be overlooked by such a mathematical intellect, but a person of such a mentality will obtain a certain insight into the average processes of the mind and, at the same time, through his sure skill in handling the arithmetical calculations, will control the measurement of the mental development. As the laws of mechanics enable us to develop technical skills, so the laws of the psychological processes make it possible for us to devise a technique in education for the development of mental abilities. For this reason, Herbart's work has become fruitful in the field of pedagogy. He has found many followers among pedagogues, but not among them alone. This seems at first sight hard to understand with regard to a world conception offering a picture of meager, colorless generalities, but it can be explained from the fact that it is just the people who feel a certain need for a world conception who are easily attracted by such general concepts that are rigidly linked together like terms of an arithmetical operation. It is something fascinating to experience how one thought is linked to the next as if it were through a self-operative mechanical process, because this process awakens in the observer a feeling of security. The mathematical sciences are so highly appreciated because of this assurance. They unfold their structure, so to speak, through their own force. They only have to be supplied with the thought material and everything else can be left to their logical necessity, which works automatically. In the progress of Hegel's thinking, which is saturated with reality, the thinker continually has to take the initiative. There is more warmth, more direct life in this mode of thinking, but it also requires the constant support of the soul forces. This is because it is reality in this case that the thinker catches in his thoughts, an ever-flowing reality that at every point shows its individual character and fights against every logical rigidity. Hegel also had a great number of pupils and followers, but they were much less faithful than those of Herbart. As long as Hegel's powerful personality enlivened his thoughts, they exerted their charm, and as long as his words were heard under its spell, they carried great conviction. After Hegel's death many of his pupils went their own paths. This is only natural, for whoever is self-dependent will also shape his own attitude toward reality in his own fashion. We observe a different process with Herbart's pupils. They elaborate the master's doctrine, but they continue the fundamental stock of his thoughts without change. A thinker who finds his way into Hegel's mode of thinking penetrates into the course of the world's development that is manifested in innumerable evolutionary phases. The individual thinker, of course, can be stimulated to follow this course of evolution, but he is free to shape the various stages according to his own individual mode of conception. In Herbart's case, however, we deal with a firmly constructed thought system that commands confidence through the solidity of its structure. One may reject it, but if one accepts it, one will have to accept it in its original form. For the individual personal element, which challenges and forces us to face the self of another thinker with our own self, is lacking here.

[ 6 ] “Life is a miserable affair; I have decided to spend mine by thinking about it.” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1861) spoke these words in a conversation with Wieland at the beginning of his university years, and his world conception sprang from this mood. Schopenhauer had experienced personal hardship and had observed the sad lives of others when he decided upon concentrating on philosophical thought as a new aim of life. The sudden death of his father, caused by a fall from a storehouse, his bad experiences in his career as a merchant, the sight of scenes of human miseries that he witnessed as a' young man while traveling, and many other things of similar kind had produced in him the wish, not so much to know the world, but rather to procure for himself a means to endure it through contemplation. He needed a world conception in order to calm his gloomy disposition. When he began his university studies, the thoughts that Kant, Fichte and Schelling introduced to the German philosophical life were in full swing. Hegel's star was just then rising. In 1806 he had published his first larger work, The Phenomenology of the Spirit. In Goettingen, Schopenhauer heard the teachings of Gottlob Ernst Schulze, the author of the book, Aenesidemus, who was, to be sure, in a certain respect an opponent of Kant, but who nevertheless drew the student's attention to Kant and Plato as the two great spirits toward whom he would have to look. With fiery enthusiasm Schopenhauer plunged into Kant's mode of conception. He called the revolution that his study caused in his head a spiritual rebirth. He found it even more satisfactory because he considered it to be in agreement with the views of Plato, the other philosopher Schulze had pointed out to him.

Plato had said, “As long as we approach the things and events merely through sensual perceptions, we are like men who are chained in a dark cave in such a way that they cannot turn their heads; therefore, they can only see, by means of the light of a fire burning behind them, the shadows upon the opposite wall, the shadows of real things that are carried between the fire and their backs, the shadows of each other and of themselves. These shadows are to the real things what the things of sensual perception are to the ideas, which are the true reality. The things of the sensually perceptible world come into existence and pass again, the ideas are eternal.”

Did not Kant teach this, too? Is not the perceptible world only a world of appearances for him also? To be sure, the sage from Koenigsberg did not attribute this eternal reality to the ideas, but with respect to the perception of the reality spread out in space and time, Schopenhauer thought Plato and Kant to be in complete agreement. Soon he also accepted this view as an irrevocable truth. He argued, “I have a knowledge of the things insofar as I see, hear, feel them, etc., that is to say, insofar as I have them as a thought picture in my mind's eye. An object then can be there for me only by being represented to my mind as a thought image. Heaven, earth, etc., are therefore my mind's imaginations, for the “thing in itself' that corresponds to them has become my mind's object only by taking on the character of a thought representation.”

[ 7 ] Although Schopenhauer found everything that Kant stated concerning the subjective character of the world of perception absolutely correct, he was not at all satisfied with regard to Kant's remarks concerning the thing in itself. Schulze had also been an opponent of Kant's view in this respect. How can we know anything at all of a “thing in itself"? How can we even express a word about it if our knowledge is completely limited to thought pictures of our mind, if the “thing in itself” lies completely outside their realm? Schopenhauer had to search for another path in order to come to the “thing in itself.” In his search he was influenced by the contemporary world conceptions more than he ever admitted. The element that Schopenhauer added to the conviction that he had from Kant and Plato as the “thing in itself,” we find also in Fichte, whose lectures he had heard in 1811 in Berlin. We also find this element in Schelling. Schopenhauer could hear the most mature form of Fichte's views in Berlin. This last form is preserved in Fichte's posthumous works. Fichte declared with great emphasis, while Schopenhauer, according to his own admission, “listened attentively,” that all being has its last roots in a universal will. As soon as man discovers will in himself, he gains the conviction that there is a world independent of himself as an individual. Will is not a knowledge of the individual but a form of real being. Fichte could also have called his world conception, The World as Knowledge and Will. In Schelling's book, Concerning the Nature of Human Freedom and Matters Connected with This Problem, we actually find the sentences, “In the last and deepest analysis there is no other being than will. Will is fundamental being and will alone can claim all its predicates: To be without cause, eternal, independent of time, self-assertive. All philosophy is striving for just this aim, to find this highest expression.”

That will is fundamental being becomes Schopenhauer's view also. When knowledge is extinguished, will remains, for will also precedes knowledge. “Knowledge has its origin in my brain,” says Schopenhauer, “but my brain must have been produced through an active, creative force. Man is aware of such a creative energy in his own will.” Schopenhauer now attempts to prove that what is active in all other things is also will. The will, therefore, is, as the “thing in itself,” at the root of all reality that is merely represented in the thought pictures of our mental life, and we can have a knowledge of this “thing in itself.” It is not, as Kant's “thing in itself,” beyond our perceptive imagination but we experience its actuality within our own organism.

[ 8 ] The development of modern world conception is progressive in Schopenhauer insofar as he is the first thinker to make the attempt to elevate one of the fundamental forces of the self-consciousness to the general principle of the world. The active self-consciousness contains the riddle of the age. Schopenhauer is incapable of finding a world picture that contains the roots of self-consciousness. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had attempted to do that. Schopenhauer takes one force of the self-consciousness, will, and claims that this element is not merely in the human soul but in the whole world. Thus, for him, man is not rooted with his full self-consciousness in the world's foundation, but at least with a part of it, with his will. Schopenhauer thus shows himself to be one of those representatives of the evolution of modern world conception who can only partially encompass the fundamental riddle of the time within their consciousness.

[ 9 ] Goethe also had a profound influence on Schopenhauer. From the autumn of 1813 until the following spring, the young Schopenhauer enjoyed the company of the poet. Goethe introduced him personally to his doctrine of colors. Goethe's mode of conception agreed completely with the view that Schopenhauer had developed concerning the behavior of our sense organs and our mind in the process of perception of things and events. Goethe had undertaken careful and intensive investigations concerning the perceptions of the eye and phenomena of light and colors, and had elaborated their results in his work, Concerning the Doctrine of Colors. He had arrived at results that differed from those of Newton, the founder of the modern theory of color. The antagonism that exists in this field between Newton and Goethe cannot be judged properly if one does not start by pointing to the difference between the world conceptions of these two personalities. Goethe considered the sense organs of man as the highest physical apparatuses. For the world of colors, he therefore had to estimate the eye as his highest judge for the observation of law-determined connections. Newton and the physicists investigated the phenomena that are pertinent to this question in a fashion that Goethe called “the greatest misfortune of modern physics,” and that consisted in the fact that the experiments have been separated, as it were, from man.

One wants to know nature only according to the indications of artificial instruments and thereby even intends to limit and to prove what nature is capable of.

The eye perceives light and darkness and, within the light-dark field of observation, the colors. Goethe takes his stand within this field and attempts to prove how light, darkness and the colors are connected. Newton and his followers meant to observe the processes of light and colors as they would go on if there were no human eye. But the stipulation of such an external sphere is, according to Goethe's world conception, without justification. We do not obtain an insight into the nature of a thing by disregarding the effects we observe, but this nature is given to us through the mind's exact observation of the regularity of these effects. The effects that the eye perceives, taken in their totality and represented according to the law of their connection are the essence of the phenomena of light and color, not a separated world of external processes that are to be determined by means of artificial instruments.

It is really of no avail that we attempt to express directly the nature of a thing. What we are aware of are effects, and a complete account of these effects might possibly encompass the essence of that thing. Vainly do we endeavor to describe the character of a man; we put his deeds and actions together, however, and a picture of his character arises before our eyes. Colors are the actions of light; they are what light does and suffers. In this sense we can expect information from them concerning the nature of light. Color and light are indeed in close relation but we must think of them both as belonging to nature as a whole; for it is nature as a whole that is ready to manifest itself in special ways to the sense of the eye.

Here we find Goethe's world view applied to a special case. In the human organism, through its senses, through the soul of man, there is revealed what is concealed in the rest of nature. In man, nature reaches its climax. Whoever, therefore, like Newton, looks for the truth of nature outside man, will not find it, according to Goethe's fundamental conviction.

[ 10 ] Schopenhauer sees in the world that the mind perceives in space and time only an idea of this mind. The essence of this world of thought pictures is revealed to us in our will, by which we see our own organism permeated. Schopenhauer, therefore, cannot agree with a physical doctrine that sees the nature of light, not in the mental content of the eye, but in a world that is supposed to exist separated from the eye. Goethe's mode of conception was, for this reason, more agreeable to Schopenhauer because Goethe did not go beyond the world of the perceptual content of the eye. He considered Goethe's view to be a confirmation of his own opinion concerning this world. The antagonism between Goethe and Newton is not merely a question of physics but concerns the world conception as a whole. Whoever is of the opinion that a valid statement about nature can be arrived at through experiments that can be detached from the human being must take his stand with Newton's theory of color and remain on that ground. Modern physics is of this opinion. It can only agree with the judgment concerning Goethe's theory of colors that Helmholtz expressed in his essay, Goethe's Anticipations of Future Ideas in Natural Science:

Wherever it is a question of problems that can be solved through poetic divination producing imaginative pictures, the poet has shown himself capable of the most excellent work; wherever only a consciously applied inductive method could have helped, Goethe has failed.

If one sees in the pictures of human imagination only products that are added to an already complete nature, then it is of course necessary to determine what goes on in nature apart from these pictures. But if one sees in them manifestations of the essence contained in nature as Goethe did, then one will consult them in investigating the truth. Schopenhauer, to be sure, shares neither the first nor the second standpoint. He is not at all ready to recognize sense perceptions as containing the essence of things. He rejects the method of modern physics because physics does not limit itself to the element that alone is directly given, namely, that of perceptions as mental pictures. But Schopenhauer also transformed this question from a problem of physics into one of world conception. As he also begins his world conception with man and not with an external world apart from man, he had to side with Goethe, who had consistently drawn the conclusion for the theory of colors that necessarily follows if one sees in man with his healthy sense organs “the greatest and most exact physical apparatus.” Hegel, who as a philosopher stands completely on this foundation, had for this reason forcefully defended Goethe's theory of colors. He says in his Philosophy of Nature:

For the description of the color phenomenon that is adequate to its concept, we are indebted to Goethe, who was attracted early by the phenomena of color and light and who was drawn to their contemplation especially in painting; his pure and simple sense of nature had to revolt against such barbarism of reflected thought as is found in Newton. Goethe took up everything about light and color that had been stated and experimentally demonstrated since Plato. He conceived the phenomenon as simple, and the truest instinct of reason does consist in the ability of approaching a phenomenon from that side that allows its simplest representation.

[ 11 ] For Schopenhauer, the essential ground for all world processes is the will. It is an eternal dark urge for existence. It contains no reason because reason comes into existence only in the human brain, which in turn is created by the will. Hegel sees the spirit as the root of the world in self-conscious reason, and in human reason, only as individual realization of the general world reason. Schopenhauer, by contrast, recognizes reason only as a product of the brain, as a mere bubble that comes into being at the end of the process in which will, the unreasoning blind urge, has created everything else first. In Hegel, all things and processes are permeated by reason; in Schopenhauer, everything is without reason, for everything is the product of the will without reason. The personality of Schopenhauer exemplifies unequivocally a statement of Fichte, “The kind of world conception a man chooses depends on the kind of man he is.”

Schopenhauer had bad experiences and had become acquainted with the worst side of the world before he decided to spend his life in contemplation of it. It is for this reason that he is satisfied to depict the world as essentially deprived of reason as a result of blind will. Reason, according to his mode of thinking, has no power over unreason, for it is itself the result of unreason; it is illusion and dream, produced out of will. Schopenhauer's world conception is the dark, melancholy mood of his soul translated into thought. His eye was not prepared to follow the manifestations of reason in the world with pleasure. This eye saw only unreason that was manifest in sorrow and pain. Thus, his doctrine of ethics could only be based on the observation of suffering. An action is moral only if it has its foundation in such an observation. Sympathy, pity, must be the source of human actions. What better course could be taken by a man who has gained the insight that all beings suffer than to let his actions be guided by pity. As everything unreasonable and evil has its roots in will, man will stand morally the higher the more he mortifies his unruly will in himself. The manifestation of this will in the individual person is selfishness, egotism. Whoever surrenders to pity and thereby wills not for himself but for others, has become master of the will.

One method of freeing oneself from the will consists in surrendering to artistic creations and to the impressions that are derived from works of art. The artist does not produce to satisfy a desire for something; he does not produce his works because of a will that is selfishly directed toward things and events. His production proceeds out of unegotistic joy. He plunges into the essence of things in pure contemplation. This is also true of the enjoyment of art. As long as we approach a work of art with the desire stirring in us to own it, we are still entangled in the lower appetites of the will. Only when we admire beauty without desiring it have we raised ourselves to the lofty stage where we no longer are dependent on the blind force of will. Then art has become for us a means to free ourselves for the moment from the unreasoning force of the blind will to exist. The deliverance takes place in its purest form in the enjoyment of the musical work of art, for music does not speak to us through the medium of representative imagination as do the other arts. Music copies nothing in nature. As all things and events are only mental pictures, so also the arts that take these things as models can only make impressions on us as manifestations of imaginations. Man produces tone out of himself without a natural model. Because man has will as his own essence within himself, it can only be the will through which the world of music is directly released. It is for this reason that music so deeply moves the human soul. It does this because music is the manifestation of man's inner nature, his true being, his will, and it is a triumph of man that he is in possession of an art in which he enjoys selflessly, freed from the fetters of the will, what is the root of all desire, of all unreason. This view of Schopenhauer concerning music is again the result of his most personal nature. Even before his university years, when he was apprenticed to a merchant in Hamburg, he wrote to his mother:

How did the heavenly seed find a place on the hard ground on which necessity and poverty struggle for every little spot? We have been banished from the primordial spirit and are not to reach up to him. Yet, a pitiful angel has begged the heavenly flower for us and it blossoms in full glory rooted in this soil of misery. The pulsation's of the divine art of music have not ceased to beat through the centuries of barbarism, and a direct resonance of the eternal is preserved in this art for us, understandable to every soul and exalted above even vice and virtue.

[ 12 ] From the attitude that is taken toward art by the two antipodes of world conception, Hegel and Schopenhauer, one can learn how a world conception deeply affects the personal relation of man toward the various realms of life. Hegel, who saw in man's world of conceptions and ideas the climax toward which all external nature strives as its perfection, can recognize as the most perfect art only the one in which the spirit appears in its most perfect form, and in which this spirit at the same time clings to the element that continuously strives toward the spirit. Every formation of external nature tends to be spirit, but it does not reach this aim. When a man now creates such an external spatial form, endowing it as an artist with the spirit for which material itself strives without being capable of reaching it, then he has produced a perfect work of art. This is the case in the art of sculpture. What otherwise appears only in the inward life of the soul as formless spirit, as idea, is shaped by the artist out of matter. The soul, the inner life that we perceive in our consciousness as being without shape, is what speaks out of a statue, out of a formation of space. This marriage of the sensual world with the world of the spirit represents the artistic ideal of a world conception that sees the purpose of nature in the creation of the spirit, and therefore can also recognize the beautiful only in a work that appears as immediate expression of the spirit emerging in the form of nature. Whoever, like Schopenhauer, however, sees in all nature only mental pictures, cannot possibly recognize the ideal of art in a work that imitates nature. He must choose an art as his ideal that is free of all nature, that is to say, music.

[ 13 ] Schopenhauer considered everything that leads toward the extirpation, the mortification of the will quite consistently as desirable, for an extirpation of the will means an extinction of the unreasonable in the world. Man is to give up will. He is to kill all desire within himself. Asceticism is, for this reason, Schopenhauer's moral ideal. The wise man will extinguish within himself all wishes; he will annihilate his will completely. He will reach the point where no motivation forces him to exert his will. All striving consists merely in quietistic yearning for deliverance from all life. In the world-renouncing life-views in Buddhism, Schopenhauer acknowledged a doctrine of profound wisdom. Compared to Hegel's, one can thus call Schopenhauer's world view reactionary. Hegel attempted everywhere to affect a reconciliation of man with life; he always strove to present all action as a cooperation with a reason-directed order of the world. Schopenhauer regarded enmity to life, withdrawal from reality and world flight as the ideal of the wise man.

Hegel's mode of world and life conception contains an element that can produce doubts and questions. Hegel's point of departure is pure thinking, the abstract idea, which he himself once called “an oyster-like, gray or entirely black” being (in a letter to Goethe on February 20, 1821), of which he maintained at the same time should be considered the “representation of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite spirit.” The aim that he reaches is the individual human spirit endowed with a content of its own, through whom first comes to light what led only a shadow-like existence in a gray, oyster-like element. This can easily be understood to mean that a personality as a living self-conscious being does not exist outside the human spirit. Hegel derives the content-saturated element that we experience within ourselves from the ideal element that we obtain through thinking. It is quite comprehensible that a spirit of a certain inner disposition felt repulsed by this view of world and life. Only thinkers of such a selfless devotion as that of Karl Rosenkranz (1805–1879) could so completely find their way into Hegel's movement of thought and, in such perfect agreement with Hegel, create for themselves structures of ideas that appear like a rebirth of Hegel's own thought structure in a less impressive medium. Others could not understand how man is to be enlightened through pure idea with respect to the infinity and variety of the impressions that pour in on him as he directs his observations toward nature, crowded as it is with colors and forms, and how he is to profit if he lifts his soul from experiences in the world of sensation, feeling and perception-guided imagination to the frosty heights of pure thought. To interpret Hegel in this fashion is to misunderstand him, but it is quite comprehensible that he should have been misunderstood in this way.

This mood that was dissatisfied with Hegel's mode of thinking found expression in the current thought that had representatives in Franz Xaver von Baader (1765–1841), Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832), Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797 – 1879), Christian Hermann Weisse (1801–1866), Anton Guenther (1783–1863), Karl Friedrich Eusebius Thrahndorff (1782–1863) Martin Deutinger (1815– 1864), and Hermann Ulrici (1806–1884). They attempted to replace the gray, oyster-like pure thought of Hegel by a life-filled, personal, primal entity, an individual God. Baader called it an “atheistic conception” to believe that God attained a perfect existence only in man. God must be a personality and the world must not, as Hegel thought, proceed from him like a logical process in which one concept always necessarily produces the next. On the contrary, the world must be God's free creation, the product of his almighty will. These thinkers approach the Christian doctrine of revelation. To justify and fortify this doctrine scientifically becomes the more-or-less conscious purpose of their thinking. Baader plunged into the mysticism of Jakob Boehme (1757–1624), Meister Eckhardt (1250– 1329), Tauler (1290–1361) and Paracelsus (1494–1541), whose language, so rich in pictures, he considered a much more appropriate means to express the most profound truths than the pure thoughts of Hegel's doctrine. That Baader also caused Schelling to enrich his thoughts with a deeper and warmer content through the assimilation's of conceptions from Jakob Boehme has already been mentioned.

In the course of the development of the modern world conception personalities like Krause will always be remarkable. He was a mathematician who allowed himself to be swayed by the proud, logically perfect character of this science, and attempted a solution of the problems of world conception after the model of the method he was used to as a mathematician. Typical of this kind of thinker is the great mathematician, Newton, who treated the phenomena of the visible universe as if it were an arithmetical problem but, at the same time, satisfied his own need concerning the fundamental questions of world conception in a fashion that approached the belief to be found in revealed religion. Krause finds it impossible to accept a conception that seeks the primal being of the world in the things and processes. Whoever, like Hegel, looks for God in the world cannot find him, for the world, to be sure, is in God, but God is not in the world. He is a self-dependent being resting within himself in blissful serenity. Krause's world of ideas rests on “thoughts of an infinite, self-dependent being, outside of which there is nothing; this being comprises everything by itself and in itself as the one ground, and that we have to think of as the ground of reason, nature and humanity.” He does not want to have anything in common with a view “that takes the finite or the world as the sum total of everything finite to be God itself, idolizing and confusing it with God.” No matter how deep one may penetrate into the reality given to the senses and the mind, one will never arrive in this way at the fundamental ground of all being. To obtain a conception of this being is possible only if one accompanies all finite observation with a divinatory vision of an over-worldly reality.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte settled his account with Hegelianism poignantly in his essay, Propositions for the Prolegomena of Theology (1826), and Contributions Toward a Characterization of Modern Philosophy (1829). Then, in numerous works, he tried to prove and elaborate his view that a conscious personal being must be recognized as the basis of all world phenomena. In order to procure an emphatic effect for the opposition to Hegel's conception, which proceeded from pure thought, Immanuel Hermann Fichte joined hands with friends who were of the same opinion. In 1837, together with Weisse, Sengler, K. Ph. Fischer, Chalybäs, Fr. Hoffmann, Ulrici, Wirth and others, he began the publication of the Journal for Philosophy and Speculative Theology. It is Fichte's conviction that we have risen to the highest knowledge only if we have understood that “the highest thought that truly solves the world problem is the idea of a primal subject or absolute personality, which knows and fathoms itself in its ideal as well as real infinity.”

The world creation and preservation that comprises the world reality, consists solely in the uninterrupted consciousness-permeated will-direction of God, such that he is only consciousness and will, but both in a highest union, therefore, only person, or person in the most eminent sense of the word.

Chr. Hermann Weisse believed that it was necessary to proceed from Hegel's world conception to a completely theological mode of conception. In the Christian idea of the three personalities in the one deity, he saw the aim of his thinking. He attempted to represent this idea as the result of a natural and unsophisticated common sense and did so with an uncommon array of ingenuity. In his triune, Weisse believed that in a personal deity possessing a living will he had something infinitely richer than Hegel with his gray idea. This living will is to “give to the inner godly nature with one breath the one definite form and no other that is implied at all places in the Holy Writ of the Old and New Testaments. In it, God is shown prior to the creation of the world as well as during and after that event in the shining element of his glory as surrounded by an interminable heavenly host of serving spirits in a fluid immaterial body, which enables him to fully communicate with the created world.”

[ 14 ] Anton Guenther, the “Viennese Philosopher,” and Martin Deutinger, who was under his influence, move with the thoughts of their world conception completely within the framework of the catholic theological mode of conception. Guenther attempts to free man from the natural world order by dividing him into two parts—a natural being that belongs to the world of necessary law, and a spirit being that constitutes a self-dependent part of a higher spirit world and has an existence comparable to an “entity” as described by Herbart. He believes that he overcomes Hegelianism in this manner and that he supplies the foundation for a Christian world conception. The Church itself was not of this opinion, for in Rome Guenther's writings were included in the Prohibitory Index. Deutinger fought vehemently against Hegel's “pure thinking,” which, in his opinion, ought to be prevented from devouring life-filled reality. He ranks the living will higher than pure thought. It can, as creative will, produce something; thought is powerless and abstract. Thrahndorff also takes living will as his point of departure. The world cannot be explained from the shadowy realm of ideas, but a vigorous will must seize these ideas in order to create real being. The world's deepest content does not unfold itself to man in thoughtful comprehension, but in an emotional reaction, in love through which the individual surrenders to the world, to the will that rules in the universe. It is quite apparent that all these thinkers endeavor to overcome thinking and its object, the pure idea. They are unwilling to acknowledge thinking as the highest manifestation of the spirit of man. In order to comprehend the ultimate substance of the world, Thrahndorff wants to approach it, not with the power of knowledge, but of love. It is to become an object of emotion, not of reason. It is the belief of these philosophers that through clear, pure thinking the ardent, religious devotion to the primordial forces of existence are destroyed.

[ 15 ] This opinion has its root in a misconception of Hegel's thought world. Its misunderstanding becomes especially apparent in the views concerning Hegel's attitude toward religion that spread after his death. The lack of clarity that began to prevail regarding this attitude resulted in a split among Hegel's followers into one party that considered his world conception to be a firm pillar of revealed Christianity, and another that used his doctrine to dissolve the Christian conceptions and to replace them by a radically liberal view.

[ 16 ] Neither party could have based its opinion on Hegel if they had understood him correctly, for Hegel's world conception contains nothing that can be used for support of a religion or for its destruction. He had meant to do this with respect to any religion as little as he had intended to create any natural phenomena through his pure thought. As he had set out to extract the pure thought from the processes of nature in order to comprehend them in that way, so he had also, in the case of religion, merely the intention to bring its thought content to the surface. As he considered everything that is real in the world as reasonable just because it is real, so he held this view also in regard to religion. It must come into existence by soul forces quite beyond those that are at the disposal of the thinker when he approaches them in order to comprehend them.

It was also an error of such thinkers as Fichte, Weisse, Deutinger and others that they fought against Hegel because he had not proceeded from the realm of pure thought to the religious experience of the personal deity. Hegel had never set himself a task of this kind. He considered that to be the task of the religious consciousness. The younger Fichte, Weisse, Krause, Deutinger and the rest wanted to create a new religion through their world conception. Hegel would have considered such a task to be as absurd as the wish to illuminate the world through the idea of light, or to create a magnet out of the thought of magnetism. To be sure, in Hegel's opinion, religion has its root in the idea, just as the whole world of nature and the spirit. For this reason, it is possible that the human spirit can rediscover this idea in religion, but as the magnet was created out of the thought of magnetism before the human mind came into being, and as the latter only afterwards has to comprehend the magnet's creation, so also religion has become what it is before its thought emerged in the human soul as an illuminating part of world conception. If Hegel had lived to experience the religious criticism of his pupils, he would have felt compelled to say, “Take your hands off all foundation of religion, off all creation of religious conceptions, as long as you want to remain thinkers and do not intend to become messiahs.” The world conception of Hegel, if it is correctly understood, cannot have a retroactive effect on the religious consciousness. The philosopher who reflects on the realm of art has the same relation to his object as the thinker who wants to fathom the nature of religion.

[ 17 ] The Halle Yearbooks, published from 1838 to 1843 by Arnold Ruge and Theodor Echtermeyer, served as a forum for the philosophical controversies of the time. Starting with a defense and explanation of Hegel, they soon proceeded to develop his ideas independently, and thus made the transition to the views that are called “radical world conceptions” in the next chapter. After 1841, the editors called their journal, The German Yearbook, and, as one of their aims, they considered “the fight against political illiberality, against theories of feudalism and landed property.” In the historical development of the time they became active as radical politicians, demanding a state in which perfect freedom prevails. Thus, they abandoned the spirit of Hegel, who wanted to understand history, not to make it.

I have taken on to still give this lecture before the approaching lengthy voyage regarding what relates to important tasks of the Anthroposophical movement—at least with the intention that important tasks need to be spoken about. Through some aphorisms I want to bring things to your attention today. We have every reason to examine the historic development of the Anthroposophical movement again, and will again because this Anthroposophical movement depends on those who want to be its bearers and that they this up and understand it in the right way. We should continuously bear in mind the circumstances out of which, through its own nature, through its entire being, this Anthroposophical movement grew at a stage which enabled it to find its existence to a certain extent unnoticed by the world. This fact we dare never overlook, for it is one of the most important facts in the development of the Anthroposophical movement. We need to be very clear how the Anthroposophical movement had begun and actually had to come into being, because one can only create true relationships out of something real, where small groups came together and work was done by these small cooperating groups. These small groups however multiplied, this we can't deny, contributing something scrupulously sectarian out of the old Theosophic movement. From different sides it was adopted, one could say, like a working habit by some of our members; but then again there were those to whom the content of what is meant in this anthroposophic spiritual science was such that from the beginning, it was impossible to fit any kind of sectarian behaviour into it. It clearly entered everyone strongly and was visible in each individual in the way it was encountered when the Goetheanum Building had been started in Dornach. It was considered possible by many of those in the member's circles that such a building could be created in the world by still retaining old sectarian customs. Such sectarian traditions are all too understandable, they are usually in all Theosophical Societies and in orders where most of them work in a manner which could be called obscure, where things are thoroughly avoided which should in fact be examined if a movement strives to uphold a generally humane character.

The work habits in certain orders and in the Theosophical movement can therefore not be applied to the content which is worked through in the Anthroposophical movement, because this Anthroposophical movement, despite speaking to the hearts and minds of every single person, at the same time was fully developed in all scientific challenges from the start, but could only be as it were presented in the present time. The latter is a fact which has not been taken seriously from many sides amongst the membership. It is characteristic that people prefer to remain completely stuck within a habit originating from tradition or from the course of life. Within the course of life it presents a certain isolated territory for you. This is not in agreement with what your religious tradition has brought you, it is in agreement with what the popular spreading of a world view offers you and now you feel a certain satisfaction when something is offered which surpasses that, which is equally from religious tradition as also from the general, wide, popular point of view of the modern materialistic thought processes which are able to come out of a newer time. However, you still prefer to a certain extent what is a given, because you allow yourself, I want to say, in a kind of Sunday pleasure, something which exists but doesn't intervene in a disruptive manner with ordinary life.

A movement such as the Anthroposophical one which reckons with the life forces of the present, naturally can't do this. Such a movement seizes the entire human being, involves every single detail of life. You can't consider it as something on the side. You may well enter into certain conflicting details because these things are absolutely unavoidable, and it doesn't allow living within the present lifetime habits in the various areas, through submitting on the one side to what life has presented and act as a courageous philistine, and on the other side, continue with your reading of Anthroposophy, accepting through your heart and mind the Anthroposophical life. You see, this would be the most comfortable way, but it denies the content of vital human evolutionary forces which Anthroposophically orientated spiritual science singles out in the present. Just as little as the Anthroposophically orientated spiritual science which necessitates a wide view and a truthful gaze on what moves within mankind and worldly life, can it be united with what is loved in the trade of some circles, which intend, out of a soul lust, the creation of small, inaccessible, obscure circles which demonstrate all kinds of illusions, carry out all kinds of obscure mysticism and so on. Such things are completely unable to be unified into the anthroposophic, wide world view of all life's relationships regarded through spiritual science. It is already necessary that these things appear in all clarity to the souls of our members, who need to break off all sectarian usages, because today the Anthroposophically orientated spiritual science stands in such a situation in the world that it can be attacked from all sides, and be besmirched from all sides. Usually this doesn't happen to some kind of obscure movement. I can let you anticipate a symptom right now which you can find if you take the February edition of the monthly “Die Tat.” Later on I want to speak in greater depth about what makes this “Tat” issue so symptomatic. It appears to actually orientate the entire issue to the Anthroposophical movement which is treated, in this case by a completely untalented author, in what I might call a brutal clarity.

Here you have an article—the whole thing is an article—from the start to the end of the issue, regarding Anthroposophy—which deals with “Anthroposophy and Christianity,” and only stems from a particularly untalented creator. In this article you will find, I may say, pointed out with awkward fingers, the basis, why at this time, seen from the outside, so many discussions are taking place regarding what the orientation is of spiritual science. The man says: “As long as Anthroposophy is esoterically maintained in circles, it can be left to their own devices, like in so many other side streams of spiritual histories. However, if one comes to the fore with a claim which is to renew the viable basis of social renewal as well as public, political and social life on the basis of thought and its second- and third-hand budding `truths,' then it is time to see through this cultural and spiritually favoured `esoteric lore' and duly reject their borders in order that truthful powers of renewal do not become forerunners blamed of false evidence.

“Our generation however, who turns towards Anthroposophy in great crowds, create a symbol like the moving scene in the First Book of Samuel, when Saul, renounced by God before the day of his death, prove the augury true.”

You see what gives people the reason to run down Anthroposophy? It is clearly here where the cumbersome fingers indicated express it in the sentence: “Our generation however, who turn towards Anthroposophy in great crowds ...” It is this, that Anthroposophy also contains certain effective origins within itself, from which one could say that people—forgive me when I repeat the expression, it is tasteless enough even if one can't imagine it, what “great crowds” can be—that people turn to Anthroposophy in “great crowds.” However it is this which causes the attacks and people would certainly leave us in peace if we would have been active for instance, let's say, in the years 1900 to 1907 or 1909. I personally would also not have been left in peace in those days, but anyway the attacks came, I could say, from a more restrictive corner and were not as wilfully destructive as they are now.

What appears to be thoroughly difficult to understand to those close to our movement, is the necessity to extract ourselves from sectarianism. You see one can renounce all the rest—many self-explanatory things can be stated—but one can't refer to such a building as the Dornach Building and still support certain obscure sectarian usages, which are being maintained by many of our members in the Anthroposophical movement. One can't do it any other way. One can't without a certain sophisticated sense, without a broader view of the world do what we do: regarding the way in which we do it. One could sit together in small circles, whether six or forty people, it's the same thing, and somehow make someone broadcast, on my account, something regarding the reincarnation of the holy Magdalene or Christ, or whatever. If it doesn't originate from closer circles one can do it and indulge ecstatically in soul experiences. One can't for instance publically present something like our Eurythmy without having a certain sense about the world. It is assumed that those who participate in such a movement, will have no peeved or no narrow-minded sense but a sense of the world, that one doesn't have some kind of sectarian airs and graces nor such affectations leading to only feeling comfortable in small circles, but it is assumed that one brings together everything connected to the world into what such a movement itself should be, which is not merely a movement of a world view, but includes everything spiritual and actually human life as well. Therefore it is by now necessary for discussions to take place about various spiritual or other movements existing in the world today. Sectarianism has the peculiarity of frequently being haughty and disdainful about everything which is outside its framework and does not understand what is on the outside and want to be cut off and be isolated. With us this can't at all be sustained in the long term. If our movement wants to be taken seriously it is certainly necessary that this or that is not continuously chattered about as it is often done, but it is necessary that we should—I must ever and again use this expression—acquire a certain world sense which enables understanding for what is going on, resulting in a point of view taken from Anthroposophical spiritual science, in order to clarify and treat these things. This is necessary in all areas. Certainly, one may say, someone or other doesn't have the possibility to do this or that. Indeed, one can't expect someone or other to do this or that if the person doesn't get the opportunity. We have actually been able to have extensive experiences of this during the last weeks when certain individuals in our movement have now also decided to act. As a result something quite terrible has come to the fore. It must be added that it is perhaps not absolutely necessary to expect anyone to do what he or she doesn't find suitable. Something is absolutely necessary, namely to abstain from certain things, because certain things, which are not carried out, work further in the most fruitful way.

My dear friends, I don't mean it in such a way that one could say: We are therefore encouraged not to participate in any way.—No, I don't mean this; I mean refraining from certain things which we can already see is of a gossipy or unreasonable nature. It is so, to take only one example, that folly refrained from being expressed in gatherings, finds a way to expresses itself in the opposition members of our movement.

These things are of course difficult to discuss because as soon as something is presented in some false way to the world one can say it becomes a blind act of will attracting blind supporters. That is absolutely not the case, but it is about those things which as a result of unrefined tactlessness, in turn in the most terrible way prevent things from working. Hence, when a saying is continuously repeated by our members, for example from something I have refrained from doing or saying, then we will naturally as an Anthroposophical movement not make any progress. I want to again mention the example, which is found in this “Tat” publication.

You see, it is really out of our membership's requests that such things come about, like cycles (of lectures) simply being printed as they were copied, while the work of the Anthroposophical movement is not given the time to do things in the way they should actually be done. The demand for printing the cycles has indeed originated from members, but normally something like this arises without anyone developing a feeling of responsibility for such a thing. It is natural that something like this arises from the members but a sense of responsibility must develop to not allow a distortion of it. This appears in the most harsh way in the February edition of the “Tat,” where it is said: “I don't want to spend time regarding Steiner who has left some of his disciples to edit the shorthand notes of a part of his esoteric lectures, for example the Evangelists, without taking on the responsibility to bother himself with it any further (as it is strictly assured on the title-page).”

These things should not be propagated further because of my needs, but because the Anthroposophical society needs it; it requires however at the same time that this Anthroposophical society develops a sense of responsibility for that which is necessary for its own sake, not for my sake, not always striking back on me personally because as a result it restricts me representing Anthroposophy as such in the appropriate way towards the world. It is quite necessary that this must be clearly understood otherwise what the Anthroposophical society really presents will in the widest sense prohibit the actual spreading of the Anthroposophic way. I should naturally become much more strict as we face a more serious situation here, than what has merely happened up to now through goodwill amongst the members. Besides, what is to be said in this area nevertheless has to be said. In this context I want to stress once again that it is not enough to merely disprove opposition as it has frequently happened in this way, when from this or that side the opposition turns against us—I have mentioned this already the day before yesterday. Such dismissals which have to be made now and then out of necessity, are worthless, supports nothing really, because today there are definite categories or groups of people who are active in a spiritual or other life, who have nothing to do with people who represent a rebuff and with whom it somehow comes down to a defence, a rebuff, but here we have people who do not care to spread the truth but with whom it finally comes down to spreading untruths.

Thus it is very necessary in such a strong and thoroughly spiritual movement which the Anthroposophical movement is, to point out interrelationships. One can't skip certain events because they become repetitive. For instance, I recently received a letter in which it was written that the writer had turned to the famous Max Dessoir, to this Max Dessoir who has been characterised as adequate among Anthroposophists for his moral and intellectual qualities. Now the relevant person wrote to me that he had a conversation with this Max Dessoir. Obviously such a person as Dessoir can't be converted by a conversation, that we must spare him—because firstly he doesn't want it and secondly it appears stupid to him to have to understand something Anthroposophically. So it makes no sense to try some way or another to continue a discussion with such an individual.

During conversations it also came out that Max Dessoir soon would write a piercing statement against me and my letter writer declared himself available to first read through this work and correct any mistakes so that Max Dessoir at least would not make errors! Now, one can hardly believe that such things, often through celebrities, can actually be done. And what are the results? When one complains and reproaches the person concerned, he would possibly say: “If something like this is not done then it means Anthroposophy doesn't allow itself to argue with scientific people.” Yes, my dear friends, we should not think like this. We should not immediately generalize abstractly, because it concerns the separate, specific moral and intellectual inability of the characterised individual Max Dessoir, and one can't do Max Dessoir the honour by saying we seriously consider him scientific and that we can't get involved in a discussion due to a certain inner spiritual cleanliness. These things must actually be grasped and individually actually followed through and thought through or otherwise we would really experience that writings by the opposition could possibly work well and that no “errors” would appear because these would have been corrected by our members. It is quite necessary to discuss these things because we have arrived at a serious time in our Anthroposophical movement. Much is done this way so one can say, things come about because we crush them, perhaps sometimes, as in this case also, quite out of goodwill; but the best will can turn out quite evil when it is not seriously—here I must use this word again—enlivened by a World sense and thought through. This is something which quite unbelievably often comes from our present Anthroposophical movement.

You see, it doesn't come down to being merely defensive today. Yet if nothing is said in defence, due to the fact that I have something against defending, it is obvious something must be done and it calls for the actual characterisation of the movement as such. In a person such as Frohnmeyer it doesn't merely concern a bare opponent and aggressor of Anthroposophy. It is much more important to establish the manner in which it is done and what kind of sense of truth controls him. It is far more important to know that this priest, Frohnmeyer, has developed out of quite a wide mass of people who are also similar. He is only somewhat freer than the mass; he represents a type of person within these groups which are as such really quite large in the world. Today we can't hope that people who argue from such a basis can't somehow be converted. It is complete nonsense that they do not wish to be converted. We do them the greatest favour when we don't present an opposing truth but stupidities, because then their values are better challenged. So it doesn't come down to mere defence against such people. This would result in an endless discourse of statement and counter-statement. What it boils down to is to characterize out of what spiritual ground and basis this originates and what it means for the entire dampening and degeneration of our present spiritual life. From this general sophisticated viewpoint things must at all costs be lifted because one can hardly remain stuck at mere defensive nagging and counter nagging. This is really what doesn't concern us because for us the concern is about the all-inclusive characteristics of these spiritual endeavours which need to be conquered today. Only through doing this can we effectively counter the Frohnmeyers, Gogartens, Bruhns and Leeses. It's not so tremendously important that someone within such a movement has the time to sit down and write a book; this anyone with a little learning can do, but it depends out of which spiritual foundation these things are presented to the world. One must be completely clear that people like Frohnmeyer can't criticize Anthroposophy differently than the way they do it. One should refrain from the personal. For me it never depends upon the personal. I never want to defend or attack a Frohnmeyer or Bruhns or Heinselmann or whoever they are all called, but I want to characterize this existing spiritual stream out of which these people develop. Individually these people according to today's sense of the word could be honourable men—honourable men they all are when I remind myself of Shakespeare's dramas—but this is irrelevant. I don't want to attach anything to these people personally. For example it doesn't include someone like the priest Kully who actually is the product of certain streams within the Catholic Church.

This is how things must be considered at all costs in today's serious time in which we stand. This is what we must consider under all circumstances. We must develop a spiritual eye, above all, for every decadent spiritual movement, which needs to be identified, characterized. We need clarity regarding today's world situation: amongst quite a large number of people it is simply the case that spiritual science is seen for itself and everything within the content of their lives is made to come out of spiritual science. Above all, when you could search and find proof of what is growing within today's youth then you'll have to say to yourself: these youths inherently have definite inclinations and abilities for which spiritual science is allowed to appear as something natural. On the other hand is the curiosity that there are still enough forces to hold down what actually wants to rise to the surface of existence just as we see it in politics.

Do you believe for instance that in the defeated or conqueror's countries there aren't innumerable individuals who, if they somehow could be brought to act, they wouldn't be able to do something sensible? There are certainly many such people but you don't encounter them because those connected to all old, degenerating world and life attitudes (Weltanschauungen) and who have caused this misfortune, are repeatedly thrown back with an iron fist to the surface. As long as one doesn't get the insight that it is quite impossible to do something with people who come out of old spiritual streams, even when they are in radical parties of the present, as long as one deals with those who have grown out of feeble minded and old spiritual structures, one will get no further. We need to maintain actual new forces, and those who are running the show are holding these forces back.

This is generally happening in spiritual life. We must draw a thick line between what wants to be worked at into today's youth out of the world, and whoever occupied the professorial chair and given the stamp of approval in the exam. This causes terrible pressure. Insight must develop for the content held by the examiner and the learned chair-person for what is involved here, because no lucid insight can arise for what is absolutely needed today. Pessimism says something, the forces are simply not there, it is not permitted. Only once we allow something to happen can we make it possible to get out of degeneration. Is it any use then that we conduct such a beautiful university course? Certainly, we can inspire several young individuals—that actually happened and will happen many times in the future. These young people are inspired for a time but they grow up in an environment of exams and philistinism and of course need to earn their daily bread because they will not manage otherwise and thus their development is of course weighed down and prevented from real striving and creativity in future. These things must be inspected thoroughly and on this track something must be done in order to overcome these things. We can't do this if today, during these earnest times of development, mankind as well as also our Anthroposophical movement refrain from reflecting that these things are present. This kind of thing is aptly depicted in this “Tat” publication.

You see we need to give attention to how these things which grow out of the basis of spiritual science come from thoughts of broad reality. For everything, when it comes down to it, is the main thread found in a far wider line of argument. In my book “Riddles of the Soul” I point out these Dessoir talents: Dessoir relates a very naive and quite beautiful example of his extraordinary spiritual predisposition in his “Schandbuch” (Book of Shame?) which he wrote and which has found much recognition in the world, that it can happen to him while in the middle of lecturing and immersed within his thoughts, he suddenly is unable to continue. Now, I find this a quite extraordinarily characteristic for such thought, that it can be thought and thought and suddenly can't continue. Yes indeed! I find this extraordinarily characteristic ... (Gap in short-hand notes). It is even a precondition that one can't regard him as a serious scholar, is that not so; one comes across such people today, who create something like the “Tat.”

The publisher of the “Tat” is the former Eugen Diederichs. I once came across a collection which Diederichs held to former students, where the discussion was led by Max Scheler as main speaker. Some time before that Diederichs had written to me with the request of wanting to publish one of my books. It was either in 1902 or 1903. The one he wanted was “Christianity as Mystical Fact” which had been published before already. In front of the word “Theosophy” he winced. The next day he wanted to speak to me. This conversation dealt with a publisher's concern out of which nothing came because obviously, nothing could come out of Diederichs ... (Gap in short-hand notes). He said—the mystical writing of Plotin, as well as other mystics should much rather be fostered because, regarding the general wellbeing of mankind, these make such a particularly good impression. It is just like when one drinks sweet wine or something similar and it runs in such a soulful manner through the entire human organism.—And one can hardly abstain from having the thought of him sitting there with rather a full little belly trying to digest the mystical by slapping his full belly with his flat hands!

Later every Mister Mystic supported the “Tat,” and the second publication in 1921 contained nothing other than an article on Anthroposophy, firstly one which was actually written by someone who had been elected by certain communities for the particular battle against Anthroposophy. What he wrote is combined out of pure impertinence and nonsense: I.W. Hauer: “Anthroposophy as the way to the Spirit.”—As second article appeared a refutation of the first from Walter Johannes Stein, “Anthroposophy as monism and as theosophy,” because Diederichs wanted to illustrate his objectivity. Of course he also invited supporters because they were within it all, they were people who read it and obviously were immediately convinced that Diederichs was an objective man, who allows both opponents and supporters to have their say. The distinction is that among the supporter articles a really well written one came from a man, Wil Salewski, “The Goetheanum in Dornach near Basel and the Anthroposophical High School course in Autumn 1920.” Certainly some good articles appeared in it but particularly those written by opponents show a grand stupidity, an absolute misunderstanding for what really should work through Anthroposophy, what it means and so on.

Quite tragic-comic, even joking, I might say, however is a discussion which the publisher Eugen Diederichs presents, entitled: “Towards an Anthroposophic Special Edition.” Permit me to quote the slime: “This booklet is the research from fruitful, striving discussions of religious men who preside over the non-confessional, within the circles of anthroposophic thought, and the director of this movement, Dr Rudolf Steiner. How such an attempt comes across depends on the personality traits found amongst members. I must confess, despite all efforts I was not successful in attracting the Steiner followers into a stronger collaboration.”

I wanted, but they didn't fall for it, not for Diederichs to compliment his “Tat” with something which comes right out of our circles.

“One could say, it is based perhaps on their relation lacking `humility' in the sense of Mennickes, yet as publisher I feel it my duty to be quite impartial and state facts. I hope however that later, another anthroposophist from the priest's rank, Rittelmeyer, will contrast his own serious Christ experience in opposition to those of Michel, Gogarten and Mennicke.

“As private person I can only admit that up to now I have not succeeded to acquire an affirming position regarding Anthroposophy.”

It doesn't appear to taste like sweet wine and thus can only be run down!

“I personally stand completely with Mennikes' point of view that Anthroposophy is the end point of materialism as well as rationalism and as a result this end point indicates no new developments. This doesn't exclude that it can be a transformative constructive phenomenon with new construction and that it therefore contains all kinds of worth, like constructive eclecticism built on values of the past. Anthroposophy doesn't appear to me as coming directly ....”—what is `direct' in this case is at most working from an inaccurately active gastric acid—“and therefore also doesn't give any evidence—despite all the talk about intuition, creativity and Goethe's observation. I know the Theosophists claim this assertion as their highest lack of understanding nevertheless it is spoken out in a singular attitude of secret subconscious powers.”

Regarding this `attitude', I've already spoken to you about it! “So I see from this personal attitude (which should absolutely not be an attack on Anthroposophy, but only a confession).”

Really, it is not very nice, because now someone who is smart enough will say: `He isn't attacking Anthroposophy.'—He is apparently indifferent whether he attacks it or not. Thus he says: “So I see ... it is a danger for the mental investment of the upcoming Germany, and is urgently necessary, not only for the readership of the `Tat,' but above all for the youth with Rudolf Steiner and with those of his spreading movement that it is intellectually dealt with. Because today it has become so close that we need to save ourselves from the chaos of our new development in a safe tower.”

Governments have sometimes saved themselves in “safe towers” during revolutions and riots; something can be said about that! Now however the publisher ends with: “My colleague Ernst Michel, well known to readers of this newspaper through his Goethean sayings and books, in this issue about Anthroposophy is faced with Catholic God- and World-feelings.”

Now, I ask you to listen even more carefully, because then you will notice what I have already characterized for you out of the most varied backgrounds the experience of Catholicism in an apparent rejuvenated gesture becoming a kind of Catholic-Dadaism, finding shelter under Eugen Diederichs in the “Tat.” “His article forms a prelude to the April edition which will connect with the Sonderheft of the Catholic youth movement.”

So this is what I mean when I call it the Catholic-Dadaistic movement. I don't say this without foundation because I immediately want to introduce you to something from Ernst Michel's article: “Anthroposophy and Christianity” and through this have the opportunity to familiarize you with a representative of religious Dadaism.

“It gives me particular satisfaction to have the opportunity to take the Catholic publication with its predominantly Protestant readers of the `Tat' and measure the Protestant individualism against the Roman Catholic community spirit. I hope that out of all the intellectual discussions the basic idea of the `Tat' gets support: the strengthening of its feeling for responsibility for its own development and as a result for the nation as a whole.”

These are the words of Mr Eugen Diederichs. Here, therefore, is a statement of the young catholic movement, which was given out of the prelude of Ernst Michel's article: “Anthroposophy and Christianity.” I have often indicated, also in the last two studies pointed out with great energy, what actually threatens the modern spiritual life from this side. However, now this article of Ernst Michel in the “Tat,” entitled “Anthroposophy and Christianity” is actually total religious Dadaism. The oldest catholic branch of Roman Catholic Christianity is here puffed out to its readers in bombastic words. Extraordinarily interesting discoveries can actually be made regarding this religious Dadaism. For example Ernst Michel noticed a basic truth of Christianity: “It is a basic Christian truth that a person with original sin against God, inherited through blood and essentially enraptured by conditions of sanctification, is unable to extricate himself through his own forces: that he has the independent inclination of wanting to rise to a higher stage of humanity; that the break through from one condition to the next, despite the original cause, appear as real procreative acts of God to this willing creature.”

So many words, so many sentences!—Each sentence can be sifted through and a childish confession found towards a `catholic catechism'. It's interesting that according to Ernst Michel it isn't up to single individuals to discover a final spiritual truth. You have just heard how it depends on `successful outcomes' and so it `breaks through'. A person receives this through grace and then breaks through. One needs to submit to this. A person should not out of his own kind of higher truth strive by claiming: “There is no spiritual development; there is only development and a successful outcome, a break-through.”

It is exceptionally nice how Ernst Michel from this standpoint of Dadaistic catechism says: yes, with dogmas there is something else, they have to be believed as truths!—“Dogmas are not formulated by a person or the community as their basic religious experience (as in `addressing God') but God, the head of the church, speaks as Holy Ghost directly and immediately through the visible church ...”

Thus the fathers of the councils, who are united, or even the Pope who speaks ex cathedra, is not a single person, not so? Now to go into excess, invoke the Dadaism of religion on top of holy Paul who had also said that the single human being dare not research the final truths: “At this point we can listen to the words of St Paul to the Corinthians without the fear of Gnostic interpretation: What we are talking about is God's secret wisdom, that which is hidden, which God prescribed for all times for our glory, which none of the rulers if this world has acknowledged ... to us however God is revealed through the spirit because the spirit explores all things, even God's depths. Speaking of people—who of you know the inner being of someone according to how the spirit lives in him? Just so nobody has ever fathomed the depth of God as the spirit of God. Yet we haven't received the spirit of the world but the spirit which comes out of God, in order for us to understand what gift God has given us ...” and so on.

Now you see, when these words of Paul are stated in the way of Anthroposophy, it all appears to agree. When however one is forbidden to somehow come to the truth through the spirit and then quote these words, one must be a religious Dadaist. It is the same with the description of the Christ experience and so on. In such minds it naturally will not be considered. In worldly minds it may be considered but of course what Anthroposophy has to say about Christ will not enter into such minds. This is where the circulating nonsense comes from which covers the Christ problem in relation to what Anthroposophy has to say about it. Of course one finds the Ernst Michel type who has to say one should have a religious relationship and out of this relationship so to say comes even such expressions as the “great crowds” which I quoted to you before. It's true, this is a particular style of expression.

On the contrary this article of Dadaistic aspects in religious affairs indulges particularly in scolding my style. This is exactly characteristic of such plump, grimy fingers which just don't manage to arrive at what is really necessary—to state spiritual truths. For this it is necessary to have a certain uncomfortable style. It is necessary to exit from such Dadaistic bombast as Ernst Michel depicts. Understandably my mysteries mean nothing to Ernst Michel. He understands absolutely nothing about it. He says for example: “Mystery certainly doesn't come from the naked-extrasensory: whoever looks for it there is a materialist, just as much as someone who looks for it in matter. No mystery is created by taking ideas of ghosts or magical wonders, dressing them in conceptual clothing and presenting them on stage under the theme of `Reality'. No indeed, the secret lies in the creative combination of nature and spirit into an indescribable gesture ...”

Now, just imagine such “indescribable gestures” and then say to yourself: “in the unity of matter and form, from power and direction” in the “emerging form, the living develops itself,” this is of course a quote from Goethe! Now comes the sentence—and you must retain the relevant Dadaistic-religious correlation here in order to tolerate it at all, and not only allow this to be considered as slimy when it must be rolled on the tongue or give it an even stronger instigation—“Speech is the mystery,” yes, it is stated thus in one sentence: “Speech is the mystery, the Son of Man Jesus Christ is the mystery.” You see, you can well understand that the style in which Anthroposophical literature is presented throughout isn't created in this style and it then becomes obvious in copied lectures which have not been corrected by me, that something else can be expressed. It doesn't matter that this is pointed out, how it is in fact quite a strong piece when Diederichs presents the entire nation with such things as a “sense of responsibility,” and as a result transfer the necessity to have a good look at what is transferred by not analysing it a bit more finely. It is really extraordinary when such a Dadaist of religions claims, that such a transfer of inner reality in sound and rhythm in the element of speech, was not connected with me. He then refers to two people where such a transfer has taken place; Nietzsche and Hölderlin. Typical of such a gossipmonger who has no feeling for the spiritual life, when confronted with difficult spiritual content and is challenged by his life's hindrances, he changes his style to that of Nietzsche and Hölderlin, and in this style tragic elements emerge just as they do in Nietzsche and Hölderlin today. The entire wicked thoughtlessness of this contemporary bunch appears precisely at such a point; they have neither any feeling for the tragedy of a Hölderlin or Nietzsche, nor for the necessity of an objective style, which is necessary in bringing to expression spiritual truths and spiritual facts. It is necessary today to point out that once one has shifted into a position to examine such Diederichs-gossipmongers, it must be done in an energetic way. One must see out of which sewers such Dadaism springs today which appears as the Anthroposophical opposition cloaked in the mantel of objectivity and from where it gets its spiritual nourishment.

These things can't be expressed in a different way than this, in these present serious times, because it should not appear in the attitude amongst Anthroposophist that such “objectivity” is different to a refinement in what Anthroposophy is and what lives in her, sunk in her very ground and soil. People like Ernst Michel and their religious Dadaism as well as a Eugen Diederichs and his stomach-mysticism obviously don't have the slightest inkling. This is what we must be aware of and what we need to examine. Today it is necessary to give rise to a serious attitude towards language and not be pulled into something which presents itself to the world in this way. It must be said and must appear in all forms in the world that exactly through what is presented in this way as spiritual striving, mankind becomes gradually increasingly drawn into degeneration, into the morass, and that it is necessary for Anthroposophy to remain standing in work which is pure and not be familiar with something which flourishes in a decaying society.

It fails to interest me when something praiseworthy appears because I give neither praise nor reproach from something incompetent—while the will is incompetent but not the mind—which Anthroposophy wants to heal in mankind. This religious Dadaism of course can't do otherwise than come up with such sentences as: “The power in which people grow up as the foundation of the mystery of faith is also not first in the line of knowledge but in the show of the continued and ever deeper show of introduced love.”

With that nothing other is meant but soulful sensuality which these people keep in mind and which is not supported by what appears in pure spiritual creativity today, where there is no place for these soul-spiritual distortions into religious sexual Dadaism, which, when it also appears under all possible guises, is nothing other than the shameless living of soul sensuality which a good many disguise as religious, but which is nothing other than the shameless living in soulful sensuality.

Against this we must evermore be clear that for once in our time something, when it is allowed to come through, can unfold despite all these oppositions, and can penetrate into the real understanding of spiritual life which is creatively active in material life. We must evermore be clear that we need care in the present for existing abilities in people; we must thoroughly, with every fibre of our soul dedicate this care and that no nuance of seriousness is strong enough to describe the devoted energy required in order to make progress on this path. Here no compromises can be chosen. Duty must be done. Obviously everywhere where Anthroposophy wants to be heard, Anthroposophy must be heard: our duty must be done. We must not allow the slightest illusion to come about in any way. It is necessary to work out of things themselves without compromise. Every one of us has the obligation, as far as possible, to work out of ourselves towards the recovery of the Anthroposophical movement, that it may extract itself from every kind of outsider tendency, from every pettiness, and that it leaves behind any emotional, sensual mysticism, that it really penetrates through to a free contemporary well-informed understanding of existential mysteries. Because only then, when we have seized the mysteries of existence in this way, can it be worked through the soul into practical life which still has to be mastered in order not to become a hindrance towards further progressive development of mankind. Exactly in this last arena the human being is misunderstood in some way. What doesn't all have to happen to distort things most shamelessly! In the well known “Berlin Daily Newspaper” an article was fabricated regarding all sorts of sewer-like stuff which in Berlin is claimed as fortune telling and predictions of the most idiotic manner and in the middle of it all is a reference to Anthroposophy and myself. This article has been sent out into the world. It appears in both English and Swiss publications. In the most infamous, shameless manner this fabricated article is working towards the destruction of the Anthroposophical point of view. It is precisely this that must be seen through, for by merely presenting some opposition will not suffice; the culprits themselves must be characterized. Obviously it would not be so difficult to get through this if the very basis out of which all this stuff is rising is characterized and a mirror held up so they can see their own identity. This is essentially what is necessary and what becomes increasingly necessary. We can't restrict ourselves by placing a kind of anthroposophic dogma on the one side and raise a defence on the other when opposition comes along, but we need to examine everything which is active in the stupefaction and degeneration directed at humanity. This appears very, very often. We need to reiterate this to ourselves every morning in some way, expressed in truth and without fanaticism. I have not in fact spoken about these thing exactly in this way, and I seldom reason, and previously seldom reasoned about these things, but now it has become more frequent because actually your gaze must be directed towards such childish prattle which flows out of the entire decadence of our time, like this fabricated article in Berlin, which is now doing the rounds in the world, like other things also do the rounds, and we really have unbelievable much to do if we want to oppose these things. We could in fact work for twenty four hours against this shameful witnessing. Then the Frohnmeyers come along and say that what they had written was never presented as disapproval. Dr Boos disproved it, had written to the relevant editor, and the editor actually didn't accept the refutation and thus Frohnmeyer had afterwards removed some of it out of the publication which the relevant priest who had been there had seen, and had told a lie; so the reply had simply never been accepted. Consequently, I believe, further correspondence took place in which no mention was made of it, that this reply was made and no comment given. We will really have to be very active if we want to oppose all these things. It is a comfort to a Frohnmeyer or Heinzelmann to focus on something or other they wish to say which doesn't correlate in any way to reality, the relevant item borrowed, letting one believe that it is the truth. Whoever writes something has the duty to do research, to investigate the source.

With these kinds of people who develop constantly out of malice and also a predominant ignorance in their point of view, one finds no end by mere opposition. Essentially it pertains to the spiritual basis which can be found everywhere and really place this in a truthful light.

(Gap in short-hand notes—the closing words follow:)

With reference to these things and not from personal grounds I would like to mention that since April 1919 I have given countless lectures in Stuttgart which contained the most important economic facts and truths as well as giving references to characteristic contemporary spiritual streams which should be exploited. Throughout it is stressed that important material is about to be revealed.—it is “defiled.” Items are printed and sent to members of the tripartite circle and the tripartite unions and are read in small circles. Whatever appears sophisticated is made sectarian. Anyone who is interested in this is wronged because things are not taken up but handled this way.

Basically this is lost work, directed towards something like this—which is actually so far-fetched—if it is not grasped, not laboured further, not worked out in this sense.

Above all else, this is what is really needed today!

It is not only unacceptable that these things are read in a sectarian way in small circles, but these are the things which can be worked through further. Everywhere are growing points for further work! One could ask, why should one work further on something when it simply lies there as printed material, and no one is seriously worrying about it any further? This is what it is about: when it is studied further one can really do extended research into what becomes special within it. This is needed, the further research into the seeds which are given on earth. This is the real active work: by lifting our movement out of any sectarian signs and then taking things simply as they are and allowing them to again enter into sectarianism, we won't make any progress. The content of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science is actually not suitable for some or other sectarian movement; the content is something which can by all means convey the impulse for having an effect in the world.

For this to happen it is absolutely necessary that everyone join forces. Today we are confronted with the necessity that things need practical application. We will not progress if this is not earnestly accepted, if nothing is really comprehended as to how the true spirit also penetrates into actual practical applications.

Then something must be done in such a way which doesn't defile it but instead that it is grasped and actively pursued in a lively way, proving itself.

Now I still want to say this in conclusion: No one, really no one needs to feel affected by these things. Only in a time in which, as I have recently quoted, it is this possible that publications opposing anthroposophical spiritual science as well as opposing its actions can they end by saying: there is enough spiritual sparks and they are necessary because also the actual, physical fire sparks should descend on this Dornach hill—during a time when malice is basically attributed to superficiality, is it a time for serious words by all means.

For this reason I asked you to come here once again. Don't take me amiss when the opportunity came along for me to utter some really earnest words! Before this journey I simply had to bring this to your hearts, to your minds, to your consciousness!

It has been repeatedly pointed out in the course of these lectures how, as time goes on, the relationship of mankind to the Gospels will be fundamentally changed through the recognition of their profoundly artistic character, and the artistry of their composition. The occult background and the world-historical impulses pictured in the Gospels will be seen in the right light only when their artistic composition is taken into account. During the entire course of the historical evolution of mankind, the art and literature of the Gospels are linked together in the same way, as we have been able to point out on a few occasions in the course of these lectures.

We have pointed to those lonely figures in the Hellenic world who experienced in their souls the gradual disappearance and dying out of the old clairvoyant vision, for which they had to exchange the consciousness of the present time, its abstract concepts and abstract ideas, out of which the ego of man has to work. We can also point to something else which, precisely in Greek culture, from a certain point of view represents a kind of concluding phase of the culture of mankind. It is as if this culture had attained a certain peak, and had to be enkindled again from another point of view. I am referring to Greek art. How did it happen that people at the time of the Renaissance in Europe sought in their souls the land of the Greeks, that is to say the land of Beauty, and saw an ideal of human development in the wonderful way in which the Greeks shaped the human form? But this did not only occur in the time of the Renaissance. In the modern classical epoch spirits like Goethe sought in the same way within their souls this land of the Greeks, the land of beautiful form. The reason for this is that in actual fact it was in Greece that beauty, which speaks out of external form directly to human sight, came to a kind of end, an end that indeed represented a certain high point of achievement.

In Greek beauty and Greek art everything confronts us enclosed in form. The composition of Greek works of art reveals to our sight exactly what is intended by the composition. It is there in sense existence, fully apparent to the eye. The greatness of Greek art consists in the fact that it has come forth so fully into outward appearance. We may say that the art of the Gospels also represents a new beginning, but one that to this day has scarcely been understood at all. There is above all in the Gospels an inner composition and an inner interweaving of artistic threads, which are also at the same time occult threads. As we emphasized yesterday the important thing is everywhere to look for the real point, as it is drawn to our attention in every description and every story.

It is particularly shown in the Mark Gospel, not so much in the wording but in the general tone of the presentation, that Christ is to be seen as a cosmic being, an earthly and supra-earthly manifestation, while the Mystery of Golgotha is shown as an earthly and supra-earthly fact. But something else is also emphasized, and here we are faced with the fine artistic element, especially toward the end of the Gospel. It is emphasized that a cosmic element is shining into the concerns of earth. It truly shines in; and it was the task of earth beings, of earthly human beings to bring their understanding to this impulse. Perhaps nowhere else is it indicated so well as in the Mark Gospel how fundamentally the whole of earth evolution will be necessary to enable us to understand what shone here out of the cosmos into earth existence, and how at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha such understanding was altogether impossible. And even today this understanding is still absent. The truth that at that time there was only an initial impetus toward an understanding that can come into being only with the further development of mankind is shown in a quite wonderful way in the artistic composition of the Gospel. We can discern something of this artistic composition if we enquire into the form of understanding that could have been possible and brought to bear on the Mystery of Golgotha at the time it took place.

Essentially three kinds of understanding were possible, and they could arise at three different levels. Firstly, understanding could have been found in those who were nearest to Christ Jesus, His chosen disciples. They are presented to us everywhere in the Gospels as those whom the Lord Himself had chosen, to whom He confided many things to help them toward a higher understanding of existence. From them, therefore, we have a right to expect the greatest understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. What kind of understanding may we expect from them? As we approach the end of the Mark Gospel this is ever more delicately interwoven into its composition. It is pointed out to us very clearly that these chosen disciples could have had a higher understanding than the leaders of the Old Testament people. But we must everywhere look for the point to which we are referring.

In Mark chapter 12, verses 18 to 27 you will find a conversation between Christ Jesus and the Sadducees, a conversation that is primarily concerned with the immortality of the soul. If the Gospels are read superficially it will not occur to anybody to ask why this conversation appears precisely here, a conversation about immortality followed by the curious question posed by the Sadducees, who spoke as follows, “It could happen that one of seven brothers married a woman but he dies, and the same woman marries the second. After the death of the second she also marries the third, and likewise with the others. She herself dies only after the death of the seventh brother.” The Sadducees could not understand how, if there is indeed immortality, these seven men should behave toward the one woman in the spiritual world. This is a well-known Sadducean objection which, as some of you may know, was not made only at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha but is even to be found in some modern books as an objection to immortality, which proves that in the circles where such books are written there is still no complete understanding of the matter. But why was this conversation recorded? If we consider the matter, we shall see that the answer given by Christ Jesus tells us clearly that souls become heavenly after death, that there is no marrying among beings of the supra-earthly world. In the case cited by the Sadducees the facts are totally irrelevant, since they are concerned with a relationship that is essentially earthly and has no meaning beyond the earth. In other words Christ Jesus is here speaking of circumstances prevailing in the extraterrestrial worlds which He wishes to bring in here solely for the contribution they can make to the understanding of life beyond the earth.

But as you approach the end of the Mark Gospel you will find still another conversation when Christ Jesus is asked about marriage (Mark 10:1-12). This was a conversation between Christ Jesus and the Jewish scribes. How is it possible, He was asked, to dismiss a wife with a letter of divorce as permitted by the law of Moses? What was the reason for the answer given by Christ Jesus, “Yes, Moses gave you this law because your hearts are hard and you need an arrangement like this?” The reason is that He is now speaking about something entirely different. He is now speaking about how men and women were together before human evolution had been exposed to temptation through the Luciferic powers. That is to say, He is talking about something cosmic, something supra-earthly; He raised the subject to the supra-earthly plane. The reason for His answer is that He was leading the conversation beyond what refers simply to earthly life, beyond experience of the senses, beyond ordinary earth evolution. And this is already a significant example of how by appearing on earth He brings down to it supra-earthly, cosmic matters, and talks about such cosmic matters with the beings of earth.

By whom might we hope, or even go as far as to demand, that such discourses of Christ concerning these cosmic matters will be best understood? By those whom He had first chosen as His disciples. So the first form of understanding could be characterized in this way. The chosen disciples of Christ Jesus could have understood the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that they could have interpreted the supra-earthly, cosmic aspect of this world-historical fact. This might have been expected from those disciples whom He had chosen.

A second kind of understanding could have been expected to be found among the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people, from the high priests, the chief justices, from those who knew the Scriptures and knew the historical evolution of the Old Testament people. What could have been asked of them? The Gospel shows clearly that they were not called upon to understand the realities of Christ Jesus, but they were expected to understand the fact that Christ Jesus came to the ancient Hebrew people, that with His individuality He was born into the blood of the people, that He was a Son of the House of David, inwardly linked to the essence of what came through David into the Jewish people. This is the second and lesser kind of understanding. That Christ Jesus had a mission that marked the high point of the mission of the whole Jewish people is indicated in a wonderful way toward the end of the Mark Gospel when it is shown ever more clearly—see in what a delicately artistic way this is indicated—that here we have to do with the Son of David. Thus, while the disciples were called upon to have an understanding of the mission of the cosmic hero, those who considered themselves as belonging to the Jewish people were called upon to understand the truth that the time had come for the completion of the mission of David. That is the second kind of understanding. The Jewish people should have known that the end of their old mission had come and that there could come a new flaming up of their own particular mission.

And the third kind of comprehension—where should this have been found? Again something lesser is demanded, and it is remarkable with what delicacy the artistic composition of the Mark Gospel indicates it. Something lesser is demanded and this lesser element was required of the Romans. Read what happens toward the end of this Gospel when Christ Jesus is delivered over to the Romans by the high priests—I am referring only to this Mark Gospel. The high priests ask Christ Jesus if He wishes to speak of the Christ and acknowledge Himself as the Christ, at which they would take offense, because He would then be speaking of His cosmic mission; or if He wishes to speak of the fact that He is a scion of the House of David. But why does Pilate, the Roman, take offense? Simply because Christ was supposed to have claimed He was the “king of the Jews” (Mark 15:1-15). The Jews were expected to understand that He represented the culminating point in their own development. The Romans were expected to understand that He signified something in the development of the Jewish people—not a climax of this development but something that was to play a leading part in it. If the Romans had understood this what would have been the result? Nothing much different from what came about in any case; only they failed to understand it. We know that Judaism spread indirectly over the whole Western world by way of Alexandria. The Romans could have had some understanding for the fact that the moment in world history had arrived for the spread of Jewish culture. Such an understanding was again less than what the scribes ought to have understood. The Romans were called upon to understand simply the significance of the Jews as a part of the world. That they did not understand this, which would have been a task of that age, is shown through the fact that Pilate did not understand why Christ Jesus was looked upon as the king of the Jews, and regarded it, indeed, as a harmless matter that He should have been presented as a king of the Jews.

Thus a threefold understanding of the mission of Christ Jesus might have been expected: first, that the chosen disciples could have had an understanding of Christ as a cosmic being, secondly, the understanding that the Jews were supposed to have for what was burgeoning in the Jewish people itself, and thirdly the understanding that the Romans ought to have had of the Jewish people, how they were ceasing to expand only over Palestine, but were beginning to spread over the greater part of the earth.

This secret is concealed in the artistic composition especially of the Mark Gospel; and in it answers are given, and with great clarity, to all three questions.

The first question must be: Are the apostles, the chosen disciples equal to the task of comprehension imposed on them? Did they recognize Christ as a cosmic spirit? Did they recognize that there in their midst was one who was not only what He signified to them as man, but who was enveloped in an aura through which cosmic forces and cosmic laws were transmitted to the earth? Did they understand this?

That Christ Jesus demanded such an understanding from them is clearly indicated in the Gospel. For when the two disciples, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him and asked that one of them might sit on His right hand and the other on His left, He said to them, “You do not know what you ask. Can you drink from the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38.)

It is clearly indicated here that Christ Jesus required this of them, and at first they solemnly pledge themselves to it. What might then have happened? There were two possibilities. One would have been that the chosen disciples would really have passed in company with Christ through all that is known as the Mystery of Golgotha, and that the bond between Christ and the disciples would have been preserved until the Mystery of Golgotha. That was one of the two things that could have happened. But it is made very clear, especially in the Mark Gospel, that exactly the opposite occurred. When Christ Jesus was taken prisoner, everyone fled, and Peter who had promised solemnly that he would take offense at nothing, denied him three times before the cock crowed twice. That is the picture presented from the point of view of the apostles. But how is it shown that, from the point of view of the Christ, it was not at all like this?

Let us place ourselves with all humility—as we must—within the soul of Christ Jesus, who to the end tries to maintain the woven bond linking Him with the souls of the disciples. Let us place ourselves as far as we may within the soul of Christ Jesus during the events that followed. This soul might well put to itself the world-historical question, “Is it possible for me to cause the souls of at least the most select of the disciples to rise to the height of experiencing with me everything that is to happen until the Mystery of Golgotha?” The soul of Christ itself is faced with this question at the crucial moment when Peter, James and John are led out to the Mount of Olives, and Christ Jesus wants to find out from within Himself whether He will be able to keep those whom He had chosen. On the way He becomes anguished. Yes, my friends, does anyone believe, can anyone believe that Christ became anguished in face of death, of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that He sweated blood because of the approaching event of Golgotha? Anyone who could believe that would show he had little understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha; it may be in accord with theology, but it shows no insight. Why does the Christ become distressed? He does not tremble before the cross. That goes without saying. He is distressed above all in face of this question, “Will those whom I have with me here stand the test of this moment when it will be decided whether they want to accompany me in their souls, whether they want to experience everything with me until the cross?” It had to be decided if their consciousness could remain sufficiently awake so that they could experience everything with Him until the cross. This was the “cup” that was coming near to Him. So He leaves them alone to see if they can stay “awake,” that is in a state of consciousness in which they can experience with Him what He is to experience. Then He goes aside and prays, “Father, let this cup pass from me, but let it be done according to your will, not mine.” In other words, “Let it not be my experience to stand quite alone as the Son of Man, but may the others be permitted to go with me.”

He comes back, and they are asleep; they could not maintain their state of wakeful consciousness. Again He makes the attempt, and again they could not maintain it. So it becomes clear to Him that He is to stand alone, and that they will not participate in the path to the cross. The cup had not passed away from Him. He was destined to accomplish the deed in loneliness, a loneliness that was also of the soul. Certainly the world had the Mystery of Golgotha, but at the time it happened it had as yet no understanding of this event; and the most select and chosen disciples could not stay awake to that point. This therefore is the first kind of understanding; and it comes to expression with the most consummate artistry if we can only understand how to feel the actual occult background that lies concealed behind the words of the Gospels.

Let us now enquire into the second kind of understanding, and ask how the Jewish leaders understood the one who was to come forth from the lineage of David as the flower of the old Hebrew development. We find in the tenth chapter of the Mark Gospel one of the first passages in which it is pointed out to us what understanding the ancient Hebrew people showed toward the one who arose from the lineage of David. This is the decisive passage when Christ Jesus is approaching Jerusalem, and should have been recognized by the old Hebrew people as the successor of David.

And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a considerable crowd, a blind man, Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road, begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to call, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” And many scolded him, telling him to be silent. But he called all the more loudly, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” (Mark 10:46-48.)

It is explicitly stated that the call of the blind man was expressed in the words “Thou Son of David,” showing that he could reach the understanding only of “the Son of David.”

And Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man and said to him, “Be of good cheer, arise, he is calling you.”

So he threw off his mantle, jumped up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

The blind man said to him, “Rabboni, that I may receive my sight.”

And Jesus said to him. “Cheer up!¹ Your faith has rescued you.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him on his way.

It was therefore only faith that was required of him. Is it not worthwhile giving consideration to why, among the other stories, the healing of a blind man is referred to? Why does the story stand there all by itself? We should learn something from the way the Gospel is composed. It is not the cure itself that is at issue, but that only one man among them all, and he a blind man, should call with all his strength, “Jesus, thou Son of David!” Those who had sight did not recognize Him, but the blind man, who does not see Him physically at all, does recognize Him. So what has to be shown here is how blind the others are, and that this man had to be blind in order to see Him. In this passage what is important is the blindness, not the healing; and it shows at the same time how little Christ was understood.

As we proceed further we find how He speaks everywhere of how the cosmic lives in the individual human being. Indeed, He speaks of the cosmic when He speaks of immortality, and it is noteworthy how He speaks of this just in connection with His appearance as the Son of David. He proclaims that God is a God of the living and not of the dead, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Mark 12:26-27), because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live on in their successors in different forms, in that God lives in their individualities. This is pointed out still more strongly when Christ refers to what slumbers within man and must be awakened. Here it is said that it was not a question of a merely physical son of David, for David himself speaks of the “Lord” and not of a physical son (Mark 12:35-37). As the influence of the cosmic Christ is waning, everywhere reference is made to the “Lord” that lives within the individuality of man, and how this is to spring from the lineage of David.

We wish to draw attention to one particular passage that you will find near the end of the Mark Gospel. It is a passage that can easily be overlooked if it is not understood, though it is indeed a soul-shattering passage. It occurs where it is reported that Christ has now been delivered over to the worldly powers, that He is to be condemned, and excuses are sought for condeming Him. Just before this passage what He did in the Temple was described, how He drove out the money-changers and overturned their tables, and how He preached most remarkable words which were heard in the souls of those present. Yet nothing happened to Him because of this. Christ explicitly draws attention to this when He says, “You have heard all this. Yet now, when I am standing before you, you are looking for false charges against me. You have taken me prisoner by the customary method of employing a traitor, as if you were arresting someone who has committed a serious crime whereas you did nothing while I stood among you in the Temple.”

This is indeed a shattering passage, for we are given to understand that essentially, wherever Christ is active, nothing can be done against Him. Is it not permissible to ask why? Indeed, He is working so actively that He points with the utmost clarity to the fact that a turning point in cosmic evolution has been reached, as He indicates with the words, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” (Mark 9:35.) Such teachings that He hurls at them must have seemed terrifying by comparison with the teachings of the Old Testament and the way they understood them. Yet nothing happens. Afterwards He is captured under cover of darkness and night by the agency of a traitor; and we even have the impression that there was something like a struggle when He was captured. The passage is truly shattering:

But the traitor had given them a sign and said, “The one whom I will kiss, it is he; seize and secure him.”

And when he came he went directly to Him and said “Rabbi, Rabbi!” and kissed him. And they laid hands on Him and seized Him.

But one of those who were standing by drew his sword and struck at a servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

And Jesus spoke to them, “You have come out with swords and sticks to take me prisoner as you would a murderer. I was daily in the Temple teaching, and you did not seize me; but the Scriptures must be fulfilled.” (Mark 14:44-49.)

What was it that really happened that they did not at first capture Him, and then sought reasons to capture Him like a murderer? It is only possible to understand what happened if we look at it in the light of occult truths. I have already pointed out how the Mark Gospel clearly describes occult and spiritual facts intermingled at random with purely physical facts. And we shall show how Christ clearly does not limit His activity to the deeds of the single personality, Jesus of Nazareth. He worked upon His disciples when He came to them by the lake in an external form but outside His physical body. So while His physical body might be in one place or another, He could while outside it inspire into the souls of His disciples all that He did, and all that radiated from Him as spiritual impulse. And we shall point out that the Mark Gospel makes it abundantly clear how human beings hear what He preaches and teaches while He appears to them in an external form outside His physical body. What He says lives in their souls; though they do not understand it, it comes to life within their souls. In the individuality of Christ and in the crowd it is both earthly and supra-earthly at the same time.

The Christ is everywhere connected with a widely extended, actively working aura. This aura was present and active because He was linked with the souls of those whom He had chosen, and it remained present as long as He was linked to them. The cup had not passed away from Him; the chosen human beings had shown no comprehension. So this aura gradually withdrew from the man Jesus of Nazareth; Christ became ever more estranged from the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth. Toward the end of His life Jesus of Nazareth was more and more alone, and the Christ became ever more loosely connected with Him.

Although the cosmic element was there until the moment pictured as that of the sweating of blood in Gethsemane, and Christ up to this moment was fully united with Jesus of Nazareth, now through the failure of human beings to understand this connection the link was loosened. And whereas earlier the cosmic Christ was active in the temple and drove out the money-changers, expounding mighty teachings, and nothing happened to Him, now, when Jesus of Nazareth was only loosely connected with the Christ the posse could come near Him. However, we can still see the cosmic element present, but less and less connected with the Son of Man. This is what makes the whole episode so soul-shattering! Because the threefold understanding could not be forthcoming, what did the men finally have in their hands? What could they seize, what could they condemn, what could they nail to the cross? The Son of Man! And the more they did all this, the more did the cosmic element withdraw that had entered the life of earth as a youthful impulse. It escaped them. For those who sentenced Him and carried out the judgment there remained only the Son of Man, around whom only hovered what was to come down to earth as a youthful cosmic element.

No Gospel other than that of St. Mark tells how only the Son of Man remained, and that the cosmic element only hovered around Him. Thus in no other Gospel do we perceive the cosmic fact in relation to the Christ event expressed with such clarity, the fact that at the very moment when men who failed to understand laid their violent human hands upon the Son of Man, the cosmic element escaped them. The youthful cosmic element which from that turning point of time entered earth evolution as an impulse, escaped. All that was left was the Son of Man; and this is clearly emphasized in the Mark Gospel. Let us read the passage and find out if the Mark Gospel does indeed emphasize how, just at this moment in the unfolding of events, the cosmic acts in relation to the human.

And Jesus spoke to them, “You have set out with swords and sticks to take me prisoner, as if I were a murderer. I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.”

And they all forsook him and fled. (Mark 14:48-50.)

He stands alone. But what has become of the youthful, cosmic element? Think of the loneliness of this man, permeated as He was by the cosmic Christ, who now confronts the posse like a murderer. And those who should have understood Him flee! “And they all forsook Him and fled,” it says in the 50th verse. Then in verses 51 and 52:
And there was a youth among his followers,² who wore a fine linen garment over his bare body, and they seized him. But he let go of the linen garment and fled naked.

Who is this youth? Who was it who escaped here? Who is it who appears here, next to Christ Jesus, nearly unclothed, and then slips away unclothed? This is the youthful cosmic impulse, it is the Christ who slips away, who now has only a loose connection with the Son of Man. Much is contained in these 51st and 52nd verses. The new impulse retains nothing of what former times were able to wrap around man. It is the entirely naked, new cosmic impulse of earth evolution. It remains with Jesus of Nazareth, and we find it again at the beginning of the sixteenth chapter.

And when the Sabbath was over Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices and went there to anoint him. And early in the morning on the first day of the week they came to the tomb as the sun was rising.

And they said among themselves, “Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?” And when they looked up they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was really very large.

And as they entered the tomb they saw a youth sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white robe; and they were startled.

But he said to them, “Do not be frightened. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one. He has risen!” (Mark 16:1-6.)

This is the same youth. In the whole artistic composition of the Gospels nowhere else does this youth confront us, the youth who slips away from the people at the moment when they condemn the Son of Man, who is there again when the three days are over, and who from now onward is active as the cosmic principle of the earth. Nowhere else in the Gospels—you should compare the others—except in these two passages does this youth confront us, and in such a grandiose manner. Here we have all we need in order to understand the profound meaning of just this Gospel of St. Mark, which is telling us that we have to do with a cosmic event, with a cosmic Christ. Only now do we understand why the remainder of the Mark Gospel had to be artistically composed as it was.

It is indeed remarkable that, after this significant appearance of the youth has come twice before us, the Gospel quickly comes to an end, and all that remains are a few striking sentences. For it is scarcely possible to imagine that anything that came later could have still yielded any further enhancement. Perhaps the sublime and marvelous element could have been enhanced, but not what is soul-shattering and of significance for earth evolution. Consider again this composition of the Mark Gospel: the monologue of God; the cosmic conversation on the mountain above the earth to which the three disciples were called but did not understand; then Gethsemane, the scene on the Mount of Olives when Christ had to acknowledge that those who had been chosen could not attain to an understanding of what was about to happen; how He had to tread this path alone, how the Son of Man would suffer and be crucified. Then the world-historical loneliness of the Son of Man who is abandoned, abandoned by those He had chosen and then abandoned gradually by the cosmic principle. Thus, after we have understood the mission and significance of the youth who slips away from the eyes and hands of men, we come to understand in an especially profound manner the words, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34.) Then the reappearance of the youth, whereupon it is briefly shown how the youth is a spiritual, super-sensible being, who becomes sense-perceptible only through special circumstances, when He first shows himself to Mary Magdalene. Then afterward, “He revealed Himself in another form to two of them as they went for a walk into the countryside.” (Mark 16:12.) The physical could not have showed itself “in another form.”

Then the Gospel quickly comes to an end, having indicated that what could not be understood at that time had to be left to the future. Humanity, which had then arrived at the deepest point of its descent, could only be directed toward the future, and it is in the way in which mankind is referred to the future that we can best appreciate the artistic composition of the Gospel. How may we suppose that such a reference to the future would emanate from one who had experienced this threefold failure to understand as He faced the fulfillment of the Mystery of Golgotha? We can imagine that He would point to the fact that the more we go forward into the future, the more men will have to gain an understanding of what happened at that time.

We shall only achieve the right understanding if we pay attention to what we can experience through the Mark Gospel which speaks to us in a remarkable way. If therefore we say to ourselves that every age has to bring more and more understanding to what happened at that time, and to what the Mystery of Golgotha really was—then we believe that with what we call here our anthroposophical movement we are in fact fulfilling for the first time something that is indicated here in this Gospel. We are bringing a new understanding to what the Christ wanted to come about in the world. This new comprehension is difficult. The possibility is always present that we may misunderstand the being of Christ; and this was already clearly indicated by Christ Himself:

“And then if one says to you, ‘See, here is Christ,’ or, ‘See, he is there,’ don't believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise, and they will show signs and wonders to lead astray even the chosen ones if that should be possible.

But you see to it! Behold, I have fortold everything to you.” (Mark 13:21-23.)

At all times since the event of Golgotha there has been ample opportunity to let such words be a warning to us. Whoever has ears to hear may also hear today how the word resounds over to us from Golgotha, “If someone says to you ‘See, here is Christ,’ or ‘see, he is there,’ don't believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders such as to lead astray if possible even the chosen ones.”

How may we face up to the Mystery of Golgotha? Among the few striking sentences contained in the Mark Gospel after it has spoken to us in such a soul-shattering way is to be found also the very last sentence, in which it is related how the disciples, who had earlier shown so little comprehension, after they had received a new impulse through the youth, the cosmic Christ, “went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word through the signs that accompanied it.” (Mark 16:20.)

The Lord worked with them! This we recognize as in accord with the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Not that “the Lord” could be incarnated anywhere in the physical body, but where He is understood, if work is performed in His name, then He works with us; and He is spiritually among those who in truth understand His name—without presenting Him, out of vanity, in a physical form. Rightly understood the Gospel of St. Mark tells us about the Mystery of Golgotha itself in such a way that, when we rightly understand it, we may also find the possibility of fulfilling the Mystery of Golgotha in the right manner. Precisely in what is contained only in this Mark Gospel, in this remarkable story of the youth who at a decisive moment broke away, so to speak, from Christ Jesus, do we discover the indication as to how this Gospel must be understood. Because the chosen ones fled and they did not truly participate in everything that happened afterward. This is also told in the Gospel. In truly artistic fashion a passage is inserted in the midst of the composition. A passage of the utmost clarity is here inserted; yet none of the disciples were present, not one of them was an eye-witness! And yet the whole story is told! So the question is still presented to us, and we shall try, in answering this question, to penetrate still further into the matter, and at the same time to throw light upon the remainder.

Where does this remainder originate that the disciples have not seen? Jewish traditions relate the story quite differently from the way it appears here in the Gospels. Where does it come from? What then is the real truth about the Mystery of Golgotha since those who give an account of it were not themselves present? What is the source of their knowledge of something that none of those who have preached Christianity can have seen?

This question will lead us still more deeply into the matter.

• 1. Although this is not the meaning usually given in the biblical translations, the Greek word used here (hypage) ordinarily has the meaning given here and I prefer it to the not particularly meaningful “Go” or “Go thy way” or “go along” customarily used. Ed.
• 2. The Greek says “who was following him closely.” Ed.

To continue last week's study I shall begin with a kind of hypothetical case. Where the deepest riddles of human existence are concerned the best way to avoid abstraction and to get close to reality is to give examples. My example will of course apply to every possible level of life. So let us begin with a hypothetical example.

Let us imagine we are in a school, a school of three classes, with three teachers and a headmaster. These three teachers differ tremendously in character and temperament. It is the beginning of a new school year. The headmaster discusses the coming year with his teachers. First of all it is the turn of the first teacher. The headmaster asks him what preparations he intends to make and what he thinks is the best way to proceed in the coming year. The teacher replies, “Well, during the holidays I noted down carefully all the areas where the pupils did not meet my expectations, areas that I had obviously not prepared well. And I have drawn up a new plan for next year containing all the things which I am sure were successful and got across to the children. All the work I will give them next year consists of the things that came off best last year and have proved successful.” A further question from the headmaster produced a complete schedule the teacher had made of the subject matter. He could also stipulate what work he would give the pupils to do in school and what would be set as homework in the course of the year. All his themes, both for schoolwork and homework, had been chosen from careful scanning of the previous year. The headmaster was very satisfied and said “You are doubtless a conscientious teacher, and I reckon you will achieve excellent results with your class.”

The second teacher also said, “I have gone through the whole curriculum I covered with my pupils last year and noted everything I did wrong. I have arranged the new schedule avoiding all the mistakes I made before.” And he, too, was able to show the headmaster a curriculum containing all the subjects he was going to give the pupils for schoolwork and homework in the course of the year, basing it on the experience of his last year's mistakes. The headmaster said, “The teacher I have just spoken to noted all the instances where he had achieved excellence, and tried to plan his curriculum accordingly, whereas you have endeavored to avoid mistakes. It can be done either way. I am assured that you will achieve excellent results with your class. I see with a certain satisfaction that I have teachers in my school who review their past achievements and let the wisdom of self-knowledge guide their future steps.” You see, a teacher who knows his priorities is bound to make a good impression on a headmaster.

Then it was the third teacher's turn. He said, “During the holidays I, too, have thought a lot about what happened in my class last year. I have tried to study the character of my pupils and have done a kind of review of what has taken place in the various individuals.” “Well,” said the headmaster, “you will also have seen the mistakes you made and the things you did well, and will have been able to draw up a schedule for the coming year.” “No,” replied the teacher. “I have certainly made mistakes; and some things I have done well. But I have only studied the pupils' characters and what has taken place there. I have not thought especially about whether I made any particular mistakes, or whether this or that was particularly good. I did not do that. I accepted that things had to happen the way they did. So I have just observed what I believe had to happen out of a certain necessity. The pupils had their various dispositions, and these I observed carefully. I too have a definite disposition, and the interaction of our different natures produced its own results. I cannot say more than that.”

“Well,” said the headmaster, “you seem to be a very self-satisfied person. Have you at least drawn up a schedule, and worked out the subjects you will give your pupils as schoolwork and homework during the year?” “No,” he answered, “I have not done that.” “Well, what do you intend to do with your class?” To this the teacher replied, “I will see what kinds of pupils I will have this year. And I believe I will be able to size this up better than last year, as each year I have always studied the previous year's characters during the holidays. But I cannot possibly know yet what they will be like next year. Only time will tell.” “Well, are you not intending to plan subjects for schoolwork and homework?” “Yes, but not until I have seen what my pupils' capacities are like. I will try to set the work accordingly.” “Well, really,” said the headmaster, “we would be thoroughly at sea in that case. We can hardly allow such things to happen.”

But there was nothing to be done. The headmaster had to agree to it, and the school year got under way. The headmaster inspected the school frequently. He saw the first two teachers doing exceedingly well, but with the third he always found that things were not on a good footing. There was no certainty, he said, one never really knew what would happen the following month. And it went on like this throughout the year. Then came the time for the report cards. From those of the first two teachers the headmaster was satisfied that they had been very successful. Of course, some of the pupils in their classes failed too, and others passed, but it all happened as expected. According to the report cards, the third teacher's results were no worse. Yet other people had come to the conclusion over the year that he was very lenient. While the other teachers were strict, he was so lenient that he frequently made allowances, and the headmaster was convinced that the third teacher's class had come out the worst.

Then the next year came. The holidays were over, and at the start of the school year the first two teachers spoke as before, and the third, too. Things happened similarly, with the school inspector also coming occasionally, and, of course, he noticed what the headmaster had as it were prepared him to see, namely that the first two teachers were very good, and the third only second-rate. It could not be otherwise. I hardly need mention that after a few years the two good teachers were nominated for decorations, and the headmaster received an even higher one. That is a matter of secondary importance, isn't it?

Some time later the following thing happened. The headmaster left the school and another came at the beginning of the year. He also discussed with his three teachers what their plans were, and so on, and each of the teachers answered in a similar way as before. Then the headmaster said, “There is certainly quite a difference between your methods. And I believe the first two gentlemen ought to take a little guidance from the third teacher.” “What!” said the first two gentlemen. “The previous headmaster always said that he ought to take guidance from us!” “I do not think so,” said the new head. “It seems to me that the first two should adapt to the third.” But they could not very well emulate him, for they could not see how anyone could possibly foresee what would happen in the coming year if he groped about as blindly as that teacher did. They just could not imagine it.

In the meantime the former headmaster, because of his insight into proper school administration, had himself become a school inspector, and was most astonished at the views his successor was expressing about the school he knew so well. How could such a thing happen? And he said, “The third teacher never told me anything except ‘I must first see what the pupils are like, then I can form my schedule from week to week.’ But that way you cannot look ahead at all! It is quite impossible to manage if you cannot anticipate a single thing.” To which the present headmaster replied, “Yes, but look, I have actually asked my teachers about their different ways of looking ahead. The first two gentlemen always say 'I know for certain that on February 25 next year I will present such and such items of school-work. I can say in detail what will be happening, and I know for certain that I will be talking about such and such a subject at Easter.' The third teacher says 'I do not know for certain what I will be doing at Easter, nor do I know what schoolwork I will set in February. I will set the work according to the kind of pupils I have.' And by that he meant that he can in a certain way foresee that all will be well. And,” said the new headmaster, “I actually agree with him entirely. You cannot know until afterwards whether your resolves have been entirely successful. It depends on the attitude you have to the previous year; if you study the character of last year's pupils, you acquire greater capacities to understand the character of the new pupils. I appreciate that more can be achieved this way.”

“Yes, but you still cannot know anything in advance! Everything is in the realm of uncertainty. How can you predetermine anything for the whole school year?” asked the former headmaster. “You cannot anticipate anything. But you must be able to look ahead a little bit, if you want to make proper plans.” “You can foresee that things will go well,” said the new headmaster, “if you join forces as it were with the spirit at work in the pupils, and have a certain faith in it. If you, so to speak, pledge yourself to this and depend upon it, then even if you cannot anticipate the school work you will be presenting in February, you will know that it will be the right work.” “Yes, but you cannot foresee anything with certainty, and everything remains vague,” said the school inspector, to which the new headmaster replied, “You know, I once studied the sort of thing people call spiritual science. And I still remember from this that beings on a much higher level than human beings are actually supposed to have acted in this way in much more important affairs. For at the beginning of the Bible it says 'And God made light.' And only after he made the light does it say 'And he saw that it was good.'“ To this the inspector had nothing suitable to say.

Things continued in the same way for a time. There are few headmasters like the second one I chose as a hypothetical example, aren't there? I could call him hypothetical to the second degree, for even with it being a hypothesis it is hypothetical to assume a headmaster like that. Therefore he was dismissed very soon, and another one more like the inspector was appointed. And things ran their course until one day it went so far that the completely “undecorated” teacher was driven away from the school in disgrace and another of the same style as the first two was appointed in his place. The outcome could not possibly have been any different at the time, for in all the yearbooks and personnel files it was recorded what great progress had been achieved by the first two teachers, while of the third one it was recorded that he sent out only poor students from the school for the simple reason that he made allowances; otherwise all his pupils would have failed. There was absolutely nothing that could be done about a person like this third teacher.

Many years passed. By chance a very unusual event followed. The headmaster who had been dismissed tried to go more deeply into how matters had turned out with the two teachers who had always practiced strict self-observation, for example, with the one who noted the subjects that yielded fewer successes and selected the more successful ones. The former headmaster also wanted to know what the second and the third teachers had achieved. He even followed up what their pupils had achieved under other teachers, and he discovered that with different teachers the third teacher's pupils made much less progress than those of the first two. But the former headmaster did not stop there. He went even further into the matter and traced the subsequent life of the former pupils of these teachers. He then discovered that those taught by the first two teachers, with a few exceptions naturally, had all become respectable citizens, yet they had achieved nothing outstanding. Among the pupils taught by the third teacher, however, were people of considerable importance, who accomplished things of far greater significance than the pupils of the others.

He was able to prove these things in this particular case. But it made no special impression on people, for they said, “We cannot always wait to follow up the pupils' whole subsequent lives! That is impossible, isn't it? And that is not the point, anyway.”

Now why am I telling you all this? There is an important difference between the first two teachers and the third. Throughout the holidays, the first two teachers kept focusing their attention on the way they had done their work the previous year. The third teacher did not do this, for he had the feeling that it had to happen as it did. When the headmaster, the first one, kept telling him again and again, “But you won't have any idea how to avoid mistakes next year, or how to do the right thing, if you don't study what you did well last year,” he did not answer immediately, for he did not feel like explaining this to him. But afterwards he thought to himself, “Well, even if I did know what mistakes happened in the course of the work my pupils and I did together, I will after all have different pupils this year, and our working together is not affected by the mistakes made last year. I have to work with new pupils.”

In short, the first two teachers were wholly entrenched in a dead element, while the third teacher entered into what was alive. You could also say that the first two teachers always dealt with the past, the third teacher with the immediate present. He did not brood over the past, but said, “Of necessity it had to happen as it did according to the conditions that prevailed.”

The point is that if things are judged in a superficial way according to external judgments, one can indeed go astray where actual facts are concerned. Because if you were to do things the way the first teachers did them you would be judging the present according to what is dead and gone and what ought to be allowed to remain so. The third teacher took what was still alive from the past, arriving at it by simply studying character, and made himself more perfect by doing so; in fact, he did it with this in view. For he told himself, “If I can make myself more efficient in this way, the greater capacities I thus acquire will help me achieve what I have to do in the future.”

The first two teachers were somewhat superstitious about the past and told themselves, “Past mistakes must be avoided in the future and evident good qualities must be used.” But they did this in a dead way. They had no intention of enhancing their abilities but only of making their decisions according to outer observation. They did not have the wish to be effective as a result of working in a living way on themselves; they thought the only means to gain anything for the future was observation and its results.

In accordance with spiritual science we have to say that the first teacher, who investigated so carefully the good qualities he had established in the past and wanted to incorporate them in his future work, acted in an ahrimanic way. It was an ahrimanic approach. He clung to the past, and out of personal egotism looked with complacent satisfaction at everything he had done well and prided himself on it.

The second teacher's character was governed more by luciferic forces. He brooded over his mistakes and told himself, “I must avoid these mistakes.” He did not say, “The things that happened were necessary, and had to happen like that,” but said, “I have made mistakes.” There is always something egotistic about it when we would like to have been better than we actually were, and tell ourselves we made mistakes that ought to have been avoided and that we must now avoid. We are clinging to the past, like Lucifer does, who, on a spiritual level, brings past happenings into the present. That is thinking in a luciferic way.

The third teacher was, I would say, filled with the forces of divine beings who are progressing in a normal way, whose correct divine principle is expressed right at the beginning of the Bible, where we are told that the Elohim first of all create and then they see that their creation was good. They do not look upon it egotistically as though they were superior beings for having made a good creation, but they admit that it is good in order to continue creating. They incorporate it into their evolution. They live and work in the element of life.

What is important is that we realize that we ourselves are living beings and a part of a living world. If we realize this, we will not criticize the gods, the Elohim, for instance. For anyone wishing to set his own wisdom above that of the gods might say, “If gods are supposed to be gods, could they not see that the light would be good? Those gods do not even sound like prophets to me. If I were a god, I would of course only create light if I knew beforehand what light was like, and did not have to wait till later to see that it was good.” But that is human wisdom being placed above divine wisdom.

In a certain way the third teacher also saw what would come about, but he saw it in a living way in that he surrendered himself to the spirit of becoming, the spirit of development. When he said, “By incorporating what I have gained through the study of last year's characters and not focusing on the mistakes I made of necessity, simply because I was as I was, nor applying criticism to what I encountered as my own past, I have enhanced my capacities and acquired in addition a better understanding for my new pupils.” And he realized that the first two teachers were considering their pupils merely in the light of what they had done the previous year, which they could not even estimate properly. So he could say, “I am quite certain I will give my pupils the right schoolwork in four weeks time, and I have every confidence in my prediction.”

The others were better prophets. They could actually say “I will present the schoolwork I have written down; I will give them that for sure.” But that was a foreseeing of facts, not a foreseeing of the course of the forces of movement. We must hold very firmly to this distinction. Prediction as such is not impossible. But predicting in detail what will happen when these details are interwoven with a living element that is to work out of itself is possible only when we consider the phenomena that Lucifer and Ahriman carry over from the present into the future.

We are gradually getting closer to the big problem occupying us in these lectures on freedom and necessity. However, as this particular problem affects so profoundly the whole matter of world processes and human action, we must not fail to look at all the difficulties. For instance, we must realize clearly that when we look back at events that have happened and in which we have been involved, we look at them as necessity. The moment we know all the circumstances, we consider the events as necessity. There is no doubt about the fact that we look upon what has happened as a necessity.

But at the same time we have to ask, “Can we really, as so often happens, always find the causes of events in what immediately preceded them?” In a certain way natural science has to look at what has just happened to see what will happen next. If I carry out an experiment, I have to realize that the cause of what takes place later obviously lies in what took place previously. But that does not mean at all that this principle applies to every process in the world. For we might very easily deceive ourselves about the connection between cause and effect if we were to look for it along the lines of what comes first and what comes later. I would like to explain this with a comparison.

When we penetrate external reality with our senses, we can say, “Because this thing is like this, then the other must be like that.” But if we apply this to every process, we very often arrive at the error I want to illustrate. For the sake of simplicity let us take a man driving himself in a cart, an example I have often taken. We see a horse with a cart behind it and a man sitting in it holding the reins. We look at it and quite naturally say that the horse is pulling and the man is being pulled. The man is being taken wherever the horse takes him. That is quite obvious. Therefore the horse is the cause of the man's being pulled along. The pulling being done by the horse is the cause, and the fact of the man being pulled is the effect. Fair enough! But you all know very well that that is not so; that the man sitting up there driving himself is leading the horse where he wants him to go. Although the horse is pulling him, it is taking him where he wants to go.

Such mistakes happen often when we judge purely externally, on the basis of happenings on the physical plane. Let us look once more at the hypothetical examples I gave you a few days ago, in which a party of people set out for a drive, got into the coach, but the driver was delayed, and they were five minutes behind time. Therefore they arrive beneath an overhanging boulder at the moment it falls, and it crushes them all. Now if we trace the cause on the physical plane, we can naturally say, “This happened first and then that and then the other.” And we will arrive at something. But in this case we could easily make the same mistake we make if we say the horse pulls the driver wherever it wants and overlook the fact that the driver is leading the horse. Perhaps we make this mistake because the controlling force in this case is possibly to be found in the spiritual world. If we merely trace events on the physical plane we really judge in the sense of saying the man is going where the horse takes him. However, if we penetrate to the hidden forces at work in the occurrence, we see that events were directed toward that point and that the driver's belated arrival was actually part of the whole complex of circumstances. It was all necessary, but not necessary in the way one might believe if one merely traces events on the physical plane.

Again, if you believe you can find the cause by assuming it to be what has happened immediately beforehand, the following might happen. Seen externally it looks like this. Two people meet. We now proceed in the proper scientific manner. The two have met, so we enquire where they were during the hour before they met, where they were an hour before that, and how they set out to meet one another. We can now trace over a certain length of time how one thing has always led to another, and how the two were brought together. Someone else who does not concern himself with this sort of thing hears by chance that the two people had arranged five days beforehand that they would meet, and he says, “They have met because they planned to do so.”

Here you have an opportunity to see that the cause for something is not necessarily connected with the immediately preceding event. In fact if we break off looking for the chain of causes before we come to the right link in the chain, we shall never find it, for after all we can only follow the chain of causes up to a certain point. In nature, too, we can only follow it up to a certain point, particularly in the case of phenomena involving human beings. And if we do this, and go from one event to the other, tracing what was before that and before that again, and imagine we will find the cause this way, we are obviously laying ourselves open to error, to deception.

You have to grasp this with what you have acquired from spiritual science. Suppose a person carries out some action on the physical plane. We see him doing it. If we want to limit our observations to the physical plane, we will look into his behavior prior to the action. If we go further, we will look into how he was brought up. We might also follow the modern fashion of looking at his heredity, and so on. However, let us assume that into this action on the physical plane something has entered that is only to be found in the life of that person between his previous death and rebirth. This means that we must break off the chain of causes at his birth and pass over to something that resembles the prior arrangement made by the two people in my example. For what I have just described may have been predetermined hundreds of years before in the life between the last death and the birth into the present life. What was experienced then enters into our present actions and resolves.

Thus it is inevitable that unless we include the sphere of the spirit, we cannot find the causes of human actions at all, certainly not here on the physical plane, and that a search for causes similar to the way people look for causes of events in outer nature may go very wrong.

Yet if we look more closely at the way human action is interwoven with world processes, we will arrive at a satisfactory way of looking at things, even of looking at what we call freedom, although we have to admit that necessity exists also. But what we call the search for causes is perhaps for the time being limited most of all by the fact that on the physical plane one cannot penetrate to the place where causes originate.

Now we come to something else that has to be considered. The two concepts freedom and necessity are extremely difficult to grasp and even more difficult to reconcile. It is not for nothing that philosophy for the most part fails when it comes to the problem of freedom and necessity. This is largely due to the fact that human beings have not looked fairly and squarely at the difficulties these problems entail. That is why I am trying so hard to focus in these lectures on all the possible difficulties.

When we look at human activities, the first thing we see everywhere is the thread of necessity. For it would be biased to say that every human action is a product of freedom. Let me give you another hypothetical example. Imagine someone growing up. Through the way he is growing up, it can be shown that all the circumstances have gone in the direction of making him a postman, a country postman, who has to go out into the country every morning with the mail and deliver letters. He does the same round every day. I expect you will all agree that a certain necessity can be found in this whole process. If we look at all that happened to this lad in his childhood and take into account everything that had its effect on his life, we will certainly see that all these things combined to make him a mailman. So that as soon as there was a vacant position he was pushed into it of necessity, at which point freedom certainly ceased to exist, for of course he cannot alter the addresses of the letters he gets. There is now an external necessity that dictates the doors at which he has to call. So we certainly see a great deal of necessity in what he has to do.

But now let us imagine another person, younger perhaps. I will assume him to be younger so that I can describe what I want to describe without your objecting too strongly to the way he behaves. Well then, another, younger person, not out of idleness but just because he is still so young, makes up his mind to go with the mailman every morning and accompany him on his round. He gets up in good time every morning, joins the postman and takes part in all the details of the round for a considerable while.

Now it is obvious that we cannot talk of necessity in the case of the second fellow in the same sense as we can of the first. For everything the first fellow does must happen, whereas nothing the second fellow does has to be done. He could have stayed at home any day, and exactly the same things would have happened from an objective standpoint. This is obvious, isn't it? So we could say that the first man does everything out of necessity and the second everything out of freedom. We can very well say this, and yet in one sense they are both doing the same thing. We might even imagine the following. A morning comes when the second fellow does not want to get up. He could quite well have stayed in bed, but he gets up all the same because he is now used to doing so. He does with a certain necessity what he is doing out of freedom. We see freedom and necessity virtually overlapping.

If we study the way our second self lives in us—the one I told you about in the public lecture,¹ our actual soul nature, which will pass through the gate of death—it could, after all, be compared with someone accompanying the outer human being in the physical world. An ordinary materialistic monist would think this was a dreadful thing to say. But we know that a materialistic monist takes the view that people are terrible dualists if they believe water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. For them everything must be undifferentiated. They think it is nonsense to say that the monon “water” consists of hydrogen and oxygen. But we must not let monism deceive us.

The crux of the matter is that what we are in life really consists of two parts that come together from two different directions, and these two parts can indeed be compared with the oxygen and hydrogen in water. For our external physical nature comes through the line of heredity, bringing not only physical characteristics with it but also social status. It is not just our particular form with its nose, color of hair, and so on that we get from our father and mother, but our social position is also predestined through our ancestors' positions in life. Thus not only the appearance of our physical body, the strength of our muscles and so on, but our position in society and everything pertaining to the physical plane comes through the line of heredity from one generation to the other.

Our individual being originating in the spiritual world comes from a different direction, and at first it has nothing to do with all the forces in the stream of heredity through the generations, but brings with it causes that may have been laid down in us centuries before, and unites them on a spiritual level with the causes residing in the stream of heredity. Two beings come together. And in fact we can only judge the matter rightly if we regard this second being coming from the spiritual world and uniting with the physical being as a kind of companion to the first one. That is why I chose the example of the companion who joins us in everything. Our soul being in a certain sense joins us in the external events in a similar way.

The other person accompanying the postman did it all voluntarily. This cannot be denied. We could certainly look for causes, but compared with the necessity that binds the first postman the causes for the second man's actions lie in the realm of freedom. He did it all voluntarily. But look closely and you will see that one thing follows with necessity from this freedom. You will not deny that if the second person had accompanied the first person long enough, he would doubtlessly have become a good mailman. He would have easily been able to do what the man he accompanied did. He would even have been able to do it better, because he would avoid certain mistakes. But if the first fellow had not made these mistakes, the second man would not have become aware of them. We cannot possibly imagine that it would be of any use if the second fellow were to think about the first one's mistakes. If we think in a living way, we will consider this to be an utterly futile occupation. By specifically not thinking about the mistakes but joining in the work in a living way and just observing the proceedings as a whole, he will acquire them through life and will as a matter of course not make these mistakes.

This is just how it is with the being that accompanies us within. If this being can rise to the perception that what we have done is necessary, that we have accompanied it and will furthermore take our soul nature into the future in so far as it has learnt something, then we are looking at things the right way. But it must have learnt those things in a really living way. Even within this one incarnation, we can really confirm this. We can compare three people. The first person plunges straight into action. At a certain point in his life, he feels the urge to acquire self-knowledge. So he looks at the things he has always done well. He revels in what he has done well, and thus he decides to go on doing what he has always done well. In a certain sense, he is bound to do well, isn't he?

A second person is inclined to be more of a hypochondriac, and he looks more at his failings. If he can get over his hypochondria and his failings at all, he will get to the point of avoiding them. But he will not attain what a third could attain who says to himself, “What has happened was necessary, but at the same time, it is a basis for learning, learning through observation, not useless criticism.” He will set to work in a living way, not perpetuating what has already happened and simply carrying the past into the future, but will strengthen and steel the companion part of himself and carry it livingly into the future. He will not merely repeat what he did well and avoid what he did badly, but by taking both the good and the bad into himself and simply letting it rest there, he will be strengthening and steeling it.

This is the very best way of fortifying the soul: to leave alone what has happened and carry it over livingly into the future. Otherwise we keep going back in a luciferic-ahrimanic way over past happenings. We can progress in our development only if we handle necessity properly. Why? Is there a right way of handling things in this area? In conclusion, I want to give you something like an illustration of this too, about which I want you to think a little between now and next Tuesday. Then, taking this illustration as our starting point, we shall be able to get a little further with our problem.

Suppose you want to see an external object. You can see it, though you cannot possibly do so if you place a mirror between the object and yourself. In that case you see your own eyes. If you want to see the object, you must renounce seeing your own eyes, and if you want to see your own eyes, you must renounce the sight of the object. Now, by a remarkable interworking of beings in the world, it is true with regard to human action and human knowledge that all our knowledge comes to us in a certain sense by way of a mirror. Knowing always means that we actually know in a certain sense by way of reflection.

So if we wish to look at our past actions, we actually always look at them by putting what is in fact a mirror between the actions and ourselves. But when we want to act, if we want to have a direct connection between ourselves and our action, between ourselves and the world, we must not put up the mirror. We must look away from what mirrors ourselves. This is how it is with regard to our past actions. The moment we look at them, we place a mirror in front of them, and then we can certainly have knowledge of them. We can leave the mirror there and know them in every terrible detail. There will certainly be cases where this will be a very good thing. But if we are not capable of taking the mirror away again, then none of our knowledge will be any good to us. The moment we take the mirror away we no longer see ourselves and our past actions, but it is only then that they can enter into us and become one with us.

This is how we should proceed with self-observation. We must realize that as long as we look back, this review can only be the inducement for us to take what we have seen into us livingly. But we must not keep on looking at it, otherwise the mirror will always be there. Self-observation is very similar to looking at ourselves in a mirror. We can make progress in life only if we take what we learn through self-observation into our will as well.

Please take this illustration to heart, the illustration of seeing one's own eyes only if one renounces seeing something else, and of the fact that if one wants to see something else, one must renounce seeing one's own eyes. Take this illustration to heart. Then, taking this illustration as a basis, let us talk next Tuesday about right and wrong self-observation, and get nearer and nearer to the solution of our problems. In this most difficult of human problems, the problem of freedom and necessity and the interrelationship of human action and world events, it is certainly necessary that we face all the difficulties. And those who believe they can solve this problem before they have dealt with all the difficulties in fact are mistaken.

• 1. See lectures of December 3 and December 10, 1915, in Berlin in Aus dem mitteleuropäischen Geistesleben (Of Central European Cultural and Spiritual Life), GA/Bn 65. Not yet translated.

Dear attendees,

When I was able to visit our Waldorf School again, at least for a few hours, the day before yesterday after a long absence from here, I was able to attend a lesson in the eighth grade, in which world history was being taught. And I can say it openly: I have the impression that if we really succeed in continuing in this way with regard to education and teaching, at least the main part of it, then we can hope to educate people in our school who will be able to cope with the increasingly difficult life issues of the near future and who will stand their ground in life. There was undoubtedly something in this that was aimed at, and it seems to me that, to a certain extent, what I would like to call the following was achieved through what was accomplished: history as an expression of human development. For the children here, who are 13, 14, or 15 years old, history has become so vivid that what they will take from it in terms of thoughts that are full of strength will be something that can provide strength for their whole subsequent life, not just for an understanding of history, but for an understanding of life situations and living conditions in general.

And when I ask myself: How could – after I had been dealing with it for almost a year now, pedagogically and didactically, in order to pave the way for the Waldorf school of our friend Molt, who has just spoken here , how could the interest that I now had to take in the way the impulses given at the time would turn out in reality, how could this interest be satisfied in such a way as I have just indicated? And then I could see: the liveliness that had entered into the story was due to the fact that the teacher, Dr. Stein, had found the inner courage to incorporate into his historical perspective the power of the spiritual science that I have taken the liberty of presenting here in Stuttgart for many years now. This spiritual science is not meant to be a mere inner comfort for souls turned away from the world, but something that can actually permeate and fertilize all human knowledge and all human activity, including all human creativity. It should be something that not only makes people cognizant, but also provides ideas that, I would say, pour into the human limbs like a spiritual heart blood, into the spiritual and physical limbs, to make people more skillful, more capable, more adept at life in every respect.

However, in order to overcome the prejudices of the broad masses of people that still stand in the way of such a permeation of the branches of education, teaching and life with the impulses of spiritual science, one must have the inner courage - the courage that can only flow from being inwardly united in one's soul with the convincing power that springs from the knowledge of reality that comes from the contemplation of spiritual life, as I have often hinted at here. From what I have taken the liberty of speaking so directly about, thoughts are then easily directed to an appearance that is all too well-founded in today's general world situation and all too understandable in view of it.

We live – and I already hinted at this from a different point of view in my lecture the day before yesterday – we live today in a time in which the social question can no longer be a question of institutions and facilities, but in which it is a great question of human value, human dignity, a question of humanity in general. The question today is not how to devise the best institutions based on these or those ideas about social life, but rather: how can we win over the broad masses of the people who have appeared on the scene of life to work together with those who, in a certain way, through their intelligence, their intellectual direction, and what they have absorbed, must nevertheless be leading in all that is incorporated into the social life of the present as forces. It is indeed extremely difficult to express certain truths that may no longer sound quite so paradoxical today, but still sound somewhat cruel. But again and again, reference must be made to a truth that is all too clearly taught by what has happened in recent years. It must be pointed out that in the last few centuries, but especially in the last few decades, the bearers of present-day education, the bearers of what is actually civilizational life – apart from the survival of traditions – have lapsed into a certain materialistic view of life and that they have not found their way out of it to what has since emerged among the broad masses as theories, as views of life.

What had developed among the ruling classes as religion, as science, as art, did not have the inner strength to take hold of the broad masses of humanity. In particular, it lacked the power to educate the broad masses of humanity, who, as a result of the upsurge of our industrial life, had to be put to work at the machines, in the factories, and so on, to what was now the content of the education, religion, science, and art of the leading classes. The broad masses of the proletariat were left to their own devices, as it were. The members of the proletariat were left to what they could see of what was merely a mechanical institution, what was merely a lifeless, heartless, soulless machine and machinery. And from the sight of such a life connected with the mechanical, with the machine, an outlook could develop within the broad masses, which today expresses itself as more or less radical Marxism and now unfortunately wants to appear as a reality-shaping force, as I also hinted at the day before yesterday. But today there is no bridge between what the educated classes recognize as their civilization, based on old traditions, and what has entered the sphere of newer human life in the broad masses. And uncertain, very uncertain, we now face the great problems of life: how to build a bridge between those who, from their knowledge of human nature, can form ideas about how our social life should proceed, and those who, understandably, can only make demands on life from a sphere of life that actually only has to do with the inanimate, and who therefore believe that all life, all religion, all science, all art could develop, as it were, like a superstructure from these production conditions, which themselves are far removed from all spiritual life?

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the terrible riddle of the present day: how can we manage to bring these two sections of humanity together – which, despite everything that has been said, must come together – how can we manage to fulfill this requirement? This weighs more or less unconsciously, of course, on many people. And out of this burden, many well-intentioned endeavors have emerged in the present. And here it becomes difficult again to express something that I must now express in the face of these, as I am quite willing to acknowledge, well-intentioned endeavors. But, ladies and gentlemen, today it is of no use just not to offend people, just not to offend people, to hold back what must be said out of a deeper insight into the laws of human development so that we can move forward to a new structure of our social life. Many people feel that we have neglected to establish something of spiritual content for humanity and to allow this to flow into science, religion and art as spiritual content, something that could have the power to convince the masses - for those masses who so far only want to accept what speaks to them from their own sphere of life, from their coexistence with the machine and with the mechanistic, and so on. And so many have already come to the conclusion that it is necessary to bring a certain education to the masses, because after all, our social question is basically an educational question. Education that is able to spread ideas about the possibilities of human coexistence, about the possibilities of social reciprocity – that is the well-intentioned endeavor of many. And so, in many circles, one thinks first of all, and with the very best of intentions, of adult education centers and all kinds of other similarly oriented educational institutions.

You see, that is precisely the difficulty, that one must speak of well-intentioned things in the way that I must now. The point is that those who today speak out of honest desire to spread education and science take it for granted that science as it exists today, as it has been learned and is taught in our schools and colleges, will simply be carried into the adult education centers and similar institutions in an appropriately prepared way. This is taken for granted by many today. Why? Because many people are not yet willing to ask the questions about the present situation of humanity with sufficient consistency. Today we see how much destructive power there is in our public life. We see the dimensions that the effects of decline have taken on, but we have become accustomed to them over the last three to four centuries, to what has emerged as popular science and popular art, to an unconditional, absolute sense of authority. And so people say to themselves: Yes, if we can now bring that which is absolutely right and absolutely appropriate to the truth to the masses, then it must be a blessing. What would be more natural than for such an opinion to arise where the vital questions of the present are not yet being raised consistently enough? But might not the other question also be raised, my dear audience, namely the question: Yes, were it not the hitherto leading classes of humanity, were it not the owners of this science and spirit that one now wants to throw into the universities and similar institutions - were it not those who had the leadership of humanity in their hands, who rode this humanity into today's conditions? Did this science, which one wants to give to the broad masses of the people today, perhaps prevent the leading classes from leading humanity into the absurdity of life? No, it has not! Can we now hope that something other than phenomena of decline will emerge when the leading classes, despite being saturated with this science, with this art and so on, rush into the present absurdity of life and are not protected by this science from this rush? Do we want to popularize something that is obviously part of the phenomena of decline? Is it to be spread to the broad masses, so that these broad masses are now led in an even more forceful way to the same absurdities to which the leading circles have been drawn by this science?

This question is a cruel one in the present day. But it is a question that must be raised, even if one suffers from raising it, because one knows from the outset how little one can be understood for raising such a question. The reason why one is so little understood is that most people today still believe: Well, something solid like the science of the last centuries does exist, we can build on it, it has just not yet sufficiently entered the masses; if it enters the masses, then it will be a solid ground for these masses. It is understandable that people want something they can call solid ground under their feet. But today the seriousness of our present world situation is so great that it is impossible to continue to keep silent about certain things that one believes one recognizes from the course of human development simply because they radically contradict, in a certain sense, what the prejudices of the broadest circles are. But what is basically an answer to the fateful question just posed was always in the forefront of the spiritual science that I have been speaking about for years in Stuttgart, and this spiritual science always wanted something quite different from what was wanted in the broadest circles [ was wanted] by prejudice; it always wanted not only that which it believed could broaden ordinary scientific education, but it always wanted a thorough fertilization of the whole of civilization with a new spiritual knowledge. And it was only from a new spiritual perspective that it could promise anything for this fertilization of the whole of civilized life. And so we are not thinking of directing our efforts towards placing popular science on as broad a basis as possible, but rather we are thinking of a renewal of the whole scientific and ideological spirit of the present into the near future.

You see, it is out of such a basic attitude that what flows through the Waldorf School here as pedagogy and didactics, as the basis of education and teaching, has arisen. And it is out of such a basic attitude that what has been said in the time between my previous and my present stay in Stuttgart, over in Switzerland, in Dornach, to a number of doctors and medical students, has also arisen. The aim was to go through the current form of medicine, particularly in a therapeutic context, and to show how everything that can be the basis of this medicine and what can then be further developed can actually be examined from a spiritual scientific point of view. The starting point was not to look at what is available as science in order to pass it on to adult education centres, but to gain a new basis of knowledge in order to enrich science and only then to pass it on to these institutions, because one should not take from the old science what is to become folk knowledge. A science of man, of the healthy and sick human being, has been attempted [through spiritual science]. It is still in its early days. Naturally, when one is immersed in the subject, one is very modest in one's thinking about everything related to these great problems of the present. But this knowledge of the healthy and sick human being has been attempted because there is a belief that only a spiritual-scientific science will be able to work in the broadest circles of humanity, to work with such a vitality that it can arise out of what the masses have gained from the view of the merely mechanical. This can never be achieved by the science that has so misled the ruling classes; only a world view that actually penetrates to completely different sources of knowledge than the sources that the intellectual and artistic conscience of humanity was inclined to penetrate to in recent centuries, but especially in recent decades.

I must take the liberty, esteemed attendees, despite the presence of such a large gathering here today, to speak first in a seemingly unpopular way and to point out some things in particular that most people today still say: Oh, we don't need that at all when we speak of the reorganization of the life situation of present-day humanity. That is much too high for certain spiritual heights, the broad masses cannot yet understand that. Yes, my dear audience, I am nevertheless speaking from such points of view, as I have just indicated. When I am often told today that what comes from here is not understood at all by the majority of people, I am reminded again and again of what I have often heard from theater directors, whose only concern has always been to present as many trashy plays as possible to the audience; they have always excused themselves by saying that the audience wants this because it does not understand better things. It was always clear to me that the theater directors concerned, who judge in this way, simply do not understand the value of better plays. And so I do not pay any attention when one or the other complains about incomprehensibility today, but I believe that we, perhaps influenced by the hardship of the times, are very much ready to take in many things that the last decades, swimming in philistinism, have called incomprehensible out of convenience. Many things have happened to me that I can cite as proof of this incomprehensibility. For example, about twenty years ago I was invited to give a series of lectures on Goethe's “Faust” to a circle of educated people in a German city. There were, however, a number of people who did not even think to say that what I was saying was incomprehensible. But there were also enthusiastic representatives of Oskar Blumenthal's muse, and they said: Yes, “Faust” is not a play, it is a science. - It has gradually emerged from certain backgrounds, which I do not want to characterize here, an educational ideal that was always at hand: you have to speak more popularly and more generally. But it is precisely this complacency that has led us to the situation we now find ourselves in. And we will not get out of it any sooner, ladies and gentlemen, until a sufficiently large number of people decide to have the conscience to understand that which simply cannot be conveyed in the most general terms, which are as clear as day, and which one can also sleep with.

When we speak today about the significance of education and teaching in the face of the current world situation, it is above all about the fact that it must be recognized: The teacher, the educator of today, can only fulfill his role in a fruitful way if he has a real understanding of the developing human being, if he has the real gift of looking into the human being and seeing the riddle that is revealed from the first day the child is born to the days when he is an adult. But we have no general world view that could lead us to truly look into a person, especially into the person becoming, in an intimate way. Our world view of recent years, of recent decades and centuries, has not actually led us to the human being, but has led us away from the human being. It has shown us a very astute way to recognize how man stands at the top of the animal series, how he has developed from lower animal forms, and today we believe we recognize what man's relationship to the non-human actually is. By raising the big questions of humanity in the popular sense, we do not actually ask: What is man? What is man's inner being? — Instead, we ask: What is the inner nature of the animal, of animality? — We study the development of animality, and when we have studied how animality develops up to its highest stage, we stop there, so that we then come to an understanding of man only from the development of animality.

It was certainly a long and meaningful path that was taken from a certain point of view, but it is characteristic of the foundations of the development of world views in recent times. For man does not stand before himself as man in terms of his actual essence, but he only stands before himself in so far as he is the pinnacle of animality, in so far as he is something other than the actual human essence. To what extent is man an animal? — We ask this today in all forms. And as a result, we have lost sight of the question: To what extent is man human in the true sense of the word? And so it becomes almost a fact that people, I would say, bite their logical teeth out on the question: What is the relationship between what we call the soul, what we call the spirit of man, and what we call the body, what we call the body of man? - In all forms, this is raised within today's philosophy, but people only bite their logical teeth out in the process. And it is strange how sometimes, when a lone raven is placed among the number of those observers who, out of the world view of the present day, are really dealing with such questions, how then, out of a certain common sense, they speak. Here is an example. Such an example illustrates many things.

For a long time, the brilliant philologist Rudolf Hildebrand worked at the University of Leipzig. He was a student of Jacob Grimm's linguistic research and also edited the famous dictionary for the most part in the parts that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had left to edit. Rudolf Hildebrand also wrote a number of diary pages that were published by Diederichs in 1910. In them, he expresses himself as a person who is immersed in the life, teaching and education of the present day with an attitude that, I would say, suddenly stops and wants to assert common sense in all that he has around him, especially in the people around him who talk about world view issues in today's school and teaching manner. An interesting sentence sequence can be found in Rudolf Hildebrand's diary pages “Thoughts about God, the World and the Self,” which were published after his death, in the chapter where he talks about education and teaching. There he says: “When I visualize how my colleagues at the university talk about the actual questions of world view, then I often want the lecturer to talk upstairs and the audience to sit downstairs in the sense of duty or perhaps also in something else and listen to him, I want a man from the people to come and tug the lecturer's ear a little, but not not too weakly, but so strongly that it hurts, and said to him: You, look me in the face, and look your students in the face, from person to person, and try to accept this empirical fact, and then ask yourself whether you do not speak all that you say only because you are self-absorbed and are not at all aware that you are facing another human being in the social life. Rudolf Hildebrand thinks it would be particularly interesting if the lecturer's wife went along with him and drew his attention to it by also pulling his ear lobe, not too weakly but so hard that it hurt and said: “You, would you really dare to say what you say under the influence of your authority at home in private, and do you think that I would attach any value to it?”

Now, esteemed attendees, I have expressed this not only to convey to you my own judgment, but also the judgment of a person who has worked for decades at a representative university, who has observed and to whom the question at hand has become a real matter of conscience. But what is at stake today, in the present world situation, if we want to educate and have an effect through teaching, is a true knowledge of the human being – a knowledge of the human being that we must demand should inspire us in our treatment of people, and a treatment of people that is thoroughly imbued with love for humanity. For only such knowledge of human nature, permeated by skill in human treatment and permeated by love of humanity, can lead teaching and education in such a way that the coming generations are introduced to the social context of life in the right way.

But, esteemed attendees, that is precisely the difficulty: our present science oscillates at abstract heights, believing that it can grasp reality with its atoms and atomic groupings, while it only rambles about in abstract heights of thought, in abstract concepts. If, therefore, one first forms a concept of soul and then forms a concept of body, without carefully considering the real configuration of the human body and the real essence of the human soul through direct spiritual observation, then one can come to nothing but a logical struggle with this great riddle of life, which must underlie all human knowledge. This is where the subject of spiritual science comes in, not in the sense of the abstract philosophical formulas that are almost the only ones being sought after today, but by to really look at the soul activity of the human being as self-education and self-discipline in the sense of spiritual research, which I have often described here, and likewise the attempt is made to look at the physical, the bodily, in the sense of this spiritual research.

And then, of course, we arrive at concepts, a few of which I would like to characterize today. But from these few I will be able to show how a living knowledge of the human being wells up from such a renewal, from such a refreshing of the human being's life of world-view. We see the human being growing up from birth, when he enters the physical world from the spiritual world. We see something emerging that works its way out of the deepest core of the human being, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, becoming more and more enigmatic and yet more and more magnificent and meaningful in the outer structure, in the outward physical body of the human being. And we see how significant life events impact this human existence as the person grows up. These life events are usually not sufficiently taken into account by what is now commonly accepted science. I will mention two of these life events first; from a different point of view, I have already characterized them from this point several times.

I would like to mention that around the age of seven, the child's original milk teeth are replaced by permanent teeth. I have already pointed out here that the entire mental constitution of the human being changes at this age. At the same time, it is the age at which we get the child out of the parental home and into primary school. It is the age we have to look at if we want to gain the methodological, didactic and pedagogical starting point for primary school teaching and education. I have pointed out how, in the years up to the change of teeth, the human being is primarily an imitator, how his soul is shaped in such a way that he experiences, out of his instinct, what is going on in his immediate surroundings, how he does not, so to speak, detach himself from his surroundings. The hand movements that the father and mother make, the sounds that the father and mother utter, are imitated by the child because, in a sense, albeit not so visibly, the child is connected to the father and mother and the whole environment in the same way that the mother's arm and father's arm are connected to the body of the mother and father, only to a higher degree. But I do not wish to draw attention to what I have already pointed out here today, but to something else, which in turn is intimately connected with it. What appears to be a change of teeth is, in a sense, the conclusion of a whole organic process; what culminates, so to speak, in the eruption of the second teeth, these are the results of forces that flood the entire human organism in the preceding age. At first we do not need to distinguish between what is spiritual-soul and what is bodily-physical. We see, when we observe the child's facial expressions, when we see the changes in his face from year to year, how the soul works on the body. And we see, so to speak, only deeper into this soul-spiritual work when we see how this soul-spiritual work in the child works organically, how it penetrates the outside world, finally finding a conclusion in the appearance of the second teeth. What exactly is it that is at work here? I can only sketch the matter out, but what I sketch out can be established with all scientific exactitude, down to the smallest details. What exactly is going on in the human being? Observe what happens to the human being in soul and spirit when he undergoes the change of teeth. At the same time, those human perceptions that fluctuate so much that they are no longer remembered in later life become [sharply defined concepts]. Think about how far back you have to go if you want to remember the first clearly defined concepts that you formed in your childhood; at this age, up to the change of teeth, the concepts are still unclear , fluctuating, not sharply defined, not yet so firmly established that they can be woven into the soul-spiritual life in such a way that they can then be retained, that all these memories shape the whole life. This interconnection of the soul-spiritual with sharply defined concepts and ideas, which can be incorporated into memory, begins at the same age at which the teeth change. And if we now investigate what is actually present, it turns out that the same forces that then come to light in our memory, in what we carry within us as the power of thought, the power of our remembering thought, that these forces, which around the seventh year have, as it were, emancipated themselves from the corporeal-physical, have worked in the corporeal-physical until the change of teeth: they were the same forces that drove out the teeth. Thus, until the change of teeth, we are intimately connected with the physicality of the human being with the same forces that then become powers of thought; they work on the formation of the bones that finds its conclusion in the change of teeth.

Dear attendees, we are looking at a very real relationship between soul and body. For in later life we have our sharply contoured concepts of memory, we know what our thinking power is, we look inside ourselves and observe this thinking power, and we say to ourselves: this thinking power has only been working as a free thinking power in us since the seventh year. Before that, it was submerged in our organism and directed the forces that pushed out the second teeth. We have an intimate relationship between the soul and the body; we look concretely at this relationship. We do not speculate about it: what is the relationship between body and soul? We look at the soul and see where we can observe, so to speak, the emergence of free memory images. And we see how these forces have worked in the organism before they were released into memory, how they were organically formative.

You see, this is the progression of the spiritual scientific worldview from the abstract to the concrete, from the merely conceptual, which imagines that it is penetrating into reality, to the truly realistic. This is the advance to the true essence of the human being, for now we know how to answer the question: What takes place in the body of a human being before the age of seven? One cannot describe this in the abstract; one must point to something factual, one must show something that is working in the human being. The same thing is at work that is our remembering thinking power. This is the one example that is intended to characterize the radical change that must come into our scientific way of thinking, into our world view. You can imagine, my dear audience, Because something like this is completely outside the consciousness of so-called educated humanity today, because no one – least of all science – wants to know anything about the concrete state of the soul and spirit and body of the human being, that is why the human being is a stranger to himself, that is why one cannot see into the human being. But how can one found a teaching method, an art of teaching, if one cannot see into the human being?

A second life event to which I would like to draw attention is sexual maturation. And just as much happens from birth to the change of teeth as from the change of teeth to sexual maturation. And if we now look again from the same spiritual-scientific point of view at what works towards sexual maturity and reaches its culmination in sexual maturity, we have to ask ourselves: what exactly is it? Just as the power of thought works in the body and the teeth, if I may express myself trivially, push out, so - as spiritual science shows, I can only sketch it out here - so the will works in man up to the age of fifteen. The will has an organic formative effect. It works in such a way that it governs the conditions of growth, the inner organic conditions. Then this inner organic working of the will comes to a certain conclusion, just as the working of the thoughts does when the teeth change. And that which comes to a conclusion here appears in the outer formation of the human being at sexual maturity. The forces of the will are rooted not in the human being's head but in his entire being. These forces of the will regulate the human being's growth forces up to sexual maturity. Then they accumulate. They have a tendency, as it were, to permeate the formation of the head. These forces of the will also shot in before sexual maturity; they were inwardly and organically active in the whole human being; with sexual maturity they accumulate. They accumulate and find their conclusion in the human vocal organ, which is the most intimate expression of the human will, just as the other forces accumulate in the formation of the teeth. They accumulate below the head – the head, the organ of the actual intellectual human being, is excepted. The forces of will accumulate, and in the male nature this accumulation is even expressed in the transformation of the voice through the larynx, in the female nature somewhat differently. In this lies a release of those forces of will, which are now to engage with the outside world in experience and in life – those forces of will that until then have worked inwardly in the human body as soul and spirit. It is exactly the same as with the powers of thought, which finally brought about the change of teeth and then appeared in their actual form as emancipated powers of thought.

Thus, as spiritual scientists, we look on the one hand at the thinking human being, at the human being with the power of thought, and on the other hand at the human being with the power of will. We are not talking in the abstract about some kind of soul, but we are talking about the soul that we observe. We follow its activity as a thinking soul until the second dentition changes, and then we follow its liberation, its becoming independent of certain internal aspects of the organic process. And we follow the will in the same way. That is to say, we no longer construct theories about the relationship of soul and spirit to the body, but we observe, we approach reality. You see, here a path is taken which, I believe, is suitable for flowing into general human education in a completely different way than the path that once occurred to an honest mind, namely to pluck the lecturer by the ear lobe, but not too weakly.

But now we are dealing with something quite different. It is a matter of not only attaching importance to the results, to the knowledge that is gained in this way, but also to how one should attach importance to how, through spiritual scientific methods, as I have described them in my “Occult Science”, in “How to Know Higher Worlds » or in «A Way to Know Thyself», how by such paths of thinking one comes to know something and truly much more about the healthy and the sick human being, which is simply closed in its depths to science, which today can be called an authoritative one. In a sense, one must train the mind, one must orient the mind in a certain way. The mind must take a different direction than one is accustomed to today. And much more depends on this. After all, the results are just results; they can be more or less important or unimportant, interesting or uninteresting. But what we do by taking the path to such knowledge, what we make of ourselves by educating ourselves in our essence, what we make of ourselves as human beings by preparing the way for such knowledge - that is the essential thing, that is what matters. It always depends on what we make of ourselves as human beings by developing a very specific way of looking at the world from within, in a very specific state of mind. This also enables us to look at life free of all illusions and yet in all its wonderful grandeur.

For example, we see that children are obliged to play in their early years and even in later years. The direction and guidance of play is essentially one of the tasks of a sensible, humane art of education and teaching. The child plays. The person who has now sharpened his view of the world and of human life in such a way as I have just characterized it, notices a great difference between the way one child plays and the way another child plays. To the superficial observer, almost all children play the same. For those who have sharpened their gaze, all children play differently from each other. Each has its own unique way of playing. It is now very strange when one focuses on what play means for a child's age: an activity for the human being in the soul-spiritual, as it is present when the actual thinking is still working within the organic until the teeth change. It is very strange how the child's soul-spiritual, which has not yet taken in the conceptual, moves in free play - in that play whose design is separate from the use and purpose of life, that play where the child follows only what flows from his own soul. On the surface, this appears to be a departure from the principle of imitation, for the way the child engages with the game is something that comes from the freedom of the child's soul – but only on the surface. For the one who watches more closely will see how the child incorporates into the game what he experiences through his environment, through everything that is going on around him. But if you have sharpened your gaze, then you look at this game not just as something interesting that happens in the individual life of a child at a certain time, but you place this game with all its character in the whole human life.

And by observing this, one learns to compare what happens at different ages of human life. Just as one can compare zinc and copper in the inanimate, as one can compare a cockchafer with a sun chafer in the animate, and so on, one can also compare the different ages of human life with each other. And here something most remarkable presents itself. When, with the sharpened eye that characterizes us today, we have gained a real conception of child play, then we must seek, in the various human ages, for something into which the special character of this child play flows. And there, through a very experiential search, we find that, when a person reaches the approximate age of 20 to 28 or 29, he really has to find his place in the world, really has to deal with what the world should give him as experience and guidance for an independent life, and when you look at how the human being engages with life and allows himself to be touched by life, you really do find a metamorphosis at a certain stage, a transformation of the particular character of child's play. Before the change of teeth, the child used to create freely from its soul activity with what did not belong to life, with the doll, with other play materials; it was active in a certain configuration, in a certain structure. If we learn to recognize and understand this and then observe people in their twenties as they engage with the serious side of life, with what is useful and purposeful in life, with what they have to find their way into through experience, you find that now the human being places himself in the usefulness, in the purpose of the world, in what is required by life, with such a character as he first freely showed in the childlike years of life in childlike play. Consider what this means. You want to influence education, and you know: what you observe as a special character trait in a child's play, what you then understand and how you guide the child's play, you do so that it will bear fruit when the person has dealt with the world that should be useful and appropriate for them in their twenties. Imagine the feelings that arise in the soul of the educator when he knows that what he is doing with the child, he is doing for the adult in his twenties. What matters is not what we know as educational principles in abstract forms, what we can muster from intellectual backgrounds in didactic-methodical rules, but what matters is that through such insights, when we see through life in this way, we develop a deep sense of responsibility in our hearts. A true insight into human nature does not only speak to our intellect; it speaks to our feelings, it speaks to our perceptions, it speaks to our whole conception of life. It permeates and interweaves us with a sense of responsibility at the post where we stand. We are not looking for an educational theory that merely says, out of a crazy or a justified cleverness, that one should educate in this or that way, but we are looking for such an educational theory in view of the present situation of man, which - out of knowledge of the human being - puts a sense of responsibility into the educator, a sense of social responsibility towards all of humanity. The art of education arises out of a sense of responsibility, which can only arise in us out of a right foundation of world view.

I am not speaking to you here about a renewal of science for the reason that it particularly interests me or tempts me to tell you that there will be different scientific results and that these different results would form a different world-view basis than the one commonly held today. No, I am speaking to you in this way because I believe that the whole trend, the whole character of world-view and scientific life will change. I say this because I believe that there will be a science, a life of world view, which will penetrate the whole human being, which will permeate the human being through body, soul and spirit, and which is particularly important for all the art of educating, for all the art of teaching, in view of the human being's present situation.

But something else is connected with what stands on the basis of such a new view of the human being. What do we strive for today when we speak of science, of a scientifically based foundation of a world view? We speak of what presents itself to us, for the most part in abstract concepts, and we are satisfied when we can say to ourselves: we must demand what only sharply defined concepts can give us; we must demand such concepts out of our prejudice. — Yes, but what if nature, the world is not such that it can be fitted into the concepts we demand, what if the world forms itself according to completely different forms, what if nature, for example, does not form itself according to what our natural laws are, what if these natural laws of nature only comprise a small part of reality and that the essential aspects of nature are not formed according to abstract laws of nature and ideas, but according to images - then we can discuss the logical justification of sharply defined laws of nature for as long as we like, we will not penetrate into nature, because nature does not lend itself to such laws, because it demands to be grasped in images. In particular, human nature demands that it be grasped in images. And one is led to all that I have outlined today only through a pictorial, through an imaginative way of thinking.

I would like to say: When you look at the human being in such a way that you see how the power of thought rules in his organism until the teeth come out, how willpower rules, how it draws into the larynx and transforms the voice. When one looks at all this, one cannot stop at formulating those abstract laws of nature that are so popular today, but one comes to make the soul active, plastic, by wanting to understand the human being. One comes to not stop at abstract concepts, at abstract ideas, but one comes to images. In other words, one arrives at a point where one can derive the abstract-logical scientific concepts from an artistic understanding of the world, from an aesthetic understanding of the world. One arrives at an understanding of what Goethe spoke so deeply from the foundations of his world view: Art is based on a perception of deeper natural laws that would never be revealed to man without art. Goethe believes that they would never reveal themselves through the abstract laws of nature, but only through the contemplation of nature in pictorial forms. In this way, one moves from a logical-abstract contemplation, from a mechanistic contemplation of external nature to an artistic comprehension, and such artistic comprehension gives our whole personality a different spiritual suppleness than abstract concepts.

And now let us imagine the person who has risen from scientific knowledge of man to an artistic understanding of the world and man; let us imagine this person flooded, permeated with this artistic-pictorial view of man and then practicing the art of education and teaching. In this way, life passes directly from the teacher to the life of the developing human being; it is not a philistine-abstract educational science that is at work here, but a living art of education, that which can take place in the most beautiful way as a social element between human being and human being. Finally, from a deeper basis of knowledge, what Schiller tried to express in his letters 'On the Aesthetic Education of Man' is fulfilled, based on more humanistic feelings. There it is actually made clear that man, in true knowledge, also maintains a state of equilibrium between the merely abstract necessity of reason and the merely sensual natural instinct; it is made clear that man stands between these instincts and that he works out of an attitude that asserts itself in the same way as the attitude in artistic creation or in artistic contemplation. It asserts itself in such a way that it presents that which we pursue as spirit, at the same time as something sensual; it brings about that which presents itself as something sensual, at the same time as something spiritual.

It is with this in mind that we begin to educate and teach at the Waldorf school. We no longer give the developing human being something that is prescribed to us; as educators and teachers, we devote ourselves entirely to the developing human being, and we educate people who can then engage fully in life. I have only mentioned a few examples. Just as we can give the child the best possible start in finding his way into life in his twenties by directing the game, we can observe other things in the developing human being on which we can base our education in order to give him the best for his later life. We can establish a form of teaching and education that takes into account the whole human being and the whole of human life. It may be said that the gravity of the present world situation demands that we take a look into the depths of that from which things can improve, from which the suffering and hardship of the present can be overcome. But this cannot be done with superficial means, it can only be done with deeper means. Only in this way will we educate people who will have what they need in the most eminent sense, because that is precisely what people lack in the current world situation.

If we look at people as they are today, if we look at what is coming to the surface of life, what even wants to direct life, at what is being lived out in public life, as it has have taken shape again — we see everywhere that two things are lacking in people today, which one would only wish for them in the most intense degree: what is lacking to a great extent in people today is what might be called self-confidence, but also what might be called trust in humanity. Consider, honored attendees, why people today so rarely turn inward to energetically place themselves in that social life of the present that so urgently needs energy. We find: People lack self-confidence. But self-confidence is only justified and can only exist when it is supported by trust in others. Just as the north and south poles belong together and cannot exist without each other, so self-confidence cannot exist without trust in other people. No educational science, no teaching science, will ever bring into people what self-confidence, what trust in humanity is, if it is not born out of such love for humanity, which comes from the knowledge of humanity, as I have characterized it today. For that is what one experiences, ladies and gentlemen.

When one gets to know the human being, as I have characterized it, when one learns to recognize how the soul and spiritual aspects work in the human organism, how the different ages of the human being interact - as I have illustrated with the example of the effect of a child's play on the age of twenty - when one gets to know the spiritual, soul and physical being of the human being so intimately Then one cannot but educate one's self in true human love at the same time, for one power of the soul is connected with another power of the soul, just as in the blossom of a plant the stamens are connected with the pistil; if the stamens are perfect, they require a perfect pistil. Thus true knowledge, arising out of love for one's fellow-men, does not develop into that abstractness which is so often and justly despised today, but into that which, on the other hand, also draws forth true love for one's fellow-men.

And what prevails in education, in teaching, out of such knowledge of the human being, out of such love for the human being, what pedagogy and didactics can create as a curriculum and timetable out of such knowledge of the human being, we have tried to do here in the Waldorf School, as far as this is already possible today. The effect of this, ladies and gentlemen, is that love for other people dawns in the child. The trust in humanity that is kindled in the child through the power that is born in us from real knowledge of the human being, which comes from the artistic understanding of the natural human being, that is what forms in us the power to ignite in the child lasting, inexhaustible self-confidence. And two other qualities that humanity so sorely lacks today and that can only be handed down to the human spirit through such an art of education are, on the one hand, composure and, on the other, a willingness and eagerness to act. These things are not clearly thought about today, quite, quite unclear, because one does not think from reality, namely from social reality.

I have already mentioned the amiable scholar Rudolf Hildebrand in very laudatory terms. So you will not believe that I want to misjudge this man. But he too was a person who – although he was sometimes driven by his instincts to make the kind of observations I have mentioned – was a person who was steeped in all the prejudices that have brought us the present misfortune. And so he also wrote a remarkable sentence in his diary pages, the sentence: “Compare a gawker who stands in front of a target to be shot at with a marksman who aims at the target. The gawker can hit the target with his gaze; he hits it every time. The marksman must first learn to hit the target; only then does he actually hit it.” Thus, according to Hildebrand, there is a difference between someone who is a mere onlooker of life, that is, someone who looks at life philosophically or scientifically or mystically or theosophically or in some other way, and someone who actively participates in life.

There is much that is correct in such a sentence, but nevertheless, there is also much that is one-sided. For let us not think of the example of Hildebrand, but of a “life gawker”, of someone who has only looked at life, for example, of Leibniz, who discovered differential and integral calculus. Let us imagine how this “gazer at life”, who discovered differential and integral calculus, has now become the cause of everything that is done in technology today through differential and integral calculus, of everything that is done in life today by the “shooter”, by the person who shoots. If you look at the person in such an unsocial isolation, you can aptly see the parallel between the onlooker and the marksman, each aiming at the target. But if one regards life in its social breadth, then one must say to oneself: If the one who is the life-gazer, out of his life-gazing, has a fruitful thought that leads to countless deeds, then, with regard to the interaction of people, with regard to social life, perhaps the life-gazer is the more active than the one compared to the archer.

The point is that we have gradually come to observe life one isolated act at a time, and now lack the ability to see the big social picture. To point this out, we need to be level-headed and reflect. Today, it is often the case that people avoid this reflection, this introspection, this “gazing” at life because they are too lazy to turn their thoughts and ideas into action, because they do not want to engage with the real conditions of life, because even when adversity comes knocking at the door, when it extends to the mouth, when the adversity is infinitely great, they are fatalists and say: tomorrow it will get better from some corner or another. We need prudence, life in action-thoughts. And on the other hand, we need a new willingness to act; this will follow from such thoughts in people, in whom we can ignite the human element from the love that we gain from true knowledge of spirit, soul and body - as the basis of a future world view, as we have described it today. And what is best, what education and training can give us in the face of the current world situation, is that we gain an open and free sense of life when the human is unlocked by such knowledge of the human being as is meant here. We are experiencing in our time that people misunderstand life in a strange way. They imagine themselves to be spirits of reality, but when it comes to reality, they are truly quite, quite far from this reality. Here is an example.

You see, a certain judgment was once passed in the course of the 19th century. Please read the parliamentary reports, read the best speeches of the best minds, read from newspaper reports what the most esteemed practitioners have said. You can always find in the parliamentary reports, in the speeches of the best economists, of the best practitioners, how they have passed a certain judgment that has become of the utmost importance for the development of modern times in political, governmental and economic terms. For example, there was a time when certain states introduced the gold standard. Read what was said about it. The best practitioners, the most experienced economists, predicted that the gold standard would lead to the abolition of customs barriers; that the gold standard would bring about free world trade. And if we look at what these practitioners of life, these businessmen, these industrialists, these parliamentarians said, who had emerged from an understanding that was typical of the 19th century, we find – I do not want to mock, I just want to speak the truth – we find that they said something very clever; but reality turned out quite differently. They said: tariff borders, protective tariffs, all of this will be done away with when the gold standard is introduced. The opposite has happened. After the introduction of the gold standard, tariff borders and protective tariffs have been erected everywhere. So, the opposite of what the cleverest people said has happened. I say explicitly the cleverest people; I am far from saying that the people who so radically failed to grasp reality were fools; they were the opposite of fools. They said the smartest things based on their education, but no one can arrive at the truth when the truth is not predetermined by anything, when the circumstances around us are such that one cannot see through reality even with the sharpest mind. That is why the smartest people talk nonsense in such a field. This is because the economic conditions, in their interconnection with the state and political conditions, were so tangled up that no matter how clever one was, one could not see through them; one said nonsense as a matter of course because one could not learn anything from reality. One could not shape reality in advance so that one could learn from it.

What we call the idea of the threefold social order is that economic life, spiritual life and political life should each stand on their own ground, and that these three spheres of life should stand as three interlocking and interacting parts of the whole social organism. It is demanded that the individual economic spheres, whether they be spheres of production or consumption or professions or the like, develop in the way that they must, uninfluenced by state or other organizations, from the foundations of the economy itself. It is required that they develop so independently from the expertise and knowledge of those working in them that one organization, which under such conditions can only have a certain size, then joins another, a third, a fourth, in a certain way; depending on how such associations develop, they will associate with each other again. In this way a network of economic associations will arise. Those who are part of one association will know: in the other association, with which I am involved in trade, in the exchange of goods, the other person whom I know is part of it; one can see the relationships of the two associations. The mutual relationship is regulated by contract. In this way one can concretely see into what the economic realm is. Through the associative principle, overall relationships are created; life is shaped in such a way that we can learn from it. The present situation demands that the unmanageable nature of economic life be replaced by the associative principle, by something transparent, the essence of which you can read about in my book 'The Core of the Social Question' and especially in our newspaper 'Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus', which has now appeared in fifty numbers.

You cannot learn from that which is opaque. Life should be shaped in such a way that, when we are placed in life in the right way, we can learn from that life. People who have been educated in such a way that this education is based on genuine, true knowledge of the human being, from which, as if according to natural law, love for humanity will follow — such people will feel how economic life, in its independence, wants to shape itself associatively. For such people will have learned in their childhood in such a way that this learning was such a school for them that they can now learn from life all the time. But that is the greatest experiential science of the school, that we emerge from it in such a way that life always remains a great continuing school for us. In this way, we are guaranteed throughout our lives: we continue to develop, we do not stand still, we carry the world forward. Until the end of our lives, until we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we can live here in such a way that we expand our soul-spiritual, that we make our physical life more skillful, that we can regard all of life as a school. The present situation in life demands this. And what it demands here can best be expressed by saying: Everything that must come out of such a renewal of the foundations of world view, as it is meant here from spiritual-scientific foundations, must lead to the emergence of an art of education, a teaching art which, out of true, genuine knowledge of the human being, gives birth to that love of humanity which educates such human beings that are released from the school of childhood into the school of life in the right way, for it is only through this learning in the school of life that the right work on the social plane will be possible.

I will then talk about this in the next week's lecture on “Questions of the Soul and Questions of Life”, a lecture for our time. Today I just wanted to show that, when it comes to education and teaching in the present day, we are indeed obliged to say, in view of all the pressing issues of the day, that we must adhere to the principle: base education and teaching on that which, based on a deeper world view, is the foundation of education and teaching. For in this way you create the true, the genuine, the firm foundation for a solution to those social and human questions that have now become so pressing in all of human life.

Hermann Grimm, the eminent thinker on Art, has tried to follow Raphael's influence and fame through the ages down to the present day. Grimm has been able to show that Raphael's creations went on working after the painter's death as a living element, and that a uniform stream of spiritual development has flowed onwards from the life of Raphael to our own time. Grimm has shown how the evolution of humanity has proceeded since the creations of Raphael, and on the other side of the spiritual conception of history it may be said that preceding ages too give the impression as if they were themselves pointing to the Raphael who was later to appear in world evolution like a limb inset in a whole organism. We may here recall an utterance once made by Goethe and from the world of Space apply it to the world of Time. Goethe once wrote these significant words: “What would all the starry world and all that is spread out in Space amount to if it were not at some time reflected in a human soul, celebrating its own higher existence for the first time in the experiences of this human soul?” Applying these words to the evolution of the ages, we may say that in a certain sense, when we cast our eyes back into antiquity, the Homeric gods who were described so gloriously by Homer nearly 1000 years before the founding of Christianity, would seem less to us if they had not risen again in the soul of Raphael, finding their consummation in the sublime figures of his pictures. What Homer created long ages before the appearance of Christianity unites in this sense into an organic whole with what was born from the soul of Raphael in the 16th century. Again, we turn our gaze to the figures of the New Testament, and in the face of Raphael's pictures we feel that something would be lacking if the creative, formative power in the Madonnas and other pictures which have sprung from Biblical tradition and legend, had not been added to the Biblical description. Therefore we may say: not only does Raphael live on through the following centuries but his creations form one organic whole with all preceding ages. Most ages indeed already pointed to one in whom they should find their consummation, although this, it is true, could only be discovered in later history.

The words of Lessing when he speaks of “the Education of the Human Race” assume great significance when we thus see how a uniform spiritual essence flows through the evolution of humanity, flashing up in figures like Raphael. The truth of repeated earthly lives that has so often been emphasized from the spiritual-scientific standpoint in connection with the spiritual evolution of humanity is perceived with special vividness when we bear in mind what has just been said. We realize then for the first time what it means that the being of man should appear again and again in repeated earthly lives through the epochs, bearing from one life to the other what is destined to be implanted in the spiritual evolution of humanity. Spiritual Science is seeking the meaning and purpose in the evolution of mankind. It does not merely seek to portray the consecutive events of human evolution in one straight, continuous line, but to interpret the various epochs in such a way that the human soul, appearing again and again over the course of the ages, must have ever new experiences. Then we can truly speak of an “Education” which the human soul undergoes as the result of its different earthly lives,—an education proceeding from all that is created and born from out of the common spirit of humanity.

What will here be said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science in regard to Raphael's relationship to human evolution as a whole during the last few centuries, is not intended to be a philosophical or historical study, but the result of many-sided study of Raphael's creative activity. There is no question of giving a philosophical survey of the spiritual life of humanity for the sake of bringing Raphael into it. Everything that I myself have experienced after study and contemplation of his different works has crystallized quite naturally into what I propose to say tonight.

It will be impossible, of course, to enter in details into single creations of Raphael. That could only be if one were able by some means to place his pictures before the audience. A general impression of the creative power of Raphael arises in the soul and then the question arises: what place has this in the evolution of humanity? The gaze falls upon a significant epoch,—an epoch to which Raphael stands in inner relationship when we allow him to work upon us—I refer to the Greek epoch and its development. All that the Greeks not only created but experienced as the outcome of their whole nature and constitution appears as a kind of middle epoch when we study human evolution during the last few thousand years. Greek culture coincides in a certain sense with the founding of Christianity and all that preceded it seems to bear a different character from following ages. Studying humanity in the Pre-Grecian age of civilization we find that the soul and spirit of man are much more intimately bound up with the corporeal, with the outer corporeality than is the case in later times. What we speak of today as the “inwardness” of the human soul,—the inward withdrawal of the soul when applying itself to the spiritual or the spiritual becoming conscious of the Spiritual underlying the universe,—this inwardness did not exist to the same degree in Grecian times. When man made use of his bodily organs in those days, the spiritual mysteries of existence simultaneously lit up in his soul. Observation of the sense-world was not so detached and aloof as is ordinary Science to-day. Man beheld the objects with his senses, and with his sense impressions he simultaneously perceived the spirit and soul-elements weaving and living within the objects. The Spiritual was there with the objects as they were perceived. To press forward to the Spirituality of the universe in ancient times it was not necessary for man to withdraw from sense impressions or to give himself up wholly to the inner being of the soul. Indeed in very ancient times of evolution “clairvoyant perception of things”—in the very best sense of the word—was a common possession of man. This clairvoyant perception was not attained as the result of certain given conditions, but was as natural as sense perception.

Then came Greek culture with the world peculiar to it,—a world where we may place the beginning of the inward deepening of spiritual life, but where the inner experiences of the spirit are still connected with the outer, with processes in the world of sense. In Greek culture the balance is between the Sensible and the Psychic-Spiritual. The Spiritual was not so immediately present in sense perception as was the case in Pre-Grecian times. It lit up in the soul of the Greek as something inwardly apart, but that it was perceived when the senses were directed to the outer world. The Greek beheld the Spirit not in the objects, but with the objects. In Pre-Grecian times the soul of man was poured out, as it were, into corporeality. In Greek culture the soul had freed itself to some extent from the corporeality, but the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and the bodily element was still held. This is why the creations of the Greeks seem to be as fully permeated with the spirituality as that which their senses perceived.

In Post-Grecian ages the human spirit undergoes an inward deepening and is no longer able to receive, simultaneously with the sense impression the, Spiritual living and weaving in all things. These are the ages when the human soul was destined to withdraw into itself and experience its struggles and conquests in an inner life before pressing forward to the Spiritual. Spiritual contemplation and the sense perception of things became two worlds which the human soul must experience. How clearly evident this is in a spirit like Augustine, for instance, who in the Post-Christian epoch is really not so far removed from the founding of Christianity as we are from the Reformation. The experiences and writings of Augustine as compared with the traditions of Greek culture are highly characteristic of the progress of humanity. The struggles of the inward turned soul, the scene of action existing in the inner being of the soul apart from the external world that we see in Augustine,—how impossible all this appears in the Greek spirits who everywhere reveal how deeply their soul-content is united with the processes of the external world.

The evolutionary history of humanity shows evidence of a division, a mighty incision. Into this evolutionary picture there enters on the one side Greek culture, where man holds the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and outer corporeality; on the other side there is the founding of Christianity. All the experiences of the human soul were thereafter to become inward, to take their course in inner struggles and conquests. The mission of the founding of Christianity was not to direct man's gaze to the world of sense in order that he might become conscious of the riddles of existence, but to all that the spirit might intuitively behold when giving itself up wholly to the powers of the spirit and soul. How utterly different,—divided by a deep, deep cleft, are those beautiful, majestic Gods of Greece, Zeus or Apollo, from the figure dying on the Cross,—a figure, it is true, full of inner profundity and power, but not beautiful in the external sense. Already here we find the outer symbol of the deep incision made by Christianity and Greek culture in the evolution of humanity. And in the spirits of the Post-Grecian ages we see the effects of this incision as an ever more intense inward deepening of the soul.

Thence forward this inner deepening has been characteristic of the onward progress of evolution. And if we would understand human evolution in the sense of Spiritual Science we must realize that we are living in an age which represents a still greater inward deepening, the more we observe it in relation to the immediate past and the prospect of the future in which a cleft, still deeper than that which the contemplation of the past reveals, will appear between all that is proceeding in the world in a more or less mechanical, technical life of the outer world, and the goal ahead of the human soul as it endeavors to scale the heights of spiritual being,—heights which open up only in our inner being as we attempt to ascend to the Spiritual. More and more we are advancing into an age of inner deepening.

A mighty incision in the progress of humanity in Post-Grecian times toward an energy being is what has remained to us in the creations of Raphael. Raphael stands there as a mighty spirit at a parting of the ways in human evolution. All that preceded him marks the beginning of the process of this inner deepening; what follows him represents a new chapter. Although much that I have to say in this lecture may have the appearance of symbology, it should not be taken merely as a symbolical mode of expression, but as an attempt to create as broad a conception and idea as possible, that which can be clothed only in the “trivial concepts of man” on account of Raphael's towering greatness.

When we try to penetrate into the soul of Raphael we are struck, above all, by the way in which the soul appears in the year 1483 in a “spring-like” birth, as it were, passing through an inner development radiating forth its glory from the most marvellous creations. Raphael dies at an early age, at 37. In order so to deepen ourselves in this soul so that we can follow all its stages, let us turn our attention for the moment away from all that was going on in world history and concentrate wholly on the inner nature of this soul.

Hermann Grimm has pointed out certain regular cycles in the inner development of Raphael's soul. And indeed it may be said that Spiritual Science today has no need to be ashamed of directing the attention of modern skeptical mankind to the existence of cyclic laws holding sway along the path to the spirit, in all evolution andalso in that of individual human beings, if so eminent a mind as Hermann Grimm was led, without Spiritual Science, to the perception of this regular inner cyclic development in the soul of Raphael. Grimm speaks of the picture called “The Marriage of the Virgin” as being a new phenomena in the whole evolution of Art, saying that it cannot be compared with anything that had gone before. From infinite depths of the human soul, Raphael created something entirely new in the whole of spiritual evolution. If we thus gain a conception of the gifts lying in Raphael's soul from birth onwards, we can readily agree with the following passage of Hermann Grimm: “We now see Raphael's soul developing onwards in regular cycles of four years duration. It is wonderful to observe how this soul advances onwards thus, and studying one such period we find that at the end of it, Raphael stands at a higher stage of his soul's development. Four years after the picture The Marriage of the Virgin comes The Entombment; four years later again the frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican,—and so on, by four year stages up to The Transfiguration which stood unfinished by his death bed.”

We feel the desire to study this soul for its own sake because its development is so harmonious. Then however we get the impression that in the Art of Painting itself an inwardness had to develop,—an inwardness such as that expressed in figures which only Raphael could create. It is an inwardness borne out of the depths of the soul experience although it appears in pictures of the world of sense, and it then becomes part of history itself.

Having thus contemplated the inner nature of the soul of Raphael, let us allow the age in which he lived and all that was around him, to work upon us. While Raphael was growing up more or less as a child in Urbino, his environment was of a kind that could stimulate and awaken any decisive talents. The whole of Italy was excited at that time about a certain palace that had been built in Urbino. This was something that imbued the early talents of Raphael with an element of harmony with their nature. After that, however,we find him transplanted to Perugia, thence to Florence, thence to Rome. Fundamentally speaking, his life ran its course within narrow circles. These towns seem so near when we study his life. His world was enclosed within these circles so far as the world of sense was concerned. It was only in the spirit that he rose to “other spheres.” In Perugia, however, which was the scene of his youthful soul development, fierce quarrels were the order of the day. The town is populated by a passionate, tumultuous people. Noble families whose lives were spent in wrangling and quarreling fought bitterly against each other. The one drove the other out-of-town, then after a short banishment the other family would try again to take possession of it. More than once the streets of Perugia flowed with blood and were strewn with corpses. One historian describes a remarkable scene, and indeed all the descriptions of that epoch are typical. A nobleman of the town enters it as a warrior in order to avenge his relatives. He is described to us as he rides through the streets on horseback like the spirit of War incarnate, beating down everything that crosses his path. The historian evidently has the impression that the revenge was justifiable and there arises before his soul the picture of St. George bringing the enemy to his feet. Later on, in a work by Raphael, we feel the scene as described by the historian rise up before us in picture form and our immediate impression is that Raphael must surely have allowed this to affect him; and then what seemed so terrible in the outward sense is deepened and rises again from out of his soul in the subject of one of the most wonderful pictures.

Thus Raphael saw around him a quarreling humanity; disorder upon disorder, battle upon battle, surrounded him in the town where he was studying under his master Pietro Perugino. One gets the impression of two worlds in the town,—one, the scene of cruelty and terror, and another, living inwardly in Raphael's soul, which had really little to do with what was going on around him in the physical world.

Then, later again we find Raphael transplanted to Florence in the year 1504. What was the state of Florence then? In the first place the inhabitants give the impression of being a wearied people who had passed through inner and outer tumults and were living in a certain ennui and fatigue. What had been the fate of Florence? Struggles, just as in the case of the other town, bitter persecutions among different patrician families, and of course, quarrels with the outer world. And on the other hand the stirring event that had thrown every soul in the town into a state of upheaval when Savonarola, a short time previoulsy, had been martyred. This extraordinary figure of Savanarola appears before us uttering words of fire against the current misdeeds, the cruelty, materiality and heathendom of the Church. The words of Savonarola seem to resound again in our ears, words by which he dominated the whole of Florence and to such an extent that the people not only hung upon his lips but revered him as deeply as if a spirit from a higher world were standing before them in that ascetic body. The words of Savonarola transformed Florence as if the direct radiations of the Reformer of Religions Himself had permeated not only the religious conceptions, but the very social life of the town. It was as though a citadel of the Gods had been founded. Such was Florence under the influence of Savonarola. He fell a victim to those Powers whom he had opposed, morally and religiously. There rises before our soul the moving picture of Savonarola as he was led to the fire of martyrdom with his companions, and how from the gallows whence he was to fall onto the burning pyre, he turned his eyes—it was in May 1498—down to the people who had once hung upon his words, but who had now deserted him and were looking with apparent disloyalty at the figure who had for so long inspired them. Only in a very few,—and they were artists,—did the words of Savonarola still resound. There were painters at that time who themselves donned the monk's robe after Savonarola's martyrdom in order to work on in his Order under the influence of his spirit.

One can visualize the weary atmosphere lying over Florence, Raphael was transplanted into this atmosphere in the year 1504. And he brought with him in his creations the very Spirit's breath of Spring, although in a different way from Savonarola. When they contemplate the soul of Raphael in all its isolation,—a soul so different from the mood surrounding it in this town, visualizing him in the company of artists and painters working at his creations in lonely workshops in Florence or elsewhere, another picture rises up, showing us visibly in history how Raphael's soul stands out inwardly aloof from the outer life around it. And there arises before us the figures of the Roman Popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, in fact the whole Papal system against which Savonarola directed his words of scorn, the Reformers their attacks. Yet this Papacy was the Patron of Raphael who entered its service, although inwardly his soul had little in common with what we find in his Patron Pope Julius II for instance. It was said of Julius II that he gave the impression of a man with a devil in his body, who always likes to show his teeth to his enemies.

How was this possible? We see the contrast between outer life and Raphael's inner being in the early student days in Perugia, but we see it's still more intensely in Rome where his all-conquering works were created in the midst of an officialdom of Cardinals and Priests which had been intolerable to Savonarola. True, the two men were different, but we must nevertheless contrast Raphael with his environment in this way if we are to obtain a true picture of what was living in his soul.

Let us allow the picture of Raphael to work upon us. This cannot be done in detail in a lecture, but we can at least call up before the mind's eye one of the more widely known works for the purpose of contemplating the peculiar qualities living in Raphael's soul,—I mean the Sistine Madonna which is familiar to everybody in the innumerable copies existing all over the world. The Sistine Madonna is one of the greatest and noblest works of Art in human evolution. The “Mother with the Child” hover towards us on clouds which cover the Earth globe,—hover from the shadowy world of spirit and soul, surrounded in clouds which seem naturally to form themselves into human figures, one being the Child Himself. Feelings arise which, when we permeate them with soul, seem to make us forget all those legendary conceptions which culminate in the picture of the Madonna. We forget all that Christian traditions has to tell of her. I say this not for the sake of giving any dry description, but in order to characterize as fully as may be the feelings that arise within us at the site of the Madonna.

Spiritual Science raises us above all materialistic conception of human evolution. Although it is difficult to understand in the sense of Natural Science according to which the development of lower organisms proceeded until finally it reached the stage of the human being,—nevertheless it is the fact that man is a being whose life transcends everything below him in the kingdom of Nature. Spiritual Science knows that man contains a something within him much more ancient than all the beings who stand in greater or lesser proximity to him in the kingdom of Nature.

Man existed before the beings of the animal, plant and even of the mineral kingdom. In a wider perspective we look back to ages when that which now constitutes our inner being was already in existence andwhich only later was incorporated into the kingdoms which now stand below man. We see the being of man proceeding from a super-earthly world and realize that we can only truly understand it when we rise above all that the Earth can produce out of herself to something super-terrestrial and pre-terrestrial. Spiritual Science teaches that even if we allow all the forces, all the living substances connected with the Earth herself to work upon us, none of this can give a true picture of the whole essence and being of man. The gaze must rise beyond the Earthly to the Supersensible whence the being of man proceeds. Speaking figuratively we cannot but feel how something wafts towards the Earthly when, for instance, we gaze at the golden gleaming morning sunrise,—and especially is this the case in a region like that in which Raphael lived. Forces which work down into the Earth seem here to flow into the Earthly elements,—forces which inhere in the being of the Sun. And then out of the golden radiance there rises before our soul the sense image of what it is that is wafting hither in order to unite itself with the Earthly.

Above all in Perugia we may feel that the eye is beholding the very same sunrise once seen by Raphael, who in these phenomena was able to sense the nature of the Super-Earthly element in man. And gazing at the Sun-illuminated clouds there may dawn on us a realization that the picture of the Madonna and Child is a sense picture of the eternal Super-Earthly element in man that is wafted to Earth from super-earthly realms themselves and meets, in the clouds, those elements that can only proceed from the Earthly. Our perception may feel itself raised to the loftiest spiritual heights if we can give ourselves up—not theoretically, or in an abstract sense, but with the whole soul—to what works upon us in Raphael's Madonnas. This perfectly natural feeling may arise before the world-famous picture in Dresden. And to prove to you that it has indeed had this effect upon many people I should like to quote words written about the Sistine Madonna by Karl August, Duke of Weimar, the friend of Goethe, after a visit to Dresden: He says:

“In regard to the Raphael picture that adorns the collection, I felt as if the whole day long I had roamed over the heights of the Gotthard, through the Urner cleft and looked down from thence to the green, blossoming valley. As I looked at the picture and again away from it, it always seemed to me a revelation of the soul. Even the most beautiful Correggios were pictures only of the human; the memory of them tangible like beautiful forms. Raphael, however, remained with me as a breath, as one of those revelations sent to one in women's form by the Gods to bring us happiness or sorrow, like a figure that arises before one again and again in waking or dream life, whose gaze, once experienced, is with one forever, day and night, moving the innermost being.” (Karl August to his friend Knebel, 14th October, 1763)

Another remarkable thing is that if we study the literature of those who speak of the experiences of deep emotion at the site of this Sistine Madonna and also of other pictures of Raphael, we shall always find that they use the analogy of the Sun, all that is radiant and spring-like.

This gives us a glimpse into Raphael's soul and we realize how from amid the environment already described, it held converse with the eternal mysteries of the genesis of man. And then we feel the uniqueness of this soul of Raphael, realizing that it is not a “product” of its environment, but points to a hoary antiquity. There is no longer any need for speculation. A soul like this, looking out into the wide universe,—a soul which does not express the mystery of existence in ideas, but senses and gives it form in a picture like the Sistine Madonna, stands there in its inner perfection quite naturally as mature in the highest degree. Truly, the gifts inherent in this soul represents something that must have passed through other epochs of human evolution, not many such epochs which poured into it a power able to reemerge in what we call the “life of Raphael”. But from what it re-merges?

We see the living content of Christian legends and traditions appearing again in Raphael's pictures in the midst of an age when Christendom had, as it were, become heathenised and was given up to outer pomp and show, just as Greek paganism was represented in the figures of its gods and honoured above all else by the Greeks in their intoxication with beauty. We see Raphael giving form to the figures of Christian tradition in an age when treasures of Greek culture which had for long centuries been buried under ruins and debris on Roman soil were unearthed, Raphael himself assisting. It is a remarkable spectacle, the Rome where Raphael found himself at this time. Let us consider what had gone before.

First there are the centuriesof the Rise of Rome,—a Rome built upon the Egoism of individual men whose aim it was above all to establish a human society in the external physical world on the foundation of what man, as the citizen of a State, was meant to signify. Then during the age of the Emperors, when Rome had reached a certain eminence, it absorbs the Greek culture which streams into Roman spiritual life. Rome subdues Greece in the political sense, but in the spiritual sense Greece conquers Rome. Greek culture lives on within Roman culture; Greek art, to the extent to which it has been imbibed by Rome, lives on there; Rome is permeated through and through by the essence of Greek culture.

But why is it that this does not remain through the following centuries as a characteristic quality of the development of Italy? Why was it that something entirely different made its appearance? It was because soon after Greek culture had streamed into the life of Rome there came the influx of that other element which impressed its signature strongly into the spiritual life that was developing on the soil of Italy, I mean, Christendom. The mission of this inward deepening of Christendom was not that of the external sense element in the Greek State, Greek sculpture, or Greek philosophy. A formless element was now to draw into the souls of men and to be laid hold of by dint of inner effort and struggle. Figures like Augustine appear,—men whose whole being is inward turned. But then,—since everything in evolution proceeds in cycles, we see arising in men who have passed through this inward deepening and whose souls have long lived apart from the beauties of external life, a yearning for beauty. Once again they behold the inner in the outer. It is significant to see the inwardly deepened life of Francis of Assisi in Giotto's pictures for those pictures express the inner experiences called forth in the soul by Christianity. And even if the inner being of the human soul speaks somewhat haltingly and imperfectly from Giotto's pictures, we do nevertheless see a direct ascent to the point where the most inward elements, the very loftiest and noblest in external form confronts us in Raphael and his contemporaries. Here we are directed once again to a characteristic quality of this soul of Raphael.

If we try to penetrate into the kind of feelings and perceptions which Raphael himself must have had, we cannot help saying to ourselves: “Yes, indeed, in the contemplation of pictures like the Madonna della Sedia, for instance, the whole way in which the Madonna with the Child, and the Child John in the foreground are here represented, makes us forget the rest of the world, forget above all that this Child in the arms of the Madonna is connected with the experiences of Golgotha. Gazing at Raphael's pictures we forget everything that afterwards proceeds as the “life of Jesus”; we live entirely in the moment here portrayed. We are gazing simply at a Mother with a Child, which in the words of Hermann Grimm, is the great Mystery to be met with in the outer world. Peace surrounds this moment; it seems as though nothing could connect with it, before or afterwards; we live wholly in the relationship of the Madonna to her Child and separate it off from everything else. Thus do the creations of Raphael appear to us,—perfect and complete in themselves, revealing the Eternal in one moment of Time.

How shall we describe the feelings of a soul able to create like this? We cannot compare them to the feelings of a Savonarola, who when he uttered his words of scorn or was speaking those uplifting, godly words to Christian devotees, was seized with inner fire and passed through the whole tragedy of the Christ. We cannot conceive that Raphael's soul burst forth suddenly like the genius of a Savonarola, or others like him; nor can we conceive that it was swayed by the so-called “fire of Christendom.” Raphael could not however have portrayed the Christian conceptions in such inner perfection if his soul had been as foreign to this “Christian fire” as may appear to have been the case.

On the other hand, the forms in all their objectivity and roundness could not have been created by a soul permeated with Savonarola's fire and winged by the experience of the whole tragedy of the Christ. Quite a different peace, quite a different Christian feeling must have flowed into the soul. And yet no soul could have created these pictures if the very essence of Christian inwardness were not living within it. Surely it is almost natural to say: here indeed is a soul which brought with it into the physical existence of the artist Raphael, the fire that pours forth from Savonarola. When we realize how Raphael brings this fire with him through birth from earlier experiences, we understand why it is so illuminating and inwardly perfect; it does not come forth as a consuming and shattering element but as the reliance of plastic creation. In Raphael's innate gifts one already feels the existence of something that in an earlier life might have been able to speak with the same fire that is later found in Savonarola. It need not astonish us to find in Raphael a soul reincarnated from an age when Christianity was not yet expressed in picture form or in Art, but from the age of its founding, the starting point of the whole mighty impulse which then worked on through the centuries.

In the attempt to understand the soul like Raphael's, it is perhaps not too bold to say something of this kind, for those who have steeped themselves again and again in the works of Raphael and have thus learnt to reverence this soul in all its depth, cannot but realize what it is that speaks from those wonder-works into which the artist poured his soul. Thus the mission of Raphael only appears in the right light when,—to use an expression of Goethe,—we seek in a life already past for the Christian fire that is revealed in the radiance of the Raphael life. Then we understand why his soul was necessarily so isolated in the world and why it was that having possessed to an intense degree in an earlier existence something of the nature of a Savonarola. It was able to refresh and renew all that had arisen in the spiritual evolution of Italy in the 16th century.

I have already described how in the age of the Rise of the Empire, the influence of Greek culture has entered into Roman development and how an inward deepening of the soul had set in. Later on, in the age of Raphael,—the Renaissance,—we see on the one side the reappearance of this old Greek culture that had long been buried under ruins and debris. We see in Rome with the remnants of this Greek culture, the reappearance of the Greek spirit that had once adorned and beautified the city; the eyes of the Roman people turn once again to the forms that had been created by this Greek spirit. On the other side, however, we see how the spirit of Plato, of Aristotle, of the Greek Tragedians, penetrates Roman life in the epoch. Once again the victory of Greek culture over the Roman world! The Greek culture which was emerging from ruins and debris and spreading over the Italian peninsula could not help having a refreshing and renewing effect on a spirit like Raphael's, who in an earlier existence was imbued, to the exclusion of everything else, with the moral-religious conception of Christendom.

If we see the moral-religious impulse of Christendom born in the gifts of Raphael, we also see that element which these gifts did not at first contain rising before his eyes in the resurrected culture of Greece. And just as the city, rising out of ruins and debris, influenced this soul more deeply than all others, so also did the spiritual yields of Greek culture that were unearthed in the hidden manuscripts. Raphael's inborn gifts, united with his “super-spiritual” devotion to everything of a cosmic nature, worked hand-in-hand with the Greek spirit that was emerging again in his age. These were the two elements that united in Raphael's soul; this is why his works express the inwardness proceeding from the post-Grecian age,—the inwardness poured by Christianity into the evolution of humanity which was expressed in outward manifestation in a world of artistic forms permeated with the purest Greek spirit.

We are faced, then, with the remarkable phenomenon of the resurrection of Greek culture within Christendom through Raphael. In him we see the resurrection of a Christendom in an age which in a certain respect represents the “Anti-Christian” element around him. In Raphael there lives a Christianity far transcending what had gone before him and rose to a much loftier conception of the world as it was at that time. Yet it was a Christianity that did not dimly and vaguely direct the attention to the infinite spheres of the Spiritual, but was concentrated into forms that delight the senses too, just as in earlier times the Greeks expressed in artistic forms their ideas of the gods united with the formless element living and weaving in the universe.

This is what we find when we try to form a general picture of Raphael, allowing one or another of his creations in all their sublime perfection yet marvellous superfluity of youth,—for Raphael died at the age of 37,—to work upon us. Not for the sake of any colorless theory, or for the purpose of building any kind of philosophical history, but as the result of a conception born out of Raphael's works themselves, it must be said that the law holding sway in the course of human spiritual life finds its true revelation in a mighty spirit such as his.

It is not correct to think of this course of spiritual life as a straight line where effect follows cause as a natural matter of fact. It is only too easy in this connection to quote one of the so-called “golden sayings” of humanity to the effect that the life and nature does not advance by leaps and bounds. Well and good, but the fact is that in a certain respect both life and nature do continually do so, as can be seen in the development of the plant from the green leaf to the blossom, from the blossom to the fruit. Here everything does indeed “develop” but sudden leaps are quite obvious.

So too is it in the spiritual life of humanity, and this, moreover, is bound up with many mysteries, one of them being that a later epoch must always have its support in an earlier. Just as the male and female must work in conjunction, so may it be said that the different “Spirits of the Age” must mutually fertilize and work together in order that evolution may proceed. Roman culture, already at the time of the empire, had to be fertilized by Greek culture in order that a new “Spirit of the Age” might arise. This new Spirit of the Age had in its turn to be fertilized by the Christ Impulse before the inwardness which we then find in Augustine and others was possible. This human soul that had been so inwardly deepened, had once again to be fertilized by the spirit of the Greek culture which, although it was doubly buried, doubly hidden, was made visible again to the eyes of man in the works of Art resting beneath the soil of Italy, and to their souls in the rediscovered literary manuscripts.

The first Christian centuries in Italy were extraordinarily uninfluenced by what lived in Greek Philosophy and Poetry. Greek culture was buried in a double grave and waited in a realm beyond as it were, for an epoch when it could once again fertilized human soul that had meantime passed through a new phase. It was buried, this Greek culture, hidden from the eyes of men and from souls who did not know that it would live and flow onwards like a river that sometimes takes a track under a mountain and is not seen until it once again comes to the surface. Hidden, outwardly from the senses, inwardly from the depths of the soul was this Greek culture and now it appeared once again. For sense perception it was brought to the light of day from out of the soil of Italy and flowed into the works of art; for spiritual perception it was not only unearthed from the ancient manuscripts; men began once again to feel in the Greek sense how the material is the manifestation of the Spiritual. They began to feel all that Plato and Aristotle had once thought.

It was Raphael in whom this Greek culture could bring forth its fairest flower because the Christ Impulse had reached a greater ripeness in his soul than in any other. This twice buried and twice resurrected Greek culture worked in him in such a way that he was able to impress into forms the whole evolution of humanity. How marvellously was he able to accomplish this in the pictures in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican! The ancient spiritual contests rise again before our eyes,—the struggles and activities of those Spirits who developed onwards during the epoch of inward deepening, who were not there in the Greek culture as it reappeared in the time of Raphael. The whole period of inward deepening was necessary before Greek culture could become visible in this particular form, and then it is painted on the walls of the Papal Chambers.

What the Greeks had conceived of in forms only, has now become inward; we see the inner struggles and conflicts of humanity itself charmed onto the walls of the Vatican in the spirit of Greece, of Greek Art and beauty. The Greeks poured into their statues their conception of the way in which the Gods worked upon the world. How this working of the Gods is experienced by man, so that he presses onwards to the foundations and causes of things,—this is what is expressed in the picture so often called “The School of Athens”. The conceptions which the human soul had learned to form of the Greek Gods is expressed in the Parnassus, with its new and significant interpretation of the Homeric gods. These are not the gods of the Iliad and Odyssey; they are the gods as perceived by a soul that had passed through the period of inward deepening.

On the other wall there is a picture that must remain indelibly in the memory of everyone, whatever their religious creed,—I refer to the fresco of the “Dispute about the Mass” which portrays the deepest inner truths. Whereas the other pictures,—in a Greek beauty of form it is true,—express the goal to be attained as the result of a certain philosophical striving, we have in the “Dispute about the Mass”, the fairest thing that the soul of man may experience. Here we find “Brahma”, “Vishnu”, “Shiva” portrayed in quite a different sense,—a proof to us that there is no need to adhere rigidly to a narrow Christian dogmatism. What can be inwardly experienced by every human soul, irrespective of creed or confession, as the “Trinity”, faces us in the symbolism,—though the portrayal is not merely “symbolical”, in the upper part of the picture. We see it again in the countenances of the Church Fathers, in their every gesture, in the whole grouping of the figures, in the wonderful coloring, indeed in the picture as a whole which portrays the inwardness of the human soul in a beauty of form permeated by the spirit of Greece.

And so the inward deepening experienced by the soul man in the course of 1500 years rises again in outer revelation. Christianity, not as the heathendom of the Roman popes and cardinals, but as the wonderful paganism of Greece with its mighty Gods, is resurrected in the works of Raphael.

Thus the soul of Raphael stands at the turning point of ages, pointing back to days of yore, containing within itself all that had developed up to the time of Christendom in the beauty of external revelation, and yet at the same time permeated by what had been brought about by the so-called “education of the human race”, namely an inward deepeningin the reincarnated soul. These wonderworks of so rare and art stand before us like a fusion of two ages, each clearly different from the other,—the pre-Grecian and the post-Grecian epochs, the one of external, the other of inner life. But the pictures also open up a glimpse into the future. Those who realize what the fusion of external beauty and the inner wisdom-filled urge of the human soul may signify, cannot but feel security and hope that this inward deepening—despite all the materiality that must develop more and more as humanity progresses,—must increase in the course of evolution and that the soul of man through successive lives will enter into greater and greater depths of inwardness.

If we now turn to literature and study not as “Art critics” or mere readers, the works of a spirit like Hermann Grimm, who tried with his whole soul to portray the workings of human fantasy, we can understand the depths of inner sympathy with which he contemplated the creations of Raphael. If we ourselves study a spirit like Hermann Grimm with this same inner sympathy, we can understand the significance of certain words of his which express what was passing through his soul when he makes a somewhat tentative utterance at the beginning of his books, in a passage dealing with the way in which Raphael is a product of all the ages. Grimm's formal descriptions of the various works of Raphael do not show us whence this particular thought has sprung. In the middle of other wider historical considerations into which Raphael is introduced, Hermann Grimm is struck by a thought which he records somewhat tentatively in these words: “When we contemplate the spiritual creations of humanity and see how they have passed over from days of yore into our own time, we may well be aware of a longing to tread this Earth once more in order to see what has been their fate as they have lived on.”

This desire for “reincarnation” expressed by Hermann Grimm in the introduction to his book on Raphael is remarkable, and moreover, deeply characteristic of the feeling living in the soul of a man of our own time,—I mean of course one who tried to penetrate into the very soul of Raphael and his connection with other epochs. Surely this makes us feel that works like those of Raphael are not merely a “natural product”; they do not only induce a sense of gratitude for all that the past has hitherto bestowed. They rather give birth to a feeling of hope, because they strengthen our belief in an advancing humanity. We feel that these works could not be what they are if progress were not the very essence of humanity. A feeling of security and hope arises when we allow Raphael to work upon us in the true sense and we are able to say: Raphael has spoken to humanity itself in his artistic creations.

In front of the Stanzas in the Camera della Segnatura we do indeed feel the transitoriness of the outer work and that those ofttimes repaired frescoes can no longer give any conception of what Raphael's magic once charmed on those walls. We realize that at some future time men will no longer be able to gaze at the original works, but we know too that humanity will never cease progressing. Raphael's works began their march of triumph when out of sheer love of them the innumerable reproductions now in existence were made. The influence of the originals live on, even in the reproductions. We can so well understand Hermann Grimm when he says that he once hung a photograph of the Sistine Madonna in his room but always felt that he had no right to go into that room; it seemed to him to be a sanctuary of the Madonna in the picture. Many will have realized that the soul is changed after they have entered livingly into some picture of Raphael, even though it is only a reproduction. True one day the originals will disappear, but may it not be said that they exist nonetheless in other worlds?

The words of Hermann Grimm in his book on Homer are quite true: “Neither can the original works of Homer truly delight us in these days for when we read the Iliad and Odyssey in ordinary life without higher spiritual faculties, we are no longer able to enter fully into all the subtleties, beauty and power of the Greek language. The originals exist no longer; yet in spite of this Homer speaks to us through his poems.” What Raphael has given to the outer world however will always remain as a living witness of the fact that there was once an age in the evolution of humanity when the mysteries of existence were indeed revealed through mighty creations, although at that time men could not penetrate into these mysteries through printed writing. In the age of Raphael men read less, but they beheld a great deal more.

Raphael's eternal message to humanity will bear witness to this epoch,—an epoch differently constituted but that will nevertheless work on through all the ages to come, because humanity is one complete organism. Thus Raphael's creations will live on in the outer course of human evolution and inwardly in the successive lives of the spirit of man, bestowing ever mightier and more deeply inward treasures.

Spiritual Science points to a twofold continuation of life, one aspect of which has been described in previous lectures here, and will be still further described, and to another spiritual life towards which we are ever striving. This spiritual life becomes our guide as we pass through the epochs of earthly existence. Hermann Grimm spoke words of truth when he expressed what his study of Raphael imparted to his feeling and perception. He says: “A time must come when Raphael's work will have long since faded and passed away. Nonetheless he will still be living in mankind, for in him humanity blossomed forth into something that has its very roots in man and will forever germinate and bear fruit.” Every human soul who can penetrate deeply enough into Raphael's soul will realize this. Indeed we can only truly understand Raphael when we can sublimate and deepen in the sense of Spiritual Science a feeling which permeated Hermann Grimm when he turned again and again to the contemplation of the painter. (In the last lecture we saw how near Hermann Grimm stood to Spiritual Science.) It will help us to understand our own relation to Raphael and the sense in which thoughts such as have been given today may grow into seeds. If we conclude with a passage from Grimm which expresses what I have really wished to say: “Men will always long to understand Raphael, the fair young painter who surpassed all others, who was fated to die early and whose death was mourned by all Rome. When Raphael's works are lost his name will nevertheless remain engraven in the memory of man.”

Thus wrote Hermann Grimm went in his own particular way he began to describe Raphael. We can understand these words and also those with which he concludes his book: “All the world will long to know of the life work of such a man for Raphael has become one of the basic elements in the higher development of the human spirit. We would fain draw nearer to him nay, we need him for our healing.”

When with the normal perception belonging to outer existence we study human life in its relation to life in the rest of the Universe, we are observing only the smallest part of world-existence that is connected with man himself. In other words, what a man can observe if he is not prepared to penetrate behind the mysteries of existence, can throw no real light upon his essential nature and being. For when we look around us with the ordinary organs of perception, with the organ of thinking, we have before us only that which does not in any way contain the deepest and most significant secrets of existence. This fact will strike us most strongly of all if we succeed in developing, even to a comparatively small extent, the capacity to view life and the world from the other side, namely, from the side of sleep. What can be seen during sleep is for the most part concealed from man's present faculty of perception. As soon as a person goes to sleep, from then until the moment of waking he really sees nothing at all. But if and when in the course of development the time comes when observation is also possible during sleep, most of what a man sees to begin with is connected with him as a human being but remains entirely hidden from ordinary observation. It is easy to understand why this is so, for the brain is an instrument of judgement, of thinking. Hence we must use or at least activate the brain when in everyday life we want to think or form judgements, but for that very reason we cannot see it. After all, the eye cannot see itself while it is actually observing something, and the same holds good of the whole organism. We bear it about with us but we cannot observe it in the real sense, we cannot penetrate it to any depth. We direct our gaze out into the world but in modern life we cannot direct this gaze into our own being.

Now the greatest mysteries of existence are not to be found in the outside world but within man himself. Let us recall what we know from Spiritual Science, namely that the three kingdoms of nature around us owe their existence to a certain retardation in evolution. Mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom are, fundamentally speaking, entities attributable to the fact that something remained backward in the evolutionary process. Normal progress in evolution has in point of fact been made only by beings who have reached the stage of human existence during the Earth period. When a man looks at the mineral, plant or animal kingdoms, he is really observing in the world that which amounts in his own existence to what he ‘remembers’, to the content of his memory of his actual experiences; he is in fact contemplating what has taken place in the past and still enjoys a certain existence. But he is not experiencing the living, invisible soul-life of the immediate present when he concerns himself only with his memory. The memory with all its mental pictures represents something that has been deposited in our living soul-existence, is fixed there. All this is, of course, to be taken metaphorically, but the memories embedded in the soul are not the direct, basic elements of its life. The same applies to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms in outer nature. The thoughts conceived by divine-spiritual Beings in the past live on in these kingdoms and they continue into present existence, just as our memory-pictures continue into our present life of soul. Hence we have in the world around us, not the thoughts of the immediately present, living, divine-spiritual Beings but the memory-pictures, the preserved thoughts of the Gods.

As to the content of our memory, this may well be of interest because with our memory we grasp a tiny corner of world-creation, we grasp what has passed over from creation into existence. Our memory-pictures are the first, the lowest, the most fugitive stage of created existence. But when we waken spiritually during sleep we see something quite different. We see nothing of what is outside in space, nothing of the processes manifesting in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms or in the external aspects of the human kingdom. But then we know that the essential realities which we are there beholding are the creative, life-giving principles working on man himself. It is actually as if everything else were blotted out and as if the Earth, observed from the viewpoint of sleep, contained nothing except Man. What would never be seen by day, in the waking state, is revealed when contemplated from the viewpoint of sleep. And it is then, for the first time, that knowledge dawns in us of the thoughts which the divine-spiritual Beings kept in reserve in order to work at the creation of man, at a level above that of mineral, plant and animal existence.

Whereas through physical perception of the world we see everything except the real being of man, through the spiritual perception exercised from the viewpoint of sleep, we see nothing except man—as a creation, together with happenings in the human kingdom—that is to say, from the viewpoint of sleep we see everything that is hidden from the ordinary perception of waking life. This accounts for the element of strangeness that is present in our vision when we are contemplating the world from the viewpoint of sleep, in other words, when we become clairvoyant, having wakened spiritually during sleep.

Now the human body—and here I mean the physical and etheric bodies together—which lies in the bed during sleep, this human body itself has a singular appearance, a characteristic of which can be expressed in words somewhat as follows. Only in the very first years of a child's life does this human body as seen during sleep show a certain similarity with the weaving life and activity in the other kingdoms of nature. The body of a grown-up person, however, or of a child from a certain age onwards, when seen from the viewpoint of sleep, reveals a constant process of decay, of destruction. Every night during sleep the forces of destruction are ever and again subjugated by the forces of growth; what is destroyed by day is repaired during the night, but the forces of destruction are always in excess. And the consequence of this fact is that we die. The forces that are renewed during the night are never the equal of those that have been used up during the waking life of day, so that in the normal life of the human being a certain surplus of destructive forces is always present. This surplus accumulates and the natural death of old age ensues when the destructive forces eclipse the upbuilding forces.

Thus when we observe the human being from the viewpoint of sleep we are actually witnessing a process of destruction—but without sadness. For the feelings we might have in our waking life about this process of destruction are absent when we see it from the viewpoint of sleep, because then we know that it is the precondition of man's true spiritual development. No being who did not destroy his body in some measure would be capable of thinking or of developing an inner life of soul. No life of soul as experienced by man would be possible if the process of growth were not opposed by processes of destruction. We therefore regard these processes of destruction in the human organism as the precondition of man's life of soul and feel the whole development to be beneficial. Looked at from the other side of life, the fact that man's body can gradually be dissolved is felt to be a blessing. Not only do things look different when viewed from the other side of life but all our feelings and ideas are different; consciousness during sleep has always before it the spectacle of the body in decline—and rightly in decline.

Study of the life between death and rebirth, however, affords a different spectacle. A certain connection with the preceding life is experienced for a time after death. All of you are aware that this is the case during the period of Kamaloka; even after that period, however, the experience of connection with the previous life continues for a time. But then, at a certain point during the life between death and rebirth, a reversal of all ordinary vision and perception takes place, a reversal far more radical than takes place during sleep-consciousness. During existence on Earth we look out from our body into the world that is not our body; from the point of time to which I have just referred, between death and the new birth, we direct hardly a gaze to the universe around us but look with all the great intensity at what may now be called the human body; we discern all its secrets. Thus between death and rebirth there comes a moment when we begin to take special interest in the human body. It is extremely difficult to describe these conditions and it can really only be done with halting words. There comes a time between death and the new birth when we feel as if the whole universe were within us and outside us only the human body. We feel that the stars and other heavenly worlds are within our being, just as here on Earth we feel that the stomach, the liver, the spleen, are within us. Everything that here, in life on Earth, is outside us becomes in that other life an inner world, and just as here we look outwards to the stars, clouds and so forth, in that other life we gaze at the human body. At which human body?

To understand this we must be clear that the new human being who at his next birth is to enter into existence, has for a long time previously been preparing his essential characteristics. Preparation for a return to the Earth begins a long time before birth or conception. The conditions of central importance here are quite different from those accepted by modern statistical biology which assumes that when a human being comes into existence through birth he simply inherits certain traits from his father, mother, grandparents and the whole line of ancestors. Quite an otherwise attractive little book about Goethe has recently been published, in which his characteristic qualities are traced back to his ancestors. Outwardly speaking, that is absolutely correct in the sense I have often indicated, namely, that there is no contradiction between a scientific fact that is correctly presented and the facts brought forward by Spiritual Science. It is just as if someone were to say: Here is a man; how comes it that he is alive? It is because he has lungs inside him and there is air outside. Needless to say, that is quite correct. But someone else may turn up and say: This man is alive for an entirely different reason. A fortnight ago he fell into the water and I jumped in after him and pulled him out; but for that he would not be alive today! Both these assertions are correct. In the same way, natural science is quite correct when it says that a man bears within himself characteristics inherited from his ancestors; but it is equally correct to attribute them to his karma and other factors. In principle, therefore, Spiritual Science cannot be intolerant; it is external natural science alone that can be intolerant, for example, in rejecting Spiritual Science. Someone may insist that he has preserved the characteristics of his own ancestors. But there is also the fact that from a certain point of time between death and rebirth a human being himself begins to develop forces which work down upon his ancestors. Long before an individual enters into physical existence there is a mysterious connection between himself and the whole line of his ancestors. And the reason why specific characteristics appear in a line of ancestors is that perhaps only after hundreds of years a particular individual is to be born from that ancestral line. This human being who is to be born, perhaps centuries later, from a line of ancestors, regulates their characteristics from the spiritual world. Thus Goethe—to take this example once again—manifests the qualities of his ancestors because he worked continuously in the spiritual world with the aim of implanting into these ancestors qualities that were subsequently to be his. And what is true of Goethe is true of every human being.

From a specific point of time between death and rebirth, therefore, a human being is already concerned with the preparation of his later earthly existence. The physical body which a man has on Earth does not by any means derive in all details from the physical lives of his ancestors, nor indeed from processes that can operate on the Earth. The physical body we bear is in itself fourfold. It has evolved through the periods of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. Its very first foundation was laid during the Old Saturn period; during the Old Sun period the etheric body was woven into this foundation; during the Old Moon period the astral body was added and then, during the Earth period, the Ego, the ‘I’. As a result of these processes the physical body has undergone many changes. Thus we have within us the transformed Saturn foundation, the transformed Sun and Moon conditions. Our physical human body is the product of transformed physical conditions. The only part of all this that is visible is what has come from the Earth; everything else is invisible. Man's physical body is visible because he takes in the substances of the Earth, transforms them into his blood and permeates them with something that is invisible. In reality we see only the blood and what has been transformed by the blood, that is to say, a quarter of the physical human body; the other three-quarters are invisible. In the first place there is an invisible framework containing invisible currents—all this exists in the form of forces. Within these invisible currents there are also the influences exercised by one current upon another. All this is invisible. And now this threefold entity is filled out, permeated by the foodstuffs that have been transformed into blood. It is through this process that the physical body becomes visible. And it is only when we come to deal with the laws governing this visible structure that we are in the earthly realm itself. Everything else stems from cosmic, not from earthly conditions and has already been prepared when, at the time of conception, the first physical atom of the human being comes into existence. Thus what is later on to become the body of the human being has been prepared in past ages without any physical connection with the ultimate father and mother. It was then that the qualities transmitted by heredity were first worked into the process of development.

The human soul looks down upon what is thus being prepared from the above-mentioned point of time onwards between death and the new birth. It is the spiritual embryo, the spiritual seed of life. This is what constitutes the soul's outer world. Notice the difference between what is seen when we wake spiritually during sleep and have clairvoyant perception of the human body undergoing a process of continual destruction, and what is seen when our own inner organism is perceived as outer world. The outer world is then the inner man in process of coming into being. This means that we are then seeing the reverse of what is perceived clairvoyantly during sleep. During sleep we feel that our inner organs are part of the outer world, but otherwise what we see is a process of destruction. From the above-mentioned time onwards between death and rebirth our gaze is focused upon a human body in process of coming into being. Man is unable to preserve any remembrance of what he has seen between death and rebirth, but the spectacle of the building of the wonderful structure of the human body is veritably more splendid than anything to be seen when we gaze at the starry heavens or at the physical world with vision dependent in any respect upon the physical body. The mysteries of existence are truly great, even when contemplated from the standpoint of our physical senses only, but far greater still is the spectacle before us when, instead of external perception of our inner organs, we gaze at the human body that is in process of coming into being with all its mysteries. We then see how everything is directed to the purpose of enabling the human being to cope with existence when he enters the physical world through birth.

There is nothing that can truly be called bliss or blessedness except vision of the process of creation, of ‘becoming’. Perception of anything already in existence is trivial compared with vision of what is in process of coming into being; and what is meant by speaking of the states of bliss or blessedness which can be experienced by man between death and rebirth is that during this period he can behold what is in process of coming into being. Truths such as these, that have been revealed through the ages and grasped by minds adequately prepared, are indicated in words to be found in the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ in Goethe's Faust:

Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt,
Umfass' euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken,
Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt,
Erfistiget mit dauernden Gedanken.

May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And Seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

(Tr. Anna Swanwick, L.L.D.,
Bohn's Standard Library)

The difference between vision in the world between birth and death and the world between death and rebirth is that in the former we behold what is already in existence and in the latter what is coming into being.

The thought might occur: Is a man, then, concerned only with the vision of his own being? No, that is not the case. For at the stage of coming into being this body is actually part of the outer world; it is the manifested expression of divine mysteries. And it is then that we realise for the first time why the physical body—which after all is only maltreated between birth and death—may be seen as the temple of cosmic mysteries, for it contains more of the outer world than is seen when we are within it during earthly existence. At that stage between death and rebirth what is otherwise outer world is our inner world; what is otherwise called Universe is now that of which we can say ‘I’—and what we then behold is outer world. We must not allow ourselves to be shocked by the fact that when we are looking at our body—or rather the body that will subsequently be ours—all other bodies which are coming into being must naturally also be there. This is of no significance because here it is simply a matter of number. In point of fact, differentiation between human bodies that can be of interest and importance to us has little significance until shortly before human beings enter into physical existence. For the greater part of the period between death and the new birth, when we are looking down upon the body that is coming into being, it is actually the case that the single bodies are differentiated only according to their number. If we want to study the essential properties of a grain of wheat, it will not make much difference whether we pick an car from a grain of wheat in a particular field or go fifty paces farther on and pick one there. As far as the essential properties are concerned, one grain is as good as another. Something similar applies when between death and rebirth we are gazing at our own body; the fact that it is our own has significance only for the future because later on we are to inhabit it on the Earth. At the moment it interests us only as the bearer of sublime cosmic mysteries and blessedness consists in the fact that it can be contemplated just like any other human body. Here we stand before the mystery of Number which will not be further considered now, but among many other relevant aspects there is this, namely, that Number—that is to say, multiple existence—cannot be regarded from the spiritual standpoint exactly as it is from the physical. What is seen in countless examples will again be seen as a unity.

Through the body we feel ourselves to be in the Universe and through what in physical life is called Universe we feel that we are living within our own Ego-hood. Such is the difference when the world is contemplated at one time from this world and at another from yonder.

For the seer, the most significant moment between death and the new birth is when the human being concerned ceases to concern himself only with his last life and begins to direct his attention to what is in process of coming into existence. The shattering impression received by the seer when, as he follows a soul between death and the new birth, this soul begins to be concerned with what is coming into being—this shattering impression is due to the fact that the soul itself at this moment experiences a severe shock. The only experience comparable with it is the coming of death in physical existence, when the human being passes over from life into being. In the other case—although it is impossible to describe it quite exactly—the transition is from something connected with a life that ended in death to experience of the process of ‘becoming’, of resurrection. The soul encounters that which bears a new life germinally within it. This is the moment of death in reverse. That is why it is so immensely significant.

In connection with these things we must turn our minds to the course of human evolution on the Earth. Let us look back to an age, for example the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch, when our souls, looking out through physical bodies, did not see the stars merely as material bodies in the heavens; spiritual Beings were connected with the stars—although this experience occurred only in certain intermediate states during the life between birth and death. The souls of men were deeply affected by this vista and in those times impressions from the spiritual world crowded in upon them. It was inevitable that in the course of evolution the possibility of beholding the spiritual should gradually cease and man's gaze be limited to the material world. This came about in the Graeco-Latin epoch, when men's gaze was diverted to an ever greater extent from the spiritual world and limited to the world of the senses. And now we ourselves are living in an era when it is becoming more and more impossible for the soul to see or detect spiritual reality in the life of the physical environment. The Earth is now dying, withering away, and man is deeply involved in this process. Thus whereas in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men still beheld the spiritual around them, they now see only what is material and actually boast of having established a science which deals only with what is physical and material. This process will go to further and further lengths. A time will come when men will lose interest in the direct impressions of the world of the senses and will concentrate attention on what is sub-material, sub-sensory. Today, in fact, we can already detect the approach of the time when men will be interested only in what is sub-sensory, below the level of the sense-world. This often becomes very obvious, for example when modern physics no longer concerns itself with colours as such. In reality it takes no account of the actual quality of colour but concerns itself only with the vibrations and oscillations below colour. In many books today you can read the nonsensical statement that a yellow colour, for example, is merely a matter of oscillations, wave-lengths. Observation here is already diverted from the quality of the colour and directed to something that is not in the yellow colour at all but yet is considered to be the reality. You can find books on physics and even on physiology today in which it is emphasised that attention should no longer be fettered to the direct sense-impression but that everything resolves itself into vibrations and wave-lengths. This kind of observation will go to further and further extremes. No attention will be paid to material existence as such and account will be taken only of the working of forces. Historically, one example suffices in order to provide empirical evidence of this. If you refer to du Bois-Reymond's lecture ‘On the Boundaries of Knowledge’, given on 14th August, 1872, you will find a peculiar expression for something that Laplace already described, the expression ‘astronomical knowledge of a material system’—that is to say when what lies behind a light- or colour-process is presented as something only brought about by mathematical-physical forces. A time will come when human souls—and some of those who are being educated in certain schools today will have the best possible foundations for this attitude in their next incarnation—will have lost real interest in the world of light and radiant colour and enquire only into the working of forces. People will no longer have any interest in violet or red but will be concerned only with wave-lengths.

This withering of man's inner spirituality is something that is approaching and Anthroposophy is there to counter it in every detail. It is not only our present form of education that helps to bring about this withering; the trend is there in every domain of life. It is in contrast to everyday life when with our Anthroposophy we want to give again to the souls of men something that fertilises them, that is not only a maya of the senses but springs forth as spirit. And this we can do when we impart to human souls knowledge that will enable them to live in the true world in their following incarnations. We have to speak of these things in a world which with its indifference to form and colour is in such contrast to what we ourselves desire; for it is particularly in regard to colours that the world of today is preparing souls to thwart what we want to achieve. We must work not only according to the concepts and ideas of everyday existence but with cosmological ideas. Hence it is not a mere liking on our part when we arrange surroundings such as those to be seen in this room¹ but it is connected with the very nature of Spiritual Science. Immediate response to what is presented to the senses must again be generated in the soul in order that active life in the spirit may begin. Now, in this incarnation, each one of us can assimilate Anthroposophy in the life of soul; and what is now assimilated is transformed into faculties for the new incarnation. Then, during his life between death and the next birth, the individual sends from his soul into his body that is coming into being influences which prepare his future bodily faculties to adopt a more spiritual view of the world. This is impossible for him without Anthroposophy. If he rejects Anthroposophy he prepares his body to see nothing but barren forces and to be blind to the revelations of the senses.

And now something shall be said that enables a seer to form a judgement of the mission of Anthroposophy.

When a seer today directs his gaze to the life between death and the new birth of souls who have already passed beyond the above-mentioned point of time and are contemplating the body that is coming into being for a further existence, he may realise that this body will afford the soul no possibility of Developing faculties for the comprehension of spiritual truths. For if such faculties are to be part of life in the physical body, they must have been implanted before birth. Hence in the immediate future more and more human beings will be devoid of the faculties needed for the acceptance of spiritual knowledge—a state of things that has existed for some time already. Before the seer there will be a vista of souls who in previous lives deprived themselves of the possibility of accepting any knowledge of a spiritual kind. In their life between death and rebirth such souls can indeed gaze at a process of development, but it is a development in which something is inevitably lacking—that is the tragic aspect. These vistas lead to a grasp of the mission of Anthroposophy. It is a shattering experience to see a soul whose gaze is directed towards its future incarnation, its future body, beholding a budding, burgeoning process and yet being obliged to realise: something will be lacking in that body but I cannot provide it because my previous incarnation is responsible. In a more trivial sense this experience may be compared with being obliged to work at something knowing from the outset that ultimately it is bound to be imperfect. Try to be vividly aware of the difference: either you can do the work perfectly and be happy in the prospect, or you are condemned from the outset to leave it imperfect.

This is the great question: are human souls in the spiritual world to be condemned in increasing numbers to look down upon bodies which must remain imperfect, or can this be avoided? If this fate is to be avoided, souls must accept during their life in physical bodies the proclamation and tidings of the spiritual worlds.

What those who make known these tidings regard as their task is verily not derived from earthly ideals but from the vista of the entire span of life, that is to say, when to life on Earth is added the period of existence between death and the new birth. Herein is revealed the possibility of a fruitful future for humanity, the possibility too of militating against the withering of the souls of men. The feeling can then be born in us that Spiritual Science must be there, must exist in the world. Spiritual Science is a sine qua non for the life of mankind in the future but not in the sense that is applicable to some other kind of knowledge. Spiritual Science imparts life, not concepts and ideas only. But the concepts of Spiritual Science, accepted in one incarnation, bring life, inner vitality, inner forcefulness. What Spiritual Science gives to man is an elixir of life, a vital force of life. Hence anyone who regards himself as belonging to a Movement for the promulgation of Spiritual Science should feel Spiritual Science to be a dire necessity in life, unlike anything that originates from other unions and societies. The realisation of being vitally involved in the necessities of existence is the right feeling to have in regard to Spiritual Science.

We have embarked upon these studies of the life between death and rebirth in order that by turning our minds to the other side of existence we may receive from there the impulse that can kindle in us enthusiasm for Spiritual Science.

• 1. Dr. Steiner recommended that restful and refreshing colours should be displayed in lecture halls and rooms used for the presentation and study of Spiritual Science, also in rooms for the sick.

(Dr. Steiner in the original first paragraph confined his remarks to the educational system in Germany in 1919 and before. They may be summarized as follows: In Germany you will be sharing the many difficulties inevitable in country schools where the equipment is defective in comparison with the town schools. On the other hand, the country schools have often better methods and have preserved many simple, good old principles, which die out as soon as modern intellectualism is introduced.—

In these circumstances you will often have to rely on your gift for invention. You will have to fall back on many a simple device where the average town schools have abundant resources. That may, indeed, animate your teaching, but it will also make the teaching of some subjects thoroughly distasteful. You will feel this particularly when you have brought the children to the end of their ninth year and can really only continue your teaching provided you have adequate materials for it. You will then have to use drawing, and simple elementary painting, as a substitute for many a thing which, in ideal conditions, you would not convey by drawing or by painting, but by a study of the thing itself.

I have made this preliminary observation because I should like to speak to you to-day about the transition in method which must be attended to just when the children have passed their ninth year. We shall only understand the curriculum at this point if we have trained ourselves in method so far that we have realized the nature of each individual child between seven and fifteen years. I should like to explain to you, as teachers, what you will have to make clear to children (in a rather different, more elementary way), just when they are between their ninth and tenth year. In some children this stage is reached even before the ninth year, with some it only occurs later, but on an average what I have to tell you to-day begins with the ninth year.

When we approach this period in their lives we shall have to feel the need to introduce natural history into the timetable in addition to the other things. Before this the children have grown familiar with natural history in narrative form, in the same way as I took in our training class¹ the relations of the animal world and the vegetable world to man. The method so far used to familiarize the child with natural history has been chiefly narrative, descriptive. But with actual natural history, before the Rubicon of the ninth year has been crossed you will hardly have started.

Now here it is of great importance to know that the development to be aimed at in the child by means of natural history teaching is radically defeated unless the teaching of natural history starts with an exposition of man. You may say with justice: “The child at nine years of age can be told little natural history about man.” But be it never so little, the little that a child can be taught about man should be taught as a preparation for all other teaching in natural history. You must know, in the meantime, that in man we have, as it were, a synthesis, a compendium, of all three natural kingdoms, that the other three natural kingdoms merge in man on a higher plane. You will not need to tell the child this, but by the course of your teaching you will have to awaken in him the feeling that man is this consummation of all other kingdoms of nature. You will succeed in this if, in speaking of man, you lay sufficient emphasis on him; if, from your manner of referring to man, you produce in the child an impression of the importance of man within the entire world-order. You will perhaps start, when the child is nine, to describe the human form in its external aspect. You will draw his attention to the principal division of man into head, trunk, and limbs, but in so doing you will be more concerned with the outer appearance, with the outward form. You will be wise to use the drawing already practised to produce in the child, even at this early age, an idea of the most outstanding features of the human form: that the head is spherical, that it is slightly flattened underneath and rests on the trunk at the flattened spot, that is, that it is a sphere poised on the trunk. It is well to give the child this idea. It awakens simultaneously the elements of feeling and will, for the child starts by seeing the head artistically, as spherical. This is important. In this way you compass the whole human being, not merely the intellect. Then you try to arouse in the child the idea that the trunk is in a sense a fragment of the head. And then, for the limbs, you awaken the idea that they are appended to the trunk and affixed to it. There is much that the child will not be able to understand, but at least call up a vivid picture that the limbs are “fixed into” the human organism. At this point you must not go any further, for the limbs are continued internally in the morphological constitution of the human being, and are there connected with the digestive and sexual organs, which are simply a continuation, in an inward direction, of the limbs. But you evoke the clear idea in the children that the limbs are affixed to the organism from outside. This gives the child a first conception of the human form.

Try further to excite in the child a first, if still elementary, primitive conception, that our gazing on the world is bound up with the spherical head. You can say to him: “You have your eyes, your ears, your nose, your mouth, in your head. You see with your eyes, you hear with your ears, you smell with your nose, you taste with your mouth. Most of what you know about the outside world you know through your head.” If you develop this thought further the child derives from it a conception of the formation and function of the head. Then you try to produce in him a conception of the trunk by saying: “What you taste with your tongue enters your trunk as food; what you hear with your ears goes into your trunk as sound.” It is well with children to evoke an idea of the organic system of the whole being. If you then suggest to the child that he has the respiratory organs in the chest and breathes through these, that in the lower part of the body he has the stomach with which he digests food, it is an excellent plan. And it is moreover a good thing to let the child reflect on how the human limbs serve, as feet for walking on, and as hands for free movement and work. It is well at the same time to awaken in the child an understanding for the different services rendered to the human body by the feet, which carry it and make it possible for the human being to work in the different places where he has to live—and, in contrast to this, by the arms and hands, with which the human being does not need to carry his own body but can work freely. While his feet stand on the ground, his hands can be extended in the air to work. In short, the child's attention must be clearly directed to the essential difference between human legs and feet, and human arms and hands. The difference between the service performed by the feet and legs, in carrying the human body, and that performed by the hands and arms in working, not for the human body but for the world—this difference between the egoistical service of the feet and the selfless service of the hands in labouring for the human world outside, ought to be impressed on the child early and through the feelings.

Thus we ought to teach the child, by evolving ideas from form, as much as possible about man from natural history. Only then should you go on to the rest of natural history, and first of all to the animal kingdom. Here it would be a good plan to bring to the lesson—you will have to contrive this in some way or other—a cuttle-fish, a mouse, a lamb, or even a horse, something or other from the mammals, and then, in addition, perhaps, an example of a human being—now you ought to have enough specimens of human beings: you need only present one of the pupils to the others as a human object! You must be clear as to how to proceed. You will try to familiarize the class first of all with the cuttle-fish. You will tell them how it lives in the sea; you will describe, by studying or drawing it, its appearance; in a word, you will make the children acquainted with the cuttle-fish. They will feel, while you describe the cuttle-fish to them, that you are describing it in a particular way. Perhaps only later, when, for instance, you describe the mouse, the children will notice how differently you treat the subject of the mouse from that of the cuttle-fish. You must try to develop this artistic feeling in the children, which, from your different procedure in describing the cuttle-fish and the mouse, will be at the same time a feeling of the difference between these two creatures. With the cuttle-fish you must suggest how it feels its immediate surroundings: if it scents danger in its surroundings it at once emits its dark juice and envelops itself in an aura, to divert the attention of the approaching enemy. You can tell the child many things which help him to understand that the cuttle-fish, when protecting itself from its enemies, or, too, when feeding, always acts like the human being when he eats or looks at something. When the human being eats, he has a taste—a feeling which is conveyed to him through his tongue, through his taste-organ. Again, the human eye feels the constant need to look into light, and, when it does so, can adjust itself to light. Because the taste-organs of the human being desire to taste, they absorb what serves to nourish him. So describe the cuttle-fish in such a way that the child feels from your description the sensitiveness of the cuttle-fish, its fine perception of things surrounding it. You will have to work out for yourself an artistic description of the cuttle-fish so that the children really grasp it in this artistic description.

Then describe the mouse. Describe how it has a pointed snout, how on this pointed snout there can be seen very strong whiskers, how, besides, you can see the gnawing-teeth protruding from the lower and upper jaws; describe the disproportionately large ears of the mouse, then come to its cylindrical body and to the fine velvety growth of hair. Then go on to describe the limbs, the smaller forefeet, the slightly larger hind-feet, which enable the mouse to leap. Then notice its tail, covered with scales, scurf, and less hairy. At the same time show the child that when the mouse is climbing or grasping something by its fore-feet, it supports itself on its tail, which it can use very skilfully because it is not hairy but scurfy, and therefore inwardly more sensitive. In a word, you again try to describe the mouse to the child by building up its physical form artistically. And you will succeed in this artistic construction if you evoke in the child a notion of how, for all the functions for which the cuttle-fish does not need limbs grown on to the body, the mouse needs limbs grown on. The cuttle-fish is sensitive in itself, in its own body; consequently, it does not need such big ears as the mouse. Its relation to its surroundings allows it to imbibe nourishment without the help of the pointed snout which the mouse has. Nor does it need such large grown-on limbs as the mouse, because it can use its own body to propel itself forward in the water. Sum up in artistic form what you are trying to show the child: that the cuttle-fish expresses itself less through its limb-organs than through its body.

I have to describe all this to you first so that you can translate it into teaching, for you must first be conscious of what you must later introduce less consciously into artistically prepared lessons. In short, describe the mouse so that you gradually produce in the child the feeling that the mouse is completely adapted to serve the life of its trunk through its limbs. Then, too, make clear to the child that, after all, the lamb is so organized that its limbs serve its body, and the horse, when it lives wild, is organized so that with its limbs it can serve its body. For instance, show clearly why the mouse has such very pointed teeth; these teeth have to be sharp and pointed, or else the mouse would not be able to gnaw at objects, as it must, to nourish itself, and even to bore holes, in which it then lives. But in this way it is constantly wearing away its teeth. But the teeth of the mouse are arranged—like our nails—always to grow new again from inside, and the tooth-substance is constantly being renewed. Here you see, particularly with the teeth, which are, of course, also organs appended to the rest of the organism, that they are designed to enable the body of the mouse to live.

In this way you have given the child a profound, if only rudimentary impression, through the feelings, of the cuttlefish, and you have also evoked in him a clear idea of the structure of the mouse. And now you return to the structure of the human being. You make clear to the child that if we now look for the ways in which man most resembles a cuttlefish, curiously enough we are brought to the human head. The part of man which most resembles the cuttle-fish is the head. It is prejudice which causes people to imagine that the head is their most perfect organ. The head is indeed very complex in formation, but it is really only a transformed cuttle-fish—I mean, a transformed lower animal, for the relation of the human head to its surroundings is that of the lower animals to theirs. It is in his trunk that man most resembles the higher animals: the mouse, lamb, horse. But, whilst the cuttle-fish can maintain its entire existence by means of its head, man cannot do this. The head must be poised on the trunk and rest upon it; it cannot move freely. But the cuttle-fish, which is really all head and nothing else, can move freely in the water. You must at least succeed in giving the children a feeling of how the lower animals are heads which can move freely, though they are not so perfect as the human head. And you must awaken in the children a feeling for the fact that the higher animals are chiefly trunk, and are endowed by nature with refined organs chiefly for the satisfaction of the needs of the trunk, which is much less true of man; as far as his trunk goes he is more imperfectly formed than the higher animals.

You must then awaken in the child a feeling of the external feature in which man is the most perfect of all creatures. That is, his limbs. If you trace the higher animals up to the ape, you will find that the front limbs are not so very different from the hind limbs, and that the four limbs as a whole serve essentially to bear the trunk, to propel it forwards, etc. The wonderful differentiation of the limbs into feet and hands, into legs and arms, occurs for the first time in man, and is marked by the tendency to stand upright in his carriage and even in his structure. No animal species is so perfectly formed as man, from the point of view of the inter-organization of the limbs.

Then introduce a quite graphic description of the human arms and hands: how they have been relieved of the weight of carrying the body, how the hands do not come in contact with the earth for the purposes of the body, but how they are transformed so as to be able to grasp objects, so as to perform labour. And then go on to the will-aspect, to the moral aspect. Produce in the child, through the feelings, not theoretically, this vivid idea: for instance, you take up chalk to write with; you can only take up the chalk because your hand is designed to perform labour, because it no longer has to carry the body. The animal cannot be lazy with its arms because it cannot really be said to have any. When people talk of apes as being four-handed it is only an incorrect way of talking, for the ape actually has four legs and feet shaped like arms, and not four “hands.” For when, after all, animals are formed to climb, their climbing is a function which serves the body, and their feet are shaped like hands so that they can support the body in climbing. For the human body, hands and arms are freed from the task of supporting it, expressing thus the most beautiful symbol of human freedom. In fact, no more beautiful symbol could exist for it than our hands and arms. Man can both work with his hands and arms for others and for the support of his own body.

By this description of the cuttle-fish, the mouse, the lamb, the horse, and the human being himself, you gradually awaken in the child, by way of the feelings, a clear conception that the lower animals have the character of head, the higher animals of trunk, and the human being of the limbs. It only inculcates man with conceit to teach him perpetually that he is the most perfect creature in the world by virtue of his head. On hearing this he instinctively derives the notion that man is perfect through idleness, through laziness. For the human being knows instinctively that his head is a lazy-bones, that it rests on his shoulders, that it does not want to move itself through the world, that it lets itself be carried by the limbs. It is not true that man is the most perfect creature because of his head, because of his lazy-bones of a head, but because of his limbs, which are a part of the structure and work of the world. You make man in his inmost heart more moral if you do not teach him that he is perfect through his lazy head, but through his active limbs. For the creatures which are only head, like the lower animals, have to propel their own heads, and the creatures which only use their limbs in the service of the trunk are, compared with man, the less perfect creatures because their limbs are less fashioned for free use than are those of the human being. They are burdened from the start by a certain purpose; they invariably serve the body. In man, one pair of limbs, his hands, is completely liberated into the sphere of human freedom. You will only give man a sound experience of the world if you awaken in him the idea that he is perfect on account of his limbs, not on account of his head. You can do this very well by the comparative description of the cuttle-fish, the mouse or the lamb or the horse, and the human being. At the same time you will notice that you should never really omit the human being in describing anything in the natural kingdom, for in man you see all the activities of nature combined. We should always have man in the background when we are describing anything in nature. That is why, after reaching the child's ninth year, and going on to teach natural history, we should take man as our starting-point.

In the study of childhood it is found that something happens just between the ninth and tenth year, though it is not so evident as at an earlier stage. When the child begins to move his limbs a little more consciously than before and to walk about, even if it is unsteadily, when he begins to move his arms and hands with a purpose, he is just beginning to be partially aware of his Ego, and will later be able to remember as far back as this moment, but no further. If you notice how normally (there are individual exceptions) the human being begins at this age to say “I,”—or perhaps a little later, because the activity of speech, that is, the will-element, must first have developed—you can see that the emergence in man of self-consciousness is distinctly perceptible at this stage, whereas the change is not so evident which takes place in the human consciousness round about the ninth year. At this point self-consciousness increases; you notice that the child understands much more intelligently what is said to him about the difference between man and the world. Before the Rubicon of the ninth year the child is far more merged in his surroundings than after this age. He then finds himself more separated from his surroundings. For this reason you can now begin to talk to the child a little about things of the soul, for which he would have shown little understanding before he reached the age of nine. When he is nine his self-consciousness both deepens and increases.

Anyone with a feeling for such things will observe that at this age the child begins to use words much more inwardly than before, to become much more aware that words arise from his inner nature. Nowadays, when people are much more concerned with outer than inner nature, far too little attention is shown to this sudden change in the ninth or tenth year. But the teacher must pay attention to it. For his reason you will be able to address the child from a quite different background of feeling when you introduce him—not before this stage has been reached—to natural history, which must always compare man with the other kingdoms of nature. Whereas before, when the individual was more merged in nature, you could only speak to the child of the things of natural history in the form of stories, now that he is past nine years of age you can show him the cuttle-fish, the mouse, the lamb, or the horse, and the human being, and talk with him of their relationship to each other and to man. Before this stage you would stumble on something quite unintelligible to the child if you were to connect the functions of the head with the cuttle-fish, or the functions of the trunk with the mouse, or if you were to seek the distinguishing perfection of man in the human limbs. And now you are to use the very material offered to you by the child's age, for when you teach natural history in the way I have described, you plant in the child's soul moral concepts which are firm and strong. Moral concepts are not instilled into the child's soul by appealing to the reason, but by appealing to the feelings and the will. But you will be appealing to the feeling and the will in directing the child's thoughts and feelings to the way in which he himself is only fully human if he employs his hands in work for the world, and how this makes him the most perfect creature; further, how the human head is related to the cuttle-fish, and the human trunk to the mouse, sheep, or horse. Through feeling himself duly placed like this in the natural order the child absorbs feelings by which he will later know himself to be fully man.

You can implant in the child's soul this quite particularly important moral element if you take pains to arrange your teaching of natural history so that the child has no suspicion that you intend to teach him anything moral. But you will never implant so much as a trace of morality in the children if your teaching of natural history is independent of man and describes the cuttle-fish for itself, the mouse or the lamb or the horse for itself, and even man for himself; these descriptions would simply be verbal-definitions. You can only describe man if you build him up from all other organisms and activities of nature. Schiller admired in Goethe his naive conception of nature, in the light of which he considered the human being composed of all the single entities of nature, as Schiller states in the beautiful letter which he wrote to Goethe at the beginning of the nineties in the eighteenth century. I have again and again brought this to your notice because it contains something which should permeate our civilization and our culture: the consciousness of the synthesis of all nature in man. Goethe is repeatedly expressing it like this: “Man is placed at the summit of nature and feels there that he is a whole nature;” or again: “The whole world reaches within man its own consciousness.” If you go through my writings you will find such utterances of Goethe's quoted again and again. I have not quoted them because they struck me as pleasing, but because such ideas should become part of the consciousness of our age. That is why I am always so grieved that one of the most important of educational writings has really remained quite unknown, or at least unfruitful in the actual sphere of education. Schiller, as a matter of fact, learnt good educational theory from Goethe's naive self-education, and introduced this educational theory into his work Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (“Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”). These letters contain a tremendous wealth of educational theory; one only has to think out its implications to their logical conclusion. Schiller arrived at his discoveries, remember, through Goethe's vision. Just recall how Goethe, a product of civilization and yet rooted in nature, from his very earliest childhood opposed the educational principles in force around him. Goethe could never isolate the human being from his surroundings. He always took man in his setting of nature and felt himself, as a human being, one with nature. That is why, for instance, he took no pleasure in piano lessons as long as they were given to him in no kind of connection with the human being. He only began to take an interest in piano lessons when he was shown the function of the different fingers, when he heard: “That is the thumb; that is the index-finger, etc.,” and when he knew how the thumb and the index-finger are applied in playing the piano. He always wanted to see the whole being rooted in the whole of nature. And again—I have mentioned this before, too—at the age of seven he built his own altar to nature, taking for the purpose his father's music desk, laying minerals upon it, and plants from his father's rock-garden, and on top putting a little fumigating candle; then he caught up the beams of the morning sun in a burning-glass and offered a sacrifice to the great God of nature—a rebellion against what people wanted him to learn. Goethe was always a person who wanted to be educated as people ought to be educated now. And because Goethe was like this, after first struggling hard with himself towards that end, he won Schiller's great admiration and inspired in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters on education what you know to be the contents of these letters.

My old friend and teacher, Schröer, once told me that he had to sit on a school commission to examine prospective teachers, but he had not been able to prepare the work demanded of the future teachers in the examination. So he questioned them on Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. They had learnt from A to Z everything about Plato and all else that was to be known, but when Schröer began to question them on Schiller's Aesthetic Letters they revolted! And all over Vienna the tale spread: Schröer had tried to examine the teachers on Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, while obviously no one on earth can make anything of them.

But if we wish to turn to many a healthy and sound, if rudimentary suggestion, we have to go back to Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education, and also to Jean Paul's educational doctrines in Levana. This, too, contains very many practical hints for teaching. In recent times there have been many improvements, but it cannot be said that the potential influence of Schiller's Aesthetic Letters and Jean Paul's educational doctrines have really entered the educational system of our days. Things are often turned according to personal points of view.

I have now tried to give you an idea of how it is possible to learn from a certain age in childhood, roughly the ninth year, the educational methods which ought to be adopted at this age. In the next lecture we shall see how the child's fourteenth and fifteenth years should be employed to give the child what satisfies the needs of his nature at that age. In this way we shall come near to winning insight into how the whole world appears to children between seven and fifteen years of age and into the obligations of the educator and teacher. From this insight will arise our curriculum. In these days people ask abstractly: “How are we to develop the child's latent possibilities?” But we must first know them, if all the oft-repeated phrases about teaching according to the “development of the child's possibilities” are to have any concrete meaning.

• 1. See No. 3 of the sixth year of the periodical, The Art of Education.

Dr. Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen. Have you thought of something else you would like to ask me?

A question is asked concerning the relationship between human breathing and the pulse. Wouldn't this have been completely different in earlier times?

Dr. Steiner: You mean in the human being himself? Well, let's quickly review how things stand today. We have on the one hand the breathing. Man is connected to the outer world through breathing, because he is constantly inhaling and exhaling air. It can thus be said that man today is constituted in such a way that he absorbs the healthy air and expels the air that would make him ill. The expelled air contains carbon dioxide. The circulation of the blood, on the other hand, is an internal process in which the blood flows through the body itself. I shall not discuss whether it is accurate to say that the blood circulates in the body, but the force of the blood circulates through the body. Now, although it varies slightly in each individual, a person takes approximately eighteen breaths per minute. As for the blood, the pulse rate is seventy-two beats per minute. So, one can say that breathing is related to blood circulation in an adult today in such a way that his pulse is four times faster than his breathing.

Now, we must be clear what is really involved in the human being when breathing is considered in relation to his blood circulation. First, we must be clear that man breathes chiefly through the lungs—the nose, mouth, and lungs—but this is only his primary way of breathing. Indeed, with the human being, functions primarily carried out by one part of his body are also actually carried out to a lesser degree by his whole body. Hence, air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of his skin. Man therefore also breathes through his skin, and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin's breathing. If, for example, the holes of his skin, called pores, are clogged, the skin absorbs too little air. Something is not right with the skin's breathing. Man's skin must always be in such shape that he can breathe through it.

Now, in the case of human beings, all outer processes can, as it were, also be found to exist inwardly. Making a sketch of a human being, we can say that breathing occurs through the entire surface of the skin but most particularly through the lungs in eighteen breaths per minute. All this, however, requires a counterbalance in the human being, and something quite interesting makes its appearance. Man cannot breathe properly through his lungs nor through his skin, but especially not through his skin, if this counterbalance is not present.

You know that a magnet has not only a north pole, a positive pole, but also a south pole, a negative pole. If man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in the liver. We have already familiarized ourselves with the liver from various standpoints; now we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung activity balance each other. One could say that the liver's constant purpose is to bring into order internally what man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for.

Consider a disorder of the liver that may occur at any time, even in older people. It is quite difficult to diagnose when the liver is not in order, and frequently one is unaware of it because the liver is the organ, the single organ, that doesn't hurt when something is wrong with it. Man can suffer for a long time from a liver ailment without knowing of it. No one can diagnose it, because there is no pain. This is because the liver is related to the most outer aspects of the human being, the skin and lungs. Internally, the liver is really something like an outer world. Man does not sense it within when a chair is broken, nor does he sense it when the liver is being destroyed. It is as if the liver were a segment of the outer world. In spite of this, it is of terrible importance to the human being.

Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. You see, from the heart, the veins reach everywhere into the lungs and the skin. Through quite delicate blood vessels, the blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. The following now takes place. If the liver's function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person becomes jaundiced. Jaundice occurs in man when too much bile is produced, when, therefore, the activity of the liver is too strong. Jaundice therefore results when overactivity of the liver pervades the body.

What happens, however, when the liver's activity is too weak? The blood's activity on the surface of the skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn't behaving properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the result. This is the connection between smallpox and the blood circulation, which, due to a defective liver, has something wrong with it.

The blood reaches everywhere where I have drawn a line in blue (see sketch); there is also a red line signifying that oxygen from the air reaches everywhere. The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact there with the breathing, and whether this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity on the body's surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active on his surface area, and this activity causes inflammation everywhere.

What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What is really accomplished through cowpox vaccine? The vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is otherwise compensated for on the body's surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on the surface thus is prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on inoculation, because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body.

Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether different, it is basically the same response as that I explained concerning smallpox. Imagine that a person is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison now enters the victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the basis for death. You know that a man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this?

Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to this spot, and I must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sensed by my spinal cord as though I had received a shock. This is how it affects my spinal cord. Since my body must suddenly develop such extreme activity because of the dog's bite, my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill.

What must now be done to offset this shock? You know that when a person freezes in horror, he can be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must first get to the spine. This can be accomplished by giving a rabbit rabies. It is then killed and its spinal cord removed and dried for approximately twenty minutes at about 20° C. This substance is then injected into the rabid person.

Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal cord of the rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time—about fifteen minutes—before becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It goes into his own spinal cord, which thereby suffers a countershock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps out of it. In the case of rabies, man's spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the rabid rabbit's dehydrated spinal cord.

You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place. These are some of the complicated relationships of the human organism.

Now, if you consider respiration and the activity of the blood, these two processes are related in today's adult in a ratio of one breath to four pulse beats. The blood stream flows faster; after three pulsations man inhales, and after three more, he inhales again. This is how air goes through his body. The blood moves through the body: one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale; one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale again. This goes on throughout our body.

All this produces carbon dioxide. Now, most of this carbon dioxide is exhaled, but if all of it were exhaled, we would be the worst dopes. A part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened. The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide. Through inhaling air it therefore rises up continuously in me and supplies my nervous system.

What does this mean? Nothing other than this, that since carbon dioxide is a poison, I continually require a poison in my system for my thinking. This is a most interesting point. Unless a continuous poisoning process took place in me, with which I must continuously struggle, I could not use my nervous system. I would be unable to think. Man is really in the position of having constantly to poison himself by inhaling air, and by means of the poison in the breath, he thinks. Carbon dioxide constantly streams into my head, and with this poisonous air I think.

Today, man simply breathes air. The air contains oxygen and nitrogen. Man absorbs the oxygen, omitting the nitrogen.

When we study man today, the following is discovered. The human head today requires carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a combination of carbon that is produced in the human body and oxygen. Man omits the nitrogen contained in the air. If one studies the human head today, one discovers that this human head is so organized that it can think quite well because of the absorption of carbon dioxide and therefore of carbon and oxygen. This human head, through the carbon dioxide, which is a poison and rises fleetingly to the human head from the organs, is constantly exposed to damage. It is as if we were always to inhale a bit of carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. You really always inhale a bit of carbon dioxide into your head. This is of great significance, because we constantly take in something that actually destroys life. This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs.

Studies of the head show that in its present condition it can make use of this poison, carbon dioxide, by repeatedly sustaining a little damage and then restoring itself through sleep, then again being damaged, again restoring itself, and so on. In very ancient times, however, man did not as yet have a head. It came about through evolution. Man would never have acquired a head if he had inhaled only carbon dioxide. The fully evolved head can tolerate carbon dioxide, but if man had always inhaled carbon dioxide, he would never have acquired a head. Therefore, he must have breathed something else long ago. Now we must ask ourselves what man used to breathe. If all human evolution is studied in detail, one discovers that during embryonic development in the womb, the human being uses something other than mere carbon dioxide. It is an interesting fact that in the mother's womb man is almost all head. The rest of the embryo, if you study it in the early stages, is minute (see sketch) and still is almost all part of the head; the rest is terribly small. The whole embryo is then surrounded by the walls of the womb.

You see, man is almost all head, but he must still develop, and for that he requires nitrogen. He requires nitrogen, and this is supplied by the mother's body. If man did not have access to nitrogen in the womb, a substance he later rejects in the air, not allowing it to enter him, it would be impossible for him to develop. We would not acquire a proper head if it were not for nitrogen. In an early stage of evolution, when his head was only beginning to develop, man must not have absorbed oxygen but nitrogen. The essential elements for man must, therefore, have been carbon and nitrogen instead of today's carbon and oxygen.

Just as man inhales oxygen today, he once must have inhaled carbon combined with nitrogen—in other words, he must have absorbed nitrogen. But what is carbon plus nitrogen? It is cyanogen, and when it is present as an acid, it is hydrocyanic acid. This means that conditions must have been such at one time that man did not absorb oxygen from the air but nitrogen, with which he internally produced cyanogen, an even stronger poison. This even stronger poison is what has enabled man to think today with carbon dioxide. At that time he fashioned the organs with an even stronger poison.

Going back in time, we come to a point in ancient evolution when, unlike today, man produced cyanogen, and instead of exhaling carbon dioxide as he does today, he exhaled hydrocyanic acid, a much stronger poison. Thus, from man and his present-day respiration, we go back to an ancient condition in which the air was filled with hydrocyanic acid just as it is today permeated with carbon dioxide.

In 1906, I gave lectures in Paris, and because of various suggestions from the listeners I was prompted to tell them that even today there are cosmic bodies that possess the ancient cyanogen atmosphere rather than that of the earth. If the earth were viewed from the moon or particularly from Mars, one would be able to perceive traces of carbon dioxide everywhere in the earth's atmosphere by means of the spectroscope. Had the ancient earth been viewed from space when man was only beginning to acquire his head, however, one would have perceived traces of hydrocyanic acid instead of carbon dioxide. To this day there are cosmic bodies that have retained the earth's condition of former ages; these are the comets. The comets are what the earth was like when man acquired his head. Hence, they must contain cyanogen. I said in 1906 that the main characteristic of comets is that they contain cyanogen; if one studies a comet with a spectroscope, one must see lines of cyanogen. Soon after this a comet appeared; they only appear rarely. I was in Norway at the time, and there was much talk about it—curiously enough, people actually observed the cyanogen line.

People always say that when anthroposophy becomes aware of something that is based on spiritual insight, one should be able to prove it afterward. There are indeed numerous things that have later been proved. When proof arises, however, people overlook or suppress it. The truth is that, on the basis of this change in the breathing process, I stated prior to its having been observed with the spectroscope that comets contain cyanogen. This is the same substance that man needed in order to acquire his head at a time when the earth was still in a comet-like condition.

Now, imagine for a moment that I were to breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen; something other than human blood would naturally arise. As you know, the blood that has become blue combines in the lungs with oxygen and becomes red. Now, when man inhales oxygen he absorbs oxygen into his blood; when he inhales nitrogen, he absorbs the nitrogen into his blood. The way our blood functions today in a healthy person, it never contains uric acid, but if even a little nitrogen is absorbed into the blood, if something is only slightly amiss with the human being, uric acid appears in the blood.

In the age when man acquired his head, his blood consisted completely of uric acid, since nitrogen continuously combined with the blood instead of oxygen. His blood was only uric acid. As an embryo today, the human being swims in the amniotic fluid and thus has uric acid readily accessible. Uric acid is everywhere in his environment. In this early state the embryo needs uric acid for its development. In the past, when man was acquiring his head and exhaled hydrocyanic acid, he swam around in uric acid. In other words, he made use of cyanic acid, combining nitrogen and carbon and inwardly producing uric acid. Hydrocyanic acid surrounded him everywhere. The world was once in a condition in which uric and hydrocyanic acids actually played as big a role as water and air do today.

Even today, living creatures exist that can survive on something other than oxygen. There are, for example, creatures that are minute, since everything that was formerly large has become small today. The tiniest, smallest living creatures were once giants. But there are living creatures that cannot tolerate oxygen at all. They avoid oxygen and absorb sulphur instead. They are the sulphur bacteria that live by means of sulphur. This shows that oxygen is not the only necessity for life. Likewise, man didn't need oxygen to stay alive in earlier ages but instead required nitrogen, and through that he was formed. Man was fashioned during a comet-like formation of the earth, and the relationship between breathing and the blood was completely different in those earlier ages.

Let's now consider what we have learned in connection with the world itself. If we focus on the fact that we take one breath to four pulse beats—one, two, three, breath of air; one, two, three, breath of air—the same rhythm can also be found in nature: spring, summer, fall, winter. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter. Here we have the correlation between what's outside in the universe and what you have within man. So we can say, if we behold the entire earth, that our inner rhythm can be found outside on earth as well. People pay no heed at all to these circumstances regarding the earth.

You see, there is snow outside now. In summer there is no snow. What does that really mean? What is outside as snow now you find at other times as water. Water is completely dependent on the earth, and man must certainly sense that. The water around here in the Jura mountains contains calcium. Everything within the earth is also in the water. People who are especially sensitive to this develop goiters from what is contained in the water in the Jura region. The water is dependent on the earth. In spring, it begins to become dependent, it is most dependent in summer, and it ceases somewhat to be dependent in fall. In winter—well, gentlemen, the earth does not form the snow! The snow, consisting of myriads of delicate crystals, is formed by the universe, from out of the cosmos. Unlike in summer, the earth in winter doesn't abandon itself to the warmth of the world but rather to the formative forces. The water turns away from the earth in winter and receives the coldness of universal space. So we have discovered an interesting rhythm in the universe. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter, and the water no longer directs itself to the earth but to the universe. Again, one, two three—spring, summer, fall; then four: the water follows the universe, no longer the earth.

Now compare this rhythm with the blood and the breathing process. One, two, three pulse beats, the blood is directed to the body's interior; four: breath of air, the blood is directed to what is outside. Here you have the same activity with the earth as in the human being. If you compare the blood with the earth's water, the blood directs itself accordingly. The first three pulse beats are inwardly a little like spring, summer, and fall; four, now comes earthly winter, and aha, we breathe, now comes the breath, just as with the earth itself. Inwardly, man is attuned completely to the earth's breathing process. It can therefore be said that what runs its course in one year in the earth takes place quickly, eighteen times in one minute, in man. What takes a year for the earth takes place eighteen times in one minute in man. Man actually is always filled with this rhythm, but it is much faster than with the earth. When we consider the earth in the light of our discussion today, we realize that the condition of the earth was formerly quite different, and it comes to acquire for us a certain similarity to the comets. Now, when a comet disintegrates, the pieces, which contain iron, fall to earth as meteors. An entire comet, which falls to earth when it splinters, therefore contains iron.

This is also something that we still contain within ourselves. When our corpses disintegrate, the iron from our blood is left behind. Here we have retained something of our ancient comet nature, and we actually act as comets do. We have iron in our blood through developing the ancient cyanogen activity in ourselves—that is, our external bodies, the blood of which it may no longer enter though it was once allowed to. This means nothing more than that today we withdraw our inner spring, summer, fall, and winter from the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. Our dependency on the outer seasons has become minimal.

You need not go terribly far back into the past, however, to find that things had a totally different character then. Although things are changing now, if one grew up in a country village as I did, one knows that there used to be people who were very dependent on spring, summer, fall, and winter; there are fewer now because everything is becoming more uniform in the world. One could even notice it in their whole life of soul. They were in a totally different mood in summer than in winter. When they encountered you in winter they were always a little outside their beings; they were much more like apparitions than people. They came into their own only in summer and then were really themselves. This means that they were dependent upon the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter.

This demonstrates to us what man was like in earlier ages. When he breathed nitrogen instead of oxygen, he was completely dependent on the outer surroundings; he participated in the pulse beat and breathing of his comet body, which in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, I called the ancient Moon. The ancient Moon was a sort of comet-like body, and, as a participant in it, man was a part of a large organism that also breathed. It was as if man today were suddenly to have one pulse beat in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and would then take a breath in winter, and so on. This is the way man was when he breathed nitrogen; he was a member of the entire earthly organism.

So, you see, we come from a completely different direction and again reach the point we arrived at earlier when we considered the megatheria, sauria, and so forth. We arrive at the same point by a different path.

This is the remarkable thing about spiritual science. Ordinary present-day scientific activity begins at some point and proceeds step by step, trotting along in a straight line without knowing where it is going. That is not the case with anthroposophical science. It can proceed in one or another direction from various points of departure, but just as a hiker always reaches the same summit regardless of where he starts at the foot of a mountain, so anthroposophy always arrives at the same goal. This is what is so remarkable. The more one honestly examines the world, the more the individual considerations fit together into a unity.

We have an example of this in exploring your question today. We proceeded from matters quite different from the earlier subjects, yet once again we arrived at the conclusion that man had his rhythm within the entire earthly organism when it was still comet-like; only now has he made it his own. Man existed as part of the earth just as he does today when he is still a germ within his mother. There he also takes part in her pulse and breathing activity.

Can it be proven that man today takes part in his mother's pulse and breathing activity? This is proven by what I said before, that smallpox develops from the blood's activity coming into connection with the breathing activity. This is interesting. If man does share the maternal blood and breathing activities while in the womb, a child in the womb should contract smallpox if the mother has it, and it does. When a pregnant woman contracts smallpox, her unborn child already has smallpox in the womb, because the child takes part in everything.

In the same way, when the earth was still the mother of the human being—although the earth was then a kind of comet—he participated in all that the earth underwent. His pulse beat and breathing were that of the earth's pulse beat and breathing. It therefore can be said that it is most remarkable when, if we go back into ancient times when human beings knew instinctively and were not clever as they are today, they always called the earth “mother”—Mother Earth and so forth. They spoke of Uranus, meaning the universe, and Gaea, the earth, and they viewed Uranus as the father in the universe outside an11 the earth as the mother.

So one can say that the part of the human organism in which the child develops, the womb, is really like a miniature earth that has remained behind and is still in the ancient comet-like state.

In that ancient comet-like state, man's breathing and that of the earth were together a breathing in the great universe. Not only did man absorb nitrogen, but the whole comet-earth received the nitrogen from the universe. Breathing in that age was also a form of fertilization. Only the process of fertilization in humans and animals remains of that today. In fertilization, therefore, something of the nitrogen breathing process still takes place, because the most important element in the human sperm is nitrogen. This is transmitted to the female organism and, as a nitrogen stimulus, brings about what oxygen could never accomplish, that is, the formation of the organs that must be present later when man is exposed to oxygen. So you see that we actually receive our breathing from the universe.

Now, let's try exploring something else. You see, the year's course is followed somewhat in the course of the day: 18 breaths per minute; 60 times that much per hour = 1,080; in 24 hours, one day, we have 24 times that much = 25,920. Hence, we take 25,920 breaths per day.

Now let me figure something else for you—the number of days in an average human life. As you know, the year has about 360 days. The average number of years a man lives is between 71 and 72. 72 times 360 makes 25,920. We take as many breaths per day as we have days in our human life. But a day, too, is in a certain sense a breathing. One day is also a breathing. When I go to sleep, I exhale my soul, and I draw it back in again when I awake: exhalation, inhalation. I exhale the spiritual and inhale it again. This rhythm in my breathing I therefore have throughout my life on earth in sleeping and waking. This is most interesting: 25,920 breaths per day, 25,920 days in the average human life.

Now we turn and look at the sun. When you observe the sun in spring today, it rises in the sign of Pisces, but it does not rise every year in spring in exactly the same spot. On March 21 in the spring of next year the sun will have moved a fraction. Year by year it moves a little. The point where it rises moves constantly and eventually comes full circle. Therefore, if the sun rises in the constellation of Pisces today—the astronomers think it is still in Aries where it was formerly, because they have not yet caught up with their notations—then it must have risen in primordial times in Pisces, too! When the number of years that it takes the sun to come full circle is calculated, the result is 25,920 years. It is the same ratio. Even the cosmic rhythm harmonizes with the faster rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. Just imagine how man stands with the cosmos! He is born completely from out the universe. His father and mother are originally in the universe.

One arrives at a completely different way of viewing man in relation to the universe than when one simply says that God created the world and man—a concept that doesn't require much thinking. But anthroposophy wishes to begin to think something in every instance. This is held against it. Why? Well, it takes no effort to say words that don't require thinking. In anthroposophy, however, one must exert oneself, and this makes people angry. One needn't strain oneself in today's science. All of a sudden here comes this upstart, anthroposophy, and one cannot sit as if in the cinema thoughtlessly watching a movie. People would even like to introduce movies into schools so that children wouldn't have to make an effort to learn. I am surprised that arithmetic has not been made into movies yet! Then along comes anthroposophy demanding that you don't sit around so idly but put your confounded skulls to use! And, that, no one wants to do.