The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The contents of the last lecture are most important for our next consideration as well as for a comprehension of karmic connection in general. For this reason, because of its extreme importance, allow me to recapitulate the chief points.

We began by saying that views concerning cures and medicines have in the course of a relatively short time, during the last century, undergone a radical change. We pointed to the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that view was developed which was based entirely upon the theory that for every illness which was given a name, and which it was believed could be strictly defined, some remedy must exist upon earth. And it was firmly believed that by the use of the remedy in question the course of the illness must be influenced. We then pointed out that view prevailed more or less until the nineteenth century, and side by side with this we showed the complete reversal of this opinion which found expression chiefly in the nihilism of the Viennese school, founded by the famous medical man Dietel, and carried on by Skoda and his disciples. We characterised the nihilistic current of thought by saying that it not merely harboured doubts as to the existence of any absolute connection between one remedy or another, one manipulation or another in respect to the treatment of illness and the illness itself, but would no longer concern itself with any such connection. The idea of the so-called ‘self-healing’ penetrated the minds of the young doctors influenced by this school. Skoda himself made the following significant statement to this school: ‘We may be able to diagnose an illness, to explain, and perhaps also to describe it, but remedy for it we have none.’ This point of view originated from the proofs furnished by Dietel to the effect that, given the necessary conditions, an illness such as pneumonia will with temporising treatment take such course as to develop self-healing forces at the end of certain period. By means of statistics he was able to prove that a temporising treatment showed neither fewer cures nor more deaths than the remedies ordinarily in use. At that time the term ‘therapeutic nihilism’ was not without justification, for it is quite true that the doctors of this school were powerless against the patient's conviction that there simply must exist a remedy, a prescription. The patient would not yield, nor would his friends. A remedy had to be prescribed, and the disciples of this school got out of the difficulty by prescribing a thin solution of gum arabic, which according to their opinion would have the same effect as the remedies previously in use. From this we have learnt how the modern scientific world is moving in the direction of what we may call the karmic connections of life. For they had now to find an answer to the question: how is that which we may call ‘self-healing’ brought about? Or better, why does it take place? And why in some cases can there be no self-healing or cure of any kind?

If a whole school led by medical authorities resorts to the introduction of the idea of self-healing, we must arrive at the conclusion that something is invoked in the course of an illness which leads to the conquest of the illness. And this would have induced us to pursue the more secret reasons for the course of the illness. We have attempted to point out how such a karmic connection with the course of an illness may be sought for in the development of humanity. We showed that indeed what we accomplish in our ordinary lives in regard to good or evil deeds, or wise or foolish deeds, what we experience in regard to right or wrong emotions, that all this does not go deeply into the foundation of the human organism. And we have shown the reason why what is subject to the moral, intellectual, or emotional judgement in ordinary life remains at the surface, and is not subject to the law which we could trace in another instance—a law which influences the deeper lying forces of the human organism. We demonstrated that in this way there exists a sort of hindrance preventing immorality from entering into the deeper forces of our organism. And this barrier against the penetration by our acts and thoughts into the deeper forces of our organism, consists in the fact that our deeds and our emotions accomplished between birth and death are accompanied by our conscious concepts. In so far as we accompany an act or any other experience by a conscious concept, so far do we provide a defence against the result of our deeds sinking down into our organism.

We have also pointed out the significance of those experiences that have been irrevocably forgotten. It is no longer possible to bring them back to the life of our conscious perceptions, but those experiences, because the defence of the conception is lacking, penetrate in a definite way into our inner organism and there co-operate with the formative forces of our organism. And we are able to point to those forms of disease which lie nearer the surface, such as neurosis, neurasthenia, and so forth. A light is thrown even upon hysterical conditions. As we said, the cause of such conditions must be sought for in the concepts that have been forgotten, which have fallen out of the complex of consciousness and have sunk down into the inner soul-life where, as a sort of wedge, they assert themselves in the form of disease. We further pointed out the tremendous significance of the period which lies between birth and the time when we first begin to remember our experiences; and our attention was drawn to the fact that what at an earlier stage has been forgotten continues to be active within our living organism, forming, as it were, an alliance with the deeper forces of our organism, and thereby influencing our organism itself. As we see, a complex of conceptions, a number of experiences must sink down into the deeper foundations of our being before they can intervene in our organism. We then pointed out that this sinking down is most thorough when we have passed through the gate of death and are experiencing the further existence between death and re-birth. The quality of all experiences is then transformed into forces which now develop an organising activity, and the feelings which we have experienced during the period between death and re-birth will become part of the plastic forces, the formative forces that take part in the rebuilding of the body when we return into a new life. In these formative forces man now carries within him the result of what at an earlier stage he held within his soul-life, perhaps even in his conscious conceptions. And further we could point to the fact that man with his conscious conceptions permeated by the Ego oscillates between two influences present in the world—between the luciferic and the ahrimanic influences. When owing to the characteristics of our astral body we have done wrong through evil passions, temper, and so forth, we are driven thereto by luciferic forces. Such deeds then take the course we have described, if they are transformed into formative forces, they will be dwelling as causes of luciferic disease within the formative forces, and will lay the foundations of our new body. We have further seen that we are subject also to the ahrimanic forces which affect us more from outside. And again we had to admit, concerning the ahrimanic forces, that they are transformed into formative forces, into forces shaping the newly built organism when man enters existence through birth, and in so far as the ahrimanic influences mingle with the formative forces, so far we may speak of ahrimanic predisposition to disease. We then pointed out in detail how the forces act, that are thus developed. I quoted some radical examples of this activity, because in radical examples the picture is more distinct, more clearly defined. I gave the person who in his previous life had at all times acted in such a way as to produce a weak Ego-consciousness and weak self-reliance, and whose Ego attached little value to itself, becoming absorbed only in generalities and so forth. Such a person will after death develop the tendency to absorb forces that will render him capable of strengthening and perfecting his ego in his further incarnation. As a result of this he will seek conditions that will give him an opportunity of fighting against certain resistances, so that his weak Ego-consciousness may be strengthened through resistance. Such a tendency will lead him to seek an opportunity of contracting cholera, because in this he will face something that offers an opportunity of conquering those resistances, in the conquest of which he will be led in his next incarnation, or even should a cure be effected in this same incarnation, to a stronger Ego-consciousness or to forces which will by way of self-education lead him gradually to a stronger Ego-consciousness. We have further stated that an illness such as malaria affords an opportunity of compensating for the overbearing Ego-consciousness which has been engendered by the soul in an earlier life through its deeds and emotions.

Those of us who took part in our earlier anthroposophical studies will understand such a course. It has always been said that man's Ego finds its physical expression in its blood. Now both of these illnesses which have just been mentioned are connected with blood and the laws of blood. They are so connected that in the case of cholera there is a thickening of the blood which can be regarded as the ‘resistance’ which a weak self-reliance must experience, and by means of which it is trying to develop. We shall also be able to understand that in a case of malaria we are faced with an impoverishment of the blood, and that an over-developed Ego-consciousness needs the opportunity of being led to an impossible extreme. This impoverishment of the blood of an over-developed Ego will find all its efforts ending in annihilation. Naturally these things stand in an intimate relationship to our organism, but if we examine them, we shall find them comprehensible.

The result of all this is that when we are dealing with an organism formed by a soul that has brought with it the tendency to overcome some imperfection in one or another direction, man will tend to become impregnated with a predisposition to a certain illness, but, at the same time he will have the capacity for fighting this illness which is produced for no other reason than to provide the means of a cure. And a cure will be effected when the person, in accordance with his whole karma acquires through the conquest of the illness, such forces as will enable him through the rest of his life to make true progress by means of his work upon the physical plane. In other words, if the stimulating forces are so strong that man is able to acquire upon the physical plane itself those qualities, on account of which the illness broke out, then he will be able to work with that reinforced power which he lacked before, and which he gained from the healing process. But if it is in our karma that we have the desire to mould our organism so that through the conquest of the illness in question it should acquire forces which lead nearer to perfection, and yet because of the complexity of the causes we are forced to leave our organism weak in another direction, then it may be that although the forces we develop and make use of in the healing process strengthen us, they do not do so sufficiently to make us equal to our work upon the physical plane. Then because what we have already gained cannot be used upon the physical plane, it will be made use of when we pass through the gate of death, and we shall try to add to our forces what we could not achieve upon the physical plane. So these forces will mature in the formation of the next body when we return to earth in a new incarnation.

Bearing this in mind one more indication should be given which deals with those forms of illness leading neither to a real cure nor to death but to chronic conditions, to a kind of languishing state. Here we have something of which the knowledge is of the greatest importance for most people. When one has recovered from an illness, the effect sought for has been obtained and in a certain sense the illness has been conquered. But in another sense this may not be the fact. For instance, the trouble which was produced between the etheric body and the physical body has disappeared, but the disharmony between the etheric body and the astral body still exists, and we oscillate between attempts at cure and our inability to effect a cure. In such a case it is of special importance that we should make use of all that we have attained in the way of a real cure. And this is what is very rarely done for it is precisely in the case of those illnesses that become chronic that we find ourselves in a vicious circle. We should find a way out of the difficulty if in such a case we could isolate that part of our organism that has achieved a certain cure, if we could let it live by itself and withdraw from the healthy part the rest which is still in disturbance and disorder on account of what is in the soul. But many things oppose this, and chiefly the fact that when we have had an illness resulting in a chronic condition, we are living all the time under the influence of that condition, and, if I may thus crudely express myself, we can never really completely forget our condition, never really arrive at a withdrawing of that which is not yet healthy, so as to treat it by itself. On the contrary, through thinking continually about the sickly part of our organism, we bring as it were our healthy part into some kind of relationship with the sickness and thus irritate it anew. This is a special process, and in order to make it clearer I should like to explain one of the facts proved by Spiritual Science, that can be seen by clairvoyant consciousness when a person has gone through an illness, and has retained something which may be termed chronic. The same occurs also when there exists no apparent acute illness, but when a chronic disease is developed without any acute state having been specially noticed. In most of these cases it is possible to see that there is an unstable state of balance between the etheric and the physical body, an abnormal oscillation to and fro of the forces, but in spite of which the body still remains alive. This oscillation of forces which appertain to the etheric body and the physical body bring about in the person a continual state of irritation which leads to continuous excitability. Clairvoyant consciousness sees this agitation transmitted to the astral body, and these states of excitability continually force their way into that part of the organism which is partly ill and partly well, thereby creating not a stable but an unstable balance. Through this penetration by astral excitability, the health which would otherwise be much better is in fact greatly impaired. I must beg of you to remember that in this case the astral does not coincide with consciousness, but rather with an excitability of the inner soul, which the patient does not wish to admit even to himself. Because in such cases the barrier of consciousness is lacking, those conditions and passions, emotional crises, continual states of weariness of mind and inner discontent do not always act as do conscious forces, but rather like the organising forces. Seated within our deeper being they continually irritate that part which is half ill and half well. If the patient by means of a strong discipline of the soul could forget his condition for some time at least, he would gain such satisfaction from this, that even from this satisfaction itself he could derive the necessary force to carry on further. If he could forget his state completely and develop the strong will which will help him to say: ‘I will not bother with my condition,’ certain soul forces would thereby become liberated, and if he applied them to something spiritual that would elevate him and satisfy his inner soul, if he liberated the forces that are continuously occupied with the sensation of aches and pains, oppression and so on he would thereby gain great satisfaction. For if we do not live through these feelings, the forces are free and they are at our disposal. Naturally it will not be of much use merely to say we don't want to take notice of these aches and pains, for if we do not put these liberated forces to spiritual use, the former conditions will soon return. If, however, we employ these liberated forces for a spiritual purpose which will absorb the soul, we shall soon discover that we are attaining in a complicated way that which our organism would otherwise have attained without our assistance through the conquest of the illness. Naturally the person in question would have to be aware of filling his soul with something directly connected with his illness or with that which constitutes his illness. For instance, if someone suffering from a weakness of the eyes were to read a great deal so as to avoid thinking of this, he would naturally not arrive at his goal. But it is quite unnecessary to resort to further illustrations. We have all noticed how useful it is when we are slightly indisposed, to be able to forget that indisposition, especially if we gain this forgetfulness by occupying ourselves with something different. Such is a positive and wholesome forgetfulness. This already suggests to us that we are not entirely impotent in face of the karmic effects of those transgressions of our earlier lives which are expressed in the form of illness. We recognise that what is subject to moral, emotional and intellectual judgement during life between birth and death cannot penetrate so deeply during one single life as to become the cause of an organic disease, but that in the period between death and re-birth it may penetrate so deeply into the human essence as to cause disease; then there must also exist a possibility of re-transforming these processes into conscious processes.

The question might be put thus: If illnesses are the karmic results of spiritual or other events called forth or experienced by the soul, if they are the metamorphosis of such causes, might we not then also suppose that the result of the metamorphosis, namely, the illness, might be avoided—or do we learn nothing of this from spiritual facts? Might it not be avoided if we could replace, for the good of our education, the healing processes which are drawn from the organism to combat the disease. Could we not replace these by their spiritual counterpart, their spiritual equivalent? Should we not thus, if we were sufficiently wise, transform illness into a spiritual process and accomplish through our soul forces the self-education that would otherwise be accomplished through illness?

The feasibility of this may be demonstrated by an example. Here again we must insist that only those examples are given which have been investigated by Spiritual Science. They are not hypothetical assertions but actual ‘cases.’ A certain person contracts measles in later life, and we seek for the karmic connection in this case. We find that this case of measles appeared as the karmic effect of occurrences in a preceding life—occurrences that may be thus described: In a preceding life the individuality in question disliked concerning himself with the external world but occupied himself a great deal with himself, though not in the ordinary egotistical sense. He investigated much, meditated much, though not with regard to the facts of the external world, but confined himself to the inner soul life. We meet many people to-day who believe that through self-concentration and through brooding within themselves, they will arrive at the solution of world riddles. The person in question thought he could order his life through inner meditation how to act in one instance or another without accepting any teaching from others. The weakness of the soul resulting from this led to the formation of forces during existence between death and re-birth which exposed the organism comparatively late in life to an attack of measles.

We might now ask: if on the one hand we have the attack of measles which is the physical karmic effect of an earlier life, how is it then with the soul? For the earlier life will also result through karmic action in a certain condition of the soul.

This soul condition will prove itself to be such that the personality in question, during the life in which the attack of measles took place, was again and again subject to self-deception. Thus in the self-deception we must see the psychic karmic result of this earlier life, and in the attack of measles the physical karmic result.

Let us now assume that this personality before developing measles had succeeded in gaining such soul forces that he was no longer exposed to all kinds of self-deception, having completely corrected this failing. In this case the acquired soul force would render the attack of measles quite unnecessary, since the tendencies brought forth in this organism during its formation had been effaced through the stronger soul forces acquired by self-education. If we contemplate life as a whole and examine in detail our experiences, considering them always from this standpoint, we should invariably find that external knowledge will bear out in every detail what has here been stated. And what I have said about a case of measles can lead to an explanation why measles is one of the illnesses of child-hood. For the failings I have mentioned are present in a great many lives and especially in certain periods did they prevail in many lives. When such a personality enters existence he will be anxious to make the corresponding correction as soon as possible. In the period between birth and the general appearance of children's complaints which effect an organic self-education, there can as a rule be no question of any education of the soul.

From this we see that in a certain respect we can really speak of a disease being transformed back into a spiritual process. And it is most significant that when this process has entered the soul as a life principle, it will evoke a viewpoint that has a healing effect upon the soul. We need not be surprised that in our time we are able to influence the soul so little. Anyone regarding our present period from the standpoint of Spiritual Science will understand why so many medical men, so many doctors become materialists. For most people never occupy themselves with anything which has vital force. All the stuff produced today is devoid of vital force for the soul. That is why anyone wishing to work for Spiritual Science feels in this anthroposophical activity something extremely wholesome, for Spiritual Science can again bring to men something which enters the soul so that it is drawn away from what is acting in the physical organism. But we must not confuse what appears at the beginning of such a movement as Anthroposophy with what this movement can be in reality. Things may be brought into the Anthroposophical Movement which prevail in the physical world, for people on becoming Anthroposophists often bring to Anthroposophy exactly the same interests and also all the bad habits which they had outside. There is thus brought in much of the degeneracy of our age, and when some such degeneracy appears in the persons in question, the world says that this is the result of Anthroposophy. That is of course a cheap statement.

If we now see the karmic thread passing from one incarnation to another, we grasp only the one aspect of truth. For anyone beginning to understand this, many questions will arise which will be touched upon in the course of these lectures. First of all we must deal with the question: What difference is there between an illness due to external causes and an illness where the cause lies exclusively in the human organism itself. We are tempted to dispose of the latter illnesses by saying that they come of their own accord without any external provocation. But this is not so. In a certain sense we are justified in saying that illnesses come to us if we have a special disposition for the illness within us. A great many forms of illness, however, we shall be able to trace to external causes; not indeed everything that happens to us, but much that befalls us from outside. If we break a leg for instance, we are obliged to account for it by external causes. We must also include within external causes the effects of the weather, and numerous cases of disease which come to people living in slum dwellings. Here again we envisage a wide field. An experienced person looking on the world will find it easy to explain why the modern trend of the medical faculty is to seek the causes of illness in external influences, and especially in microbes. Of these a witty gentleman (Tröhls-Lund) said not without justice: ‘Today it is said that illnesses are provoked by microbes, just as it was formerly said that they came from God, the devil, and so forth.’ In the thirteenth century it was said that illnesses came from God; in the fifteenth it was said that they came from the devil; later it was said that illnesses came from the humours, today we say that illnesses come from microbes! Such are the views that in the course of time give place to one another.

Thus we speak of external causes of human illness and health. And the man of the present day may easily be tempted to use a word that is fundamentally adapted to bring disorder into the whole of our world-conception. If someone who was previously healthy comes into a district where there is an epidemic of influenza or diphtheria, and then falls ill, the man of today will be inclined to say that the person has become ill because he entered this particular district. It is thus easy to make use of the word ‘chance.’ Today people really speak of ‘chance.’ This word is really disastrous for any world-conception, and as long as we make no attempt to become clear about what is so readily termed ‘chance,’ we shall not be able to deal in any way satisfactorily with the initial stages of the subject: ‘Natural and accidental illnesses of man.’ For this it is essential that we should attempt by way of introduction to throw some light on the word ‘chance.’

Is not chance itself inclined to make us suspicious of the way it is frequently defined to-day? I have already on a previous occasion drawn your attention to the fact that a clever man in the eighteenth century was not entirely wrong when, concerning the reason for the erection of monuments, he made the following statement: ‘If we regard objectively the course of history, we should have to erect by far the greater number of monuments to Chance.’ And if we examine history, we shall make strange discoveries concerning what is concealed behind chance. As I have mentioned before, we owe the telescope to the fact that children once were playing with optical lenses in an optical laboratory. In their play they formed a combination by means of which someone then produced a telescope.

You might also recall the famous lamp in the cathedral of Pisa, which before the time of Galileo was seen by thousands and thousands, oscillating with the same regularity. But it remained for Galileo to find out by experiment how these oscillations coincided with the course of his blood circulation, whereby he discovered the famous laws of the pendulum. Had we not known these, the whole course of our physics, the whole of our culture would have developed on entirely different lines. Let us try to find a meaning in human evolution, and then see whether we should still wish to maintain that only chance was at work when Galileo made this important discovery. Let us consider yet another case.

We are aware what Luther's translation of the Bible means to the civilised countries of Europe. It profoundly influenced religious sentiment and thought and also the development of what we call the German literary language. I simply mention the fact without comment. I insist only on the profound influence which this translation exercised. We must endeavour to see the significance of that education which, during the course of several centuries, came to mankind as a result of Luther's translation of the Bible. Let us endeavour to perceive a meaning in this, and then let us consider the following fact.

Up to a certain period of his life Luther was deeply imbued with the feeling and desire so to order his life as to become a veritable ‘child of God.’ This desire had been brought about by a constant reading of the Bible. The custom prevailed amongst the Augustinian monks of reading preferably the works of the Fathers of the Church, but Luther passed to the spiritual enjoyment of the Bible itself. Thus he was led to this intense feeling of being a ‘child of God,’ and under this influence he fulfilled his duties as teacher of Theology in the first Wittenberg period. The fact that I should now like to emphasise is that Luther had a certain repugnance to acquiring the title of Doctor of Theology, but that, when sitting with an old friend of the Erfurt Augustinian monastery, he was persuaded in the course of a ‘chance’ conversation to try and gain the hat of a Doctor of Theology. For this purpose it was necessary once more to study the Bible. Thus it was the ‘chance’ conversation with his friend which led to a renewed study of the Bible, and to all that resulted from it.

Try to conceive from the point of view of the last centuries the significance of the ‘chance’ that Luther once conversed with that friend and was persuaded to try for the Doctorate of Theology. You will be obliged to see that it would be grotesque to connect this human evolution with a ‘chance’ event.

From what has been said we shall first of all conclude that perhaps after all there is something more in chance than is usually supposed. As a rule we believe chance to be something which cannot be satisfactorily explained either by the laws of nature, or by the laws of life, and that it constitutes a kind of surplus over and above what can be explained. Let us now add to this statement a fact which has helped us to understand so many aspects of life: Man, since he began his earth existence, has been subject to the two forces of the luciferic and ahrimanic principles. These forces and principles continually penetrate into man. While the luciferic forces act more within by influencing the astral body, the ahrimanic forces act rather through the external impressions which he receives. In what we receive from the external world there are contained the ahrimanic forces, and in what arises and acts within the soul in the shape of joy and dejection, desires, and so forth, there are contained the luciferic forces. The luciferic as well as the ahrimanic principles induce us to give way to error. The luciferic principle induces us to deceive ourselves as to our own inner life, to judge our inner life wrongly, to see Maya, illusion within ourselves. If we contemplate life rationally, we shall not find it difficult to discover Maya in our own soul life. Let us consider how very often we persuade ourselves that we have done one thing or another for this or that reason. Generally the reason is quite a different one, and far more profound. It may be found in temper, desire, or passion, but in our superficial consciousness we give quite a different explanation. Especially do we endeavour to deny the presence within our soul of that which the world does not greatly appreciate, and when we are driven to some act from purely egotistical motives, we frequently find ourselves clothing these crude egotistical impulses with a cloak of unselfishness, and explaining why it was necessary for us thus to act. As a rule we are not aware ourselves that we err. When we become aware of it, there generally begins an improvement accompanied by a certain feeling of shame. The worst of it is that for the most we are ignorant that we are driven to something from the depths of our soul, and then we invent a motive for the deed in question. This has also been discovered by modern psychologists. As there exists but little psychological culture today, however, these grotesque indications are brought forward, and interpretations are arrived at which are altogether peculiar. Any true investigator on observing such facts will naturally fathom their true significance and so realise that there are indeed two influences acting together, namely, our consciousness, and that which dwells in the deeper layers beneath the threshold of consciousness. But when the same facts are observed by a materialistic psychologist, he will set to work differently. He will immediately fabricate a theory about the difference between the pretext for our deeds and the real motive. If, for instance, a psychologist discusses the suicides of students which occur so frequently today, he will say that what is quoted as pretext is not the real motive; that the real motive lies far deeper, being found mostly in a misdirected sexual life, and that the real motive is so transformed that it deludes the consciousness for some reason or other.

Often this may be so, but anyone who has the least knowledge of truly profound psychological thought will never from this evolve a general theory. Such a theory could easily be refuted, for if the case really is such that pretext is nothing, and motive everything, this would also apply to the psychologist himself, and we should be forced to say that with him too, what he is telling us and developing as a theory is but a pretext. If we were to search for deeper reasons, perhaps the reasons alleged by him would be found to be of exactly the same nature. If this psychologist had, truly learnt why a reason is impossible that has been based upon the conclusion: ‘All Cretans are liars,’ and that such a judgement is biased if made by the Cretan himself, if he had learnt the reason why this is so, he would also have learnt what an extraordinarily vicious circle is created when in certain domains assertions can be driven back upon oneself. In almost the whole compass of our literature we find very little of truly deep culture. That is why as a rule people hardly notice what they themselves do, and for this reason it will be indispensable for Spiritual Science in every respect to avoid such confusions in logic. Modern philosophers when dealing with Spiritual Science come more than any others to such confusions in logic. Our example is typical of this. We here see the tricks played upon us by the luciferic influences transforming the soul-life into Maya, so that we can pretend to have quite different motives from those really dwelling within us.

We should try to acquire a stricter self-discipline in this respect. Today words are as a rule handled with great facility. A word, however, can lead to great error and confusion. The word has but to have a pleasing sound, and it creates the impression of a charitable deed. Even the pleasant sound of a sentence will betray us into believing that the motive in question is within our soul, while in truth the egotistical principle may be concealed behind it without our being aware of its presence, because we have not the will to arrive at true self-knowledge. Thus we see Lucifer active on the one side. How does Ahriman act on the other?

Ahriman is that principle which intermingles with our perceptions and enters us from outside. Ahriman's activity is strongest when we feel that in this case thought is not sufficient, and that we face a critical moment in our thought life. Thinking is trapped as in a thought maze. Then the ahrimanic principle seizes the occasion to penetrate us as through a rift in the external world. If we pursue the course of world events and the more obvious occurrences, if for instance, we pursue modern physics back to the moment when Galileo was sitting in front of the oscillating church lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa, we can spin a thought-net embracing all these events whereby the matter will be easily explained. Everything will be quite clear, but the moment we arrive at the oscillating church lamp, our thoughts become confused. Here is the window through which the ahrimanic forces penetrate us with the greatest strength, and here our thought refuses to understand the phenomena which might bring reason and understanding into the matter. Here also is what we call ‘chance.’ It is here where Ahriman becomes most dangerous to us. Those phenomena which we call ‘chance’ are the phenomena by which we are most easily deluded by Ahriman.

Thus we shall learn to understand that it is not the nature of facts themselves that induces us to speak of ‘chance,’ but that it depends on ourselves and our own development. Little by little we shall have to educate ourselves to penetrate Maya and illusion, that is to say, we must gain insight into matters where Ahriman's influence is at its strongest. So that just where we have to speak of important causes of illness, and of a light that is to be shed over the course of many an illness, we shall find it necessary to approach phenomena from the following aspect. First of all we shall have to try and understand how far it is by chance that someone should be travelling on the very train on which he may lose his life, or that someone at a definite period should be exposed to disease-germs affecting him from outside, or to some other cause of illness, and if we pursue matters with sharpened understanding, we shall be able to arrive at a truer cognition of the whole meaning for human life of illness and health.

Today we had to show in detail how Lucifer leads to illusions within man, and how Ahriman becomes intertwined with external perceptions and there leads to Maya; that it is a result of Lucifer if we delude ourselves with a false motive, and how the false supposition concerning the world of phenomena—the deception through Ahriman—leads to the belief in chance. These foundations had to be laid to show that karmic events, the results of earlier lives, are active also in those cases where external causes, which seem to be chance, give rise to illnesses.

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements for explaining reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. As we have seen, it is our organization that determines the fact that the full, complete reality of things, our own subject included, appears at first as a duality. Cognition overcomes this duality by combining the two elements of reality: the perception and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. If we call the world as it confronts us before it has attained its true aspect by means of cognition, “the world of appearance,” in contrast to the unified whole composed of perception and concept, then we can say: The world is given us as a duality (dualistic), and cognition transforms it into a unity (monistic). A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a monistic philosophy, or monism, in contrast to the theory of two worlds, or dualism. The latter does not assume that there are two sides of a single reality, which are kept apart merely by our organization, but, rather, that there are two worlds, completely different from each other. Then in the one world it tries to find the principles that can explain the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism rests on a misunderstanding of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it lets these spheres stand opposite to and outside of each other.

[ 3 ] It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the perceived object and the thing-in-itself which Kant ⁴¹ introduced into science and which so far has not been expelled. From our discussion can be seen that it is due to the nature of our intellectual organization that a particular thing can be given us only as perception. Thinking then overcomes this separateness by referring each perception to its rightful place in the world whole. As long as the separated parts of the world whole are defined as perceptions, in this elimination we are simply following a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we consider the sum-total of all perceptions as constituting one part, and confront it with the “thing-in-itself” as a second part, then our philosophizing loses all foundation. It then becomes a mere playing with concepts. An artificial opposition is constructed, but it is not possible to attain a content for the second part of this opposition, since such content for a particular thing can be drawn only from perception.

[ 4 ] Every kind of existence which is assumed outside the realm of perception and concept belongs to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. The “thing-in-itself” belongs in this category. It is quite natural that a dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between a universal principle which he hypothetically assumes, and the given, known by experience. One can obtain a content for the hypothetical universal principle only by borrowing a content from the sphere of experience and then shutting one's eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept, which is nothing but a shell of a concept. Then the dualistic thinker usually maintains that the content of this concept is not accessible to our knowledge. We can know only that such a content must be present, but not what it is. In both cases it is impossible to overcome dualism. Even if one brings a few abstract elements from the sphere of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it still remains impossible to derive the rich concrete life of experience from those few qualities which, after all, are themselves taken from perception only. DuBois-Reymond ⁴² thinks that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then comes to the conclusion: We can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for

“It is absolutely and forever unintelligible that it should be other than indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, etc., how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, or how they will lie and will move. It is impossible to see how consciousness could come into existence through their interaction.”

This conclusion is characteristic of this whole trend of thought. Position and motion are abstractions derived from the rich sphere of perceptions. They are then transferred to the imagined world of atoms. Then astonishment arises that real life cannot be evolved out of this principle which is self-made and borrowed from the sphere of perceptions.

[ 5 ] That the dualist who works with a completely empty concept of the “in-itself” of things can reach no explanation of the world, already follows from the definition of his principle indicated above.

[ 6 ] A dualist is always compelled to set impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower of a monistic world view knows that everything he needs for the explanation of any given phenomenon in the world must lie within this world itself. What hinders him from reaching the explanation can be only contingent limitations in space and time, or shortcomings of his organization. And, indeed, not of the human organization in general, but only of his own particular one.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of cognition, as defined by us, that one cannot speak of limits to knowledge. Cognition is not a concern of the universe in general, but one which men must settle for themselves. Things claim no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which thinking can discover. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our egohood confronts them, grasping at first only what we have called perceptions. In the inner core of our egohood, however, we find the power to discover the other part of reality also. Only when the egohood has again combined for itself the two elements of reality which are indivisibly united in the world, is the thirst for knowledge satisfied: the I has again come to reality.

[ 8 ] Therefore, the conditions required for cognition to arise, come about through and for the I. The I sets itself the problems of cognition. And it takes them from the element of thinking, in itself absolutely clear and transparent. If we ask questions we cannot answer, then the content of the question cannot be clear and distinct in all its details. The world does not set us the questions; it is we ourselves who set them.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question was taken.

[ 10 ] In knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of perceptions, conditioned by time, space, and our subjective organization, is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to a world which is a unity. My task is to reconcile these two spheres, well known to me. One cannot speak here of a limit of knowledge. It may be that at a particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving all that is involved. What is not found to-day, however, may be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perceiving and thinking.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis of object and subject, which has significance only within the sphere of perceptions, to purely invented entities outside this sphere. But as the separate things within the field of perception remain separated only as long as the perceiver refrains from thinking, which cancels all separation and shows it to be due to merely subjective factors, so the dualist, in fact, transfers to entities behind the sphere of perceptions definitions which, even for perceptions, have no absolute but only relative validity. In doing this he splits up the two factors concerned in the process of cognition, perception and concept, into four: 1) the object-in-itself, 2) the perception which the subject has of the object, 3) the subject, 4) the concept which relates the perception to the object-in-itself. The relation between object and subject is considered to be real, that is, the subject is considered to be really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is said not to appear in consciousness. But it is supposed to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is said to be the perception. This at last enters our consciousness. The object is said to have an objective reality (independent of the subject), the perception a subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to be referred by the subject to the object. This latter reference is said to be an ideal one. The dualist, in other words, splits up the process of cognition into two parts. One part, i.e., the production of the perceptual object out of the thing-in-itself, takes place, according to him, outside of consciousness, the other part, the union of perception with concept and the reference of this to the object, within consciousness. These presuppositions make it clear that the dualist believes he receives in his concepts only something subjective, which represents what confronts his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject, by means of which the perception comes about, and still more the objective relationships between things-in-themselves, remain inaccessible to direct cognition for such a dualist. In his opinion, man can obtain only concepts that represent the objectively real. The bond of unity which connects things with one another and also objectively with our individual spirit (as thing-in-itself), lies beyond consciousness in a being-in-itself of whom we likewise can have in our consciousness only a concept that represents it.

[ 12 ] The dualist believes that the whole world would be nothing but a mere abstract scheme of concepts if he did not insist on “real” connections between the objects beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which can be discovered by thinking seem too airy for the dualist, and he seeks, in addition, “real principles” with which to support them.

[ 13 ] Let us examine these “real principles” a little more closely. The naive man (naive realist) regards the objects of external experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp and his eyes can see these objects is for him the proof of their reality. “Nothing exists that cannot be perceived” is, in fact, the basic axiom of the naive man, and it is held to be equally valid in its converse: “Everything which can be perceived, exists.” The best proof for this assertion is the naive man's belief in immortality and in ghosts. He thinks of the soul as a fine kind of physical matter which, in special circumstances, may actually become visible to the ordinary man (naive belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] In contrast to this real world of his, the naive realist regards everything else, especially the world of ideas, as unreal, as “merely ideal.” What we add to objects by thinking is mere thoughts about the objects. Thought adds nothing real to perception.

[ 15 ] But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the naive man regards sense perception as the sole proof of reality, but also with reference to happenings. According to him, one thing can act upon another only when a force actually present to sense perception issues from the one and seizes upon the other. The older physicists thought that very fine substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. They thought the actual seeing of these substances to be impossible only because of the coarseness of our sense-organs in comparison with the fineness of these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these substances was the same as that for attributing it to the objects of the physical world, namely, the form of their existence, which was thought to be analogous to that of physical reality.

[ 16 ] The self-dependent nature of what can be experienced, not physically but ideally, is not regarded by naive consciousness as being real in the same sense. Something grasped “merely as idea” is regarded as a chimera until sense perception can provide conviction of its reality. In short, in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking, the naive man demands the real evidence of his senses. This need of naive man is the reason why primitive forms of belief in revelation arise. For naive consciousness, the God who is given through thinking always remains a God merely “thought.” Naive consciousness demands that the manifestation should be through means accessible to physical perception. God must appear in bodily form; little value is attached to the evidence of thinking, but only to the Divine Nature being proved by the changing of water into wine in a way which can be testified by the senses.

[ 17 ] The act of cognition, too, is regarded by naive man as a process analogous to sense-perception. Things must make an impression on the soul or send out images which penetrate the senses, etc.

[ 18 ] What the naive man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and that of which he has no such perception (God, soul, cognition, etc.) he regards as analogous to what is perceived.

[ 19 ] A science based on naive realism will consist in an exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are only means to this end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of perceptions. For things themselves, they have no significance. For the naive realist, only the individual tulips which are seen or could be seen, are real. The one idea of the tulip, is to him an abstraction, is to him an unreal thought-picture, which the soul has put together for itself out of the characteristics common to all tulips.

[ 20 ] Naive realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all perceived things, is contradicted by experience, which shows us that the content of perceptions is of a transitory nature. The tulip I see, is real to-day; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species tulip. This species, however, for the naive realist is “merely” an idea, not a reality. Thus, this world view finds itself in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while what it regards as unreal, in contrast to the real, persists. Hence the naive realist has to allow for the existence of something ideal besides the perceptions. He has to accept entities which he cannot perceive by means of the senses. He justifies this by imagining their existence to be analogous to that of physical objects. Such hypothetically assumed realities are the invisible forces by means of which objects perceptible to the senses act on one another. Heredity is thought of in this way; it goes beyond the individual and is the reason why a new being develops from the individual which is similar to it, and by means of it the species is maintained. The life principle permeating the organic body is also thought of in this way, and so is the soul, for which one always finds in naive consciousness a concept based on an analogy to sense-reality, and finally so, too, the naive man thinks of the Divine Being. This Divine Being is thought of as active in a manner exactly corresponding to what can be perceived as actions of men, that is, the Divine Being is thought of anthropomorphically.

[ 21 ] Modern physics traces sense-impressions back to processes in the smallest particles of bodies and to the infinitely fine substance, the ether, or to something similar. For example, what we sense as warmth, is, within the space occupied by the warmth-giving body, movement of its parts. Here again, something imperceptible is thought of on the analogy of what is perceptible. The physical analogon to the concept “body” is, in this sense, something like the interior of a totally enclosed space in which elastic balls are moving in all directions, impinging on one another, bouncing on and off the walls, etc.

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions, for naive realism, the world would collapse into a disconnected chaos of perceptions with no mutual relationships to unite them. It is clear, however, that naive realism can arrive at these assumptions only by inconsistency. If it remained true to its fundamental principle that only what is perceived is real, then it would not assume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces which proceed from perceptible things are essentially unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naive realism itself. And as the naive realist acknowledges no other realities, he invests his hypothetical forces with perceptual content. In doing this he applies a form of existence (perceptual existence) to a sphere where he lacks the only means that can give any evidence of such existence: perceiving by means of physical senses.

[ 23 ] This self-contradictory world view leads to metaphysical realism. Beside the perceptible reality, the metaphysical realist constructs an imperceptible one which he thinks of on the analogy of the former. Metaphysical realism therefore, is of necessity dualistic.

[ 24 ] Where the metaphysical realist observes a relation between perceptible things (mutual approach through movement, becoming conscious of an object, etc.), there he regards a reality as existing. But the relation that he notices he can, however, express only by means of thinking; he cannot perceive it. The relation, which is purely ideal, is arbitrarily made into something similar to what is perceptible. Thus, according to this line of thought, the real world is composed of perceptual objects which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces which are permanent and produce the perceptual objects.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities of perceptions. In addition to the sphere, for the form of existence of which he has a means of cognition in its perceptibility, the metaphysical realist has decided to acknowledge another sphere to which this means is not applicable, a sphere which can be ascertained only by means of thinking. But he cannot at the same time decide also to acknowledge the form of existence which thinking mediates, namely the concept (the idea), as being of equal importance with perceptions. If one is to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible perceptions, then it must be admitted that the relation thinking mediates between perceptions can have no other form of existence for us than that of the concept. When the untenable part of metaphysical realism is rejected, we then have the world before us as the sum of perceptions and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Then metaphysical realism merges into a world view which requires the principle of perceptibility for perceptions and that of “think-ability” for the relations between the perceptions. Side by side with the realm of perceptions and that of concepts, this world view cannot acknowledge a third realm for which both principles, the so-called real principle and the ideal principle, have equal validity.

[ 26 ] When the metaphysical realist maintains that beside the ideal relation between the perceptual object and the perceiving subject, there must also exist a real relation between the “thing-in-itself” of the perception and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceptible subject (of the so called individual spirit), then this assertion is due to the mistaken assumption of the existence of a process, analogous to a process in the sense-world, but imperceptible. Further, when the metaphysical realist says: I have a conscious ideal relationship with my world of perceptions, but with the real world I can have only a dynamic (force) relationship, he then makes the above mistake to an even greater degree. One can only speak of a force-relationship within the world of perceptions (in the sphere of the sense of touch), not outside that sphere.

[ 27 ] Let us call the world view characterized above, into which metaphysical realism merges if it discards its contradictory elements, monism, because it unites one-sided realism with idealism in a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For the naive realist, the real world is an aggregate of objects of perception; for the metaphysical realist also the imperceptible forces are realities. Instead of forces, the monist has ideal connections which he attains by means of his thinking. The laws of nature are such connections. For a law of nature is nothing other than the conceptual expression for the connection of certain perceptions.

[ 29 ] The monist never has any need to ask for factors other than perceptions and concepts, with which to explain reality. He knows that in the whole sphere of reality there is no need to ask for this. In the sphere of perceptions, directly accessible to his perceiving, he sees half of a reality; in the union of this sphere with the sphere of concepts, he finds the full reality. The metaphysical realist may make the objection to the adherent of monism: It could be that for your organization your knowledge is complete in itself, that no part is lacking; but what you do not know is how the world is mirrored in an intelligence organized differently from your own. To this the monist would reply: If there are intelligences other than human, if their perceptions have a different form than ours, then all that would be of significance for me would be what reaches me from them by means of perceptions and concepts. By means of my perceiving and, in fact, by means of this specifically human manner of perceiving, as subject I am placed over against the object. The connection of things is thereby broken. The subject restores this connection by means of thinking. In doing so, things are re-inserted into the world whole. Since it is only through our subject that this whole appears rent in two at the place between our perception and our concept, so likewise the union of these two factors gives us a true knowledge. For beings with a different world of perceptions (if, for example, they had twice as many sense-organs), the connection would appear broken in another place, and the restoration would, accordingly, have a form specific for such beings. The question concerning limits of knowledge exists only for the naive and metaphysical realists, both of whom see in the content of the soul only an ideal representation of the world. For them, what exists outside the subject is something absolute, something self-dependent, and the content of the subject is a picture of this absolute and is completely external to it. How complete is knowledge of this absolute would depend on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man would perceive less of the world, one with more senses would perceive more. The former's knowledge would therefore be less complete than that of the latter.

[ 30 ] For the monist, things are different. It is the organization of the perceiving being that determines how the world unity appears to be torn apart into subject and object. The object is not something absolute, but is only something relative in relation to this particular subject. The bridging of the contrasting entities can, therefore, take place again only in the quite specific way that is characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the I, which, in perceiving, is separated from the world, reinserts itself into the connection of things through thinking investigation, all further questioning ceases, since all questions arose only as a result of the separation.

[ 31 ] A differently constituted being would have a differently constituted knowledge. Our knowledge suffices to answer the questions asked by our nature.

[ 32 ] The metaphysical realist should ask: How does what is given as perception come to be the given; what is it that affects the subject?

[ 33 ] For the monist, the perception is determined by the subject. But in thinking, the subject has, at the same time, the means for canceling this determination, caused through the subject itself.

[ 34 ] The metaphysical realist is faced by a further difficulty when he seeks to explain the similarity of the world picture, of different human individuals. He cannot but ask himself: How is it that the world picture which I build up out of my subjectively determined perceptions and out of my concepts, turns out to be like that which another individual builds up out of the same two subjective factors? How, from my subjective world picture, can I infer anything about that of another human being? The metaphysical realist believes he can infer, from the fact that people come to terms with one another in practical life, that their subjective world pictures must be similar. From the similarity of these world pictures he then further infers that the “individual spirits” behind the single perceiving human subjects, or the “I-in-itself” behind the subjects, must also be similar.

[ 35 ] Therefore this inference is drawn from a sum of effects to the nature of their underlying causes. It is believed that from a sufficiently large number of instances, the situation can be so recognized that one can know how the inferred causes will behave in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. It will be necessary to modify the results if, from further observation, some unexpected element is discovered, because the result, after all, is determined only by the particular form of the earlier observation. The metaphysical realist maintains that this stipulated knowledge of causes is quite sufficient for practical life.

[ 36 ] Inductive inference is the methodical foundation of modern metaphysical realism. At one time it was believed that out of concepts could be evolved something that is no longer a concept. It was believed that from concepts could be derived the metaphysical realities which of necessity, metaphysical realism must have. This kind of philosophizing is now superseded. Instead, it is believed that from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts one can infer the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Just as in the past one tried to derive the metaphysical from concepts, so to-day one tries to derive it from perceptions. As concepts are transparent in their clarity, it was believed that one could also deduce the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty. Perceptions are not of such transparency. Each later perception is always a little different from those of the same kind that preceded it. Therefore, anything inferred from the earlier perception is, in reality, somewhat modified by each following one. The aspect of the metaphysical arrived at in this way, therefore, can be said to be only relatively correct, for it is subject to correction by future instances. Eduard von Hartmann's metaphysics is of a kind that is determined by this methodical principle. This is expressed in the motto he gave on the title-page of his first major work: “Speculative results according to the inductive method of natural science.”

[ 37 ] The form which the metaphysical realist gives to his things-in-themselves today is obtained by inductive inferences. His consideration of the process of knowledge has convinced him that a connection of things, which is objectively real, exists side by side with the “subjective” connection that can be known through perception and concept. The nature of this objective reality he believes he can determine by inductive inferences from his perceptions.

[ 38 ] Addition to the Revised Edition, (1918): Certain representations which arise from investigations of natural phenomena tend, again and again, to disturb unprejudiced observation—as the effort has been made to describe it above—of how we experience concepts and perceptions. Such investigations show that in the light-spectrum the eye perceives colors from red to violet. However, within the spectrum's sphere of radiation, but beyond the violet there are forces to which corresponds no color perception of the eye, but a chemical effect and, similarly, beyond the limit of the red there exist radiations which have only effects of warmth. Investigation of these and similar phenomena has led to the opinion that the range of man's sphere of perceptions is determined by the range of his senses, and that he would have before him a very different world if he had more or altogether different senses. Those who are inclined to flights of imagination, for which the glittering discoveries of recent scientific research in particular offer such tempting opportunities, may come to the conclusion: Nothing can enter man's field of observation except what is able to affect the senses of his bodily organization, and he has no right to regard what he perceives, by means of his limited organization, as being in any way a standard for ascertaining reality. Every new sense would give him a different picture of reality.—Within its proper limits, this opinion is entirely correct. But one who allows this opinion to prevent him from observing without prejudice the relationship between concept and perception, as explained here, will put obstacles in the way to any realistic knowledge of man and world. To experience thinking in its own nature, that is, to experience the active working-out of the sphere of concepts, is something entirely different from the experience of something perceptible through the senses. Whatever senses man might possibly have, not one would give him reality if through the activity of thinking, he did not permeate with concepts the perceptions they conveyed to him; and indeed, every sense, of whatever kind, if thus permeated, gives man the possibility to live within reality. Speculations about quite different perceptual pictures conveyed by other senses, has nothing to do with the question concerning man's relation to reality. It is essential to recognize that every perceptual picture derives its form from the organization of the perceiving being, but the perceptual picture when permeated by thinking which is livingly experienced leads man into reality. A fanciful description of how different the world would appear to other than human senses cannot act as an incentive to man to seek for knowledge concerning his relationship to the world; rather will this happen through the insight that every perception gives us only a part of the reality it conceals, that, therefore, it leads away from its reality. This then brings us to the further insight that it is thinking which leads into that part of reality which the perception conceals within itself. An unprejudiced observation of the relation between perceptions, and concepts worked out by thinking, as here described, may also be disturbed by the fact that in the sphere of applied physics it becomes necessary to speak not at all of directly perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible magnitudes, such as lines of electric or magnetic force, etc. It may appear as if the elements of reality, spoken of in physics, had nothing to do either with what is perceptible or with concepts actively worked out by thinking. But such a view is based on self-deception. What matters is that all that is worked out in physics—as long as it is not based on unjustifiable hypotheses which must be excluded—is obtained by means of perceptions and concepts. By a correctly working instinct for knowledge in the physicist, what is apparently a non-perceptible content will always be placed into the field of perceptions, and will be thought of in concepts belonging to this field. The magnitudes in electric and magnetic fields, etc., are attained, owing to their nature, by no other process of cognition than the one which takes place between perception and concept.—An increase or a transformation of the human senses would give a different perceptual picture; it would be an enrichment or a transformation of human experience. But a real knowledge of this experience also could be attained only through the interplay of concept and perception. A deepening of knowledge depends upon the active power of intuition contained in thinking (see p. 30). In the living experience within thinking, this intuition can dive down into lesser or greater depths of reality. Through extension of the perceptual picture this diving down of intuition can receive stimulation and thus be indirectly strengthened. But never should this diving into the depths to attain reality be confused with being confronted with a wider or narrower perceptual picture, in which there would always be contained only a half-reality determined by the organization of the cognizing being. If one avoids getting lost in abstractions, it will be recognized how significant, also for knowledge of the being of man, is the fact that in physics one has to include the existence, in the field of perceptions, of elements for which no sense organ is directly tuned as for color or sound. The essential being of man is determined not only by what confronts him through his organization as direct perception, but also by the fact that he excludes something else from this direct perception. Just as life needs, in addition to the conscious waking state, an unconscious sleeping state, so, for man's self-experience is needed besides the sphere of his sense-perceptions, another sphere also—indeed, a much larger one—of elements not perceptible to the senses, but existing within the same field where sense-perceptions originate. All this was already indirectly indicated in the first edition of this book. The author here adds these amplifications to the content because he has found by experience that many readers have not read accurately enough.—Another thing to be considered is that the idea of perception, as presented in this book, is not to be confused with the idea of external sense-perception, which is but a special instance of perception. The reader will gather from what has already been said, but even more from what will follow, that here perception includes everything that man meets, physically or spiritually, before he has grasped it in actively worked out concepts. We do not need what we usually mean by senses in order to have perceptions of a soul or spiritual kind. It may be said that such extension of the ordinary use of a word is inadmissible. Yet such extension is absolutely necessary if one is not to be barred by the current use of a word from enlarging the knowledge of certain fields. If the word perception is applied to physical perception only, then one cannot arrive at a concept that can be of use for attaining knowledge even of this (physical) perception. Often it is necessary to enlarge a concept in order that it may preserve in a narrower field the meaning appropriate to it. Or it is sometimes necessary to add something different to the previous content of a concept in order that its first content may be justified or even readjusted. For example, it is said in this book (p. 32) “A representation, therefore, is an individualized concept.” It has been objected that this is an unusual use of the word. But this use of the word is necessary if we are to find out what a representation really is. What would become of the progress of knowledge if, when compelled to readjust concepts, one is always to be met with the objection: “This is an unusual use of the word”?

• 41. Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, was born in Königsburg April 22, 1724. He entered the university there in 1740, enrolled for the study of mathematics and physics. His studies were interrupted by the death of his father, which left him in poverty. After he supported himself by tutoring for 9 years, the kindness of a friend enabled him to resume his studies, to graduate as a doctor and to qualify as a privatdocent. He occupied this position for 15 years. His lectures widened from physics to include much philosophy. Finally, after unsuccessful attempts, in 1770 he was given the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsburg. In 1781 his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason appeared, and in 1783, his Prolegomena. After the appearance of the 2nd edition of the Kritik in 1787, Kant became famous everywhere in German intellectual circles, and his views were regarded as those of an oracle. From 1792–97 he was engaged in a struggle with the government concerning his religious views. In 1794 he withdrew from society, and gave up all teaching except for one public lecture course on logic. In 1797 Kant terminated a teaching activity that had extended over 42 years. He died in Königsburg on February 12, 1804 near the end of his 80th year. Little more than five feet tall, deformed in his right shoulder, his chest almost concave, Kant had a weak constitution. He never married, and followed an unchanging program of activities from youth to old age. For example, he never failed to rise at 5 o'clock, studied for 2 hours, lectured for 2 more, and spent the rest of the morning at his desk. He dined at a restaurant and spent the afternoon in conversation with friends. He then walked for about an hour—a walk which for years followed exactly the same course—studied for 2 hours more, and retired between 9 and 10. He was a prolific reader, especially in history, science, travel, and philosophy. He knew English history and literature intimately, especially in the period of Queen Anne. He read little of Goethe or Schiller, but often re-read Voltaire and Rousseau. He had little interest in nature, and in 80 years never traveled more than 40 miles from his native Königsburg. For further biographical details, works and translations, consult any standard encyclopedia.
• 42. Emil DuBois-Reymond, German physiologist and educator. Born Berlin, November 7th, 1818, in 1836 he entered the University of Berlin, where his teacher was Johannes Müller, above). In 1840 he became the latter's assistant in physiology. His great work was the study of animal electricity, and his famous book was Researches on Animal Electricity, 1848–84. For many years he exerted great influence as a teacher. In 1858, upon the death of Müller, he was appointed to the latter's chair in physiology. In 1851 he had been admitted to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin; in 1867 he became its permanent secretary. His closest friend after Müller's death was von Helmholtz, who also had been a student of Müller. DuBois-Reymond died in Berlin on November 26, 1896. Rudolf Steiner makes many references to his work in lectures and writings.

Those of you who heard the last lectures given here will have understood from what was said in them that it is an absolute necessity of our time that the Science of Initiation, the real science of the spiritual life, should permeate the whole evolution of our present civilized society. I have already said much concerning the obstacles which hinder the permeation of our civilization, both present and in the future, by the science of the spiritual worlds. First, above all things, there is that feeling which I have often characterized as fear of spiritual knowledge. At the present time one has only to say such a thing openly for it to be received on all sides as a kind of insult. According to the views of most people, how can it be conceivable that in this age in which such splendid progress has been made, men should be afraid of any kind of knowledge? People today undoubtedly believe that with their powers of cognition they are in a position to comprehend everything, practically everything. The fear, however, of which I am speaking and of which I have so often spoken, does not lie within the consciousness of mankind. In his consciousness man persuades himself that he is courageous enough to face any kind of knowledge. But deep down in that part of the soul of which men know nothing, and of which indeed they wish today to know nothing, there lies this unconscious fear. And because men have this unconscious fear, all kinds of reasons rise up from the depths of their soul which they call logical, and they give out these reasons as logical objections to Spiritual Science. These are not logical objections. They are only the outcome of that fear of the science of the spirit, a fear which rules unconsciously in human souls. As a matter of fact, in the hidden depths of his soul-life everyone knows far more than he thinks, but he does not want this knowledge, which is rooted in the depths of his soul-life, to come to the surface, because in the presence of it he is afraid. Above all things man surmises one thing about the super-sensible worlds; he surmises that in all that he calls his thinking, in all that he designates as his world of thought, there is something contained of a super-sensible world. At the present time, even persons of a materialist turn of mind cannot altogether drive away the dim feeling that in the life of thought there is something contained which somehow indicates a super-sensible world. And at the same time man surmises something else about this thought-world. He divines that this world of thought relates itself to an actual reality, just as the image seen in a looking glass relates itself to the reality reflected by the looking glass. Just as the image in the looking glass is no reality, so man has to admit that his own world of thought is no reality. In that moment where man has the courage, the fearlessness, to admit that the world of thought is not a reality, in that moment he is also seized with yearning for a knowledge of the spiritual world. For after all, one would like to know what it is that is really there, but of which one only sees the reflection.

What I have just said has an important polaric counterpart. When through the Science of Initiation we cross the threshold of the super-sensible world, over into the spiritual world, then everything which man experiences here as sensible reality is transformed to a mere picture, to an appearance. We mount up into the super-sensible world and just as, let us say, here on earth the super-sensible world is a mirror-picture, existing only as a mirror-picture, so in the super-sensible world the earthly world exists only as a mirror-picture. He, therefore, who speaks from the Science of Initiation, speaks quite naturally of the realities of the sense world as of “pictures”. Now, human beings feel this; they feel that that on which they can stand so comfortably, that which they can breathe in so comfortably, which they can see so comfortably without having to do anything else than, at most, open their eyes when they get up in the morning and rub them—all this becomes a mere picture. They feel this and they begin to feel insecure, much as a man might who, taken for a walk, is led to the edge of an abyss and is then seized by the dizziness of fear. On the one side therefore, the human being feels that his thinking in the sense-world is a mere sum-total of pictures. On the other side he feels—and he feels it even if he deceives himself through that unconscious fear—that that which is told him of the super-sensible world makes this physical world a mere picture. As I have said, this is felt by men, and therefore they struggle against that which comes from the Science of Initiation. They rebel because they think that the secure foundation of existence falls away from them when their soul-life is, as it were, transformed to a mere picture.

Of course, it is not everybody in our present age who, quite unprepared, can go through that which has to be gone through by one who actually directly enters the world of Initiation. For anyone who enters the world of Initiation must not only know in it what every human being today should strive to know, but he has to live in it as well. He has to live in it, just as a man lives with his body in the physical sense world. That means he has to go through, as it were, by proxy what is only to be gone through in the physical sense-world at the moment of death. He has to gain the power to live in a world for which the physical, sensible part of him is not adapted. If we cut our finger we feel a certain pain, a discomfort. Why do we feel discomfort when we cut our finger? For the simple reason that the knife cuts the skin and muscle and nerve, but does not cut the super-sensible etheric body. If we have an uninjured finger, our super-sensible etheric body is adapted to it. If we cut the finger (and we cannot cut the etheric body) the super-sensible uncut etheric body is not adapted to it. That is the reason why the astral body then feels pain. The pain comes from non-adaptability to the sensible corporality. But when man crosses the threshold and enters the super-sensible world, then in his whole body he is no longer adapted to the sensible body. He gradually feels something similar to what he felt locally when he cut his finger. And this, my dear friends, this has to be thought of as enhanced to an unlimited degree.

Naturally, then, one cannot imagine what would come over human beings of the present-day, who often are so brave in their consciousness, and so sorry for themselves in their souls, if they suddenly received the power to live in the super-sensible world, if they had to experience everything which comes from non-adaptability to the super-sensible world.

But not only are human beings today so far advanced that with their healthy human understanding they can comprehend everything related by those who know the life in the super-sensible, but this knowledge of the super-sensible, this receptivity towards the science of the super-sensible, is an absolute, an unconditional, necessity for the healthy human understanding of the present age. Only this knowledge of the super-sensible can throw light upon all that is so chaotic, so destructive, in our modern surroundings. We are living in a world in which things are making their appearance, in which things are working themselves out, of which we must say: “They cannot go on like this, they must undergo transformation.” But human beings today have absolutely no insight into that which lives around them. To see through that which lives around man today is only possible through the Science of Initiation, is only possible when all the life of our present age can be compared with all the phenomena of life which have marked the evolution of mankind in the course of centuries, of millennia.

There has come a time when it must be said publicly that if any fruitful impulse is to be brought into life, into life with its modern destructive phenomena, it can be no other than the principle of the Three-fold Division of the Social Organism. By this means the eyes of men's souls will be directed to the three basic streams of our present life of civilization.

These three basic streams, as most of you today are fully aware, are the stream of the Spiritual Life (in the full meaning of the word spiritual), and that of the Political Life of Rights, and that of the external Life of Economy and Industry.

When these three basic streams of life are placed before the soul of man, when the name for each of these streams is uttered, in each case a great sum-total of the phenomena of Life is really included.

Let us now pass briefly before our spiritual vision these three streams in their sequence. We have today a Spiritual Life. In one way or another each individual has a part in this spiritual life: One, perhaps because his way of life is conditioned by economic circumstances or civic status, goes only to an elementary school; another perhaps is taken further on in our educational institutions. And that which is learnt in this way by human beings lives on at work amongst us in our social life. By this means we are linked to our fellow man.

Today the time has come when the question has to be put searchingly: “Where has this whole spiritual life come from, and what was it in the course of its descent, in the course of its evolution, which gave to it the character which it bears today?” If we go back to the real origin of this spiritual life, we must pass through certain stages on the way. That which characterizes the life of our schools, elementary and higher—I am leaving out the intermediate stages for the present—all goes back to a far-distant past. People usually do not know how far it goes back, e.g., in the case of the elementary school, that that goes back to the time of ancient Greece. Fundamentally our spiritual life today is nourished by impulses which existed in ancient Greece in a somewhat different form, and which have only been changed since then. But these impulses did not originate even in ancient Greece. They originated far away in the East. Thousands of years ago at their source in the East they had certainly another form than they had in ancient Greece. In the East these impulses belonged to the Wisdom of the Mysteries. If we leave aside our legal-political life, which is entangled chaotically as in a knot with the spiritual life, and also leave aside the life of industry, of economics; if we separate, abstract from these our spiritual life, then we can go back, mounting the path to certain Mysteries of the East, the origin of which lies undoubtedly thousands of years ago. That, however, which for us today in educational institutions is a dry barren abstraction, devoid of life, was then something altogether living. And if we transport ourselves in spirit back to those Mysteries of the East to which I am now referring, we meet as the leaders of these Mysteries men who may be designated as a kind of union of priest, of king, and at the same time, strange as it may sound to people today, of industrialists, economists. For in those Mysteries—I shall call them the “Mysteries of Light or of the Spirit”- an all-embracing knowledge of life was pursued, a knowledge which, in the first place, aimed at directing the study of the nature of man by means of the facts of the world of the Heavens, and the world of the Stars. But this knowledge was also a wisdom which aimed at regulating the rights of man's communal life in accordance with the knowledge thus acquired. Thus from these Mystery centres instruction was given for the tending of the cattle, for ploughing the fields, for laying the water courses, and so on. This Science of Initiation of hoary antiquity had an impelling power for social life; it was something which gave scope to the whole man. It was in a position not merely to say lovely things about the good and the true, but also by the Spirit itself it could rule practical life, could organize it and give it form.

Now the path which these Mystery leaders took and, which so far as was possible to them, showed to the people who belonged to such a Mystery, was a path leading from above downwards. First, these Mystery leaders strove for a revelation of the spiritual world, then grasping the spirit in the concrete in accordance with the basic principles of atavistic clairvoyance, they worked down to the political life, to the political shaping of the social organism, then down to economy and industry. That was Wisdom, with impelling force for life itself. By what road did this wisdom with its impelling life-force actually come among mankind?

If we go back to the ages before the Mysteries to which I am now referring became authoritative, we find in the regions of civilized humanity people with a primeval atavistic clairvoyance, human beings who, if they spoke of the needs of life, could invoke the impressions of their heart, of their soul, of their inner vision. These people were spread over the regions now called India, Persia, Armenia, North Africa, South Europe, etc. One thing, however, we do not find in the souls of these human beings. It is that which today we consider our proudest soul-treasure—Intellect, Reason. The inhabitants of the civilized world of that time did not yet need reason. What our reason does today, was done by those human beings out of the promptings of their souls, and these promptings were guided and directed by the leaders whom these men had. Later there came into these regions another human race, quite a different race from the earlier population. In the Sagas and Myths, and indeed also in history, we are told that from the highlands of Asia certain people came down in very ancient times who brought a form of civilization to the south and south-west. Spiritual Science is required to establish what kind of men these were who came down upon those earlier human beings, who simply from their own inner promptings received the guiding powers for daily life. Through investigation by Spiritual Science we find that those who brought in a new population-element combined two qualities, one of which the earlier people did not possess. The original inhabitants had atavistic clairvoyance without reason, without intelligence. Those who came down amongst them also had something of the clairvoyant power, but at the same time in their souls they had received the first germ of intelligence, of reason. They brought, therefore, into the civilization of that time, a clairvoyance impregnated with reason. These were the first Aryans, of whom history tells us, and out of the mutual opposition of the ancient early people living by atavistic powers of the soul, and those who impregnated the ancient soul-powers with reason, out of that opposition there arose the first distinction into Caste, external, physical and empirical, which still works on in Asia, and of which Tagore, for instance, speaks.

The most prominent members of the race, who possessed at the same time ancient soul-vision and the intellect which was dawning in humanity, were the leaders of those Mysteries of which I have just spoken, the Mysteries of Oriental Light. From these proceeded the Mysteries of Greece. Thus we may say: From the Mysteries of the East there went forth later the stream of the Spirit, that living wisdom with its living practical impulse of which I have just spoken. In the course of time it came over to Greece. Its influence is still to be traced in the most ancient Greek civilization. But in the progress of Greek civilization the influence became weakened, the leaders lost their ancient soul-vision, and reason more and more freed itself from the old clairvoyance. Thereby the leadership of this civilization lost its meaning, because this once only had meaning as long as the leaders were endowed with spiritual soul-vision as well as intelligence. History tells us that that which had a meaning in ancient times is preserved into a much later epoch. Thus we find humanity in the later Greek civilization still grouped in a way which had a meaning for that ancient time, when the leaders of the Mysteries were actually messengers of the Gods. That which once was wisdom with an impulse for life, was transformed into Greek logic and dialectic, into the wisdom of the Greeks, wisdom which is already strained thin compared with its old Oriental origin. In the old Oriental times every one knew why there were people who obeyed when the leaders gave them directions in economics. In Greece we find the division into masters and slaves. The division of mankind was still there, but the meaning had been gradually lost. And that which for the Greeks still had much meaning, for at least they knew that it came from the ancient Mysteries, was still more weakened as it passed into our modern life of education. In our modern life of education, everything has become devoid of living connection. We pursue today an abstract science. We find no longer a connection between this abstract science and external life. The stream from Greece has gone into our Colleges, into our elementary and secondary schools, into the whole popular cultural life of modern humanity. One curious thing may be observed today. We meet among the men with whom we are surrounded some whom we call “noblemen”, “aristocrats”. We try in vain to find the reason why one person is an aristocrat and another is not, for mankind has long stripped off that which distinguishes the aristocrat from the non-aristocrat. The aristocrat was the leader in the old Oriental Mysteries of Light. He could be the aristocrat, because from him came everything which had a real living impulse in political and economic affairs. The wisdom has become watered thin, the divisions into which it made groups of people have become an external abstraction without meaning for those whose lives are cast in it. From that stream proceeded what we call Feudalism. In external social life this Feudalism lives on, tolerated by some, perhaps vexatious to others, meaningless. No one thinks any more about the meaning, because it is not to be found in life today, but in our modern age of chaos the feudal origin of our abstract science and knowledge shows itself pretty clearly. And when our modern Spiritual life became entirely the spiritual life of the journalistic world, a term was invented which really is a verbal atrocity. Through this term men sought to bring about a transformation of our life, but it was merely the expression of an utterly rickety spiritual life—they invented the term, “spiritual aristocracy”. If anyone tried to explain exactly what is meant by this term he could only say: “It is that which now squeezed dry to the uttermost had once upon a time in the Mysteries of the East, an impelling force which worked down into the furthest limits of practical life.” The term in those days had a meaning, but today it has lost all meaning. And if anyone wishes to describe our Spiritual life, he has to think of a desperately tangled coil of wool where all the threads are twisted together. There are three threads in particular which are entangled. One of them I have just described to you. Our essential task is to unravel the tangle.

Let us now turn the eyes of our soul to the second stream. This second stream had another origin, which also lies far back in the evolution of mankind; it, too, was essentially united with the Mysteries, and in particular with the Mysteries of Egypt. I called the first stream “the Mysteries of the East” or “the Mysteries of Light”. I shall call this second stream “the Mysteries of Man”. These Mysteries were directed above all to obtaining at the Egyptian source, that Wisdom which gives the power to organize human communal life, to establish a relation between one human being and another. This stream from the Mysteries spread through the South of Europe, and then, just as the first stream went through the life of Greece, this second stream found its way to the people of Rome, a people lacking in imagination. I might call it “the stream of Rights”. It took its path through Rome. All that which, bit by bit, in the course of human evolution has been inoculated as Jurisprudence, as legal distinctions in Equity, is the attenuated remnant of knowledge of these Mysteries of Man.

The second thread in our tangle of civilization has come to us in this way, but very much changed, transformed after having passed through the unimaginative mind of Rome. We shall not understand modern life, until we know that men even today are still unproductive both in the life of Spirit and in the life of Rights; until we know that both of these have been received by us from outside—the first after it had traveled the long way from the Mysteries of the East through the Mysteries of Greece, the second, the long way from the Mysteries of Egypt through Rome. Present-day humanity has been sterile with regard to both the life of Spirit and the life of Rights. We could bring forward many cases to prove this assertion, but it will suffice if I point out paths taken by Christianity.

When Christianity sought to enter the world, where had Christ Jesus to appear so that what He had to give to the world could find a foothold? He had to appear in the East. It was in that which lived in the East that He had to place what He had to give to humanity. The Mystery of Golgotha is a fact. What mankind knows about it is in process of evolving. What people first had to say about the Mystery of Golgotha was clothed in that which was still left to them from the Mysteries of the East. They surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha with the Science and Wisdom of the Mysteries of the East, and with that Wisdom they tried to understand it. In the early Greek Fathers of the Church we find there is still something of this Christianity.

To point to another manifestation of the same kind, when the civilization of the West had spiritually become utterly sterile, and a spiritual restorative was sought for, through one of its representatives, what happened? In England and America a few people came together and borrowed the Wisdom from the conquered and enslaved people of India. That is to say, they went once more to the East to seek there the spiritual stream, to seek in the East what remained of that ancient spiritual stream. From this arose Theosophy of the English-American dye, which sought to draw water from this source, but in the form it has assumed at the present day. It is the sterility of modern Spiritual life which strikes one most forcibly, especially in Western lands.

The second stream, then, is that which is concerned with Politics and Rights, and which passed through Rome. In it we find the origin of our life of Politics and Rights. This stream which has flowed into, and is still active in our life of Rights, only came by the side-channel of the Roman world. Hence, in our civilization, that which passed into our Spiritual life also has been received by way of the Roman political-legal system. This accounts for so many anomalies. Even Christianity, which spread in the West on Roman lines, took on a form conditioned by this fact. What did the religious element become on its passage through the Roman world? It became that great System of Law which we call the Roman Catholic religion. There, God with his attendant gods, is essentially a Being who rules according to the Roman conception of justice, only He is in the super-sensible world. Here we find established the ideas of debt, of default, which are really only legal ideas, ideas which never existed in the Mysteries of the East or in the Greek philosophy of life. In this Christianity the juristic concepts of Rome are established. It is a religious stream saturated with legalities. Everything which finds expression in life can assume a form of beauty, but we must confess that even that juristic-political scene in which the God of the World becomes the Judge of the World, and winds up the whole evolution of the earth by a legal Act, even that magnificent painting of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, is only a glorious expression of Christianity saturated by legalism. It is just this Christianity saturated by legalism, which finds its culmination in the “Last Judgment”.

We must unwind the tangle of our spiritual, political, and industrial life so that we may see what is really contained inside it. For we live in a chaotic civilization. Three streams are working in it; we must separate them from one another.

The third stream which has come into our chaotic civilization, originated more in the North. Much has filtered into it also, but in another way. This stream has been preserved till today, especially in the social organization of England and America. I shall speak of this stream as “the Mysteries of the Earth”, the Mysteries of the North or of the Earth. Now this stream which developed first as primitive spirituality out of the Mysteries of the Earth, took a different course from that of the essentially Spiritual life of the East. I have said that in the East the path led from above downwards, first revealing itself as the Mysteries of the Heavens and of the Light, then passing down into Politics and Economics. Here, in the North things rose out of Economics, out of the life of Industry. The origin has, of course, vanished from ordinary modern life. We notice it at most in ancient customs which still survive here and there; such customs as are described in accounts of ancient Nordic civilization, of which the English civilization is a branch, e.g., processions through the villages at a certain season of the year, with the bull, which has to fertilize the herd of cows, crowned with wreaths. That is to say, from below upwards there arose a longing after the Spiritual life. The path leads from below upwards. Everything, even that which existed as primitive spirituality, was taken from the industrial-economic life. All the festivals originally were connected with the life of Economy, of Industry, all expressed something of the meaning of the life of Economy. Just as in the Oriental civilization the path led from above downwards, so here, in the North, the path had to lead from below upwards. Mankind had to be raised from below, out of Economics, through the life of Rights, into the Mysteries of the Spirit. Mankind has not as yet advanced very far on this path from below upwards.

If we investigate the Legal life, the life of law and justice, as it has developed in the regions of Western Europe, we find it completely orientated to Rome. If we investigate the Spiritual life, we do not find it so plainly orientated to the East as that Indian Theosophy is of which I have just spoken. But we do find that that which has survived as innate Spiritual life which was not taken from the East, nor saturated with legalities from Rome, we do often find this original Spiritual life struggling to release itself from the Economic life, and with hard labour working itself free.

Let us take a characteristic example. Such philosophers, such students of natural science as Newton, Darwin, Hume, Mill, Spencer, can only be understood if we see how they developed out of the Economic life, how they endeavoured to take an upward path. Mill, for example, as a national economist, can only be understood if we understand the economic conditions surrounding him. We can only understand the English philosophers if we clearly grasp the economic basis of their environment. That basis is something inseparable from the third stream, the stream of “the Mysteries of the Earth”, the stream which works its way from below upwards. This, the third stream, is as yet quite unrefined.

Here then, in the tangle of our so-called civilization, we have the three threads chaotically at work. Always in a certain sense there has been a revolt against this tangle, in the West at least. In America, where the Economic life is derived from the Mysteries of the North, we find theories built up scientifically, but devoid of Spirit, alien to Spirit. America obtained her Legal-Political life by way of Rome. Spiritual concerns were borrowed from the East. In Central Europe, too, there was a good deal of revolt, and various endeavours were made to grasp these things in their primitive clarity; in the Spiritual life with most penetration in what I must call Goetheanism. Goethe, who sought to get rid of a Law-code in the sphere of natural science, Goethe is characteristic of this revolt against the purely Oriental life of Spirit. For the legal element has entered into natural science too. We speak of “Laws of Nature”. The Oriental would never have spoken of the Laws of Nature, but of the Rule of Cosmic Will. The term “Natural Law” was derived from the side-stream of Jurisprudence. It crept into nature knowledge as through a window and became “natural law”. Goethe wanted to grasp the pure phenomenon, the pure fact, the primal phenomenon. Until we purge our Natural Science from its dependence on Jurisprudence, we can never reach a purified cultural life. For this reason Spiritual Science everywhere lays hold on facts, and indicates so-called “laws” as secondary phenomena only.

We find also a certain revolt against the Roman system of Rights, a revolt which is still in the minds of many persons inclined to socialism. For instance, a Prussian minister, Wilhelm van Humbold, in his fine treatise on “The Limits of State Action”, shows stirring within him something of this impulse to free the Cultural life and the life of Economics from the mere life of the State. In that little book there lives the impulse to strip off the political from the other directing forces. Thus in German philosophy, too, there lives this revolt against that which is merely “old”. But only through a healthy insight into that which the Science of Initiation can give concerning the origin of our present cultural life, can man gain a sure foot-hold; only through such insight can healing, can health, come into the evolution of human civilization.

In the East of Europe especially, there has always been a feeling for the necessity of a right co-operation of the three elements in our present life of culture. Of these three streams the one most characteristic in expression is that which came from the North to the West. In the West everything is overpowered by the Economic-industrial life. Of the legal element there is much in Central Europe, whilst much of that which arose from the Mysteries of the East, the Mysteries of Light, is to be found in Eastern Europe and Asia. There, where the caste system still prevails, we find something of the meaning of that old Feudalism which came forth from the Spirit. The life permeated with legalities has bred the modern Bourgeoisie. The Bourgeoisie is the outcome of the stream of Rights. These things have to be seen with perfect clarity now; and the impulse towards this clear recognition lies already in the unconscious part of man, but it is only Spiritual Science which can bring this longing, this impulse, to real clarity.

In the nineteenth century, again and again, we can see how men strove amid all the confusion of very indefinite impulses, to reach ideals for the future. Men wanted especially to put an end to the abstract relations which prevail today between man and man. The life of the Spirit has been watered down so that it lives in us as an abstraction; and the life of Economics is grasping and struggling to find the way upward from below.

In Eastern Europe, where things of such disturbing, devastating significance are now working themselves out, it was shown for the first time in the much-confused nineteenth century how men attempted to prepare for the revolt against this chaos of civilization. The Russian revolutionaries of the second and last third of the nineteenth century, attempted in particular to fertilize the remnant still left in the East of an early stage of Spiritual life, with that element in Central Europe which had already revolted against tradition. We find among such Russians in their correspondence with each other, how they point out that already in Central Europe, the intellect, the pure abstract life of reason has endeavoured to permeate itself with a certain spirituality. Again and again there appears some such sentence as the following: “In German philosophy the attempt has been made once more to raise the intellect, which has lost its ancient soul-vision, to a certain spirituality.” In Eastern Europe they wanted to make themselves intimately acquainted with this attempt in Central Europe, and this intimate knowledge reflects itself in the way these Russian revolutionaries write to one another. They greatly esteemed the philosopher Ivan Petrovitch. They spoke much of his philosophy, how he had raised himself to pure thought, attempting to bring Spirit again into the dialectic play of thought of Western Culture. They tried to draw conclusions from his philosophy. The better to mark their own feeling of relationship to him, they called him not “Hegel”, but “Ivan Petrovitch”. In their endeavours we see foreshadowed that which later on had to work so destructively.

In our age, clear thinking must spread over the whole earth. Everything must be done to help forward the victory of clear thinking. But we must be quite conscious of all that is against us when we make the attempt to reach this clear thinking, and that, amongst many other things, we have against us man's love of ease. We must wean ourselves from the habit of regard for the comfort of men. For mankind needs the Spirit, and the triumph of the Spirit is not brought about by the comfortable paths so often trodden today. Today men fight against the coming in of Initiation with the most significant weapons.

I was recently informed of something which is significant in historic culture. You will correct me if I make a mistake, for I was not there myself. At a meeting where a Protestant clergyman was in the chair, one of our friends made some quotations from the Bible. The truth of these did not please the chairman, who then used the expression, “Here Christ is wrong!” Have I repeated that correctly? (Assent.) Today when one can no longer justify one's own view, it is man who is infallible, and the Christ who is wrong! We have come as far as this.

All these things bear witness to the true character of that which is stirring as Spiritual life in mankind today. Where Spiritual life has reached the most utter abstraction, it can no longer keep within the sphere of truth. But we must become aware of what really exists.

The periodical, The Threefold Social Organism, recently published a notice of a gathering held here at Stuttgart, where from the Roman Catholic side, but in harmony with the Protestant, opposition was made to the teaching given as Spiritual Science. And the leading cleric is reported to have said that no discussion was necessary because people can inform themselves concerning the doctrines of Dr. Steiner from the writings of his opponents, but the writings of Dr. Steiner himself may not be read because the Pope has forbidden it. In fact, this is the latest decree from the Holy Congregation, and it applies especially to Catholics—the decree that it is forbidden to Catholics to read Anthroposophical writings. Roman Catholics, therefore, are officially bound to seek information upon what I teach from the writings of my opponents, but they are not allowed to read what I write myself. Anyone on the other side who knows the whole constitution of the Roman Catholic Church, how the individual is so dovetailed into it that he is only a representative of the whole organization, must in all earnestness, out of the depths of his soul, bring forward the question regarding the moral aspect of such a procedure. Is such a procedure to be reconciled in any way with human morality? Is it not profoundly immoral? Such questions must be put bravely today, without any leniency. We are living in a serious time, and may not go on sleeping in the easy comfort-loving, lazy way. We must express ourselves unreservedly about these things. If we show the immorality of modern untruth in the right light, it will bring about a healing.

Recently an article by a doctor in Sociology was brought to me. It began somewhat as follows: “What a distance there is between the clear thoughts of Waxweiler and the obscure thoughts of Dr. Steiner! But then, this Dr. Steiner was the intimate of William II, and it has been suggested that he helped William II with important advice, especially in recent years. So one can even call this man the Rasputin of William II.” His next sentence runs: “We will not make ourselves the transmitters of such a rumour.” And there are today many people with this mentality, people forsaken by every spirit of truthfulness, and whatever they say is beyond the sphere of truth.

We see two things here. First, the moral degradation of a man who makes himself the bearer of this rumour, and then his fine logic when he says, “Because I spread this rumour among my readers, I do not make myself a spreader of this rumour.” Countless people think in this way. What they say has no reality in it. I cannot say, “I say something because I do not say it.” This is what Monsieur Ferriere says, the man who wrote the article from which I have just read. We cannot enter into relationship with such morally degenerate individuals. I can only maintain, and I hope that it will be brought before this writer's notice, that I have had the following relationships with William II. Once about 1897, I was sitting in a theatre in Berlin, in the middle of the front row, above, and William II sat in the Royal Box, and I saw him, as far away as from here to the end of this room. The second time was when he walked behind the coffin of the Grand Duchess of Weimar, and that was quite far away. The third time was in the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, where, with his following, with the Marshal's baton in his hand, he rode through the streets, all the people shouting “Hurrah!” after him. These are all the relationships with William II, I have ever had. I have never had any others nor sought them. Thus assertions arise today, and much of what you read on paper in printer's ink is of no more value than that dirty rumour which is used to make Anthroposophy a heresy in Latin countries. Today such things have to be traced to their origin. It is not enough to take them as mere parlance. People must accustom themselves to go to the origin of what is affirmed.

A sense for the true origin of facts in the external world will only develop in mankind out of a deepening in real Spiritual Science.

Ladies and Gentlemen,¹

A few weeks ago, in my lecture on Soul Health and Spiritual Investigation,² I put before you some of the answers that have been given to the question, "Why do people misunderstand Spiritual Investigation?" To-day, I should like to examine other points of view, which will give a more general answer to the question under discussion. There can, of course, be no question of my examining individual attacks which may have been made from one quarter or another on what we call Spiritual Investigation. Such a procedure would be quite out of key with the tone that you, ladies and gentlemen, have learnt to expect from these lectures. If, on occasions,³ frustrated ambition or some such motive has caused opposition to be raised in those very circles which formerly reckoned themselves perfectly good followers of Spiritual Research, this only serves to show how unimportant are these attacks in comparison to the great tasks which Spiritual Investigation has to fulfil. It will, therefore, be necessary to deal with individual points only occasionally, and on external grounds. That, moreover, is not my aim. My aim is this. To show how contemporary education and all that the mind may have assimilated of the habits of thought, the philosophic feeling, and the intellectual systems that characterise our present times—how all this may make it hard for the modern mind to bring the right spirit to the understanding of Spiritual Investigation. What, then, I wish to explain fundamentally are not the illegitimate attacks that have been made on Spiritual Investigation, but those that are, up to a point—one had almost said completely—legitimate; at any rate understandable to the modern Soul.

For Spiritual Science has to deal not only with the attacks that are made upon other spiritual tendencies of our time; it has, in the special sense mentioned just now, every intellectual movement of the time against it. If the mechanistic, materialistic—or to use the more scholarly expression now in vogue—the monistic view of the universe is put forward, it will be found to have opponents who base themselves upon a certain spiritual idealism. The reasons which such spiritually-minded idealists adduce in defence of their views against materialism are, as a rule, extremely weighty and important. They are objections which can in every respect be shared by the Spiritual Investigator, reasons which he can grasp and understand in the same way as anyone who merely takes his stand upon a certain spiritual idealism. But the Spiritual Investigation speaks of the spiritual world, not merely as do, for example, idealists of the stamp of Ulrici, Wirth, Immanuel Hermann Fichte,⁴ though the last, as we saw yesterday,⁵ went more deeply into things than the others. The Spiritual Investigator does not merely speak in abstract concepts which point to a spiritual world beyond the world of the senses. On the contrary, he cannot leave this spiritual world undefined, cannot grasp it in mere concepts; he must go on to a real description of it. He is not content, as are the idealists, to accept a purely intellectual indication of a spiritual world, which, though it must exist, still remains unknown. No—the spiritual world which he has to show forth must be concrete and manifested in various individual types of being which have, not a physical, but a purely spiritual existence. In a word, he has to speak of a spiritual world which shall be as varied and as full of meaning as the physical, far fuller indeed, if it were but truly described. If, then, the Spiritual Investigator speaks of the spiritual world, not as of something which exists in general and can be proved intellectually, but quite definitely as of something to be believed in, as of something which can be perceived as the world of sense is perceived, he will find among his opponents not only the materialists, but also those who speak of the spiritual world only in abstract concepts from the standpoint of a certain spiritual and intellectual idealism. Finally, he will have as opponents those who believe that religious feeling of any kind will be threatened by Spiritual Investigation, that religion—their religion—will be endangered by the existence of a science of the spiritual world. And one could name many other movements which the Spiritual Investigator would find working against him—all fundamentally in the same way as has been described, and to-day more powerfully than ever. Weighty objections, objections which from a certain point of view and to a certain extent are justified. It is of these, therefore, that I wish to speak.

And again and again it is the scientific view of the world which presents, especially in our day, the most considerable opposition to the aspiration of Spiritual Science, the view, namely, which seeks to erect a picture in the world on the foundations of those recent advances in science which may rightly be regarded as the greatest triumph of humanity. And again and again we must repeat that it is no easy task to realise that the true Spiritual Investigator does not really dispute anything in the world picture that can be legitimately deduced from the data of modern science, that on the contrary he does in the fullest sense of the word take his stand upon the ground of modern science, in so far as the latter supplies an adequate foundation for a cosmic or world-conception. Let us examine this recent scientific tendency from a particular contemporary point of view. For we can but pick out individual points of view for examination. Here, then, we stand before those men who quite legitimately raise difficulties against Spiritual Science by saying, "Does not modern science show us through the wonderful structure of the human nervous system and the human brain how dependent is that which man experiences mentally upon this structure and upon the action of this nervous system? "And one might easily expect the Spiritual Investigator to deny what the ordinary scientist is bound to maintain from his point of view. But this is just where so much mischief is done by the dilettante Spiritual Investigator, and by those who want to be Spiritual Investigators without being worthy to lay claim to so much as the name of dilettante. For ever and again true Spiritual Science is confused with charlatanism and dilettantism. It is no easy task to believe that just on this very subject of the meaning of the physical structure of the brain and nervous system, the Spiritual Investigator actually stands more firmly on scientific ground than the scientist himself.

Let us take an example. I purposely choose one that is not very recent, although with the rapid advance of modern science things alter very quickly and the older discoveries are easily superseded by new ones. I purposely did not choose a very recent example, though it would have been easy enough to do so. I have selected the famous brain specialist and psychiatrist, Meynert,⁶ because I wish to take as my starting-point what, as a result of his researches on the brain, he had to say about the relation between the brain and the life of the soul. Meynert had a profound knowledge of the brain and of the nervous system, both in their normal and in their pathological conditions. His writings, which towards the end of the nineteenth century, were standard works on the subject, will inspire anyone who reads them with the feeling that it is supremely important to consider not only the pronouncements of purely positive research on the question under discussion, but also those of a man of this quality. The following point, however, must be borne in mind. When people who, for one reason or another, have lightly taken upon themselves a would-be Spiritual Scientific attitude, people who have never looked through a microscope or a telescope, ignoramuses who have never done anything that could give them the remotest conception of—say—the wonderful structure of the human brain—when such people talk about the baseness of materialism, then it is easy enough to understand that the conscientious thoroughness which informs the methods of modern scientific research should prevent its votaries from accepting the objections that have been put to them by those who parade as the champions of Spiritual Science.

But when a man like Meynert, however, embarks upon the study of the brain, the first thing he finds is that the brain in its outer frame is a complicated agglomeration of cells (according to him about a milliard in number),⁷ which combine among themselves in the most intricate ways, which multiply and are distributed to the most various parts of the body, into the organs of sense where they become the nerves of the special senses, into the organs of movement, etc., etc. And to a scientist like Meynert it is revealed how connecting fibres lead from one set of nervous paths to another and he is thus led to the view that the brain takes in that which man experiences as the world of presentations, that which is broken up and bound together again in concepts and images when the external world impinges upon his senses. The brain takes all this in, works upon and transforms it, and according to the nature of the transformation, produces what we call the phenomena of the soul.

Yes, say the philosophers, but these phenomena, these visions of the soul, these mental processes are something quite different from the movements of the brain, different from anything that goes on inside the brain. The answer to them is this. That the brain should produce what we call mental processes is for a scientist like Meynert no more wonderful than that, say, a watch should, in accordance with the nature of its internal mechanism, produce signs which tell us the time of day; no more wonderful than that a magnet should, in virtue of its purely physical properties, attract a body outside itself, should, as it were, work with invisible threads. The magnetic field reveals itself as active around the physical object. Why should not the life of the soul be something produced similarly, but in an infinitely more complicated manner, by the brain? The view, in short, is one that cannot be easily dismissed, nor can its claims be rejected without very careful examination. You may laugh at the idea that the brain should, by the mere unrolling of its processes, bring into being some highly complex psychic life. Yet there are plenty of examples in nature of processes where we would not at first glance be disposed to speak of the presence of soul life. Not by taking our stand upon preconceived opinions, but by realising how justified are many of the difficulties which many people feel to be standing in the path of Spiritual Investigation—thus, and thus alone, can we bring order and harmony into the bewildered conceptions of the world.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing to disprove the possibility of that which in the ordinary sense of the word we call soul life having been produced by a purely mechanical process, in so far as it takes place in the brain and in the nervous system. The brain and the nervous system may be ordered in so complicated a manner that through the unrolling of their processes, the life of the soul can arise in man. No one, therefore, will reject the materialistic picture of the world given by Natural Science on the ground of considerations such as these, which merely rest upon the observations of nature. Indeed, Spiritual Science is hard put to it to-day to oppose Natural Science, just because the latter has been brought to such a pitch of perfection, and has achieved so legitimate an ideal in its own sphere. For the Spiritual Investigator must be able and willing to recognise to the full where the other side is in the right. That is why, once again, we can never hope to build up a spiritual view of the world by merely stressing those things which run counter to the claims of external observation, even when the latter extends to the sphere of our own human lives. If we want to reach the life of the soul, then we must experience it in ourselves, and our soul life must not flow from outer events. Then we shall not say that the brain cannot produce the processes of the soul, but we must experience these psychic processes ourselves.

Now there is one sphere in which everyone has experience of his own soul, independently of brain processes, and that is the sphere of ethics, the sphere of the moral life. It is at once obvious that what shines before a man as a moral impulse cannot occur as the result of the unrolling of any mere brain processes. It must be clearly understood that I am speaking of the moral impulse in so far as the will and the feelings enter into it, in so far as the experience is really ethical. Thus, in the sphere where the soul becomes immediately aware of itself, everyone can assert that the soul has a life of its own, independently of the body and of anything corporeal. But not everyone is able to add to this inner realisation and growth in the moral life the idea that Goethe added to it in the essay which I mentioned yesterday⁸ on "Anschauende Urteilskraft," and in many other passages. Not everyone can say, like Goethe, from the depth of his own experience: If even in the world of sense man can rise to impulses which act independently of the corporeal, why should not this soul of his be able, in relation to other spiritual activities, to embark boldly upon the "adventure of reason."⁹ (This was the name given by Kant to anything that went beyond the moral standpoint.) This is where Goethe speaks in opposition to Kant. And it means that we must rise, not only to a spiritual soul life which springs, as do the moral impulses, from the depth of the soul, so that it cannot be ascribed to the life of the brain—no, we must also have other spiritual experiences, which will go to show that the soul perceives spiritually with spiritual organs just as we perceive physically with physical organs. But for this to happen there must be added to the ordinary everyday life, which we go through passively, a life of inner activity and doing. And this it is which escapes so many people to-day, who have become accustomed to the idea that if anything is true, then it must be dictated to them from some quarter or another. For men would rather take their stand upon any external manifestation than upon the firm ground of inner experience. What is experienced within the soul strikes them as something arbitrary, something unsure. Truth, so it seems to them, should be firmly rooted in external reality, in something to whose existence we have not ourselves contributed.

Now this way of thinking is easy enough, at any rate in the sphere of scientific research. To add all manner of fantastic material to the testimony of the outer senses and to what experiment and method can make of this testimony, is to burden Natural Science unnecessarily. But we shall see in a moment that the same does not hold of Spiritual Investigation. And even if we admit that the standpoint of Natural Science is justified, we can see how it loses in strength for lack of the habit of inner energising, how enfeebled it shows itself when that activity is demanded of it which is simply indispensable for anyone wishing to make the smallest progress in Spiritual Science. In order to make progress in spiritual knowledge it is not necessary to go in for all sorts of hazy activities, nor to train oneself so as to have what are usually called clairvoyant experiences by means of hallucination, visions, etc. This comes neither at the beginning nor, as I pointed out in the lecture on Soul Health and Spiritual Science,¹⁰ does it come at the end of our quest. What is needful, however, in order to reach a deeper understanding of Spiritual Research (mind, I do not say in order to become a legitimate follower of its teaching), what is needful for a legitimate understanding is hard thinking. And hard thinking has suffered considerably from the fact that people have grown accustomed to do no more than observe how phenomena occur as to their form. They place implicit faith in the pronouncements of nature, whether in the outer world of sense, in external observation, or in experiment. They take their stand upon what the experiment says. They do not venture—and they are right so far as this particular field is concerned—they do not venture to establish as a comprehensive general law anything that has not been dictated from outside. But this attitude hinders the inner activity of the soul. Man gets into the way of being passive, of trusting only what is shown to him from outside. And his soul completely loses the faculty for seeking truth by an inner energising, an inner activity. Now, in approaching Spiritual Science, it is above all necessary that one's thinking should be thorough, so thorough that nothing will escape it, and that certain lightly-veiled objections which could be raised should spring up in one's mind. It is necessary, too, that one should anticipate such objections and face up to them oneself, so as to reach a higher standpoint from which, on looking back on these former objections, one shall find the truth. And at this point I would like to direct your attention to an example—one of many hundreds and thousands which could be found in Meynert. I do this, ladies and gentlemen, because I regard Meynert as a first-class scientist. When it comes to refuting criticisms I do not choose protagonists I despise, but critics for whom I have the highest regard.

Thus one of the points of interest in Meynert is his account of how the conceptions of time and space arise in man. His view is as follows. Let us suppose (the example is particularly apposite at the moment) that I am listening to a public speaker. I shall get the impression that his words are spoken one after the other, i.e., that they are spoken in Time. And, Meynert asks, how do we get this impression that the words are spoken successively in Time? (Thus, ladies and gentlemen, you can all imagine that Meynert is speaking of you as you are taking in my words in such a way that they appear to you one after the other in Time.) And he answers: Time comes into being through the conception of the brain; it is as the brain receives it that one word can be thought of as coming after another. The words come to us through the sense organs and from these sense organs a further process sends them on to the brain. The brain has certain inner organs with which it works upon the sense impressions, and thus the conception of Time arises within through the activity of certain organs. And it is in this way that all conceptions are created out of the brain. That Meynert does not mean a subordinate activity by this can be seen from a certain remark which he makes in his lecture on the "Mechanics of the Brain Structure,"¹¹ in which he gives his opinion of how the external world is related to man. The ordinary man in the street, says Meynert, assumes that the external world is there exactly as he creates it in his brain. The hypothesis, he continues, which Realism dares to make is that the world which appears to the brain is there before and after any brains existed. But the world as constructed in this way by a brain capable of consciousness gives the lie to the realistic hypothesis. That is to say, the brain builds up the world as man pictures it, as it is presented to him by his senses, as he has created it outwards from within through the processes of his brain. And in this way man creates, not only images, but also Time, Space, and Infinity. Certain mechanisms exist in the brain, says Meynert, which enable him to do this. Unfortunately in lectures of this sort, which must of necessity be short, one cannot enter into every detail of these ideas, which may, therefore, in many respects seem obscure. But we shall see in a moment that it is possible, nevertheless, to pick out the main line of thought in this matter. What seems clear is that as soon as one has taken a step along the path which leads to the view that the brain is the creator of the life of the Soul as it occurs in man, then what Meynert says will seem completely justifiable. It is what that path leads to; we are bound to end there. And the only way of avoiding such a conclusion is to have thought things out so thoroughly that the very simple objections to this view will immediately occur to one. For imagine what would be the consequences if Meynert's exposition were correct. You are all sitting there. You are listening to what I say. Through the structure of your brains what I am saying becomes ordered in Time. It is not merely that your auditory nerve transforms it into an auditory image, but it arranges for you in Time the words that I am speaking. Thus you all have, as it were, a dream picture of what is being said and also, naturally, of him who is standing before you. Behind this dream picture, says Meynert, Naive Realism assumes that there is a human being like yourselves, who is saying all this. But this is not necessarily so, for you have produced this man and his words in your brain, and there may be something quite different behind him. And yet I, too, am ordering my images in Time, so that Time is present not only in you but also in the fact that I am placing one word after another. Now this perfectly simple idea will not occur to anyone who digs himself into a certain line of thought. And yet it is easy to see in the case I have just described that Time has an objective existence, that it lives outside ourselves. But the man who has embarked upon a certain definite line of thought will see neither to right nor to left of him, but will go on and on in this same direction and reach the most extraordinarily subtle and highly remarkable results. But this is not the point. All the most subtle results which this line of thought will yield admit of vigorous proof. Each proof is linked to the other. You will never detect an error if you follow the stream of Meynert's thought. The point, however, is this, that you must have thought things out sufficiently to hit upon the instances that will not fit; the thinking finds out of itself that which will force the stream out of its bed. And it is just this act of making thought mobile and active which, among those in the other camp, interferes with that perfectly legitimate concentration upon the external world which is demanded of them by Natural Science. Thus the problem of Time gives rise here not to a subjective, but to a genuinely objective difficulty. And the same will be found to be the case in all kinds of departments of thought.

For more than a hundred years philosophers have been chewing the old saying of Kant's with which he tried to rescue the conception of God from the dilemma in which he found it. If we merely think of a hundred coins,¹² they are not a coin less than a hundred real coins. A hundred imagined, possible coins are supposed to be exactly the same as a hundred real coins! Upon this idea that conceptually a hundred possible coins contain everything that a hundred coins contain, upon this idea Kant bases the whole of his refutation of the so-called Ontological proof of the existence of God. Now, if our thinking is mobile, we shall immediately hit upon the objection: a hundred imaginary coins are for one with a mobile mind exactly a hundred coins less than a hundred real ones. Exactly a hundred coins less. The point is not merely to ask for a logical proof of what we are thinking, but to pay attention to how we are thinking. The web of Kant's ideas is, of course, so closely woven that it needs the utmost acumen to point to any logical error it may contain. The point is not only to bear in mind what arises within certain accustomed streams of thought, but to be so well drilled in thought that one remains firmly planted in the objective world. We must stand, not only with our thinking within ourselves, not only inside our own world of thought, but in the objective world outside us, so as to capture on the wing the instances that will refute the idea before us. The mind must be thoroughly trained, must have thought things out thoroughly before the instances will stream towards it. And only in this way will man attain to a certain kinship with the great Thought that animates the objective world.

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that we must think of the soul in its activity. If we want to grasp what the soul is, it is not enough to draw conclusions from the premise that it is impossible to develop the life of the soul from the brain and its processes. No, we must have immediate experience of the life of the soul independently of the life of the brain; then only can we speak of the life of the soul. This inner activity is what people nowadays regard as merely the work of fantasy. But the genuine Seeker knows exactly where fantasy ends and where in the development of his soul something else begins which he does not spin from fantasy but which binds him with the spiritual world, so that he can draw from this spiritual world that which he then coins into words or concepts, ideas or images. Only in this way will the soul attain to some knowledge of itself.

I now propose to develop what may seem to be a very paradoxical view. But it is a view which must be expressed, because it can throw so much light upon the essential nature of Spiritual Investigation. You will have noticed that the Spiritual Investigator is and can be in no way inimical to the assumption that the brain can of itself produce certain images, so that what arises as soul life devoid of any inner co-operation can be regarded as merely a product of the brain. And a certain mental habit, due mainly to modern methods of education, causes men and women to behave in the following manner. They are unwilling—for the reasons given above—to seek for anything that they hold to be true by means of inner activity. This they condemn as fantasy or dreaming. And they not only apply this opinion theoretically, but also give it practical effect in that they seek to eliminate what the soul has formed within itself, in that they do their utmost to suppress this element in the attempt they are making to give a picture of the world. Once the soul life has been thus cut off the materialistic world view becomes the ideal sought for. For what happens exactly when man rejects his inner life? Why, much the same as if one were to cut off one's own bodily life from the life of the soul. Just as the watch into which the watchmaker has worked his ideas, once it is finished and left to itself, will produce the same manifestations that were at first introduced into it by the watchmaker's ideas—so the life of the soul can continue in the brain, without the soul being there at all. And the education of to-day forms this habit in people. They grew accustomed not only to deny the soul, but to eliminate it altogether, that is to say, instead of seeking after it with inner activity, they sink back, as on to a pillow, into the purely cerebral life. And the paradox I want to utter is that the materialistic view of the world is literally a brain product, it has actually been automatically produced by the self-moving brain. The external world mirrors itself in the brain, sets it in passive motion, and this gives rise to the world picture of the materialist. The curious thing is, that if and when he has eliminated the life of the soul, the materialist is, on his own ground, perfectly right. Having gone to sleep on the pillow of purely cerebral life, all he can see is this purely cerebral life which has produced the life of the soul; then, in Karl Vogt's¹³ coarse simile, the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.¹⁴ These ideas, which arise in the field of materialism, do not, however, admit of being thought out. The simile is coarse, but they have literally come out of the brain as bile comes out of the liver. Hence the errors to which they give rise. For errors do not come about simply through people saying something false, but when they say something that is true, that holds good within a limited field, namely in the one and only field they will allow, the field of materialism.

From this tendency to make no mental effort, this inability to intensify our thinking as was shown in the last lecture,¹⁵ this failure to achieve any liveliness in the soul—from this general inclination merely to trust to what the body can do comes the materialistic view of the world. The materialistic conception does not arise from a logical error, it comes from the mental tendency to shun all inner activity and to give oneself up to the dictates of the corporeal. And herein lies the secret of the difficulty of refuting materialism. For a man who refuses to bestir his soul cannot answer the objections that are raised against him except by undertaking this very inner activity; and if he shuts it out from the first and prefers the far more convenient alternative of producing simply what his brain produces, well, it is hardly to be wondered at if he remains firmly stuck in the closed circle of materialism. One thing he will never see, and that is that this brain of his (he may thank Heaven that he has one; he could not for all his materialistic philosophy have provided himself with one!)—that this brain of his has itself been created by the Wisdom of the World and that it can, therefore, go on working like a watch, that it is entirely material and can go on reproducing itself. This Wisdom is a sort of phosphorescence; a phosphorescence that is present in the brain itself brings out what is already placed there spiritually. But the materialist need have nothing to do with all this; he simply gives himself up to that which, from being spiritual, has, as it were, condensed into matter, and which now, like the watch, simply grinds out spiritual products. As you see, ladies and gentlemen, the Spiritual Investigator stands so firmly on the foundations of legitimate Natural Science that he is obliged to assert what to many will seem as paradoxical as what I have just been saying. But this will show you that if we want to pass judgment on Spiritual Science, we must reach down to the central nerve of the matter. And since what can be repeated is so well established, it is easy to see why so very many objections and misunderstandings have arisen. Genuine Spiritual Investigation, that takes itself seriously, is all too easily identified with all the dilettante activities that bear a superficial resemblance to the real thing. I have often been reproached with the fact that the books I have written and the lectures I have delivered on Spiritual Science were not sufficiently on popular lines—as the common phrase goes. Now, I do not write my books nor do I deliver my lectures in order to please people and give them the heart-to-heart talks that they enjoy. I write my books and deliver my lectures in the manner best fitted to present Spiritual Science to the world at large. Spiritual Science existed in the past, as I have often had occasion to point out,¹⁶ although it arose from sources that differ from those of the Spiritual Science of to-day, which has inevitably been altered by human progress. In the olden days only those were admitted to the places where Spiritual Science was taught who were considered sufficiently ripe. Such a procedure would be quite meaningless to-day. Nowadays our life is public and it goes without saying that all subjects of investigation must be brought out into the open and that it would be folly to practise any sort of secrecy. The only secrecy which can be admitted is that which is already customary in public life. Namely, that to those who have already begun to study the opportunity be given of hearing more in lectures addressed to smaller audiences. But this is done in Universities; it is what is practised in ordinary life. And it is as unwarrantable to speak of secrecy in this respect as it would be in connection with University lectures. But the books are written and the lectures are delivered in such a way that a certain effort is needed on the part of those to whom they are addressed, and a certain amount of thought is required of them in their approach to Spiritual Science. Otherwise, anyone who shirked the trouble of going into the matter seriously could understand, or rather imagine he understood it, from reading those popular works that are so palatable to him. I am well aware that much of what I say must seem bristling with scientific terms to those who do not want that sort of thing. But this has to be in order that Spiritual Science may take its place in the mental and spiritual culture of the day. And if here and there Spiritual Science is being cultivated by large or small groups of men and women who, having no conception of the advances of modern science, yet claim to speak with a certain authority, it is little wonder if Spiritual Science incurs the contempt and misunderstanding and calumny of men of science. Something special, something significant must, therefore, be felt even in the manner in which the subject is imparted. And it must be felt in the fact that inner activity and doing of the soul is necessary in order to grasp how the essential part of the soul really lives as something which can use the body as an instrument but is not one and the same as the body.

If, then, we see things aright, how are we to account for the misunderstandings that have arisen? Well, when the soul begins to grow, when its dormant powers begin to awake, then the first of these powers which has to be developed is Thought, and it must be developed in the way we have often indicated and to-day again repeated. And for this a certain inner force, a certain inner strength is required. The soul must strive within itself. And this inner effort is just what, under the influence of the times, people do not want. Unless it be the artists. But in the realm of art, things have reached the point that people prefer simply to copy nature and have no inkling of the fact that, in order to add anything exceptional and new to nature pure and simple, the soul must be strengthened from within, must work upon itself a little. The power of Thought is, therefore, the first thing that has to be fortified. And then Feeling and Will, as was shown in the lectures of the last week.¹⁷ And this process of fortifying is only described by people saying that in Spiritual Science everything happens inwardly. People shrink from this, and from the idea of anything being strengthened inwardly, and they fail to grasp the obvious distinction which is required here between the conception of external nature and that of the spiritual world.

Let us try to grasp this distinction more vividly. What exactly is it? With regard to external nature, our organs are already given. Our eyes have been given us. Goethe has said very beautifully, "Were not the eye sunlike, how could we behold the light?"¹⁸ Just as it is a fact that you would not hear me when I speak unless you met me half-way by listening in order to understand me so, in Goethe's view, it is a fact that the eye has been created out of the light of the sun by a devious path of hereditary and other complicated processes. And by this is meant, not merely that the eye creates light in Schopenhauer's sense, but that it is itself created by light. This must be firmly borne in mind. And those who are inclined to be materialists may, we suggest, thank God! They no longer need to create their eyes, for these eyes are created from the Spiritual. They already have them, and in taking in the world around them they are using these ready made eyes. They direct these eyes towards the outer impressions and the outer impressions mirror themselves, completely mirror themselves in the sense organs. Let us imagine that man could, with his present degree of consciousness, experience the coming into being of his eyes. Let us imagine him entering nature as a child with only a predisposition for eyes. His eyes would first reveal themselves to him through the action of the sunlight. What would happen in man's growth? What would happen would be that by means of the sun-rays, invisible as yet, the eyes would be called forth out of the organism. And when a man feels "I have eyes," he feels the light inside his eye; when he knows his eyes to be his own, he feels them as part of his own organisation, he feels his eyes living inside the light. And, fundamentally, sense-perception is as follows: Man experiences himself by experiencing light, by experiencing with his eyes what has been developed in sense-perception, where we already have eyes for which possession we, as was said above, may thank God!

And so it must also be with Spiritual Science. There, too, the organic must be called forth from the as yet unformed soul. Spiritual hearing, spiritual vision must be called forth, to use Goethe's expressions¹⁹ once again: the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear must be called into being from within. Through the development of the soul we actually feel our way into the spiritual world, and as we do this, the new organs will come into being. And with these organs we shall experience the spiritual world in exactly the same way as we experience the physical world of sense with the organs of the physical body. Thus we must first create something analogous to that which man already possesses, for the purpose of sense perception. We must have the strength to begin by creating new organs of perception in order to experience the spiritual world with them.

The obstacle to this—and there is no other—is what may be called the inner weakness of man, resulting from modern education. It is weakness that prevents man from so taking hold of his inner life (the expression is clumsy, but it will serve) that it becomes as active as it would if man had to create his own hands in order to touch the table before him. He creates his inner powers in order to touch that which is spiritual; with spirit he touches spirit. Thus it is weakness that holds man back from pressing forward in the pursuit of true Spiritual Investigation. And it is weakness that calls forth the misunderstanding which Spiritual Investigation is faced with, fundamental weakness of soul, the inability to see that we are still caught in the Faustian doom, powerlessness to transform the reality within into organs which will lay hold upon the spiritual world. That is the first point.²⁰

And there is a second point, which will also be understood by those who wish to understand it. Man, in the face of the unknown, always experiences a peculiar feeling, primarily a feeling of fear. People are afraid of the unknown. But their fear is of a peculiar sort: it is a fear that does not become conscious. For what is the source of the materialistic, mechanistic world-view, or, as the more scholarly would have us say, what is the source of the monistic world conception? (Though even under this name it is still materialistic.) It arises from the fact that the soul is afraid of breaking through sense-perception, afraid that if it breaks through the sensuous into the spiritual, it will come into the unknown, into "Nothing," as Mephistopheles says to Faust. But, "In the Nothing," answers Faust, "I hope to find the All."²¹ It is fear of that which can only be guessed at as Nothing. But it is a masked fear. For we must become familiar with the fact that there is a luxuriant growth of hidden or unconscious processes in the depths of the soul. It is remarkable how people deceive themselves over this. A frequent example of such self-deception is that of people who, while animated by the grossest selfishness, refuse to admit it and invent all sorts of subterfuges to show how selfless, how loving they are in what they do. Thus do they put on a mask to cover their selfishness. This is very frequently the case with societies that are formed with the object of exercising love in the right way. One often has occasion to make a study of this masking of selfishness. I knew a man who was always explaining that what he did, he did against his own aims and inclination; he did it only because he deemed it necessary for the welfare of humanity. Again and again I had to say, "Don't deceive yourself! Pursue your activities from selfish motives and because you like doing it." It is far better to face the truth. One stands on a foundation of truth if one simply owns to oneself that one likes the things one wishes to undertake and if one ceases to hold a mask before one's face. It is fear which leads nowadays to the rejection of Spiritual Knowledge. But people will not own to this fear. It is in their souls, but they will not let it come into their consciousness, and they invent proofs and arguments against Spiritual Knowledge. They try to prove, for instance, that to leave the firm ground of sense-perception is inevitably to indulge in fantasy, etc. They invent the most complicated proofs. They invent whole philosophical systems which may be logically incontestable but which for anyone who has any insight in such matters go to show no more than that every one of these inventions misses the mark when it comes to Reality—and this, whether it calls itself Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, more or less Speculative Realism, Metaphysical Realism, or any other kind of "ism." People invent these "isms," and a lot of hard thinking goes to their making. But at bottom they are nothing but the soul's fear of embarking upon that which I have often characterised as "Feeling the Unknown in its Concreteness." These, then, are the two chief reasons for the misunderstandings which arise in relation to Spiritual Knowledge—weakness of soul and fear of what is presumed to be the unknown. And whoever possesses some knowledge of the human soul can analyse the modern world conceptions in the following way: on the one hand, they arise from men's inability so to strengthen their thought that all the relevant examples will at once occur to them; on the other hand, there is the fear of the unknown. And it often happens that because people are afraid of venturing into the so-called Unknown, they prefer to leave it as such. We grant, they will say, that behind the world of sense there is another, spiritual world. But man cannot enter into it. We can prove this, prove it up to the hilt. And most of them, when they wish to adduce these proofs, begin by saying, "Kant said," on the assumption, of course, that the person whom they are addressing understands nothing about Kant. Thus people invent proofs to show that the human spirit cannot enter into the world that lies beyond what is given in sensation. But these are simply subterfuges—clever though they be, they are attempts to escape from fear. It is assumed that something exists behind the world of sensation. But they call it the Unknown and prefer to lay down a form of Agnosticism of the Spencerian,²² or any other type, rather than find the courage really to lead the soul into the spiritual world.

A curious philosophy has arisen of late—the so-called "World-Conception of the As-If." It has found root in Germany. Hans Vaihinger²³ has written a large volume on the subject. According to the "World-Conception of the As-If," we cannot speak as though conceptions like "the unity of consciousness" actually corresponded to anything real, but must regard the appearances of the world "as if" there existed something which could be thought of as one undivided soul. Or again, the As-If philosophers cannot deny the fact that none of them has ever seen an atom or that an atom must be conceived precisely as something which cannot be seen. For even light itself is supposed to arise from the vibrations of atoms, and atoms would, therefore, have to be seen without light, since light first happens through the vibration of atoms! Thus the As-If philosophers do at least go the length of accepting atoms as real only in an intellectual sense (not to speak of the fantastic nonsense about atoms that dances about in some quarters). What they say, however, is this: It makes the world of sense easier to understand if we think of it "as if" there were atoms in it.²⁴ Now whoever, ladies and gentlemen, has an active inner life, will notice that it is one thing actively to live and move as an individual soul within a realm of spiritual reality, and another quite different thing to apply outwardly and realistically the idea that human activities can be made to appear "as if" they belonged to an individual soul. At any rate, if we take our stand on the firm ground of practical experience, we shall not find it easy to apply the Philosophy as As-If. To take an example. Fritz Mauthner²⁵ is to-day a highly esteemed philosopher, regarded by many as a great authority because he has out-Kantianised Kant. Whereas Kant still regards concepts as something with which we grasp reality, Mauthner sees in language alone that wherein our conception of the world actually resides. And thus he has been fortunate enough to complete his "Kritik der Sprache," (Critique of Language) to write a fat Philosophisches Wörterbuch²⁶ (Dictionary of Philosophy) from this point of view, and, above all, to collect a following who look upon him as the great man. Now, I do not wish to deal with Fritz Mauthner to-day. All I want to say is that it would be a hard task to apply the As-If philosophy to this gentleman. One might say: Let us leave it an open matter whether the gentleman has or has not intelligence and genius. But let us examine his claim to be intelligent "as if" he had intelligence. And if we set about the task honestly we shall find, ladies and gentlemen, that it cannot be done. The "As-If" cannot be applied where the facts are not there.

In a word, we must, as I have said before, reach the mainspring of Spiritual knowledge, and we must know what this teaching can regard as legitimate in the field in which misunderstandings can arise. For, while these misunderstandings really are misunderstandings, it is equally true that they are justified if the Spiritual Investigator is not fully capable of sharing the thought of the man of science. The Spiritual Investigator must be in a position to think along the same lines as the man of science, he must even be able to test him from time to time, especially if the man of science is one of those who are always insisting upon the necessity of standing firmly rooted in the data of empirical fact. At any rate, if one submits to a purely external test a philosophy that seems to be entirely positivistic and that rejects everything spiritual, the results are very remarkable. As you know, I in no wise underrate Ernst Haeckel.²⁷ I fully recognise his merits. But when he begins to talk about World-Conception, he shows precisely that weakness of soul which renders it impossible for him to follow any current of thought except that upon which he has already embarked. We are here up against that extremely significant fact which is so baffling when one meets it in serious contemporary works. I mean the widespread superficiality of men's thought and the downright lie in their life. We find, for example, that one of the great men to whom Ernst Haeckel refers as one of his authorities is Carl Ernst von Baer.²⁸ The name is always introduced as decisive in support of the purely materialistic World-Conception which Haeckel drew from his own researches. Now, how many people will take the trouble to acquire a real insight into what actually goes on in scientific thought and activity? How many people will pause and reflect when they read in Haeckel that Carl Ernst von Baer is one from whom Haeckel has deduced his own views? So, naturally, people think that Carl Ernst von Baer must have said something which led to Haeckel's views. And now, let me read you a passage from one of von Baer's works. "The terrestrial body is simply the breeding ground on which the spiritual part of man vegetates and grows, and the history of nature is nothing but the history of the continued victory of spirit over matter. This is the basic idea of creation, in virtue of which or rather for the attainment of which, individuals and species are allowed to vanish and the present (future) is built up upon the scaffolding of an immeasurable past."²⁹ The man whom Haeckel is always quoting in support of his theories has a wonderfully spiritual conception of the world! The development of scientific thought should be carefully watched. If those whose business it is to trace this development only kept their eyes open, we should not have such a struggle to wage against that superficiality of thought that produces the innumerable prejudices and errors which as misunderstandings constitute an obstacle to such aspirations as those embodied in Spiritual Knowledge.

Or again, ladies and gentlemen, let us take an honoured figure in the arguments about World-Conception in the nineteenth century, David Friedrich Strauss.³⁰ An honourable man—so are they all, all honourable men! Having started from slightly different views he finally takes his stand quite firmly on the opinion that the soul is merely a product of matter. Man has arisen completely out of what modern materialism calls nature. When we speak of the will, there is no real willing present. All that happens is that the brain molecules spin round in some way or other and will arises as a sort of vapour. "In man," says Strauss, "nature has not only willed upwards, she has willed beyond herself."³¹ Thus, nature wills. We seem to have reached the point where the materialist, in order to be one, no longer takes his own words seriously. Man is denied will because he must be like nature, and then it is said that "Nature has willed." One can, of course, dismiss such things as unimportant, but any earnest seeker after a true World-Conception will see that herein lies the source of innumerable mistakes and errors with which public opinion becomes, as it were, inoculated. And from this inoculation arise the many ways in which true Spiritual Science and Spiritual Investigation are misunderstood.

From another quarter we have those objections which are raised by the followers of this or that religious denomination, from those who think that their religion will be imperilled by the advent of a Spiritual Science. I must point out here once again, that it was people of exactly the same mentality who opposed Galileo and Copernicus on the ground that religion would be in danger if one had to believe that the Earth went round the Sun. And to such people there is always the retort: How timorous you are within the limits of your religion! How little you have grasped your own religion if you are so quickly convinced that it must be endangered by any fresh discovery! And, in this connection, I wish once again to mention the name of Laurenz Müllner,³² a good theologian, and one who, as he pointed out on his death-bed, remained to the end a faithful member of his church. When, in the 'nineties of last century, this theologian, whom I knew as a friend, was appointed Rector of the Vienna University, he said, in the inaugural address on Galileo³³ which he held on this occasion: There were once men and women (within a certain religious body they continued to exist until the year 1822, when permission was granted to believe in the Copernican Cosmology)³⁴—there were once men and women who believed that the religions could be imperilled by such views as those of Galileo or Copernicus. But nowadays—thus spoke this theologian, and priest, who remained within his church till the day of his death—nowadays, we must have reached the point where we find that religion is strengthened and intensified by the fact that men have looked into the glory of the divine handiwork, and learnt to know it better and better.³⁵ These were deeply religious, these were Christian words indeed.

And yet men will always rise up and say: This Spiritual Science says this or that about Christ, and it ought not to say it. We have our own conception of what Christ was like. Now, we would like to say to these people: We grant you everything that you hold about Christ, exactly as you put it; only we see in Him something more. We accept Him not only as a Being, as you do, but also as a cosmic Being, giving sense and meaning to the place of the Earth in the universe. But we must not say this. We must not go a step beyond what certain people regard as true. Spiritual Science gives knowledge. And knowledge of truth will never serve as the foundation for the creation of religion, although there will always be fools who say that Spiritual Science has come to found a new religion. Religions are founded in quite a different manner. Christianity was founded by its Founder, by the fact that Christ Jesus lived on earth. And Spiritual Science can no more found anything which is already there, than it can found the Thirty Years War through knowing facts about it. For religions are founded on facts, on events which have taken place. All that Spiritual Science can claim to do is to understand these facts differently—or rather not so much in a different, as in a higher sense—than can be done without its help. And just as in the case of the Thirty Years War, however lofty the standpoint from which we understand it, we do not found something by tracing it back to the Thirty Years War which was first merely known to us as a fact—so, in the same way, no religion is ever founded through that which is at first known to Spiritual Science as a fact. Here again it is a question of that superficiality which limits itself to sentiment and prevents the mind from really going into the matter in hand. If one really goes into the question of Spiritual Science, one will see that while the materialistic philosophy may very easily lead people away from religious feeling, Spiritual Science establishes in them the foundations of a deeper religious experience, because it lays bare the deeper roots of the soul, and thus leads men in a deeper way to the experience of that which outwardly and historically has manifested itself as religion. But Spiritual Science will not found a new religion. It knows too well that Christianity once gave meaning to the world. It seeks only to give to this Christianity a deeper meaning than can be given it by those who do not stand on the ground of Spiritual Science. Materialism, of course, has led to such discoveries as those, for example, of David Friedrich Strauss, who looked upon the belief in the Resurrection as insane. This belief in the Resurrection, he says, had to be assumed. For Christ Jesus had said many true and noble things. But the speaking of truths makes no particular impression on people. It needs the trimming of a great miracle such as the miracle of the Resurrection.³⁶ There you have what materialism has to bring forward. But this will not be brought forward by Spiritual Science! Spiritual Science will endeavour to unearth and bring to light what is living in the mystery of the Resurrection so as to understand it, and place it in the right way before humanity, which has advanced with the years, and can no longer accept it in the old way.

But this is not the place for religious propaganda. All I want to do is to bring to your notice the meaning of Spiritual Science and the misunderstandings which it has to meet—misunderstandings which come from those who presumably lead a religious life. At present (1916) men have not yet reached the stage when materialism can have an evil social result on a large scale. But this could very soon happen if men and women do not once again, through the help of Spiritual Science, find their way back to the fundamental spontaneity of the soul's inner life. And also the social life of humanity may find through Spiritual Science something which will, on a higher scale, bring about its own rebirth.

We can only speak of these things in a general way. Time does not allow us to describe them in more detail. I have done my best to characterise some of the misunderstandings which are found again and again, whenever Spiritual Science is being judged. I do not really wish to discuss the results of the perfectly natural superficiality of our time—at any rate not in the sense of refuting anything. In many cases it is worth considering, as supplying material for amusement—even for laughter.³⁷ ...As I have said, one cannot discuss this type of superficiality, widespread and, in a sense, influential though it be, for printer's ink on white paper still has so potent a form of magic. But what must be discussed are the cases where the objections raised, even if they are unimportant in themselves, insinuate themselves nevertheless into the public mind. And the misunderstandings which arise from this mental inoculation are what must be combated step by step by those who take anything like Spiritual Science at all seriously. We are always meeting with objections that do not arise from any sort of activity of the soul, but which have been, as it were, injected into the minds of those who make them by the prevailing superficiality of the times. But he who is right inside Spiritual Science knows full well that, as I have so often explained, the same thing must and will happen to this teaching as has happened to any new element that is incorporated into the development of humanity. This reception was up to a point accorded to the philosophy of modern Natural Science, until the latter grew powerful, and could exercise its influence by means of external power-factors, and no longer needed to work through its own strength. And then the time comes when people, without any activity on the part of their own souls, can build philosophies upon these power-factors. Is there, ladies and gentlemen, much difference between these two views? Those who nowadays found elaborate Monistic systems regard themselves as very lofty thinkers, infinitely superior to those whose philosophy, coloured perhaps by theological and religious considerations, they consider to be narrowly dogmatic and hidebound by authority. But in the eyes of one who knows something of how misunderstandings arise, it matters little in the soul's achievement whether men swear by a Church Father such as Gregory, Tertullian, Irenus or Augustine and accept him as authority, or whether they look upon Darwin, Haeckel and Helmholtz as authorities, and in so far as these are really their Church Fathers, give them their allegiance. The point is not whether we have given our allegiance to one or the other of these two, but how far we have got in working out a philosophy of our own. And what was true of a mere abstract idealism is true in a higher, a far higher sense, of Spiritual Science. To begin with, it is misunderstood and mistaken on all sides, and then, later, the very thing that at first appeared to be moonshine and fantasy is taken for granted. This is what happened to Copernicus, it is what happened to Kepler, it is what happens to everything that has to be incorporated into the spiritual development of humanity. First it is regarded as nonsense, then it is taken for granted. And this, too, is what is happening to Spiritual Science.

But this Spiritual Science, as has been shown in previous addresses and re-stated in the present lecture, has a very important message. It points to that living reality which brings man to the fullness of his powers, not by offering itself to his passive contemplation, not by revealing itself to him from outside, but by requiring of him that he should seize hold of it alive so that through co-operation alone he may come to a knowledge of his own existence. He must overcome that weakness which makes him regard as fantasy everything whose existence cannot be felt by a mere passive surrender, but demands an inwardly active co-operation with the World-All. Only when man's knowledge is active will it tell him what he is and where he is going, what he is and what is his destiny. The spirit has strength enough of its own to fight its way through all the misunderstandings of the day, justifiable as they are in a certain sense, and it will fight its way through, especially in so far as these misunderstandings arise from the superficiality of the times. Very beautiful, in this connection, is Goethe's saying, uttered, on his own admission, in unison with the ancient sage:³⁸

Were the eye not sun-like
How could we look upon the light?
Were we not animate with God's own power
How could we be ravished with the divine?

The Spiritual-divine that lives, moves and has its being throughout the world is that from which we originate, that from which we have sprung. Even the material element in us is born of the spiritual. And it is because it is already born and no longer needs to be proved or brought forth that man, if he is a materialist, believes in it alone. The spiritual must be grasped in living activity. The Spiritual divine must first weave itself into man, the spiritual sun must first create its own organs in him. Thus, altering Goethe's words, we may say: If the inner eye does not become spiritually sun-like, it will never look upon the light which is the very essence of man.

To conclude these reflections. If the human soul cannot unite itself with that from which it has sprung from all eternity, with the Spiritual-divine whose being is one with its own, then it will never be able to rise as a gleam into the Spiritual; its spiritual eye will never come into being. The soul will then never be enraptured by the Divine, in the spiritual sense of the word, and human knowledge will find the world empty and desolate. For we can only find in the world that for which we have created organs of reception in ourselves.

Were the outer physical eye not sun-like, how could we look upon the light? And if the inner eye does not become spiritually sun-like, we shall never look upon the spiritual light of quintessential humanity. If man's own inner activity does not itself become really spiritual-divine, then never can there pulsate through the soul of man that which alone brings him for the first time to true manhood, to the fullness of his human stature, to be a true man and to that which fills and animates the world, working and weaving through the All until in him it reaches human—if not divine—consciousness, the future Spirit of the World.

• 1. The lecture is reprinted by kind permission of Frau Marie Steiner. By contrasting outstanding individual examples of one-sided thought with their opposites, the lecture gives an answer to the thesis with reference to the following names: Theodor Meynert, Kant, Hans Vaihinger, Fritz Mauthner, Ernst Haeckel, David Friedrich Strauss on the one hand, and Goethe, Carl Ernst von Baer, Laurenz Müllner on the other.
• 2. Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research (Gesundes Seelenleben und Geistesforschung). Lecture given in Berlin on 4th February, 1916.
• 3. As examples of such opponents see, amongst others, Karl Heyer, Dr. Phil. and Jur. Wie man gegen Rudolf Steiner kämpft, Stuttgart, 1932; and also Camille Schneider Eduard Schuré's Begegnungen mit Rudolf Steiner, Basel, 1933.
• 4. Herman Ulrici (1806-1884), German philosopher; John Ulrich Wirth (1810-1859), Protestant theologian and philosopher; Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797-1879), German philosopher.
• 5. Ein vergessenes Streben nach Geisteswissenschaft innerhalb der deutschen Gedankenentwicklung. Lecture delivered in Berlin, 25th February, 1916. {RSA title: A Forgotten Support for Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought}
• 6. Theodor Meynert (1833-1892), born in Dresden, was active in Vienna from 1866 as psychiatrist and cerebral anatomist. Rudolf Steiner's early friend, Alfred Stross, was one of his patients. (See Fritz Lemmermeyer's Erinnerungen, Stuttgart, 1929) A collection of his writings is to be found in August Hirsch's Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragendsten Ärzte, Berlin, 1929. Vol. IV.
• 7. Theodor Meynert, Zur Mechanik des Gehirnbaues, a lecture delivered before the Vienna Anthropological Society, 1872. (See Theodor Meynert, Sammlung von populär-wissenschaftlichen Vorträgen über den Bau und die Leistungen des Gehirns, Vienna and Leipzig, 1892.)
• 8. See footnote 5
• 9. Literally: "Unconsciously and impelled from within I had pressed on untiringly to the discovery of archetypes, I had succeeded in building up an exposition of things that accorded with nature. There was, therefore, nothing to hinder me from embarking boldly upon the 'adventure of reason,' as the Sage of Königsberg has called it." (Goethe, Anschauende Urteilskraft, 1820) Kant, in the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, describes the attempt to explain the relationship in the structure of different animals through actual blood relationship as "daring to make an adventure in reason." "A priori, in the judgment of mere reason, this cannot be disputed. It is simply that experience gives no instance of it." (Ibid.)
• 10. See footnote 2
• 11. See footnote 7
• 12. "Thus the real contains no more than the possible. A hundred real coins contain no more than a hundred possible coins." "By whatever ... predicates I may cogitate a thing I do not in the least augment the object of my conception by the addition of the statement, this thing exists. Now, if I cogitate a being as the highest reality, without defect or imperfection, the question still remains—whether this being exists or not." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
• 13. Karl Vogt (1817-1895), was a German scientist, philosopher and politician, an eager champion of Materialism and Darwinism, the well-known author of Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft, Giessen, 1855.
• 14. Literally, "Every scientist will, if he thinks with a certain amount of consistency, reach the view that all the faculties which we grasp under the name of activities of the soul are only functions of the brain matter; or to put it rather coarsely, that thoughts stand in the same relation to the cerebral substance as does bile to the liver, or urine to the kidneys. To assume a soul that uses the brain like an instrument with which it can work as it pleases, is sheer nonsense." (See Karl Vogt's Physiologische Briefe für Gebildete aller Stände, Stuttgart, 1847) The remark is made in refutation of Gall and C. G. Carns, and is repeated with especial emphasis in the fourth edition.
• 15. See footnote 5
• 16. See Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as a Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity
• 17. Lectures between 19 and 26 February 1916.
• 18. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, 1808-1810
• 19. "And with the eyes, not of the body, but of the spirit, I saw myself riding on horseback towards myself." (Dichtung und Wahrheit, Part III, Book XI) "The eye may indeed be called the clearest sense, but the inner sense is still clearer." (Shakespeare und kein Ende, 1813-1816) "We learn to see with the eyes of the spirit, without which we should in the realm of Natural Science, as everywhere else, be groping blindly about." (Zur Zoologie, 1795) "And the new-born day sounds already in our spirit's ear." (Faust II, V)
• 20. See Faust I, V. Cp. Hegel, History of Philosophy, Vol. II. "This is one of the foibles of our time, that we cannot endure the greatness, yea, the immensity of the claims of the human spirit, that we feel oppressed by it and flee from it like weaklings."
• 21. Faust, II, V
• 22. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.
• 23. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933), German philosopher, author of The Philosophy of As-If, a system of the theoretical, practical and religious fictions of humanity, based on idealistic Positivism, with an appendix on Kant and Nietzsche. (English translation published by Kegan Paul.) The philosophy of "As-If" treads the same paths as the so-called Pragmatism whose most influential representatives are William James (1842-1910), born in America, and F. C. S. Schiller (born in England, 1864). Cp. Rudolf Steiner, Die Rätzel der Philosophie, Stuttgart, Dornach, 1924-26, Vol. II.
• 24. "The soul, too, is only a summary fiction without any reality of its own... We speak as if there were a soul. We insert this auxiliary conception (the atom) because it is convenient to us. It is literally a hypostatised non-existent.
• 25. Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923), was an Austrian philosopher and author of novels, satires, reviews and journalistic works. He was an exponent of philosophical scepticism derived from a critique of human knowledge and of philosophy of language.
• 26. Fritz Mauthner, Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache, Stuttgart, 1901-1902. Second edition, Stuttgart and Berlin, 1906-1913. Wörterbuche der Philosophie Neue Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, Munich, 1910-1911.
• 27. Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), was a German zoologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species and mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms.
• 28. Carl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876), was a Baltic German scientist and explorer.
• 29. Carl Ernst von Baer, Reden und Kleinere Aufsätze vermischten Inhalts. St. Petersburg, 1864-1875. Vol. I and Vol. II. For Haeckel's reference to Baer, see Haeckel's Anthropogeny.
• 30. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), was a German liberal Protestant theologian and writer, who influenced Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus", whose divine nature he denied.
• 31. David Friedrich Strauss, The Old Faith and the New, Section IV. 'What is our rule of life?' English translation by Matthew Blind, 1873
• 32. Laurenz Müllner (1848-1911), professor of Christian philosophy at the University of Vienna.
• 33. Laurenz Müllner, Die Bedeutung Galilei's für die Philosophie. Inaugurationsrede, 1894, in Die feierliche Inauguration des Rektor's der Wiener Universität für das Studienjahr, 1894-5. Vienna, 1894.
• 34. Not till the year 1822 did the Holy Office at Rome declare that books dealing with the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun were no longer forbidden.
• 35. Literally: "Of the days when men regarded their most holy possessions as threatened through the heliocentric view of the world, we say with the Psalmist, Illic trepidaverunt timore, ubi non erat timor. 'They were afraid where no fear was.' There was no contradiction involved in the right understanding of the Christian view, which should see in the newly discovered stellar worlds fresh wonders of divine wisdom and power, through which the wonders of divine love accomplished on earth would only receive a higher meaning." Laurenz Müllner, (see note 33).
• 36. "Thus (through belief in the Resurrection) men were assured of the continuance of all that was new and profound in the religious life as lived by Jesus and imparted to his followers through precept and example. But from now on, the fantastic form of this recovery (the recovery of belief in Jesus which had been shaken by violent death) . . . became the accepted one . . . his whole life was shrouded in a shining cloud which raised it ever higher and higher above the human." Life of Jesus, by David Friedrich Strauss. Part I.
• 37. At this point the lecturer made brief mention of an article by Max Hachdorf which appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt, Feb. 9, 1916, on "Dreyfus, the Prophet Steiner and the deserters," and of two of its variants in other newspapers, all of which were distinguished by the wildest, almost ridiculous misrepresentations and errors.
• 38. "I am at the moment dictating something about the marked passage in the old mystic" (meaning Plotinus, Enneades, I, 6, 8). Goethe used the text of the Latin translation, Neque vero oculus unquam vederet solem, nisi factus solaris esset. Neque rursus animus, nisi factus sit puicher, si modo deurn sit et pulchritudinem inspecturus. Plotini Opera Salingiacum M.O. See Goethe's letter to Zalter, Sep. 1, 1805, and Goethe Jahrbuch, Vol. III, 1882, Zur Farbenlehre, 1808-1810.

Today we will discuss some topics that have played a certain role in our current development of the spiritual movement within Germany. As you know, and as some of you have already experienced, we have discussed the various spiritual truths and insights based on the Gospels. We have talked about what can be said in connection with the Gospel of John in a wide variety of places, and we have also discussed what can be said in connection with the Gospel of Luke. Now, admittedly, not all of you have heard these things. Nor is it intended to speak today in the sense of presupposing something of what has been said there. Rather, it is intended only to mention to you some of the overall field of this spiritual-scientific field, which must be important for everyone.

It has often been mentioned here in Stuttgart that Christianity, and everything connected with it, has made a deep incision in the overall development of humanity and that what is happening around us today, what the human soul can experience today, cannot be properly understood without considering the full significance of the Christ event within our Earth's history. For every single human soul, it is of infinite importance to become acquainted with the significance of this event.

Now you know that this Christ event for humanity is described in four documents, in the so-called four Gospels. You are all familiar with these four documents and have certainly followed them in a variety of ways. These four documents, the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Luke and the Gospel according to John, have met with the most diverse fates in the course of human development since the founding of Christianity. Great transformations have taken place in the judgment and position of man regarding these four documents. If we ask ourselves first how these four documents appear to today's man, even to today's theologian, the answer is quite obvious. One says to oneself: First of all, we have the three documents of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. They at least agree – so the general opinion today – on some points. But the fourth, the Gospel of John, is quite different from these three documents. At first, this Gospel of John makes such an impression on people that they say to themselves: If we take the first three Gospels as historical documents, as descriptions of the life of Christ Jesus, then the fourth document contradicts the first three so fundamentally that we cannot take this fourth as a description that corresponds to the historical facts. Thus, the opinion exists that this fourth document is merely a writing that arose from the confession of a man who was faithfully devoted to the mission of Christ Jesus, a kind of hymn that arose from the heart to express in an enthusiastic way what the narrator had to say. The other three gospels are also called the canonical gospels because they attempt to provide a kind of historical picture and because it is believed that they reflect the historical facts to a certain extent. However, if one wants to look for contradictions that the external mind, bound to physical conditions, seeks, then the first three gospels truly present such contradictions. For should there be no contradictions in the fact that the Gospel of Matthew tells of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, tells of the flight to Egypt, of the appearance of the Magi from the Orient, whereas the Gospel of Luke tells of a journey to Bethlehem, but completely omits what is told in the Gospel of Matthew about the Magi, that the flight to Egypt is kept secret and so on? We do not want to go into the details of the three years of Christ Jesus' ministry. We could find contradiction upon contradiction.

Now one could raise the question: How has the development of the judgment about the Gospels actually progressed over the course of Christian times? Was it always the case that people looked at the Gospels and saw contradictions in them above all else? We must be clear about how this development of judgment about the Gospels has taken place. It is not so very long ago that people have had access to the Gospels as they do today. They have only been available to the general public for a short time. Before the invention of the printing press, the Gospels were basically only in the hands of a few people, and truly not of the most ignorant, but of those people who had studied them in the most erudite way, who had made them the subject of their lives. And it is not the case that the further back in time we go, the more and more people said: There are contradictions – but the opposite is true. The further back we go, the more it appears that these contradictions were not perceived, that people had the four gospels next to each other and did not see the contradictions. The whole mood that people had towards the Gospels was quite different in the first Christian centuries. If we wanted to characterize this mood, we would have to say that the people of the first Christian centuries were filled with tremendous reverence for what is described in the Gospels. This whole mood was permeated by looking up to the great figure of Christ Jesus.

So how were the Gospels perceived? How did people perceive the fact that the Gospel of Matthew tells a different story than the Gospel of Luke? They perceived it similarly to how someone today - I have already used the comparison in the various lectures that have been given here and there - photographs a tree from one side. A photograph like this gives a view of the tree. If you went among people with it and wanted to create an impression of the tree based on it, this impression would be highly one-sided. And you could hope to create a more accurate impression of the tree if you photographed it from four sides. Then you would show four pictures of the one tree. These would agree with each other very little, they would be very different. Nevertheless, no one would have the feeling that it could not be that these four photographs were the pictures of a single tree. Everyone would say: I can only get a somewhat complete picture of the tree by having seen it from four sides. That is more or less how people in the early centuries of Christianity felt about the Gospels. They said: the whole great event is described from four sides, and we get a complete picture of it when we really take these four descriptions together and thus, so to speak, get an overall view. But then we must be clear about how these four descriptions from the sides actually relate to each other. The great event is indeed described from four different points of view. If we want to understand what each individual point of view describes, we must first realize the following.

We have before us an enormous individuality, Christ Jesus, an individuality of whom we know from descriptions already given here that he descended from the spiritual world and appeared in Palestine at the beginning of our era. What came to earth as an individuality now appears as a great, all-embracing ideal for every single human being. The individual human being strives upwards, as it were, intuiting that perfection in an individuality that is expressed in the Christ Jesus, and strives towards this ideal. Now, in the beginning, man sees what he can regard as his striving in intellectual, moral and so on. But he sees even more when he enters into what we call the spiritual-scientific movement. There he sees the development into the spiritual world. He knows that man can grow beyond his ordinary self, that he can grow to see into the spiritual world, that he can develop his spiritual senses in order to live up into the spiritual world. That is what man recognizes. In the essay “How to Know Higher Worlds” you have described one side of this upward life, of entering into the spiritual worlds, in which you have described what is called “splitting of the personality”. When a person develops spiritually so that he gradually grows into the spiritual worlds and becomes a seer himself, something similar to a kind of splitting of the personality does indeed occur. Three forces are initially expressed in the personality: thinking, feeling and willing. These three forces are, so to speak, united in the ordinary person; they work together, thinking, feeling and willing. You go out into the meadow, see a flower, that is, you have an idea of the flower; you have thought. You like the flower; you call it beautiful, that is, you have felt. A feeling has connected with thinking. You pluck the flower and take it home, that is, you have desired it. And so the entire outer life of man actually flows. He perceives, thinks, feels and wills, and the three go into each other. Perception gives rise to feeling, feeling to will or abhorrence and the like. When man now develops upward into the higher worlds, develops himself to clairvoyance, to participation in the spiritual worlds, then a splitting of these three forces takes place. In him who has reached a certain level of clairvoyant consciousness, not every thought evokes a feeling, but the thought occurs in isolation, and the feeling can occur in isolation and the will can occur in isolation. And precisely because he is divided into three beings, so to speak, whereas otherwise thinking, feeling and willing are only powers in his soul, man must become all the stronger in his individuality. He must not only then balance three powers, but become master of three beings, of a willing being, of a feeling being, of a thinking being. He must be the leader of a band of these three entities. He must create order; he must rule them, otherwise something evil will happen: the will will pull him in one direction and the intellect in the other, and he will then really be split and no longer find his way. Therefore, man must grow strong within himself, become powerful, so that he can be master in the entities that have become his soul forces. When man therefore develops upwards into the higher worlds, he splits himself, so to speak, into three different entities. When the entities come to meet us from above out of the spiritual worlds and one sees them in their actual entity, which one can only recognize through spiritual vision, then they appear from the outset sharply separated as thinking beings, volitional beings and feeling beings. That is what man develops them into.

This was particularly the case with the great individuality who came to us as the Christ. Therefore, those who first described the Christ said: You cannot describe the Christ by choosing only one point of view; you have to describe him as you first see a thinking, wisdom-filled being, then as you see a willing being, and then as you see a feeling being. He must be described from the point of view of wisdom, from the point of view of will, from the point of view of feeling. That is how one must describe him, people said. And they were especially prepared for this by the whole education that was customary in ancient times. If a person was to be developed at all into the higher worlds - today something different is needed for the first steps of attaining higher knowledge; in ancient times a different approach was taken - when someone was ripe to be led up, so to speak, to be made a citizen of the spiritual worlds, it was said: Well, he is ripe to be led up into the higher worlds. But let us take a closer look at him! Should we particularly develop wisdom or thinking powers or will in him?

In the old secret schools, not all powers were developed equally. Depending on the karma of the person concerned, one person's thinking was developed to the point of clairvoyance, another's feeling to the point of clairaudience, and a third's will to the point of magical power. Therefore, in the old secret schools there were three classes of developed abilities, those pupils who had developed especially the ability to see through illumination, to see the spiritual world with wisdom - these were the people in the mysteries who were asked when one wanted to know how things are in the higher worlds and how they are connected according to law. If we want to use a trivial expression today, we can say that they were the experts of knowledge within the mysteries. Then there was another class of initiates. In these, feeling was particularly developed. In order for this feeling to be particularly developed, they refrained from training in knowledge and will, and developed feeling in itself. When feeling is particularly developed in a person, then, as a result, he becomes a healer, a physician, something that is almost no longer known today. For in ancient times the physician had exerted a spiritual influence proceeding from the spheres of feeling, and had healed the receptive soul by means of a more highly developed feeling than exists today. This was the second class of initiates. They had trained their feeling to the highest willingness to sacrifice, to the surrender of all the powers they had within them. They divided the work among themselves. If someone wanted to know what was wrong with someone, they went to those who had developed the wisdom. They determined what was wrong and what needed to be done. Then came those who could not say what was wrong with the sick person because they had not developed the ability to think; but they came and sacrificed their strength because they had developed the powers of feeling. At the same time, these were the people who also had other functions, who showed their willingness to make sacrifices in the event of accidents or similar occurrences. The third category of initiates were the magicians. These were the ones who had developed the sphere of will. They had to take the external measures. The magicians had developed the powers of will and were able to carry out the task at hand. So there were three types of initiate: initiates of thinking, initiates of feeling, and initiates of willing. And a fourth class or category consisted of those in whom an attempt had been made to develop something of each of the three remaining faculties: something of thinking, something of feeling, and something of willing. Therefore, they did not advance as far as the others in any one sphere, but they showed how, with a certain initiation into the three spheres, things are connected. Thus there were powerful initiates of wisdom, powerful initiates of sacrifice, powerful initiates of magistery, and a fourth category, which had something of each of the first three.

When now the Christ Jesus was to be described, so to speak, from all sides, there were found - this can be explained in more detail another time, today it can only be done in broad strokes - four people who now described the abilities that were naturally united in him from their four points of view. One of them, for example, was particularly initiated into the secrets of thinking. He described the Christ Jesus from the standpoint of the one who could understand him particularly well, an initiate of wisdom. He left out the other sides. Another was an initiate of feeling. He described the Christ Jesus from the standpoint of feeling, as a physician, so to speak, as a healer. A third was an initiate of magisterial power. He described the powers that the Christ could unfold to organize all of humanity. And a fourth was an initiate of the fourth class, in which the powers worked together, working in harmony. He described primarily the human work of Christ Jesus. He did not see the full power of wisdom, of sacrificial service, nor the mighty magic strength of the willpower of Christ Jesus; but he saw how the three powers of thought, feeling and will were harmoniously combined in Christ Jesus. He described the human Christ Jesus.

Thus we have described the Christ Jesus to four initiates. The one who described the Christ Jesus as an initiate of wisdom was the writer of the Gospel of John; the one who described him as an initiate of feeling was the writer of the Gospel of Luke ; the one who described him in terms of magical power, that was the writer of the Gospel of Mark; and the one who described the harmonious synthesis of the lower three human members, that was the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. Thus each described that in Christ Jesus in which he was initiated.

Thus we shall understand that we can gain a complete picture of Christ Jesus through the four Gospels, in that they describe what was particularly close to the four personalities on which they are based. Anyone who has the necessary reverence for such a great individuality as the Christ will say: Precisely because of this I can gain a comprehensive picture, that the writers of the Gospels, each one, gave the best they could give. But that is why it is also necessary that you do not always take what is said in spiritual science in reference to the four Gospels, to the fourth for instance, or the third, or the second, or the first, as if you had the whole truth about Christ Jesus in each such chapter. It could easily have been thought from the various lectures that have been given here and there: Now the Christ Jesus has been described, and at most it would still be interesting to describe him with reference to another gospel. It is not so. One gets only the picture from one side, if one describes the Christ Jesus according to one gospel. We must wait until, in the course of our spiritual movement, the Christ Jesus has been described in connection with all four gospels. Only then will you have all the secrets that can be said about him.

Now we will have to start from a certain one-sided description in order to gather together, so to speak, a picture of Christ Jesus, but in such a way that you really have to keep to what has just been said. You must not go away today from the lecture and say: Well, now we have the truth in these matters - but you must say to yourself: It has now been described from one point of view and the other must be added and must be illuminated with what is said from other points of view.

In the Christ Jesus we actually have a confluence of all previous spiritual currents of humanity and at the same time a rebirth of the same. In the Christ Jesus, all spiritual currents flow together and are reborn, reborn to a higher degree. We could mention many such currents of pre-Christian times that arise from spiritual science in the context of those considerations that tie in with the four Gospels, currents that we see flowing together in the Christ event; but for now we will draw attention to only three currents.

First of all, there is a powerful spiritual current that has been active in Asia since ancient times. This is what we can call Zarathustrianism. A second spiritual current is that which flourished in India and reached a certain high point with the appearance of Gautama Buddha, six hundred years before our era. A third spiritual current is that which found expression in the ancient Hebrew people. So that we have the confluence in Christ Jesus of the ancient Hebrew spiritual current, then that which was realized in Gautama Buddha, and that which was associated with the name Zarathustra. We could mention many more such spiritual currents, but that would make the matter too confusing.

Now, in a certain way, everything that actually happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era comes to light in the four Gospels – if we really understand them correctly. It is not the task of spiritual science to draw from the Gospels what it has to say. Nothing at all of what is said about me is drawn from the Gospels. The only source for the spiritual researcher is what is called the Akasha Chronicle, that which can be observed clairvoyantly. If all the Gospels had been lost due to some catastrophe, everything that is said about the Christ in spiritual science could still be said. It is based on spiritual research. Only afterwards is the result of this spiritual research compared with what is in the Gospels. And that is precisely what gives the Gospels their objective reverence when one sees what is presented in the Gospels. You must never lose sight of this point of view. We are not drawing on the Gospels; therefore what I am going to tell you now is not drawn from the Gospels either. But we can compare it afterwards with what is in the Gospels, and we will find it to be in agreement.

One of the spiritual currents that then flowed into Christianity is the one that reached its peak in the personality that was incarnated in India as Gautama Buddha about six hundred years before our era. What kind of individuality is this? We understand this individuality when we consider the following: Everything that has gradually emerged in the development of humanity is precisely a product that develops and gradually settles in. You would be mistaken if you believed that the abilities of today's human beings have always been there. Today, for example, there is something called the voice of conscience. It has not always existed. We can almost grasp when conscience arose in the course of human development. If you go back to Aeschylus, you will find nothing of a description of conscience in his works. It is only in Euripides that we find a description of conscience. Thus, the Greek consciousness first developed the concept of conscience between these two. What man today calls an inner voice has only just developed. Before that, there was, within humanity, we can say, a kind of clairvoyant consciousness. If a person had done something he should not have done, a picture would appear to him like a vengeful spirit, and it would pursue him. This was what the Greeks called the Furies. He really saw the fruits and the avenging spirits of his evil deeds around him. This phenomenon, which was outside of man, has been drawn into the human soul as the voice of conscience. And so, too, did the other faculties of men come into being only gradually, and it is only short-sightedness on the part of men, who do not see farther than the end of their own noses, so to speak, which outer science amply does, to believe that men have always been as they are today.

Thus, people have not had what we might call the teaching of compassion and love. We have to imagine the teaching of compassion and love in ancient times as being very different from today. Today, people can, so to speak, go within themselves. When this or that happens outside, he can allow the feeling of compassion and love to arise within him, and he knows that this is good. He can find the principles of love and compassion within himself. This was not the case in the past; rather, in the past, it was instilled in people purely by suggestion from those charged with instilling it, and they were told how they should behave. People themselves had to be guided. There were individual leaders and guides for humanity who indicated how people should behave. The guides for humanity dictated what should be done in the way of acts of love and compassion. And those who were the guides in the field of love and compassion were in turn under higher guides and all together under a guide who is called the Bodhisattva of love and compassion. He had the mission to spread the teaching of compassion and love. But this Bodhisattva, who was the leader in terms of compassion and love, was not like an ordinary incarnated human being, in that not his entire being was absorbed in the physical human being. He had, so to speak, a connecting bridge up to the spiritual world.

The Bodhisattva of compassion and love lived only partly in the physical man; for the rest, his spiritual being reached up into the spiritual worlds. There he brought down the impulses he had to instill. If we wanted to describe this spiritually, we would have to say: the clairvoyant saw the image of the person in whom the bodhisattva was partially embodied, and behind him a mighty spiritual-astral figure that rose up into the spiritual worlds and was only partially in the physical body. That was what this bodhisattva was like. This Bodhisattva was the same one who was then reborn as the king's son Gautama Buddha in India, and for this Bodhisattva, so to speak, this was the ascent to a higher dignity. He had earlier, so to speak, allowed himself to be guided from above, had received impulses from the spiritual world and passed them on. But in this incarnation, six hundred years before our era, he was elevated to the dignity of Buddha in the twenty-ninth year of his life. That is to say, in this incarnation he experienced his entire individuality entering the physical body. While he had to remain outside as a bodhisattva with a part of himself in order to build the bridge, it was this progress to the dignity of Buddha that allowed him to be fully incarnated in the body. This enabled him not only to receive the teaching of compassion and love through inspiration, but also to look within himself and receive this teaching as the very voice of his heart. This was the enlightenment of the Buddha at the age of twenty-nine, under the bodhi tree. Then it dawned on him: the teaching of compassion and love, independent of the connections with the spiritual world, as a human soul property, that he could think the teaching of compassion and love, which he pronounced in the eightfold path. And the sermon that followed is the great teaching of compassion and love for the first time from a human breast.

This must happen with every human capacity. At some point in the development of humanity, an ability must first be expressed in an individuality; only then can it gradually develop as a separate ability in people in general. The teaching of compassion and love could only be felt as something that man brings out of himself after it has been brought by an individuality. In Oriental philosophy, this is called “turning the wheel” of dharma, compassion and love. This happened through the full individuality of the Bodhisattva sinking into the king's son Gautama Buddha. From that time on, there are people who can find the teaching of compassion and love within themselves. And it will develop in such a way that more and more people will find the teaching of compassion and love within themselves, and three thousand years after our era, a sufficient number of people will live on earth to develop in their own hearts what Buddha has found. Then the mission of the Buddha in this respect will be fulfilled on earth. For at the time when the Bodhisattva descended to become a Buddha, the dignity of the Bodhisattva was taken over by another. Until then, what we call the Buddha today was a Bodhisattva. The next rank after the Bodhisattva is that of the Buddha. From the Bodhisattva, the ascending being becomes a Buddha.

Oriental philosophy expressed it this way: When the Bodhisattva descended to earth, he handed over the crown of the Bodhisattva to his successor. This successor still lives today as a Bodhisattva. He will only ascend to the dignity of Buddha three thousand years after our present time. This is the one whom Oriental philosophy calls the Maitreya Buddha. This one is a Bodhisattva today and will be the Maitreya Buddha in three thousand years. He has a different mission from Gautama Buddha, which is connected with things that people today cannot yet find within themselves. That is a line of development. So that we can say: That Bodhisattva, who contains within himself the teaching of compassion and love, has indeed advanced to the dignity of a Buddha, and in so doing has given his mission a tremendous impetus. The fact that he was in a human body with his entire being six hundred years before our era earned him the right not to be incarnated in a physical body on earth again. In fact, the incarnation of that time was the last incarnation of this Bodhisattva. He no longer needed to incarnate in a physical body, but only needed to descend to the etheric body. All the following embodiments of the Buddha are therefore not such that he can be seen externally on the physical plane, but such that he can only be seen by those powers that enable people to see the etheric body. In the entire following period, the Buddha therefore only embodied himself in an etheric body. Six hundred years after his presence on earth, Buddha incorporated what he had to bring to humanity into what had been initiated by Christianity. He offered what he had to bring as a sacrifice to the founding of Christianity, so to speak, he let it flow in like a spiritual tributary into the great overall stream. This is the current that reaches its climax in the Buddha. That is the one current.

Another came about in the following way. We can form an idea of it by looking a little at the development of humanity itself. You all know that after the great Atlantic catastrophe, people did not have the same abilities as they do today, but that after the great Atlantic catastrophe they still had remnants of an old, dim clairvoyance. Logical thinking developed only gradually. The culture that we call ancient Indian culture was entirely a culture that emerged from ethereal clairvoyance. The Zarathustra culture was also still one in which people worked with ancient, dimmed clairvoyance, and the Chaldean-Egyptian cultures were not yet cultures in which people thought as they do today. Everything was still inspiration; it was not yet permeated with logic, but everything that came to light in Chaldean astrology and in Hermes wisdom was more or less inspired imagination. The human ability to think logically had not yet developed in these cultures. It was reserved for a completely different current to develop what could be called a logical culture, a culture of thinking. The first post-Atlantean culture was still entirely based on ethereal clairvoyance. The Zarathustra culture was still one of these as well, even if it was no longer as pronounced. Likewise, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture was still based on inspiration. Thought in those days was not yet permeated by logic; it was interwoven with imaginations that are expressed in the astrology of the Chaldeans and in the Hermes wisdom of Egypt in magnificent images.

The post-Atlantean cultures emerged from two streams. Apart from those who went west and populated present-day America, two streams of migrating people poured east under the leadership of their leaders, one in a northerly direction and the other in a southerly direction.

The northern stream, parts of which remained in Europe, penetrated further into Asia. While new cultures were developing and unfolding there, the population of Europe lived through the centuries as if biding its time. Its energies were, as it were, reserved for what was to come. In their essential cultural elements they were influenced by that great initiate who chose this field as his own as far as the Siberian regions and who is called the Scythian initiate. The leaders of the original European culture were inspired by him. This culture was not based on what came into humanity as thinking, but on an ability to absorb an element that was halfway between what could be called recitative-rhythmic language and a kind of singing accompanied by a peculiar music that no longer exists today but was based on an interplay of whistling instruments. It was a peculiar element, the last remnants of which lived in the bards and skalds. Everything that the Greek myths of Apollo and Orpheus tell us has developed from this. In addition, practical skills were developed in Europe through colonization, construction and so on.

The other masses of people migrated under the leadership of the great sun-initiates to Asia. The outpost formed the first post-Atlantean culture under the leadership of the Rishis. Further in Western Asia the most ancient Zarathustra culture developed; but we are not speaking here of the historical Zarathustra. What he brought forth is in some respects opposed to ancient India. The latter was entirely built upon ethereal clairvoyance; Zarathustra turned his gaze to the sun. He saw the spirit of the sun, the “great aura,” Ahura Mazda. Zarathustra was the first to express the peculiarities of northern culture here. All that followed is built upon this.

The other trend that came over, the southern one, formed the basis for the Chaldean-Egyptian culture, which arose from a merging of the one with the other. This can be schematically represented: Indian culture signifies the development of the human etheric body; in Persian culture, the sentient body developed; the Egyptian-Chaldean culture gave the sentient soul; it is essentially an inner culture, going through an inward path. And just as the sentient body and the sentient soul join together, so it is the case for all of humanity. This can be seen particularly in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. The same will be the case with the consciousness soul and the spirit self. This can only happen through the transition of progressive culture into that region where spirituality has been held back: this can only happen in Europe. There the development towards the intellectual and consciousness soul had still been held back and only developed after the Christ event. It is there that the fusion with the spirit-self qualities will also be able to take place in the future. This can only happen through a spiritual current such as the spiritual-scientific one. This will be brought about by the sixth period of our culture.

While the two currents described were still under the influence of the old, dim clairvoyance, the third current, which merged with the others and prepared the Christ event, was followed by a fourth cultural current, which could be called a logical-intellectual one. To understand each other clearly, you have to realize that all clairvoyance comes about because the etheric body works independently in a certain way, namely the etheric body of the brain. Where the etheric body of the brain and the physical tool of logical thinking are strictly united, clairvoyance cannot come about. Only when the etheric body retains something in order to be independent can clairvoyance come about. When the etheric body of the brain is completely linked to the physical brain, it works out the brain in the finest way; but it also engages in the elaboration of the physical brain and nothing is left over to develop clairvoyance. But it was necessary that precisely this ability, which is connected with brain thinking, with the brain's synthesizing of the world phenomena, should make its appearance in humanity. For this to happen, something had to happen in humanity that can be characterized by saying that it had to be selected from humanity – well, let us take an individuality in whom, so to speak, what was called ancient clairvoyance was least present, whereas the physical tool of the brain was highly developed, chiseled, and carved out. This individuality was able to survey the phenomena of the external physical world in terms of measure, number, order and harmony, to seek unity in the externally manifested phenomena. While all the members of the earlier cultures knew something from the spiritual world through inspiration from within, so to speak, this individuality had to direct its gaze out into the surrounding world of phenomena, had to combine, logically weigh and say to itself: “Out there are the phenomena, everything falls into place in harmony when one sees everything in a large unified picture. That which appears as unity there appeared as unity in the external world, as God behind the phenomena of the physical plane. That was one difference compared to the other views of God. The other views of God said: The idea of God arises from within. But this individuality directed his gaze everywhere, organized the phenomena, looked at the different kingdoms of nature, brought them under one unity, in short, he was the great organizer of the world phenomena according to measure and number, who was chosen from the whole of humanity. This individuality, who was chosen from the whole of humanity, to first survey the external physical world and find the unity in it, was Abraham. Abraham or Abram was the one who was chosen, so to speak, by the spiritual-divine powers to receive this special mission, to convey to humanity the powers bound to the measure and number of external appearances. He emerged from Chaldean culture. Chaldean culture itself had recognized its astrology out of clairvoyance. Abraham, the forefather of arithmetic, emerged to find all this through combination, through the physical brain having undergone a very special process here. Thus a very special mission was entrusted to him.

Now we must bear in mind that the way the mission was to proceed was not to remain with him alone, but was to become the common property of mankind. But since the thinking was bound to the physical brain, how could it become common property? It could only become common property by being transmitted through physical inheritance. That is to say, a people had to come forth from this individuality, in whom this special quality was inherited as long as it was to enter humanity as a mission. A nation had to come forth from it. A nation had to be founded, not just a culture, where something had been taught: what one has received clairvoyantly can be taught. What was now to be received by humanity had to be transmitted to the descendants through physical inheritance, so that it could be realized in all its details. What was to be realized? It should be found through human combination, that order which was first brought into humanity through Abraham. If one looks up at the order of the stars, one can find the order through combination. The wise men of Chaldean astrology have reflected on the thoughts of the gods. Now it was a matter of finding this particular transition to combining, to logically grasping the phenomena, in the external world. Therefore, there had to be an inherited property in the physical human body that resulted from the work of thinking itself, which is spread out in space as order. This is expressed very beautifully when the one who assigns this mission to Abraham says: Your descendants shall be arranged according to the order, according to the number of stars - which the Bible nonsensically translates as: “Your descendants shall be like the sand of the sea.” It means that there should be an order in Abraham's descendants, the descendants should be structured in such a way that there is an image of the stars in the sky. This is also expressed in the twelve sons of Jacob. They are an image of the twelve constellations. This is where the dimensions come in, which are modeled in the sky. In the line of generations there should be an image of the number in the sky. Just as the number is written in the sky, so the order of the number is to be written in the line of generations. This is the profound wisdom contained in these words, which are foolishly translated: “Your descendants shall be as the sand of the sea.”

Thus we see the meaning of Abraham's entire mission. But the symbolism of this mission, which is meant to reflect the secrets of the world, is also expressed in other ways. First of all, we ask ourselves the following: what is meant to be sacrificed, so to speak, is ancient, dimmed clairvoyance. Everything that has been rooted in humanity since the earliest times is to be sacrificed. The innermost conviction in this whole mission is that everything is received as a gift from outside. What is to come into being should come into being through physical descendants. Through them, this mission should enter the world. Abraham must receive this himself as a gift from God. This happens when he is first called upon to sacrifice his son Isaac and then prevented from doing so. What does he actually receive from the hand of God? He receives his whole mission. For if he had really sacrificed Isaac, he would have sacrificed his whole mission. He gets his people back by getting Isaac back. He receives as a gift from the divine order of the world in Isaac what he is actually meant to give to the world. Thus everything that followed Abraham was a gift from God Himself. The last gift of clairvoyance that still existed – you will understand later how the individual gifts of clairvoyance express themselves; each one can be related to one of the constellations – the last gift of clairvoyance to be voluntarily sacrificed is linked to the constellation of Aries. That is why we see the ram in the sacrifice of Isaac. This is a symbolic expression of the sacrifice of the last gift of clairvoyance in exchange for the gift of being able to judge the outer phenomena of the world in terms of number and measure. That is this mission of Abraham.

And how does this mission continue? The last gift of clairvoyance is sacrificed, it must be expelled from this mission, and if it still shows itself as an inheritance, it is, so to speak, not tolerated within the straight line of succession. Joseph shows a relapse. He has his dreams, he has the old gift of clairvoyance. The brothers cast him out. This shows how tightly this entire mission was drawn: Joseph is cast out. He migrates to Egypt to establish the connection that was now necessary, the connection with the other wing of our entire cultural development, with Egyptian culture. Joseph had united within himself that which was general in character within this mission and at the same time remnants of ancient clairvoyance. He brought about a complete revolution in Egypt by correcting the declining Egyptian culture in accordance with his clairvoyant gift. He placed his gift at the service of external institutions. This is the basis of Joseph's cultural mission in Egypt.

And now we see a peculiar spectacle. Now we see that those who were the missionaries for outer thinking in terms of measure and number are no longer on the earlier path, but are seeking the outer connection through Joseph by seeking in return what they could not bring forth from themselves in Egypt. There they go, there they take in — the descendants of Abraham take in what they need in Egypt. That is where they go. What is necessary for the further organization of this mission is given from the outside through the Egyptian initiation, because it cannot be brought forth from within. Moses brings this from the outside and connects Egyptian culture with this special mission of Abraham. And now we see how it is passed on from generation to generation, what is the human comprehension of the outer world, what is the recognition of the outer world in terms of measure, weight and number. A new element has entered. This is transmitted through blood relationship and can only be transmitted in this way, because it is bound to that which must be inherited. This is the second of the currents.

The third stream is the one that connects with Zarathustra, which is what was expressed in ancient Persia and spread to the Near East, as we have already learned in the various lectures. These three streams are what flow together in the Christ Jesus. The individuality that is the Christ Jesus must have had to do with all three currents. They must unite in him. How does that happen? This happens in the following complicated way. First of all, we have to realize that one of the things that was to flow into the general world current took place in India six hundred years before our era. At about the same time, something also happened within the Babylonian-Chaldean culture in that Zarathustra reappeared in ancient Chaldea under the name Zarathos or Nazarathos. There he lived and worked as a great teacher at the same time as some of the chosen teachers and leaders of the ancient Hebrew people were led into Babylonian captivity, because that is also the time when the Jews were led into captivity. There you see how the first contact of the Hebrew people with Zarathos took place at that time and how the Hebrew people, through their members, were under the personal influence of the reborn Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The events took place as described in the Bible. The following happened. At the beginning of our era, there were two sets of parents, both named Joseph and Mary. One of them lived in Nazareth and the other in Bethlehem. The husband of the couple in Bethlehem was descended from the Solomonic line of the House of David. The other couple in Nazareth was descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David. Solomon and Nathan are both sons of David. Both sets of parents have a son. To the Nazareth parents, the Nazareth Jesus child is born, as described in the Gospel of Luke, and to the Bethlehem parents, the Bethlehem Jesus child is born, as described in the Gospel of Matthew. So we have two Jesus children at the beginning of our era.

Let us follow the story of the Bethlehem Jesus Child! How did he actually come into being as a physical child, so to speak? As a physical child, we see in the physical line of descent, which the writer of the Gospel of Matthew traces very beautifully back to Abraham, descended from this line. We have to follow the line from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Canaan, then to Egypt and back to Canaan again. That would approximately give the line of the Israelite people from Chaldea to Palestine, to Egypt and back again. These were the ancestors of the Bet-lehemitic Jesus-child. And because he carried the blood of these ancestors within him, he went through this journey, so to speak. That individuality, which now wanted to embody itself in this Jesus boy of Bethlehem, quickly passed through the same path, albeit in a shortened form. That individuality had been active as Zarathustra in ancient Chaldea. Thus, at the moment when the Bethlehem Jesus child was born, a spiritual individuality, which exactly imitated the traits of Abraham, came spiritually from Chaldea to Canaan. There it was born into the Bethlehem Jesus child. Then it had to briefly imitate the move to Egypt and later back again, until it settled in Nazareth. There you have the individuality that, so to speak, spiritually went through the whole journey of the people of Israel. You can go through this journey that you have described in the Bible and you will find that it is true. The Bible describes better than any external records. What can be found in the Akasha Chronicle for the clairvoyant eye is confirmed by the Bible: the journey that the Israelite people went through from Chaldea to Canaan, to Egypt and back. And the parallels are wonderful everywhere. Who leads the Jews to Egypt? Joseph's dreams lead them there. Who leads the Bethelehemitic Jesus child to Egypt? Also the dreams of Joseph, his father. These parallels go as far as these details. It is again a special gift of clairvoyance that has remained, that establishes the connection.

So the Jesus child is born in Bethlehem, having received the element that came into humanity through Abraham by inheritance, the individuality of Zarathustra. And those who were connected with Zarathustra in the Chaldean secret schools are now pursuing the path. In the spiritual world, their star leads the way: Zoroaster himself, who is going to be born in Bethlehem. They can follow them, the three magi, they appear in the Bible. They know him, who lives in the Bethelehemitic Jesus child.

This is the one Jesus child, the Bethelehemitic. In the other Jesus child, who was also born in Bethlehem only through a journey, something completely different lives, something that is already announced by the fact that this Jesus child was different in all his qualities from the Bethelehemitic Jesus child. From the very beginning, the Bethlehem Jesus Child showed himself to be an extraordinarily gifted human being beyond all human measure, for he had a powerful individuality within him. He was gifted for everything that humanity had so far conquered in terms of cultural means. He showed himself to be extraordinarily gifted for everything that could be learned from the environment. The Nazarene Jesus Child was not at all gifted for the external things of culture. He had only a deep, deep, emotional inwardness. It was precisely the quality of the soul and mind that was developed in him. But he was not gifted to learn what was externally available in terms of cultural means. He had no inclination for that. He had something that people cannot even imagine in terms of distinguishing good from evil. But what had arisen on earth in the way of culture was foreign to him. It was foreign to him because something had been born in him that had not gone through the whole development of humanity.

We can understand this if we consider the following. In the ancient Lemurian times, what we call the Luciferic influence took place within humanity. Then the Luciferic powers crept into the human being's astral body. As a result, humanity has become what it has become. Now, in those days, the guiding powers of the human being's etheric body had to be held back a little so that it would not be infected by anything that the astral body, which was under Luciferic influence, could give it. Part of the etheric body was withdrawn from the influence of the astral body by the fact that man retained influence only over his etheric body, in so far as he is a thinking and feeling being, but not with regard to everything of a thinking nature. This was, so to speak, withheld and conveyed from the spiritual-divine world from above. Therefore, from the very beginning of their earthly existence, human beings have, so to speak, their individual desires and personal feelings, and they could not have their personal thoughts, nor the expression of personal thoughts, language. Thinking was such that it was guided by a continuous spirituality in all of them. As a result, they all think the same. But even language was at least guided by the folk gods, so that not every person has their own language. That which is expressed in the spirit of language was, with respect to the etheric body, removed from the arbitrariness of the individual personality; it was held back. What was withheld in Lemurian times is related in the Paradise Myth: Man partook of the Tree of Knowledge but not of the Tree of Life; he acquired freedom of will, but what was not given to man at that time was now mysteriously transmitted to this Jesus child, to the Jesus child of Nazareth, whose etheric body it was. There was that which had been withdrawn from humanity in the very beginning, and that prevented the Nazarene Jesus Child from taking an interest in the culture that humanity had acquired. He had something much more original, something that reminded of the time when humanity had not yet fallen into the sin of the arbitrariness of the individual. The author of the Gospel of Luke expresses this by leading the family tree up to Adam. So that in the Nazarene Jesus-child something appears which had sunk in Adam, which had been withdrawn from the Luciferic influence. What mankind was before this Luciferic influence, that was in this Nazarene Jesus-child.

These two Jesus-boys lived side by side. When they were both twelve years old, the following happened: the Zarathustra in the Bethlehem Jesus-boy decided to merge with the Nazarene Jesus-boy. This is hinted at in the Bible in the event known as the loss of the twelve-year-old Jesus, where the parents are amazed to find him again. He was quite different from what he had been before, the Nazarene Jesus-child. Now, all at once, he took an interest in external culture because Zarathustra's individuality was in him. This happened at that moment in time which is described in the Bible as the twelve-year-old Jesus getting lost. Something else had happened as well. At the birth of the Nazarene Jesus Child, that which we can call the later embodiment of the Buddha descended into the astral body. From the time of his birth, the Buddha in his etheric body was connected with this Jesus child of Nazareth at his re-embodiment, so that in the aura of the Jesus child of Nazareth in his astral body we have the Buddha. This is alluded to in a profound way in the Gospel of Luke. The Indian legend tells us that at the time when the royal son Gautama Buddha was born, there was a remarkable sage who was to become the Buddha. His name was Asita. He had learned through his clairvoyant abilities that the Bodhisattva had now been born. He looked at the boy in the royal palace and was full of enthusiasm. He began to weep. “Why are you weeping?” the king asked him. “O king, there is no danger of misfortune. On the contrary, the one who has been born is the Bodhisattva and will become the Buddha. I weep because I, as an old man, will not live to see this Buddha.” Then Asita died. The Bodhisattva became the Buddha. The Buddha descends and unites with the aura of the Nazarene Jesus child, in order to contribute his mite to the great event in Palestine. At the same time, through a karmic connection, the old Asita is reborn. He becomes the old Simeon. And he now sees the Buddha, who had become this from a bodhisattva. What he had not been able to see in India six hundred years before our era, the becoming Buddha, he now saw it when the Buddha floated in the aura of the Nazarene Jesus child, whom he held in his arms, and now he said the beautiful word: “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace, for I have seen my master,” the Buddha in the aura of the Jesus child.

Thus we see how the three currents flow together: through the blood, the current of Abraham; through the individuality of the Bethelehemitic Jesus-child, the Zarathustra current; and the third current through the Buddha's etheric body or Nirmanakaya floating down and being seen by the shepherds. Thus we see these three currents flowing together. And how these currents live on within Christianity, and how he who lives in the Nazarene Jesus-child, endowed with the individuality of Zarathustra, carries them forward, can only be described at another time.

It should also be said that after the Zarathustra individuality had passed over into the personality, into the body of the Nazarene Jesus child, that the Bethlehem Jesus child gradually wasted away and soon died.

The important thing is that you understand how this guidance of the Zarathustra individuality into the Jesus child took place. You know that the development of the human being proceeds in such a way that from birth to the age of seven the development of the physical body takes place, from seven to fourteen the development of the etheric body takes place, the special unfolding, and that then the astral body is born. The special I, the egoity, as it was born in man in the Lemurian time, was not at all in the Nazarene Jesus child. If He had developed further without the Zarathustra going over to Him, no I could have been born. He had what had been joined together as the holy three members, as they were before the Fall: physical body, etheric body and astral body, and only then received the gift of the I through Zarathustra. All this joined together in a wonderful way. In the Gospels we have the facts mirrored, which can be found in the Akasha Chronicle.

I have only been able to sketch out a few individual features of the confluence of these great, powerful spiritual currents of the Buddha, Zarathustra and the ancient Hebrew stream in Western Asia, where, at the beginning of our era, Christianity was reborn from these three currents. These are a few lines that we can continue another time.

The situation of someone who wants to say something about the nature of the soul on a spiritual scientific basis, insofar as it can be described as immortal, is perhaps characterized for a very long time by the fact that I am talking about the publication of a book as an introduction. This book is entitled “Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul”.

I would like to make it clear, so as not to be misunderstood, that today's spiritual research cannot consider this book as written in the spirit of this spiritual research. Spiritual research in the modern sense did not yet exist at that time, as I was able to sufficiently demonstrate in many lectures that I have given here. However, I would like to say that, in view of the fate that has befallen all those long-standing disputes that push towards what today wants to develop into spiritual science, I believe that what happened with the publication of this book is not without significance. So in 1827 a book entitled 'Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul' was published. The person who published this book wrote a remarkable introduction to it, a remarkable preface, as they say. He writes that he was with a dying person and found the manuscript of this book at his bedside, that he then took over this manuscript with the consent of the dying man, that it could no longer be said to him exactly how the dying man came by this book, which apparently had a great, profound significance for his soul in the last days of his life. Then the person who publishes the book waited because the content seemed so significant to him, seemed to contain such important information about the soul's life after the detachment of the physical body that he could not imagine that this book would not be destined to make its content accessible to wider circles. But since he had waited long enough and had not seen the content published anywhere, he decided to publish the book himself.

What can legitimate research into the origin of this book tell us? There is the strange fact that the person who published this book, with this preface in which he recounts the book's remarkable fate, wrote this book himself, from beginning to end and published it without his name; that he only found it necessary, if one may say so – it is meant in the very best sense of the word – to invent a fairy tale about the book, as it has just been mentioned. It becomes somewhat more understandable why the writer of this book resorted to this fairy tale when one knows that he was a well-known personality in the broadest philosophical circles of his time, a philosopher who dealt with the most profound questions of philosophical thought : the Prague philosopher Bernard Bolzano, who had a large number of students, students who worked for many decades at Austrian universities, who always confessed what a profound influence they had drawn from Bolzano's teachings. So, a famous, influential philosopher, Bernard Bolzano, publishes a book in which he discusses the reasons for the immortality of the human soul, and in this book he has to present himself to the public in the manner described. Why did he do this? Well, the reasons are very obvious. In this book it is not merely stated, as it is so often the case in philosophical writings, that the human soul is immortal for these or those reasons that are derived from human logic. Rather, this book speaks of how man finds within himself a being that can perfect itself between birth and death, perfecting itself in terms of its thinking, perfecting itself in terms of its feeling , perfects itself in relation to its volitions; how this being, when it is rightly grasped by man, shows, however, that it not only bears within itself the powers that lead to its perfection up to death, but that it bears within itself powers that further perfect this soul-being, further develop it, that can be further filled with content even after the human being has passed through the gate of death. This book then explains how one must imagine, when one grasps the human soul, that the human soul must live in a certain environment when it has passed through the gate of death. It also indicates how this human soul, after its death, associates with other spiritual entities, which cannot be perceived as long as the human being dwells in the body. It is hinted at what relationship the human soul, after passing through the gate of death, can have with the relatives and friends left behind, with the souls attached to it in love. As already mentioned, all these details of the soul that has passed through the gate of death are not spoken of from the standpoint of today's spiritual science, but with fine, delicate reasons that a philosopher has developed who not only philosophizes with abstract concepts, but who is involved with his whole soul, with his whole human being, when he develops thoughts, especially the thoughts about that weaving and being in the human being himself, which we call the soul. But Bolzano knew only too well that as long as one remains a logician and discusses how one concept is linked to another, what logical reasons there are for the truth or probability of a judgment, as long as one discusses how attention in the human soul, possibly even the reasons for memory and for the will; in short, as long as one expresses everything that the soul performs while it dwells in the body, one can have the reputation of a scientific philosopher. But if one speaks about the human soul as Bolzano did in his Athanasia, then one's reputation as a philosopher is ruined. Then one is an unscientific person. Then you are a person who talks nonsense and can no longer be taken seriously by those who understand how to think scientifically. Even those who have not learned to think scientifically but swear by the authority of those whom they have heard of or of whom it has been publicly stated that they can think scientifically believe that they can thoroughly dispute the scientific value of such a personality. If Bolzano wanted to save his reputation as a philosopher, he had to resort to the maneuver described above, and then leave it to later researchers to recognize that the book was written by him. And no Bolzano expert today doubts, for the very best reasons that can be proven scientifically and historically, that the book in question is by Bolzano himself. This shows something that was true then and is true today: if you want to openly and frankly advocate something that does not belong to the physical-sensory world or cannot be said about the physical-sensory world, you have to expose yourself to being seen as a completely unscientific person. And as a rule, the 'fact' does not apply either, that one could recognize from the way such things are spoken about, that the person speaking is not an unscientific person.

And yet, just as spiritual science has to speak about the question of immortality today, so this speaking, as I have often emphasized here, is in the fullest sense a continuation of that human spiritual work which, especially in the field of natural science, has led to such great results of human life and striving, which are fully recognized by spiritual science.

Therefore, today I would like to begin by hinting at some of the things that can show how the study of immortality is approached from the point of view of spiritual research, so that everything that can be called spiritual research in this sense today is in fact the direct, immediate continuation of what scientific thinking has contributed to a world view in the course of the nineteenth century and up to the present.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” you will find a chapter entitled “The World as Illusion”. This chapter is not intended to show that the world as it presents itself to the outer senses and to human thinking, which is connected to the brain, should be seen as an illusion, but it does show how many thinkers of the nineteenth century have come to the conclusion that everything perceived by the senses, and also what thinking has to say about the perceptions of the senses, does not flow into the human soul from the outside, but is, as it were, first constructed within the human soul. As far as it can be done in a popular way, I would like to touch on these thoughts in my introduction, even though they may be far removed from many of the esteemed listeners.

We see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, we perceive the world with our sense organs in general. Now, someone who is grounded in the latest natural science and physiological research says that what the senses perceive actually arises only through an interaction of the senses with something completely unknown in the external world. The researcher says: When the eye perceives a color, when the eye receives some impression of light, one must consider that what acts on the eye from the outside remains completely unknown to perception. With his soul, the human being experiences only the effect that the external world has on his soul. That is why, when we go through the world in our ordinary lives, we see things in color, as an expression of their light effects. But if, for example, we strike the eye, we may also have an impression of light in the eye, even if it is vague. Or if we can somehow otherwise evoke that which can occur internally in the eye, say, somehow with an electrical device, then we also get a light impression. That is to say, the eye responds to everything that acts on it from the outside with a light impression. So whatever happens out there, if it somehow acts on the eye, a light impression arises in the eye. The eye creates the impression of light from the effect of a completely unknown external world. It is the same with the ear. It is the same with the other senses. Therefore, for example, the philosopher Lotze, an outstanding philosopher of the nineteenth century, is in complete agreement with Schopenhauer when he says: Everything that we perceive as the effect of light, as color, has actually only come into being in our eye through the effect of an unknown world. What we hear as sounds is created by the effect of an unknown world in the ear. If there were no people with eyes and ears, the world would be dark and silent, and one could never say that something similar to what eyes see and ears hear prevails in this dark and silent, unknown world.

In other words: In the nineteenth century, under the influence of Kant's philosophy, it was concluded that in order for man to gain knowledge and perceptions of this environment, he must engage in an inner activity, and that only through this inner activity does that which he calls his environment come into being in his mind. In reality, one can say that for these people, who are genuine thinkers grounded in natural science, the world is like an illusion. For if out there, where we see pillars and all kinds of pictures on the walls, there is something completely unknown that affects the eye and from which the eye creates colors and shapes, then one can only say that what appears to us as our environment is an image created out of man's own being. And what is behind it can only be constructed by hypothesis, as modern physics does, which assumes all kinds of vibrations in the ether and the like behind our perceptions. So that man, as he goes through the world, in interaction with an unknown external world, simply by the nature of his being, builds up what he calls his world.

Taken as it has just been explained, there is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing to be said against this line of thought. This train of thought is completely in line with everything that scientific research has delivered in the nineteenth century. One can say: Such a statement as that made by Hermann Helmholtz, the famous physiologist and physicist, is perfectly understandable: by perceiving an external world, man does not perceive what is, what is really happening, but only perceives signs. Not even images, says Helmholtz, are perceived of what really is, but only signs. For what our eyes and ears create of the external world are only signs for the external world. As I said, there is nothing to be said against the seriousness and logic of this line of thought. Taken directly, as they present themselves, that is so.

You have to go much, much deeper into the nature of man if you want to know what is actually behind this train of thought. I have tried to show the philosophical world what is behind this train of thought and how it offers the possibility of finding one's way with it in relation to the human concept of reality. I have attempted to show the way to do this in a lecture I gave at the last philosophers' congress. But these arguments today only lead to general misunderstandings, if not to something much worse. The one who has the task of finding his way in the train of thought just outlined must indeed advance to spiritual science. And then it certainly becomes apparent that one can truly say: The human soul creates by perceiving through the senses that which it must initially call its world. It creates this. It really does create it. But why does it create it, despite the fact that creation prevails in the real? Well, it creates it for the reason that the human soul, that which is the human soul, is not connected to the human being in such a way that one can say: There is the human body, and in this human body the immortal soul dwells within, just as any person dwells in his dwelling and influences the outside world in some way from his dwelling or looks at the outside world through windows. The connection of the human soul with the human body must be imagined quite differently. It must be imagined in such a way that the body itself, as it were, holds the soul in itself through a process of knowledge. In the sense that colors and light, like sounds, are outside of us, in the same sense the human soul itself is outside of the body, and in that the reality carries colors and sounds in through the senses, in the same sense the contents of the soul live, as it were, on the wings of sensory perception. The soul must not be imagined as just a finer physical being that dwells in the coarser outer body, but as a being that is so connected to the body that the body exercises the same activity that we otherwise exercise in cognition when holding on to the soul. Only when we understand how, in a certain sense, that which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-awareness, is outside the body in the same way as sound or color, only then do we understand the relationship between the human soul and the human body. By pronouncing “I”, the human being, as a bodily human being, perceives this “I” from the same side of reality from which it perceives colors and sounds. And the nature of the body consists in being able to perceive precisely this I, that is, the soul's own nature. In order to fully experience the reality of what has just been said, it is necessary for the human being to carry out the exercises that have often been discussed here, that is, to perform inner acts with his soul.

Today, too, I will not repeat what I have said so often, since everyone can read it in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science,” or in the brief sketch at the end of “Theosophy.” Today, too, I shall not describe these inner soul-searchings in detail, but rather I should like to give again certain points of view which can show what man arrives at when he, in the sense often described here and in the books concerned, undertakes inner work with his soul , so that what otherwise takes place in the soul as thinking, feeling and willing develops further through inner impulses given by the soul in the meditative life; that it becomes something other than what is in the ordinary life of the body.

When a person undertakes the mental processes – this too has already been discussed in the last lectures – that lead thinking beyond the kind of thought life that one has to have in ordinary life and also in ordinary science, then one comes to think, that is, to perform the inner activity of thinking, but no longer to have a specific thought. Meditation consists in the fact that, while one otherwise thinks, as it were, under the influence of the external world and reflects on things, one evokes thinking as an inner arbitrary activity of the soul, that one does not direct one's attention to what is being thought, but to the activity of thinking, to that fine activity of the will that is exercised in thinking. I have already described this in the last lecture. In a sense, one thinks with a thought-content that one has moved into one's consciousness, into one's soul, through one's own will. One thinks so intensely, so strongly, so powerfully inwardly that one really achieves what one does not want to achieve at first, but what is achieved under the influence of such inner thought-work: thoughts fall away and one lives only in the inner weaving and working of an - well, let the expression be used - an ethereal world. The word “ethereal” is used here in a different way than modern physics uses the term. One lives in a weaving, in a pulsating, and one knows, if one has pursued this experience long enough: What one has discovered in one's thinking, what one has detached from one's thinking, just as the chemist separates hydrogen from water so that he can show the properties of hydrogen that cannot be shown while the hydrogen is still in the water, - one knows, when one has detached the activity of thinking from thinking, that one is now really in an experience outside the body. By continuing such inner soul work, one must then become clearer and clearer about what the experience actually is that one has evoked in this way in the soul. When we perceive colors and sounds in our ordinary life — as I said, this can already be considered a result of natural science — then we know through natural science: an unconscious activity is carried out in our human being; because the fact that the world of color and sound is evoked through the eye and the ear is an unconscious activity. An unconscious activity is carried out through which something that is outside speaks into the soul and reveals itself to the soul. What one experiences in the inner grasping of thinking when one does the corresponding soul exercises is not experienced in the same way as if it were rising up from our muscles, from our blood, but it is experienced as if it were coming in from the whole surrounding cosmic space , as if it were a spirit-being entering us and having a certain attraction to our body, so that it recognizes our body as the vehicle through which it wants to reveal itself to the sensory world. By meditating as described, one steps into the external world itself. One immerses oneself in this external world, from which colors and sounds come to us. That is to say, one frees one's experience from the body. This freedom of experience from the body must be inwardly experienced, must be lived. Through soul exercises, the human being must come to know that he is living and pulsating in an element that is not bound to his body as an instrument. But will, inner arbitrariness, is now present in everything, which thus leads the human being to freedom from the body – inner activity, but inner activity on a higher level. Let us just consider for a moment what it would mean for the human being: suppose – assuming the truth of what I have presented to you as a result of more recent physiology, of more recent natural science – the human being were aware: there must be something unknown, a silent, dark world. I stand in it, I open my eyes. Through my eyes I create color, through my ears I create sound. I place the sounds and the colors into the world. What would a person have to say? He would say: Well, then the whole world is a dream, of course it is a dream. Then nothing of what I see and hear is real. Only because this inner activity, which is there, remains unconscious, because one does not know that one does it — evoke colors through the eye, evoke sounds through the ear — only because of that, one is at all undisturbed in one's outer experience. For if human beings were always aware that they do what recent natural science ascribes to them, then they would certainly speak about the whole world of the senses in exactly the same way as they now speak about what way, and what human thinking, trained in this way, experiences through a world that is just as real as the sense world, but which must be voluntarily placed before ourselves through the effort of free will born of thinking. One might say that it is good for most people that they are blessed with not knowing how they create colors and sounds for themselves, otherwise they would already be able to speak about this colored and sounding world exactly as they speak about the world that the spiritual researcher presents to them. For that is indeed the characteristic of the world that the spiritual researcher presents to the soul: that one now exercises the activity, which one otherwise performs unconsciously for the sensual world, consciously, fully consciously, on this higher level of the act of will, which is detached from thinking. Otherwise, however, there is no difference at all in relation to the sense world. But people are not strong enough to hold to that, to have confidence in that which they must first call into existence inwardly. One would like to say that it is good that a kind God has withheld from people the knowledge that they create the light of the sun for themselves, otherwise they would deny it, as they deny the essence of the spiritual world. People depend on the outside world, on the authority of the outside world, to dictate what is, what is inherent in being. If they are to do something to allow this being to come to the fore, then they are not strong enough, not trusting enough in this inner activity of theirs to allow what they now have to co-create themselves to be recognized as a reality, as a truth.

When, through the indicated exercises of thinking, one has truly grasped the will in thinking, that reality which does not express itself in thoughts of a sense world, then at first – and this too has often been hinted at from a different point of view – — one does not have a spiritual reality before one, but one has only an experience that consists of a weaving and being and becoming; one has, so to speak, an expanded self before one, a self that now knows itself connected to the whole world, from which sounds and colors otherwise reveal themselves to it. But one weaves and lives in this becoming. One only knows that the way one lives in this becoming is reality, spiritual reality, spiritual reality free from the body.

One cannot be careful enough in describing such things, because it can, of course, be objected lightly by someone who believes they are allowed to think they are very scientific: So the spiritual researcher claims that he is immersed in the world through the result of this one exercise; he must actually know everything when he lives in that weaving element. Now, what works from within instead of approaching the person from the outside does not have to reveal all the secrets it contains. One can say that it can be compared to the fact that a person also eats and drinks and yet truly does not know the processes that take place in his body. One gets to know another world in its nature and essence, but naturally one does not get to know all the secrets of that world, which in turn must first be explored in detail, a research that requires exactly the same care and seriousness as the exploration of the physical-sensual world, yes, more. But this experience of living in a weaving world can be compared to when a physical person in the body has acquired the ability to grasp all kinds of things, but cannot grasp anything when he reaches out. In that case, one would know that one has organs to grasp, to make grasping movements, but one does not grasp anything. One would be in this situation if one only had the practice results that have just been described. One would live and weave inwardly in the spiritual element, but one would feel as if one were stretching out the spiritual organs in all directions, and it would be certain: you have grasped yourself in the spirit — but one would still perceive nothing of a spiritual environment. It would only be a general living and weaving and becoming of one's own self in the spirit. A tremendous loneliness, even a sense of apprehension, could seize a person if he only came to these conclusions. Therefore, the exercises that the soul performs when they are taken from true spiritual research are designed not only to develop the life of the mind, leading to such experiences as have been described, but also to develop the life of the will. And this training of the life of the will is something that arises in the most natural way from the ordinary life of the will in man. You can find more details in the books mentioned. But I will again characterize the effect, the results of the exercises of the will, which are already interwoven into meditation in proper meditation, from a certain point of view. Exercises of the will lead a person to the point where he can observe his own volition. Ordinary self-observation, even that which is called self-observation in trivial mysticism, does not yet lead to the point where one really observes the content of one's own volition as one otherwise observes external natural phenomena. It certainly does not lead to the point where one could, as it were, become one's own spectator. But the real exercises that spiritual research can indicate allow the human being to see what otherwise takes place as will in his life and flows into actions or even just lives in desires as otherwise things and processes around us can be observed; that man can truly put himself outside of himself, that he observes himself by wanting this or that, by setting goals in life. One only acquires this ability – and this, of course, cannot fill the whole life, but only claim very short, snatched moments of meditation on life – by so directing one's volition – and every true meditator already directs the volition by doing the right meditations – by so directing one's volition that one does not merely will as one wills in ordinary life. In ordinary life some desire arises. It is prompted by some inner bodily disposition, or it is prompted by an external impression, or the will performs this or that action, and thereby something is brought about in the external world. This volition that lives there can indeed be observed, but observation is made easier if one tries to will that – and as I said, it is willed in meditation – which advances the soul itself; if one makes oneself, so to speak, the object of one's volition, if one want something so that, through what one does in the soul, one gradually becomes a different person; that the soul is organized more finely, that the soul becomes more receptive when one carries out acts of will in such a way that one develops, that one consciously advances in life. Anyone who does meditation exercises knows how, after years of doing meditation exercises, the whole way he thinks about the world becomes different from what it used to be. He knows how he connects passion with desires, and these in turn with thoughts, and so on. He knows that he has become a different being, albeit in a more subtle way, and that this must be perceived. Otherwise, the I is always the center of will. The rays of will emanate from the I, as it were, and pour into the feelings and into the actions. In this kind of willing, the person effectively places himself outside of his ego and advances the ego itself through willing. Therefore, true meditation is particularly suitable for becoming the spectator of one's own willing, for knowing how to place oneself outside of one's own will and, just as one learns to observe natural processes, to observe one's own willing with composure. Otherwise, one is completely absorbed in one's desires, with all one's passions, all one's wishes, all one's emotions. One overcomes this for certain moments in life, and one learns to become a spectator of one's desires.

Let us just consider: when we want something else, we are present in what we want, we are so immersed in it that we instinctively defend it, at least inwardly, as our own. In any case, we do not look at wanting in the same way as we look at, say, the formation of a rainbow. But this is the path that the soul can follow: to observe the activity of the will, as one observes the formation of a rainbow or the rising of the sun; to become so objective, so calm. At first, one strives out of oneself in thought – for at first it is a mental striving out of oneself – in order to become a spectator.

But then one makes a discovery that one must take into account if one wants to become immersed in the reality of these things. One makes the remarkable discovery that although one must strive for what one strives for, one achieves something completely different. And with that I characterize an essential aspect of the spiritual research path in general. On the path of spiritual research, one must, if I may say so, set out on the path. One sets out on the path with the first exercises that I have described by meditating, by putting thoughts into the soul. But if one were to believe that holding on to these thoughts, drilling oneself into these thoughts, is also the goal, then that would be wrong. For the goal consists precisely in overcoming what one has initially undertaken: that thoughts cease to be thoughts in the strict sense, that the activity of thinking, free of the thought, now takes hold of us in becoming and weaving. That is the characteristic of the spiritual research path: that something must be undertaken and something else comes out. And precisely because something is undertaken, something else comes out.

And so it is with this second one I have to describe. You make an effort in the way described—but as I said, you can find details in the books mentioned—you make an effort to become your own spectator, that is, to step out of yourself in your imagination and watch your own volition as you would watch external natural phenomena. But the result of these exercises is different from what it would be if you were to follow a straight line. One might think that one would now become such a being by making a being out of oneself that looks at its currents of will. This is not the case. Rather, the result is that the more one goes out of oneself in this way, the more that which goes out disappears within oneself. In the development of thinking, one becomes more and more inwardly absorbed. The self expands, becomes more intense, more powerful. In the process I have just described, one does not enter into oneself, but one's own self is, in a sense, laid aside. Instead, however, a will remains in the spiritual field of vision, an act of the will. And as it were, out of the plane of these acts of the will, rising up from below, through the acts of the will, there rises a real being, which is a higher human being in the human being. That which one has always carried within oneself through one's whole life, but has not carried in consciousness, that rises through the will, that breaks through it. Just as the depths of the sea would appear if they were to break over the surface, so now a being appears, a conscious being, a being of higher consciousness, which is an objective spectator of all our acts of will, a real being that always lives in us and that breaks through the will in this way. And this being, which one discovers in the currents of will, this being connects with what one has made out of thinking. These two beings, which one has found in oneself, unite with each other. And through this one is now not only in a working and weaving, but in a real spiritual world with real spiritual entities and facts. In it now stands one's own being, which is also born out of the will - but in the company of other spiritual beings - and which goes through birth and death. The human being who, through birth or conception, has connected himself with what materially descends from father and mother, the human being who sustains himself when he steps through the portal of death, is discovered in such a way that what lives and works in us is brought to life in himself from two sides.

In the thinking that one gradually develops, the main thing is that in this thinking we really develop something different from what lives in our ordinary soul, and that is precisely what is difficult. Man is so attached to the habits that he has acquired in his soul through his dealings with the sensual world. Therefore, all these qualities that he acquires through this spiritual path, as it has been described, actually initially unsettle him. A sense of apprehension, loneliness, and restlessness can come over him. If everything is done correctly, as indicated by true spiritual science, this does not happen. I spoke about this a few weeks ago in the lecture I mentioned, 'A Healthy Soul Life and Spirit Research'. But everyone knows that when you enter into the spiritual world in the way I have described, a certain restlessness can arise, a certain inner anxiety, and even distinct feelings of fear towards the spiritual world that want to overwhelm you. And to avoid this, there are already enough clues in true meditation. But if someone expects that what his soul then does in these newly evoked abilities is directly similar to what the soul does in relation to the external physical world, which it must have around it all day, then he is subject to the most severe deceptions and also disappointments. Then he becomes restless because he says to himself: “I am living in something indefinite and unfamiliar. I have always thought in a different way. My thinking was so secure in the other way; it clung to a certain being that was given to me. Now my thinking is supposed to live in a becoming and not, so to speak, forget itself.

But in the true spiritual path this is avoided by the fact that this true spiritual path brings with it — it brings it with it quite naturally when it is followed in the right way — that what we can call interest, inner soul interest, manifests itself for the human being in a completely different way than the soul interest usually manifests itself in the physical world. It is really true: one acquires a new interest, a quite new kind of interest, when one leads a meditative life. It must be emphasized again and again: one does not want success for the inner life alone. Those spiritual exercises are of no value from the start and must be decidedly rejected, which make man unfit for the outer life. A person who practises true spiritual exercises remains as firmly rooted in the outer life as he was before. No, he will become even more firmly rooted in this outer life. If he has to pursue a particular occupation wherever fate has placed him, he will fulfil this occupation no worse than before if he has true spiritual science. And one can be sure – forgive the trivial expression – that the person who gets all kinds of raisins into his head by going through spiritual exercises, and then thinks he is too good for what he was before, is most certainly on the wrong track. But through that in the soul which is the actual spiritual research activity, one acquires new interests, which take the soul in a different direction, in addition to the old interests, which become even more intense for the outer world.

I will give an example of what it is like for someone who is a philosopher. Perhaps it is useful to give this example for the very reason that most philosophers believe from the outset – well, that they can judge everything from spiritual science much better than the spiritual researcher himself. But those who are not philosophers themselves become restless when faced with the many philosophies that exist. Isn't it true that one should just take a look at all the “ians” (Kantian, Hegelian, Schopenhauerian, Hartmannian) just once, all of them, and then one will see, even if one adds others to that, that one should not allow oneself to be unsettled: Well, everyone thought differently, but I want something certain in my thinking! This tendency will then take on a different expression in the philosopher. The philosopher who wants to be a “ianer” himself now develops a certain train of thought; he then swears by it, and the others are of course all fools, whom he can refute, or at least people who are going astray. But the person who has developed his thinking in the way described, who has included the process of thinking in thinking, reads Hartmann with the same interest as Schopenhauer, as Hegel, as Schelling, as Heraclitus. He does not even get around to refuting one and becoming a follower of the other, because he takes a certain interest in the movement of thinking, in being inside thinking itself, because he takes a certain joy, a certain pleasure simply in the act of thinking and because he knows that this thinking does not lead to reality in such a way as is usually believed — that thoughts can simply be reflections of reality — but that one only comes into a life and weaving in the work of thinking. Yes, when one can do this, then one can take the standpoint: Certainly, the one philosopher has viewed the world from one point of view, the other from another! And the philosophical world view that one then gets cannot be seen any differently than a tree that has been photographed from different sides, where one also does not say: I declare the one photograph to be wrong, that is not at all true with the other, that is a completely different tree! Because it is only a different tree because it has been photographed from a different side. If you look at the activity of photographing, and not at the abstract reproduction, then you will see for yourself what is right. And so it is with thinking. You become interested in the mobility of thinking, and you know that you live in spiritual reality when you live and move in thinking itself. And there is something else that is introduced into your development through the exercises of the will, and this goes much deeper. It can disturb many people, and would even appear very disturbing if you were not sufficiently prepared, as is the case in every true schooling of the spirit. I would like to say again: for ordinary life, people are familiar with the fact that what lies within their will actually only appears to them in such a way that when they have done something they call good, they rub their hands together; then they are very satisfied with themselves. If they have done something they call bad in some way, they reproach themselves. But it remains with these inner soul processes. Man oscillates back and forth between rubbing his hands together out of satisfaction with what he has done and blaming himself. But when the volition is trained in such a way that the inner spectator emerges, then a greater seriousness permeates the matter. Then it is no longer just reproaches or inner satisfaction that arise, but you get to know a very real being in what permeates the will as a spectator and shoots up through its surface. You get to know: That which otherwise appears to you as reproach and as inner satisfaction is a real power. This real power is there in the world, it will continue to have an effect. In the further course one learns to recognize how this power develops into a further destiny and influences the next life on earth as a fact, after one has passed through the life between birth and death. What one experiences there as will, would follow the one who is not well prepared like a shadow, like something one always drags along, like one's shadow, like a real being. Everything depends on whether one also learns to understand the full significance of these things; that one learns, for example, to recognize: what follows one around as a shadow need not lead one to hypochondria, but one must look at it calmly. For it is not at all what has significance for the present life, but what passes through the gate of death with us, what is among the forces that will help determine the configuration, the nature, of our next life.

In short, the interests associated with these developed inner soul activities are different from the interests of the outer life, but they do not detract from these interests of the outer life at all. They merely put everything in its proper place, so to speak. When someone comes to an awareness of what goes through birth and death, what is immortal about the soul, as I have described it, then he will not become less interested in the external physical facts that directly surround him, but rather he will come to the conclusion that there is a spiritual world. In this spiritual world there are just as many concrete spiritual processes and entities as there are in the physical world, and he can see them. But that which exists as a physical world can only be seen in the physical world. What surrounds us as a physical world naturally ceases to exist after death. Only because we carry an immortal being within us, which is a reality in itself and belongs to a reality that goes beyond the physical, do we carry something through the gate of death, enter into a spiritual world, into a world that we live through between death and a new birth, and then enter into yet another earthly life.

Especially when one knows, not in the abstract but in a living sense – and it is only through spiritual research that one really gets to know this – that one can only get to know this sensual world in its full inner essence through one's senses and through the mind that is connected to the brain – then, under this life-filled self-development — not through some theory, but through what life absorbs, under the influence of the exercises that awaken our lively interest in everything that is obvious; the interest for the smallest details in the world is increased. Only one particular interest, and this we must take with us, grows ever smaller and smaller: the interest in that which is already able to appear in the sense world as so-called 'spiritual' and to reveal spiritual reality in and out of the phenomenon itself. It is known that spiritual things can be grasped when the organs, the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, are developed first, to use Goethe's expression. It is known that one must rise to the spiritual world, and it is known that in the world of the senses, this world of the senses must be grasped out of itself, that it stands as that which must be grasped through the world of the senses. Therefore one loses interest in all those events that seek the spiritual out of the world of the senses itself. And while interest in everything that takes place in the spiritual world increases, especially in true spiritual research, interest in the sense in which it exists for many in the spiritual world is purely sensational and all kinds of superstitions and belief in miracles disappears completely. Interest, let us say, in spiritualistic events, in mediumistic performances, completely fades away. The spiritual researcher is not interested because he knows that only something abnormal can come to light in these things, which is indeed based in the sense world, but which cannot lead beyond the sense world into the true spiritual world. Of course, he can take an interest in it, as one takes an interest in some theatrical performance, in some experiment that otherwise appears in the world. Nothing should be said against such events, provided, of course, that they are not frauds, in that they allow a variety of otherwise inexpressible natural connections to be expressed. But they are natural phenomena, and we know that we do not live in these things in any other way than we live and move with our ordinary senses, however abnormal it may seem. For everything that belongs to this area, which I have just touched upon, interest wanes, as I said. It becomes a mere witnessing — well, of all sorts of events. And it is the duty of every true spiritual researcher not to allow superstition to grow in him, but to uproot superstition completely.

It would be very easy to believe – and because it is possible, it must be emphasized – that a person who experiences spiritually what I have indicated, and who basically experiences nothing less than what he can call his immortal soul, and that he is actually experiencing life after death; that he is already experiencing what will be experienced after death. In this abstract form it is not the case, and one must think very carefully about these things if one wants to get an idea of them. What the soul experiences after death, or let us say, from death until birth, is experienced in much the same way as a plant would consciously experience everything that is in its germ, which represents all the forces for the new plant. One experiences everything that must necessarily be gone through in the spiritual world after death in order to prepare one's entire life with the new body and the new experiences as a new destiny in the coming earthly existence. It is the germinal being in us that is suited to experience in the spiritual world between death and new birth that which then prepares a new life on earth, so that we then have the body that we need to have the abilities that we have previously prepared within us, so that we put ourselves in the position in which we need to be when our destiny is to be fulfilled according to our previous life on earth. That this potential lies within us, we experience that. But to have this experience before us, to have the spiritual world before our own soul, for that it is necessary, of course, to go through the experiences ourselves between death and a new birth, which one can at most look at and develop in knowledge, but in a living knowledge that is an inner reality, while the knowledge of the external world, of the physical external world, is only mental images.

You see, I would of course need a great deal of time to discuss in more detail what I have only touched upon. This will be possible in the coming lectures. But, as you can see, there is a certain path that can be described as the path of spiritual research, which leads to the development of a life that is inwardly different from the life of the soul in the external, sensual reality. And in this experience, the soul takes hold of itself in such a way that it lives and breathes in the inner power that passes through the gate of death.

Fichte only sensed the truth when he said: Immortality is not only there when we have passed through the gate of death, but it is there when we are still living in the body. For the being that passes through death can be attained by human knowledge while it is still alive in the body. How is it attained? In a remarkable way, we have to form ideas ourselves from spiritual science as to how it is attained.

You may well ask how can a person achieve all that has been described as a result of soul exercises? How can soul exercises lead to something like this? You see, people very often complain – especially when they have a keen cognitive drive – that you can't really see through reality, that there are limits to knowledge. How often have I pointed out in these lectures the famous Ignorabimus of Da Bois-Reymond, where it is said that man can indeed come to an observation of the processes of the world and their limits, but cannot penetrate into the interior of matter; that he cannot, as it were, submerge himself in the interior of matter with his thinking. It is said of all knowledge that all these powers of knowledge are actually insufficient to fully penetrate nature.

When one begins to strengthen the soul inwardly as it has been described, one notices something very definite. One notices how tremendously good it is that there are such limits to external knowledge. For if the powers that one has for external knowledge were to make one see through all nature through themselves, these powers would prevent one from attaining spiritual knowledge. Only because one cannot use everything that is in the soul for external knowledge is something left that can be developed in the way I have explained it. Only because the full, immortal soul does not enter into bodily life, but still retains something, whereby not everything is transparent in the outer bodily life, are inner forces preserved, which can then be developed in the way described. By connecting ourselves with the physical material given by our ancestors through birth or, let us say, through conception, we retain so much of the immortal soul that, on the one hand, we are prevented from seeing through the full nature in the bodily life, and have to make hypotheses and all sorts of things about what lives in nature. But as a result we have in the background of our being forces that we can develop within us and that allow us to enter into a spiritual world in a spiritual way. The immortal soul lives in man. In order for it to live, some things must be taken away from man in a sensual way. This, in turn, is such an important connection that one must look at it.

There is therefore a spiritual research that introduces us directly to the immortal being of man. This spiritual research is different from the external research. In the external research, one can remain as one is. That is exactly what suits people. The same abilities that they have acquired once, they retain when they go into the laboratory, when they do experiments, and can learn something about the external nature. And then these people also demand that the spirit should be explored in the same way, by retaining the same abilities. One cannot approach the spirit without first making oneself spiritual, that is, seeking out that which is in every human soul but which must first be raised to consciousness in the manner described. But there is much, much that, I might say, still thwarts people's paths to spiritual science in the present time. That is why the chapter 'immortality question and spiritual research' is still so little recognized today, one that people are so reluctant to get involved in.

You can already see from what I have said that it is necessary for man to learn to think and live in a subtle inner way. That is to say, when he becomes a spiritual researcher, he must not become a lesser thinker than those who believe, let us say, that they have mastered thinking, who claim that they stand on the firm ground of external natural science, which is not to be challenged in the slightest. They do not love that in the present. In the present, one loves to develop, I might say, that very tangible thinking that does not even broach the subject of the finer things that live and move in the world.

I do not like to do this: to make personal references. Those of you who have been to these lectures often will know that I actually avoid going into all the opposition from the outside world and all the misunderstandings regarding what I am presenting here as spiritual science. I would prefer to ignore it and not talk about it at all. But when things keep coming up that do have an effect and are believed, they do harm to the cause. Personally I would prefer not to talk about these things at all, but harm is done to the cause because printed paper still has tremendous authority today, because it still has a tremendous effect. And so, for the sake of the cause, one must sometimes, when occasion is offered by some topic, go into what stands in opposition to spiritual science. If coarse thinking is opposed to it, which, because it cannot engage in the finer weaving in the life of thought, can see nothing but fantasy, nothing but a form of madness in what spiritual science indicates as the right path for spiritual research. Let me give you an example. And, as I said, please excuse me if it is a personal example, but I only mention it in so far as it is opposed to spiritual science, which is expressed in it as a typical phenomenon.

I gave a lecture in a certain city about the relationships that prevail in the nature of the individual European peoples, relationships that, as many listeners know, I had already presented long before this war gave rise to talk about them; insights that were found quite independently of this war, but which, as they are presented, should actually be obvious. For when it is said in the course of the lectures, which are now often combined with the lectures on spiritual science, that the peoples of the West, the peoples of the European center, the peoples of the East differ in this or that, one should believe that no reasonable person could actually be led to say anything other than: Well, yes, he may be mistaken about individual characteristics, but there really are differences. There really are different character traits, different ones in the Germans, different ones in the Russians. To deny this can only arise from the crudest thinking. And yet, as I said, I also gave a lecture on this in a certain city. In a daily paper of the town in question, this was discussed and said in the most derogatory way, that these differences were constructed only out of the war, as it were. But one could ignore that, following the example I gave recently, for what is being achieved in this area. But now think, that was not enough for one man, but the man even turned to a magazine, and in a magazine what appeared in the newspaper at the time was printed, and the following nice comment was attached to it: “The accusation of the speaker” - that is, the critic of the Tagblatt of the city in question - “of having reconstructed opposing cultures from the current constellation of powers, rightly applies to Steiner. With the best will in the world, I am unable to perceive, as Steiner does, a difference in essence between Central European and Western and Eastern European culture. In my opinion, European culture is completely the same in essence.” And so it continues. This appeared in a Central European journal. You can see from it what a crude thinking is confronted with spiritual science as such. For what I have read to you here is further developed in a detailed article that extends over several issues. The thought — well, I need only hint at it, then you will see how crude such a person's thinking is: “Intellectual life, too, has developed in this direction and is absorbed in this pursuit. The wild greed of the European cultured man for the possession of earthly goods would degenerate into a predatory struggle of all against all, were individuals not forced into iron state forms.” So this crude thinking does not even notice how these ‘iron state forms’ are initially more involved in what is happening in this war. It is thinking like this that one has to deal with. Such thinking is in contrast to what must be demanded in the light of an understanding of such a question, and so also of the question of the immortality of the soul. And such a thing does not appear in a materialistic magazine, but in a magazine - it even bears the heading “42nd year” - that calls itself “Psychical Studies”. That I am not speaking out of personal resentment, I can prove to you from the magazine itself. You know, or at least many people know, that I have dealt with the main ideas which this gentleman here attacks in such a way in a small pamphlet. This pamphlet is called “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this pamphlet, though perhaps in a popular way, are exactly the same thoughts, written at least from the same spirit, from the same attitude. In the same issue as the article from which I have just read the characteristic passages, there is a review of this work, “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this review, the work is highly praised and it is shown how meritorious it is to express such thoughts. It goes without saying that I am just as indifferent to being praised as I am to being criticized. But I must characterize what already lives in the formation of the times, so that it is not believed again and again when diatribes appear here and there, simply through the suggestive power of what is daubed with printing ink on dirty paper, since that always forms a kind of obstacle for those who might otherwise find their way to spiritual research. One must point out the grotesque nature of the experience that can be had in our time in such a way. And it is only for this reason that spiritual science must be kept free, so to speak, in the context in which it is found, in the light in which it must appear as true, genuine, honest spiritual science. In order to keep it free in this light, I must also touch on other matters.

I have already pointed out in the lecture before last, where I spoke about misunderstandings regarding spiritual science, also in the lecture “Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research”, that spiritual research is not only opposed by what comes from the more or less materialistically minded side. On this side it is extremely difficult to achieve something for the reason that the things that are put forward from this side are so terribly plausible. When I have to characterize something, such as this magazine, I do it reluctantly. When I seriously oppose something, I turn to those whom I actually hold in high esteem. So I also hold in high esteem the actual father, I might say, of modern materialism, Lamettrie. He is an astute man, and his reasons are plausible. But one can acknowledge the plausibility of these reasons, one can assert them and one should still, when the spiritual research path is asserted alongside them, acknowledge the significance and essence of this spiritual research path alongside the validity of what comes from the materialistic side. Lamettrie is, as I said, an astute man, and in his book 'Man a Machine' he has put together everything that can prove how man is dependent on his physicality. Now it might seem as if spiritual science would have every reason to contradict such things. No, it agrees with everything, as I even proved in my last lecture, in a more forceful sense than materialism itself. For it is indeed easy to understand and irrefutable when Lamettrie points out how man's mental state depends on what he is. Of course it is very easy to prove, because it is so terribly obvious that man depends on whether he likes something or whether something agrees with him. Think of the mood of the soul that results from it. Lamettrie describes all this, and in doing so, he basically anticipated everything that can be said about this matter. Isn't it extremely interesting – especially in this day and age – to read what Lamettrie said in his book 'Man a Machine', because if you read it somewhere else, it would not make a good impression. But here in Central Europe, this passage can perhaps be read with greater composure than in Western Europe. Lamettrie wants to prove what man actually is - really prove how man, in terms of his mental state, indeed in terms of his character, in terms of what lives in him in terms of soul, depends on what he eats, what his food is. And there Lamettrie says – but as I said, it was more than a century ago since it was said – in his book 'Man a Machine', Lamettrie says: 'Raw meat makes animals wild; humans would become wild from the same food. How true this is,” says Lamettrie, the Frenchman, ”can be seen from the fact that the English nation, who eat meat less cooked than we do, eat it entirely raw and bloody, and show a wildness that is partly brought about by these foods, but partly also by other causes, which only education can suppress. This savagery engenders in the soul arrogance, hatred, contempt for other nations, unruliness and other feelings that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind, whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness.” It is perhaps not uninteresting, especially in Central Europe, to hear the judgment of a Frenchman, even if it is more than a hundred years old, about the English, so that one can see how circumstances change and how people have not always felt and thought in the same way from one place to another and from there to there. This same Lamettrie also says other things that are quite natural, for example, he says - and he believes that this is enough to refute everything that can be said from the spirit about the spirit - he says, for example: “A small fiber would have made two fools out of Erasmus and Fontenelle.” One can, of course, admit this and still stand on the ground of spiritual science, as it has been characterized today. For there is much more that can be admitted and that will not shake spiritual research. Let us assume, for example, that if only a small fiber were different in the case of Erasmus, then, from the point of view of pure materialism, this would mean that his life would perhaps have become that of a drip instead of that of a genius. But now, if it had happened that the mother, before he was born, had been murdered by a bandit and Erasmus had been killed before he was born, what would have become of Erasmus' soul? Only a true spiritual researcher is able to see through such things. For it seems even more compelling that man is dependent on matter; for it would only have been necessary for him to have died as a small boy, then he would not have been there.

That spiritual research has anything to deny that comes from this side should not be believed by those who, with their blunt considerations, want to stand in the way of spiritual research. But even today, on this ground, one still sees much that is unclear and imprecise. The characterized coarse thinking is primarily to blame for this; but there is more to it than that: spiritual science has to suffer not only from those who oppose it, but it also has to suffer from those who often want to be seen as adherents of a certain spiritual-scientific direction and who, in turn, are connected with all kinds of strange social elements of the present day. And as a result, spiritual science is lumped together with all kinds of stuff by those who do not know how to distinguish — I have already pointed this out, but I have to go into it in more detail today with reference to something else. Spiritual science does not build — as you can see from a characteristic of my lectures, which is often criticized, namely that they are too difficult — spiritual science does not build on the gullible crowd, does not build on those who, in a comfortable frame of mind, want to gain some kind of conviction, does not build on those people who, as if in a 'dream, go through life and believe everything that is conveyed to them through their certainly subjective power of persuasion. Spiritual science does not build on that which lives in the world of superstition, and because certain things are rightly discussed in public on the materialistic side as nonsense, a sharp line must also be drawn in spiritual science itself between honest, true spiritual research, which follows only the truth, and that which so often likes to its coattails and what comes from a side where one counts on the superstition of mankind, which is present as well as insisting on one's own judgment; where one pretends to people all sorts of things, because even today one finds enough people who believe everything possible, if it is only proclaimed to them from an alleged spiritual world - unknown whence. What can be confused with spiritual science from this side – as I said, it must be pointed out in order to shake it off – true science, and that is spiritual science, has little to do with it.

I will only point out a few things, because these things are now being discussed publicly on the materialistic side and, certainly under the influence of the serious and serious events of the times, there will be more and more discussion. I want to show how wrong those are who associate spiritual science with some form of ordinary or higher superstition, that higher superstition that pursues all kinds of goals in the world and actually only works in such a way that it first puts people into the world who are said to have higher abilities, a clairvoyant gift. True clairvoyance consists in what has often been described and is again described today. But what people call clairvoyance today is actually subconscious, but is often also just a fraud. But we are not reckoning with what is in the subconscious, but with the effect. Therefore, one must reckon with what the fraudulent clairvoyance is able to do with superstition. And there it is possible that all kinds of dishonest endeavors and currents arise, where one wants to achieve something completely different from what lies in the realm of truth. What people need to know, what is achieved by this, is that first of all — allow me to use a harsh expression — people are made stupid, befogged, by showing them all kinds of occultism, which has an effect on their superstition, and then, with the people made stupid, all kinds of things are carried out that do not belong in the realm of sincerity and honesty. Spiritual science has the same duty and necessity to point out these excesses of modern life as materialism does. And if it proves materialism right in its field in such cases, as I have shown with Lamettrie, then it may also prove it right when it turns against all excesses of an apparent spiritual experience, which is nothing more than life in blind superstition.

In 1912, an almanac was published, a yearbook, edited by a personality who is revered in a city in the West as a higher clairvoyant by many who are clouded in the way just described. This yearbook appeared in 1912 for 1913, in advance. In it, the following note appears about Austria: “The one who is destined to govern in Austria will not govern. A young man who has not yet been appointed to the government will govern.”

And with even greater clarity, the almanac for 1914, which was published in 1913, returns to this matter. There may be gullible people who believe nothing more and nothing less than that a great prophecy has been fulfilled, and it is impossible to make clear to them in their blind faith that dishonest currents living in the European world have been at work here, using superstition and all kinds of dark occultism to bring something into the world. How this is connected with all kinds of underground currents can be seen by considering that a Parisian newspaper, “Paris at Noon,” long, long before the current turmoil and at about the same time as the appearance of the aforementioned note in the aforementioned almanac of an alleged clairvoyant in – a Parisian newspaper that makes no claim to be occult in any way, but can be compared to other newspapers that appear at noon – that this newspaper also expressed its wish long months before that the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be murdered. One can see certain underground connections. And this same paper wrote at the time of the three-year anniversary of his term of office: “Among the very first to be murdered if mobilization occurs will be Jaurès.

The same personality who publishes this almanac travelled to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people who are open to such influence, in a direction that I will not say is linked to the main causes of Italy's position, but which had already taken effect in this matter.

I only discuss these things because they are discussed by others, from a materialistic point of view. But they must be discussed so that it can be seen that true spiritual science has nothing to do with such things, with superstition in general that relies on the credulity of the masses, and with what is done under the guise of superstition, both in large and small matters. Spiritual science will only appear as a real science that can be placed alongside other sciences when it is kept free from everything that can still be easily confused with it today and that is often confused with it, not only under the influence of limited judgment, which simply cannot distinguish, but also out of ill will. And in the literature that is thrown at spiritual science, a lot of work is done precisely with the fact that what one has to lie about when one wants to characterize spiritual science is so lied about that spiritual science is thereby put on the same ground as those things that spiritual science must of course fight as fiercely as they are fought by materialistic science.

But just as we recognize such things, spiritual science will emerge ever more clearly in its purity in what it can be for the human soul. Does not the latest book by Ernst Haeckel, that is, by a serious researcher, “Thoughts on Eternity”, shows how utterly at a loss mere natural science is in the face of such great events that have such a profound impact on the development of humanity, since it knows of nothing better to say than this:

Not that such a time would provide the reasons for spiritual science, but one must recognize what spiritual science can become for human life in the spiritual realm: that which sustains the human being, which holds the human being, because it makes him acquainted with that with which no natural science makes him acquainted. Natural science can only make man acquainted with that through which his body is connected with the sensual universe. Spiritual science makes man familiar with this through the fact that it shows him, by means of research, that he has an immortal soul, so that one can know: This soul of man is connected with eternal becoming. Man is anchored in eternity through his soul and spirit, as he is anchored in temporality through his body.

If one asks whether man needs something like this, it must be said that there can be no proof for it, any more than there can be for the fact that he needs to eat and drink. But just as man experiences through hunger and thirst that he must eat and drink, so he experiences over and over again in his soul that he must know. And the more one demands knowledge and not mere belief, one will recognize that he must know about the immortality of his soul. One can deny that man demands this knowledge, but the denial is only a theoretical one. The time will come more and more – and we are already at its beginning – when, just as hunger asserts itself in the healthy human body, the thirst for knowledge of the spiritual world, for knowledge of the immortal character of the soul itself, will assert itself in the human being who lives beyond himself into the time that begins with the present. And it will be an unquenched thirst if there is no spiritual science. This will show in the effects. Theoretically it will be possible to deny it – but it will show in the effects. It will show in the fact that people will find themselves desolate in their souls, will not know what to do with their lives, that they will perform their external tasks but will not know what the meaning of life is, and that they will thirst for this unraveling of the meaning of life. Little by little it will extend to the intellect; little by little it will show how man's thinking becomes coarser and coarser. We have already found enough coarseness in one example today. In short, the development of man would experience a descent if it could not be fertilized by spiritual science.

May the times we are living through today, which call upon man to be earnest in so many fields, also be a sign that the time is beginning when people must have knowledge of immortality and that spiritual research is the way to achieve it. The spiritual researcher himself knows that he is in harmony with all those who, even if they have not yet done spiritual research, have nevertheless been living and breathing in the spiritual world through the very nature of their soul activity. The spiritual researcher knows himself to be in harmony with those who simply knew what it means to live in the spiritual world. When Goethe was asked why he wanted to recognize the plant through ideas, since ideas are something abstract, he said: “Then my ideas, which I believe I experience within myself, are direct reality, because I do see my ideas within reality.” Therefore it was Goethe who, even when he had not yet spiritual science, knew what to say in a poetic but accurate way about the character of the spiritual world, where he was spiritually and soulfully transported by the poetic genius.

Today we have to say: the person who, through the development of his thinking, lives into the spiritual world, lives and moves in the emerging soul entities. And when man is freed from the body, he is also a spiritual-soul entity that lives in the becoming. That which has become, that which is solid, exists only in the outer sensual world in which man lives as long as he is in the body and then only when he perceives through the body. As soon as man ascends to the spiritual being, he is seized by the becoming. Goethe knows this. He also knows that just as man, through his own feeling, lives into his inner well-being, he can also live into a feeling that may well be called love. That is the surprising thing and always will be when one comes to spiritual people, that they even know how to say the right thing with the right word from their life in the spiritual world. That is why Goethe also says: one lives in the becoming. And when one develops oneself into this becoming, then the thoughts live in this becoming itself. Not the ordinary thoughts — these must first be overcome, they can only be incorporated into the world of becoming as something lasting, something enduring. Only when that which can be grasped in the process of becoming is held fast in thought, can the thought become fixed and we can carry it with our immortal soul through the portal of death. That is why, towards the end of his prologue in Heaven, written at the height of his life, Goethe speaks the beautiful words with which I want to conclude these reflections today, because in them, in a time that lies before the development of spiritual research as we understand it today , a poet speaks of the spiritual world out of poetic genius in a way that one must speak of it out of realization, by first pointing, or having the Lord point, to that which man needs as long as he lives in the sensual body. So that he does not degenerate into comfort and convenience, the Lord points out to Mephisto those who are spirit beings. And when free of the body, the human being is such a spiritual being. Goethe points out the peculiarity of the spiritual world with words that are sure to hit the mark. For you will recognize in these words what I myself had to recognize in them. After I had developed everything that I have presented today, I was surprised by the wonderful correspondence of these Goethean words, which I had not recognized before, the wonderful correspondence of these few Goethean words with the fundamental character the world to which the immortal human soul belongs: “But you, the true sons of the gods” - spiritual beings are meant, just as man is a spiritual being as an immortal soul -,

“But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the living, rich beauty!
Embrace with love's sweet barriers what is becoming, what lives and works eternally,
And what floats in a wavering appearance,
Secure with lasting thoughts.”

Attention is drawn to that which lives in the pure spirit as its very own, but which is recognized in the human soul as its immortal part. In these words, which are directly a characteristic of that which can be grasped in the human soul, even when it is still living in the body, as the immortal, and of which one can know that it passes through the gate of death, when it enters the realm of the developing and takes with it to the pure realm of the spirit that which it has experienced here in a fluctuating appearance, in order to transform it into thoughts that can then become permanent and be taken through the gate of death. And what lives in fluctuating appearance affirms the soul, which passes through the gate of death, as an immortal, as an eternal being, in lasting thoughts, which henceforth make up its life in the same way that the body makes up the soul's life in the physical world.

Dear attendees! For a number of years now, I have been privileged to give lectures here in this city in the field of spiritual science. Since the friends of our spiritual science movement have also requested such lectures here for these fateful times, I would like to present you with a reflection that takes more of an attitude of spiritual science as its starting point today; and tomorrow we will then delve deeper into questions of spiritual knowledge that move the heart and soul. It will be understandable that this introductory lecture is being held today, since everything that can move us today, especially when it is close to the heart and soul, must really be carried out after the fateful events in the midst of which we stand.

One could say that the nations of Central Europe are locked in a fortress, a large, mighty fortress. And in the east and west, the existence of this Central Europe is, so to speak, being called into question. And what a sum of courage, sacrifice and devotion have we seen in the months since the beginning of the war; and how much suffering and pain have we had to witness! How the days of suffering and pain, with their events, affect families, how fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are connected with them!

Therefore, it must be important to us to introduce our reflections on the spiritual development and spiritual hopes of humanity with a few thoughts and feelings that are directed towards the difficult situation of our time. We hear this Central European culture vilified from all sides, reviled. We hear all sorts of things today from the east and west and from all sides about this Central European culture. We may undoubtedly, my dear attendees, see the significant deeds of our people and see them as related to the whole essence of our people's organism. I would like to say: what is happening today is happening through the arms of this organism. But it befits the very essence of the German people to consider the arms, the essence of the spirit, the essence of the soul of this organism. And what better way to do that than by remembering, at such a fateful and fateful moment, the significant and important deeds of the soul and spirit of the German people, and by drawing strength from them for our hopes and goals for the future.

And I would like to take the starting point of what we, as the essence of the German people, can envision from two outstanding geniuses of this people: Schiller and Fichte. Within the German essence, has it always been the custom, in difficult times, to draw strength from those who, as great ancestors, can provide this strength? And I would like to make this connection today, truly not to stir up emotional feelings in you, but because I believe that such a connection can be meaningful in our days, the connection to the days of the death of these two mentioned geniuses. It is possible for us – as I said, not to stir our emotions, but because I believe that this point of view is particularly close to our hearts and souls in these days – it is possible for us to look at the last days, yes, the hours of Schiller's and Fichte's death very intimately, very confidentially.

Schiller's death was described to us by his then young friend, the son of Johann Heinrich Voß, Heinrich Voß, the so-called younger Voß. And we can follow him, our Schiller in the last days of his life, as he is already dying, sustained solely by the powers of the spirit that prevail in him. Yes, with Schiller we can say that basically the body was long since doomed to die, while the strong, energetic spirit still prevailed and just dragged the body along. For, as this body was so completely decrepit, Heinrich Voß shows us, so to speak. He leads us into Schiller's death chamber, and we take part in the last hours of the great spiritual hero. We are told how Schiller, in these last hours, with his body already completely subject to death, with a yellowed face, with extinct eyes, still strong in spirit in these moments, how he had his last, his youngest child come to him in these last hours, how he looked the child long in the eye and then sent thoughts out of these eyes, one would like to say into the eyes. The younger Voss wanted to divine these thoughts, and we can say that, as he tells us, they will be correctly divined. It was as if Schiller wanted to say to the child – what he could only express in these rasping words: I should have been your father for much longer, I still have much to do for you. Then he handed the child back, turned away and looked at the wall again.

Do we not feel, my dear audience, as if the whole German nation, the soul of the whole German nation, could recognize itself in this child? Schiller, who died young, could also have said to our nation: I could have been much more to you, I have left much unsaid and undone for you. But he dies fully imbued with the inner energy of that which he felt to be the German spirit, that spirit which carried him through life, inspired him to his creations, sustained him as his body wasted away, that spirit whose world-historical mission he himself described in such moving words that we may well bring these words before our souls in these times. These words only became known long after Schiller's death, but they bear witness to how Schiller thought about the spirit of his people:

He who forms the mind, rules,
must ultimately become the ruler, because
finally at the goal of time, if the
life has any meaning at all,
must custom and reason triumph,
the brute force of form succumb
and the slowest people will catch up with all
the fast fleeting ones.
[...]
Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the center of
Europe's peoples,
he is the core of humanity,
those are the flower and the leaf.

He has been chosen by the world spirit, during
the battle of the ages
to work on the eternal construction of human education,
to preserve what time brings,
Therefore, he has so far appropriated what is foreign
and preserved it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times, he has preserved;
he has not lost the treasures of
centuries;
Not to shine in the moment and
play a role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, but
the day of the Germans is the harvest of
all time.

And today, in these fateful days, we may well remember the spirit that Schiller believed must be the harvest of all time, the harvest of the cultural development of mankind.

And if we turn our attention from Schiller, the great poet, to his friend, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, we see no less of the German spirit in the soul of a human being when we look at Fichte's last hours on earth. Schiller was often able to tie in what he had to say to his people in a work, which will be discussed shortly, with Fichte's strong, forceful philosophy. Yes, Fichte's philosophy is energetic and powerful. It is as if, from the whole scope, the universality of the genius of the philosopher Fichte, he wanted to extract everything that this German mind has of load-bearing capacity, to draw out everything that can affirm the strongest will in the strongest thought. And so, as Fichte spoke the beautiful word: “What kind of philosophy you have depends on what kind of person you are,” it can be said that we see this word proven in truth in Fichte in particular; because he felt connected to the German spirit, which was so dear to him, Fichte felt at the same time connected with the rule and weaving of the whole world spirit, felt in every word he spoke, carried by the spirit that permeates and flows through the world. But this philosopher did not live only in the abstract spirit. When Germany was going through the difficult times at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Fichte, the philosopher, often considered whether he should not take part as a warrior in the fateful events of the time. But then he found that he could do more for his nation through his intellectual work. So it happened that at first only his wife took part in the military hospital service in Berlin. But she brought illness into his house by contagion. She recovered, but he himself, the philosopher, was carried off by the military hospital fever.

And now we see how Fichte, who presented the diamond-bright, crystal-clear thoughts of the most German philosophy to humanity, lay on his sickbed in the last days of his life, waiting for news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine and everything that the people in the west had to undertake. We see how he, who had decided not to be physically among the fighting because he wanted to serve his people and humanity with his mind, we see how he took part in the warlike events of his time in his feverish dreams in his last hours. And we experience the wonderful interplay of a worldview with life even in illness and even in the death rattle when we see how Fichte allowed everything that he wanted to give to the German people through his powerful philosophy to flow into his feverish dreams. We see how he feels in his dreams in the midst of the struggling, and how he feels at the same time as resting securely with his soul in the spiritual world. The dying philosopher Fichte, without fear and full of hope for his people, said when they wanted to give him medicine: “I do not need medicine, because I know I will recover.” Shortly before, he had been given the news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine. Thus, in the life of the man who is fully immersed in German intellectual life, this intellectual life and the immediate life of the surroundings interact. For this German intellectual life is not an idealistic, dreamy one, but one that always enters into all the individual achievements of its German people. And today, we can justifiably claim that everything achieved in the face of blood and death, pain and suffering, is sustained by the power that permeates our intellectual experience.

And so we see this Fichte, imbued with the best power of the German spirit! Today, we can only sketch out some of the characteristics of what lived in Fichte's mind. In one of Germany's darkest hours, when Germany had been brought to its knees by the western conqueror, Fichte spoke his “Speeches to the German Nation”. Certainly not everything that Fichte spoke at the time can be agreed with today, word for word. But the spirit that inspired him must also be ours. Just as Fichte assumed at the time that the German language is a primal language that developed like an organism from the starting point of German history in Europe, while the Romance languages of the West and South suffered a break in their development, while they originally started from something Germanic, but adopted something foreign that they put over the folk essence in the Romance essence.

If Fichte infers something from the character of this original language, which developed out of the essence of the German and grew like an organic force, then today this may be contestable from a linguistic point of view. But what inspired Fichte, what constitutes the fundamental character of his philosophy of will and thought, is that Fichte reflected on what is most original in man, what is connected in man with all the sources of life in the soul. Fichte sees flourishing and truly authentic destiny hopes only where the soul is able to bring forth from itself what lies in its depths. Fichte saw an emblem of the fact that the German spirit aspires to this in the German language. But even if we can no longer go into the details of Fichte's point of view today, we must still look at how what he then expressed in accordance with his time was formed in Fichte.

What did Fichte strive for in his philosophy? We need only recall what spiritual science actually wants to be. It wants to be a knowledge that does not passively surrender itself merely to the phenomena of the external world, that does not merely allow itself to be passively stimulated with reference to the mind that is bound to the brain, but spiritual science wants to be, if we want to use the expression in all humility, a brave science. It wants to be a science that comes about through the development of the higher human being in man, as Schiller said, the actual spiritual human being, through the development of that which is connected in man's own being with the great spiritual being of the world, which lives in man in such a way that when man recognizes it, he at the same time knows himself to be living and weaving in the divine-spiritual world being itself. But this is what Fichte was constantly seeking. And so he feels connected to the most spiritual part of the world through the knowledge that he sought to acquire from the human soul. Or how could one express the spiritual certainty that man can attain more forcefully than when Fichte uses the words:

There is no doubt about it, it is the most certain thing there is, indeed, the basis of all other certainties, the only absolutely valid objective, that there is a moral world order, that every rational individual is assigned his specific place in this order and counted on for his work.

Thus Fichte's most German philosophy brought about the realization that it was the most certain thing for Fichte to know that he was a single soul in the entire spiritual world, that there is such a world order into which the individual is woven.

Fichte merely renewed in a manner appropriate to modern times that which has always prevailed in the German spirit: the striving for knowledge that arises from the powers of the human soul, which cannot end with death. And when we hear such words as those just quoted from Fichte, we are reminded of the words of the great German mystic Angelus Silesius: “It is not I who live and die in me, but God Himself who lives and dies in me.”

This striving for knowledge not only gives the soul a sense of security in the world spirit, but at the same time certainty with regard to its immortality. For how could one, in the soul experiencing and knowing God in the soul, not be aware of this immortality? For if the God in the human soul dies, then death is precisely a new resurrection. The German spirit constantly strove for such knowledge, which conquers death, for knowledge of the soul, so that this soul recognizes itself not only through the instruments of its body, but through purely spiritual instruments, so that it faces its bodily experience, its own body, in a body-free state, in brave science, as it were, just as one faces external objects in the body. But from such knowledge there arose such a wonderful saying as that of Jakob Boehme, in which is summarized, as it were, all that the German spirit has to say about the great riddles of life in their connection with the destiny of the human soul: “He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies.”

But that means nothing other than Jakob Böhme wants to suggest that a knowledge of the nature of the soul can be gained in life, of the soul as it will be once it has passed through the gate of death and looks back at its body. Because the one who does not acquire such knowledge before he dies will, in Jakob Böhme's view, perish when he dies.

And so spiritual science today not only seeks knowledge of the spiritual, which is, so to speak, an increase of ordinary knowledge in the body, but spiritual science seeks knowledge in the soul, insofar as this soul, between birth and death, ing can forces that it will also have after death, when it will look back on the body and the bodily life, where the body and bodily life will again be not subject but object, as in everyday life. And if today a spiritual scientist wants to use, so to speak, what German spirit can bring us today to make a comparison for something that Fichte wanted to say in his time, then he could take this comparison for a particular case from this spiritual science. I will develop this particular case before you.

Fichte, when he was thinking about what he wanted to say to his people, about how they could realize their hopes and find their goals in these fateful times, pointed to a completely new education that goes to the source of the stirrings of life in the soul, to the higher human being in the human being. Fichte knew at the time that what he wanted to present to his nation with this education – we can no longer think in this way today, but we can look to Fichte's intentions, perceptions and feelings – was probably clear to Fichte's soul as the salutary for the future, but when he compared it with what had been regarded as the essence of education up to his time, it could appear to him as something completely new that must wriggle out of the old, so that this new has no longer any similarity with the old. Then the more recent spiritual researcher could say, precisely on the basis of spiritual science, which Fichte did not yet have: “Now, I compare this new, this completely new education with the soul that has wrestled itself free from the body at death and now looks back on it.

And the spiritual researcher today could describe how the soul looks back on the body and the life of the body after death. There is a passage in Fichte's “Addresses to the German Nation” that is particularly significant in this regard. It is a passage that one might easily overlook, but it is good to bring it to mind today. Fichte himself sought a symbol for the relationship between his new education and the old one. And he says: “What I am putting forward as a new educational plan appears different from everything that has been thought to be right, so that it will not be easy for anyone to understand me.” And when Fichte seeks a symbol for the relationship between this new education and the old one, he uses the following image:

Time appears to me as an empty shadow that stands over its corpses, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the once-so-beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and are surrounding her with warm, loving whispers; the secret voices of the sisters are already greeting her and welcoming her; she is already stirring and expanding within all directions, in order to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken, but she still has no feeling for these airs or hearing for these voices, or if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time.

We see from this, my dear attendees, that Fichte himself uses the image that we use today from a spiritual scientific consciousness. Fichte uses it from what he feels as the depth of the German spirit weaving within him and what he wanted to present to his people at the time. How deeply this awareness of the interweaving of the soul with the All-Spirit is linked to German spiritual life, when we see that what is being sought today and achieved in spiritual science is working its way out of the great philosopher of the German people like an energetic presentiment.

And if we go back from him to Schiller, we can see how the search for the most spiritual part of the soul runs through one of his most intimate, most beautiful, most magnificent prose works, one of those prose works in which man perceives what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears, not only in terms of external sensuality, but experiences the spiritual in it through the deepening of the soul within himself, and this is so full of life in him that he experiences it pictorially artistically or, as one would say today, spiritually scientifically as reality. There the human being is free, there the human being gives birth to his higher self.

Schiller's highest aspiration is to seek the higher human being within himself. And here, ladies and gentlemen, we can see how basically everything that the German mind has achieved at its highest levels is connected with its universal striving towards spirituality, towards the intimate coexistence of the soul with the spirit. With Schiller, with Fichte, with Goethe, the same striving is everywhere to be found. And for these minds, the most characteristic thing is that being German coincides with being human in the right sense, in the striving for the highest human ideal. And with a mind like Goethe's, in particular, we see this once again, and the most beautiful expression of this is his “Faust”.

It is precisely in these minds that we see how being German is something different from being Italian, French, British or Russian. Here we have to use the word: you can be Italian, you can be French, British or Russian, but you become German. You are constantly becoming German. Then one is best of all Germans, when Germanness floats before one like a higher ideal, or one could say like a living spiritual goal in the distance, which one has to approach more and more. Therefore, the word that Lagarde spoke in more recent times: “Being German lies not in the blood, but in the mind.” — is extremely true precisely for these minds.

Therefore, it is difficult to make those who live around this Germanness understand it, and on whom this Germanness of Central Europe has to send its rays of influence. And from Fichte's mouth we hear an important and significant word about being German, and again in the “Speeches to the German Nation”:

[...] whoever believes in spirituality and freedom of this spirituality, and wants the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom, that wherever it is born and in whatever language it speaks, it is of our kind, it belongs to us and will join us.

This is the universal position of the greatest Germans with regard to what they felt as Germanness, as Germanity. This is how Germany's great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke in his “Speeches to the German Nation”, which he, as he said in one of the first speeches, wanted to hold by Germans per se to the German per se.

I said: Everything that asserted itself as the striving for spirituality, as the essence of Germanness, is concentrated, as it were, in what Goethe was to his people. And now we might ask ourselves: Has anyone in the world tried to form a correct idea of this essence and this striving of the German people? There were times when one could hear one or another European nation praising the German essence and emphasizing it in one way or another. But in many cases one has to say: the experiences of today in particular show us how little reason, how little inner truth there was in what was felt about the German character in the world. Indeed, there are people like the French philosopher Bergson – one does not know whether he will still call himself Bergson now that St. Petersburg is no longer called St. Petersburg but Petrograd – this French philosopher Bergson, he found that the he had to give to philosophy in our time, basically borrowed it entirely from the philosophy of German idealism. In German idealism, it appears comprehensive and universal, but in Bergson's work, it appears meager and threadbare. But he, who should know the German character, pointed out in a chauvinistic speech he gave last Christmas how the Germans had forgotten everything they had achieved in the way of spirituality. How the Germans once had something like spirituality, but now they only show themselves to be purely mechanistic. One need only point to what the Germans are now producing: mechanistic cannons, rifles, machines, everything has been transformed into mechanism.

One must be truly amazed at the logic that is going around the world today. After all, is it logical to speak as Bergson does? Even if one admits that the Germans once had Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, what, one might ask, did Bergson expect with his French logic? Did he expect that when the Central European peoples were threatened from all sides, threatened by a superior force two and a half times as strong, that they would then confront their enemies reciting Goethe and Schiller or declaiming Fichte's philosophy? Because they do not do this, the philosopher Bergson finds that the Germans have become a mechanistic people because they face their enemies with guns and cannons. Well, and from this French philosopher to that Monsieur Richepin, it is a straight line between what all the ranting and raving about the German people, the German essence can be heard. All the nuances of the ranting can be found. Richepin could not avoid saying that the Germans are wild, crazy, dirty beasts that must be strangled like wild pigs, all of them. There is a scale from the philosopher Bergson to such vilifications of the German people, which today vibrates throughout Europe. But then we may well ask ourselves: Has one always thought so about the German essence? About that German essence, which under today's conditions can naturally show nothing but its armies, but that German essence, which certainly only has to defend itself with its armies, but which has its foundation only in spirit and soul. It is interesting to contrast what is pulsating through the world today with this German essence in terms of its world position and its mission in the world. And here it is certainly no pleasant task to praise oneself, as it were, for that to which one is attached. So let us choose a different path, the path of looking around to see whether this German essence has always appeared “barbaric” to those who call it “barbaric” today, to those who have tried to understand it.

There is a thinker, a great thinker of the nineteenth century, an American thinker who spoke and wrote in English, Emerson. Since we do not want to judge German character ourselves, let us hear what a non-German, speaking English, Emerson in America, has to say about the nature of the German and his mission. Emerson ties in with Goethe, who is for him the representative of the German character, Goethe, in whom is summarized that which must also appear to us as the essential in Fichte and Schiller.

One phenomenon in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of its conviction. In France, people are delighted to see brilliant ideas going wherever they want. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind possesses neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness. But what it does possess is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself about them. There is intellectual activity, well and good: what is it in favor of? What is the man's opinion? Where does he get [–where] all these thoughts?

The English [...] see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

It is true that one would be cautious if one had to coin such words oneself, but they were first uttered by an English American in English. Then he continues, looking at what the German mind has to give to world development:

For this reason, the terms of distinction used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are praised for their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and points of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind. [...] He has that awe-inspiring independence that arises from dealing with the truth.

Now, one could say that these are old stories. Emerson has been dead for a long time, and the Germans have changed according to those who judge them now in their lack of reflection caused by the passage of time. Perhaps we may look at something else that was said not decades ago, not a few months before the outbreak of the war, not by a German, not in Germany, but by an Englishman in Manchester. These words have also been translated into German and published under the title “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”.

In the preface, we are told that the lectures were given to provide journalists and other people with a little insight into the German character. You can judge for yourselves how well this has been received from what you now read in English newspapers about the German character and how it is viewed in England. But at that time the following was said, and not in German, but in English and in Manchester, in the British Isles themselves:

The highly favored elite among Descartes' and Newton's countrymen

- that is, the English [and French] —

the spirit of science was unquestionably known; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by thousands of German researchers.

Imagination, feeling, will asserted their right to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful.

It is strange what these Englishmen in Manchester know about the German character.

The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was sought from the child and the flower; science, philosophy and poetry drew near each other. With us in England this revival of the imagination created a noble poetry, but left the sciences and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the whole period

- please note that an Englishman is saying this –

is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that creates, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

In Faust, at the end of his eventful life, we see a portrayal of present-day Germany, a Germany of restless, bold will and action, and we can understand all the better why the [great] cosmopolitan, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable place as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.

Yes, my dear attendees, one can only say: Yes, why do your fellow countrymen now call the people of Schiller and Goethe a “barbarian people”? This question will be asked by history about the development of these peoples for a long, long time, since they could know better. For I did not begin this consideration in order to answer the question: Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”?, but rather to show that this question will be asked for a long, long time [in the histories of Germany's enemies], and they, these other peoples, will have to answer it.

In these lectures, which these Englishmen gave to Englishmen, there is something that a German would truly not say in Germany; but it is not meant to be said here, only quoted: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

Now, why then call the German people a “barbarian people”? And about the German Reich, the following was said in the same lectures:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for it to let the light of the past shine on the confusion of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors

- he is, of course, referring to his English ancestors -

that our ancestors regarded France with far greater fear than the wildest noisemakers fear Germany today. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. [...]

To sum up, the founding of the German Empire was a gain for Europe, and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels, they enabled the German people to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to achieve, namely to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, if that is the case, why do they call the people of Central Europe a “barbarian people”? There is a strange preamble to the lectures from which I have quoted. You will have heard the name of Lord Haldane mentioned in an unpleasant way in the early weeks of the war. But it was this same Lord Haldane – who also spoke of the fact that the English, out of an overabundance of morality, could do nothing but join the other enemies of Germany to attack the Germans – well, this same Lord Haldane wrote a preface to the lectures, from which I would like to share a sample with you. In this preface, the Lord, who now claims that England could not help but punish Germany, says:

The source of the stream of its

- that is, Germany's -

intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient [Greece], the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany to-day is to a high degree concretely practical.

Yes, it is almost shameful to hear such a thing said. But I am not saying it, I am merely quoting it. Then Lord Haldane says:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the need to prepare for attacks that none of us really has in mind.

And a woman who spent eight years in Germany, an Englishwoman who visited hospitals and lecture halls and studied schools and everything she could get her hands on in Germany for eight years, she differs from the other Englishwomen in terms of her knowledge in that she really got to know the Germans and their institutions. She published a book called “Eight Years in Germany” by Miss Wylie. This book appeared very recently, just a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Miss Wylie has described some of the things she has learned about the German character here in Germany. I will share just a few words from her book with you, and you will see how the question that is the subject of our discussion today must be put.

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence. And it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

On every border and across the water

- that is, over the Channel –

its opponents are sitting, both commercially and politically, and are waiting anxiously for the moment when Germany slackens up just a little, so that they can pounce on her and overwhelm her. Germany knows this [too] only too well.

We see that the German character was not entirely unknown to other nations. Therefore, we must consider the question of today's consideration as the question that will be asked of these nations by later history.

But at the same time, there is a complete lack of understanding of what is most deeply rooted in the German character, of what is most spiritual about it! Herman Grimm, the great art historian, was the one who uttered a wonderful word. He, this Herman Grimm – one can almost feel him as Goethe's governor in the second half of the nineteenth century – he, who was completely immersed in the German essence and was spiritually and emotionally connected to it, he spoke a very significant word about Goethe's biography, which the Englishman Lewes wrote. Lewes tried to weaken the old prejudices of the English with regard to Goethe. Because up until Lewes, every Englishman believed that the Germans revered a man, Goethe, who was actually a completely immoral fellow, despite having produced some beautiful things. With regard to Goethe's ethical nature, Mr. Lewes has achieved something. But Herman Grimm is right: when you read Lewes' biography, which is entitled “Goethe: His Life and Work”, you get the feeling that Lewes is writing about a person who was born in Frankfurt in 1749, a person to whom Goethe's life story is attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, and who died in March 1832. But what the German has in his Goethe is not even hinted at in Mr. Lewes' biography.

That is precisely what is so deeply ingrained in the German soul: universality, the desire to merge into that flowing spirituality and to transform the stream of spirituality into one's own being. That is what the peoples around Germany lack, and what they have basically still taken in very little to this day. And so one can say: What Herman Grimm once said with reference to the people of the East is true and right. There, he said, there was a Russian who had also written a biography, the biography of Beethoven. Nothing of what Beethoven really is lives in the biography.

Just compare the selfless, devoted way in which the German mind, always wanting to become, wants to delve into what is spread throughout the world, how it, disregarding its own character traits, knows how to find its way into those of others. How the German spirit has united Shakespeare's spirit with its own. When something like this is experienced in a nation, then a Herman Grimm is justified in saying this with reference to Mr. Lewes' alleged biography of Goethe. And when one sees how little heart and mind were actually present in those who have often called themselves the leaders of other nations, one understands a lot. One understands a lot when one really delves into what one can experience together with the German spirit. One can say: There really is something in this German spirit of that Faustian mood, which on the one hand has hidden life's great riddle in: “All that is transitory is only a parable,” but on the other hand says: “Whoever strives can be redeemed.” And in the German spirit lives something that must lead beyond all pessimism, something that establishes a true foundation for future security and future hope. But how little this has basically entered into the hearts and souls of those who, with some sincerity, seek in other nations what can liberate the spirit and bring harmony to the liberated human soul.

I would like to characterize for you how one of the most important Russians, Alexander Herzen, established a kind of spiritual entente with the Englishman Stuart Mill; how one of the best Russian minds, Herzen, immersed himself in the philosophy of the Englishman Stuart Mill, in that basically entirely materialistic world view, that he found, looking across Europe, that basically this culture of Europe can give no consolation, no hope for the future of humanity. It is the characteristic words of this Russian that really illuminate in a flash what has been confronting each other in Europe for a long time, and what now had to be expressed in these terrible flames of war. Herzen says of Stuart Mill:

[He was not exaggerating when he spoke of the narrowing of the mind, of energy, of the polished nature of personalities, of the constant flattening of life, of the constant exclusion of general human interests from life, of the reduction of the same to the interests of the commercial office and of bourgeois prosperity. Mill speaks openly about the fact that in this way England will become China – and we add: and not only England.

And we add: Not only England! For Stuart Mill believes that with England, the whole of Europe must become China. We only get the answer to the question: How could such an opinion arise even in the heart of an aspiring person? We get the answer when we see how he passes by that striving of which Goethe says in his Faust: “Whosoever strives, we can redeem him.” He also passes by what Fichte, Goethe and Schiller can mean for the whole of modern development. Those who speak thus do not know the German spirit, that German spirit of which we shall say in our fateful days: in it lives the power which, though not, as the Russian thinks, to the scaffold and the stake, yet to pressure and death, to infinite pain and suffering, goes to defend what the German soul and its mission in the world is.

However, if Emerson sees in Goethe the very representative of the German spirit, and one of the present-day intellectuals of Russia finds the following words about Goethe, Mereschkowski, who even claims to revere Goethe - one should not be deceived, one should not be deceived in his “Leading Spirits,” which have now been translated into German, for anyone who truly recognizes Goethe cannot utter such words about Goethe, the representative of modern intellectual life, as the Russian Mereschkowski has done. He says:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrink to the size of a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German bourgeois and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a respectable son of the respectable Frankfurt shopkeeper.

Let us assume that Goethe would appear to Mereschkowski in certain situations in his life; but anyone who recognizes Goethe and what he is to humanity would not say such a thing. For it does not merely depend on whether one considers something to be right, but whether one has enough spirituality to say it or not. There is something in these words that the world has yet to learn from the German spirit.

But when we now see how what is German spiritual life is to be trampled underfoot from the east, how this German spiritual life, in alliance with the western peoples, is to be trampled underfoot from the east, then we may ask: What about the understanding and the possibility of understanding on the part of what is there in the east, with regard to the German essence?

Now, esteemed attendees, once again it is not a German speaking, once again I do not want to speak myself, but I let a member of the Russian people speak for himself, the philosopher Solowjow, who is basically not just a philosopher, but a seer, who is regarded by the most excellent Russians themselves as a representative of Russia. Let us ask him. How does he, who has been vilified for decades by Russian intellectuals and other seducers of the Russian people, how does he judge this deification of the race principle to the exclusion of the education principle, how does he judge this brute force in relation to Europe? Let us hear him, not ourselves; let us hear the Russians about the Russians, not about the intimate forces of the Russian people, but about the forces that have come about through the conspiracies of mendacious Pan-Slavism and mendacious grand duchies. Let us hear the Russians talk about all that has been in preparation for a long time. He says: “Why does Europe not love us?” And he answers:

Europe [...] looks at us with apprehension and dislike, because the elemental power of the Russian people is dark and mysterious, its spiritual and cultural powers inferior, but its demands clear, determined and great.

The clamor of our rationalism, which seeks to destroy Turkey and Austria, to beat the Germans, to conquer Constantinople and, if possible, India, is loudly heard in Europe. But if we are asked what we will do for humanity after taking and destroying all of that, we can only remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. [...] Thus [...] the most essential, indeed the only important question that honest and reasonable patriotism should address is not Russia's power and mission, but its sins.

Because the subject that the Russians themselves must discuss has been introduced by the powers that I have just mentioned, for decades preparations have been made for what is now devastating Europe with such terrible storms, coming from the east. For if the question is raised from so many sides: “Who wanted the war?”, then the question needs only to be transformed into another: “Who could have prevented the war?” And there is a clear answer to this question, which history must also provide: only Russia could have prevented the war. Of course, the Western powers will also have to bear the consequences, because without them Russia would have avoided the war, at least for now. But only hints can be given about this. For the German who allows what I have been able to sketch with charcoal to take effect in his soul, what is now to be fought for in the East and West, at such unspeakable cost, must be something that opens our eyes, that shows us how much we need to reflect on ourselves, to reflect on that which allows us to find the strong forces of the German character. By the number of his enemies, the German can gauge the necessity of this search for his own strength, which depends on himself. In this respect, many things can be instructive for us.

We believed that an understanding would dawn, especially among the French, for the German way of being. Strangely enough, even shortly before the war, there were people who believed that an understanding could be found for the German way of being in youthful France. I must, in conclusion, shed some light on this matter. Some of our best Germans were amazed that a Frenchman, Romain Rolland, who was one of the first to join with Verhaeren and others in directing the bitterest invective against German “barbarism,” found in Romain Rolland a mind that understood the German essence, that understood Germany. Why did they find this? Yes, the question is difficult to answer, very difficult. This Romain Rolland has written a novel. In this novel, a German, Jean-Christophe, plays a role. I am well aware that I am passing judgment, and that my judgment can stand up to any aesthetic, and I am prepared for those who find the judgment I am passing “barbaric”.

So Romain Rolland wrote his novel “Jean-Christophe”. The hero is German, but he is concocted in such a way that a wild chaos results. This character is concocted from Beethoven's youth, the fates of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. All this is concocted in a jumble in this character. A character is shaped out of this, which in an artistic-aesthetic sense is basically repulsive to anyone who really has an appreciation for characterizations. And this Jean-Christophe – in German, this Johann Christof Kraft – is presented to us as he is placed in the terrible German circumstances. He spends his youth as a German among Germans, but he cannot stand these German circumstances. He has to get out of these German circumstances; he is not recognized in Germany. He does find some admirers, but he just can't stand the German way of doing things. He then goes to France. It is only in Paris that he finds what makes him a complete human being. This is described, along with other things, which are basically quite chaotic, just like Jean-Christophe himself.

And we have even been told by critics that this novel is one of the most significant achievements in the reconciliation of the German and French minds after 1870. And someone said the following about this novel:

I find myself at a loss as to how many times I should actually thank you. The human, the bon vivant, the artist, the German, the [worldly] side of me, each wants to come forward and say a word. But another time the artist should talk about this novel, another time the bon vivant, and the human wants to wait until he can shake your hand again. Today only the German should say thank you; for I have the feeling that French youth has become closer to us through this book, which has done more than all the diplomats, banquets and associations.

Someone printed this review as a letter to Romain Rolland.

In this book – forgive me for emphasizing this passage, but I can emphasize it without violating any artistic principle, simply because in Romain Rolland's work, which is a poor novel, you can hear Romain Rolland himself through his characters. When he gives his characters traits that are pleasing to him because he wants to talk about this German essence that he “knows so well”. It depends on what nuances are apparent to this young Frenchman, since he is supposed to understand the German essence so well. So we read the following, which comes about during a conversation with a visitor:

Since the German victories, the Germans did everything they could to compromise, to bring about a disgusting mishmash of new power and old principles. They did not want to abandon old idealism: That would have been an act of frankness that one was not capable of; in order to make it subservient to German interests, one had contented oneself with falsifying it. One followed the example of Hegel, the cheerfully duplicitous Swabian, who had waited for Leipzig and Waterloo to adapt the basic idea of his philosophy to the Prussian state

— In 1806, under the thunder of the guns at the Battle of Jena, Hegel wrote his fundamental work, which contains the basic outlines of all his later works. The Frenchman, who has not read Hegel either, or if he has, then without understanding, says that Hegel “waited for Leipzig and Waterloo”. And further.

and now, after interests had changed, it also changed its principles. When one was defeated, one said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that one was beating the others, it was said that Germany was humanity's ideal. As long as the other countries were the more powerful, one said with Lessing that love of one's country was a heroic weakness that one could very well do without, and one called oneself a citizen of the world. Now that victory had been achieved, there was no lack of contempt for “French” utopias: world peace, brotherhood, peaceful progress, human rights, natural equality; it was said that the strongest nation had an absolute right over the others, while the others, as the weaker ones, had no rights over it. It seemed as if the living God and the incarnate spirit, whose progress was achieved through war, violence and oppression.

That's how well the Frenchman understood the Germans!

Power, now that it was on his side, was canonized. Power had now become the epitome of all idealism and all reason.

To give honor to the truth, it must be said that Germany had suffered so much for centuries from having idealism without power that after so much trial she was well excused for now making the sad confession that she needed power above all, however it might be constituted. But how much hidden bitterness lay in such a confession of the people of a Herder and a Goethe! And what renunciation, what humiliation of the German ideal lay in this German victory! - And oh, this renunciation found only too much compliance in the lamentable tendency of all the best Germans to subordinate themselves.

“What characterizes the Germans,” said Möser more than a century ago, “is obedience.”

And Frau von Stael: “They obey properly. They use philosophical reasons to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear, which transforms respect into admiration.”

Christof found this feeling in the greatest and the smallest in Germany

- that is why he has to leave Germany -

from Wilhelm Tell onwards, the thoughtful, little bourgeois with the porter's muscles, who, as the free Jew Börne says: “to reconcile honor and fear, walks with his eyes downcast in front of the post of the tyrannical Mr. Gessler, so that he can invoke the fact that he did not disobey, who did not see the hat,” up to the honorable seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed him, quickly left the footpath to him and went down to the road.

Germany

— so says this good German-understander of France at another point,

Germany really bears the main burden of sin in Europe. If you have won the victory, you are responsible for it: you have incurred a debt against the vanquished; you have assumed the tacit responsibility of stepping forward and showing them the way. The victorious Louis XIV brought the world the splendor of French reason. What light did Germany of Sedan bring to the world?

Well, my dear audience, you may not find it wonderful when you have heard this that this Frenchman was among the first to weep with the others in the “Matin” over German “barbarism”. But you will find it wonderful that this book, this novel by Romain Rolland, was believed to be one of the most significant acts since 1870 in bringing about peace. It was quickly translated into German. The first three volumes were published shortly before the war. But this Frenchman wants to know the Germans, he also wants to describe them, where he finds characteristic moments in these Germans. As I said, he practices the technique of bad novelists, who are always audible when they let their characters speak. So this Frenchman, who is particularly surprising when he blows into the horn of the “Matin” et cetera, describes something that he really likes about the Germans. He describes how an admirer found Jean-Christophe a professor in Ulm. He visits him. Then the Frenchman describes what he calls a “German meal.” It was so good, the German meal, that even the cook Salomé peeks through the door to see how the gentlemen sitting with Jean-Christophe like it. That's when the Frenchman finds the “greatness” of Germany.

It was an exhibition of unforgettable, honest, unadulterated German cuisine with its aromas of all herbs, its thick sauces, its nutritious soups, its exemplary meat dishes, its monumental carp, its sauerkraut, its geese, its homemade cakes, its aniseed and caraway breads.

He describes something that he wants to depict as good about the Germans. But now, among those who came to see the German professor back then, there is one man who can sing well and who is truly not described in an outstandingly beautiful way by the Frenchman who understands Germans so well. And Romain Rolland loves music. His critics said that his novel was “the novel of modern music”. And he himself had grown to love Germany precisely because of music. So he describes someone who can sing. And he describes him in such a way that you can see that he, Jean-Christophe, wonders why a German can sing.

That is because the Germans do not know how to sing. They are seized by the power of song and the song works through them as if through an instrument. The spirit of the songs takes hold of them and they obey it. Because the soul of the German must do that. This soul obeys the song as the soldier obeys the general.

This is roughly how the Frenchman, who understands the Germans so well, describes the [German] art of singing.

And then he also gives us some insights into what the person who sings like this looked like. And so that you also have something good from the Frenchman's book in this area, I will also tell you that he describes this singer, who he admits sings excellently, for the reasons I have given, as a fat person who always sweats when he takes steps, but especially when he makes sounds. He describes his nature, his whole figure. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular variety of German. He thinks that there are quite a few of these Bavarians, because they have the secret of preserving this human race, which “has come about through a system of noodles similar to that used to fatten poultry”.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I could tell you many more things about the characteristics of what is behind what is now physically expressed. Particularly when one considers the contrast between Frenchness and Germanness, as expressed so clearly in the fact that, driven out of their minds by the eternal desire for revenge, the French have done something that they will only realize in the future: they have allowed themselves to be dragged eastwards, about which we have even heard a Russian speak. When one considers this antagonism between Central Europe and the immediate West, then words such as these might come to mind – truly, when one looks at everything that has been produced on the other side of the Rhine, when one summarizes it all – words like this might come to mind:

To the best of my knowledge, there is no natural law and no heavenly parliamentary act on the basis of which France alone, among all earthly beings, does not have to give back some of its plunder if the plundered owner can take it back. Nobody except France itself at this moment can believe that there is such a natural law. Alsace and Lorraine did not come to France in such a providential way that they could not be taken away from it. Richelieu's cunning, Louis XIV's grandiose saber; these are France's only legal titles to the German lands. Richelieu unscrewed them. And General Turenne happened to be unscrewed at the same time. Because Turenne was a real German by blood and nature. But Francis I had set his ancestor, the little Duke of Bouillon, on the path we saw above, and he gradually made him French.

And so on. And further:

For me, the saddest symptom in France at present is the figure its geniuses are now making, its highest literary voices, which should be its prophets and seers and which this figure has in fact been making for a generation. These voices apparently believe that new heavenly wisdom is radiating from France over all other peoples, who are sitting in deep shadow. France is the new Zion of the universe. And all the sad, dirty, half-crazed and in large part positively infernal stuff that French literature has preached to us in the last fifty years is a true gospel from heaven, full of blessings for all the children of men. Ah, one understands that France made its great revolution; that it raised its terrible voice of destiny against a world of human illusions, proclaiming with the trumpet of the Last Judgment: There shall be no more illusions!

These words were not coined by Germans! Rather, the words that I have just read were translated by the Würzburg professor of psychiatry, Rieger, from a letter that was indeed published in the Times on November 18, 1870 and that was written by Thomas Carlyle about France and the French way of life, French greed, and the claims to Alsace-Lorraine. It is a rather nice symptom that a psychiatrist found this letter and translated it, because there will be many a psychiatric chapter in world history when everything that is now being brought into the world from the east and the west about the German character has to be judged.

But if, on the other hand, we allow ourselves to be influenced by this German essence in the way that not pride but humble self-awareness has done, if we see what Germany's best minds have achieved in the German spirit, if we see how intuitions of spiritual science, spiritual insights have emerged in Schiller and Fichte, so that we have to say to ourselves: In this German essence lie seeds that oblige us to develop them further into blossoms and fruits, then we must fill our soul with the right future securities and future possibilities. And we will know that when our fateful and destiny-laden days are again replaced by such days in which history again speaks objectively, that then the question will hang over the enemy nations like one of the most terrible questions: Why do they call the people of Schiller and Fichte a “barbarian people”?

And in answering this question, one will feel how the German spirit has not completed its tasks in the world as a whole, in the development of humanity. One will feel how right Goethe was when he said to Luden, even in a fateful time:

The destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. If they had had no other task than to break up the Roman Empire and create and organize a new world, they would have perished long ago. But since they have continued to exist, and in such strength and efficiency, I believe that they must still have a great destiny.

When one feels the German essence, one will feel how it has to defend itself today as if locked in a great fortress – even the enemies who do not understand it and want to trample it underfoot – and one will find that this German essence has not yet reached completion, that this German spirit must fight for its existence not only for its own good but also for the good of the development of the earth. And today we may summarize what this reflection could only contain in hints, we may summarize it in words that point out how, even if the German spirit has already achieved great things, what it has achieved must appear in the present as the germ of future blossoms and fruits. And one would like to call out to those over whom the question will hover as historical fate: Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”? In answer, one must call out to them what we want to conclude today's reflection with:

The German spirit has not completed
what it is to bring to the world.
It lives hopefully in future concerns,
It hopes for future deeds] full of life; -
In the depths of his being, he feels mightily
Hidden things that must have their effect as they mature.
How can a mindless enemy
Wish for his end to come:
As long as life reveals itself to him,
Which holds him in the roots of his being?

Reflections such as those we are considering this evening are meant to be an interlude in the otherwise continuous presentation of the humanities. In particular, I would like to try this evening to develop some of the ideas I touched on in my lecture last December on the intellectual and cultural situation in Austria. In our time, in which the concept of Central Europe, and also of Central European intellectual life, must increasingly develop as a result of difficult events and experiences, it seems justified to take a look at the lesser-known circumstances of Austrian intellectual life.

Hermann Bahr, who is known in the broadest circles as a witty man, as a man who cultivates the most diverse areas of literature, comes, I would say, from a typically Austrian region: from Upper Austria, and visited France, Spain and Russia at a relatively young age, and I know that at the time he was of the opinion that he could faithfully represent the essence of French and even Spanish and Russian intellectual culture to a certain extent. He even immersed himself so completely in Spanish politics that, as he assured us at the time, he wrote a fiery article in Spain against the Sultan of Morocco when he returned. Well, for decades now, after his world travels, he has been staying in Austria, working as a playwright, as an editor, as a general observer of art, and also as a biographer, for example of the much-misunderstood Max Burckhardt, and so on. Until recently, I tried to keep track of what Hermann Bahr was writing. In recent times, and actually for quite a while, one finds in his work an endeavor, which he often expressed himself, that he is searching, to discover Austria. Now imagine, the man who thought he knew French, even Spanish character, who wrote a book about Russian character, then goes back to his homeland, is such a member of his homeland that he only needs to speak five words and you immediately recognize the Austrian; the man seeks Austria! This may seem strange. But it is not so at all. This search originates from the quite justified feeling that, after all, for the Austrian, Austria, Austrian nature – I would say – Austrian national substance is not easy to find. I would like to describe some of this Austrian national character in a few typical personalities, insofar as it is expressed in Austrian intellectual life.

When I was young, many people were of the opinion, the then justified opinion, that when considering art, artistry, literature, and intellectual development, one looked too much to the past. In particular, much blame was attached to the scientific history of art and literature, for which a personality is only considered if they lived not just decades but centuries ago. At that time, considerations could hardly rise to the immediate perception of the present. I believe that today one could feel something opposite: in the way that considerations about art and artists are so commonplace, we now often experience that everyone more or less starts with themselves or with their immediate contemporaries. I do not wish to consider the present situation of Austrian intellectual life here, but rather a period of time that is not so far in the past. I do not wish to proceed in a descriptive manner. With descriptions, one is always right and always wrong at the same time. One touches on one or the other shade of this or that fact or personality, and both the person who agrees and the person who refutes will undoubtedly be right in the case of a general characteristic, in the case of general descriptions. I should like to give a symptomatic description. I should like to pick out individual personalities and in these personalities to show some of the many things that are alive in the Austrian intellectual world. You will excuse me if I start with a personality who is close to me. I believe, however, that in this case being close to someone does not prevent me from making an objective assessment of the personality in question. But on the other hand, I believe that in this person I have encountered a personality in life that is extraordinarily characteristic of Austrian intellectual life.

When I came to the Vienna Technical University in 1879, the subject, which was of course taught there as a minor subject, was the history of German literature, Karl Julius Schröer. He is little known and much misunderstood by those who have met him. I now believe that he is one of those personalities who deserve to live on in the intellectual history of Austria. However, an important literary historian once made some strange comments about Karl Julius Schröer in the presence of a party at which I was sitting next to him. There was talk of a German princess, and the literary historian in question wanted to say that this German princess, however talented she might otherwise be, sometimes, as he put it, “could be very wrong” in her literary judgments; and as an example, he cited the fact that she considers Karl Julius Schröer to be an important man. Schröer took up a position as a teacher of German literary history at a Protestant lyceum in Pressburg around the middle of the last century, at a momentous point in Austrian intellectual life. He later taught the same subject at the University of Budapest. Karl Julius Schröer was the son of Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who was mentioned in my previous lecture on Austrian identity. Tobias Gottfried Schröer was also an extraordinarily important figure for Austria. He had founded the Pressburg Lyceum and wanted to make it a center for the cultivation of German intellectual life. His aim was to help those Germans in Austria who were surrounded by other nationalities to become fully aware of their identity as part of the German intellectual world.

Tobias Gottfried Schröer is a personality who, from a historical-spiritual point of view, comes across in such a way that one would like to feel a certain emotion, because one always has the feeling: how is it possible in the world that an important mind can remain completely unknown due to the unfavorable conditions of the time, completely unknown in the sense that one calls “being known” that one knows that this or that personality has existed and has achieved this or that. However, the achievements of Tobias Gottfried Schröer are by no means unknown or unappreciated. I just want to emphasize that as early as 1830 Tobias Gottfried Schröer wrote a very interesting drama, “The Bear”, which has at its center the personality of Tsar Ivan IV, and that Karl von Holtei said of this drama that if the characters depicted were Schröer's creations, then he had achieved something extraordinarily significant. And they were Schröer's inventions except for Ivan IV. However, the level-headed man, the not at all somehow radically minded Tobias Gottfried Schröer, had a flaw. In those days, people could not be allowed to read what he wrote, so to speak, that is, this view was held by the censors. And so it came about that he had to have all his works printed abroad and that one could not get to know him as the important dramatic poet that he was. He wrote a drama in 1839 called “The Life and Deeds of Emmerich Tököly and His Fellow Rebels”. In this work, one encounters in a large historical painting all the intellectual currents that existed in Hungary at that time. And in the character of Tököly himself, one encounters what critics of the time rightly called a Hungarian Götz von Berlichingen, not so much because Tököly had to be called a Götz von Berlichingen, but because Schröer managed to depict Tököly in such a vivid way that the dramatic figure of Tököly could only be compared to Götz von Berlichingen. It was only by a strange mistake that Tobias Gottfried Schröer was sometimes recognized. For example, he wrote a paper “On Education and Teaching in Hungary”. This paper was regarded by many as something extraordinary. But it was also banned, and attention was drawn to the fact that this author - who was basically the calmest man in the world - was actually a dangerous person. But the Palatine of Hungary, Archduke Joseph, read this writing. Now the storm that had risen over this writing subsided. He inquired about the author. They did not know who he was. But they speculated that it was the rector of a Hungarian school. And Archduke Joseph, the Palatine of Hungary, immediately took the man - it was not the right one! - into the house to educate his son. What a tribute to a personality! Such things have happened many times, especially with regard to this personality. For this personality is the same one who, under the name Christian Oeser, has written all kinds of works that have been widely distributed: an “Aesthetics for virgins,” a “World history for girls' schools.” If you read this “World History for Girls' Schools” by a Protestant author, you will certainly find it quite remarkable, and yet it is true that it was once even introduced in a convent as the corresponding world history – truly, in a convent! The reason for this was that there is a picture of St. Elizabeth on the title page. I leave it to you to believe that the liberalness of the nuns might have contributed to the introduction of this “world history for girls' schools” in a convent.

After pronouncing such sentences, Karl Julius Schröer let his gaze wander over the times when the German essence was thoroughly misunderstood by other nations around it as a result of various events. He spoke about this as follows: “The German name was held in low esteem by the nations that owed it so much; at that time, the German was valued in France almost on a par with barbarians.” In 1846, he spoke to his audience at the German Lyceum in Pressburg! But in contrast to this, Karl Julius Schröer was full of enthusiasm for what one could say he saw as the German intellectual substance, not for what is merely called nationality in the ethnographic sense, but for the spiritual that permeates everything that holds the German essence together. I quote a few of Karl Julius Schröer's statements from this time, which now lies far behind us, for the reason of showing how peculiarly that which is called the confession of German nationality lives in the more outstanding minds. Basically, we have to keep in mind that the way the German stands by his nationality cannot be understood by the other nationalities of Europe, because it is fundamentally different from the way the other nationalities stand by what they call their nationality. If we look at the more outstanding and deeply feeling Germans, we find that they are German in the best sense of the word because they see Germanness in what is spiritually pulsating, but also as a force tinged with this spirituality, in what counts itself German; that Germanness is something like an ideal for them, something to which they look up, that they do not see merely as a national organism. And therein lie many of the difficulties why German character – even in our days, and especially in our days – is so misunderstood, so hated. Such Germans as Karl Julius Schröer want to achieve their Germanness through knowledge, by gaining insight into the possibilities of life and action that the living organism of a nation offers. And again and again Karl Julius Schröer's gaze wanders, not in arrogance, but in modesty, to the question: What world-historical mission in the development of the human race has that which, in this best sense of the word, can be called Germanness and German nature? And before world history it wants to be justified, what is built up in views on German nature. Much more could be said about the special position of such minds in relation to the German character. Thus Karl Julius Schröer, speaking from this attitude, says: “The world epoch that begins with Christianity is also called the Germanic world; for although the other nations also have a great share in history, almost all the states of Europe were founded by Germanic peoples... .” — this is a truth that, at least today, is not readily acknowledged outside of the German border posts. Of course, it is not heard, but it is not readily acknowledged. “... Spain, France, England, Germany, Austria, even Russia, Greece, Sweden and so on, were founded by Germans and imbued with the German spirit.”

And then Karl Julius Schröer cites for his listeners a saying of a German literary historian, Wackernagel: “Throughout Europe now flowed...” - namely after the migration of peoples - “A pure Germanic blood, or combining Roman-Celtic blood, now flowed a Germanic spirit of life, took the Christian faith... on its purer, stronger floods and carried it along.” There was no time in which the hatred of Europe would have prompted such views as today. They were views that arose in a thoroughly honest way from the contemplation of the German character by this mind. And so he expressed himself: “The civilized peoples of Europe are one great family, and it is a single great course of the nations of Europe that leads through all errors back to the source of truth and true art, on which all nations accompany the Germans, often overtaking them, but in the end one after the other falling behind them. The Romance peoples are usually the first in everything: the Italians, then the Spaniards, the French, then come the English and the Germans. One of these nations usually represents the culmination of a particular trend of the times. But lately, even the English have had their hour struck in art and science... “—said in 1846, though with reference to the development of intellectual life—”... and the time has come when German literature is visibly beginning to rule over Europe, as the Italian and French did before!"

Thus was the man rooted in his Austrian homeland. And since I later became very close to him, I know well that it meant nothing to him, absolutely nothing that could somehow be described in words: he would have wanted the domination of one nation over another—not even within Austria. If one wants to call an attitude like Karl Julius Schröer's national, then it is compatible with the acceptance of every nationality, insofar as this nationality wants to assert itself alongside others from the germ, from the source of its own being, and does not want to dominate these others. His concern was not to cultivate the supremacy of the German character over any other nationality or over any legitimate national aspiration, but to bring to full development within the German character what is inherent within that German character. And that is what is special about this man: that he felt himself intertwined with Austrian national character through his entire aesthetic sensibility, through his entire feeling, artistic feeling, popular feeling, but also through his scientific endeavors. He became, so to speak, an observer of this Austrian national character.

And so we see that as early as the 1950s, out of his deep love for the people, he collected those wonderful German Christmas plays that have been preserved among the German population of Hungary, and published “German Christmas Plays from Hungary”, those Christmas plays that are performed in the villages at Christmas time, at the time of the Epiphany. They are strange games! They were actually only printed for the first time in the mid-nineteenth century – and Schröer was one of the first to have such things printed. They have been preserved from generation to generation in the rural population. Since then, many such Christmas games have been collected in the most diverse areas, and much has been written about them. With such heartfelt love, with such intimate connection to folklore, as Kar! Julius Schröer wrote his introduction to the “German Christmas Plays from Hungary” at the time, hardly anything has been written in this field since. He shows us that manuscripts of the plays were always preserved from generation to generation, as they were a sacred ritual that people prepared for in the individual villages when Christmas season approached; and that those who were chosen to play, that is, to go around the village and the most diverse locales to play these games for the people, in which the creation of the world, the biblical history of the New Testament, the appearance of the three kings, and the like were depicted. Schröer describes how those who prepared for such plays not only prepared themselves for weeks by learning things by heart, by being drilled by some kind of director, but how they prepared themselves by following certain rules; how they did not drink wine for weeks, how they avoided other pleasures of life for weeks in order to have the right feelings, so to speak, to be allowed to perform in such plays. How Germanic character has absorbed Christianity can be seen, how this Christianity has flowed into these strange plays, which are sometimes crude, but always deeply moving and extraordinarily vivid. Later, as I said, others also collected these things; but none approached it with such devotion of his personality, with such a connection to what was being lived out, as Karl Julius Schröer, even if his representations, scientifically speaking, are long outdated.

Then he turned to the study of German folklore as it is spread throughout the vast territory of Austria-Hungary, of German folklore as it lives in the people. And there are numerous treatises by Karl Julius Schröer in which he presents this folklore in terms of its language and the intellectual life expressed through it. We have a dictionary, a description of the dialects of the Hungarian highlands, the area that was settled by German settlers on the southern slopes of the Carpathians, and still is today, although most of the area is Magyar. With tremendous love, through Karl Julius Schröer, I would say, every word was recorded that resonates with the dialect of this area; but we have always recorded it in such a way that one can see from his descriptions how his interest was directed towards seeking out what the cultural task was, what the particular way of life of the people who, coming from afar, had to push their way into the east at a certain time in order to temporarily cultivate their own culture in the midst of other peoples, later to remember it and then gradually to be absorbed into other cultures. What Schröer has achieved in this field will in many ways represent something for the future, like wonderful memories of the ferment that shaped German identity in the wide expanse of Austria.

Karl Julius Schröer later came to Vienna. He became director of the Protestant schools and later professor of German literary history at the Vienna Technical University. And I myself experienced how he knew how to influence those who were receptive to the presentation of directly felt intellectual life. Then he turned more and more to Goethe, delivered his “Faust” commentary, which appeared in several editions, and in 1875 wrote a history of German poetry that was met with much hostility. It became an example at the time after it was published, a “literary history from the wrist” called. However, Schröer's literary history is not a literary history written according to the methods that later became common in the Scherer school. But it is a literary history in which there is nothing but what the author experienced, experienced in the poetic works, in art, in the development of German intellectual life in the nineteenth century up to his time; because that is what he wanted to present at the time. Karl Julius Schröer's entire life and intellectual development can only be understood by considering the Austrian character of Schröer's entire personality, which brought the scientific and artistic into direct connection , and to experience it in direct connection with folklore, that folklore which, particularly in Austria, I would say, presents a problem at every point of its development, if one only knows how to experience and observe it. And one must often think, perhaps also abroad: Is this Austria a necessity? How does this Austria actually fit into the overall development of European culture?

Well, if you look at Austria in this way, it appears to be a great diversity. Many, many nations and ethnic groups live side by side, pushed together, and the life of the individual is often complicated by these underlying factors, even as a soul life and as a whole personality life. The things that now play from one nation into another, what comes to light through this lack of understanding and the desire to understand and the difficulties of life, it comes to one's attention at every turn in Austria, combined with other historical conditions of Austrian life. There is a poet who, with great but, I would say, modest genius, understood how to depict something of this Austrian essence. At the end of the 1880s and in the 1890s, he could occasionally be seen performing in Vienna when one came to the famous Café Griensteidl in Vienna and also in certain other literary circles. Yes, this Café Griensteidl basically belongs to Austrian literature; so much so that a writer, Karl Kraus, wrote a series of articles entitled “Demolished Literature” when it was demolished. Today, one still reads about Café Griensteidl as if it were a beautiful memory. Please excuse me for including this, but it is too interesting, because at Café Griensteidl, if you went there at certain times of the day, you could really see a cross-section of Austrian literature. But today, when you read about these things, you often read about the times of the waiter Heinrich, who later became famous, the famous Heinrich of Griensteidl, who knew what newspapers each person needed to have when they came in the door. But that was no longer the real time, the time of the somewhat jovial Heinrich, but the real time was that of Franz vom Griensteidl, who had lived through the days when Lenau and Grillparzer and Anastasius Grün gathered at the Café Griensteidl every day or twice a week, and who, with his infinitely dignified manner, would occasionally tell a story in his own way about one of these literary greats when you happened to be waiting for a newspaper. As I said, Jakob Julius David also occasionally appeared in the circle of people there. Actually, David only emerged in Austrian intellectual life at the end of the 1880s and beginning of the 1890s. When you sat with him, he spoke little; he listened even less when people spoke to him because he was severely hard of hearing. He was very severely short-sighted and usually spoke from a compressed soul, from a soul that had experienced how often in life what we call fate weighs heavily on the soul. When I spoke to the half-blind and half-deaf man, I often thought how strongly Austrian identity was expressed in this personality, who had gone through a difficult youth, a youth full of privation and poverty in the valley of the Hanna, in the valley through which the March flows, where German, Hungarian and Slavic populations border on each other and are mixed everywhere. If you drive down from this valley to Vienna, you will pass poor huts everywhere; this was especially the case when David was young. But these humble huts often have people as inhabitants, each of whom harbors in his soul the Austrian problem, that which, in all its broad specificity, contains the Austrian problem, the whole diversity of life that challenges the soul. This diversity, which wants to be experienced, which cannot be dismissed with a few concepts, with a few ideas, lives in these strange, in a certain way closed natures. If I wanted to characterize what these natures are like, which David has described as being particularly prevalent in Austrian life, I would have to say: they are natures that feel deeply the suffering of life, but they also have something in them that is not so common in the world: the ability to endure suffering to a certain extent. It is even difficult to find words for what is made of the often arduous experience, especially in these Austrian regions. There is no sentimentality, but a strong ability to experience the diversity of life, which of course brings about clashes, even among the lowest peasant classes. But this does not turn into a weariness of life, into some kind of world-weary mood. It transforms itself into something that is not defiance and yet has the strength of defiance. It transforms itself, if I may say so, weakness into strength. And this strength is realized in the area in which it finds itself through the necessities of life. And weakness, which in a sense had been transformed into strength, showed itself in David. This man was half blind and half deaf. But he once said to me: “Yes, my eyes cannot see much in the distance, but all the more so when using a microscope, I see close up.” That is to say, up close he observed everything exactly through his eyes as if through a microscope; but he looked at it so closely that one must say: In what he saw with his eyes, there was something great that intervened, explaining and illuminating what was behind it. And as a substitute for the wide-ranging view, this man had a deep gaze in the small field of vision that he overlooked with his microscopic eyes, an obsession with getting behind the reasons for things. And that was transferred to his entire mental life. This allowed him to see the people he wanted to describe, deep, deep into their hearts. And as a result, he was able to depict many, many types of Austrian life in poetry, drama, novellas, and even lyric poetry. How this entire Austrian mood can form in the soul, not into sentimentality, but into a certain inner strength, which is not defiance, but contains the strength of defiance, is particularly evident where Jakob Julius David speaks for himself. There he says:

Almighty! Thou hast taken much from me,
Thou alone knowest what I have lost;
My eye sees the beautiful world blurred,
And only muffled, muffled and quiet
Life's sounds come to my ailing ear.
Once it hurt me – and for my own good,
I thank you today that I previously criticized you
You have spared me much sorrow, many horrors
Saved me from hearing and seeing...

Indeed, the man was such that he did not have to see and hear many things in order to bring out of the depths of his soul many things that he wanted to embody poetically. As I said, I would like to show what is expressed in such Austrian sounds in individual symptoms. And one must not introduce a touch of sentimentality when Jakob Julius David speaks of his fate in this way:

In the west you see gray in the valley
The heaviest clouds hang –
That reminds me of the days,
Which have passed for me...

In the east, asleep in the light of the storm, That is my today...

But this “today” he uses up, he exhausts it, and for him it became the possibility of describing Austrian folklore in such a way that everywhere, quite remarkably, one sees individual destinies in his work – many of his novellas have only a few characters. These individual destinies make one say: The way in which the characters collide with each other because they are placed next to each other in the world by kinship or otherwise is extremely moving and takes us deep into realities. But what Jakob Julius David captures so, I would say, microscopically and yet movingly and vividly, very rarely occurs in such a way that a large painting of world history is not somehow behind it, with the individual event taking place against its backdrop.

This contextual thinking of the small, which does not become shadowy and blurred because it appears on such a background, that this letting the small happen is colored by the greatness of world-historical becoming, that is what we find to be the most characteristic of a well-known Austrian poet, but one who unfortunately is not well enough known. We are talking about the greatest poet of Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century, the poet whose home we find if we go just a little way west from the home of Jakob Julius David: we are talking about Robert Hamerling.

It is remarkable how the traits exhibited by individual personalities within Austrian intellectual life seem to clash, but when viewed from a certain higher perspective, they present themselves as qualities alongside other qualities, flowing together into a great harmony. It is remarkable: Karl Julius Schröer did not want to accept Robert Hamerling at all. To him he was a poet of secondary importance, a poet who, above all, is said to have destroyed his poetic power through his erudition. On the other hand, in Robert Hamerling there is the same attitude, the same noblest grasp of the German essence that I tried to describe in such a characteristic personality as Karl Julius Schröer. But that too is typical of Hamerling, and what I am describing to you here as typical personalities can be found in many, many others in Austrian life. I am trying to pick out only the characteristic traits that can really be presented as individual traits, but in such a way that they can stand for the whole. What is peculiar about Robert Hamerling is that he grows out of the smallest things. He comes from the Waldviertel in Lower Austria, from that poor region that bears its fruit only with difficulty because the soil is rocky and covered with forest, a region that is cozy and charming, and can be particularly enchanting in its hilly nature. Out of this peculiar nature and out of the limitations of the human character, Robert Hamerling's great spirit emerged. And he grew into a similar understanding of the German character to that of Karl Julius Schröer's spirit. We see this in one of Robert Hamerling's best poems, 'Germanenzug', where the way in which the German spirit lived in Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet, is particularly clearly expressed. The ancient Germans move from Asia and camp on the Caucasus. Wonderfully, I would say, with magical vividness, it is described how evening falls, how the sun goes down, twilight reigns, the moon appears, how the entire army of Teutons camps, sleep spreads and only the one blond-haired , the spirit of Asia appears to him, releasing his people to Europe, and how the spirit of Asia permeates Teut with that which is in store for the Teutons up to their development in Germanness through history. There the great becomes great, but there also, with noble criticism, what is to be blamed is already expressed. There many a trait that especially people like Robert Hamerling see in Germanness is expressed by the goddess Asia. There the future is spoken of:

But however proudly you aspire, highly soaring, always still a blaze
you will keep the ancient sacred fire.
The dream-filled
drunkenness of God will live on in you...
You only strive because you love: your boldest thought
will be devotion that wants to sink into God.

Thus spoke Asia to the blonde Teut, the leader of the Germanic peoples to Europe, speaking in advance of the genius of Germanness, and continuing:

Do you know the highest path for your struggle
When you grow strong in certain unity in the future?
Do you know the beacons in the sea of time
Which, beckoning afar with the flame of purity,
Bring you to the last, most beautiful goal?
High above, they shine with an eternal radiance
The sacred ideals
Of humanity: freedom, justice, and light and love!
These are the last fully glowing flames
of the original light - to stir them up all together
into one glow in the quarrelling hustle and bustle
of the life of nations: that is your mission...

And Robert Hamerling could not help but consider the details that he presents, for example, as an epic poet or as a playwright, in the context of the great spiritual development of humanity. I would say that all these observers over there in Austria have something in common with microscopic vision, which, however, wants to reach beneath the surface of things; and Robert Hamerling shows it most beautifully. And they have something in common with western Austria, of which one can say: it has a certain right to place the individual within the greater whole. Because the way the valleys stand between the mountains in some areas of western Austria is expressed in turn in what lives in a poet like Robert Hamerling. We can see that a great variety of things are expressed in this Austrian intellectual life, in all its sides, which may perhaps repel each other, but which nevertheless represent a diversity that is unity in the whole picture of culture that one can draw.

And in this diversity, the sounds that come from other nationalities combine not in disharmony, but in a certain sense in harmony. It is of course not possible to say anything specific about what sounds from other nationalities into Austrian intellectual life as a whole. Only a few symptoms will be characterized. For example, within Czech literature – with regard to these descriptions, I must of course be cautious, since I do not speak Czech – we have a newer poet, a recently deceased poet, who, as someone who wrote about him put it, has become for his people something similar to what was said about a great Czech musician: that he was there like a whale in a carp pond. That is how Jaroslav Vrchlický is placed in the spiritual life of his people. In his works, the whole of world history comes to life: the oldest human life of the distant past, Egyptian, European life of the Middle Ages and modern times, Jewish intellectual life, the whole of world history comes to life in his lyric poetry, comes to life in his dramas, in his stories, and is alive everywhere. This Jaroslav Vrchlicky – his real name is Emil Frida – has an incredible productivity. And when you consider that this man has translated a large, large area of the literature of other nations for his nation, in addition to his own extremely widespread production, then you can appreciate what such a mind means for his nation. I have to read to you, because otherwise I might forget to mention some of the poets of world literature that Vrchlicky has translated for Czech literature: Ariosto, Tasso, Dante, Petrarca, Leopardi, Calderon, Camöens, Moliere, Baudelaire, Rostand, Victor Hugo, Byron, Shelley, Gorki, Schiller, Hamerling, Mickiewicz, Balzac, Dumas and others. It has been calculated that Vrchlicky alone translated 65,000 verses by Tasso, Dante and Ariosto. And yet this man was, I would say, the very embodiment of his nationality. When he emerged on the scene in the stormy 1870s – he was born in 1853 – it was a difficult time for his nation, with all the contradictions that had arisen; in relation to the Germans, all sorts of opposing factions had emerged within his own nation. At first he was much contested. There were people who said he could not write Czech; there were people who made fun of what Vrchlicky wrote. But that stopped very soon. He forced recognition. And in 1873 he was, one might say, like an angel of peace among the terribly feuding parties. He was recognized by all, and in his popular poetic works he resurrected entire paintings of world developments from all of them; just not – and this is striking – anything from Russian folklore! A man who wrote a short biography about him – before the war – expressly warned in this biography: one should see from this man in particular how little foundation there is for the fairy tale that the Czechs, or the western Slavs in general, have something to expect from the great Russian empire when they look within, as is often said.

We see this expansion in a different way, this: to see the individual experience against the background of the great interrelationships of humanity and the world — we see it in a different way in a poet whom I already referred to in my last lecture on Austrianness, the Hungarian poet Emmerich Madách. Madách was born in 1823. Madách wrote, one must say, truly imbued with a full Magyar spirit, among other things that cannot be mentioned here, The Tragedy of Man. This The Tragedy of Man is again something that does not tie in with the great events of humanity, but directly represents these events of humanity themselves. And one would like to say how Madách, the Magyar, the native of eastern Austria, presents this “tragedy of man”, which differs, for example, from the figures that Hamerling, in his own way, created out of the great painting of world history in “Ahasver”, “King of Sion”, “Aspasia”. They differ as the mountains of western Austria differ from the wide plains of eastern Austria, or rather – and I would like to be more precise here – as the soul, when it rises in the often so beautiful – especially when they are bathed in sunlight – valleys of western Austria and lets its gaze wander over the mountains that border these valleys, — how the soul, in this absorption, differs from that mood of going out into the wide open, but indefinite, that overcomes it when the Hungarian puszta, with its wide plain character, affects that soul. You know from Lenau's poetry, what this Hungarian puszta can become for the human soul.

A remarkable poem, this “Tragedy of Man”. We are placed directly at the beginning of creation. God appears alongside Lucifer. Adam dreams the future world history under Lucifer's influence. This happens in nine significant cultural images. In the beginning, we are introduced to the Lord and Lucifer; Lucifer, who wants to assert himself in his entire being towards the creator of this existence, into which the being of man is intertwined. And Lucifer admonishes the creator of the world that he is also there and that he is of the same age as the creator of the world himself. In a sense, the Creator must accept Lucifer as his helper. We hear the significant words in the poem: “If the negation” - namely Lucifer - “has even the slightest hold, your world will soon unhinge it.” With this, Lucifer threatens the creative spirit. The Lord hands Lucifer two trees, the tree of knowledge and the tree of immortality. But with these, Lucifer tempts man. And he tempts Adam, thereby causing Adam to lose paradise. And outside of paradise, Lucifer introduces Adam to what in the visions of Madách is the knowledge of the forces of nature, of the whole fabric of forces that can be gained through knowledge of man through the natural phenomena unfolding before the senses. It is the invisible cobweb of natural laws that Lucifer teaches Adam outside of paradise. And then we are shown how Lucifer makes Adam dream of the more distant fate of the world. There we see how Adam is re-embodied as a Pharaoh in ancient Egypt, and Eve, in her re-embodiment, meets him as the wife of a slave who is mistreated. Adam is seized by a deep melancholy; that is, he sees it in his dream, in which his later life, all his later embodiments, appear before the soul's eye. He sees it in such a way that he is seized by deep bitterness about what is to become of the world. And further, we are shown how Adam is re-embodied in Athens as Miltiades, how he must experience the ingratitude of the people; further, we are shown how he has to observe the declining culture and the penetration of Christianity in ancient Rome, in the imperial period. Among crusaders later in Constantinople, Adam comes to us in a new life. He is embodied again as Kepler at the court of Emperor Rudolf; as Danton during the French Revolutionary period. Then he is embodied again in London. There he becomes acquainted with that through which, according to the view of Madách, Lucifer has a characteristic effect on the present. The words must already be spoken that are written in it: “Everything is a market where everyone trades, buys, cheats, business is cheating, cheating is business.” It was not written under the influence of the war, because the poem was written in the 1860s. Then, in a later life, Adam is led to the end of time on Earth, to a landscape of ice, and so on. It is undoubtedly interesting, but one would also like to say that, like the Hungarian steppes, which extend into infinity and leave much incomprehensible and unsatisfactory – that is how this poem is. And only sporadically do we realize that the poet actually means that the whole thing is a dream that Lucifer inspires in Adam. And what the poet really wants to say is that this is how the world would be if only Lucifer were at work. But man also has an effect. Man has to seek his strength and counteract Lucifer. But this is hardly hinted at, only, I would like to say, hinted at at the end, but in such a way that what appears as positive in the face of the negative, in the face of sadness, in the face of suffering, must also be summarized, like suffering that develops into defiant strength. “Fight and trust” is what Adam is taught. But what man can fight for is not shown at all. What the world would become if it were left to nature alone is depicted. And this poem has grown out of a deep inner life and a difficult life experience.

Madách is also one of those natures who, in a different way, can be characterized by saying: Oh, this diversity of life, which is linked to the historical conditions of Austria, passed through his soul; but at the same time also the strength to transform weakness into strength.

Madách comes from old Hungarian nobility. He grew up in the Neögrader district. He lost his father very early. His mother was a spiritually strong woman. Madách became a dreamy, contemplative person. In 1849, after the revolution, he took in a refugee who was already gone when the police came looking for him; but the police still came to the conclusion that Madách had taken in this refugee. Madách was put on trial and sentenced to four years in prison. It was not so much the prison, which he accepted as an historical necessity, that had a severely distressing effect on Madách, but the fact that he had to separate from his wife, from his family, who was like his other self, whom he loved most tenderly, and that he not see her, not share in this life for four years, was devastating to him, that was the real hard blow of fate that made him doubt humanity, if it had not been for the fact that every hour he spent in prison was followed by the hope: you will see her again then. And so he wrote his poems, in which he imagined going through the door. Even after he was actually released, he wrote the last of these poems on the way home, in which he wonderfully describes the heaven that would now receive him. And he really did come home. The woman he loved so tenderly had meanwhile become unfaithful to him, she had left with another. And through the gate through which he wanted to enter in the sense of the poem he had written, he had to enter his treacherously abandoned home. In visions, the traitor and his betrayal often stood before his eyes. It was from such sources that his historical and human feelings, his feelings about the world, were formed. This must certainly be borne in mind if one is to appreciate this poetry, to which one might possibly have many objections.

For that is the point – and it would be interesting to develop this in detail – that the diversity that is in Austrian life and that is brought about by such things as I have mentioned can, again and again, broaden one's view and present one with tasks, so that one must directly link one's own experiences to the great experiences of humanity, yes, to the tasks of humanity. And just as with Hamerling, although he spent half his life on his sickbed, every poetic note he uttered was connected with the most direct experience, so too with Emmerich Madách on the other hand.

You see, this diversity – one can ask: did it have to be forged in the course of human development in Central Europe? Is there any necessity in this? If you look at the matter more closely, you do indeed get an insight into such a necessity, to find the most diverse human minds in a single area of space also united in shared destinies. And I would like to say that it always seemed to me like a symbol of what is present in the national community, in the diversity of the people, that nature, and strangely enough especially around Vienna, has already created something of a great diversity in the earth. Geologically, the so-called Vienna Basin is one of the most interesting areas on earth. As if in an earthly microcosm, as in a small Earth, everything that interacts with each other is brought together, but it also symbolizes what can explain to you that which is otherwise spread over the Earth's surface. And for those who have an interest in and an understanding of scientific observations, the contemplation of this Vienna Basin, with the numerous secrets of the Earth's formation that can be studied there, is deeply inspiring. One is tempted to say that the Earth itself develops a diversity that is bound into a unity in the center of Europe. And what is geologically present in the Earth is basically only reflected in what takes place above this Earth's surface in the minds of human beings.

I say all this not to make propaganda for Austria, but only to describe a characteristic feature. But this characteristic feature comes to the fore when one wants to describe Austria. And, I would like to say, when one goes into the field of exact science, of geology, one finds in Austria something that corresponds to what Austria's great poets claim as their most distinctive feature. If you observe Hamerling, if you observe Jakob Julius David, if you consider other great Austrian poets: the characteristic feature is that they all want to tie in with the great destiny of humanity. And that is also what gives them the most intimate and profound satisfaction. A man who was a friend of mine wrote a novel at the time, to Hamerling's great satisfaction, in which he attempted to express medieval knowledge in the form of individual figures in terms of cultural history. The novel is called “The Alchemist”. It is by Fritz Lemmermayer. And Fritz Lemmermayer is not an outstanding talent. He is even a talent who, after this novel, has hardly achieved anything significant again. But one can see that the essence that runs through the nation can take hold of the individual and find characteristic expression even in this untalented person, in all his volition.

As I said, even in the exact science of geology, something like this can come to the fore. It is probably a deep necessity that this is the case with the great Viennese geologist Eduard Sueß, perhaps one of the greatest geologists of all time, to whom we owe the study of the conditions of the Vienna Basin. Just the sight of this Vienna Basin, with its tremendous diversity, which in turn combines into a wonderful unity, could instinctively give rise to a great, powerful geological idea, which comes to light in this man and of which one must say that it could only have been developed from the Austrian character, for Eduard Sueß is an archetypally Austrian personality in his entire being: this unity in diversity, I would say, this microscopic imprint of the entire geology of the earth in the Vienna Basin. This is evident in the fact that Eduard Sueß, in our time, that is, in the last third of the nineteenth century, was able to make the decision to create a three-volume work, “The Face of the Earth,” a book in which everything that lives and works and has lived and worked in the earth in geological terms is pieced together into a significant, rounded image on a large scale, so that the earth becomes visible. Every aspect is treated with exactitude, but when one beholds the entire face of the Earth as Sueß has created it, the Earth appears as a living being, so that one immediately sees: Geology comes from the earth. If one followed Suess further, something would be created in which the planet would be directly connected to the whole cosmos. Suess takes the earth so far in this respect that, to a certain extent, the earth is alive and one only has the need to ask further: How does this earth live in the whole cosmos, now that it has been understood geologically?

Just as much in Austrian poetry is connected with the Austrian landscape and Austrian nature, so I believe that the geology of Austria in the narrower sense is connected with the fact that, perhaps, in the spiritual life of humanity: that from Vienna this book in the field of geology could arise, this book, which is just as exactly scientifically as ingeniously assessed and executed and in which really everything that geology has created up to Sueß is processed in an overall picture, but in such a way that one really believes at last that the whole earth is no longer the dead product of the usual geology, but as a living being. I believe that in this area, precisely what could come from Eduard Sueß's Austrian identity plays into the scientific achievements—by no means in any way into the objectivity of the sciences, which is certainly not endangered by this—what could come from Eduard Sueß's Austrian identity. And when you look into this Austrianness in so many different areas, you realize that figures like those created by Jakob Julius David really do exist, in whom a single trait of the soul often takes hold because the difficulties of life have pushed aside the others, and fills them so completely that the individual soul has its strength, but also its power and its reassurance and its consolation. These figures become particularly interesting when these souls mature into people of knowledge.

And there is a figure from the Upper Austrian countryside, from the Ischl area – I have already referred to the name in the previous lecture – there is the remarkable farmer and philosopher Conrad Deubler. If you imagine every figure that Jakob Julius David created from Austrian life to be a little younger, if you imagine the events of this life that shaped this life later to be absent and imagine them in the soul of Conrad Deubler, then any such figure could become Conrad Deubler. Because this Conrad Deubler is also extremely characteristic of the people of the Austrian Alpine countries. Born in Goisern in the Ischl region, he becomes a miller, later an innkeeper, a person who is deeply predisposed to be a person of insight. When I now speak about Conrad Deubler, I ask that it not be taken as discordant to point out that, of course, a world view such as Conrad Deubler's is not represented here; that it is always emphasized that one must go beyond what Conrad Deubler thought in order to achieve a spiritualization of the world view. But what matters is not clinging to certain dogmas, but being able to recognize the honesty and justification of every human striving for knowledge. And even if one cannot agree with anything that Conrad Deubler actually professed, the contemplation of this personality, especially in connection with characteristics of Austrian life, means something that is typical and significant in particular, in that it expresses how, from within those circumstances, there is a striving for wholeness that, in many respects, can be compared spiritually to being spatially enclosed by mountains. Conrad Deubler is an insightful person, despite not even having learned to write properly, despite having had very little schooling. Jakob Julius David calls the personalities he describes and sketches “musers.” In my home region of Lower Austria, the Waldviertel, they would have been called “simulators.” These are people who have to go through life musing, but who associate something sensitive with musing, who find much to criticize in life. In Austria, we call this “raunzing” about life. People grumble about life a lot. But this criticism is not dry criticism; this criticism is something that is immediately transformed into inner life, especially in figures like Conrad Deubler. He is a man of insight from the very beginning, even though he couldn't write properly. He is always going for books. In his youth, he starts with a good book, a book that aspires from the sensual to the spiritual: Grävell, “Der Mensch” (Man). Deubler reads this in 1830 (he was born in 1814), and Sintenis, “Der gestirnte Himmel” (The Starry Sky), Zschokke's “Stunden der Andacht” (Hours of Devotion). But he doesn't really feel at home with these things, he can't go along with these things. He is a contemplative by nature, and he is imbued with enthusiasm to find satisfaction for the soul not only for himself, but also for those who inhabit his village with him. Something in these people is striving out of the traditional worldview. Then Conrad Deubler becomes acquainted with the ideas that most deeply moved and stirred the times at that time – he becomes acquainted with writings that were written out of the spirit of Darwinism. He becomes acquainted with Ludwig Feuerbach, with David Friedrich Strauss. Later he becomes acquainted with the writings of Ernst Haeckel, but this is later. He reads all of this, devouring it. I will mention in passing that he was sentenced to several years in prison for dealing with such reading material and reading such things to his fellow villagers, and for founding a kind of library for his fellow villagers. It was from 1852 to 1856 – for religious disturbance, blasphemy and spreading blasphemous views! But as I said, I only mention this in passing, because Conrad Deubler bore the whole thing manfully. For him, it was a matter of penetrating to knowledge out of a fundamental urge of his soul. And so we see in this farmer what we may see in another spirit, I would say, on a higher plane of life, at the very end. We see in this spirit how attempts are made to reconcile the scientific way of thinking with the deepest needs of the soul. That Conrad Deubler could arrive at a purely naturalistic-materialistic view of life should, as I said, not concern us. For what matters is not that, but that in such people there lives the urge to see nature itself spiritualized. Even if they initially only accept it sensually, in them all lives the urge to accept nature spiritually. And from such a view of nature, a spiritualized view of life must nevertheless arise in the course of human evolution. So this simple farmer has gradually become a famous personality, especially among the most enlightened spirits of the materialistic epoch. He was an enthusiastic traveler and not only learned in his early youth in Vienna what he wanted to learn, he also traveled to Feuerbach in Nuremberg. But it is particularly interesting how his inn in Goisern became a place of residence for the most important people in the field of natural science and natural philosophy. Haeckel repeatedly stopped at Deubler's, staying there for weeks at a time. Feuerbach often stopped there. Deubler corresponded with David Friedrich Strauß, with the materialist Vogt, with the so-called fat Vogt, with all kinds of people, and we should not be disturbed by the unorthographic, the ungrammatical, but rather we should be struck by the unspoilt nature of the man of knowledge.

And I would like to say that this trait, which in Deubler appears in the rustic and coarse, appears in the man, whom I already referred to in the previous lecture, in a highly subtle way: Bartholomäus von Carneri, the real Austrian philosopher of the last third of the nineteenth century. Carneri is also the type of mind that is initially overwhelmed by Darwinism, but which shows all the more clearly how impossible it is for him to really accept science as it is accepted in Central Europe; how it is impossible for such a mind not to link science to the innermost striving of the human being, not to seek the path that leads from science to religious deepening and religious contemplation. Bartholomäus von Carneri is precisely one of those minds for whom it is true when Asia says to the blond Teut that the most serious thinking in the German spirit wants to arise out of love and come to the intimacy of God. Even if this intimacy with God comes to us, as it were, in atheistic clothing in Carneri, it still comes to us from the most intense and honest spiritual striving. Carneri, as a philosopher and as a man of world-view, stands entirely on the ground of the view that everything that is spirit can only appear to man in matter. And now Carneri is under the influence of a strange delusion. One could say that he is under the influence of the delusion that he now regards the world in terms of nothing but concepts and ideas, in terms of nothing but perceptions and sensations that are born of the spirit, with which he believes he can grasp and comprehend only material things, only the sensual. When someone looks at something sensual, says Carneri, this sensuality can be divided, but the division goes only so far that we can survey this limited thing with our senses. But when the division continues, when the differentiation becomes so fine that no sense can oversee it, then what lives in the differentiated material must be grasped by thinking, and then it is spirit, - spiritually out of the belief that actually only the natural is naturally understood. This is very characteristic, because Carneri's world view is really instinctive spiritualized materialism; one could even say purest spiritualism. And only through the trend of the times, through the effect of the times, did the deception arise that what Carneri speaks of can only be meant spiritually, when in fact it is fundamentally only expressions of the material. But what Carneri grasps so instinctively idealistically, consciously naturalistically, he must necessarily attach to ethics. And what man works out for himself in the way of morals becomes, for Carneri, because he strives for a certain monism of world view, only a sum of higher natural laws. And so Carneri, precisely because he is subject to the characterized deception, transfers the moral, the highest impulses of moral action, into the human soul like natural impulses. And there one sees particularly what is actually at work in minds like Carneri's. In their youth, they lived in a world view that made a fundamental distinction between spirit and nature. They could not reconcile this with the urge of their souls. What science has produced in three to four centuries, these minds had grasped instinctively: No, nature cannot be what it is or should be according to the old traditions; in many of its aspects, nature cannot simply be an abandoned child of the gods. What is the lawfulness of the world must live in nature.

And yet, although such people only wanted to be naturalists, it was basically the urge to give nature its spirit, which lived in them. This is what makes these men so extraordinarily characteristic. And if it can be shown, even in the case of Sueß, the geologist, how his nationality gave a special human colouring to his great work on geology, the same could be shown in the case of a philosopher like Carneri, if one were now to follow his inner life. Precisely what emerges from the observation with regard to the lawful connection between the most diverse nationally colored human minds, as they can be found in Austria, had the particular effect that there, in complicated form, in manifold form, human images stepped before the soul in such a way that riddle upon riddle arose. And in looking at human experiences, at people one has before one daily, one looked at something where the natural plays up into the moral and the moral plays down again into the natural. So it was that in Carneri a noble ethical world view of the historical course of humanity was intimately mixed with a certain naturalism, which, however, is basically only a transitional product, a transitional from which most of all that could be found as a later stage is represented here as a spiritual science, if one is only aware that everything in the world needs its historical development.

Thus, in Carneri's work, a certain view of the ethical, historical ethical life of humanity is combined with the natural life. For him, natural life and historical life merge into one. He sharpens his view of the natural phenomena he has observed so wonderfully, I might say so lovingly and intimately, for the phenomena of humanity, insofar as they take place between nation and nation. The one always clarifies the other. And Carneri had the opportunity, in particular, to be able to contribute to the development of Austria's destiny because he was a member of the Austrian Parliament for a long time and because he absorbed the basic conditions of Austria at that time in the most honest way into his soul. He was born in Trento in 1821, the son of a senior Austrian civil servant. It is remarkable that today I often have to describe personalities to you who were outwardly tormented by deep suffering. Carneri was a twin child. His twin sister developed quite well. But from the beginning he was afflicted with a curvature of the spine. He was ill all his life, paralyzed down one side. He also corresponded with Conrad Deubler. And although I have already been made aware from another source of what Carneri's external life was like, I would still like to present to you the words that Carneri wrote to Deubler on October 26, 1881, so that you can see what an extraordinarily physically tormented man Carneri was. “Do you know,” Carneri wrote to Deubler, ”that the description of your home has made my heart very heavy? It reminded me of the time when I was healthy. I have the forest just behind the house and I have not entered it for years because I can only walk on completely flat paths. I have long since renounced any higher enjoyment of nature, but also everything that is called social entertainment. Incidentally, I can't say that I feel any less happy as a result. Due to a muscle cramp in my neck (torticollis intermittens), which often extends across half of my body, my existence is an extraordinarily arduous one. But I don't mind, and that's what matters. In short, it will be difficult for me to visit you; but if it is feasible one day, I will. We are sticking together, even without knowing each other face to face, and that's the main thing."

And I have read here before how the Austrian poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, who knew Carneri well, described the exterior of Carneri from a moving scene. She describes it as follows: ”... “How could you bear it, all these years, and still keep that smile, that kindness and joy of life?” I cried out in agony when Carneri suffered such an attack in my presence. Slowly he raised his head, which had sunk low on his chest, wiped the sweat from his forehead and cheeks with his trembling left hand, breathed deeply and looked at me with a look that was once again all sun and willpower. “How so?” he smiled. ‘But don't you understand that in my daily struggle with such a beast, I wanted to remain a man, and become a man I had to? I —, he smiled again, ’just had my ambitions. That‘, he pointed to his still-twitching body, ’should be stronger than me? Should it be able to rob me of my days? To make me loathe all the joys and beauties of life? Would I be a man if I did not remain the stronger? So it began, and so it will end.

Thus speaks one who, due to the previously described deception, believes himself to be a naturalist, but who has absorbed a noble ethic from naturalism. But he also shows us a personality that, in a certain respect, contains within itself much that is genuinely Austrian: the ability to turn a strong soul into a strong soul and not to be able to bear weakness being taken as weakness, but rather acting — was particularly developed in this Carneri. And this sense is poured over his entire philosophy. And if you read his works, you will find this sense. But you will also find the infinitely loving response to the facts of life. Incidentally, it already emerges in his poems, in his various writings, which appeared as early as 1840. And the whole of Carneri – it was wonderful to look at him. He stands before me as I look down from the gallery of the Austrian House of Representatives. It was always an important day when one knew that Carneri would speak. Carneri, who was half paralyzed, who could only walk on flat paths, who could only speak in such a way that half of his tongue participated in the speaking, so to speak, that only half of his brain was only half thinking. This Carneri had conquered his physicality; that he now stood there and that his speech was imbued with the most tremendous acumen, with which he saw through everything that could be seen through, that could be condemned. And everywhere he found the right words, which shot like an arrow at those who were to be hit, and which could everywhere inspire those who wanted to be inspired. Carneri was far too much of an idealist for his speeches to always be followed by action. But his speeches were feared in a certain way. In a scholarly way, he presented to his parliament what he carried in his whole thinking – one might say: Austria. This lived and this spoke. And whether he spoke where he could agree with something or whether he spoke as an opponent – that which was discerning Austrian patriotism always spoke through Carneri; such a patriotism, which seeks the tasks of this Austrian national community in the whole historical development of mankind. And even when he spoke about individual matters, not in abstract terms but with all the color of his speech, a great historical trend came to life. And even when he had to reproach, when he had to reproach bitterly, I would say that in his thoughts the blood relationship between this thinker Carneri and Austrian-ness came to life. Therefore, anyone who is aware of this can never forget how the words of one of his last speeches must have sounded from Carneri's mouth, where he saw some things approaching that the opponents of Central Europe had overestimated, that were not as the opponents of Central Europe believed, but that could have been brought about by many out of lack of understanding. Carneri was one of those who saw it from afar, but who, above all, did not want to merely criticize it, so that Austria would remain truly strong. That is why his words of reproach had such an effect that they could remain in the soul. And those who heard such words of reproach, such words of reproach imbued with the deepest feeling, which he uttered in one of his last most brilliant speeches, where he said: “I document thereby express my conviction... which can be summarized in two words, two words which — and I have experienced many a serious moment in my sixty years — I utter for the first time in my life today: Poor Austria!” That such words could be spoken, that there were people who felt that way, is where the forces lie that today have their counter-image in the vilifications of Austria's opponents, outside of Austria, among the enemies of Austria. In Carneri, something of the spirit of those who, in all their diversity, strove to bring Austria powerfully into harmony, because they understood the necessity of the harmony of this diversity, lived.

In the end, he went blind. He celebrated his eightieth birthday in 1900 – by then he had gone blind. As a blind man, he wrote his Dante translation at the time. He dictated from memory, because he had Dante's Divine Comedy in his soul and was able to translate it from memory. At that time, his life was behind him. In many, it lives on, in more people than one might think. He had become blind, weak. As a blind man, he sat in a wheelchair; he had eighty years behind him, sixty years of work. “Realized” - I say this in parentheses - when this man was eighty years old and blind, the University of Vienna ‘recognized’ him by awarding him the doctorate as an eighty-year-old blind man and declaring that it understood something of his merits, with the words: ”We highly appreciate that you have been able to give your scientific ideas such a form that they are able to penetrate into further circles of the people, and that your honorable sir, in addition to the noblest devotion to Austria, has always represented those principles of freedom in your public activities, without whose unreserved recognition a successful advancement of knowledge and scientific work is not possible.” One must be glad that such things as Carneri has done for the benefit of his country and, dare I say it, for the benefit of humanity, are at least recognized; even if one can become eighty years old, blind and deaf before they are recognized. Well, that is the way things are going today.

Unfortunately, I have already taken up far too much of your time; but I could continue at length by attempting to describe, not by means of description, but by means of symptoms, in which, I believe - not always in such a refined way, of course - Austrian folklore lives, but which also shows what this Austrian folklore is when it can show itself in its noblest blossoms. I have mentioned these noblest blossoms because I believe that it is good if the population of Central Europe gets to know each other better in our difficult times, also in a spiritual sense. For time is forging a whole out of this Central Europe, and a unified spirit already prevails in this whole. And the better we get to know this unified spirit, the more alive it will appear to us, and the more we will be able to trust it. All the more will one be able to believe that, despite all misunderstanding, it cannot be overcome. In the German representatives of Central Europe there lives, in many cases, what I have already had to characterize as not simply an instinctive devotion to nationality, but an ideal to which one wants to develop, which consists in spirituality and in the development of strength, which one can only approach and which one can only truly appreciate when one regards it in connection with what leads to the salvation of all mankind. Indeed, there is something about the most German of Germans when they speak of their nationality that others cannot understand; for never does anything else live in the Germans but the duty: You must develop what wants to live through your nationality in the world! The duty to develop is, in a sense, to be national. Hence the constant urge to place one's own nationality within the context of the goals of all humanity. And so it was with Carneri, that in his soul-searching he found what, ethically, must be connected as the basic features of the development of all humanity with natural law. For him, this was one. But he regarded it with such love that for him the Germanic ideals were also part of the historical development of all mankind. And he could compare, and only because he really compared, he felt entitled to think about the Germanic as he did. I would have much more to say about it, but there is not enough time. A mind like Carneri's first looks at the essential nature of the various nations, and then he allows the value of his own nation to emerge before himself in the right image. He considers his own national substance in connection with other national substances. From this point of view, he says to himself: The freedom of all nations, the recognition of every nation, is compatible with everything German, because that lies in the whole German development. And this, for Carneri, is contradicted, for example, by the Pan-Slav ideal, which proceeds from the a priori view that supremacy must one day be granted to every nation; which works towards getting supremacy. In contrast to this, Carneri says: The leadership of the Germanic spirit, which dominates Europe and extends to the distant West, originates from the concept of morality, which, on the favorable soil that has made it flourish, bears beneficial fruits. It cannot, therefore, last any longer than this world is habitable. And precisely at the time when Carneri was a member of the Austrian parliament, the situation in Central Europe, particularly in the political sphere and in the field of political observation, was such that England and the English constitution were seen as a model. Many politicians wanted to model the constitution of all countries on the English model. And much else in England was seen as a model. Carneri was very much involved in such politics, where many of his comrades thought this way. But Carneri wanted to come to clarity. Carneri wanted to be objective in his view of humanity. But out of this objectivity arose his sense of belonging to the Germanic-Germanic essence and his objective assessment of a country like England. What I am going to share with you now, Carneri did not just write before the war – he died long before the war, after all – he wrote it in the 1860s. “England,” he says, ‘the country of continuous progress par excellence, will turn to general ideas if it is not to descend from the proud heights it has climbed. Nothing characterizes it better than the fact that it has become so ’practical' in the self-confident development of its greatness that it had to learn from the Germans that it had produced the greatest playwright in the world!” In a spirit like Carneri's, this is not just any kind of jingoism, it is a sense of belonging to the Germanic essence; a sense of belonging that arises from knowledge, that arises precisely from deep knowledge, and that does not want to allow itself to appear in the world and claim what it is entitled to claim before it can justify itself before the entire mission of humanity on earth. This is something that, whether it is spoken in Germany or in Austria, can find little understanding among the others, because it is basically the national conception of the specifically German.

With regard to Austria, however, I have, I believe, characterized something of Austrian-ness for you more than descriptive words can, by showing some of living people. And I hope that I have characterized Austrian character in these living people in such a way that, through the contemplation of these living people, the conviction can arise that this Austria is not just a motley collection, brought together by some arbitrary act, but that it corresponds to an inner necessity. The people I have tried to present to you prove this. And they prove this, I think, by the fact that one can say of them, as of deeply thinking souls, seeking a world view or an art out of a deep temperament, what has been said in another area and in another respect with reference to the Austrian Field Marshal Radetzky. The saying that was then repeated was once said with reference to the Austrian Field Marshal Radetzky: “In your camp is Austria!” I believe that one can expand on this saying and say of such people, as I have tried to interpret for you, that in their searching souls Austria lives, Austria lives as something that they feel is a necessity: “In their thoughts Austria lives!” And I believe that Austria lives in a very lively way.

Dear attendees! Every year I have had the privilege of speaking here in this city about topics in spiritual science. Our friends in the spiritual science movement here were of the opinion that this should also be done in these fateful days. Now it will seem understandable that these days of ours require a very special kind of consideration, even for those striving in spiritual science. After all, all our feelings and emotions are intimately connected with what is happening in the East and the West in these fateful days. We must look with heartfelt sympathy at those who are faithfully obeying the demands of duty, who are giving their all, body and soul, for what has become so deeply embedded in the course of European and indeed human development. In all our thoughts, in all our reflections, there must be a connection to the great arena in which decisions are not made and judgments are not passed in words, in concepts and ideas, but where decisions are made and judgments are passed through deeds, through life, through blood, through death.

What I would like to consider before you this evening, dear attendees, is said to be so connected with the great events of the times that the question is asked, as it were, from these events themselves: What impulses, what forces, what powers in the course of human development have led, could lead to the fact that the bearers of Central European culture, that the bearers of Central European spiritual life are now enclosed as in a mighty, enlarged fortress on all sides, have to defend themselves on all sides; not only have to defend themselves, but are burdened from all sides with all possible insults, yes, defamations. Perhaps spiritual scientific conceptions, perhaps perceptions that arise from spiritual scientific feeling, are suitable for characterizing, at least in some strokes, the larger connections that have led to our fate-shaking events in the world's development up to our time.

Among the things that the materialistic age has particularly laughed at can be mentioned the idea, the concept of the folk soul, which I tried to present in my book “Theosophy”. For the spiritual scientist, this folk soul is not just an abstract, empty concept, not just an abstract summary of the characteristics of some people. This folk soul is a living, real thing.

For spiritual science – as has often been emphasized here – the concept of reality, and also the concept of personal and individual reality, does not end with the visible. Behind the visible, everywhere, the invisible reigns. If we approach nature spiritually, then, behind what nature reveals to us externally, we find spiritual entities that are effective not only for a superstitious, traditional worldview, but for real spiritual scientific research. Behind all that we ourselves are, behind all that develops in us between birth and death, there reigns that eternal, immortal self, which, however, presents itself to man in forms and entities that he ignores in everyday life. The supersensible self rules in us, passing from birth to birth and from death to death on earth. And in all historical development, invisible, supersensible, but as real as the external beings of the animal and plant world, there are real, personal, individual beings. The spiritual researcher speaks of such real, ruling spiritual beings when he speaks of the soul of a nation. And he tries to grasp the nature of these folk souls on the basis of his knowledge; he tries to penetrate into what these folk souls are, in order to gain an understanding from this penetration of how the folk souls prevail in the folk souls, in the feelings and impulses of the folk souls, and how the folk souls relate to each other through this rule.

First of all, I would like to hint at how the spiritual researcher arrives at speaking of such higher spiritual beings, including in the sense of folk souls, which would be far too involved to explain in detail. In our material life, we relate to the things of the external world, to the things of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms; we look at what is around us within the horizon of these kingdoms; we form ideas and thoughts about them and absorb them. We know that our soul lives within us, and when we form thoughts, images and ideas, then these thoughts, images and ideas relate to beings outside of us.

What we can draw from the beings, we acquire, so to speak; we then carry this further into ourselves from the mineral, animal and plant world that extends around our senses. We form images, thoughts and ideas about the world that is below us as human beings. Spiritual research shows us – I can only hint at this today with a comparison; listeners who have heard me here often know that this is not just a comparison but a result of spiritual research – spiritual research shows us how we as human souls relate to external reality. Thus, in the invisible, there is a spiritual world above us; and what the things of the mineral, animal and plant worlds are for us, we ourselves are as souls for a spiritual world. We can say comparatively: just as the things of the sensory world become thoughts for us, so we become thoughts, so we become perceptions and ideas for the spiritual world. And the folk soul is one of the beings in the spiritual world that are closest to us. And just as we humans can relate to the external world by simply surrendering ourselves to it with our senses, giving it little thought and rarely rising to the realm of the ideal, so the folk soul can relate to the individual people of a nation by living itself out completely in the individuals, entirely [with its will impulses] – and with the folk soul it depends on will impulses – that it expresses itself entirely in the individuals, that this folk soul rises little into a spiritual realm, but rather submerges more and leads a life in the folk individuals themselves. From a spiritual-scientific point of view, we find such folk souls more among the western peoples of Europe. We find that folk souls there rise little into a spiritual realm; on the other hand, we find that they intervene decisively, tyrannically and dogmatically in the individual soul life of the members of the Western European peoples.

Another thing is conceivable and is actually in the character of the folk souls. This can be compared to when a person is more of a dreamer, when he has little eyes and little sense for the outer world; when things pass by him unnoticed, as it were, and he lives more in his own ideas. The behavior of the individual human soul towards external things can be compared to the Russian folk soul. It hovers, as it were, nebulously over the individual members of the people, does not enter into the individualities of the people; cares little about them; is only loosely connected with them.

Then there are people, and we have a representative person of this kind in the history of the development of Central Europe, who on the one hand lovingly contemplates the outside world with all his senses, but then again does not get stuck in this outside world, but develops a full ideal, spiritual-soul life, and with this spiritual-soul life plunges into what the senses around him offer and reveal. In the most eminent sense, Goethe is a representative of this kind of mind. Goethe, whose way of thinking has been called “a concrete thinking” by an important psychologist of his time, because this remarkable Goethe soul connects lovingly with everything outside through the senses, and at the same time rises so strongly to ideas. Schiller could not quite understand this in a conversation he had with Goethe, so that Goethe had to claim that he saw his ideas with his eyes. His intellectual and spiritual life was so highly developed, as was his life of the senses and outer life. The German national soul is a type of national soul that can be compared with this disposition of the individual human soul. The German national soul has proven itself as such over the centuries and millennia of German development in Central Europe.

This German national soul appears to us, on the one hand, as intimately and intimately concerned with the individual human being. On the other hand, we see how it was able to withdraw into the spiritual realms in order to open up new sources of spiritual life there, and then to go down again to the individual human beings in the German nation. A folk soul that lives in the spiritual and in the individual at the same time, that appears to us in the succession of time as if it were coming down among the people; [it appears as if it were coming down rhythmically], we see it in the decisions in which our ancestors assert themselves as opponents of the Roman development. We see how this folk soul, even then, was permeating the individual human personalities in Central Europe, how it imbued them with strength so that they could oppose in a very specific way what was intruding on them as Romanism. We then find how this folk soul withdraws, then breaks out again, submerging itself in the individual personalities, even producing a supreme one at the time of Walther von der Vogelweide [Wolfram von Eschenbach]. We find, as later when Germany was crushed from left and right, from north and south, during the Thirty Years War, this national soul gathers strength in the unseen, and then in a heyday of German spiritual development at the turn of the eighteenth, nineteenth century, it in turn submerges into the individuals.

If we observe history in its rhythmic course, we see it as alternating between the submergence of the national soul in the individualities and a return to the spiritual. And it is from this return to the spiritual that the rejuvenating forces of German development come.

If we consider the fundamental feature of this familiarity on the one hand and the soaring flight on the other of the German national soul, we understand how, within the development of German culture, what is produced as the highest , what reaches to the heights of art and intellectual life, is rooted in the simplest impulses, in the primitive of the national soul; how it was unthinkable in Germany from time immemorial that Germany's high culture was not at the same time popular culture.

And so, in these fateful times, I would like to invoke two personalities in their last moments, their dying moments, so to speak, and characterize something.

How did that which Schiller was able to be for his people settle into German hearts and minds? What worked in Schiller's mind itself? The rejuvenating powers of the German national soul! He knew himself connected to these deeper powers of the German national soul. Through one of his friends, Heinrich Voß, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, we are led into Schiller's death chamber, as it were, and get to know Schiller's last days and last moments. There we get to know him, this Schiller, as he, so to speak, already died physically in his last days, but as he, gathering all the powers of his soul, nevertheless took part in what surrounded him. There you can see how the spirit prevailed over the worn-out body, which showed a dried-up heart at the autopsy, but in which there was a warm glow. We see that this worn-out body was maintained solely by the strong soul forces that dwelled in it.

We are told how difficult Schiller's last moments were. It is touching to see how, in these last moments, he still made an effort to say this or that, which he believed he still had to communicate to those around him so that it could be passed on to posterity. We are told how Schiller had his last, his youngest child brought to his bedside, how he looked the child in the eye for a long, long time. How he then turned to the wall. And young Voß recounts that he believed – and rightly so – that Schiller looked at his child as if to say: Yes, it would be necessary for me to be your father for much longer, because I still have so much to tell you.

And it may be said that the entire German nation can imagine that the feelings that turned to the child in these last moments were turned to the entire German nation itself; as if the German nation must feel what Schiller still had to say to it. For in Schiller, the German nation can feel how he was carried in everything by the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

Let us recall the words that have been quoted frequently in recent times, which Schiller, so to speak, left as a legacy, and which show how he felt connected to the German people. These words only came to light long after his death. But they show us how Schiller himself felt carried by the forces of the German national spirit.

He who forms and rules the spirit

must ultimately gain mastery, for

finally, at the goal of time, if the

world has a plan, if human

life has any meaning, finally,

custom and reason must triumph,

the brute force of form must succumb

and the slowest nation will overtake

all the fast, fleeting ones.

[...]

Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the center of
Europe's peoples,
he is the core of humanity,
those are the flower and the leaf.

He has been chosen by the world spirit, during
the battle of time
to work on the eternal construction of human education
and to preserve what time brings,
therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign
and kept it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times,
he has preserved,
it is not lost to him, the treasures of
centuries.
Not to shine in the moment and
play his role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, but
the day of the German is the harvest of
all time.

Thus Schiller knew himself connected with the power of the German national soul.

Now we turn our gaze to another German, to a German who has risen high, one might say, into the often seemingly cold philosophical regions; we turn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. But Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times, when Germany was depressed from the west, tried - as he himself put it - to hold his “Discourses to the German Nation” from the innermost “root of the stirrings of life” of his people. He, the philosopher, who perhaps put forward the most vigorously willed thoughts to humanity, he who shaped the sharpest thoughts, he knew himself as being connected to all the primitive sources of the German people, and it was out of this consciousness that he delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time. But he also felt connected to everything that came from the German people and determined Germany's fate. And again this shows itself to us – we can look at it without sentimentality – it shows itself symbolically in his last moments.

He often deliberated with himself, Fichte, whether he should personally go to war. Then he told himself that he had to work through the power of his mind. His wife worked as a nurse in a military hospital in Berlin. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but Fichte was infected by this fever. And in his last moments – and this was strangely characteristic of this seemingly abstract and at the same time most popular philosopher – in his last days, when his crystal-clear, life-energetic thoughts feverish fantasies, he was outside with the German armies, at Blücher's crossing of the Rhine, he took a faithful part in the fighting, and felt himself in the midst of the battle. Thus, even in the feverish fantasies of the dying philosopher, the strongest German philosophy led to intimate communion with the deeds of his people. His son offered him a medicine. He pushed it away with his hand and said, letting his thoughts wander from the most human philosophy to the way he felt on the battlefields, he said: “I do not need medicine because I feel I will recover.” He recovered to death.

Such examples, esteemed attendees, show us how the forces of the German national soul were at work, where the individual souls that belong to this nation are making the way that they must describe as the most humane, as the one leading to the highest goods of humanity.

And everywhere it is shown how this German national soul does not rule over the individual in a tyrannical way, how it does not pour some kind of collective, dogmatic world view into souls; how it is experienced in the individual souls, how the individual soul feels it as its own power. And how, nevertheless, the highest developments of the supersensible spiritual life are brought into these individual souls. And again and again we see the individual soul seized afresh in all that it has to accomplish on earth, carried down from the spiritual heights by the soul of the nation.

How did this Central European people once receive Christianity! So that it was felt like the most personal impulse. We read the retelling of the Gospel stories [in Heliand, the work of the Saxon monk], we read them as something that arose directly from the most personal spiritual life, but was nevertheless the revelation of a supreme being.

And we move on. We see how later on the individual German soul is seized; so seized is it by that which encompasses the whole soul of the people, that this German soul in German mysticism in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth century feels God so that this God lives directly in all that the individual can will, feel and love, what the individual soul feels directly within itself as the eternal-living. How the words of Master Eckhart resound in us: “If you love God, then you can do whatever you want, [for then you will only want the eternal and the one, which God also wills. I will not ask God to give himself, I will ask him to make me pure, then he will flow into me of his own accord. God is a pure good in Himself and therefore does not want to dwell anywhere, for He may pour Himself entirely into a pure soul. When it is so pure that it sees through itself, then it need not seek God in the form, but it sees Him in itself and enjoys all creatures in God and God in all creatures, and whatever it does, it does in God and] God does in you.” That is to say, they maintain a familiar dialogue not only with what they are as individuals, but also with what, as the soul of the people, whispers and rests through all the minds of the people.

And think of Angelus Silesius, who lived in the seventeenth century. How he empathizes with the individual soul of the human being with the whole soul of the people. How we read there - I will quote only one saying - how Silesius, the “Cherubic Wayfarer,” has made countless such sayings.

I neither live nor die. God himself dies in me, and what I am to live, he also lives for and for.

This means feeling at one with the spirit that lives and breathes in the world. At the same time, it means carrying within oneself a supreme consciousness of immortality. When a person feels connected in their soul to the divine source of existence, they say: “I neither die nor live. God himself dies in me.” There is the certainty that God does not die; but that it is God who goes with me through death. There I feel so connected with God that through this my immortality is granted. There you see the peculiarity, how intimately the soul of the people lives with the individual mind of the people.

When we look at the human soul from a spiritual scientific point of view, then we see – not by dividing it up in the abstract, but by looking at this soul in a truly scientific way, and this is not what science does today, but it is something that the science of the future will certainly do – we see that we can distinguish three soul elements, three soul expressions in the human soul. Just as one can distinguish the different color shades in the spectrum, so one can and must distinguish quite scientifically in the human soul: the sentient soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. And within each of these there is that which is called the human being's ego, the actual self of the human being. Just as light reigns in the reddish-yellow, greenish, and blue-violet parts of the rainbow, so the power of the self, of the ego of man, reigns through the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul.

Now the peculiar thing about trying to understand the peoples of Europe from a spiritual scientific point of view is that it shows that the soul of a nation, for example the Italian soul, relates primarily to the individual human being in such a way that the soul of the nation stimulates the sentient soul and works through the sentient soul. In the case of the French nation, the soul of the nation works through the intellectual or mind soul. In the British nation, the folk soul works through the consciousness soul. In the Russian nation, the folk soul hovers over the soul forces, leaving the soul forces in a kind of [anarchic] state. The German folk soul directly stimulates the I. It does not express itself in a particular part of the soul, but by taking hold of the whole soul; hence its rejuvenating power. Hence the possibility for the German, when seized by the power of his folk soul. [At a certain time, it lovingly seized what was offered in Italy, France, and England, but always rejuvenated it, elevating it within itself to an independent existence.] How lovingly did the German spirit of his time take hold of what was offered to humanity by Eckhart and Tauler! But how did it rejuvenate it by stimulating the whole self through the whole spectrum! How did it raise it to the most independent, personal and inward existence! How was he, with his ever-rejuvenating power of the I-seizing folk soul, how was the German in the present able to present that which encompasses the whole human being as the highest representative of humanity. No other nation could have produced a work of literature like Faust, because no other nation is so deeply moved in its immediate self by the national soul, through all the elements of the soul's spectrum. But that is also why this German essence is so little understood and so misunderstood in all directions.

If we look to the West, we see how everything that arises most deeply from the German soul, what is present there in a completely undogmatic way, always stimulating striving, is expressed in a crude way through language; how it is often not understood and is either rejected emotionally or critically. One is tempted to say: the best that the Central European folk soul instills in the people of Central Europe is “understood” in the West, even when it is tried to be understood, in such a way that precisely the immediate invigoration is lost. And this extends even to the contemplation of the figures.

We can learn a lot about the peculiarities of European cultures by considering how much is understood in the West when it is understood through the Western European strength of the national soul. Herman Grimm, the art historian, once said quite rightly [about a book about Goethe by the Englishman Lewes]: “A certain Mr. Lewes in England has written a book about a person who was born in August 1749 in Frankfurt, who died in March 1832 in Weimar, to whom Mr. Lewes attributes [“The Sorrows of Young Werther”, “Clavigo” and so on], such fates, which we know Goethe experienced. To whom he also attributes the writing of Goethe's works. But everything he describes about this man is only coincidentally connected to the man who was born in 1749 and died in 1832. For that which connects Goethe's work with the life of the Central European folk soul has not been transferred, not even in the slightest, into the book that Mr. Lewes has written about a certain Goethe, who is not, however, the creator of Faust for the Central European in reality. One can grasp the external, the coarse, that through which the other appears. But that which lives in the folk soul, animating the individual soul, is lost, one does not see it. This is perhaps a little too radically expressed in Herman Grimm. But it shows what it is about.

And so we must also find that in the way German essence is understood by French essence, there is something that proves to us that the French soul of the people is such that it enters into the soul of the mind, determining the mind's soul, directly tyrannizing the soul of the mind, so that the soul of the people thinks in the individual and radiates through the impulses of the will of the individual. While the German folk soul becomes the confidante of the individual human being.

And if we now look over to the East, to the Russian people. In Russia, much attention has been paid to Kant, to Hegel, Belinsky. But all this shows a very particular peculiarity: the thoughts of Central Europe become strangely ghostly in the East. They are felt and experienced not in the soul-elevating sensation, but like thought ghosts, conceptual ghosts; like what lives in the secular of the national groupings that lives above the individuals.

In saying this, I am expressing something that is just as much a part of the strict body of knowledge as the physical, chemical and biological truths are. Even though it is more difficult to talk about these things because people are indifferent to physical, chemical and biological truths, whereas the truths presented here are related to the fate and nature of man. But we live in a time in which the human soul must rise above that which impairs the human [...] and we live in a time in which such things must be spoken, in which we must gain understanding for the impulses that are going through the world and that have brought about what is now there.

It is rightly said that the two Central European peoples have been surrounded and enclosed in the last decades, as if with iron clamps, the Central European states. But for the spiritual researcher, this encirclement begins much earlier. And the outer, one might say materialistic encirclement, which had its main organizer in Edward VII, this materialistic encirclement is the last [representative] of an ancient encirclement that began in the year 860 of our era. These connections must be borne in mind. In 860, on the one hand, the Normans were standing outside Paris and, on the other hand, the Varangians came down [outside Novgorod and Kiev] and threatened Constantinople, and then, when they pushed into the Slavic area across Russia to Kiev, to Constantinople, on the other hand, parts of the Normans pushed in [into the Romance element], and we have a coiled snake in Central Europe. Those who remained Central Europeans were to be surrounded and encircled. And in the West, we have the nations pushing in and becoming permeated by a folk soul, pushing into the Romance element, which then, from south to northwest, becomes the substance of the folk soul's nature, so that thinking becomes dogmatic, so that on this side everything must be taken dogmatically, so that we see how what is directly human, what arises from the intimate contact of the human soul with the folk soul, is taken dogmatically in the West by the intellect soul, which is permeated by the traditional Romanism. [Thus Central Europe is isolated. This must be taken dogmatically. If the world is not taken in this way, the folk soul, which is permeated with the old Romanism, will not be individualized.]

On the other hand, in the East we see how a folk soul comes into being when the Varangians, who are related to the Normans, merge with the Slavs, are permeated by the Slavs, and are permeated racially by the Byzantines in religious terms. And we see that what arises there remains at the level of the racial personality, as something aloof and unapproachable, which never comes down. Thus in the East one is dealing with that which directly asserts the racial element. Towards the West, with that which is an ancient and renewed feeling, which dogmatizes the individual. They see that one can only understand what human souls produce by doing so.

In the center we see that which is encircled and enclosed from all sides, which always wants to bring forth something new and wants to offer on the altar of human development that which can arise from the intimate connections of the individual souls with the folk soul.

Thus we experience the remarkable phenomenon that to this day, even in our most painful days, what emerges in Central Europe is observed by the West, but in observing it, it must necessarily be misunderstood because it is measured not by human experience but by one's own dogma; by what the soul of the people tyrannically commands from the soul of reason. We are experiencing some very characteristic phenomena in this regard. On the surface, people want to acknowledge that the Germans have achieved a great deal, that they have attained a high level of culture in thought, in philosophy, in poetry, and in other branches of art; but then, when a man has sipped a little and even translates it quite ingeniously into the realm of Western popular culture, as Henri Bergson did, when a man surveys something ingeniously, it is still German conceived in the French manner, German translated into the way of the West. And now he feels compelled – we had to read this around Christmas, how he spoke in the so-called [Academy of Moral and Political Sciences], we had to read it, how he tries to characterize the German character. And this German essence appears to him as if it only wanted to be embodied in cannons and rifles, in what the silly chatter calls “German militarism”; that militarism to which Germany has been forced, not by itself, but by those who surrounded it. One would like to ask such a man what he actually expected Germany to put up against its enemies other than rifles and cannons. Did he perhaps imagine that Novalis or Schiller or Goethe would be recited to the armies of Germany?

The question is: What does the Central European have to defend? What he has to defend can be seen from a consideration of what the German national soul is to the individual German. But such considerations will only become important when they can take hold of and find an echo in the reasonable people of the world within a somewhat broader horizon. Today logic is not exactly what is being whispered throughout the world. We have even had to hear that when there was a manifestation from the German side, the response from the left and right in Europe was: We did not want this war. They did not want it. Yes, from a logical point of view; that is quite correct, from a logical point of view. You can believe it. It is just as right as when a number of people surround the house of another person. He sees that he is locked in his house. He goes out and beats those who surround him. And then they say: We did not want the beating. The logic is exactly the same in both cases. Logic does not whisper today through what is called the “intercourse of nations”, especially through the newspapers. It can be seen everywhere through facts: what the German national soul says to the individual German can be grasped in the West, it can be heard, but it cannot be effective for the reasons just given.

We are experiencing strange phenomena. This power of the German national soul - in enlightened minds, in minds that want to deal with it, something of it has come to light after all. It is not exactly pleasant to speak characteristically about the Central European people in the midst of them. And so I will choose a different approach. I would like to raise the question: Has this German character really always been misunderstood, as it is now, even outside the German-speaking areas? There is a man who certainly belongs to the most important minds of the nineteenth century. And I would like to read to you a passage from a book about Goethe, who appears to him as the representative of the German character, [Emerson]. He says, a man who lives far away from Central Europe, he says about Goethe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public.

- [A trait] is mentioned that Goethe shares with his entire nation:

that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are satisfied only when it works for or against a party in line with its convictions. In France, one is delighted to see brilliant ideas, wherever they may lead. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they write stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness, but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself about them. There is intellectual activity, so what is it expressing? What are people's opinions? Where do they come from? Where do they get all these ideas?

The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

[We see that the rejuvenating effect of the German national soul has not always been recognized.

For this reason, the terms of distinction used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, view their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something else in mind that is even better. [...] He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from contact with the truth.

Thus, one felt what the German could achieve in contact with the truth, that is, in contact with his national soul, where one wanted to feel it.

Now one could say: That was a long time ago. And it has been said. The Germans have changed since then. Instead of poetry, they have made cannons. Now, so that this too can be countered, the saying of another man should be mentioned here, who in his way must have touched - we will soon see why - to the west that which is the German national character.

The source of the stream of

— Germany's —

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a large extent practical and material.

And elsewhere the same man says:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of suspicion and free us from the need to prepare for attacks that no one really has in mind.

Who said that? Well, Lord Haldane said it. You may remember how he said some other things a few months ago! Not so long ago, just a few months before this war broke out, a lecture was given in Manchester by a few Englishmen who were supposed to educate English journalists about the German character. From the newspapers that are now appearing, one can see what fruit this has borne, what use it has been. But we will soon see what was said in Manchester, in England, about the German character.

Woods

- the Englishman –

essay was the forerunner of the even more epoch-making Homeric research of Wolf; and the Greek ideals of art and life became for Goethe and Schiller at Weimar, as in the case of Herder, the ideals of [primeval] song, the instruments on which the German spirit played itself up to a music that was new and yet at the same time, in the deepest sense, its own.

Now come some remarkable words:

The highly favored elite among Descartes' and Newton's countrymen knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by thousands of German researchers.

Spoken in Manchester to enlighten English journalists; that's why they are so enlightened now!

Imagination, feeling, will asserted their right to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was sought from the child and the flower; science, philosophy, and poetry drew near each other. In England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left science and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that creates, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

In Faust, at the end of his eventful life, we see a portrayal of present-day Germany, the Germany of restless, bold will and action, and we can understand all the better why the [great] citizen of the world, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable place as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.

And now a very curious thing. The following was also said in the same lecture cycle in Manchester shortly before the outbreak of the war:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason.

So says an Englishman!

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe, and therefore also for Great Britain. Because the events of the years 1866-1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war

- in this he was, however, mistaken -

which in earlier centuries had so often lured France onto the wrong track;

- that has been said, not in Berlin and not in Hanover, but in Manchester. -

they put the German people in a position to develop their previously stunted political abilities, and they helped to build a new European system on a secure foundation that preserved peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to achieve, namely to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

This was said in Manchester, a year before the war. The matter speaks for itself, we hardly need to add anything.

We see, then, that people have sometimes known what the Central European nation has to contribute to the overall culture of humanity. Yes, sometimes they have even known it quite thoroughly. Here is another example of how thoroughly they have known it. There was a certain man, also over there in the West, who was closer to us than the others we have just spoken of; a certain man whom the world calls a mystic. The man has undoubtedly written very brilliant works. Once he expressed himself about where the deepest thoughts of his soul came from, and he cited three world-historical phenomena. The third is the German poet Novalis. When we hear his poetry, we have the immediate feeling that the rejuvenating power of the folk soul speaks intimately to his soul, so that it can express what the folk soul is telling him. Now, what does this man feel about Novalis? He says:

What people describe on earth, what poets say, a Sophocles, a Shakespeare, what these Desdemona, Ophelia, what Hamlet and so on experience, it all happens between people. But if a spirit from a different plane were to descend to earth, could this spirit of a different plane find something on earth that also interests him, the spirit who is not of the earth?

And the man now finds that what the German poet Novalis expressed could also interest a spirit who descends from another plane as a genius. He finds that Novalis touched on secrets of the human soul, which the soul must often keep silent about, because it can only find the right words in the solemn moments of life to express these secrets, these supersensible secrets of life. So says the man. And we want to write these words very deeply into our souls, for they are beautiful, these words that he says in reference to his experience of Novalis. He says:

On these heights alone are memories that the soul can form, and images that resemble it and are as compelling as itself. There, humanity ruled for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the spiritual realm to the earth.

- and of those lights, says the man, Novalis has lit many. And he continues –

but in their works, the aforementioned people

- including Novalis -

left the little village of passions and said things that are also of value to those who are not of the earthly community.

Thus one speaks of one of the most German of Germans, Novalis. A man speaks thus, and we could assume that this man, who obviously loves the spiritual, would instruct all those who now speak of the German “barbarians” with the words: For these words, which I have now read, are also from the man of whom I will read something else:

In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak, childlike voice amidst the useless cries that surround it.

Yes, it can be said that in the midst of the useless shouting that is now speaking of Germany's “barbarism,” such words as those of the man can hardly be heard. But who said all this? Maurice Maeterlinck. Well, you know how Maeterlinck himself has gone among the useless shouters in recent months. We don't need to add anything to that either.

But then, when we hear such voices, we say to ourselves: They are proof that what wells up from the German national soul into the individual German souls is already penetrating across the borders, but it cannot come into effect. And it cannot come into effect properly even where it seems ghostly. I have shown that it has a ghostly effect in the East. Yes, if one asks: What is it that people feel from this participation of the German national soul in German culture, even those who speak of Western European culture in the East? One can often hear something like the words I would like to read to you now. When Herman Grimm speaks of the alleged Goethe of Mr. Lewes in the way I have mentioned, we notice a coarsening in this Mr. Lewes; but how what one wants to absorb but cannot absorb becomes ghostly towards the East is shown to us by words that Mereschkowski spoke about Goethe. He says:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed and shriveled into a dwarf by an evil spell; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German burgher and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.

Thus Mereschkowski speaks of the poet of Faust. Nor should one be deceived by the words which Mereschkowski says about Goethe in the final sentence of his essay. If one reads the foregoing, which is inspired throughout by the same spirit, one sees that Mereschkowski cannot rise up to Goethe, that he sees him only as a ghost. And much of this kind could be cited. But of course, when one of the leading spirits of the East, about Chekhov, Mereschkowski himself has to say:

No era, no people, as if in the midst of eternity there were only the end of the nineteenth century and in the world only Russia. Infinitely sharp-eyed and bright-eared [for] everything Russian and contemporary, he is almost blind and deaf to the foreign and the past. He saw Russia more clearly than anyone else, but overlooked Europe, overlooked the world.

One can find it understandable, must find it understandable, that Central Europe is currently only a specter for the East, which is transferred up into the national soul hovering over the individual. There is not enough time to prove this in detail, but it could be proven. On the other hand, it can truly be said that what can be called “the rejuvenating power of the German national soul” not only gives us insight into the nature of the German national soul in the past, but also gives us strength, faith and hope for the German national soul in the future.

Indeed, the German knows how to take Goethe somewhat differently than the others. And for this I may cite a saying that Herman Grimm in turn has done about Goethe. This saying has been done in lectures on Goethe, in lectures that speak differently than the one whom Herman Grimm himself has dismissed in the manner indicated, Lewes. Herman Grimm perceives Goethe as a confidant of the German people themselves; but also as an impulse, as a force that works and will continue to work within German culture, just as cosmic changes in the earth must work in relation to physical conditions. Herman Grimm says of Goethe:

Goethe has worked in the spiritual life of Germany as a powerful natural phenomenon would have worked in the physical. Our coal deposits tell of times of tropical warmth when palm trees grew in our country. Our opening caves tell of ice ages when reindeer were native to our country. Over vast periods of time, dramatic upheavals took place on German soil, which in its present state gives such an appearance of eternal immutability. The comparison can be drawn that Goethe's influence on the intellectual atmosphere of Germany was roughly equivalent to a telluric event, which increased our climatic warmth by so many degrees on average. If something like that happened, a different vegetation, a different operation of agriculture and with it a new basis for our entire existence would occur.

This is how Herman Grimm feels Goethe within German intellectual life. Gradually, a different intellectual vegetation, a different intellectual climate, will occur through Goethe, says Herman Grimm.

This same Herman Grimm, in a manner that brought out the whole character of the German spirit, spoke of how the German folk soul has worked in German culture to arrive at views that seek the universal in the particular national spirit. Thus Herman Grimm demonstrated the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul by showing how he himself was attuned to the course of the world spirit at the end of the nineteenth century. For in 1895 the beautiful words were spoken that express the mood of a German who knew himself to be one with the living and breathing German national soul. Herman Grimm said:

The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people today is the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious endeavors of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national difference can be maintained in the face of the ethical worldview.

Herman Grimm continues:

We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland,

he says, and then the significant words follow:

But to long for or to hasten the moment when this could happen through war, we are far removed. The assurance that peace is our most sacred desire is not a lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill to men” permeates us.

But the fact that Herman Grimm saw through his time, that he was not a dreamer, that he was able to grasp reality under the guidance of the German soul, is attested by what he now says:

As a totality, men acknowledge themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned as it were in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist, and to whose judicial procedure they seek to adapt their internal dissensions. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today are at pains to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, and even the Germans themselves, recognize it.

You see, in 1895 Herman Grimm had a clear view of how things stand. Those who are accustomed to seeing things this way do not let themselves be called out: Who wanted the war!

Among the hundreds and hundreds of testimonies I could present, here is one more. A person who is not particularly fond of Germanic nature writes the following words:

As far as I am concerned, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. Since the Crimean War, a long time has passed and, it seems, it is now considered appropriate in St. Petersburg to take up the Oriental question again.

Yes, my dear attendees, these words were not spoken just a few months before the war. They were written in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Even those who saw things clearly never realized that the nations pushed into the middle of Europe would be locked up like in a fortress by those who misunderstood and do not understand them on all sides.

It is curious when, in the face of such words, one tries to express the opinion that the Germans wanted this war. I would like to use the few moments remaining to me for this lecture to present something about this “the Germans wanted this war” that may speak volumes to anyone who wants to see clearly.

Let us assume that someone had observed what was going on in the weeks before the outbreak of war - in the spring of 1914, when the press was perhorresziert the political horizon - and he wanted to express that; what would he have had to say in 1914, after the events that took place? He would have had to say something like the following:

[One could see how a press campaign was gradually beginning in St. Petersburg, how strong pressure was being exerted on Austria that, if accepted, would have resulted in Austria and Germany becoming dependent on Russia. And yet one could not have contradicted the Russian friends when they said that there was no reason for a war between Russia and Germany.

Not true, in 1914, in July, it could have been expressed quite well, and it could have been applied to the immediate events of the present. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have not read you anything that was said in July 1914, but, with some modification, the words that [Bismarck spoke on February 6, 1888 in the Reichstag] to justify the military bill. And now I read his own words, so you can see that I have not only the words, but only the time somewhat rectihziert:

[...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [through which German politics was attacked], I personally was suspected in my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year until 1879 to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend my hand to this, because if we estranged ourselves from Austria, then we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: We have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our politics (for a certain time) to the Russian politics would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

However, if things are as they have been presented, if the national soul in the West and in the East must behave in relation to what the strength of the German national soul is, then it will be a mistake to believe that this war was wanted by Central Europe in 1914. For it has been clear for decades how everything has been done to bring about the current events.

Not only the subtle Herman Grimm spoke of the will for peace in Central Europe. It may also be recalled that not only where, like Herman Grimm, as a man ethically on the heights of his time, was in touch with the German national soul, but also where one was politically inspired by the German national soul, one spoke in a similar way.

In 1888, in Berlin, again Bismarck spoke in such a way that no desire for war was expressed. Bismarck said:

With the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be, one does not attack. If I were to stand before you today and tell you - if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are: We are seriously threatened by France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe it as a diplomat after military intelligence about this, it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today. Yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would have the confidence in me to grant it. I hope not!

One day, my dear audience, we will come to feel, not only from reason but also from our instincts, something of the real causes of this war and the driving forces that led to it. One will sense something of the will that concentrated against Central Europe in order to stop the eternally rejuvenating German national soul in its element.

The images that can be gained by surveying the workings and weavings of European national souls in recent decades show how the storm is looming. Can we not say the following: If one wanted to delve into the goings-on and workings of the German national soul as they were in the times before this war broke out, could one not come to the following thoughts? Allow me to read this to you as well. You will see in a moment that I also have a certain idea:

German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it. [...]

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

Across every border and across the water sit the adversaries, commercial and political, waiting anxiously for the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce and overwhelm, and Germany knows it.

[This is how Mrs. Wylie wrote in her book “Eight Years in Germany,” which was published about two years before the war. It is quite good when such people try to delve into the German national soul.

So, these are the things that are awakened as an echo when one tries to understand what the German seeks in intimate dialogue with his national soul. And what was it that the German always tried to find in his dialogue with his national soul? It was always that which should enable the individual human being, the individual human soul, the individual human spirit to find its way to the spiritual heights of the world, where all things have their source and origin, where the eternal part of the human soul itself also has its source and origin.

Spiritual science, precisely because of its sources, must believe in the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul; believe because it is aware that in the course of world history this German national soul has always ascended to spiritual heights , descended to the human selves in order to convey to them the truth of their eternity. Spiritual science has its roots and its source in German idealism, and we can prove that spiritual science is closely related to this German idealism.

What does spiritual science say, not in the abstract but in concrete terms, about the future of the human soul? That in this body lives an immortal self that goes through births and deaths again and again; that when spiritual initiation is attained, when spiritual knowledge and spiritual reality are attained through research, the soul is grasped outside of the body; that it looks back at this body as if at an external object, so pre-sensing that which the human soul experiences when it has passed through the gate of death. Spiritual science does not speak in general terms that the human soul is eternal, but in such a way that it clearly points to what, after death, looks back on what lived in the body. Spiritual science describes this very specifically. And only today can it do so.

And true spiritual science, as we in Central Europe consider it to be, is aware that it owes the powers of research only to the connection of the German national soul with the German philosophers. If someone who professes spiritual science today wants to use a comparison in the truest sense of the word for something that has passed and must find its future, if someone who is a true believer in spiritual science wanted to say: I think something completely new must be introduced into humanity, something that is still met with many prejudices today; but to me, these prejudices seem like what the soul of the corpse feels when it looks back at the corpse after death.

One might think that only a spiritual researcher could make such a comparison, because only recently has spiritual research been able to confirm that the soul really does this after going through death. I will present such a comparison to you:

Time appears to me like a shadow that stands over its dead, from which an army of diseases has just driven it out, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed spirit has entered, have already taken her up and surround her with a warm breath of love; the secret voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within herself in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which it is to grow; but it has as yet no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or, if it had, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with which it believes itself to have been lost at the same time.

Today, one really believes that only a spiritual researcher could speak in this way. It is Fichte who spoke in this way in his “Speeches to the German Nation”; addressing the corpse as he would a corpse in what he wants to replace the old German education with a new education.

Thus, whatever can be desired today is rooted in the germs that German idealism sought from the union with the German national soul, from these rejuvenating powers of the German national soul.

And if we want to have confidence that spiritual science can really unfold as a new fruit on the tree of German development, we need only look at what can be seen as the true essence of the German national soul, as the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. The true essence of the German national soul is precisely this ever-rejuvenating power.

And when we look at the fateful events of today, we feel them like a twilight. But we look into the future and want to understand that a horizon warmed and illuminated by the sun must arise from this twilight; that the German national soul will have the strength to rejuvenate German character and German striving. And whatever is undertaken against this German essence, against this German striving, will not be able to rob it of its breath of life, because that which is present as the highest life in the German essence is the ever-rejuvenating powers of the German national soul. If it has produced so many rungs in German culture, it must also produce new fruits. That is our hope, and that is not something vague, that is something well-founded! We look hopefully towards the horizon, which will show us precisely one of the fruits of German development: a spiritual-scientific worldview that will flow through all hearts and souls and will connect spirit and body. When people see the spiritual as a reality, when they know how the spiritual passes through the gate of death, when they look at the spiritual as science today looks at the external physical forces, when they know that nothing is lost, then they will know that the countless spiritual parts that now pass through the gate of death from young bodies cannot be lost. They, these soul-like human faculties, which could have continued to serve the body for decades to come, will not only be felt in the abstract sense as something eternal in the future, as was possible according to ancient knowledge, but they will be felt as something that lives on, that those who have followed the duties of the time through the gate of death or suffering have incorporated into the spiritual stream of existence.

And they will feel a concrete connection when times of peace come again out of this twilight of war. Those who have borne the best fruits of the German character will feel a special connection with all those who have gone through the gates of death.

So it can be said, summarizing what I have tried to express before you today: Yes, this German spirit has not yet fully accomplished what its mission in the world was. It is connected with the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. And if you look at the true nature of the German national soul, then you know: the driving forces are there, the invisible forces of German life are unchanged among us. And to all those who today speak of Germany's weakness or of a weakening or destruction of the German character, to them the one who objectively recognizes what the rejuvenating power of the German national soul whispers to individual Germans, to them he calls out into the world the meaning that he perceives from the work of the German national soul:

The German spirit has not completed

what it is to accomplish in the course of the world.

It lives in the future, hopeful,

It hopes for future deeds full of life;

In the depths of his being, he feels a mighty

secret that is still to take effect as it matures.

How can a mind, uncomprehending,

Wish for its end to come:

As long as life reveals itself to him,

Which holds him in the roots of creation?

We have often approached the question that must interest us all: Where does it actually come from that relatively few people today still find access to the spiritual knowledge of the world order? This question can be answered from a wide variety of points of view. Today we want to consider a point of view that can then bring us certain thoughts that may be very important to take in, especially in the present time. When we consider man's relationship to the spiritual world, we are naturally interested in various things in this field. One that interests us most is the relationship that a person can have with those human souls who, from his own circle, from the circle with which he is connected karmically, have passed through the gates of death and are now in the spiritual realm. The relationship with the so-called dead will always be of the greatest interest for the relationship of the human being to the spiritual world. This relationship shows particularly how fundamentally different the view of the spiritual world approached man than the view of the physical-sensual world. I have often mentioned that when man confronts the spiritual world, it very often happens that he has to radically break with the ideas he has formed about physical existence. He has to break radically because the things and processes of the spiritual world often have to be grasped by concepts that are the opposite of those of the physical world. But one must not believe that one can come to a knowledge of the spiritual world by imagining, for example, that one simply has to turn the physical world upside down and reverse everything. That is not the case. Each one must be specially experienced, specially investigated. But just when it concerns the relation of man to the so-called dead, there it is indeed the case, at least for the time being, that we must acquire the ordinary concepts opposed to the physical ones.

The spiritual researcher can initially only relate how things are. What he has to say about the relationship to the so-called dead is more or less present in every person in reality, but only remains in the subconscious if the person is not a spiritual researcher. So I will tell you things that are present for all of you. I will speak about relationships to the so-called dead in which you all find yourselves. Only that this relationship is unconscious at first. Spiritual science has to bring these things into consciousness.

Let us assume that someone to whom the spiritual world has revealed itself is confronted with a particular dead person. It turns out that when we address the dead person in speech, we naturally do so not with physical words but in thought. When we turn to the dead person in thinking and speaking, then, if the relationship with the dead person is a real one, the feeling arises: What we ask the dead person or what we tell them comes from them. We are accustomed to imagining things differently in our physical lives: when we ask someone something or tell them something, we hear ourselves speaking and address the words to them. It is the other way around when we enter into a relationship with the dead. If we want to communicate something to him and the relationship is to be a real one, we have the feeling that we ourselves are inwardly at peace. For when what we have to ask or communicate really reaches him, it seems to us, in contemplation, as if the words, and thus the thoughts, come from him to us. He speaks to us. And what he says to us rises from the depths of our own soul as an answer or a message. The relationship that I have just described, which is quite the opposite of the relationship we have with a person in the physical world, is something that people do not easily notice in ordinary life because it is quite different from what they are used to. If it were not so extraordinarily difficult for people to get used to the unusual, many more people would be able to tell of their relationship with the dead.

Take a particular case. You are always in a relationship with some karmically connected dead person. If you want to make this relationship particularly intimate and particularly real, then you would do well to bear in mind an important rule: abstract thoughts and abstract ideas have the least significance for the spiritual world. Anything that remains abstract does not reach across into the spiritual world. So if you only think in abstracto, let us say, of the dead, if you - one can also say it that way - abstractly love the dead, not much comes across. On the other hand, if you strongly link this relationship to something concrete, then it comes across. I mean it like this: you remember, for example, a certain situation in which you were with the dead person when he was still alive. You imagine it very precisely: how he stood or sat opposite you, how you went for a walk with him. You imagine him in very specific situations, you imagine what it was like, what he said, what you said to him, you imagine the tone of his voice and try – which is the most difficult thing – to let the feelings you had for him become present in your soul again. You tie in with specific experiences you had with him. And then, starting from there, you try to say something to the dead person, something you would say if he were still alive in some situation, something you want to ask him, something you want to tell him. And you do this as if he were still there, again very specifically. That is enough to make the connection. In the moment when you have the feeling: I am now telling the dead person something – or: I am now asking the dead person something – the connection will not be made immediately. You have to allow time for this. Time is really something that has a completely different meaning for the spiritual life than it does for physical existence.

Even if you are not a spiritual scientist yourself, you can still establish a connection with the dead through what I have just characterized, so that it is a reality. But time itself will be waiting, so to speak, so that what you want to send to the dead person really does get through to him. For someone who is not consciously initiated, who does not consciously have a relationship with the spiritual world, the situation will usually be such that one moment seems particularly important for establishing this relationship with the dead: that is the moment of falling asleep. The moment of transition from waking to sleeping is at the same time the moment that usually carries what you have directed to the dead during the day, as I have described it, over to the dead. The path that leads you into the spiritual world when you fall asleep also leads what you have directed to the dead into the realm of the dead. Therefore, you must be careful when interpreting dreams. Dreams are very often only reminiscences, memories of daily life, but they do not have to be; they can also be reflections of realities. And in particular, dreams in which the dead are dreamt do not always, but very often, actually originate in connection with real dead people. But people usually believe what appears to them in the dream, what the dead person communicates to them, as being as direct a reality as it appears in the dream. It is not so, but what you wanted to communicate to the dead person when you fell asleep, that is received by the dead person, and what appears in the dream is how he receives it. So just when the dead person communicates something to you in a dream, it is intended to show you that you were able to communicate something to him. There you have what I characterized: You are much more likely to say, when the dead person appears to you in a dream and says something to you, than to believe that you dreamt of the dead person, that what you said to the dead person has really reached the dead person; by dreaming of him, he shows me that what I wanted to communicate to him has reached him.

For a message from the dead to come back – let's say a reply or something similar – the moment of waking up is again of particular importance. What is transmitted from the spiritual realms is what the dead person has to communicate to us living, as we say, at the moment of waking up. And then it comes up from the depths of one's own soul. It is peculiar to people that they do not like to pay attention to what comes up from the depths of their own soul. In our time, people do not have much sense of paying attention to what comes up from the depths of the soul. People prefer to be impressed only by the outside world, to absorb only what is outside; they would prefer to numb themselves to what rises from the depths of the soul. But when someone becomes aware that something is rising from the depths of the soul, a thought, an idea, they take it for inspiration. That satisfies vanity more. We consider all things that arise from the depths to be our inspiration. They may be, but mostly they are not. Most of the time, the things that arise from our soul as inspiration are the answers that the dead give us. For the dead live with us. What seems to come from you is actually what the dead say. It is only important that we interpret the experience in the right way. I have often mentioned what can be said in detail about our relationship with the dead: reading aloud and so on. The more vividly, the more emotionally, the more pictorially one lives in these things, the more meaningful the connection with the dead will be.

It is not meaningless to have these conditions clearly before one's soul. For our time has a great need to allow the truths that relate to such things as I have just mentioned to come closer together. We live in a time in which, for many long ages, the human organism has actually been in decline. We are all much more spiritual, much wiser than it appears because of the decline of our body. The Greek bodies were still better able to reflect what the person was in spirit. Actually, since the middle of the Atlantean period, the human being has been in decline in relation to his body, and in our age it is becoming particularly pronounced that the body can no longer reflect what the person actually is in spirit. Thus it happens almost incredibly often in our age that when we die - I would like to call it that - we are not yet finished with our development. If only people would understand that! We develop throughout our lives, but we can only become aware of this development to the extent that the body reflects it. We are sometimes so wise as people when we die – only our declining body is not able to bring these things out for us – that we could still do very important work for the earth, not only in the spiritual field, but could do great service to the earth through our insights if they could be applied. These services could be applied if people, as I have indicated, were to establish relationships with the dead. The dead still want to have an influence on physical life, but they can only do so indirectly through human souls, when human souls devote themselves to them in the appropriate way.

I have probably already mentioned here that I can actually express what is personally close to me on this very point: I have never believed that I only process in a literary-historical or historical way that which ties in with Goethe in the fields of world view, but I have always believed that I am not only dealing with the Goethe of 1832, but with the Goethe of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century: with the living Goethe. With the Goethe who in 1832 carried much out of the physical world, but which can still have an effect if one is only willing to grasp it. Therefore, what I have written has not been merely literary-historical research, but the communication of what he has told me. However, our so-called contemporary culture, our contemporary education, works radically against what I have just explained.

It is actually necessary that spiritual science always ties in with life and is made fruitful by life. In our time, I would say, there is an ideal that completely opposes what I have just expressed as a peculiarity of our time. This ideal can be characterized something like this: People are striving more and more to believe in life as little as possible. They actually only believe in life until their twenties. This can already be seen in the practical goals that people set. Even if we go to Greece, we see that people believed that when they got older, they would be wiser than when they were young. The older person can know better things about state and city institutions than a young person. This belief has been completely discarded, because the ideal of most people today is to set the age at which one can be elected to city or state parliaments as early as possible, because people only believe in life until their early twenties. But life really requires us to believe in it as a whole, to believe in the development of all life. Just think how our social life would change through moral impulses if we knew once more that all of life is developing around the human being. How young people would relate to the elderly if this were deeply rooted in the human soul! Imagine what a difference it makes to one's consciousness when one says to oneself again and again: Now I am just a young badger of thirty, thirty-five years old, but I will also get older one day, and growing older means hope for me, an expectation: there will be something that will come when I get older that cannot come while I am young. Do you realize how much joy and strength of life a human being has when he has this consciousness throughout his whole life until death and still says to himself before death: Yes, I cannot get so far as to reflect everything that life offers me into my consciousness; I will carry something through death; then people will believe in the dead and let the dead be co-advisors. Just think how foolish one would be considered if one were to express this, which must become a practical principle today, as such. I am quite serious when I say that our parliaments throughout the world would come up with better ideas than they do today if the dead were also consulted, if we were to ask today: What do not only the young badgers of thirty, thirty-five years say about this? – but: What does Goethe, for example, or what do other dead people say who are a hundred and so and so many years old? – This is something that must immediately become a practical reality for the future.

Today there are certain, well, let's say secret societies; they cultivate all kinds of old symbols. They would do better if they understood the times and made themselves into places where the counsel of the dead is explored. This is so infinitely significant! For humanity will not move forward if it does not imbue itself with the awareness that the divine-spiritual is at work in the development of our entire life; we are not finished in our twenties.

I have already drawn your attention to this here: in the early days of human development, it was the case that people felt their whole life developing, purely through their physical and bodily development, including emotionally and spiritually. Just as today people only feel their soul and spiritual life going along with their physical and bodily life during puberty or otherwise only into their twenties, so in ancient times people felt their soul and spiritual life going along with their physical and bodily life up to their forties or fifties. But from the age of thirty-five onwards, if one remains capable of development, precisely those spiritual powers develop, because the body then declines, which the human being does not come to if he does not allow them to sprout through spiritual science. In the past, people revered the elderly because they knew that something was revealed in them that cannot yet be revealed to young people. I have pointed out that humanity is getting younger and younger. If we go back to the original Indian culture, it was the case that at that time people remained capable of development until their fifties. In the original Persian culture, they remained capable of development until their forties, in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture until the second half of their thirties, and in the Greek-Latin culture until their thirty-fifth year. When Greco-Latin culture came to an end in the 15th century, people were only capable of development until the age of twenty-eight; today it is until the age of twenty-seven. Which person is therefore particularly characteristic of the present time, of this present age of materialistic development? You see, that would be a person who completely rejects being inspired by the soul for a spiritual development, who only absorbs what flows into him from outside, what the present itself offers.

Let us imagine, I would like to say, an idealized figure who is particularly characteristic of the present. It would be a personality who does not go through any of our intellectual high schools – because there one takes in the old, there one already stimulates the soul – but who only absorbs what comes to people from outside. A self-made man, a man who makes himself, who also absorbs everything else that one experiences in reality today in terms of feelings, sensations, emotions. So, from the age of seven, eight, nine, he grows up with a certain social aversion to the privileged classes, who does not tip his hat to anyone who has a title or power or the like, who then does not attend a Greek-Latin school, but learns by living life alone. He then enters a profession similar to that of a lawyer, not by studying law, but by going through the practical experience in a law firm and making his way through it; by the time he is twenty-seven, everything has come to him in this way, but not in the extraordinary way of repeating ancient culture, but what the present can bring to him. In the twenty-seventh year he should get himself elected to Parliament. Then he comes before his contemporaries, and as he has developed by himself until then, he presents himself to people, not believing in further development. One can become a minister from Parliament. Development is no longer good in the opinion of our contemporaries, otherwise people say that one contradicts oneself, one said something completely different earlier, and now one contradicts oneself. If you are elected to parliament, you can no longer say anything different. Is there such a person in the present? Do you know a particularly characteristic person who is the most concentrated expression of the present time? That is Lloyd George. You cannot understand the peculiarity of certain contemporaries today if you do not look at these things, do not really look at the peculiarity of the person in this way. Lloyd George is a self-made man. Up to the age of twenty-seven he has only taken in what the present itself offers; but because he has no inner drive of the soul, it stops at twenty-seven. He is then elected to parliament. Lloyd George is in Parliament, sitting there with his arms folded, his eyes turned inwards towards the axes, speaking aptly everywhere, watching for his opponents' weaknesses. Now came the Campbell-Bannerman Ministry. One wonders: what is to be done with Lloyd George? He criticizes everything the Ministry does! What is to be done? Well, he is taken into the ministry; inside he can do less opposition than outside. He becomes a minister. And it turns out that he quickly finds his feet in this situation too, because he is truly a representative of our time. Now, of course, people are asking themselves: Which portfolio should we give Lloyd George? After all, the important thing is that he is a capable person. So they agreed to give him the portfolio he didn't understand: public works. But lo and behold, in three months he had familiarized himself with the subject and achieved great things as a minister in precisely this field, which he had previously understood nothing about.

That is a characteristically modern figure. There are many of them in one sense or another. You only have to ask: what kind of people are they who, by the age of twenty-seven (which is the cut-off point today), have developed to such an extent that they have absorbed everything their environment has to offer, then immediately entered public life and no longer continued their development?

A personality who is somewhat closer to us is Matthias Erzberger. Study his biography and you will find the same if you look at it in this occult way. It is something that arises in the culture of our time in a very remarkable way. But to look a little into the human heart in an occult way is something that must be included in the history of the development of mankind. You see how the culture of our time reveals itself when we penetrate to its core in this way. Now, however, the culture of our time demands of us that we penetrate more deeply than we are accustomed to doing today. But this will only be possible if we become aware that the dead also have their say. Those who are truly characteristic representatives of our time will, of course, reject this in the most eminent sense.

If you want to study a person in whom you see the continuous striving for further development, this unconscious belief in the lasting reality of the divine-human in the human soul until death, it is Goethe. Goethe is much more characteristic in this respect than is usually thought. Goethe wanted to look back on the age, on the years of life in which he took in from the outside world what the outside world brings in, but he wanted to continue his development. He has described his youth in “Poetry and Truth”. It breaks off with his entry into Weimar. Born in 1749, he came to Weimar in 1775, and so he continued his life story, as he wanted to tell it, until the age of twenty-six. He ended it before the age of twenty-seven because he unconsciously knew that this was an especially significant moment. In the age of thirty-five, a person experiences a moment that today he usually sleeps through. It is the moment when the burgeoning, ascending life passes into the descending life in relation to the body. But then the spirit is driven to reveal itself, and to reveal itself more and more.

The thirty-fifth year of life is an important moment in human life. This is really something where man first truly gives birth to his soul in physical life. Ask yourself how this turns out for a person like Goethe, who remained capable of development throughout his entire life. In 1786, after the thirty-fifth year, just the important time from thirty-five to forty-two years, Goethe goes to Italy. If you look more closely at Goethe's biography, you will see what a turnaround this meant in his life. In an essay that will now appear in a small book, I have shown how Goethe actually personally relates to his Faust in “Goethe's Spiritual Nature as Revealed through his Faust and through the Fairy Tale of the Serpent and the Lily”. I have discussed it with a few hints at least. Precisely with regard to this, one is rather confused than enlightened by what is otherwise written. That is not particularly important, which is what people usually point out complacently, that Faust says right at the beginning:

I have now, alas, thoroughly studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
unfortunately! also theology
with great zeal.
There I stand, I poor fool

And I am no wiser than before... People are complacent and point out: He went through all four faculties and didn't get anywhere, doubts all knowledge. Especially the actors often feel that they have to despise the four faculties. But that is not the characteristic, that is not the specifically Goethean, what matters, that is just a prelude. Many people in Goethe's time said that. When the Goethean element in Faust comes into play, things change. It is when Faust picks up the book of Nostradamus and sees for the first time the sign of the macrocosm. This sign shows how man fits into the whole macrocosm. How his spirit is connected with the spirit of the world, his soul with the soul of the world, his physical body with the physical body of the world, all this is depicted in the great picture of the intermingling buckets of the world - planets and suns, with the hierarchies behind them. But Faust turns away with the words: “What a spectacle! But alas, only a spectacle!” He sees images, a spectacle. Why? Because at this moment, in a moment, he would like to grasp the secret of the world. But this can only happen in the whole of human life, insofar as the physical world exists, the whole of evolution. Knowledge can only give images. Then he turns to the sign of the microcosm. There he does not have the spirit of the macrocosm, but only the spirit of the earth. The earth spirit gives what history, what is human on earth encompasses.

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!

Faust seeks self-knowledge through the earth spirit, he rejects world knowledge. That is the Goethean, that is where the Goethean begins. Before that, there is a prelude. In his youth, Goethe was indeed at a loss, and could say no more than: Everything that relates to the macrocosm gives me only images, we cannot penetrate it. Only from within can the riddle of life be solved. But this earth spirit, that is, the spirit of self-knowledge, said to him:

You resemble the spirit that you comprehend! Not me!

Faust falls to the ground. What spirit does he resemble? You see, here is an opportunity in 'Faust' to get to know a poet who does not theorize! There is nothing theoretical about it, but you have a poet who presents things in living artistic reality. Listen: “You resemble the spirit you comprehend! Not me!” There is a knock at the door: Wagner enters. That is the answer: you resemble Wagner, not me! - Here, we must change our thinking about this point in Faust. It must not be presented on the stage as it usually is: that Faust is only the ideal-striving man who wants to reach the heights of the spirit, who is absolutely right, and then Wagner limps along. I would, if I had to present it, present it in such a way that Wagner wears the mask of Faust, that both stand there in the same form, because Faust should be pointed out: Look at your own image, you are at a standstill! And what Wagner says is a conclusion in itself; what Faust says is actually all just stuff of longing. But the Faust expounders, and people in general, want to make things as comfortable as possible. People like to quote: “Feeling is everything, name is sound and smoke,” even though Faust coins this for a sixteen-year-old girl. So a teenage girl's wisdom is actually always dressed up as a philosopher's wisdom. Wagner confronts Faust with his self-awareness – as I said, I have expanded on this in the little book – but Faust has nevertheless been touched by the spirit. The earth spirit has appeared to him, he has come close to the spiritual world, he must go further and must make up for what he has neglected up to the age of forty. Faust is forty years old when he appears at the beginning of the poem. Yes, he must also make up for what he did not go through: the Bible. He begins a kind of retrospective view of the missed youth. Then another self-knowledge approaches him: Mephisto. After the self-knowledge through Wagner, another self-knowledge.

But now something strange happened. In the nineties, in 1797, Schiller became very urgent: Goethe was to continue his “Faust”. In 1797 Goethe was forty-eight years old. Another important point in time. Seven times seven is forty-nine; that is the point in time when a person comes out of the special development of the spirit self and into the spirit of life. Schiller urged him on. People have made it easy for themselves with the explanation. Minor, who wrote an interesting book about Goethe, says: Goethe is gripped by age, he is no longer really capable of poetry. But just think, if that were true, a “Faust” could never be written! It would be impossible to depict the life of a human being in old age, and Faust was indeed in old age! Goethe is now approaching the age at which the ancient Indians said: Now man enters the age when he can ascend into the realm of the fathers, can gradually ascend into the deeper secrets of spiritual life. - That is when Goethe encounters his Mephisto in a remarkable way.

You know that when one tries to get to know the powers that oppose man, there are two, Ahriman and Lucifer. Goethe has confounded the two, thrown them together. He did not feel this earlier, and so Mephisto has become a contradictory figure. You only need to consider a few aspects to see that Mephisto is not a unified figure: Goethe combined Lucifer and Ahriman. He realized this in 1797, which is why it became so difficult for him to continue Faust. The humanities had not yet reached the point where man's opponent could be split into two opponents; Goethe stopped at one. You can see Goethe's nature when you consider that he should have actually created two figures but threw them together into one. Goethe really went through something inwardly in that he felt Mephisto was a contradictory figure. That “Faust” was created after all and stands tall as a piece of poetry can, of course, be attributed to Goethe's great poetic power. But this, in turn, is something that Goethe found surging within him from the unconscious. You see, a person can be capable of development; in his soul, he can feel in a very elementary way that which works together with the spirit through the whole of life in us, not just into our twenties.

What you know as the “Prologue in Heaven” was not written by Goethe until 1798. What happened in Faust? He did not say it, but it is in his soul: he let Faust reach for the book again, and now he is face to face with the spirit! Now it is no longer a play. Here the spirits are weaving the spheres. Here Faust stands in the midst of the struggle between good and evil in the macrocosm. One should not view Faust from beginning to end in such a way that one sees everything as if it were the same. Goethe broke with the view of his youth and introduced Faust more and more into the spirit of the macrocosm. I just wanted to show you how regularly this developing Goethe life is shaped. In it one can show how the human developmental periods go from seven to seven years until death. One must lift the subconscious more and more into consciousness, according to the meaning and spirit of the present. There is much talk about the subconscious, but it is not viewed in the right way, not viewed deeply enough.

Today there is something called analytical psychology, psychoanalysis. This is, as it were, brought to bear on the subconscious spiritual and soul life in the human being, but with inadequate means; for the adequate means are the spiritual-scientific ones. The classic example, which psychoanalysts cite over and over again, shows precisely how people work with inadequate means. Let us introduce an example from the soul that actually led to the development of psychoanalysis: there is a woman who knows a man. The man is married; she knows him in a way that may have been all right for the husband, but not for the husband's wife. Lo and behold, the husband's wife falls ill for various reasons, one of which may have been this lady herself. She becomes nervous. These days, people get nervous, neurasthenic, so there's no need to be surprised. She has to go to a spa for several months. She is supposed to leave one evening, but before that, supper is organized – a souper, as they say in German – to which the lady, who is well acquainted with the man and with the whole family, is also invited. The supper goes quite well. Then the lady of the house has to go to the train. The company also gradually disperses, as they say. A group of the party is walking on the street with this lady, who is well acquainted with the gentleman of the house. Now, as it happens here and there, not only late at night, people no longer walk on the sidewalk, but in the middle of the street. But lo and behold, a cab, not a car, but a cab, turns the corner, and that lady, who is a friend of the gentleman of the house, does not move aside like the others onto the sidewalk, but she runs in front of the horses. The driver curses, cracks the whip; but she runs in front of the horses, runs and runs until they come to a bridge. Then she has an idea: she must save herself. It is a dangerous situation. So she saves herself by jumping into the water. She is pulled out and saved, and society carries her into the house from which she has just come: into the home of the master of the house. She stays there for the night. The others go home again. And something has been achieved, which I will not characterize further now. The psychoanalyst now studies this case for hidden psychological motives: perhaps the lady has gone through something special with horses in the last seven or eight years, which resounds again from the soul, and at that moment she loses consciousness, it only comes up through the fear of horses. So one searches for “hidden provinces of the soul”. But that is not the truth. The truth is this: there is a subconscious in the soul of a person that can be smarter and more sophisticated than the conscious mind. This lady was a very decent lady, but she was in love with the master of the house. Her conscious mind would not have admitted: I want to stay in this house – but the subconscious does. It considers very carefully: If I run in front of the horses and jump into the water, then they will take me back! – That is what happened. In her conscious mind, the lady would never admit this, but in her subconscious she goes through these things, that is where it is present. Man carries within himself this subconscious, which is much wiser, much more cunning, for good or ill, than the conscious mind. As I said, the present time is becoming somewhat aware of this subconscious, but it seeks it with inadequate means. It must be clear that it can only be found by adequate means through spiritual science if one wants to show that, alongside the ego, which lives through the body, the eternal spiritual lives in us, which is not just an angel and can therefore also be refined, depending on its karma. What this subconscious always is in its revelation through man must be studied in a spiritual scientific way. We must realize that we have to get to know the truth, reality. Today the subconscious is knocking at the consciousness, and we can no longer cope in life if we ignore this, if we do not also follow with our consciousness the paths that the subconscious takes. Many people do not want that, so they do not want to approach spiritual science.

So on the one hand there are certain reasons for not being able to understand spiritual science: people do not want to understand that things are completely reversed when it comes to the dead. One must completely change one's way of thinking. While in ordinary life we are accustomed to our words coming out of our mouths when we speak or ask something, in our intercourse with the dead it is the case that what we say comes out of his soul, what he says comes up out of our own inner being. This is a natural thing.

The other is the antipathy that people have towards the spirit because they do not like to admit how this spiritual strikes at the door of consciousness. In many places one finds this spirit knocking at the door of consciousness. In people who, for example, have been somewhat abnormal in their lives, a loosening of the spiritual and mental in the physical and bodily today results in the subconscious making a more correct impact on the conscious than in those who have nothing loosened in them. It is by no means certain that relaxation should be aimed at, truly not, but in some people something is relaxed in a natural way, as for example in Otto Weininger. He was truly a talented person; he had completed his doctorate at the beginning of the 1920s, then formed the book “Sex and Character” out of the doctoral dissertation, which is quite amateurish and even trivial in many respects, but is nevertheless a remarkable phenomenon. Then he took a trip to Italy, kept a diary during which something quite remarkable happened. Certain spiritual-scientific insights are expressed as a caricature. This relaxed spiritual-soul-like already sees many things, but it caricatures them! The moral is also usually somewhat tainted. But Weininger was a genius. He then rented a room in the Beethoven House in his twenty-third year and shot himself inside. From this you can see that he was a very abnormal person. But I just want to mention: if you read his last book, you will also find a strange passage among all the other things. There he says: Why does man not remember his life before birth? Because the soul has brought itself so low that it wants to submerge itself in unconsciousness with regard to the previous life! - I mention this only - and I could multiply the example a thousandfold - to show: There are many people who are very close to spiritual science but cannot find it because the present time does not want to let people approach spiritual science at all. I mention this as an example because it can certainly be seen: Weininger comes to it by loosening the spiritual and soul, as a matter of course, to express that the human being connects with the physical and bodily. He expresses it as a matter of course, as many other people still do today, only in a very shamefaced way. But this is a fundamental demand of our time: that people really pluck up the courage, educate themselves in strength, to face the spiritual world in its concrete manifestations.

And one such concrete manifestation is precisely the one I particularly wanted to talk to you about: that people allow the dead to have a say; that people's social lives are again determined by feeling the differences between people and people according to age, but also by the fact that something becomes different, that people believe in their entire human life. God does not only reveal Himself up to the age of twenty. In the past He revealed Himself physically, but now He must be felt through spiritual science. But the human being must believe in the gifts of the divine spiritual world. Throughout his entire life he must have the encouraging, sustaining feeling that When I am fifteen years older, I will bring to the Divine-Spiritual what it can take up differently than before. Imagine how one can live into the future when one is so expectant! How this pours a different soul-spiritual aura over our entire social life! It must be known that people will need this aura as they develop towards the future. This is of infinite importance. Try to feel how many things must change! We live in an age in which many, many things must change. Above all, it must be so that certain things are no longer seen in a hypocritical way, but are seen in reality. It is of no use to tell lies to oneself about certain things. And I would like to discuss one such self-lie.

How many people are there today who say: I do not look up to the various hierarchies, to angels, archangels and so on, but I look up to “my God”. And how many continue to declaim what great progress it is that humanity has come to the one God, to monotheism. But one must ask the question: To whom do people actually turn when they seek to enter into a concrete relationship with the spiritual world and speak of “their God” in doing so? Whether one is Catholic or Protestant, when one speaks of one's God, one can only speak of that which really enters one's consciousness. This can only be one of two things: either it is the one angel that protects him, whom man then calls God, who is no higher god than an angel – and since every human being has an angel whose task it is to protect him, we are in a pluralism – or he means his own ego. But man is mistaken in that he has the same name for it, because everyone calls their particular angel by the same name “God”. In contrast to this, one should consider one thing, which is actually very instructive. There is a word whose origin people know nothing about, despite all their research: that is the word “God”. That is interesting and makes one think! Look it up in the various dictionaries in which the words are treated linguistically and philologically: there is complete uncertainty about the word “God”. People do not know what they are actually designating with God. And in our time, people either mean their angel, or, by speaking of their God, they become, so to speak, unconscious followers of our teaching: they speak namely of their own ego, as it has developed since the last death until this birth. That is the concrete thing they call God: either the angel that protects them intervenes – it is only the angel, they call it God – or it is only the individual ego. Whether one reinterprets this or not, it does not matter: it is the egoistic religious confession that is in many souls today, but one does not want to admit it to oneself. Only spiritual science will make people aware of it. Then people will hate spiritual science and will fight it more and more because it is so convenient for people to call their closest neighbor, who stands above them in the hierarchical order, their god. When people talk about God today, they mean either their own ego or the angel.

One can only get beyond such a view by entering into the concrete spiritual-scientific relationship. This is one of the points about which people will have to become more and more enlightened as the future approaches. And there must be truth among people. This will have to be a particular demand in the future, and truth is not very widespread in the present, not at all widespread. Particularly in learned circles, one sometimes encounters very strange ideas about what truth is. You will recall from my book 'Puzzles of the Soul' (if I may refer to it briefly) the peculiar way in which the remarkable man Max Dessoir dealt with the truth. What one reads in the last issue of the Kant journal is truly heartbreaking! I may mention this in particular because anthroposophy is not mentioned there; so this essay does not hurt in relation to its own cause. But in this “scholarly” journal one finds an essay that is not only the most banal in the anthroposophical field, but also, through and through, the most amateurish for anyone who understands the matter. But it is taken seriously.

You know from my book how one has no choice but to point out to Dessoir, in a schoolmasterly manner, that he has not read my books but distorts everything possible. I would like to mention just one of the most stupid distortions: Dessoir states in the first edition of his book 'Beyond the Soul' that my 'Philosophy of Freedom' was my first work. Now, this 'Philosophy of Freedom' was published in 1894, ten years after my first work; but he is so superficial about everything that he does not get it right. So the 'Philosophy of Freedom' was my first work. I also dared to say this about it among more important things to show him his nature. A second edition is being published. In the preface, he asserts all kinds of things that are precisely such that one can see from them what kind of person this university professor is. But now he has said in the first edition that the Philosophy of Freedom is my first literary work; now he says that he did not mean that, but that it is my “theosophical first work”. If you now take this together with the way in which the Philosophy of Freedom is again taken by others as something that would be denied by my “theosophy”: you will see a real quagmire! But it is very easy to see into the present through such things, and it is very important to get complete enlightenment about these matters. And this is possible only if one unreservedly arms oneself with the weapons of spiritual science.

Historical observation, too, will have to become something quite different under the influence of spiritual science than it has been up to now, because history, for the most part, is actually nothing other than a fable convenue, as it is offered. Where one really gets to the facts, one is led into something quite different from what popular history presents.

I will give you one example. You will see shortly what my point is in this consideration. We know that the fourth post-Atlantic period ended with the 15th century. That is the Greco-Latin period; in its last stages it extends into the 15th century. In 1413, the fifth post-Atlantic period begins, and a mighty upheaval occurs. If we bear this in mind, we may perhaps ask ourselves: how did this Roman Empire, into which everything that is Greek-Latin culture was finally drawn, come to its downfall? There are various causes, but one of the important ones is the following: the Romans waged great wars; these wars gradually expanded the territory beyond its borders. Many new border peoples emerged. This had a very specific consequence. Anyone who studies the time of the first Christian centuries will find that the peculiar nature of the Roman Empire, in its administration and internal social structure, with the border peoples and towards the Orient, has resulted in a continuous outflow of metal money from the Roman Empire to the Orient. And this is one of the most important events in the second, third and fourth centuries A.D., when the Roman Empire was gradually coming to an end: that metal money flows over to the neighboring peoples in the Orient. And the Roman Empire, despite having a complicated military administration, is becoming increasingly poorer in gold and money. This is the external expression, the image of the internal processes. I mention this external picture, the impoverishment of the Roman Empire in gold and money, because it is the external expression of the inner mood of the soul. What arose out of this inner mood of the soul? Of course, this inner mood has a definite significance in the whole sense of world-historical events. Something had to come out of this impoverishment of the Romans in metallic money. And what came of it? Individualism arose, which is the characteristic feature of our age. There was much talk of the art of making gold. How did this art come about? Because Europe became materially poor in gold, this external physical longing for making gold arose until America was discovered and gold came from there. These great connections must be grasped. What one comes to know by really studying the fall of the Roman Empire had an effect all the way into alchemy and thereby into the development of human souls: poverty of gold through the expansion of the social structure beyond the peripheral peoples into the Orient.

We now live in a time when people have to admit to themselves: the time of instinctive living is over. We cannot achieve social structures if we are unable to invigorate social thinking with thoughts that come from an understanding of the spiritual world. That is why the social sciences are so sterile and why humanity has brought itself into this catastrophic present, in which social structures create chaos throughout the world because people cannot let spiritual scientific thoughts flow into community life. These thoughts should flow from the impulses of human development into social thinking. There are spiritual causes for this catastrophic present. This is the rebellion of people against the influx of the spirit. That is the true origin of the present catastrophe. For people everywhere turn against the spirit that wants to come in.

I will give you an example that you might find characteristic. Let us suppose that someone is thinking today about the different world views that exist and, purely superficially, classifies them as: Catholicism, Protestantism, socialism, naturalism and so on. Take the cycle that I once gave in Berlin, where I built the world views more on inner categories, on the number twelve and on the number seven. You really do get seven world views: Gnosticism, Logism, Voluntarism, Empiricism, Mysticism, Transcendentalism, Occultism. Of course, anyone who just picks them up will not call them by these names. And yet the music of the spheres reigns everywhere! So just imagine someone who is nothing more than a materialistic observer, who reads the world views as they are accessible to him. How many would he have to find? He would have to find seven. He may call them something else, depending on how they present themselves externally, but they must appear in seven links. Read the current issue of the “Preußische Jahrbücher”. In the first essay you will find an observation according to which a person wanted to register the worldviews as they currently exist. He lists them. How many does he find? Seven: Catholicism, Protestantism, rationalism, humanism, idealism, socialism and personal individualism. There are indeed seven. The categories are only shifted, but one cannot find more than seven. There you have an example of how what we find as a sense of development overlaps with ordinary external development. People do not want to admit this, but it is necessary to acknowledge it in the present; that we should not ignore these things, but have the courage to face them.

What is actually happening in the present? In ancient times, in the third post-Atlantic cultural period, there was a far-reaching impulse from east to west, across the entire globe, an impulse that did not come merely from material life, as do today's impulses, but from the spiritual. In those days, spiritual impulses also intervened in social life. A certain impulse developed from the East to the West. It can be characterized by saying that some people at that time were striving to pass on to others what they had obtained from the spiritual world as enlightenment, what came to them more or less through their age or through initiation from good or bad mysteries; they wanted to impose what they had on others. In those days there was an impulse that went from the Orient to the West: a few spiritual powers in the sense of spreading progress to humanity, filling the earth with a few spiritual maxims, with powers that came from the fading mysteries. Even then, social life was based on this. It was in the third post-Atlantic period; historically, little is recorded. But the repetition of what happened then is happening now. Imagine what spread in those days as the urge from east to west, implemented purely materially in the fifth post-Atlantic period: in those days it was the atavistic-spiritual forces that brought about a social structure in which strong spiritual impulses were to be given to people; these were to be brought into humanity. Now imagine the opposite: some people want to conquer the material world of the earth of their own accord, to take it away from other people. At that time, the aim was to give spiritually, and that is precisely what caused the catastrophes that befell the Earth so many years after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the process, the Roman Empire fell. At that time, spiritual catastrophes befell the Earth, culminating in the fact that certain peoples from the East wanted to flood the Earth's countries with individual maxims. The same is now taking effect, in that the British-American people want to take the earth away from people. That is behind the whole thing. And it is exactly the same: it appears as a mirror image. What is happening in the present can only be understood by looking at the real course of human development, by replacing what is taught as history with the real history. For it is necessary that people be placed in full awareness in what is really happening, in the direction of the future. Today's economic life has long been a chaos, and this is how the catastrophe developed. Now you have two things that are having an effect. From west to east: the mirror image; from east to west: what has become old. There you still have the remnants of the old spiritual outlook of the entire Asian Orient, what it did to spread the spiritual and push the soul into the background. If you study the present catastrophe, you have a war of souls from the east, with souls fighting to assert the oriental-Slavic concepts; and from the west, a purely material war for sales territories. These things can only be understood if they are viewed from the great perspective of human development. But it would be necessary to be able to speak freely about these things for once. People should be allowed to be enlightened about what it actually is that they live in. This is of tremendous importance. What must stop, however, is people literally oversleeping what is happening. The most important things can happen without people being able to understand them. They can no longer grasp their significance because at present one can only do so if one is able to illuminate them with the light of spiritual-scientific knowledge. They cannot be illuminated in any other way.

But what is the attitude of the most learned people today towards spiritual-scientific knowledge? Yes, here we have a good example. In various places I have repeatedly mentioned the interesting fact that a book was written by a Haeckel student, Oscar Hertwig, an excellent book: “The Origin of Organisms, a Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance.” In it, Oscar Hertwig pointed out the various downsides of Darwinism. I have praised this book highly. But in our spiritual scientific movement you will have to get used to there being no absolute authority. For a short time ago another book appeared by the same Oscar Hertwig: 'In Defense of Ethical, Social and Political Darwinism'. Now you must not say: Well, Steiner praised Hertwig, so we will now also study his latest book with this in mind, because then you will be in for a disappointment. The disappointment that I have to say: While the one book is an excellent book, this latest book is the most amateurish, most nonsensical thing one can possibly say about the chapters in question. If you just want to say: Steiner praised it, so we can accept it as gospel in turn, then you can never be sure that I will not be forced to give the opposite rating to something that is created on the same ground. Blind faith must not flourish in our ranks, only our own observations and our own opinions. But where does that come from? It stems from the fact that Daf Hertwig is an excellent naturalist; but the concepts of natural science must not be introduced into social life. If they are, then one finds everywhere only the dead, the dying of history, as for example with Gibbon, who wrote the excellent history of the decline of the Roman Empire. That is one secret – I have already presented this too – of historical development, that if you want to observe this historical development with the concepts that apply in science, you will never find that which grows and sprouts, but only that which turns into a corpse. You only encounter signs of decay in historical life if you want to use the concepts that are well applicable in science. People have suspected this from time to time. That is why Treitschke said that the driving forces in history are the passions and follies of men. It is not so. There are unconscious forces that descend in historical becoming. Therefore it is true that if you want to introduce decay into public life, and thus also into practical life, then you put scholars and theorists into parliaments. These people will concoct nothing but laws that lead to decadent phenomena, because with what is considered scientific today, only the decadent phenomena in history can be found. These things must enter into the consciousness of the people. This is far more necessary than most people realize, and it must be grasped if one is honest and sincere about what is to lead humanity out of the present catastrophic time. It is no longer acceptable to continue to oversleep the important events that unconsciously occur in human life, which people will not be able to cope with through their consciousness if they do not illuminate them with spiritual science. But the point is to grasp life in its reality, to really look into the true nature of life.

Here we must take into account the interaction of these three impulses: the normal human, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. For we must not treat these things in such a way that we say: I want to be a normal human being, and so I avoid everything Ahrimanic, everything Luciferic! Those who want to be really good and avoid everything that is Ahrimanic or Luciferic will flounder all the more into the Luciferic on one side and into the Ahrimanic on the other.

The point is not to avoid things, but to bring the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic into balance. The Luciferic is more characteristic of youth, the Ahrimanic of the age that is passing away. The Luciferic is more characteristic of woman, the Ahrimanic of man. When we look into the future, we look mainly into the Ahrimanic; when we look into the past, into that which is still to germinate, we look mainly into the Luciferic. If we look at the British Empire, we look into an Ahrimanic realm; in the case of oriental state institutions, we look into a Luciferic realm. The point is that we find these forces interfering with human life everywhere. We must not be blind to these things.

Take just one example: in the entire social structure of human life, the Luciferic has sometimes played a highly disastrous role because people did not know how to channel it into a right current, because they allowed the scales of Lucifer to swing too far. That is why Luciferic impulses have played a major role in the way the social structure has developed. Even at school, young children are accustomed to 'being first', 'being second', 'being third'. Think of the Luciferian ambition that has been at work when people want to be first! Then there are the titles and medals and everything that goes with them! Imagine how the social structure has been built up by the Luciferian! But this time is coming to an end; that too would be something to be recognized! The time is coming to an end, the Luciferic is dwindling more and more to its shadowy areas. That too would be a good thing if people were a little more vigilant with regard to the dwindling of the Luciferic - for the time being, for the near future. But they are unwary of something that is coming in again in a different way to do harm. This is: an Ahrimanic takes the place of the Luciferic. The slogan has been dropped: Free rein to the brave! - I have already said: What use is it to say “Free rein to the brave” and then still consider the nephew to be the bravest! No, it depends on looking into the concrete, looking into the real. But that is not what I mean now. What I do mean is that an entire Ahrimanic system is emerging, with very dangerous side effects. This Ahrimanic system is somewhat connected with the buzzword that is now used in the field of education and is called the gifted test. This gifted test is praised everywhere. People are possessed of it in a purely devilish way when they talk about it. From a number of hundred gifted boys and girls who have particularly good grades, the most gifted are to be selected, the best in terms of intellectuality, power of concentration, memory and so on. And so they are tested using the latest psychological methods. For example, intelligence is tested in a very peculiar way in experimental psychology. Three terms are presented to the children: murderer, mirror, rescue. Now they are supposed to find the connection through their intelligence. The one who merely finds the connection: the murderer sees himself in the mirror like the other people – he is merely stupid. But the one who finds the “most obvious” connection: the person looks in a mirror, sees the murderer who is just creeping up on him, and can save himself - that person is normal. A “gifted” person would be the one who says, for example, that the murderer creeps up to the mirror, sees his own face in the mirror, is frightened and desists from murder. Particularly clever would be the one who would say something like this: Near the one whose life is to be ended by the murderer, there is a mirror; in the darkness, the murderer bumps into the mirror, makes a sound and then desists from the murder. That is even cleverer! This is how you test cleverness! This is supposed to be something particularly great, whereas it is nothing more than the transfer of a purely Ahrimanic method, which applies to machines, to humans. The most terrible thing will come out of the mechanization of human life if one wants to find out about giftedness in this way. People need only reflect on what they themselves assumed until recently. I could show you the evidence of how nonsensically people talk when they carry out such tests. Take a whole series of people whom those people themselves also regard as important, very important people, who are now the spiritual heirs of the gifted test, let us say, for example, Helmholtz, the physicist, and others. If all of them had been tested using the gifted test method, many would have been shown to be untalented, including Helmholtz, for example. These things must all be taken much more seriously, because the salvation of the future depends on them. Nothing can be left to chance in this area. Today, events themselves teach an enormous amount.

Take the following: Imagine the period from 1930 to 1940. There could be certain people then in their forties or early fifties. Imagine you had had this thought in 1913, you would have thought: Of those living in 1913, a certain number will still be alive in 1930 and will be in leading positions; the social structure, and even the outer physical life in various areas of the earth, will depend on them. You can roughly imagine how things would have gone from 1930 to 1940 if the eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, the current young people, had then turned forty. Now take another thought and ask yourself: How many of those who would have done what you assumed for 1930 have now fallen on the battlefields and will no longer be able to physically participate in the management of physical earthly affairs? Others will take part! Imagine these two pictures side by side: the one picture: if this catastrophe of war had not occurred, then what would have been formed from the antecedents would have been in accordance with how you would have imagined the future at that time. And now the other picture that you must now imagine: How perhaps all those who could have had the most important positions have fallen on the battlefields! If you paint such a picture for yourself, you will come to a very tangible concept of the Maja, of the great deception of the outer physical plane. Is this physical plane in 1930 as it should have been if all those who were young in 1913 had lived? It would have become quite different. To think through such things is not without significance. But only spiritual science, by thinking through such things, can offer the possibility in the right sense of thinking realistically in the real world as well. Spiritual science leads you to such concepts that break away from the merely physical brain. Our present concepts are mainly bound to the physical brain, which is why the thinking of the present has a certain quality. It is precisely because the concepts of natural science, which are most closely bound to the brain, dominate the present, that our thinking in the present has a special quality: narrow-mindedness, limitation. For that is the most limited thinking, which is preferably bound to our brain. Spiritual science must tear thinking away from the brain, must set thoughts in motion. Today we have tried to present a whole series of thoughts before our soul, thoughts that are easy to move, that broaden the horizon.

But not only the horizon of thought must become broader, but also the horizon of feeling. How people became philistine because their thoughts were tied primarily to physical life! Besides narrow-mindedness, philistinism is the most important characteristic of our age. Narrow-mindedness! Men are interested in the narrowest circle. Spiritual science must lead men out again into the vastness of the universe, must unfold before them great fields of happenings, because the present can only be understood from them. Spiritual science must lead men out of narrow-mindedness. It must fight against narrow-mindedness and philistinism.

The will, too, has gradually acquired certain qualities. As a result of a certain social structure having grown out of materialistic culture, people have become unskillful. Ineptitude has arisen! People are pigeonholed into very specific subjects and actually know nothing but their subject, and are highly inept with regard to everything else. Today one meets men who, because they have not become tailors, cannot sew on a button. But spiritual science has the peculiarity of developing such concepts that are alive, that pass into the limbs, that also make man more skillful. The remedy for narrow-mindedness, for philistinism, for clumsiness is spiritual science. We need an age that leads people out of narrow-mindedness, out of narrow-mindedness, out of clumsiness, into wide horizons, into broad-mindedness, into skill. Spiritual science must be taken as full of life and with a sense of life. If we just look at the simplest concepts from spiritual science in relation to our time, we will see that the misfortune, suffering and pain of our time, which have not yet reached their peak, are intimately connected with humanity's resistance to the spirit. People have cut themselves off from the divine spiritual life, people must find the connection again with the divine spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to bring before your soul this time. Do you get more and more the feeling: the signs of the times speak clearly and audibly! But only those who have learned to read them with the means of spiritual science will find what they speak. No matter how far one goes, one can never find enough spiritual science as a vigorous and serious matter. One must always go further and further in penetrating life through that which spiritual science gives. People in our time have little courage to think through life through the forces that come from the spirit. This must be learned; that is what is mainly missing. If it is not learned, if it continues to be lacking, then what has befallen humanity as a catastrophe will last a long, long time. Therefore, one can say that one should seek a way out of the conflict of the present with spiritual science. Please take it very seriously and very deeply: then what we wanted to speak to each other about at this meeting will bear the right fruit in your hearts, in your souls.