The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[Ladies and gentlemen!]

We have passed by the basic ideas in the Platonic worldview. I call them basic ideas because they are actually the most important for understanding Platonic mysticism, namely the Platonic ideas of the eternity of the soul and the ideas of love. The one idea has been revealed to us through an examination of the Platonic discussion "Phaidon", the other through an examination of the "Banquet". We have seen that these two ideas, which perhaps play the greatest leading role in the spiritual development of mankind - the great goal of the eternity of the soul and the path of love - are also among the most important and fundamental ideas in Platonic mysticism.

This is also the point where we can best understand the influence of Platonism on Christianity, i.e. how Christianity developed under the influence of Plato. It would not be making the most necessary contribution to clarity if we did not, on the occasion of the consideration of the eternity of the soul and love, at the same time draw attention to how these two basic ideas have reappeared in Christianity. I will pass over the intermediate stages. They will become all the more understandable if we touch on the relationship between Platonism and Christianity. I have thought a lot about this. You will therefore forgive me if I have to address some of the more difficult questions.

I am of the opinion that the views and relationships that exist between Platonism and Christianity have not unjustly given rise to such a great literature, a literature that is centuries old, because through the shadowing, through the peculiar way in which the Platonic spirit has settled into the Occident through Christianity, one can see how the Occident is influenced by Platonism. It can only be understood - and it is only possible to show the true relationship between Platonism and Christianity - if one looks at its mystical elements and considers the core ideas of Christianity.

The liberal, theological approach still insists that the relationship between Platonism and Christianity should be presented according to a mystical method. And so we must be clear about the fact that we must seek out the actual core ideas of Christianity in their original meaning. Only in this way will we be able to understand where Platonism meets Christianity and thus understand what Plato presents to Christianity as a kind of world view. Only the theosophical-mystical direction has the possibility of really grasping the core. All exoteric methods do not have the possibility of grasping what had to come from ancient mysticism in order for Christianity to emerge.

But in order to show what has happened, I would like to show the characteristic features, illustrated by the consciousness of the builders, those who have contributed to its development. I would like to show how it presented itself to the souls of the first [church fathers and teachers]. Then the most important key point is that [Christianity] presents something fundamentally new compared to Platonism. This fundamentally new thing is nothing other than that Christianity is direct, real life, life as it presents itself before our eyes and ears. If you do not hold on to this core point, you will not be able to see what distinguishes it from the old religions and also from the mysteries and Platonism.

I would like to point out once again what is emphasized in Platonism and Christianity. It was the immediate life, that which the everyday person perceives directly, that Platonism was supposed to overcome; and on the other hand, it was that it rose to something higher, which cannot be perceived with the senses, into the eternal view. Plato's "Phaidon" wants nothing other than eternity of the soul. He does not want to prove the eternity of the soul. It is not about logical proofs. His aim is to bring to life that which gathers around Socrates and to bring it into a new world. The soul should rise by turning away from what can be seen with the eyes and heard with the ears. In short, eternity should be something that one acquires, that one acquires through the introduction to the mysteries. Plato's pupil says: "The soul can become immortal when it rises to the vision of eternity. When it sees the spiritual, it participates in spiritual life. This makes it eternal. This is a developmental process that we went through in the Platonic "Phaidon", and also a developmental process that we see in the "Banquet". We see that it was Diotima who lifted us up to the higher standpoint.

I drew attention to what Goethe said about his view of such eternal conversations. He says: "If I have inserted myself into the spiritual course of development of the universe, then I am entitled to have a place assigned to me by nature. We are not immortal in the same way. We must first acquire this right. We have to develop this first claim first.

This is the basic element that runs through Plato's "Phaedo". Plato says [in essence]: You can see what you want, but if you only perceive what your eyes, ears, the external senses give you, then you cannot enter the spiritual. The supersensible is what guarantees you the eternity of the soul. - He could not have soul eternity proven. The disciples should acquire it, they should become immortal. This is the basic conception of the Platonic method. - Logic can only link together perceptions that you already have.

And now let us look at what lived in the first centuries of Christianity. The experience of the senses was what was emphasized. The message of salvation was to consist in the fact that the Savior, the one who brought the right to eternity for man into the world, was visibly there. So it is the Savior who is perceived by the senses. - Here are a few passages that show that it is about becoming visible, about the Good News:

"We behold his glory. - He who has seen it testifies to it, and his testimony is true, and he is conscious of speaking the truth so that you may believe." [John 19:35]

We have not preached the presence of Jesus Christ to you in a sophisticated way, but as eyewitnesses. We have heard his voice. - I am not saying that this is to be understood symbolically, I am saying that this is to be understood literally, not symbolically. - What we have heard and touched, we tell you so that you may have the message with us.

It is essential that we are assured by Irenaeus that we can be assured of this by people who have known such people themselves. Irenaeus himself still knew people who were disciples of the apostles, and he says that they still had personal experiences. This is the sensual truth that lived in the consciousness of the first Christians. This sensual truth, which was there for the eyes to see and the ears to hear, lives on in the Church. This [truth] is there for all time. It is not only the temporal truth that took place at the time when Jesus lived, but it lives on as such. This is what we call Christian mystery.

The Lord's Supper is not just a symbol and must not be just a symbol if we do not want to end up with something completely watered down. Christ has appeared today - Christmas. We must take this as an eternal truth, that what has happened once can happen again and again. So it does not happen symbolically, but in such a way that it is really there in the present.

This mystical view existed in the first centuries when Christianity was formed. I would therefore like to agree with [Möhler] and consider it to be the only correct thing to say: viewed from one side, the Church is one in which the living Christ lives, whose personality is repeated and continues uninterruptedly. Not in the way of a deceased person. He does it in a sensual way. In baptism he always takes us into his fellowship. The Savior has been foretold. And for the apostles and the first Christian teachers, the word and sensory perception are valid. They relied on the Old Testament as well as on visual evidence.

We must be clear about the fact that they see an incomprehensible continuation of life. What has happened once must be there forever. This must be emphasized, just as the words of Augustine must be emphasized again and again, which show us that even at the time of Augustine, appearances compelled him to do so, for he says: I would not profess it if the sensually perceptible authority of the Church did not compel me to do so. This is what guarantees the truth of the message of salvation.

There are two aspects to this: firstly, being a naturalized eye and ear witness and secondly, the authority of the truly continuing church. Without this continued existence of the church, even Paul would not have felt comfortable believing in it. The church must be the embodiment of the mystery, it must be a mystical community, it must be added to the testimony of the apostles and apostles' disciples. It must be clear to us that these views became firmer and firmer in the first centuries, and that they also became firm in Augustine's worldview.

What I have now explained as the basic characteristic of Christianity in the first centuries is the necessity that the content cannot be proven, but only vouched for, that human thinking has nothing to do with this content, that it can at most be a point of reference for understanding this content. We have to keep that in mind. It is essentially linked to Christianity that it is based on certainty.

The mysteries also have nothing to do with logic, they are also based on experience. Plato was familiar with the mysteries. Anyone who wanted to become a Mystic had to personally submit to the required process. He had to take part in it personally and allow himself to be initiated. He had to ascend to the pinnacles of knowledge. They had to climb up personally. And so it was in the Platonic initiation.

In Christianity, something new was added: the substitution by a single personality living in history. It was something that antiquity had in mind as an exemplary type of commitment in a historical act by a single historical personality. Three things had to come together - and that is the important thing that had to happen in order for Christianity to come into being. It had to be there:

- firstly, what lived in the ancient mystery cults as an explanation of the world;
- secondly, the initiation process that everyone who wanted to be initiated had to undergo;
- thirdly, a transformation had to take place.

Let's take a closer look at what this transformation was like. Platonic mysticism has already shown us the beginnings. This [transformation] is that we are dealing with a - I may best say - first materialization of the eternal being, let us say with a materialization of God. And then again we are dealing with the ascending process of the development of the worldly into the divine. We have to do - now let us say - with the divine, in order to make the conception that comes into consideration clear - with the eternal, divine essence, and on the other side with the Logos that forms itself in matter, that develops, that transforms itself in the most manifold ways, with a sequence of stages in the development of the Logos. [We need only follow Philon of Alexandria], and we will find this sequence of stages of the Logos.

First, we have the Logos before us in its pure spiritual form. No human being can grasp it, although human individuality rests in it. According to [Philon], this spiritual entity is the primordial Logos. It is a [prototype] of what appears in the world as the divine world order. Whoever lives and works in the world and recognizes the world must - and this must be noted - consider on the one hand the descending line that goes from the spiritual to the material, and on the other hand the line that ascends and goes from the material to the spiritual. Only by standing in the middle can he understand why he is an individual. Only through this can he understand why he is a being appearing as a duality. By realizing that he can have hope of entering into the spiritual primordial being, but also by realizing that this being forms the world order itself.

Because the world itself is spiritualized, he becomes aware that he is dealing with a twofold Logos, with a Logos that cannot be reached and with a Logos that is poured out, with the Logos that has become flesh, with the Logos that has become material. The material world is an exact image of the divine world; but it is not the same as the original divine essence.

[Philon] distinguishes between these two entities. God is the Father of all things, the primordial Logos; and the Son of God, the children of God are the materialized Logos in the world. It is that which develops, transforms, strives upwards towards the primordial Logos. This upward striving in one form or another can be found in mysticism. We will see this in neoplatonic theosophy, which form mysticism can still take. Then we have the basic skeleton that underlies all mysticism. That is one element.

The other element is the initiation process; and here I must try to express myself particularly clearly, because - according to the experiences of others - they say things somewhat differently. I am compelled by my experiences to express myself somewhat differently. I will try to be as clear as I can. We have to understand what it was all about. I will only be able to prove this with a few glimpses, let's say, of the initiation process of the Egyptian schools. [Gap in the transcript]

We must be clear that man, by moving further along this path, is making a journey that leads back in the true sense of the word. Now I would like to draw your attention to this: Initiation is that which a person achieves when he walks back along his path, goes through it, when his consciousness is illuminated. Deeper and deeper truths can be revealed to people. And these are the initiations that man encounters on his path into his inner being. These initiations are the same as the Principia of the world. They are the fundamentals and the foundations of the world that come to development in the world. Let us call the principles of development in the world "Logos. If man can really progress on the path of initiation to the real principles of the world, then he will find within himself the same thing that he finds outside as a principle. Thus initiation was a real, actual process, something that man actually goes through. It is not of subjectively human significance, but of objectively divine significance. The path of knowledge is a way back, a reconnection of man with the original source of existence. What he finds in himself is what he rests with in the objective of the world, that is what leads man to deification, to divinization. The path of knowledge is the path of deification.

The second way is that which is based on principles, on the Logos. This is also a real process. It is a real process, not an allegory. The idea that it is a real process can only be obtained through spiritual experience. Think of the initiation process that every Myste had to go through, intertwined with the process of the creation of the world. And now, instead of understanding this as an exemplary process that every Myst had to go through, think of a unique historical process, think of a single initiate and think of him as the original initiate, as the representative initiate for all others, then you have the image of the "Christ as it developed in the first century of Christianity. The materialization, the incarnation of the divine Logos conceived as a one-time event, but in such a way that it is the real incarnation of the divine Logos, then you have the Christ-appearance.

Three things must therefore be distinguished:
1. the old doctrine of the origin of the world,
2. the initiation process and
3. the combination of these two things with a historical

conceived, individual act. This is the view that Theosophy has of the origin of Christianity, and this is the one against which, of course, not the slightest objection can be raised from the esoteric point of view, because the esotericist must regard precisely this way of looking at the truth as much deeper.

Here you have what lived in the consciousness of the old Christians. They claimed that which was presented to them as a process of development in the old schools and which then happened as a single act. And that made it necessary to make it dependent on appearance. The purpose of the initiation process is to raise the lower aspects of man, to divinize them, so that the Word becomes flesh in the individual, so that the individual struggles upwards, is sanctified upwards. This was demanded as something done.

So instead of continuing the mysteries of antiquity, Christianity had to bring a new mystery into the world. Spiritual survival is not merely an allegory, but a matter of faith, and the ecclesiastical principle of authority had to take its place. For Plato, the concept of love was central. He regarded it as a kind of demon. It is that which leads people from the lower levels to the higher levels of knowledge, which transforms people from the temporal to the eternal. Love is the mediator between the temporal and the eternal. But love is also the demonic agent that brings about the process of development in each individual human being, the passage from the temporal to the eternal. And to the extent that this love is not at work, to that extent the review of ideas, as Plato says, cannot take place.

What is achieved through this initiation process, which is described to us as the initiation process of ideas, is an introduction to the divine, to seeing. This can only be mediated through love, which is a guide for every personality. Platonic love is something else. It is not to be confused with what "Christian love is. What can be found in Christian writings is not to be put together with Platonic love. Just think that the path was there in the ancient mystical teaching. The path of the mystics was a personal one. It was such for an individual. Now we are dealing [in Christianity with a vicarious mystery] with a historical event that happened once. It is a question of what used to serve as the idea of the origin of the world becoming, as it were, the map according to which the path is traveled. This whole world, which Plato calls the world of ideas, was removed from the personal perspective, it was removed from personal observation. It was that which was guaranteed by historical tradition or ecclesiastical authority. But that which underlies the ancient mystery, the eternal truth of the incarnation of the Logos, was that which was moved beyond the human perspective. For the people of Platonic philosophy, this was called the way of love. This love, this Eros, took on a different, a new form. It now became a principle through which man could look up to something that was beyond human comprehension. Everything Plato said boiled down to this: knowledge was there to lead to where one could make perceptions; but this knowledge could not lead there [because the Eternal born in the midst of knowledge, in the midst of light - Brahma, so to speak - was not accessible to knowledge]. What had to take the place of love was not something that had an end, but something that offered a view, that led to remaining in the apparent, in the historical. At the same time, a path was closed which the old Myste wanted to reach, but which can no longer be traveled. This is why Christianity had to put forward a different idea for the "path of love". And that is "faith. Faith is that [which no human knowledge can achieve, it is that] which can only be revealed, which must be guaranteed by sight. The Christian can believe, but not strive for the content of the infinite. This is what took place at the beginning of Christianity, because these views were actually transformed, because in each individual the mystical initiation process was re-stamped as a unique historical event. The element of Hermes, the guide from the earthly to the divine, was also transformed into an abstract element that had only a subjective meaning. The way in which the Platonic conception and the mystery doctrine in particular still had to take on an earthly form in everything that presents itself to us as Christianity is something I would like to talk about next time.

Answer to the question:

The Christ has been completely eliminated. Two things are to be distinguished, the believers and the teacher who taught the doctrines of the ancient mysteries. The parables reveal a teacher of the Essaean community. He spoke to the people as it was appropriate for the people. Behind Jesus stands the actual teacher, as with Krishna, Ramah and so on. What Jesus taught is no different from what the Orient taught. But what Christianity has become is something else. What was demanded by the mystics is something else[: to believe in] a unique historical fact.

The content of the Christian dogmas of the first centuries is exactly the same as in the old mystery schools. The content of the mystery teachings is presented as a diabolical imitation of the divine word in order to be able to say that they teach something else after all.

Philon deepened the Platonic philosophy. Philon broke through the principle of strict isolation from the outside world. The external dissemination of doctrine through the parable was cultivated. The esoteric core disappeared, the exoteric shell remained. Paul deepened the exoteric nature of Christianity.

Good morning, gentlemen! Now, today we would like to add something about the question concerning Christianity. Unfortunately, I could not speak last Saturday because I had to go to Liestal. We have tried to say something about what can be described as the actual essence of Christianity, what Christianity has adopted in the development of humanity. We then spoke of the struggles that actually arose around Christianity in Europe and which, as I said, were essentially based on the fact that one party emphasized the father principle more, as did Christianity in the East, while the other party emphasized the son principle more, as did the Roman Catholic Church, and a third party, the Protestant Church, emphasized the spirit principle more.

It is actually difficult to talk about these things today because most people think: Is it worth arguing about such things in the world? Today, the world is concerned with completely different things that are worth fighting for; and the fact that people once waged war on each other in the most horrific way for the very reason that they emphasized one principle or the other is difficult for people to comprehend today. But, you see, gentlemen, one must also understand such things, because there will come a time when people will not be able to understand why people fought over today's issues! This will perhaps be in the not too distant future. And when you consider that, you will also understand why the older people fought over something completely different than today. But you should know what people fought for, because it still lives among us.

What then is the outward view that has been preserved in the strongest possible way from Christianity? The strongest view of Christianity was, for long periods, the dying Jesus – the cross, and on it the dead Jesus. Not right at the beginning of Christianity did people look at the dead Jesus in this way. If you go back to the very earliest times, you find that the most common and widespread image of Christ is one that shows Christ as a younger man with a lamb around his shoulders and as a shepherd. And that was called the Good Shepherd. In the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Christian centuries, that was actually the most widespread image, the Good Shepherd. And it was only in the sixth century AD that images began to appear depicting Christ hanging dead on the cross; as they say, depicting the Crucifixus, the crucified one. The first Christians did not actually depict the crucified one.

There is also something important behind this. You see, the first Christians still had the view that the Christ had come into Jesus from the sun, that the Christ is an extraterrestrial being. The whole thing was misunderstood later. Because the whole thing was later turned into the dogma of the so-called immaculate conception, according to which Jesus, when he was born, was conceived and born not in the ordinary human way. Only when this was no longer understood, that Jesus was a human being at first, albeit a very important human being, and that only in the thirtieth year of his life did the spirit, which is called the Christ, come into him as a sun spirit - at the time when this no longer understood this, on the one hand they conceived the idea of depicting the dead Christ on the cross, the dying Christ, and on the other hand they already spiritually placed the coming of Christ at the moment of birth. This was a misunderstanding that only arose in the sixth century. But that gives us a very, very deep insight. For between the time when Christians still depicted Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd and the time when he was depicted as the Crucified, a very specific fact lies in between, namely the fact that at a council it was decided that man does not consist of three parts, body, soul and spirit, but only consists of two parts, body and soul, and the soul, it was said, had some spiritual properties.

This is very important, gentlemen! You see, throughout the Middle Ages, trichotomy, the division of man into three parts, was considered a heretical view. No one who was orthodox was allowed to believe in the tripartite nature of man. One was not allowed to say: Man also has a spirit; but one had to say: Man has body and soul, and the soul has some spiritual qualities. But by virtually abolishing the spirit, the whole path of human beings to the spirit has been blocked, and only today must the science of the spirit arise again to restore to humanity what has been taken from it.

Above all, the first Christians realized that that which lives in them as Christ cannot be born and die at all. That is not something human. Man is born and dies. But the Christ, who has gone in Jesus during his lifetime, was not born in a human way, and when Jesus died on the cross, he could not have been touched by death either, but rather, just as a man puts on another robe and remains, he took on another form, namely a spiritual form. But if you want to depict something that is spiritual – you can't see that with your eyes – then you have to represent it figuratively. And the fact that the spirit watches over man, that the spirit is a good advisor to man, that is what they wanted to depict by depicting Christ Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

And something has remained, it is just that people today no longer understand it. It is very often the case that only part of an image remains. Even today, when speaking of Christ, one often says, “the Lamb of God.” This was seen in the images that were there in the first centuries; part of it, depicting the lamb that Christ had on his shoulders, has remained. And only this part has been retained. In older times, people were referred to by some part of their body. Let us suppose, for example, that there are such names. Someone is called Kappa – Cappa, which was once a small headdress. Certain people got their name from this headdress. If someone is called 'Eagle', it means that they once had an eagle in their coat of arms, and so on. Isn't that right? The name 'Lamb of God' also remained because it was a part of the older images.

Now, in the sixth century, all sense of the spirit had actually already disappeared, and the consequence of this was that people believed that they could only look at what had taken place in the human destiny of Christ Jesus. They did not look at the living Christ, who is spirit, but at the mortal man Jesus and interpreted it as if He were the Christ. Therefore, from the sixth century onwards, this event of dying became particularly important.

Yes, you see, materialism already plays a role here. And we see, especially when we follow the development of Christianity, how materialism develops even more. And as a result, many things came about in later times that would not otherwise have come about.

I have told you, gentlemen, that this knowledge, that the Christ is a being from the sun that lived in the man Jesus, is expressed by this sign, which can still be seen on the altar at every high mass: This is the Holy Sacrament, the monstrance (see drawing p. 128): the sun in the middle and the moon on which the sun is. As long as it was known that the Christ was a being from the sun, it made sense. For what is it that is inside the monstrance? It is caked flour. How could this caked flour come about? It could come about through the sun's rays falling on the earth, through the sun's light and warmth falling on the earth, through grain growing and flour being made from that grain. So that is a real product of the sun. It is really, if you want to put it that way, a body made of sunlight. As long as one knew that, the whole thing had a meaning.

Furthermore, the moon was depicted in this form because the crescent moon appears to be the most important thing. And I have told you: man has received the powers that give him his physical form from the powers of the moon. The whole thing had meaning as long as people knew how these things are. But these things are gradually losing all their meaning. I will tell you one thing that shows you the significance of such things.

Do you think that the Turks, that is, the Mohammedans, as I told you, again merely worshipped the one God, not the three figures; they again attributed everything to the Father God. What did they have to accept as a sign? Of course, the moon! That is why the Turks have their image: the crescent moon.

Christianity should know that in this symbol of theirs it has the one in which the sun conquers the moon. And that was mainly depicted by the first Christians: that the sun has conquered the moon through the Mystery of Golgotha. But what does that mean? You see, now everything is actually going haywire in the spiritual realm! Because if you understand what the image of the sun represents, you say to yourself: the one who knows about this solar image assumes that man has free will in life, that something can still enter into him that has a meaning for life. The one who only believes in the moon thinks that man has received everything at birth, that he can no longer make anything out of himself. Yes, but that is precisely the fatalism of the Turks! And the Turks actually know something about it. In some respects the Turks are cleverer than the Europeans, because the Europeans once had the sun as their sign, but have forgotten what it means.

Now, when you consider that in the 6th century they actually no longer knew anything about the spiritual Christ, then you will also understand why in the Middle Ages - in the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th centuries, and then a little later - they suddenly began to argue: What does it actually mean, this thing called the Lord's Supper? It only means something to the one who accepts a picture of the spiritual. But they were no longer able to do that; so now they argued. Some said: On the altar in the church, the bread really does change into the body of Christ. The others did not believe this, because they could not imagine that the bread, which looked exactly the same afterwards as it did before, had become flesh. They could not understand this. And so those medieval disputes arose, which led to such terrible results. For those who said: It is all the same to us whether people understand the matter or not, we believe that the bread is real flesh – that was the one party that became Roman Catholics. The others said: We cannot believe that, but at most what happens can have the meaning, the symbolic meaning. – Those were the ones from whom Protestantism then arose.

And it was actually over this issue that all the religious wars of the Middle Ages broke out, which came to a head in the terrible Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648. This Thirty Years War began with Catholics and Protestants getting mixed up. As is well known, the Thirty Years War began with the so-called Defenestration of Prague. The imperial governors in Prague were thrown out of the window by the opposing party; they only fell, despite falling from the second floor, so well that it did them no harm because they fell on a dung heap! But the dunghill was not made of cow or horse dung, but of shredded paper and the like, because at that time in Prague there was an order that shredded paper, envelopes and so on were simply thrown out of the window. But it did serve a good purpose, because when Catholics and Protestants quarreled and the imperial governors Martinitz and Slawata, together with the secret writer Fabricius, were thrown out of the window – that was often done at the time, it was something that was not that uncommon – all three were saved. But that was when the Thirty Years' War started.

Of course, you must not believe that the entire Thirty Years' War was just about fighting out religious disputes. In that case, the Thirty Years' War would probably have ended earlier. What was added then were the disputes between the princes. They took advantage of the fact that people were attacking each other. One took the side of one party, the other that of the other, and then they pursued their own aims under the guise of religious disputes, so that the Thirty Years' War lasted for thirty years. But it really started for the reasons I have told you.

Well, you see, it was not until the Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to 1648, that it lasted into the 17th century; it was not so long ago that people fought over such things. And it was actually out of this dispute that Protestantism, the Protestant Church, grew.

You will now say: Yes, but if the spirit was actually abolished, how can you tell us that of the three divine beings, the Protestant, the Evangelical Church adopted the spirit? - Yes, gentlemen, it must be said that the Evangelicals did not know that they were worshiping the spirit, because the spirit had actually been abolished. They did not know it. But I have already told you: just because you are unaware of something, it does not mean that it is not there. And there was a spiritual activity going on in the Protestant Church, even if it was not a very large spiritual activity. It was just that the Protestants were unaware of it. You see, if there were no such thing as what the professors, for example, are unaware of, well, how much would there be in the world? Gentlemen, that is precisely the point: we must be clear that we can speak of something that a person does even if he knows nothing about it! And so, when it comes to the origin of Protestantism, we can already say that this third figure, the spirit, was actually the active one.

You can literally see materialism emerging there! The older people in Christianity did not need to argue that this flattened flour physically turns into real flesh, because it never occurred to them to think such a thing. It was only when they wanted to think everything materially that it was also thought materially. That is very interesting in general. Materialism actually has two forms: First, all spirituality was conceived materially, and only later was the spirit denied. That is actually the path that materialism takes.

It is now interesting to see how even later, even after the 6th century, a much more spiritual view of Christianity is present in Central Europe than later. Christianity first became materialistic in the south. In Central Europe there are two very beautiful poems. One of them originated in Alsace in the 9th century and is called Otfried's “Evangelienharmonie”. The other poem, however, originated in areas that are now Saxon and is called “Heliand”, savior. If you read the “Heliand”, you will notice one thing. You will say to yourself: Now, this monk – because it was a monk from a farming background who wrote the “Heliand” – has indeed described Christ Jesus, but he describes him in a very particular way; he describes him roughly as the Germans describe a duke who rides at the head of German masses of soldiers, fighting and conquering his enemies. When you read the “Heliand,” you feel you are in Germany, not in Palestine. Of course, it recounts the same events as the Gospels, but it does so as if Christ Jesus were actually a German duke, a German prince. And the deeds of Jesus are also told in this way.

Yes, gentlemen, what does that mean? It means that the man who wrote the “Heliand” was completely indifferent to the external facts that could once be seen with one's own eyes in Palestine; he did not want to describe them faithfully at all. He was indifferent to the external image. He wanted to describe the spiritual Christ and thought to himself: It does not matter whether he travels around the world in the human form of a German duke or in the form of a Palestinian Jew. So at the time when 'Heliand' was written, people in Central Europe still truly believed in the spiritual Christ, they had not yet become materialistic. In the south, this was already the case at that time; the Romance peoples, the Greek peoples, had already become materialistic. But in Central Europe there was still a certain sense of the spiritual, and so this Saxon monk who wrote the “Heliand” actually still described the Christ, only in the image of a German duke. From this you can see that even here in Central Europe one finds the possibility of proving that the Christ was at first conceived entirely spiritually, precisely as the Spirit of the Sun, as I described him.

And if one then goes into the character of the Christ in this Heliand, one finds that the main point of view is that the Heliand, the Christ, in this Saxon book is a “free man”, that is, he has the sun within him, not just the moon, so he is a free man.

It is really the case that the whole connection of the Christ with the world outside of Earth has simply been forgotten and is no longer recognized today.

But now I would like to tell you something else. If we go back to those mysteries that I told you about, which in ancient times were places of learning, religion and art at the same time, if we go back to these old mysteries, we find that festivals are celebrated in them that are connected with the year. In spring, the festival of the so-called resurrection was always celebrated. Nature also rises at Easter time. That is when the festival of resurrection was celebrated. People said to themselves: the human soul can celebrate a resurrection just as nature does. Nature has the Father. In spring, nature's powers become new. But in the human being, if he takes proper care of himself, if he works on himself, the powers of the soul become new. And that was what was striven for in the old mysteries, by the people who actually knew, by the people who were said to have wisdom, that the soul should have an experience which I might call a kind of springtime experience in human life. You see, a springtime experience, when you can say of yourself: Oh, what I knew before, it's all nothing! I am reborn! Once in a lifetime, the realization can dawn on you that you are reborn, that is, reborn out of the spirit. As strange as it may sound to you, in the whole of Asia Minor, people were divided into those who were born once and those who were born twice. Everywhere one spoke of twice-born people. Those who had been born only once were born through the powers of the moon and remained so throughout their entire lives. The others, the twice-born, had been taught in the mysteries, had learned something and had known: Man can free himself, man can follow his own forces. - But that was represented in the picture.

You can go back far, far: Everywhere around the springtime there is a particular festival where in the mysteries they depicted how a god, present in human form, dies and is buried, and then rises again after three days. That was a real depiction that was always given in the old mysteries in the springtime. People came together. The image of this god in human form was there. They depicted how the god died; they buried the image. After three days, the image was taken out of the grave again and carried in solemn procession through the area, and everyone shouted: The savior has risen again for us! During the three days in which the savior figuratively lay in the grave, they had a kind of mourning festival, and this was followed by a celebratory festival.

You see, gentlemen, that means a lot; because it means that what happened at Golgotha was always enacted in the mysteries every year.

When it is said in the Gospels that there was a cross on Golgotha, that Christ died there, that is a historical event. But the image of it was present throughout antiquity. And that is why the first Christians felt that what really happened was a fulfilled prophecy. And they said: Those who lived in the ancient mysteries were the prophets of what happened as the mystery of Golgotha.

So you see: even in ancient times there was, so to speak, a Christianity. Only that Christianity was not the Christianity of Jesus Christ, but it was a spiritual Christianity that was celebrated in the image.

You see, one of the most important saints of the Catholic Church is St. Augustine, who lived in the 4th to 5th century. This Saint Augustine was initially a pagan, then converted to Christianity and later became one of the most respected priests and saints of the Catholic Church. Now, in the writings of this Augustine, you will find a strange saying. He says: Christianity was already there before Jesus Christ; the ancient sages were already Christians, only they were not yet called Christians.

Yes, gentlemen, it is something tremendously significant that even in the time of Christianity it is admitted that what was present as Christianity in the ancient mysteries was only presented by Jesus Christ in the time when the mysteries were no longer present, so that it had to remain as a unified event for the whole earth.

And the awareness that Christianity had already existed in ancient paganism has also been lost. Materialism has simply destroyed an enormous amount of what mankind had already found. And in this image, where the resurrection of the dead human god was always depicted in springtime, the wise man of antiquity saw his own destiny depicted. He said: I must become like that; I must also develop a science within me by which I say to myself, death has only one meaning for that in me which has come into being through natural forces, but not for that which later came into being in me for the second time, which I acquire through my own human powers.

There was still something in the early Christianity where people said to themselves: Man must, in order to be immortal, awaken the soul within himself during life; then he is immortal in the true sense. Of course, a false view could not actually be opposed to something like that. But a false view did fight. For while in the first centuries Christianity was spread in such a way that people said: One must cultivate the soul of man so that the soul of man does not die -, later the church preached a different view: It no longer wanted man to take care of his soul, but it wanted to take care of his soul itself! The Church is supposed to take more and more care of the soul of the individual, not the individual himself. This has led to the fact that people no longer see the actual way in which the soul is properly cared for, namely, that the spirit is reborn in the soul, that the sun-like element is reborn. You cannot take care of the sun-like element in a materialistic way. How then could one provide for the soul in a materialistic way? Yes, one would have to equip an expedition and always bring from the sun what one should give to man! But of course one cannot do that. And so the whole thing was presented in a false way.

You see, gentlemen, everything I have to tell you shows you how, over time, materialism has actually become more and more widespread and how the spiritual in man has actually no longer been understood. Today it is already the case that this principle, not letting the soul of man take care of itself, but letting the church take care of the soul, has not yet led to the death of the human soul. But if the same principle were to continue, it would not be long before souls died with their bodies. Today, people's souls are still alive; they can still be awakened when a true spiritual science comes. In a century or two they could no longer be awakened if a spiritual science does not arise, if the old ways continue.

What would happen if materialism were to remain? Yes, you see, gradually this materialism would have to laugh at itself; because even in education one must proceed in a spiritual way. You cannot educate and teach without speaking of the spirit. But if it really comes to that, as it is already evident in some places, materialism will either have to laugh at itself when it speaks of the spirit, or it will have to become honest.

When I and some other anthroposophical friends had spoken at the congress in Vienna in 1922, an article was published afterwards that ended with the author saying, “We have to fight against the spirit!” He wanted to dismiss us by saying, “We have to fight against the spirit!” But if we honestly continued the fight against the spirit, where would it lead? Then one would say, if one honestly wanted to start educating a six-year-old child: Gosh, that's matter, that presupposes the spirit! Let's rather prescribe a powder or something else for the child to change its matter; then it will become clever, then it will know something! That is what comes out when materialism becomes honest. He should let children come to school, and, as one might vaccinate against smallpox today, so one child after another should be vaccinated with cleverness; because if cleverness is materialistic, then it must be vaccinated. So human children should be vaccinated with cleverness. That would make materialism honest. Because if someone says that he does not think with his soul and spirit, but with his brain – and the brain is a material substance – then one must also make the brain clever in a material way, not in a spiritual way. Materialism would end up in such terrible contradictions. The only way to save itself is to learn again to know something of the spirit. A spiritual science was bound to come in our time, because otherwise the human souls would die.

[Dearly beloved present]

After we have been able to see from our previous observations how the then prevailing mystery views were used in the formation of Christianity, today we want to look at two main representatives of early Christianity to see how they placed themselves in the whole development, in the formation process.

There is no doubt that Paul saw in Christ the mediator between God and man, a personality at such a high level of the development of existence that this person undoubtedly overcame death in Paul's opinion and really appeared to him in a spiritualized body in the hour of his conversion. That is Paul's faith. This is also what gave him the confidence to teach. Convinced of the mediator between God and man, of the risen Jesus Christ, he went out and preached the gospel.

Where did the components [of these teachings] come from, which presuppose a very specific philosophical conception, and especially those which came to us as a reinterpretation of the [ancient initiation] rituals? Where is the origin of the life of Jesus to be found? We can certainly say: within the sermons preached to the large Christian community in the first century. Within it, Paul probably did not hold the view that we encounter in the Gospel of John, where Christ Jesus is the second form of God who became man. Paul never held this strictly metaphysical, theosophical view. But John [did]. Since the Apocalypse is undoubtedly from John, we are dealing with a spiritualized personality in the school of John, which understands Christ as God incarnate - not merely as the mediator between man and God, not merely as an exemplary personality - but we are dealing with a spiritualized personality in the personality that is based on John. We see a spiritualized personality taking hold.

We know that John spent time in Ephesus, that he wrote his most important writings there and then had a relationship with the presbyter John. Whether the teachings of the Logos are taken from Egyptian-Greek philosophy is more or less irrelevant to us. But it is clear that the metaphysical-theosophical conception came from John.

There was a whole series of Christian communities in Ephesus and Asia Minor. There were certainly many more than seven. Strictly speaking, the Apocalypse is only addressed to seven churches to whom the teaching is to be revealed. When John comes to Ephesus, he plays a very special role. He is one of the most important personalities. He doesn't actually have any special influence in the administration of the church. The administrators are completely different. If one such church leader dies, another is simply elected without any thought of putting John at the head. All the statements that we know from this time indicate that there was a certain opposition [to Paul] - but not conflict - that John's direction and Pauline Christianity must have gone side by side. This is a very important fact. It can only be explained by the fact that, in view of the completely different Jesus figure in John's Gospel and in view of something else that I will say later, we see in John's school a special school [in which was taught] what was not preached to the great masses. We even know that John's teachings were first considered dangerous for the masses. In the school of John we are probably dealing with a kind of secret school, a mystical community, from which the Gospel of John emerged and which also influenced the Synoptic Gospels. It was not written down in the form of history, but only the teachings were written down. The language became the universe. But the story was not written down until the end of the first century at the earliest.

This indicates that we are dealing with the great

Christian community in Ephesus and the surrounding area - and with a mystical theosophical school of John. Everything that we have in terms of historical-allegorical moments in Christianity emerges from this school of John, while in Pauline Christianity we have nothing other than the Christ who died for humanity and what he taught, including that he introduced the communion of the Lord's Supper. That was the common bond by which the Christians of that time recognized each other.

The fact that we are dealing with a mystical church can be seen from the fact that we are dealing with seven churches [in the Apocalypse]. Right at the beginning of the Apocalypse we are dealing with an allegorical school, while in the Gospel of John we are dealing with a mystical-theosophical school. The school of John was not the only one. We may get to know another one today, if there is still time.

So what came into Christianity through the St. John school? The things I have already mentioned. The resurrection of Lazarus, which is nothing other than the representation of an initiation process. These [things] come from schools that were very familiar with the mystery rites. This raising of Lazarus is undoubtedly part of a secret school, and [it was not included in the Synoptic Gospels]. The facts speak for this.

What we need to look at now is: Within the secret school must have arisen what is called the Apostles' Creed. This is nothing other than a result of the mystery cults[, those mystery cults which can be read in the presentation which I have given to the members. Those who have embarked on the path of initiation have had to make a profession of faith, into the meaning of which they have been initiated. I would like to outline such a creed for you. It cannot be made up arbitrarily, but is based on what has been handed down to us:

1. [The person to be initiated] must first believe in a supreme deity, because the deity is deeply hidden, but a perspective opens up for those who want to walk the highest path to the [mysteries]. [God] is the Father of all things. That was the first article.

2 Then he has to believe in the second Logos. The first Logos was the Father himself, who then entered into things. This is how he came to take the form of the second Logos.

The second Logos is therefore a kind of image of God, a spiritual reflection of God. It descends and takes on material form. This is called "the absorption of God in a material existence. It condenses and takes on material form. The world at large is nothing other than the materialized second Logos, which develops up to the human soul in order to find its way back to God from there.

When man searches through matter, he finds the spirit in matter. However, this is nothing other than the spirit that previously entered matter. This descent is presented to us mystically in the figures of Dionysus, in the various mystical figures such as Osiris, Isis and so on. In the mythological processes we have the various transformations of this process. In short: I believe in the materialized Logos.

[B-] Why did God make this sacrifice of materialization? Why did he descend? It means the whole process of development itself. The world would not be there. The Initiator professes this. The Logos has descended into matter and is now in its ascent again.

This general view was repeated microcosmically, as it were, in every single person. There was the view that the same procedure takes place in man as took place with God.

The initiation cults were there to make this particularly clear to the person being initiated. As a rule, such mystery cults were held near lakes. And in Athens they were also held near ponds. The lake, the water - as we know from the Egyptian initiation ritual - were regarded as a symbol of material existence. The descent into material existence was to be reflected by those seeking initiation [by descending into the water]. Water was regarded as a symbol of material existence. That is why this cult was held near lakes.

Something very strange happened. You can find this if you follow the Apostles' Creed, which was established by the various councils: The whole processes that are described there in the Creed are nothing more than the same points, the same processes, which can also be found in the initiation process. The Apostles' Creed still clearly shows the initiation process. If you leave out [for the time being] only the words "suffered under Pontius Pilate", you will see that it is an initiation process. A confession is made of God, then of the materialized God, the second Logos, then of the ascent [of the Initiator]. Three days in sleep, the descent to hell, to be awakened again on the third day and then to emerge from the process as an initiate.

However, there is the difficulty that on the one hand we have the second Logos, Christ Jesus - the Gospel of John identifies Jesus with the second Logos - and on the other hand the personality of Jesus, so that we can assume that [in the creed] we are dealing with a reinterpretation of the second Logos into the personality of Jesus. So [the second Logos] has been Christianized.

Now I come to a hypothesis - I will call it a hypothesis for now - I mean the words: "suffered under Pontius Pilate". We have them from the writings of the time, but we know nothing of the events. We know that Pilate existed, if not in Jerusalem, then at least in the Assyrian Empire. But that cannot convince us that a very strange process must have taken place. So we cannot help but see the Apostles' Creed as a transformed initiation rite. The second Logos has been transformed into a personality. So how does "suffered under Pontius Pilate" come into it? You only need to omit a single letter from Pontius and instead of Pontius just say Pontus and take Pontus in the sense of the sea. This may seem a little daring. But such insertions - don't call them forgeries, because they are made in good faith - occurred every now and then in the first centuries. This confession describes the various stages of initiation according to the Mystery rituals. However, these were held in various individual places, almost always on a lake. It has also always been said that these things took place at some lake here or there. We would therefore be quite surprised if the fact that the event took place on a lake were not to be found in a mystery ritual. We therefore have reason to assume that we are dealing with the [view of an initiatory process], so that it would mean nothing other than the descent [of the Logos] into matter or the undergoing of the process of initiation.

We are therefore dealing with an application of the ritual and with a fusion of what was taught and what flowed into Christianity from various cults. In the most diverse places, the most diverse cults have also been cultivated within Christianity.

Paul started out from a teaching that pointed towards Judaism. He also accepted Gentiles, but always paying attention to what was already there. He also says: "The Jews put more emphasis on signs, the Greeks more on wisdom. I treat both the way they want to be treated." He did not create something that perplexed people, but he shaped what he had before him. To a much greater degree, the others seem to have done the same. To imagine that Christianity was a uniform doctrine from the beginning would be a childish notion.

Paul and Peter were highly divided, and there were also disputes in the churches. Paul often tried to settle such disputes. So [early Christianity] was not a strictly uniform doctrine, but one could see the rays coming together from the most diverse points. The centralization took place much later.

In addition to the popular Christianity of Paul, there was also an esoteric view, the school of John. We owe the related information to a series of written works. They emerge in the sixth century AD and later form the basis of various church writers. Later they are attributed to the [Areopagian writer] Dionysius, who is said to have been converted to Christianity by Paul in Athens. All this has often been considered false. But you can't understand what that means. Perhaps the only way to understand it is that Dionysius did not write the writings himself. But if we follow these writings, we find an even deeper understanding of Christianity. The author is not named, but the references made by church writers show that these writings existed. All traces indicate that they were not present in [early] Latin Christianity, but that we received them quite late. We are therefore dealing with writings that reflect the views of the early church fathers of the Greek Church. The author presents them to us as a development of the old mystery relationships, as the belief in God that is only accessible in a mystical way.

We are then shown how the imperfect beings emanate from this God and in this way a descent takes place to the forms to which man himself belongs. Then it is shown how a return to the God is to take place through the various forms. We find more detailed accounts in Scotus Eriugena, who wrote his "Classification of Nature" in this spirit. What we learn in these writings indicates that from the second century onwards we are dealing with such a mysterious school, very similar to the school of St. John in Ephesus. It too cultivated such mystical-theosophical teachings.

So such traditions, which aim to show that we are dealing with a "pseudo-Dionysius", indicate that such a school existed, which did not write down its teachings, but propagated them orally, and that these teachings can be traced back to Dionysius, who was converted by the apostle. Such secret schools undoubtedly existed in the early days of Christianity. We must therefore distinguish between the popular view and the view held by the individual initiate himself.

When we follow the writings of [Hermas], we can almost grasp with our hands what lies behind the form of expression. [Hermas] does not break with the [Christian mystical] tradition, but stands on the same point of view.

However, we are dealing with teachings that have a deeper understanding of Christianity, which they strive to translate into symbolism, in the creed, which is built up piece by piece in the councils and built up in the ritual acts and rites.

We can almost follow this in the writings of the Church. Sometimes we cannot understand what is contained in such a symbol, but we must accept such a symbol with faith and believe that the meaning will gradually become clear to us. Now if this man [- Hermas -] speaks of there being four degrees of initiation, as described in the scriptures, then we can only say that there must have been an esoteric teaching in addition to the exoteric teaching.

Whoever received the symbol, [to whom] for example the sacrifice of the Mass was presented, is not disturbed by the fact that something is presented to him [which he does not understand], but is given a symbol. Soon he will penetrate the mysterious meaning of the symbol.

In the church writers of the third and fourth centuries we see that the [students of the] deeper teachings of Christianity have to go through various stages of initiation. For the great masses, the esoteric teaching was brought to light in the symbol.

Now let us see how the esoteric teaching has developed and how the esoteric has adapted itself to the exoteric. And how the church strives for worldly power as a result. We want to see how this [esoteric] character has gradually been lost and how traces of it have evaporated right into scholasticism. This is connected with the most important events that took place in church history and with the transfer of events in Christianity from Ephesus in Asia to Rome in Italy.

In the first and beginning of the second century, the most important center for the spread of Christianity was Ephesus. This seat then moved from Ephesus to Italian Rome. We also speak of Ephesus as an Asian Rome, and of a direction that did not concern Johannine Christianity but Pauline Christianity. So we see an esoteric Christianity in the doctrine of John, while in the Pauline direction we have the popular form.

Answer to the question:

Pontus = lake. Pontius Pilate was governor of Caesarea. ["Suffered under Pontius Pilate" therefore means suffering caused by passing through the stages of matter.

"I am Osiris N. Growing among the blossoms of the fig tree is the name of Osiris N."

"Go thy way", see in the Book of the Dead.

Pontius Pilate is mentioned by the Roman or other writers as governor of Caesarea.

The Holy Spirit is nothing other than the third Logos, which we find in matter and in our souls.

The resurrection of the flesh points to the doctrine of reincarnation. Not demonstrable in the Johannine school, probably did not even exist. The Church replaced initiation with inspiration with faith. The secret teachings were canonized [dogmatized]. Why the doctrine of reincarnation was not popular is quite clear to me today. Even today it is difficult to make it popular. It is seen as a political danger. The doctrine of reincarnation in its true form cannot be popularized. The doctrine of reincarnation has led to the wildest superstitions, [the doctrine of] transmigration through animals and so on.

Christianity does not regard the doctrine of reincarnation as a doctrine that could be handed over to the masses. Substitutionary atonement in Pauline Christianity is something that cannot be reconciled with reincarnation and karma.

When it was announced to the world on Friday the 15th that Emperor Frederick had died, a wave of profound emotion ran through the world. Everywhere it was felt what Frederick could have been to the German people if the treacherous illness had not prevented him. No one can hide the fact that this emperor on the throne would have represented an ethical greatness that would have given rise to the greatest hopes. Voices from all parts of the world are pouring in, expressing the deepest sympathy for the noble ruler. The funeral took place on Monday morning at ½II o'clock. Wilhelm II addressed the army for the first time after his accession to the throne. We will only highlight the most striking passages: "In the army, the firm, unbreakable allegiance to the warlord is the legacy that passes from father to son, from generation to generation; and I also refer to my grandfather, the image of the glorious and venerable warlord, as it cannot be thought of more beautifully and appealing to the heart; to my dear father, who already earned a place of honor in the army as crown prince... I vow to be mindful that the eyes of my ancestors look down upon me."

The proclamation of the new King of Prussia is reproduced here as his most important proclamation:

To my people! God's decree has once again imposed upon us the most painful mourning. Now that the tomb over the mortal remains of my unforgettable grandfather has barely closed, my beloved father's majesty has also been recalled from this temporality to eternal peace. The heroic energy arising from Christian submission, with which he was able to fulfill his royal duties despite his suffering, seemed to give room for the hope that he would remain with the Fatherland for a longer time. God decided otherwise. The royal sufferer, whose heart beat for all that was great and beautiful, was given only a few months to exercise on the throne the noble qualities of mind and heart that had won him the love of his people. The virtues that adorned him, the victories he once won on the battlefields, will be gratefully remembered as long as German hearts beat, and everlasting fame will glorify his chivalrous figure in the history of the Fatherland.

Called to the throne of my fathers, I have taken over the government looking up to the King of all kings and have vowed to God, following the example of my fathers, to be a just and mild prince to my people, to cultivate piety and the fear of God, to protect peace, to promote the welfare of the country, to be a helper to the poor and afflicted, and a faithful guardian of justice.

When I ask God for strength to fulfill these royal duties that his will imposes on me, I am supported by the trust in the Prussian people that the retrospect of our history grants me. In good days and in bad, the Prussian people have always been loyal to their King. I also count on this loyalty, the bond of which has proved unbreakable towards my fathers in every difficult time and danger, in the knowledge that I repay it wholeheartedly as the loyal prince of a loyal people, both equally strong in their devotion to the common fatherland.

From this awareness of the reciprocity of love that binds me to my people, I take confidence that God will grant me the strength and wisdom to exercise my royal office for the good of the Fatherland.

Potsdam, June 8, 1888, Wilhelm.

The Imperial Diet is convened by imperial decree on Monday, June 25. The Emperor himself will open it with a speech from the throne.

In Austria, it is the delegations that are currently the focus of political interest. It is worth mentioning above all the friendly and deeply political manner in which the alliance with Germany is being treated by the Hungarian statesmen, so that Count Kalnoky could rightly say that it had hardly happened before that an act of state concluded in secret had been brought into the public eye in this way and welcomed with such universal approval. Reference was also made to the importance of the alliance with Italy, and it must certainly also give satisfaction that Kalnoky was able to say that the conclusion of the last trade treaty with that empire, which placed trade relations on a secure footing, had shown how the leading Italian statesman, Crispi, was directing policy with energy and enlightened understanding towards the closest possible union of his country with Germany and Austria-Hungary. With regard to the political situation in Europe, we have probably learned nothing new. Count Kalnoky also emphasized that none of the causes which last winter and earlier had made peace appear endangered had diminished. The concerns arise not only from the conditions on the Balkan peninsula, but rather from the general Eutopean situation, from the balance of power in the individual states and the profound differences of opinion not so much between the cabinets as between the populations. As far as Bulgaria was concerned, Austria-Hungary's sympathy for Prince Ferdinand was clear enough, and the only obstacle to official recognition of the latter by the Monarchy was the fact that Turkey, which was entitled to take the initiative, had not yet done so. - During the discussion of the war budget, Reich Minister of War Bauer emphasized that in future more care should be taken in the training schools to cultivate the Hungarian language among officers, but that this should not be detrimental to the common army language. The ordinance was approved unanimously.

The reception that the Austrian Crown Prince and Princess received throughout Bosnia was extremely gratifying.

According to the latest news, Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria is likely to settle the Popov affair in a manner favorable to the latter. The ministers seem to agree with the Prince's will, and there can no longer be any talk of a cabinet crisis. The Prince departs with Princess Clementine for Philippopel, where Prime Minister Stambulov awaits him.

The run-off elections in Belgium gave the Catholics all eight seats in the Senate and one in the Chamber.

In Madrid, a ministerial crisis took place as a result of differences between the influential Marshal Martinez Campos and the Minister of War, whose military reform was opposed by the latter. The newly formed Sagasta cabinet declared in the Chamber that it only wanted to be a continuation of the previous one.

On this day when we meet to celebrate our Christmas festival, it may be seasonable to depart from what has been our customary routine and, instead of seeking after knowledge and truth, to withdraw inwardly, foregathering for a time with that world of feeling and sensations which we are endeavouring to awaken by the aid of the light we receive through Anthroposophy.

This festival now approaching, and which for countless persons presents a time of joyousness—joyousness in the best sense of that word—is, nevertheless, when accepted in the way in which it must be accepted in accordance with our anthroposophical conception of the universe, by no means a very old one.

What is known as the ‘Christian Christmas’ is not coeval with the dawn of Christianity in the world—the earliest Christians, indeed, had no such festival. They did not celebrate the Birth of Christ Jesus. Nearly three hundred years went by before the feast of His Nativity began to be kept by Christianity.

During the first centuries, when the Christian belief was spreading throughout the world, there was a feeling within such souls as had responded to the Christ Impulse inclining persons to withdraw themselves more and more from contact with the external aspects of life prevalent in their day—from what had grown forth from archaic times, as well as from what was extant at the inception of the Christ-Impulse. For a vague instinctive feeling possessed these early Christians—a feeling which seemed to tell them that this Impulse should indeed be so fostered as to form anew the things of this earth—so forming them that new feelings, new sensations, and, above all things, fresh hopes and a new confidence in the development of humanity should permeate all, in contradistinction to the feelings which had before held sway—and that what was to dawn over the horizon of the vast world-life should take its point of departure from a spiritual germ—a spiritual germ which, literally speaking, might be considered as within this Earth.

Oft-times, as you will be aware, have we in the spirit transported ourselves to those Roman catacombs where, removed from the life of the time, the early Christians were wont to rejoice their hearts and souls. In the spirit have we sought admittance to these places of devotion. The earlier celebrations kept here were not in honour of His Birth. At most was the Sunday of each week set apart in order that once in every seven days the great event of Golgotha might he pondered; and beyond this, there were others the anniversaries of whose death were kept during that first century. These dead were those who had transmitted with special enthusiasm the account of that event—men whose impressive participation in the trend thus given to the development of humanity had led to their persecution by a world grown old. Thus it came to pass that the days upon which these Martyrs had entered into glory were kept as the birthdays of humanity by these early Christians. As yet there was no such thing as a celebration of the Birth of Christ. Indeed we may say that it is the coming—the introduction—of this Christ-Birth Festival, that can show how we in the present day have the full right to say: ‘Christianity is not the outcome of this or that dogma, it is not dependent upon this or that institution—dogmas and institutions which have been perpetuated from one generation to another—but we have the right to take Christ’s own words for our justification, when He says that He is with us always, and that He fills us with His Spirit all our days.’ And when we feel this Spirit within us we may deem ourselves called to an increasing, never-ceasing development of the Christian Spirit. The anthroposophical development of the Spirit bids us not foster a Christianity which is frozen and dead, but a new and living Christianity—one ever quickening with new wisdom and fresh knowledge, an evolution from within, stretching forward into the development of the future.

Never do we speak of a Christ Who was, but rather of an eternal and a living Christ. And more especially are we permitted to speak of this living and ever-active Christ—this Christ Who works within us—when the time is at hand for dwelling on the Birth-festival of Christ Jesus, for the Christians of the first centuries were alive to the fact that it was given to them to imbue what was, as it were, the organism of the Christian development with a ‘new thing’—that it was given to them to add thereunto that which was actually streaming into them from the Spirit of Christ.

We must therefore regard the Christmas Festival as one which was not known prior to the fourth century; indeed, we may place the date of the first ‘Christ-Birth’ Festival in Rome as having taken place in the year 354, and it should, moreover, be particularly borne in mind that at a time less critical than is the present, those who confessed themselves Christians were, imbued with the true feeling—a feeling which impelled them to be ever seeking and garnering new fruits from the great Christian Tree of Life.

This perhaps is the reason why we too feel that at such a season we may do well to rejoice in an outward symbol of the Christ’s Birth—in the symbol of the Christmas-tree now before us and around which through the coming days countless people will gather, a symbol whose true meaning it is the mission of Anthroposophy with ever deepening seriousness to impress upon the hearts and souls of men.

We should indeed almost be coming to loggerheads with the evolution of the times were we to take our stand by this symbol—for it is a mistake to imagine it to be an old one. It would be, however, quite easy to imagine that some such poetic belief giving credence to the Christmas-tree being a venerable institution, might arise in the soul of present-day humanity.

There exists a picture which presents the Christmas-tree in Luther’s family parlour. This picture, which was of course painted during the nineteenth century, perpetuates an error, for not only in Germany during Luther’s days, but also amid the surrounding European countries, there were as yet no such trees at Christmas.

May we perhaps not say, that the Christmas-tree of to-day is something which should be taken rather as the prophetic sign of times to come?—that this Tree may, as the years roll on, be regarded ever more and more as the symbol of something stupendous in its meaning—in its importance? Then, indeed, being trammelled by no illusions as regards its historical age, we may let our eyes rest on this Christmas-tree the while we call before our souls an oft-repeated memory—that of the so-called ‘Sacred Legend.’ It runs as follows: When Adam was driven forth from Paradise (this Legend, I should add, is told after many fashions, and I shall here only put the matter as shortly as possible)—when therefore Adam was driven forth from Paradise, he took with him three seeds belonging to the Tree of Life—the tree of which man had been forbidden to eat after he had once eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And when Adam died, Seth took the three seeds, and placed them in Adam’s grave, and thus there grew from out the grave a tree. The wood of this tree—so runs the legend—has served many purposes: From it Moses is said to have fashioned his staff; while later on, it is said, this wood was taken to form the Cross which was raised upon Golgotha.

In this way does a legend significantly remind us of that other Tree of Paradise, the one which stood second. Man had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge: enjoyment of the Tree of Life was withheld from him.

Yet within the heart of man has remained for evermore a longing, a desire for that Tree.

Driven forth from the Spiritual Worlds—which are signified by ‘Paradise’—into an external world of appearances, men have felt within their hearts that yearning for the Tree of Life.

But what man was denied unearned and in his undeveloped state, was nevertheless to be his through the struggle of attainment when with the aid of cognition he should in the course of time and through his work upon the physical plane, have made himself ripe to receive and capable of using the fruits of the Tree of Life. In those three seeds we have presented to us man’s longing for the Tree of Life.

The Legend tells us that in the wood of the Cross was contained that which came from the Tree of Life, and through the entire development there has been a feeling, a consciousness that the dry wood of the Cross did nevertheless contain the germ of the new spiritual life—that there had been ordained to grow forth from it that which, provided man enjoyed it in the right way, would enable him to unite his soul with the fruit of the Tree of Life—that fruit which should bestow upon him immortality, in the truer sense of the word, giving light to the soul, illumining it in such manner as to enable it to find the way from the dark depths of this physical world to the translucent heights of spiritual existence, there to feel itself as indeed participator in a deathless life.

Without, therefore, giving way to any illusion, we—as beings filled with emotion (rather than as historians)—may well stand before the tree which represents to us the tree of Christmas-tide, and feel the while we do so, something in it symbolical of that light which should dawn in our innermost souls, in order to gain for us immortality in the spiritual existence; and turning our gaze within we feel how the spiritual tendency of anthroposophical thought permeates us with a force which permits of our raising our eyes to behold the World of the Spirit. Therefore, in looking upon this outward symbol—the tree of Christmas-tide—we may indeed say: ‘May it be a symbol to us for that which is destined to illumine and burn within our souls, in order to raise us thither—even to the realms of the Spirit.’

For this tree, too, has, so to speak, sprouted forth from the depths of darkness, and only such persons might be inclined to cavil at so unhistorical a view, who are unaware that the thing which external physical knowledge does not recognise has nevertheless its deep spiritual foundations. To the physical eye it may not be apparent how gradually this Christmas-tree grows, as it were, to be a part of the outward life of humanity. In a comparatively short time, indeed, it has come to be a custom that brings happiness to man, one which has come to affect the world’s intercourse in general. This, as I have said, may pass unrecognised, yet those who know that external events are but impressions of a spiritual process, are bound to fee? that there may possibly have been some very deep meaning at work, responsible for the appearance of the Christmas-tree upon the external physical plane; that its appearance has emanated from out the depths of some great spiritual impulse—an impulse leading men invisibly onward—that indeed this lighted tree may have been the means of sending to some specially sensitive souls that inspiration of the inward light whereof it furnishes so beautiful an external symbol. And when such cognition awakens to wisdom, then indeed does this tree—by reason of our will—also become an external symbol for that which is Divine.

If Anthroposophy is to be knowledge, then it must be knowledge in an active sense and permeated with wisdom—that is to say, it must ‘gild’—external customs and impressions. And so even as Anthroposophy warms and illumines the hearts and souls of men, present and future, so too must the Christmas-tree which has become so ‘material’ a custom recover its ‘golden glint,’ and in the. light of this true knowledge rise once more to illustrate its true symbolical meaning in life, after having spent so long a time amid the darkened depths of men’s souls in these latter days.

And if we delve down even a little further and presuppose a deep spiritual guidance to have placed this impulse within the human heart, does this not also prove that thoughts bestowed upon man by the aid of the Spirit can attain to even greater depths of feeling when brought into connection with this luminant tree?

It used to be ancient custom common in many parts of Europe to go ou into the woods some time before Christmas and collect sprigs from all kinds o plants, but more especially from foliage trees, and then seek to make these twigs bear leaf in time for Christmas Eve. And to many a soul the dim belief in ‘Life unconquerable’—in that life which shall be the vanquisher of all death—would thrill exultantly at the sight of all this sprouting greenery, branches artificially forced to unfold their tender leaves over-night at a time of year when the sun stands at its lowest. This was a very old custom—our Christmas-tree is of far more recent date. Where, then, have we in the first place to look for this custom?

We know how earnest was the language used by the great German mystics, more especially the impression created by the words of Johannes Tauler, who laboured so assiduously in Alsace; and anyone who allows the sermons of Johannes Tauler to ‘work upon him’ with the sincerity so peculiar to them will understand how at that time—a time when Tauler was more especially concerned in deepening the feeling of men for all that lay hidden within the Christian Belief—a peculiar, unique spirit must have prevailed, a spirit which of a truth was suffused with the Mystery of Golgotha. In those days when Johannes Tauler was preaching his sermons in Strasbourg, the passionate sincerity with which he delivered his ‘words of fire’ may well have sunk into the soul of many a listener, leaving there a lasting impression, and many such impressions may well have been caused by what Tauler was wont to say in his wondrously beautiful Christmas sermons. ‘Three times,’ said Tauler, ‘is God bom unto men: Firstly, when He descends from the Father—from the Great All-World; again, when having reached humanity He descends into flesh; and thirdly, when the Christ is born within the human soul, and enables it to attain to the possibility of uniting itself to that which is the Wisdom of God—enabling it thus to give birth to the higher man.’

At all such seasons when the gracious habit of celebrating the Festivals prevailed, Johannes Tauler might be found round about the neighbourhood of Strasbourg dwelling earnestly upon the meaning of these deep verities, and more especially did he do this at the Christmas season. Indeed the words sinking at such times into receptive souls may have echoed on—for feelings, too, have their traditions—and what was felt within some soul’s depths in the hush of such an hour may—who knows?—still stir responsive chords from one century to the other. And so the feeling once possessing souls passed to the eye, and gave to this a capability of perceiving in that external symbol the resurrection—the birth of man’s spiritual light.

Taken from the point of view of material thought the coincidence may be deemed a pretty one: but for those who know the manner in which spiritual guidance permeates all that is physical it becomes far more than a coincidence to learn that the first record of a Christmas-tree having stood in a German room comes from Alsace, and indeed from Strasbourg in Alsace, while the date may be given as 1642.

How ill German Mysticism has fared at the hands of a Christianity wedded to outward forms may be seen in what happened to the memory of Master Eckhard, the great forerunner of Johannes Tauler, since posterity branded him a heretic after death—having omitted to do so while he lived!

Nor did the burning words of Johannes Tauler, words which flamed up from a heart fired with Christian passion, meet with much response; the outward Christianity of the times lacked the spiritual depth of the teachings proclaimed by these men, and this may fully account for the fact that in recording the news of this first Christmas-tree the ‘eye-witness’ alludes to it as ‘child’s play,’ and observes that ‘people would do better by going to places where the right Christian teachings could be proclaimed to them.’

The further progress of the Christmas-tree was a slow one. We see it figuring here and there about Middle Germany during the eighteenth century, but not till the nineteenth century did it become practically a regular ‘spiritual’ decoration intimately associated with the Christmas season—a new symbol of something that had survived throughout the centuries of time.

In such hearts, therefore, where the glory of all things can he truly felt—not in the sense implied by a Christianity ‘made up of words,’ but by the force of a true, a spiritual Christianity—sentiments of the highest human kind were ever prone to kindle in the tree’s illumined presence.

Another reason for placing the advent of the Christmas-tree at so recent a date may be seen in the fact that Germany’s greatest poets had left it unsung: had it been known in earlier times we may be sure that Klopstock, to mention only one, would have chosen this symbol for poetic treatment. And we may, therefore, gather additional certainty from this omission to strengthen our statement as to its being a comparative innovation.

More especially might we then dwell upon this symbol when the feeling of the spiritual truth of the awakening Ego wells up within our souls—that Ego which senses the spiritual bond ’twixt soul and soul, feeling it with intensified strength where noble human beings are striving in a common cause. And I will but mention one instance of how the fight of the Christmas-tree has streamed in to illumine the soul of one of humanity’s great leaders.

It was in the year 1821 that Goethe (whom we so often meet wherever we regard the life of the spirit in the light of Anthroposophy) was bringing his Faust to its close, and in so doing he came to find how essential the Christian symbols were in order to present his poetic intentions—that, in fact, they became the only possible ones. Goethe, indeed, experienced at this time most intensely the way in which Christianity weaves the noblest bond for joining soul to soul; and how this bond has to lay the foundations of a brotherly love not dependent upon the tie of blood, but on that of souls united in the spirit. And when we dwell on the close of the Gospels we are able to feel the impulse yet dormant within Christianity.

Gazing downward from the Cross upon Golgotha, Christ beholds the mother—beholds the son; and in that moment did He found that community which hitherto had only existed through the blood.

Up to that time no mother had had a son, no son a mother, without the tie being that of blood relationship. Nor were blood ties to be eliminated by Christianity; but to these were to be added spiritual ties, diffusing with their spiritual light those ties created by the blood.

It was to these ends, then, that Christ Jesus on the Cross spoke the words: ‘Woman! behold thy son !’, and to the disciple: ‘Behold thy mother!’ What had been instituted as a blood-tie became through the mediation of the Cross a bond of the spirit.

Wherever Goethe perceived a noble effort in furtherance of this spiritual union being made, he was moved to turn towards the true Christian spirit, and what possessed the heart soon yearned for outward expression. The year 1821 gave him a special opportunity for giving utterance to this desire. The residents of the little Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, to the interests of which Goethe dedicated so great a measure of his powers, had united forces in order to found a ‘Bürger-schule’. The undertaking was, in fact, to be a ‘gift,’ as it were, to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and Goethe, desirous of celebrating in some suitable manner the spiritual impulse that had led to so progressive a step, called upon various members to give poetic expression to thoughts respecting this undertaking they all had at heart. These verses Goethe then collected in a volume for which he himself wrote an introductory poem which was recited by Prince (later Grand Duke) Karl Alexander, then three years old, who presented the book to his father, Grand Duke Karl August—this little ceremony taking place beneath the Christmas-tree. So we see that the tree was, by the year 1821, already a customary symbol of the season and by this act did Goethe indicate the Christmas-tree as being the symbol of a feeling and sentiment for spiritual progress in things both great and small. His introductory poem written for this little volume is still preserved in the Weimar Library and runs as follows:

‘Bäume leuchtend, Bäume blendend,
Uberall das Süsse spendend,
In dem Glanze sich bewegend,
Alt—und junges Herz erregend—
Solch ein Fest ist uns bescheret,
Mancher Gaben Schmuck verehret;
Staunend schaun wir auf und nieder,
Hin und her und immer wieder.
Aber, Furst, wenn dir’s begegnet,
Und ein Abend so dich segnet,
Dass als Lichter, dass als Flammen
Vor dir glänzten allzusammen
Alles, was du ausgerichtet,
Alle, die sich dir verpflichtet:
Mit erhöhten Geistesblicken
Fühltest herrliches Entzücken.’¹

The above verses of Goethe are the first of what we might call Christmas poems, and when in connection with Anthroposophy we speak of ‘symbols’ we may well say that such symbols, which in the course of time surge up involuntarily within men’s souls, are indeed gilded over with the gold of wisdom.

We have seen that the first Christian Christmas was celebrated during the fourth century in Rome. It would seem, furthermore, a matter of divine dispensation that this Feast of Christ’s Birth has—as far as Middle and Northern Europe are concerned—been introduced at the very time when a most ancient feast—that of the Winter Sun, when the shortest days are chronicled—was also wont to be celebrated.

Now it must not be imagined that this change of the old time-honoured Festival into the new Feast, the Christmas Festival, was brought about in order, as it were, to conciliate the nations. Christmas was born purely and simply out of Christianity, and we may say that the way in which it became accepted by the more Northern lands was a proof of the deeply spiritual relationship connecting these peoples as well as their symbols with Christianity.

In Armenia, for instance, the Christmas Festival has never become customary, and even in Palestine the Christians were for a long time averse to its celebration, and yet it soon found a home in Europe.

And now we will try to understand in the right way the Christmas Feast itself when taken from the anthroposophical view—doing so in order that we may also be enabled to apprehend the Christmas-tree in its symbolic sense.

When, during the course of the year, we meet together, we allow those words—which should not be mere words, but rather forces—to permeate our soul in order that the soul may become a citizen of eternity. Throughout the year do we thus assemble allowing these words—this Logos—to sound upon our ears in the most varied manner, telling us that Christ is with us always, and that when we are thus assembled together the Spirit of Christ works in upon us, so that our words become impregnated with the Spirit of Christ. If only we enunciate these things being conscious that the word becomes a ‘carrier on wings,’ bearing revelations to humanity, then indeed do we let that flow in upon our souls which is the Word of the Spirit. Yet we know that the Word of the Spirit cannot entirely be taken up by us—cannot become all it should be to us if we have only received it as an outward and abstract form of knowledge. We know that it can only become to us that which it should be if it gives rise to that inner warmth through which the soul becomes expanded—through which it senses itself as gushing forth amid all the phenomena of world-existence—in which it feels itself one with the Spirit—that Spirit which itself permeates all that is outwardly apparent.

Let us, therefore, feel the Word of the Spirit must become to us a power—a life-force—so that when the season is at hand at which we place that symbol before us, it may proclaim to our souls: ‘Let a new thing be born within you. Let that which giving warmth can spread the Light—even the Word—rising from those spiritual sources, those spiritual depths—be born within you—born as Spirit-Man!’

Then shall we feel what is the meaning of that which passes over to us as the Word of the Spirit. Let us earnestly feel, at such a moment as the present, what Anthroposophy gives to us as warmth, as light for the soul, and let us try to feel it somewhat in.the following manner:

Look at the material world of to-day with all its perpetual activity, consider the way in which men hurry and worry from morning till evening, and the way in which they judge everything from the materialistic standpoint, according to the measure laid down by this outward physical plane—how utterly oblivious they are that behind all there lives and works the Spirit. At night people sink to sleep oblivious of aught else than that ‘unconsciousness’ enwraps them, and in the morning they similarly return to a sense of the consciousness of this physical plane. Thoughtlessly, ignorantly, man sinks to sleep after all his labours and worries of the day—never even seeking enlightenment as to the meaning of life.

When the anthroposophist has become imbued with the Words of the Spirit he knows that which is no mere theory or dogma: he then knows what can give warmth as well as light to his soul. He knows that were he day by day to take up naught but the presentments of the physical life, he would inevitably wither—his life would be empty and void. All he came by would die away were he to have no other presentments than such as the physical plane is able to place before him. For when of an evening you lie down to sleep you pass over to a world of the Spirit—the forces of your soul rise to a world of higher spiritual entities, to whose level you must gradually raise your own being. And when of a morning you wake again, you do so newly strengthened from out that spiritual world, and thus do you shed spiritual life over all that approaches you upon this physical plane, be it done consciously or unconsciously. From the Eternal do you yourself rejuvenate your temporal existence each morning.

What we should do is to change into feeling this Word of the Spirit, so that we may when evening comes be able to say: ‘I shall not merely pass over to unconsciousness, but I shall dip into a world where dwell the beings of eternity—entities whom my own entity is to resemble. I therefore fall asleep with the feeling, ‘Away to the Spirit !’, and I awaken with the feeling, ‘Back—from the Spirit!’ In doing this we become permeated with that feeling into which the Word of the Spirit is to transform itself, that Word which from day to day, from week to week, has been taken up by us here. Let us feel ourselves connected with the Spirit of the Universe—let us feel that we are missionaries of the World-Spirit which permeates and interweaves all outward existence—for then we also feel when the sun stands high in summer and directs its life-giving rays earthward that then too is the Spirit active, manifesting itself in an outward manner, and how—in that we then perceive His external mien, His outward countenance, mirrored by the external rays of the sun—His inner Being may be said to have retired beyond these outer phenomena.

Where do we behold this Spirit of the Universe—this Spirit whom Zoroaster already proclaimed—when only the outward and physical rays of the sun stream in upon us? We behold this Spirit when we are able to recognise where it is He beholds Himself. Verily does this Spirit of the Universe create during summer-time those organs through which He may behold Himself. He creates external sense organs I Let us learn to understand what it is that from Springtime forward decks the earth with its carpet of verdant plants giving to it a renewed countenance. What is it?’Tis a mirror for the World-Spirit of the sun! For when the sun pours forth its rays upon us, it is the World-Spirit Who is gazing down on earth. All plant-life—bud, blossom and leaf—are but images which present the pure World-Spirit, reflected in His works as they shoot forth upon this earth:—this carpet of plants contains the sense-organs of the World-Spirit.

When in the autumn the external power of the sun declines, we see how this plant life disappears—how the countenance of the World-Spirit is withdrawn—and if we have been prepared in the right manner we may then feel how the Spirit which pulsates throughout the universe is now within ourselves. So that we can follow the World-Spirit even when He is withdrawn from external sight, for we then feel that though our gaze no longer rests upon that verdant cover, yet has the Spirit been roused in us to so great a measure that He withdraws Himself from the external presentments of the world. And so the awakening Spirit becomes our guide to those depths whither Spirit life retires and to where we deliver over to the keeping of the Spirit germs for the coming Spring. There do we learn to see with our spiritual sight, learning to say to ourselves:

‘When external life begins gradually to become invisible for the external senses, when the melancholy of Autumn creeps in upon our soul, then does the soul follow the Spirit—even amid the lifeless stones, in order that it may draw thence those forces which in the Spring will once more furnish new sense organs for the Spirit of the World.’

It is thus that those who having in their spirit conceived the Spirit come to feel that they too can follow this World-Spirit down to where the grains of seed repose in winter-time.

When the power of the sun is weakest and when its rays are at their faintest—when outer darkness is at its strongest—it is then that the Spirit within us united to the Spirit of the Universe feels and proclaims that union in greatest clearness, by filling the grains of seed with a new life. In this way we may indeed say quite literally that by the power of the seed we also live within and permeate—as it were—the Earth. In Summer-time we turn to the bright atmosphere about us, to the budding fruits of the earth, but now we turn to the lifeless stones, yet knowing that beneath them reposes that which shall in its turn again enjoy external life, and our soul follows in the spirit those budding germinating forces which, withdrawing themselves from outward view, lie dormant amid the stones in Winter-time.

And when Winter-time has reached its central point—when the darkness is deepest—then is the time at hand when we may feel that the exterior world is nevertheless not capable of counteracting our union with the Spirit—when within those depths to which we have withdrawn we feel the flashes of the Spirit-light—that light of the Spirit for which the greatest Impulse received by humanity was given by Christ Jesus. In this way we are enabled to sense what the Ancients felt when they spoke of descending to where the grain of seed lay dormant in Winter-time in order that they might learn to know the hidden powers of the Spirit.

We then come to feel that Christ has to be sought for amid that which is hidden—there where all is dark and obscure, unless we ourselves kindle the light in the Soul—that Soul which becomes clear and illumined when penetrated by the Light of Christ. At Christmas-tide, therefore, we may well feel an ever-increasing sense of strength—strength due to that Impulse which, grace to the Mystery enacted on Golgotha, has permeated the human race. If truly experienced in this way the Christ Impulse becomes for us indeed the most powerful incentive, strengthening year by year this life which is leading us into the Spiritual Worlds where death—as known in the physical world—does not exist.

It is in this way that we are enabled to spiritualise a symbol which to present-day materialistic-thinking persons is no more than a token of material joy and pleasure, and we thus may also feel within our hearts what Johannes Tauler really meant when he spoke of Christ having to be born three times: once as God the Father Who permeates the world—once as Man, at the time when Christianity was founded—and since then again and again, within the souls of those who can awaken the Word of the Spirit within their innermost being. For without this last birth Christianity would not be complete, nor would Anthroposophy be capable of grasping the Christian Spirit did it not understand that the Word brought home to us year after year is not intended to remain theory and dogma, but is to become both Light and Life—a force, indeed, by which we may contribute spirituality to life in this world as well as gather spirituality for ourselves—and so be one with the other—incorporated with the Spirit for all Eternity.

No matter the step of evolution upon which we stand—we can nevertheless feel what was felt at all times by those who had been initiated and who therefore really did in this Holy Night descend at the midnight hour to gaze upon the spiritual Sun in the darkness of the Christmas Night—when that spiritual Sun could call forth from apparently dead surroundings and waken into life all budding nature, bidding it burst forth and proclaim a new Springtide.

This is the Christ Sun we should feel behind the physical sun: to it we ourselves must rise—rise to experience and see that which, by grace of those new forces man may develop, shall unite him with the Spirit—then shall it also be for us to

See the Sun
About the midnight hour,
And build with stones
Amid the lifeless clay,
Finding that as we pass
To the dark night of Death
Creations new come forth—
Young morns arise to power—
The heights above reveal
The Gods’ eternal Word,
And depths below shall guard
The peaceful Place of Rest.

Dwelling in Darkness,
Oh! create a Sun!
And while ye weave the web,
Oh I recognise
The blissfulness of Spirit.

• 1. The first verse is descriptive of the earthly joys—the union, of friends and the gifts interchanged at Christmas; while the second hints at the spiritual significance of the ceremony, the flames of light giving rise to feelings and sentiments which respond to Higher Planes.—Translator's Note.

The remembrance of this Christmas Festival will be strongly imprinted on the souls of many, for a sharper mental contrast can scarcely be imagined than that which arises, when we lift our souls to the voices which sounded to the shepherds, presenting an eternal truth for all human progress of the post-Christian times:

‘Divine revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill,’

when we raise our souls to the ‘peace upon earth to men’ and then look at the facts of the present day which we find outspread over a great part of the civilised world.

By reason of this contrast, this Christmas Festival will be a permanent token in the memories and hearts of men upon the earth. For certainly, if we preserve that which we must always preserve within the fields of our occult thought, if we preserve our uprightness of heart and our inner sincerity of soul, we cannot celebrate this Christmas Festival with the same feeling with which we have celebrated others; for it must stimulate us to more profound reflection, must stimulate us very specially to that which arises from our occult deepening as ideas for the future of humanity—to that which can lead human hearts to the ages which will be so different from our own.

In the course of years we have registered much within our souls, which can indicate to us the sort of soul-condition which such ages will bring. Let us ask ourselves, what is that, of which we must feel that it is still so much needed at the present time? If we call up before the eyes of our soul that which has frequently formed the centre of our consideration, we shall see that within the depths of the human soul a true knowledge is wanting of that which drew into the world upon the day which we celebrate every year in this wintry Christmas.

The whole significance, the whole profundity, of that which took place in the time which we call to remembrance in this Christmas Festival, is truly not expressed unavailingly, but profoundly and significantly, in the passage which humanity of earth has accepted from affection, one might say, the passage which runs thus:

‘Divine revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill,’

The simplest things are often to the human heart the most difficult of comprehension, and simple as this verse sounds, we do well if we make it ever clearer to ourselves that all the future ages of the earth existence will be able to understand this verse more and more profoundly, to enter more and more deeply into the significance of these important words.

It is not without reason that out of all the secret history of the appearing of Jesus upon the earth, the Festival of Christmas has become the most popular—nothing has become more popular than the entrance of the Jesus-child into earth life. For with this we have the possibility of placing before the souls of men something which is received lovingly even by the heart of a little child, in so far as he is able to receive external sense impressions, even though perhaps not yet from words, and yet at the same time it is something which sinks deeply into the depths of those human souls through which the gentlest and yet at the same time the strongest love flows warmly.

Truly the humanity upon earth is not yet advanced beyond a childish comprehension of the Mysteries of Christ Jesus, and epoch after epoch will still have to elapse ere human souls again acquire those forces, by means of which they will be able to absorb the complete magnitude of the beginning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus on this occasion may no Christmas consideration as in other years be brought before your souls, but something which may show us how much we are wanting in that depth which is necessary in order to let the Mystery of Golgotha flash up rightly within our souls.

In the course of the last few years we have often spoken of the fact that on occult grounds we really have to celebrate the birth of not only one Jesus child but of two, and it may be said that because through the observations of Spiritual Science this mystery of the two Jesus children has been revealed, a faint beginning has been made to a new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Only slowly and gradually could this Mystery of Golgotha grip the minds of men. How it has been absorbed into human minds can be brought before our souls when, for example, we glance at the fact that, to a certain extent, that which Christian humanity has gained in the idea of the Christmas child had to struggle through from East to West, by making its way through other versions of a Divine Mediator between the highest Divine-spiritual Beings and the human soul.

We have often considered the fact that, running parallel with the stream of Christian life from East to West, another stream of revelation flowed from the North, over the Black Sea, along the Danube, upwards to the Rhine, to Western Europe. The worship which we know as the worship of Mithras disappeared in the early centimes of the Christian era. But in the first centuries of the Christian era it had gripped as many hearts in Europe as had Christianity itself, and impressed itself deeply and extended in the regions of central and Eastern Europe. To those who followed this worship, Mithras appeared just as sublime and great a Divine Mediator descending from spiritual heights into earth existence, as the Christ appeared to the Christians. In the same way we hear of the entrance of Mithras into earth existence in the Winter Holy-night, the shortest day! In the same way we hear that he was born secretly in a cave, that shepherds were the first to hear his Song of Praise: in the same way was Sunday dedicated to him in contradistinction to the other more ancient feast days. And if we ask what is the characteristic feature in the descent of this Mithras-figure, we must say as follows: Mithras was not represented as was the Christ within Jesus. When an image, a symbolical representation, was formed of him, it was known that it was only a symbolical representation. The true Mithras was only to be seen by those who had the faculty of clairvoyance. Certainly he was represented as a mediator between man and the spiritual Hierarchies, but he was not represented as having been incarnated in a human child. He was represented in such a way that when he descended to the earth, in his true being he was only visible to the Initiates, to those who had clairvoyant vision. The idea did not exist in the Mithras worship that that spiritual Being, who was represented as a mediator between the Spiritual Hierarchies and the souls of men, was incarnated in an earthly body as a child. For the worship of Mithras depended upon the fact that the ancient primitive clairvoyance was still in existence in a large number of human beings.

If we investigate the path of worship of Mithras from East to West, we find that amongst the people who were worshippers of Mithras a large number were those who could see in those intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping, when the soul lives not in dreams, but in spiritual reality. These could see in such intermediate conditions the descent of Mithras from aeon to aeon, from stage to stage, from the spiritual world down to the earth. Many could see and bear witness that such a Mediator had arisen for man, a Mediator in the spiritual worlds.

That which lived as the cult of Mithras was an externalisation of the more or less symbolical representation seen by the seer. What is it really that we meet with in this worship of Mithras? Our whole understanding of the Cosmos makes it impossible to believe that the Christ has only been known since the Mystery of Golgotha. The Initiates and their pupils also knew Him in the pre-Christian times as that Spirit Who was to come. The Initiates always pointed again and again to Him Whom they saw as the Sun-spirit descending from the heights, Who was approaching the earth in order to take up His abode within it. They designated Him as the One Who was to be, the One Who was to come. They knew Him in spirit and saw Him descending.

Then the Mystery of Golgotha took place. We know what it signifies. We know that through this Mystery of Golgotha that Spirit through Whom the earth has gained its meaning drew into a human body. We know that since then this Spirit is connected with the Earth and we know how man is to develop in order, in no very distant future, to see again in spirit the Christ Who through the Mystery of Golgotha united His Own Life with the life of the earth I humanity. We are expressing nothing figurative when we say that That Which the ancient Initiates saw in the various Sanctuaries of the Spiritual is since then to be recognised as pressing through, streaming through, pulsating through, living through the earth-life.

But the clairvoyant perception had to be lost more and more, and with it the power to look up into the spiritual spheres to behold the Christ, Who had now descended to the earth. For now those who could not perceive clairvoyantly could see that He was permeated with divine love, that He was That Which they were always to possess as the highest treasure of the earth-man. Thus men were to feel fully that they had to receive within their earthly habitation the great gift of cosmic Love, the Christ, sent by the God Who is called the Father-God; they were to learn to know Him fully as the Being Who henceforth was to remain connected with the ages as the meaning of the earth evolution; they were to learn to know Him fully in His life, from the first respiration as a Child to the spiritual deed of Christ on Golgotha which can be revealed to the hearts of men.

In the course of later times, it has been possible for us to fill this gap by means of the Fifth Gospel, which has been added to the other Gospels, as in our age it was destined for us to know every step of this Divine Life upon earth yet more minutely. And thus because men were, as it were, to become familiar with Christ Jesus as with a brother, as with One Who from love of man has drawn out of the wide spiritual realms into the narrow valley of earth, because men were to learn to know Him in the most familiar, most intimate knowledge, therefore had the powers of perception and love in the human mind to be gathered together in order to perceive intuitively in a purely human-divine manner, I might say, that which was enacted among men as the beginning of a new age, the Christian age.

For this end the power of man had to be concentrated upon the life of Christ Jesus: for a time it had to be diverted from the vision upwards into the spiritual spheres by means of That Which had drawn into the Child of Bethlehem, Which had descended from cosmic heights. But to-day, we are living in a time in which the vision must again be extended, in which human progress and human evolution must again dominate evolution if the Christ, as descending from divine spiritual heights, is to remain what He is in the life of the earth.

The worship of Mithras was a last powerful remembrance of the Christ Who had not yet reached the earth but was descending. For humanity was destined to receive the Christ ever more into the soul in such a way that even the smallest child could receive Him; in such a way that with it there came a closing of the spiritual vision with regard to the spiritual world, that vision by means of which we know that the Christ is a Cosmic Being, by means of which we know what importance He has for the valley of the earth.

Slowly and gradually the worship of Mithras flowed away, owing to the fact that Christ could appear to man as a Cosmic Being. The worship of Mithras was an echo of the old clairvoyant perception.

Then we see how, with the gradual flowing away, the clairvoyant perception also diminished, how even for those who still had the clairvoyant perception of the old sort, a flowing away of the clairvoyant capacities began, and how, with this flowing away, the possibility also ceased of perceiving the Christ completely in His true nature. He was perceived in His true nature when He was perceived not only in His earthly activity, but in His heavenly glory. The possibility gradually diminished, disappeared, of seeing Him in His heavenly glory beside His earthly existence. We see that it again appeared in a weakened form, in spite of the greatness of the teaching in other respects, in the founder of Manicheism. The Manu pointed to Jesus, but it was not an indication which was suited to simple, primitive, believing minds, because in this spirit which founded Manicheism the ancient clairvoyance still existed.

Yet there was nothing in it which could be counted as an opposition with regard to the comprehension of Christianity. Christ Jesus was for the Manu a Being Who had not taken on earthly corporality but had lived in a phantom body, as it were, in an etheric body upon the earth.

Now we see that with regard to the comprehension of the appearing of Christ Jesus a struggle began. Why was this? There was a striving to look upwards, as it were, to see how the Being of Christ descended. They were not, however, yet capable of seeing how the descending Being actually took up His abode in human flesh. A struggle of soul was inevitable before this complete comprehension was possible.

Again we see the teachings of the Manichees extending from East to West, a teaching which still looked up towards the Divine Spirit Who was descending, looked towards everything which the old conception of the world possessed, looked towards the permeation of the world not merely with the physical Being which presented itself to the human sense existence, but also with the Being which with the movements of the stars pervades the Cosmos.

The linking of human fate, of human life, with cosmic life, this pervaded the soul of the Manichee, this was deeply rooted within him, shunning the evil, which rules in human life in common with the activity of the good God. Deeply, deeply did Manicheism look into the riddle of evil. But this riddle of evil at the same time can only appear before the human soul when we are able to grasp it in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, when we penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha with the riddle of evil in Manicheism.

Truly those who were called upon to yield their souls in the deepest, most intense manner, to the Mystery of Golgotha, have contended with that which shone into more modern times from the residue of the ancient clairvoyant perception. We need only think of one great leader of the West, St. Augustine. Before he struggled through to the Christianity of Paul he was given up to the teaching of the Manichees. A yet greater impression was made upon him when he was able to perceive how from aeon to aeon the Being of the divine spiritual mediator descended from divine spiritual spheres. This spiritual vision also illumined for Augustine in the first period of his struggle the perception of how the Christ had taken up His abode upon the earth in a fleshly body, and how with Him the riddle of evil was solved.

It is striking to see how Augustine conversed with the celebrated Bishop Faustus of the Manichees, and only because this Bishop was not able to make the requisite impression upon Augustine, he turned away from Manicheism and towards the Christianity of Paul. Here we see the flow and ebb of that which we can call the perception of the super-earthly Christ as He was before the Mystery of Golgotha. And in the main, only with the raising of the new age of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch did that completely disappear which was the residue of the old clairvoyant perception.

This old clairvoyant perception knew the heavenly Christ. Even in the beginning of Christianity He could be felt, but to see how He descended was only possible for the old clairvoyant perception. Deeply, deeply, must it affect us when we perceive how in the first age of the spreading of Christianity those who had drawn their perception from the old clairvoyance wished to picture the Christ; how in order to perceive the Christ they looked not merely towards Bethlehem but into the spheres of heaven, in order to see how He descended from thence to bring salvation to men.

We know that besides the worship of Mithras, and besides Manicheism, there existed in the West the Gnosis which wished to connect the old clairvoyant perception of the great Sun-Spirit, Who descended from the divine sphere, with the perception of the course of earthly life of Christ Jesus. And then it is striking to see how the human mind wished to concentrate itself ever more upon the earthly connections of Christ Jesus. It is striking to see how this simple human mind which can find nothing simple enough to represent it, is afraid of the greatness of the feeling which had to be experienced with regard to the lofty conception of the old Gnosis. The early Christians were afraid of these lofty conceptions. Up to our own age the fear strikes those who come into touch with spiritual knowledge that it is easy for the mind to come into confusion if it raises itself into the ages in which it could be seen that Christ descended from the loftiest heights in order to be able to dwell in a human body.

That which the Gnostics were able to say regarding the heavenly Christ beside the earthly Christ affects us very deeply and I should like to say that our soul-vision of the earthly life of Christ Jesus will in no way be blunted if, through Spiritual Science, it is shown the way to the new clairvoyance in order to find the Christ as He descended from the heights of heaven. Here we have a verse evidently of Gnostic origin:

‘Behold, O Father, how, distant from Thy Breath, this being upon earth
Wanders, the target and victim of all ill.
Lo, ill, perplexed, it flies the deadly chaos—how can it find its way?
Therefore send me, O Father,
Descending, victory to bring,
I traverse all the aeons,
Teaching all sacred knowledge;
Thus may God’s image be manifested,
And thus to you I give
The deeply hidden knowledge of the sacred way:
“Gnosis” it is called for you.’

We feel that the new Spiritual Science must again lead us into these things in order that we, in our conceptions, may be able to weave round the Christ- Event the spiritual Aura which for good reasons, as we have often emphasised and had to mention again to-day, was for a time lost to humanity. We must do it slowly and gradually: we must, to a certain extent, try to express that which Spiritual Science is able to reveal to us in such a way that the human mind, which to-day is far from the science of spiritual knowledge, may be able to grasp it.

And so we have endeavoured to express the whole anthroposophical wisdom concerning the Christ-Event, and especially concerning the Christmas night and its connection with the human mind, in simple words which are here presented to you:

In the eyes of the soul reflected
In the light of the cosmic hope,
In the human heart to the spirit exalted wisdom speaks:
The eternal love of the Father
To the earth has sent His Son
Who, filled with grace, on the human path sheddeth the light of heaven.

It is to be hoped that a time will come for earthly evolution in which more, much more can be expressed, and in far, far clearer words, regarding the Mystery of Golgotha, simple words in which for the whole world can be expressed that which Spiritual Science has to say to humanity regarding the Mystery of Golgotha.

We see how, up to the end of the fourth post-Atlantean period, even up to the beginning of the fifth, the old clairvoyant perception ebbed away in such a maimer that the last remains which were still left to man fell into disrepute. We see this downfall, as I might call it, embodied in that form which appeared in Europe and spread much further than is thought during the ebb of the fourth post-Atlantean period, in the figure of the popular adventurer (for he was an adventurer), who was still able to exhibit the last sign of clairvoyant perception—“Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, Magus Secundus, philosophus philosophorus, fons necromanticorum, chiromanticus, agromanticus, pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.” So ran the complete title of that Faust who lived in the sixteenth century as a representative of the moribund clairvoyance, that Faust who still had a vision into the spiritual worlds, even though the vision was chaotic. But it no longer happens in modern times that when the human soul is passive in certain conditions it can see spiritually, as in ancient times. For it can only see what is material and can acquire that which the intellect can combine out of the material. The whole tragedy of the final spiritual vision is brought to expression in the primitive communications regarding Faustus junior. By giving himself such a title we can perceive that he is, as it were, the final offshoot of those who were able to see into the spheres through which the Christ descended. He called himself Faustus junior, in allusion to the Manichee Bishop Faustus.

We know that he knew all about the Bishop Faustus for whom Augustine had longed, for the writings of Augustine were never so widely spread in Europe as at the time in which the writings of Faust junior appeared. And he called himself Magus Secundus, referring to the Magus Primus, the Simon Magus of old, who for those who were yet able to see, represented one whose vision towered up into the spheres of heaven, and of whom they stood in awe who were only desirous of concentrating within themselves the heavenly power.

Faustus alluded to him. And he alluded to yet another of whom we know through our observations of Spiritual Science that his vision unfolded in order to see into spiritual spheres. He called himself Pythagoras Secundus as the successor of that Pythagoras who was called Primus in this art.

We see the last glimmering evening-glow of that which existed as the ancient clairvoyance and we see how incomprehensible this ancient clairvoyance already was to men. Indeed that was actually realised which has been represented so strikingly to us in the legend of Faust, that Augustine longed for Faustus senior and that he became acquainted with the teaching of Faustus senior through an old man, a doctor. In the same way, carried forward into different circumstances, Faustus junior encounters us in the popular legend, and the old man again appears here, warning him: but he had already made his compact. He entrusted to Dr. Wagner his inheritance. When in surveying the ages and that which arose therein as conceptions of a spiritual world we see the age of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch approaching, we have to say: That is the legacy entrusted to Dr. Wagner. The question is how such a legacy can be administered. In the case of Faust, it is still a seeing into the spiritual worlds; in the case of this Dr. Wagner it is what can be described by saying that a man digs greedily for treasure and rejoices if he finds a glow-worm.

Such is the materialistic conception of the world of our modern times. It is no wonder that in this materialistic conception of the world the whole view of the heavenly Christ was lost, so that to-day people are afraid of the expansion of that picture upon which the earth-forces up till the present should have been concentrated. For we also know that the earth-humanity would have to lose, completely lose, all comprehension of this, if through a new spiritual view it were not able to weave a new aura round the touching picture of the Christ-child and His growth through thirty-three earth years. Spiritual Science will be called upon, as those souls who seriously apply themselves to Spiritual Science will perceive, again to quicken the vision of human minds for the heavenly Christ beside the earthly Christ. Then will the Christ be known for all the future earth-ages in such a way that He can never be lost to the progress and the salvation of mankind.

When wisdom shall again press upwards into the heights where, in the divine spheres, the fire of love bums, then will the human soul certainly not lose all that is wonderful, all that presses into the profoundest life-springs of men, all that human knowledge can know regarding Christ Jesus. And infinitely much will be acquired in addition: there will be acquired that which must be acquired if the evolution of humanity is to advance as it should.

The fresh springs of a new spiritual knowledge have already been opened; nevertheless, that which we are able to say to-day is truly such that we celebrate it at this time still in the symbol of the Christmas Festival. Deep, deep humility overcomes him who rightly experiences that which is to-day our occult knowledge. For we can only very dimly sense that which Spiritual Science will become for humanity in future days. For that which we are able to know of it to-day is in the same relation to that which in the days to come, when many, many ages have passed away, will be presented to humanity as that of the little Christmas child to the full-grown Christ Jesus. To-day in our newly-arisen Spiritual Science we have truly still the child. Hence the Christmas Festival is rightly our festival, and we perceive that, with regard to what can hold sway in the evolution of the earth as human light, we are to-day living in the profoundly dark winter night. Also with regard to our present-day knowledge we are actually standing before what is revealed in the profound wintry darkness of the earth evolution, just as once the shepherds stood before the Christ-child which was first revealed to them. With regard to the comprehension of Christ Jesus we can feel to-day exactly as did the shepherds at that time. We can so truly implore the springs of spiritual life which can ever more and more flow to mankind, implore them that indeed they may more and more bring to pass the Divine Revelation in the spiritual heights and through this revelation give to the human minds that peace which is in truth good for them. Then this Christmas Festival appears to us as a token. We still know little of that which the world will have as Spiritual Science in the days to come. We dimly sense what is to come, we dimly sense it in profound humility. But if we allow that little truly to enter our hearts, how does it appear to us then?

Let us cast a glance over present-day Europe—how the peoples think of one another, how each one seeks to lay the guilt of what is taking place upon the others. If the true anthroposophical conception is really impressed on our minds, then we shall understand the guilt which is now sought for by one people in the other, by one nation in the other. Truly, the guilt belongs to someone who is really and truly international, who guides his steps from nation to nation. But he is only spoken of in the circle of those into whose hearts a little Spiritual Science has penetrated. There we speak of Ahriman, the truly international being, who in conjunction with Lucifer is the truly guilty one. We do not find him if we turn our glance always to others, but if we seek the way to knowledge through self-knowledge. There, below in the chaotic depths, he goes; we feel him, this Ahriman. We shall learn to know him rightly and to know him in connection with that which the Mystery of Golgotha can be to us, namely, the proclamation of the revelation of wisdom and of peace in the heights and depths of the valley of the earth. Then only do we perceive what the whole fire of the Love is which can ray forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which knows none of the limits which are set between the nations of the earth.

Much is contained in that which as Spiritual Science stands before our souls. Yet if we look at that which had already been manifested before this our chaotic present and which has now found an expression so convulsing, so sad and so painful, then we find how very very small is that dwelling, that soul-dwelling, in which to-day must dwell the new comprehension of the Christmas child which is to come to the earth. That Christmas child had to appear to poor shepherds, had to be born in a stable, concealed from those who at that time governed the world. Is it not again the same with regard to the new comprehension of that which is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha? Is not that which appears to us to-day outside in the world far removed from this comprehension? How far removed is the world at the beginning of our age from that which was revealed to the shepherds in the words:

Divine Revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill.

Let us celebrate this Christmas Festival of the renewed Christ comprehension in our hearts and in our souls if we wish to celebrate a true Christmas Festival, let us feel, as did the shepherds, far away from that which has now gripped the world. And through that which is revealed to us, as it was to the shepherds, we realise what had to be realised at that time, the promise of a certain future. Let us build within our souls confidence in the fulfilment of this promise, confidence that that which we feel to-day as the child which we must worship (the new Christ-comprehension is this child) will grow, will live, will grow to maturity in the near future, so that in it can be embodied the Christ appearing in the etheric, just as the Christ could be embodied in the fleshly body at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us fill ourselves with the light which through the confidence in this out-pouring can shine into the deepest inner being of our souls. Let us permeate ourselves with the warmth which can flow through our minds. If we feel thus with regard to the heights in which the light of Spiritual Science appears before our souls, then alone can we be certain that it will some day fill the world.

When we thus think, we celebrate a genuine Christmas Festival even in this grave and painful time, for not only is it the profoundly dark winter night of the time of the year, but there is over the horizon of the nations the result of the Ahrimanic darkness which has been growing up since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. And just as the announcement of the Christ could only come at first to the shepherds but then filled the world ever more and more, so will also the new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha fill the world ever more and more, and times will come which as times of light will replace for humanity the time of winter darkness in which we are living to-day.

Thus let us feel as did the shepherds with regard to that which is still a child, with regard to the new Christ-comprehension, and let us feel that in all humility we can permeate with the new meaning the verse which is not only for ever to be preserved within the progress of the evolution of the earth, but is also to become more and more full of meaning. Let us with our minds and with heightened consciousness make ourselves one at this Christmas time with the motto so full of promise:

Divine Revelation in spiritual heights,
Peace ever and yet more peace
To all the souls of men on earth
Who have goodwill.

Today, my task will be to contribute further to the fundamental theme in our quest to understand the problems of our time. It is justifiably required that man should be awake, and pay due heed to the many spiritual influences that affect and transform him over comparatively short periods of time, and also that he acquaint himself with what must be done to further the particular spiritual and cultural impulses at work in our time.

I have tried from various viewpoints to draw your attention to the greater post-Atlantean period, by describing wider aspects as well as details from it, because only our understanding of that period makes our own comprehensible. To allow the whole of mankind's post-Atlantean evolution to work upon us awakens understanding for our own time.

I want today to speak about that same period by bringing before you some different characteristic aspects. However, in order to understand what I want to describe I must ask you to bear in mind what has been said about humanity as such becoming ever younger and younger. I described how, immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe, mankind's age was 56 and that by now it has dropped to 27. This means that modern man develops naturally up to that age. After the age of 27 he develops further only if he cultivates impulses received directly from the spirit out of his own inner initiative. So let us turn our attention to how the 27 year old human being of today came to be as he is.

Let us look back once more to the time immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe. I have pointed out how very different, compared with today, man's social feelings and in fact his whole social structure then were. I would like to draw special attention to the unique soul constitution of the first post-Atlantean people, particularly of those in the southern part of Asia, and also remind you of certain facts, already known to you from my writings, about that ancient Indian culture. There was at that time a complete absence of what modern man can hardly imagine a social structure without, namely the concepts of laws and rights. You will be aware of the immense importance attached to these and related concepts today. Things of this nature were never mentioned; they were unknown in the first postAtlantean epoch. It would have been impossible at that time to imagine what might be meant by laws and rights, whereas we cannot visualize society without them. When guidance was needed concerning what ought to be done or left undone, or about arrangements to be made either in public or private life, one turned to the patriarchs, i.e., to those who had reached their fifties.

It was assumed, because it was self-evident, that those who had reached their fifties were able to recognize what ought to be done. They had this ability because people remained capable of development in the natural sense like children right into their fifties, by which time they had also attained in the same natural way a certain worldly maturity. No one disputed the fact that people of that age were wise and knew how life should be arranged and human affairs conducted. It would never have occurred to anybody to doubt that people who had developed normally into their fifties would know the right answers to life's problems. When a human being today, in the course of his natural development, reaches puberty, a change takes place in his inner being. In that ancient time inner revelations came to people in their mature years, simply because natural development continued until late in life, the consequence of which were the capabilities I have indicated. Thus, when advice was needed, one consulted the natural lawgivers, the elders, the wise ones.

Why exactly did they have this extraordinary wisdom? The reason they were so wise was that they experienced themselves at one with the spirit, more particularly with the spirits that live in light. Today we sense the warmth in our environment; we are aware of the air as we breathe it in and out; we sense a force in water as it evaporates to come down again as rain, but we experience this only physically, through our senses. The people of the first post-Atlantean epoch did not experience things that way. When they were in their fifties, they felt the spirit in warmth, in currents of air, in circulating water. They did not just experience the wind blowing but the spirits of wind; not just warmth but the spirit of warmth; when they looked at water, they saw also the water spirits. This caused them, when they had reached a certain age, to listen to the revelations of these elemental spirits, though only in certain states of wakefulness. What the elemental spirits revealed to them formed the basis for the wisdom they were able to impart to others. When people who had reached that age had gone through normal development, they were geniuses; in fact, they were much more than what we understand by genius.

Today a child's soul development reveals itself gradually up to a certain age while the body's development takes place. In those days something similar happened in old age when wisdom arose from the bodily nature itself. It came about because many not only developed naturally during the body's thriving growth, but continued to do so during its decline when it became sclerotic and mineralized. The body's forces of decline, its calcification, caused the soul and spirit to develop, and this was bound up with another aspect of evolution. If you imagine vividly what I shall now describe, you will find it easy to understand. People who had reached the age when the body began to decline, clearly perceived the beings of the elements. At night the normal senses enabled man to perceive not only the stars but also imaginations. He saw the spiritual aspect of the starry sky. I have often drawn attention to old star maps with their curious figures. These figures are not as modern science would have it—creations of fantasy—but originate from direct perception.

Thus the ancients, the wise ones, were able to give counsel and regulate the social structure through what they directly perceived. They had an intimate relationship with that part of the earth they inhabited because they perceived its spiritual content. They perceived spirituality in the water that issued from it, in the air surrounding it, in the climatic conditions of warmth and so on. But these interrelationships differed from place to place. In Greece they were different from those in India and different again from those in Persia and so on. As a consequence the wise ones, the sages, had perceptions that were related to the particular section of the earth which they occupied. The ancient Indian culture developed the way it did through the relationships prevailing in that part of the earth. Likewise there arose in Greece a culture specifically related to the elements in that part. These differences were experienced quite concretely.

Today something similar is experienced only in regard to the human being. We would regard it as grotesque were it suggested that the ear could be situated where the nose is or vice versa. The whole organism is so formed that the nose could only be where it is and likewise the ear. However, the earth itself is an organism, but for that there is no longer any feeling or understanding. When a culture develops, it must of necessity have a certain physiognomy through the influence of the earth's elemental beings. What developed in ancient Greece could not have been transferred to ancient India or vice versa. What is so significant about ancient times is that cultures developed which reflected the earth's spiritual physiognomy. Nothing of this is known to man today because, when he reaches the age when he could know, his natural ability to develop ceases. People do not pause to wonder why it is that, when the white man immigrated to North America, the appearance of those who settled in the eastern part became different from that of those who settled in California. The expression in the eyes of the settlers in the east changed completely, and their hands became larger than they would have been in Europe; even the color of their skin changed. This applies only to the eastern part of America. The development of a civilization and its relationship to its part of the earth's organism is no longer taken into account. Man no longer knows what kind of spiritual entities, what kind of spiritual beings live in the elements of the earth. Man has become abstract; he no longer experiences things as they truly are.

What I have described applies to the first post-Atlantean epoch. Things changed in the following epoch, in the course of which mankind's age dropped to between 48 and 42. During this second post-Atlantean epoch the natural ability of the human being to develop lasted only into his forties. Therefore he did not attain the kind of wisdom he had attained in the first epoch. His soul-spirit being remained dependent on the bodily nature only in his forties. The ability to sense his relationship with the elements became weaker. However, the ability was still there, only weakened. People now became aware that when they were outside the body during sleep, they were in the spiritual world. They became aware of this once they had reached, their forties. They also became aware that when they awoke and plunged into the body once more, the spiritual world became dark. The teaching about Ormuzd and Ahriman, about Light and Darkness, originated from this experience. Man was aware that he was in the spiritual world during sleep, and he experienced the descent into the body as a descent into darkness. There was no longer the close dependence on the piece of land one inhabited; instead, there was an experience of participating in night and day. The constellations of stars were still seen pictorially through the faculty of imagination. This atavistic ability had remained from the time of Atlantis and enabled man to know that he had a living soul and that during sleep he was in a spiritual world which he could experience through imagination.

In the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the ability to experience oneself so completely at one with the whole cosmos receded still further. In Persia it had been taught by Zarathustra, but had in general been known through tradition. During the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epoch, in the course of normal evolution, man's sense perception became stronger while the old spiritual perception became weaker. As a consequence the main form of worship in the third epoch was a star cult. Earlier, in Persia there had been no star cults; the spiritual world had been experienced directly through imagination and music of the spheres. In the third epoch things were more interpreted rather than seen directly; the pictorial aspect became fainter. A proper star cult developed because the stars were clearly seen.

Then came the fourth epoch when the surrounding spiritual world had faded from man's consciousness. Only the physical aspect of the stars was perceived; the world was seen more or less as we see it. I have already described how man experienced the world in ancient Greece. That the soul lives in the body and expresses itself through the body—of this the Greeks were aware, but they no longer felt to the same extent that the cosmos was the soul's true home. I have often referred to Aristotle who, because he was not initiated, could not perceive the spiritual aspect of the stars; instead he founded a philosophy of the world of stars. He interpreted what he saw physically. His interpretation was based on his awareness that man's soul resides in the body between birth and death. He was also aware in a philosophical sense, that the soul has its home in that outermost sphere in which, for Aristotle, the highest God held sway, while lesser Gods held sway in the nearer spheres. He also evolved a philosophy of the elements, of earth, water, air, and fire or warmth; it was, however, philosophy, not experience. No philosophy of the elements had existed before when they were still directly perceived and experienced. By the fourth epoch it had all changed; mankind had been truly driven from the spiritual world. The time had come when something had to intervene: the Mystery of Golgotha.

In these lectures I have pointed to the deep significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. I explained that by the time it took place mankind's age had dropped to 33; man's natural development proceeded only up to that age, and Christ, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, experienced just that age. A truly wondrous coincidence! As I have described, immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe man remained capable of natural development right up to the age of 56, then 55, later 54 and so on. At the beginning of the second epoch this ability lasted only up to the age of 48, then 47 and so on. At the beginning of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch it lasted only to the age of 42, receding to the age of 36. The Graeco-Latin epoch began in the year of 747 B.C. when man retained the ability of natural development only up to the age of 35, then 34 and when it receded to the age of 33 then—because this age is below 35 when the body begins to decline—man could no longer experience the cosmic spirit's union with the soul. Therefore, the spirit that is the Christ Spirit approached man from outside. You see how essential was the Christ Spirit's entry into mankind's evolution.

Let us look back once more to the patriarchs in ancient times who were, one might say, super-geniuses. They were consulted on all questions concerning the arrangement of human affairs because their natural inner development enabled them to embody the divine-spiritual element. The possibility of receiving higher counsel from human beings diminished ever more. When mankind's age receded to 33, Christ had to come from other worlds and enter the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Man had to receive from a different direction the impulse which through his natural evolution he had lost.

This allows us deep insight into the indispensable connection between mankind's evolution and the Mystery of Golgotha. Science of the spirit reveals Christ's entry into human evolution as an inherent necessity. The need for new insight and deeper understanding of the Christ Impulse can be seen at every turn.

I recommend you read the latest number of Die Tat (The Deed), for it contains much of interest. You will find an article by our revered friend Dr. Rittelmeyer¹ and also one of the last articles written by our dear friend Deinhard before his death.² In this same number there is also an article by Arthur Drews which is significant because here he again discusses the role of Christ Jesus in the modern world.³ I have often spoken about Drews. He came to the fore in Berlin at the time when the attempt was made, from the so-called monistic viewpoint to prove, among other things, that Jesus of Nazareth could not be a historical person. Two books appeared concerned with what was called the “Christ Myth” to show that it cannot be proved historically that a Jesus of Nazareth ever lived.

This time Drews discusses Christ Jesus from an odd point of view. In the June number of Die Tat you will find an article entitled “Jesus Christ and German Piety.” He builds up the peculiar idea of a piety that is German; this is just about as clever as to speak of a German sun or a German moon. To bring national differences into these things is really as nonsensical as it would be to speak of the sun or moon being exclusively German; yet such absurdities attract large audiences these days. It is interesting that Drews, who would not dream of evoking Eckart,⁴ Tauler⁵ or Jacob Boehme,⁶ here does evoke Fichte,⁷ although normally he would not do so even if philosophical matters were discussed. He takes the greatest trouble in his attempt to justify his idea of German piety, and also to show that, especially if one is German, the truth about Jesus Christ cannot be arrived at through theology or historical study, but only through what he calls German metaphysics. And says Drews, no historical Christ Jesus can be found through metaphysics.

Drews' whole approach is closely connected with what I have drawn to your attention in these lectures, that the only concept of God modern man can reach is that of the Father God. The name of Christ is interspersed in the writings of Harnack,⁸ but what he describes is the Father God. What is usually called the inner mystical path can lead only to a general Godhead. Christ cannot be found in either Tauler or Eckart. It is a different matter when we come to Jacob Boehme, but the difference is not understood by Drews. In Boehme the Christ can be found for it is of Him that he speaks. Christ is to be found neither in Arthur Drews' writings nor in Adolf Harnack's theology, but Drews is, from the modern point of view, the more honest. He seeks the Christ and does not find Him, because that is impossible through abstract metaphysics held aloof from historical facts. But the real facts of history can, as we have seen, enable us to understand the significance even of the age of Christ Jesus in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha. Drews fails to find Christ because he remains at abstract metaphysics, which is the only standpoint acceptable today. Certainly, the healthy person can through metaphysics find a general God but not Christ. It is an outlook that is directly connected with what I explained, that atheism is really an illness, the inability to find Christ a misfortune, not to be able to find the spirit a soul blindness. Drews cannot do otherwise than say, “What is discovered through metaphysics cannot honestly be called Christ; we must therefore leave Christ out of our considerations.” Drews believes he is speaking out of the spirit of our time, and so he is inasmuch as our time rejects spiritual science. He believes he is speaking the truth when he says that religion must be based on metaphysics, and therefore cannot, if it is honest, entertain any concept of Christ.

Let us now turn to the actual words with which Drews ends his extraordinary article: “Every historical tradition”—he means traditions depicting Christ historically—“is an obstacle to religion; as soon as the great work of reformation, only just begun by Luther, is completed, the last remnant of any faith based on history will be swept away from religious consciousness.”

I have often mentioned that spiritual science seeks to establish a faith based on history because it provides a concrete impetus towards the spiritual aspect of evolution which leads as directly to Christ as abstract metaphysics leads to an undifferentiated God. Drews says, “German religion must be either a religion without Christ or no religion at all.” That expresses more or less what I have often indicated, namely that the present-day consciousness is bound to remove Christ unless it comes through spiritual science to a concrete grasp of the spiritual world and thereby rekindles understanding of Christ.

Drews continues:

When one recognizes God and man to be essentially the same, [Imagine, to suggest, as is done here, that God and man are the same!] when every person is seen to have a natural tendency to become a “Christ”; i.e., to become a God-man, then there will be no room for a Jesus Christ. One can certainly draw attention to acts attributed to Christ in order to elucidate and illustrate certain religious procedures, as for example mystics have done. One can also refer to sayings of Christ to make one's own opinions clear, just as one can refer to words and doings of other outstanding individuals.

Here we have the peculiar situation that what is said never to have existed is yet referred to as if it had. On the one hand Drews sets out to prove that Christ never was, and on the other he says that it is permissible to refer to His words and deeds in order to elucidate one's own. He continues:

“German” religion of the God-man has no use for a historical redeemer or even for an exceptional human being who, like Jesus, haunts our liberal theologians. It needs no symbolic representative who only serves to confuse the issue. Such a symbol must be recognized as superfluous and even dangerous because it introduces into our “German” concept of religion not only an alien element which, however sublime, is nevertheless onesided, but also unacceptable Protestant ethics. It is this which has caused modern man's alienation from Christianity. Furthermore, such imposed ethics contradict the duties, so deeply felt at the present time, placed upon us by our own nature.

This is certainly a passage of which I can make no proper sense. How is one to come to terms with the way modern man thinks? That is something difficult to understand when one's own thoughts relate to reality. Drews continues:

All that is great and significant in the Gospels is not lost to mankind even if there never was a Jesus. The words attributed to him would then have come from some other source. In any case, our salvation cannot be dependent on whether there was a Jesus or not. Regarding Jesus as principle of salvation draws in its wake not only the whole dualistic metaphysics of Palestinian Judaism, which is incompatible with the modern spirit, but also makes religion inseparable from history. It introduces vague opinions and brings forward doubtful historical events as proof of external religious manifestations. The “German” religion of the God-man is not only a religion of freedom, but a religion of the most individual and deepest inwardness. It will no sooner have entered life than we shall be free both of external Church functions with their subsidiary demands, but also of Jesus Christ. As Fichte said: “It is through metaphysics, not history, that salvation is obtained! And metaphysics knows of no Jesus Christ.”

It would be well if people become conscious of the fact that without spiritual knowledge modern education leads logically to such a conclusion. To present a different result would be a compromise and therefore dishonest. If this were recognized spiritual science would not be seen as something arbitrarily introduced at the present time, but as the answer to the deepest and truest needs of the human soul.

Since the year 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha, man has lived in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch during which through human evolution he becomes ever more estranged from the spiritual world. We can find our connection with spirituality only through impulses that are no longer provided by man's bodily nature but are innate in the soul itself. People today succumb to the kind of abstractions I have described because as yet they are not sufficiently permeated by Christianity to sense the soul's necessity of union with the spiritual world. That is why nowadays all concepts, all ideas are abstract. Truly they go together—today's unchristian attitude and the unreality and abstraction of ideas. Indeed our concepts and ideas will remain unreal unless we learn to permeate them once more with the spirit, the spirit in which Christ lives. Through Him our concepts will again become as living and real as those of the ancient Indian patriarchs who through their personalities made concrete and effective what was instituted as rights and laws. Our rights and laws are themselves abstract. When a bridge is built and it collapses, one soon realizes that its construction was based on wrong concepts. In society such connections are not so easily detected; all kinds of incompetence may be practiced. The result reveals itself only in the unhappiness people suffer in times such as ours. When a bridge collapses, one blames the engineer who built it. When misfortune overtakes mankind because the inadequate concepts of those in charge are incapable of intervening in events, then one blames all kinds of things. However, what ought to be blamed, or rather recognized, is the circumstance that we are going through a crisis in which people no longer have any true sense as to whether a concept has any connection with reality or not.

I would like to give you an example taken from external nature to illustrate once more the distinction between concepts that are connected with reality and those that are not. If you take a crystal and think of it as a hexagonal prism, closed above and below by hexagonal pyramids, then you have a concept of a quartz crystal that is connected with the reality, because that is true of the crystal's form and existence. If on the other hand you form a concept of a flower without roots, you have an unreal concept, for without roots a flower cannot live, cannot have an existence in reality. Someone who does not strive to make his thoughts correspond to reality will regard the flower torn off at the stem as just as real as the quartz crystal, but that is untrue. It is not possible for someone who thinks in accordance with reality to form a mental picture of a flower without roots. People will have to learn anew to form concepts that correspond to reality. A tree which has been uprooted is no longer a reality to which the concept tree corresponds. To feel the uprooted tree as a reality is to feel an untruth, for it cannot live, but withers and dies if not rooted in the earth. There you have the difference.

No one whose thinking corresponds to reality could suggest, as professor Dewar does, that it is possible to calculate by means of experiments how the world will end.⁹ Such speculations are always unreal. It must become habit to train one's thinking to correspond to things as they truly are, otherwise one's thoughts about the spiritual world will be mere fantasy. One must be able to distinguish the concept of a living entity from that of a lifeless one, otherwise one cannot have true concepts of the spiritual world. One's thoughts remain unreal if a tree without roots, or a geological stratum by itself—for it can exist only if there are other strata lying below as well as above—is regarded as true reality. Those who think the way geologists or physicists and especially biologists do are not formulating real thoughts. Biologists think of a tooth, for example, as if it could exist on its own. Today, spiritual science apart, it is only in the realm of art—though not in pure realism—that one finds any understanding for the fact that the reality or unreality of something can depend on whether that to which it belongs is present or not.

These examples are taken from the external physical world, but today other spheres, such as national economy and political science in particular, suffer from unreal thoughts. I have pointed out the impossibility of the political science outlined by Kjellen in his book The State as a Form of Life.¹⁰ You know that I have great respect for Kjellen. His book is both widely read and highly praised, but if some aspect of natural science had been written about in a similar way, the author would have been laughed at. One may get away with writing in that way about the state, but not about a crocodile. Not a single concept in Kjellen's book is thought through realistically.

It is essential that man develop a sense for the kind of thoughts that do relate to reality; only then will he be able to recognize the kind of concepts and ideas capable of bringing order into society. Just think how essential it is that we acquire concepts enabling us to understand people living on Russian soil. Remarkably little is done to reach such understanding. What is thought about the Russian people, whether here or in the West or in Central Europe, is very far from the truth. A few days ago I read an article which suggested that Russians still have to some extent the more mystical approach to life of the Middle Ages, whereas since then in the West and in Central Europe intellectuality has become widespread. The article makes it clear that the Russian people should begin to acquire the intellectuality which other European peoples have had the good fortune to attain. The writer concerned has not the slightest inkling that the character of the Russian people is utterly different. People nowadays are not inclined to study things as they truly are. The sense is lacking for the reality, the truth, contained in things.¹¹

One of our friends made the effort to bring together what I have written about Goethe in my books with what I said in a lecture concerning human and cosmic thoughts.¹² From this material he produced a book in Russian, a remarkable book already published.¹³ I am convinced it will be widely read in Russia by a certain section of the public. Were it to be translated into German or any other European language, people would find it deadly boring. This is because they lack the sense for appreciating the finely chiseled thoughts, the wonderful conceptual filigree work that makes this book so striking.

What is so remarkable about the Russian character is that as it evolves something will emerge which is different from what has emerged in the rest of Europe where mysticism and intellectuality exist, as it were, apart. In Russia a mysticism will appear which is intellectual in character and an intellectuality which is based on mysticism. Thus it will be something quite new, intellectual mysticism, mystical intellectuality and, if I may put it so, quite equal to its task. This is something that is not understood at all. It is there nevertheless, though hidden within the chaos of Eastern Europe, and will emerge expressing the characteristics I have briefly indicated.

These things can be understood only if one has a feeling for the reality inherent in ideas. To acquire this sense, this feeling that ideas are realities is one of the most urgent needs of the present time. Without it abstract programs will continue to be devised, beautiful political speeches held about all kinds of measures to be taken which prove unproductive, though they need not be. Nor can there be any feeling for events in history which when followed up, can be an immense help when it comes to understanding our own time.

Let me give you a characteristic example. Concern about the problems facing mankind at the present time causes one to turn repeatedly to events that took place in the 18th century, particularly in the '60s of that century. At that time remarkable impulses were emerging in Europe. An attempt to understand them can be most instructive. As you know that was when the Seven Years War took place. England and France were deeply divided, mainly through their colonial rivalry in North America. In Europe, England and Prussia were allies; opposing them was the alliance consisting of France and Austria. In Russia a strong hostility prevailed against Prussia during the reign of Czarina Elizabeth. Therefore one should really speak of an alliance between Russia, France and Austria against Prussia and England. One could say that on a smaller scale conditions were similar to those of today; just as now there was then a danger of complete chaos in Europe. In fact, when the situation in the early 1760s is investigated, it is found to be not unlike the present one in 1917. But the remarkable incident I want to mention is the following.

I believe it was on January the fifth, 1762, that Czarina Elizabeth died; or to put it as the historians have done, her life, not very often sober, had come to an end; she had spent most of it inebriated. The Czarina Elizabeth was dead, and her nephew, her sister's son, stood before those authorized to place the crown upon his head. It was an extraordinary person who, on January the fifth 1762, prepared himself to be elevated to Czar. He was clad in his regiment's ceremonial uniform, consisting of green jacket with red collar and cuffs, yellow waistcoat and stockings, leggings to above the knee (he had already as Grand Duke made a habit of never bending the knees when walking as this, to him, seemed more dignified) long pigtail, two powdered coils, a hat with upturned brim, and as his symbol he carried a knobbed staff. As you know, his consort was Catherine, later to become Catherine the Great. History describes Czar Peter III as an immature young man.¹⁴ It is extraordinarily difficult to ascertain what kind of person he actually was. Very probably he was very immature, even backward. He became Czar at a significant moment in the history of Europe. At his side was a woman who already as a seven year old girl had written in her diary that there was nothing she desired more than to become the absolute ruler of the Russian people. Her dream was to become ruler in her own right. And she seemed to be proud that for the sake of direct succession she need never bear a child that was necessarily that of her husband, the Czar. When he became ruler, the war had been going on for a long time; everybody longed for peace. Peace would be a blessing if only it could be attained.

What happened next was that already in February—that is, soon after the feeble-minded Peter III had ascended to the throne of the Czars—all the European powers received a Russian manifesto. This event was very remarkable, and I would like to read to you a literal translation. The manifesto was sent to the embassies in Austria, France, Sweden and Saxony. Saxe-Coburg was at that time part of Poland. The document reads as follows:

His Imperial Majesty, who through good fortune ascended to the throne of his forebears, regards his first duty to be promotion and increase of the welfare of his subjects. It is therefore with great sorrow that he Witnesses the present war which has already lasted six years and is an immense burden to all the countries involved. Far from showing any signs of coming to an end, it is, to the misfortune of all the nations, spreading ever further the longer it lasts. The suffering of humanity through this calamity is all the greater because of the uncertainty concerning the outcome, which shows no sign of lessening. In these circumstances, out of humanitarian feelings and compassion for the useless spilling of innocent blood, his Imperial Majesty on his part wishes to put an end to this evil. He therefore finds it necessary to turn to Russia's allies reminding them that God's first commandment to sovereigns, namely the preservation of the people entrusted to them, must take precedence over all other considerations. They on their part would wish to secure the peace so necessary and valuable to them also, and at the same time to contribute as much as is possible to see peace established in the whole of Europe. To this purpose His Majesty is prepared to sacrifice the conquests made in this war by Russian forces. His Majesty hopes that the allies on their part will consider the return of peace a greater benefit than anything they could expect to obtain through a prolonged war and further bloodshed. Out of the best and deepest feelings his Imperial Majesty advises all to devote their best forces to achieve so great and beneficial an objective. St. Petersburg, February 23, 1762.

I do wonder if anywhere today there is a true feeling for the fact that this manifesto is absolutely concrete, is based completely on reality. One should be able to sense that it is a document that carries the conviction of truth. However, the diplomatic notes sent in answer to the manifesto are all declarations written more or less in the same vein as are today's declarations concerned with the entente, especially the ones sent by Woodrow Wilson. Everything in these diplomatic notes is utterly abstract with no relation to reality, whereas what I just now read to you, written on the 23rd of February 1762, is in a style of a different order, and contains something quite remarkable, all the more so in view of the Czar's condition, which I described to you. There must have been someone with power behind the scenes, with a sense for the reality of the situation, who could cause this action to be taken. Later, when the abstract replies had reached Russia—replies containing the same kind of abstractions as those used today, like “peace, free from annexation” or “freedom for the people”—Peter, the feeble-minded, sent an answer delivered by the Russian envoy, Count Gallitzin, to the Court in Vienna on the 9th of April. Listen to what it contains:

The friendship which has existed between the Russian Imperial Court and the Prussian Royal Court ever since the time of Czar Peter I has lately suffered a setback merely through accidental changes in the constitution of Europe. The war which is a result of these changes can neither last forever nor destroy the advantage of a friendship which for many years proved to be a useful confederation and could be so again. His Imperial Majesty therefore proposes to the King of Prussia that they conclude not only a lasting peace, but a treaty of alliance in their mutual interest and to their mutual advantage.

Please note the stroke of genius in what follows:

The reason for these deliberations on the part of his Russian Imperial Majesty is obvious and needs no lengthy explanation, as it is easy enough to demonstrate that no good can come of a general peace such as was concluded in Westphalia. Peace cannot be expected to last when there is an unending shifting of arms and such variety of intentions. Such a peace necessitates all conquered territories to be protected, as is the case in Westphalia. But now the matter hinges on pretentions which have only arisen out of the war. These can hardly be reconciled due to the eagerness early in the war to mobilize as many powers as possible with little consideration for possible consequences of hastily concluded treaties and amalgamations.

One cannot imagine a more ingenious diplomatic document. Think about it—if only somebody could recognize now that the pretentions made today have only arisen because of this war! The document continues:

The Russian Imperial Court alone has always insisted that, before a general congress is arranged, it is necessary that conflicting interests and demands are reconciled. It would appear that the Sovereign Court in Vienna also recognizes this, and therefore never directly answered the Russian Imperial communique. The Sovereign Court made only brief reference to points that were in its favor, passing over others in silence preferring, it would seem, to await possible fortunes with arms. ... The war that has since broken out between England and Spain only increases the general misery. Although it engages England at sea, it does nothing to lessen the war in Germany. Sweden is without hope and is suffering losses; her glory waning, she seems to have courage neither to continue the war nor to withdraw from it. The Sovereign Courts all appear to be waiting to see who will be the first to make a decisive move towards establishing peace. His Russian Imperial Majesty alone is ready to do so, through compassion and also in view of the complaisance shown by his majesty the King of Prussia. His Imperial Majesty wishes to take the necessary steps at the earliest possible moment, especially as this intention was communicated to all the Sovereign Courts as early as the 23rd of February, soon after the start of his reign.

Peace was established, and indeed as a result of what was initiated with this concrete document based on reality. It is of the greatest importance that a sense is developed for what history conveys, a feeling for the difference between concepts and ideas that are incapable of intervening in reality, and those that are themselves rooted deeply in reality and therefore have the power to affect it. One should not imagine that words are always mere words; they can be as effective as deeds if based on reality. It must be realized that mankind is going through a crisis. It is all-important that a new path, a new connection, be found to truth and reality. People are so alienated from what is real that they have lost the sense for truth and for the right way of dealing with things. It is important to see that the crisis we are in and the untruthfulness that abounds are related. Let me give you one small example: a periodical has appeared, calling itself The Invisible Temple, obviously a publication in which those inclined towards mysticism expect to find something very deep. “The Invisible Temple”—Oh, the depth of it! Subtitle? A Monthly Magazine for the Gathering of Spirits.¹⁵ I will say no more on that point, but in one issue monists and theosophists are mentioned. Various foolish things are said, including a passage I will read. The periodical is the mouthpiece for a society which is at present led by Horneffer.¹⁶ The society claims it is going to renew the world.

This is the passage:

Monists and theosophists may go in different directions; they may vigorously fight and despise one another; yet in one respect they are strangely alike. Both lay claim to the word “science.” Both insist that their pursuit is true science, and that everybody else's science is pseudo-science. You will find this stated in the writings of Haeckel as well as of Rudolf Steiner.

I request you to go through everything I have said or written and see if you can find anything of what is here maintained. But who today is prepared in a case like this to call something by its right name, and say that it is an outright lie, and a common one at that. That Horneffer should write such things comes as no surprise. When he published Nietzsche's works, I had to point out to him that he did not have the faintest understanding of Nietzsche. What he had compiled and published was rubbish. So what he writes now is no surprise. But people take such things seriously, and thus it comes about that the worst, most stupid foolishness is confused and mixed up with the earnest striving of spiritual science, and worse still, what is-truth is called lies, whereas lies are accepted as truth.

It must be learned that a new link to reality has to be found. In the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch the patriarchs when they reached their fifties, received the spirit into themselves as part of their natural development. We may ask if this has in any way remained through the Greek epoch up to our own? The answer is that all that has remained is what we call genius. When the faculty of genius appears today it is still to some extent dependent on man's natural development. However, the men of genius appearing during the fifth cultural epoch will be the last in earth evolution. It is important to know that no genius will appear in the future. We must face the fact that as a natural gift the faculty of genius will disappear. Instead, a new quality of originality will appear, a quality that no longer appears as a gift of nature but must be striven for. It will arise through man's intimate union with the spirituality that reveals itself in the outer world.

A very interesting man, a psychologist, died in March, 1917. I have often spoken about Franz Brentano.¹⁷ He was not only the most significant expert on Aristotle, but a characteristic thinker of our time. I have mentioned before that he began a work on psychology. The first volume appeared in 1874; the second was to appear that same fall and further volumes later. But neither the one expected in the fall nor any later volumes appeared. I became thoroughly familiar with Franz Brentano's characteristic way of lecturing when I lived in Vienna. I have read every published line of what he has written, so I am well acquainted with the direction of his thoughts. Because I know him so well I am convinced that Franz Brentano's innate honesty prevented him from publishing further volumes. There are clear indications already in the first volume of his struggle to reach a clear conclusion regarding immortality of the soul. However, without spiritual science—with which he would have nothing to do—he could not get beyond the first volume, let alone the fifth, in which he planned to furnish proof of the soul's immortality. There was no room for science of the spirit in his outlook. He is, in fact, the originator of the saying so much quoted by 19th-century philosophers: “Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est” (”True science of the spirit can have no other method of research than natural science.”)¹⁸ He composed this sentence for his inauguration thesis when in 1866, having left the Dominican order, he became professor at the university at Wurzburg. Philosophy was already then rather scorned. The first time he entered the auditorium, where formerly a follower of Baader¹⁹ had lectured, he was met with slogans such as “sulfur factory” written on the walls.

Franz Brentano was a gifted man, and he worked out his chosen subject as far as it was possible for him to do. The reason he came to a standstill after the first volume of his intended work was his refusal to enter into spiritual science. His later writings are fragments. But one treatise, a rendering of one of his lectures, is extremely interesting. It is entitled Genius. Although he was a keen observer he was not someone able to ascend from physical observations to spiritual ones. The treatise is basically an attack on the idea of genius. He opposes the idea that from some unconscious strata of the soul could arise what is called genius. He argues that what comes to expression is just a quicker, more commanding grasp of things than is normally attained by ordinary people. As I said, Brentano's treatise is very interesting although he did not come to a spiritual-scientific viewpoint. He was a keen observer and for that very reason could not find, when observing life today, anything to justify the claim of genius. And because he was honest he opposed the idea.

The riddle of genius, among other things, remains inexplicable till one investigates the deeper aspects of mankind's evolution, unless one knows that in the future, what has been known as “genius” will be replaced in certain people by a new way of communion with the spiritual world. When they achieve this, they will receive impulses which will come to expression in the external world in ways that will be equivalent to what was created by geniuses in the past. To recognize that things were different in the past and will be different again in the future is to understand evolution rightly.

I know full well that one is ridiculed for saying such things, but they are the result of direct observation of concrete facts. They are also a contrast to the way people nowadays base their actions not on facts but on some idea with which they have become enamored. To give an example, a man concerned with healing got the idea that movement is good for certain illnesses, which is quite true. However, someone consulted him who had a complaint which the practitioner thought would benefit from movement. He recommended that the patient take plenty of exercise, to which he got the reply: “Forgive me, but you must have forgotten that I am a postman.” One must recognize that concepts are only the tool, not the reality, and also that one must never be dogmatic. I have sometimes referred to another unreal concept, frequently acted upon when it is said: “the best man in the right place!”—whereupon it is immediately found that one's nephew or son-in-law is the best man! What matters are the facts as they truly are, not the idea one is in love with. Unless a feeling for these things is acquired one will fail to learn what is to be learned from history, and fail also to recognize the real issues in things and events around one. And the possibility to find the Christ again will elude one.

We shall continue these considerations next week.

• 1 . Friedrich Rittelmeyer, 1872–1938, professor of theology, pastor in Nurnberg and Berlin, co-founder of the Christian Community.
• 2 . Ludwig Deinhard, 1847–1917, Das Mysterium des Menschen im Lichte der psychischen Forschung, Berlin 1910.
• 3 . Arthur Drews, 1865–1935, see: “Ist Jesus eine historische Perstinlichkeit?” in Hat Jesus gelebt?, Berlin and Leipzig 1910, and Die Christusmythe, Jena 1910 and 1911.
• 4 . Meister Eckart, 1260–1327, German mystic and preacher.
• 5 . Johannes Tauler, 1300–1361, German mystic and preacher.
• 6 . Jacob Boehme, 1575–1624, German pantheist mystic and philosopher.
• 7 . Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German idealist philosopher.
• 8 . Adolf Harnack, 1851–1930, German Lutheran theologian.
• 9 . Professor Dewar, 1842–1923, chemist, lecturer at the Royal Institution in London.
• 10. Rudolf Kjellen, 1864–1922, Der Staat als Lebensform, Leipzig 1916.
• 11. See also Lecture VI, p. 117 and Lecture VIII, p. 157.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner, Human and Cosmic Thought (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1967).
• 13. Boris Bugajeff (Andrej Bjelyi), 1880–1934. Rudolf Steiner and Goethe in der Weltanschauung der Gegenwart.
• 14. Peter III, Czar of Russia 1768–1762.
• 15. Der unsichtbare Tempel; Monatsschri ft zur Sammlung der Geister, Mtinchen 1916–1920, 5 volumes edited by the brothers Dr. Ernst and Dr. August Horneffer.
• 16. Ernst Horneffer, 1871–1954, professor in Giessen, followed Dr. Fritz Koegel as editor in the Nietzsche archives. See Nietzsches letztes Schaffen, Jena 1907.
• 17. Franz Brentano, see note 2 to Lecture I.
• 18. Franz Brentano, Das Genie, a lecture held in the Center for Engineering and Architecture in Vienna, published in Leipzig, 1892.
• 19. Franz Xavier Benedikt Baader, 1765–1841, philosopher.

We have been considering the whole law of evolution of the post-Atlantean humanity, and we have tried to understand why the founding of Christianity should have taken place just at a particular moment in this period of evolution. Yesterday at the close of our lecture, we observed that an understanding of important questions in the Gospel of St. John and in the whole of Christianity depends upon our keeping well in mind this evolutionary law in its esoteric, Christian sense. Only in this way shall we be able to gain a complete understanding of the meaning of the words “Holy Spirit,” “ Father and Mother of Jesus.” Above all we must remember that in the course of the last lectures, it was made clear that the post-Atlantean humanity falls into seven sub-divisions. It is, in fact, that humanity to which, strictly speaking, we, ourselves belong and which developed after the Atlantean Flood. I intentionally avoided the idea of “sub-races,” because the concept “race” does not fully coincide with the idea we are considering. What we are considering are cultural periods of development and what we still experience as racial laws in our present humanity is, in fact, an echo of the Atlantean evolution. The human evolution which preceded the Atlantean Flood, which took place for the most part upon a continent lying between present Europe and America, upon ancient Atlantis, can also be divided into seven successive groups. To these seven groups the expression “racial evolution” is applicable, for these seven successive stages of humanity upon ancient Atlantis differed widely from each other bodily, both internally and externally. We include in the external body also the inner configurations of brain, blood and other fluids. But it cannot be said that the earliest humanity of the post-Atlantean age, the Indian, differed sufficiently from ourselves for us to be able to employ the expression “race” for it. We must always hold fast to the continuity of Divine Wisdom, therefore it is often necessary to form a connection with this ancient concept of the race. Yet false ideas can very easily be created by this word “race” through our failing to see that the reason for the division of humanity of the present is something of a much more inner character than the idea usually attached to the word race. Race can no longer be used for the culture that will replace our own after the seventh subdivision, because then humanity will be divided according to quite different fundamental laws.

From this point of view we must consider the division of the post-Atlantean period into the following epochs: 1st the ancient Indian epoch; 2nd the ancient Persian; 3rd the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Egyptian; 4th the Greco-Latin; and 5th, the epoch in which we now live. Our epoch will be replaced by a 6th and that by a 7th evolutionary epoch. We are now in the 5th post-Atlantean cultural epoch and say to ourselves:—Christianity entered into human evolution in its full profundity and significance in the 4th epoch. It has had its influence on the humanity of the 5th epoch to a marked degree and we shall now forecast prophetically what its further effect will be, as far as this is possible out of Spiritual Wisdom. We indicated yesterday that the mission of Christianity was prepared in the 3rd epoch. The Egyptian civilization belongs to the 3rd epoch, and out of its womb the adherents of the Old Testament directed the development of Hebrew culture in such a way that Christianity was born, as it were, coming fully into the world in the 4th epoch, in the person of Christ Jesus. We may say that humanity experienced a certain spiritual influence in the 3rd epoch of the post-Atlantean age. This worked on into the 4th Epoch, concentrating in the person of Christ Jesus, then continued on into the 5th, our own, and from thence it will work on over into the 6th epoch which will follow ours. Now we must clearly understand how all this has occurred.

Let us call to mind that in the course of human evolution, the various constituent parts of the human being have experienced their own evolution. Let us recall how it was in the later Atlantean period. We have described how the ether head sank into the physical body and how at that time people developed the rudimentary capacity for saying “I AM” to themselves. When the Atlantean Flood occurred, the human physical body was permeated by the power of the “I AM;” this means that human progress had advanced far enough to have prepared the physical instrument for the ego or for self-consciousness. By this we understand quite clearly that if we were to go back into the middle of the Atlantean period, we should find no human being in the position to develop a self-consciousness in which it was possible for him to speak the words, “I am an I” or “I AM,” out of himself. That could only occur after that part of the ether head, of which we have spoken, has united with the physical part of the head. Up to the time of the submersion of Atlantis by the Flood, the human being had developed the rudiments of the physical brain, which was to become the bearer of this self-consciousness, and the germs of the other configurations of his physical body. Up to the time of the Atlantean Flood, the physical body was being made ready to be the bearer of the ego. We may ask: What was the mission of Atlantis? It was to implant the ego in the human being, to imprint it upon him, and this mission then reached out beyond the Flood—described as the Deluge—over into our age. In our post-Atlantean epoch, however, something else had to enter; gradually and by degrees, Manas or Spirit-Self had to enter into the human being. The influence of Manas or Spirit-Self begins with our post-Atlantean age. We know that after we have passed through various embodiments in our sixth or seventh epochs, Manas or Spirit-Self will have overshadowed us to a certain degree. But a longer preparation is needed for the human being to become a fit instrument for this Manas or Spirit-Self. Before that, he will first have to become a true bearer of the “I” or ego, even though it take thousands of years. He will not only have to make his physical body an instrument for the ego, but the other members of his being as well.

In the first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period, the human being for the first time made his ether body into a bearer of the ego, just as he had previously done with his physical body. This was the ancient Indian civilization. In this epoch, the human being acquired the ability to develop not only a physical instrument for the ego, but also a fitting ether body. Therefore in the following table, the first epoch, the ancient Indian civilization is indicated as having an ether body.

If we now wish to consider the further evolution of these cultural epochs in relation to the human being, we must not, merely superficially, consider the soul as the astral body, but we must proceed more accurately and take as a basis the membering of the human being which you will find in my book “Theosophy.” You know that there we distinguish, in general, not only the seven human members, but the middle part we again divide into Soul Body, Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul—and then we have the higher members, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. Usually only seven members are to be distinguished. The fourth member which we summarize under the name “Ego,” we must again divide, because in human evolution it is thus divided. What was evolved during the ancient Persian period is the actual Astral or Soul Body. It is the bearer of the actual human active forces, therefore the transition from the Indian to the Persian periods consisted in passing over from a state of inactivity to one of activity in the material world.

The movement of the hands and everything that was connected with it, the transition from inactivity to physical work is what characterized this epoch. To a much greater degree than is supposed, the inhabitants of ancient India were disinclined to bestir the hands, but in contemplation were much more inclined to lift themselves above the material existence into higher worlds. They had to penetrate deeply into their inner being when they wished to call to memory those earlier states. Therefore the Indian Yoga, for example, consisted in general in giving special care and cultivation to the ether body.

Now let us proceed further. In the culture of the ancient Persian epoch, the ego had sunk into the Soul Body. In that of the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian epoch, the ego mounts into the Sentient Soul. You inquire, what is the Sentient Soul? It is the means by which the sensitory human being directs himself outwardly, whereby the perceiving human being by means of his eyes and other senses becomes aware of the ruling spirit in outer nature. Consequently in that epoch, the eyes were directed toward the material things spread out in space, toward the stars and their courses. What was spread out externally in space acted upon the Sentient Soul. In the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian period, very little existed as yet of what can be called an inner, personal and intellectual human culture. We of the present can no longer really imagine what constituted the Egyptian Wisdom of that epoch. It was, in fact, not at all a matter of thinking, a matter of speculation as was the case later on; but when the Egyptian turned his glance toward the outer world, he inwardly experienced the law which he read in the physical world with the physical senses. It was a reading of the laws, a science of perception, a science of feeling, not a science of concepts. If our scholars would only reflect—I am using a harsh expression—then all that has just been said would be pointed out to them, as it were, with fingers, with spiritual fingers. For if the Egyptian did not think with the true, inner forces of the intellect, that means nothing more nor less than that there could not have been, at that time, a real science of thought or of logic. It is true, there was none. History points out to you that the real founder of logic was Aristotle. If there had previously been a logic, a science of thought, it would have been possible to inscribe it in a book. A logic, which is in itself a process of reflection in the ego, in which ideas are united and separated within the ego, in which one forms judgments logically and does not gather them from the things themselves, first appeared in the fourth cultural epoch. Therefore we call this fourth epoch the epoch of the Intellectual Soul, and we ourselves are now in the epoch of the appearance of the ego in the Consciousness Soul. Humanity entered into this epoch about the middle of the Middle Ages, beginning with the 1oth, 11th, and 12th Centuries. It came as late as that. The ego first entered the Consciousness Soul about the middle of the Middle Ages.

This can be very easily proven historically, and light could be thrown into every corner were there time to point out much that might come into question. At that time a very definite concept was implanted in mankind, the concept of individual freedom, of individual ego-capacity. If you consider the early part of the Middle Ages, you will still find everywhere that the value of the individual, in a certain sense, depended upon his position in the community. A person inherited his standing, his rank and position from his father and his kinsmen, and in accordance with these impersonal things, which are not consciously connected with the ego, he acted and worked in the world. Only later, when commerce expanded and inventions and modern discoveries were made, did the ego-consciousness begin to extend itself, and we can see arising everywhere in the European world the external reflection of this Consciousness Soul in very definite forms of municipal government, municipal constitution, etc. From the history of this city of Hamburg, for example, it can easily be proven how these things have developed historically. What in the Middle Ages was called the “free city” is the external counterpart of this breathing of the ego-conscious soul through humanity. And if we now allow our glance to sweep into the future, we may say: We are now about to develop this personal consciousness within the Consciousness Soul. All the demands of the modern age are nothing but the demands of the Consciousness Soul which mankind is unconsciously expressing. But when we look still further into the future, we see spiritually something else. The human being then rises in the next cultural epoch, to Manas or Spirit-Self. That will be a time when men will possess a common Wisdom in a very much greater degree than at present; they will be, as it were, immersed in a common Wisdom. This will be the beginning of the feeling that the innermost kernel of the human being is at the same time the most universal. What is looked upon as the possession of the individual, in the present sense of the word, is not yet so on a higher plane. At present there is a notion, closely linked with the individuality, with the human personality, that human beings must contend with one another, must have different opinions. Men say: if we could not have different opinions we would not be independent human beings. Just because they wish to be independent, they must hold different opinions. That, however, is an inferior point of view. Men will be most peaceful and harmonious when they, as separate persons, become most individualized. As long as men are not yet fully overshadowed by Spirit-Self there will be opinions which differ from each other. These opinions are not yet experienced in the true, innermost part of their being. At present there are only a few forerunners of things experienced in the depths of the soul, and these are mathematical and geometrical truths. These cannot be put to the vote. If a million people were to say to you that 2x2=5 and you perceive in your inner being that it is 4, you know that this is true and that the others must be wrong. It is as though someone were to maintain that the sum of the three angles of a triangle does not amount to 18o degrees.

It will be Manas-Culture when more and more the sources of truth are experienced within the strengthened human individuality, within the human personality, and when, at the same time, there is an agreement between what different people experience as higher reality, just as now there is an agreement between what they experience as the truths of mathematics. Men agree upon these mathematical truths at present everywhere, because they are the most elementary truths. In respect of other truths, men contend not because there can be two different right opinions about the same subject, but because they have not yet reached the point of recognizing and fighting down the personal sympathy and antipathy that divides them. Were personal opinions still to come into consideration in simple mathematical truths, many housewives might then, perhaps, agree that 2x2=5 and not 4. For those who see more deeply into the nature of things, it is quite impossible to disagree about their higher nature; there is only one possibility for those who disagree: that of developing themselves to perceive more deeply. Then reality discovered in one soul will coincide exactly with that in another, and there will be no more strife. That is the guarantee for true peace and true brotherhood, because there is but one Reality and this Reality has something to do with the Spiritual Sun. Just think how orderly the plants grow; each plant grows toward the sun and there is only a single sun. When in the same way, in the course of the sixth cultural epoch, that Spirit-Self draws into human beings, a Spiritual Sun will actually be present, toward which all men will incline, and in which they will become harmonized. That is the great perspective which we have in prospect for the sixth epoch. Then in the seventh, Life-Spirit or Budhi will, in a certain way, enter into our evolution. This is the far distant future toward which we, only divining, can turn our glance.

But we now see clearly that an epoch will come, the sixth, which will be a very important one; important, because it will bring Peace and Brotherhood through a common Wisdom. Peace and Brotherhood, because not only will the Higher Self sink down into its lower form as Spirit-Self or Manas in certain chosen human beings, but also in that part of humanity passing through a normal evolution. A union of the human ego, as it has been gradually evolved with the higher, the unifying Ego, will then take place. We may call this a spiritual marriage and the union of the human ego with Manas or Spirit-Self was always so called in Esoteric Christianity. However, things of the world are bound closely together and men cannot stretch out their hands, as it were, and draw this Manas or Spirit-Self into themselves. They must reach a very much higher stage of evolution in order to be able to help themselves in respect of these things. In order that the human being in the post-Atlantean age may unite with the Higher Ego, men had to have help in their evolution. When something is to be accomplished, there must be a preparation. If a child is to develop into something special at fifteen years of age, something must be done to that end as early as his sixth or seventh year. Everywhere, evolution must prepare its impulses. What is to happen to mankind in the sixth epoch must be slowly and gradually prepared. The power and force of what is to take place within mankind in the sixth epoch has to come from without.

The first preparation was something still wholly external, operating from the spiritual world, something that had not yet descended into the physical world. That has been pointed out in the great mission of the Hebrew people. When Moses, an Initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries, received those instructions from the Spiritual Guidance of the World which we were able to characterize with the words: “When thou speakest unto them of My laws, tell them that My Name is the ‘I AM,’” he was charged in these words: “Prepare them by pointing to the formless, invisible God. Point out that, while the Father-God is still active in the blood, the ‘I AM’ who is to descend even to the physical plane is prepared for those who can understand.” This was prepared, as it were, in the third cultural epoch. Out of the Hebrew people we see streaming forth the mission to deliver to humanity the God who then descended deeper into matter and appeared in the flesh. First He was prophesied, then later He appeared to the physical eyes in the flesh. Thus came to expression in the right sense what had been prepared by Moses.

Let us keep this point of time clearly in mind: the spiritual prophecy through Moses, and the conclusion of this prophecy in the appearance of the prophesied Messiah in the Christ. From this time onward—which we can designate as the first division in the history of Christianity—the real Impulse was implanted in human evolution for unity and brotherhood which will eventuate in the sixth epoch. It is like a force that, having sunk down deeply into an object, continues to be active there until gradually results emerge. In a similar way, this spiritual force has been active up to our present time which we must describe as an age in which humanity has wholly descended into matter with all its intellectual and spiritual powers. The question may be asked: Why did Christianity have to come to the world as a direct forerunner of the most deeply materialistic epoch?

Just imagine, for a moment, that humanity had entered into this most deeply materialistic age without Christianity. It would then have been impossible for it to find again the impulse upwards. Think away the Impulse that has been implanted in mankind through the Christ, then the whole of humanity would have had to fall into decadence, would have had to be bound forever to matter. As it is expressed in occultism, it would have been “seized by the force of gravity in matter” and would have been thrown out of its evolution. Thus we must imagine that in the post-Atlantean epoch, mankind made a movement downward into matter, and that before the lowest stage was reached, there came the other Impulse which impelled it again upward in the opposite direction. This was the Christ Impulse. Had the Christ Impulse been active earlier, humanity would never have come to a materialistic development at all. Had it fallen in the ancient Indian epoch, mankind would certainly have been permeated with the spiritual element of Christianity, but it would never have descended deeply enough into matter to have been able to produce all that we call today an outer physical culture. It may seem extraordinary to say that without Christianity there would never have been any railroads, any steamships etc., but for anyone who knows things in their relationship, it is a fact. Never would these means of culture have arisen out of the ancient Indian civilization. There exists a mysterious connection between Christianity and all that is today the so-called pride of mankind. Because Christianity waited until the right moment of time for its appearance, an external culture became possible, and because it entered just at the right moment, it became possible for those who unite themselves with the Christ Principle to be able to rise again out of materiality. However, since Christianity has been received without understanding, it has become very greatly materialized. Because it has been so greatly misunderstood, it has itself been materialistically interpreted. Thus, in a certain way, it is a very distorted, materialistic form which Christianity has assumed in the course of that period which we have just been following right up to our own times, and which we may designate as a second division of Christian history. Instead of the Last Supper, for example, being apprehended from its higher spiritual aspect, it has become materialized and has been represented as a transubstantiation of gross physical substance. And we could instance hundreds and hundreds of examples of the fact that Christianity as a spiritual phenomenon has not been understood.

We have now almost reached the moment when this second period ends, when men must of necessity form a connection with the spiritual aspect of Christianity, with what Christianity really should be, in order that its true spiritual content may be drawn forth. This will come about through the Anthroposophic deepening of Christianity. By applying Anthroposophy to Christianity, we are following the universal historic necessity of preparing the third Christian epoch which directs its life toward the in-streaming of Manas in the sixth epoch. That will be, as it were, the third chapter. The first chapter is the period of the prediction of Christianity up to the time of the appearance of Christ Jesus and a little beyond. The second chapter is the deepest possible immersion of the human spirit in matter and the materialization of Christianity itself. The third chapter will be a spiritual understanding of Christianity by means of a deepening of the soul through Anthroposophy. That such a document as the Gospel of St. John has not, up to our own age, been understood is due to our whole materialistic evolution. Such a materialistic culture as has gradually developed could not fully understand this Gospel. The spiritual culture which must begin with the Anthroposophic Movement will understand this document in its truly spiritual form and prepare what will then lead over into the sixth epoch.

For those who have attained a Christian or a Rosicrucian initiation—even for those who have attained any initiation whatsoever—an extraordinary phenomenon makes its appearance. Things which take place acquire for them a double meaning; one which is enacted in the outer physical world, another, by means of which things enacted in the physical world become indications of great, comprehensive spiritual happenings. You will, therefore, understand if I now attempt to describe somewhat the impressions of the writer of the Gospel of St. John on one particular occasion.

An extraordinary event took place during the life of Christ Jesus and this event occurred upon the physical plane. The one who is describing it, according to the Gospel, does so as an initiate. Accordingly, the event represents to him simultaneously the perceptions and the results that accrue during the process of initiation. Picture to yourselves the end of this act of initiation.

During three and a half time periods, which in ancient times, as we have already pointed out, were represented by three and a half days, the candidate for initiation lay in a lethargic sleep. Each day he experienced something different in respect of the spiritual world. On the first day he had definite experiences which presented to him events in the spiritual worlds; and on the two subsequent days he had still other experiences. Now in this particular passage of the Gospel, the person we are considering had shown to him what is always spiritually presented to the clairvoyant faculty, that is, the future of mankind. If we know the impulses of the future, we can then inject them into the present and thereby lead the present over into the future.

Picture to yourselves the seer of that age. He experienced the spiritual meaning of the first of the three chapters I have described from the time when the command resounded: “Say unto your people, I am the ‘I AM,’” to the descent of the Messiah. As second chapter he experienced the descent of the Christ into matter, and as third chapter he experienced how gradually mankind is being prepared to receive the Spirit or Spirit-Self (Manas) in the sixth epoch. He experienced all this in an astral prevision. He experienced the marriage of humanity with the Spirit. That is an important experience which mankind can only impress upon the outer world through Christ having entered into time, into history. Previously mankind had not lived in this kind of brotherliness, brought about by means of the spirit unfolding within the inner being, in which peace exists between man and man. Prior to this, there was only the love prepared physically through the tie of blood. This love develops gradually into a spiritual love which then descends upon earth. As final result of this third chapter of initiation, we may say that humanity celebrates its marriage with Spirit-Self or Manas. This can only happen when the time for it has arrived, when the time has matured for the full realization of the Christ Impulse. So long as the time has not yet come, so long will the relationship which is based upon the kinship of blood obtain, and so long will love be an un-spiritual form of love.

Wherever in ancient documents numbers are mentioned, the hidden aspect of numbers is meant. When we read, “On the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,” every initiate knows that with this “third day,” something very special is meant. What is meant? The writer of the Gospel of St. John points out that it is not alone a matter of an actual experience, but that it is, at the same time, a great, an overpowering prophecy. This marriage expresses the great marriage of humanity which occurred on the third day of initiation. On the first day there occurred what took place in the transition from the third to the fourth cultural epoch; on the second day, what took place in the transition from the fourth to the fifth epoch and on the third day what will occur when mankind passes over from the fifth to the sixth epoch. These are the three days of initiation. The Christ Impulse has been compelled to wait until the third epoch. Before that, the time had not come when it could operate. The Gospel of St. John points to a special relationship between “me and thee,” between “us two.” That is what is really said, not the absurd “Woman, what have I to do with thee.” When the Mother asks the Christ to make a sign, He answered: “My time is not yet come” to be active at marriages, that is, to bring people together. That time is yet to come. What is based upon the blood-bond still works on and will continue to be active; hence the reference to the relationship between mother and son at the Marriage of Cana.

When we consider the documents in this way, all that is really external stands out in bold relief against a significant spiritual background. We gaze into the abysmal depths of the spiritual life when we penetrate into what has been bestowed upon mankind by such an initiate as the writer of the Gospel of St. John, into what he was able to bestow upon it, because the Christ had implanted His Impulse within human evolution.

Therefore we have seen that these things must be explained by the astral reality which the initiate experiences, not by empty allegory or symbolism. We are not dealing with a symbolic interpretation only, but with the narration of the experiences of the initiate. If this were not so, then one might feel that those who stand outside are right when they say that Spiritual Science offers nothing but allegorical interpretations. If we apply to this passage the spiritual-scientific interpretation, as we now understand it, we learn how, through three cosmic days, the Christ Impulse works upon humanity, from the third cultural epoch over into the fourth, from the fourth to the fifth and from the fifth into the sixth. And viewing this evolution from the standpoint of the Gospel of St. John, we are now able to say: The Christ Impulse was so great that mankind of the present has understood but very little of it, and only in a later age will it be wholly comprehended.

One of the most remarkable descriptions of the human soul was provided by the English poet Richard Jefferies, who died in 1887, in his book “The Story of My Heart”. How can I process all the impressions and experiences within me in such a way that the powers of my soul are constantly growing? How can I transform all the pains and joys of existence within me in such a way that the life of my spirit becomes ever richer? Jefferies spent most of his life pondering these questions. Anyone who follows Ludwig Jacobowski's career as a poet will find that a similar basic drive can be observed in it. From his first appearance, with the collection of poems “Aus bewegten Stunden” (1889), to his last works, “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (1898) and “Leuchtende Tage. Neue Gedichte” (1900), a passionate struggle to increase his mental powers and to grow his inner life can be seen in his development. Goethe once said to Eckermann: “In poetry, only the truly great and pure is beneficial, which in turn stands like a second nature and either lifts us up to it or spurns us.” Jacobowski felt himself to be both lifted up and spurned when he published his first poems at the age of twenty. “Kontraste” (Contrasts) is the first subtitle of this collection. Dissonances resound from the depths of his soul; he anxiously measures his strength against the ideals he dreams of. He is not one of those personalities who, as mere observers, let world events affect them as if they were not involved themselves. From his very own personal destiny, the destiny of all humanity presents itself to him. The experiences of his mind become symbols of the great struggles that humanity fights to balance the contradictions of life.

From the pain and deprivation of his emotional world, Jacobowski grew the courage of his will, which led him to feel a special joy in overcoming life. In his novel “Werther, the Jew” (1892) and his drama “Diyab, the Fool” (1895), the poet presents us with the true stepchildren of existence. Leo Wolff, the Jewish student at the center of the novel's plot, and Diyab, the son of the sheikh, are in similar situations in life, but they have different strengths of willpower, which nature has given them. In Wolff's case, a delicate and sensitive heart is confronted with a weak will, while in Diyab's case it is confronted with a strong will. This makes the former the loser and the latter the winner. Ludwig Jacobowski's psychological powers of observation can only be properly appreciated if it is taken into account that his aim is to show the influence that life has on a person's will. Wolff can only contrast his idealistic sensibilities and his lofty mind with the world; he is crushed by its wheels. Diyab is a man of will. To the extent that his heart is wounded, his will gains strength.

Wolff suffers from his father's ethical views and the prejudices directed against the young Jew. His father's financial speculations cost the teacher of his son, whom he adores, his fortune. The passion that he feels for the teacher's wife makes Wolff a deceiver of his father's friend. At the same time, it has a destructive effect on his beautiful love affair with the child of the people, who seeks release from the torments that her affection for the student has brought her by voluntarily taking her own life. The young man's willpower is not strong enough to guide him through the opposing currents into which life has thrown him, through the confusion into which his passions have thrown him. A genuinely humane spirit alienates him from the people to whom natural ties bind him; at the same time, these natural ties weigh like a lead weight on his life. By birth and by his way of thinking, he is repelled by the world and forced to turn to himself; but in the isolation of his soul he does not find the energy to shape his relationship to life on his own.

What a strong will can achieve in this direction is shown by Jacobowski in “Diyab, the Fool”. The son of the sheik is an outcast because he was born of a white mother. He is exposed to the scorn of his entire environment. But he is not affected by this mockery. He is superior to those who mock him. They know nothing of his innermost self. He hides it from them and plays the fool. They may mock him in this mask. But his own self grows outside in the solitude where the palm trees stand. There he lies between the grasses deep in the forest, living only for himself. Out there he cultivates his strength to the point where he later becomes the savior of the entire tribe, when those who had insulted him shrink back from the enemy. The strong-willed man put on the mask of a fool in order to be master of his fate. Behind this mask, however, the personality matured that takes revenge for the shameful treatment that she and her mother had to endure, and that conquers the throne of the sheikh and the beloved through boldness and strength. The artistic execution is absolutely equal to the train of thought of the two works. Ludwig Jacobowski has an open mind and a broad understanding of the great questions of existence. He is not only able to depict the individual fates of individuals, but also to artistically portray the great interrelationships of cultural development. In “Werther, the Jew”, the experience of the young Jew also symbolically expresses a great historical phase of a people's development. The individual is the representative of a rejuvenating Judaism that is struggling to break free from the prejudices and inherited habits of a tribe and to develop a universal human world view. Jacobowski's symbolizing art is particularly evident in the individual stories in the collection “Satan laughed and other stories” (1898). The first sketch, “Satan laughed”, shows how God takes control of the earth from the devil by creating man, his servant, but how the devil still manages to secure his influence. He catches the woman in his nets. A few characteristic lines are used here to symbolically suggest the demonic powers that lie hidden in human sexuality. The short stories in this collection show how an artist can express life with just a few lines, if these lines are characteristic.

Jacobowski's symbolic style reached its zenith in his book “Loki. Roman eines Gottes” (Loki. A God's Novel). The poet personifies the two powers that wage an unceasing battle in every human breast in the form of the battling gods. Goodness, love, patience, gentleness and beauty are on one side; hatred and defiance on the other. Maeterlinck has said that man is in all his parts a mystical accomplice of higher divine beings. Jacobowski seeks these beings in the depths of human nature and describes the eternal struggle between them, the scene of which is our soul. Man has a power within him that does not allow him to rest. When he believes he has found peace, when he thinks he has brought order into his existence, then this power suddenly appears and disturbs peace and order, in order to replace the old with the new and to remind us that the true essence of the world can only exist in perpetual becoming. It is true that within peace and order, good human qualities flourish; but it is equally true that the old good must be destroyed from time to time. Thus the actual driving force of the world appears as evil, which drives good out of its possession. The creative appears as an unwelcome intruder into existence. Jacobowski has contrasted it with the figure of Loki in relation to the Asen. Far from Valhalla, an Asin gave birth to this god. Terrible apparitions announce his entry into the world to the other gods. We do not know the mother or the father. He is a child of the gods' sin. This child grows up in pain and deprivation. The goddesses mistreat him and give him glacial milk, wolf's foam and eagle meat to eat. This being, who has grown up in a sphere of suffering, has one thing that all the other gods do not have: wisdom. Loki sees the future of the other gods. In this course of the “Gods' novel”, the connection between suffering and knowledge is expressed in a symbolic way. The Aesir live in happiness. They do not concern themselves with the driving forces of the world. Only those who are in pain from these driving forces look at them. They think about the reasons for this pain. This opens their spiritual eyes. Loki becomes the destroyer of the realm of the gods. He ruthlessly destroys Balder, the personification of love. He must hate him, because the becoming must always be the enemy of the persisting, of the carefree enjoyment of the moment. And from the ruins of the old realm of Balder, a new one arises, not ruled by Loki, but by a new god of love, Balder's son. The deepest conceivable tragedy lies in the figure of Loki. He is the eternal destroyer, necessary for the good elements to be constantly renewed, the demon of misfortune that happiness needs in order to exist. The creator who is never allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, the hatred that is indispensable to the existence of love: that is Loki.

Jacobowski poetically depicts the eternal conflict of world events in this “novel of a god”. All our wisdom cannot solve this conflict. For it is precisely this conflict that sustains life. We are enmeshed in it with our whole being. We recognize that it is there, and we must bow to the fact. Jacobowski also expressed this in the character of Loki. He knows the fate of all the other gods; only his own is unknown to him. Wisdom may recognize the whole world; it cannot see itself through; it can only live itself out, as it is driven by its demons.

Jacobowski's last collection of poems, his “Leuchtende Tage” (Shining Days), appeared shortly after this novel. Between this work and the “Bewegte Stunden” there are two more volumes of poetry: “Funken” (1890) and “Aus Tag und Traum” (1895). These collections are a reflection of all the struggles that led the poet to the high vantage point from which he sang the eternal secrets of the world in “Loki.”

Jacobowski's poetry reveals a beautiful relationship between this poet and nature. He has the ability to find the poetic and meaningful in the simplest things and processes. Unlike so many contemporary poets, he does not believe that the valuable can only be found in the rare, in the remote charms of existence. He becomes aware of it with every step he takes through life. The most ordinary things take on a poetic form for him.

The great world perspective that is Jacobowski's own also gives him the right view for the poetic representation of social conditions. The poets who seek their material in this area often see only a few steps ahead. Jacobowski's descriptions of big-city life and modern social phenomena grow out of the foundations of a more comprehensive worldview. In this sense, “Der Soldat, Szenen aus der Großstadt” (The Soldier, Scenes from the Big City) is a truly modern creation, in which the experiences of a person are described who is transplanted from the countryside to the big city and is destroyed there by fate. A legend, “The Four Robbers”, expresses a significant moral content in a simple form. This poetry speaks for Jacobowski's healthy imagination, which points everywhere to the ideal forces that hold “the world together at its core”, and yet never leaves the realm of fresh, immediate naturalness.

In looking back at the considerations set forth here during the last few days, we shall see, on the one hand, standing there before our soul the relations existing between the individual man and the universe, and, on the other, the relations existing between a single human being living at a certain time and mankind's whole earthly development.

Today I should like to round out these considerations by adding a few thoughts. You will have inferred from what was said that the human being, in ancient times preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, stood much closer than we do today to outward nature, to the external world. This statement goes counter to the present-day belief that we, by means of our science, stand extremely close to nature. We do nothing of the kind. We have intellectual thoughts on nature drawn only from external observation, but we no longer experience nature.

Had the human being remained dependent on the spiritual element in nature, he would not have become the free being into which he developed during the recent stages of historical evolution. He would not have attained his full ego-consciousness.

If today we look into our own self, into that which we carry within us as the memory images of things experienced by us previously, what do we find in ourselves (and rightfully so)? We find our ego with all its experiences. When ancient man, living several millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, looked into himself, he did not find his ego. He did not say: “I have experienced this or that ten or twenty years ago.” Just by means of his memory, it was clear to him that he had to say: “the Gods let me have this or that experience.” And he did not say: “the ego within me had this or that experience,” but: “the God within me had the experience.” It was just because the human being participated spiritually, by means of his physical body, his etheric body, his astral body, in the processes of nature outside of himself, just because he stood in a closer, more intimate relationship to nature, he could say: “The God within me experiences the world.”

Today man acquires a knowledge of nature by means of his intellect. His knowledge is concerned exclusively with dead nature. Thus he has become able to speak of himself, out of his innermost feeling, as an ego; to be a free ego-being.

This was felt with especial strength by Paul when passing through the event of Damascus. For Paul, before passing through the event of Damascus, was an initiate in the sense of ancient initiation. He had learned in the Semitic wisdom-schools of those days that the God Whom one might justifiably call the Christ could be seen only in pre-earthly existence. This he had been told in the wisdom-schools.

The disciples and pupils of the Christ, however, whom he came to know, made the following assertion: “The Christ has dwelt among us within the man Jesus of Nazareth. He was here on earth. While we were His contemporaries, we experienced Him not only in our memory going back to a pre-earthly existence, but here on earth itself.” And Paul answered out of his initiatory knowledge: “That is impossible, for the Christ can be seen only in pre-earthly existence.”

And he was an unbeliever persecuting Christianity until the vision, the imagination of Damascus revealed this to him: The Christ lives now in connection with the earth. Then he, Paul, coined the expression which has since become so significant for inner Christianity: “Not I, but the Christ in me.”

Man can recognize his ego in a natural way. He simply needs to look into himself. But in order to reach God anew, he must unite himself, in full consciousness, with the Mystery of Golgotha and say to himself: “the Christ in me.”

The men of ancient times have said: “We were together with the Christ, and hence with God the Father, before descending to earth.” Now they had to say: “the Christ is on earth.” Physically, Christ was on earth during the Mystery of Golgotha. Spiritually He has, since the Mystery of Golgotha, remained united with all men on earth.

Such knowledge is also contained in Christianity. We are told that the Christ revealed to man that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. Yet just the interpretation of this word shows clearly that the human beings, although outwardly believing, are inwardly unbelieving. You need only consider what many modern theologians have to say about this coming near of the Kingdom of Heaven. They say: “Well, in this respect the Christ depended on the judgment of his age. Then people believed that the earth would become more spiritual at a certain time. Here the Christ was mistaken.”

It is not the Christ, however, Who was mistaken. Human beings were mistaken. They have interpreted these words in such a way as though the Kingdom of Heaven, by coming near, would make the grapes grow ten times larger and let the earth overflow with milk and honey. Such was not the meaning of what the Christ said. The Christ spoke of the Kingdom of the Spirit which He had brought near. It is not allowable to say: “What the Christ told us was a mistake. Today we must think differently.” Instead of this we should ask ourselves: “How can I understand what the Christ has said?”

Since the Mystery of Golgotha, it has indeed become more and more necessary for us to find the spiritual within the earthly and perceive the truth of the saying: “The spiritual worlds are descended to the earth.” They are descended. We need only to look for the path upon which they can be found. In order that we find something of that which leads towards this path, I would like to discuss once more certain points that are apt to bring about a better comprehension of these matters.

In those ancient times when men, in their fifties, felt the paralysis of their physical bodies setting in, it was still possible to recognize individual destinies by means of the stars. Since then, every sort of astrological calculation has become the practice of amateurs. The ancient human being felt himself related to the transformation of his physical body into the earthly element. But this transformation of the physical body into the earthly element, this perception of the earth by means of the physical body enabled him to recognize, in the course of the stars, the spiritual element within destiny. Thus, thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha, the wisdom of the stars was highly estimated.

Then came the age during which, as I have told you, the human being acquired a greater feeling for his surroundings. After reaching the forties, he felt language in such a way that he could say: “Within me the folk spirit, the folk genius is speaking.” Man learned to regard language as something objective.

In connection with this feeling, the human being experienced that which rotated around him, as it were, in a circle. At a later time, he still experienced the daily sunrise, the daily sunset. To a certain extent, he arranged his life in accord with these phenomena. The course of the year, however, was no longer really understood by him.

Yet there was a time, during the sixth, fifth and fourth millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, when men lived in unison not only with day and night, but also with the year. This unison with the year has been partly preserved, especially up here in the North. For instance, a relic of this past unison can still be felt in the Olaf-Saga, where Olaf experiences the course of the year in such a way that around and after Christmas he enters the life of the spiritual world. Here appears a memory of the unison between human life and the course of the year as it came to flower in very ancient times in the Orient, which was the scene of mankind's loftiest civilization.

At that time, human beings understood what later became known to them only by means of tradition, namely, how to arrange their festivals in accord with the course of the year. They took part in the course of the year. In what way was this accomplished?

Today we have no immediate experience of the fact that we breathe in and breathe out; that the air is alternately within and without us. The present-day human being would be hardly aware of these things were he not told by science. He does not experience, so vividly as did the people of ancient times, the process of inspiration and expiration.

Yet it is not only man that breathes, but also, even though in a different way, our earth. Just as man possesses a soul element, so does the earth possess a soul element. In the course of one year, the earth first breathes in, and then breathes out her soul element. And the wintry days, during which the Christmas Festival takes place, approach at a time when the earth's breathing-in process is at its height; when the earth-soul is entirely within the earth. Then the earth has the greatest amount of soul-life within herself. Hence, at this time, the spirit and soul element becomes visible in the earth.

If we can inwardly experience how the earth, having concluded this breathing-in process, is now inhabited by her whole soul and thereby lets come out of the earth-element the elemental beings, who live with the snow-covered trees, who live with the earth's surface where the water congeals at a time when the earth covers herself with a blanket of ice—if we can inwardly experience all this, then the spiritual beings within the earth begin to stir. The mere naturalist would say: The husbandman scatters the seed, which lies in the earth all winter and sprouts forth in the spring. This, however, could not happen unless the elemental beings preserved, during the winter, the spiritual force of the seeds. The spiritual beings, the spirits of nature, are most wakeful when the earth has breathed in during the winter-time, during the Christmas-time, her whole soul. Thus the birth of Jesus could be best understood through the fact that it took place at Christmas, when the earth is inhabited by her entire soul.

Yet, even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, there were very few people who had been able to retain an understanding of this spirit and soul element contained in the earth during winter.

Men of earlier ages, however, knew that in mid-summer—around the Day of St. John, on the twenty-fourth of June—the state of the earth is just the opposite to her wintry state. In midsummer, the process of exhaling is at its height. Then the earth has given her soul to the extra-terrestrial cosmos. From Christmas until the Day of St. John, this breathing out of the soul-element into the vast universe is perceived more and more. The soul of the earth is striving towards the stars. The soul of the earth wishes to know something about the life of the stars. And, in its own way, the soul of the earth is most firmly united through the light of the summer sun with the star movements at the season of St. John's Day.

All this could be recognized, thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha, in certain parts of the world. And out of this knowledge arose the inception of Summer Mysteries.

In the mid-summer mysteries, the mysteries of St. John that were celebrated especially in the North, the pupils of initiates under the guidance of these initiates, tried to accompany the earth-soul to the vast expanse of the stars, in order to read out of the stars what spiritual happenings and facts are connected with the earth. And, during the time between Christmas and the Day of St. John, they pursued this soaring of the earth-soul towards the world of the stars, this striving of the earth-soul towards the stars. And an echo—but only a traditional echo—of this striving of the earth-soul towards the stars is still to be found in the way the date for the Easter Festival is set.

The Easter Festival is set for the first Sunday following the vernal full moon and thus takes place in conformity with the stars. The reason for this must be sought in ancient times, when it was said: the soul of man desires to follow the earth-soul on her path to the stars and consider the star-wisdom as something whereby man may be guided.

Thus the Spring Festival, the Easter Festival, was set not according to earthly calculation, but according to heavenly calculation, to star calculation.

Especially in the span of time between the eighth pre-Christian century and the fourth post-Christian century, the feeling prevailed in the folk souls of civilized people that human beings were saddened by mankind's cosmic destiny. For there still existed the longing to follow the earth-soul, which desired to soar up to the stars in springtime. But the human soul, which was tied to the body, could do so no longer. There was no possibility of gaining from nature the ability to soar upward to the world of stars, such as it had existed in ancient times.

Human beings, therefore, could easily comprehend why the Easter Festival, which was to celebrate the Christ's death and resurrection, should occur just in springtime.

And the Deity came to their aid, by letting the death of Christ Jesus occur in the spring. Even the setting of the Easter Festival, however, revealed the fact that it was not permissible to use earthly calculations. The Christmas Festival could be computed by earthly means; for then the world-soul was inhabiting the earth. Thus the Christmas Festival had to be set for a definite day.

This setting of the Easter Festival contains profound wisdom. Yet the modern age thinks differently. About twenty-four years ago, I had weekly meetings with a well-known astronomer. Our meetings took place in a small circle of friends. This astronomer could reason only in the following way: All the account books of the earth are thrown into disorder by having the Easter Festival take place on different days. According to his opinion, the least one could do was to set the Easter Festival for the first Sunday in April, or regulate the date in some abstract way. As you know, a movement exists in the world which strives for such an abstract regulation of the Easter Festival. People want to have order in their debits and credits, which play such an important part in modern life. And now the Easter Festival, whose celebration, after all, requires several days, causes a great deal of disorder. It would be much more efficient to set one definite day of the year for its observance!

These things are an outward symbol of the fact that people want to banish from the world all that conforms to spiritual standards. Here is preeminently shown that we have become materialists who want to banish the spiritual more and more from human existence.

Formerly, however, the human being experienced the course of the year in such a way that, by accompanying the earth-soul into the cosmos in springtime and around the time of St. John's Day, he also learned every year how to follow the spiritual entities of the higher Hierarchies and, above all, the human souls who had passed out of this world.

In ancient times, people were conscious of the fact that, by experiencing the course of the year, they learnt how to follow the souls of the dead; learnt to find out, as it were, how their dead kinfolk were faring. And people felt that springtime not only brought them the first blossoms, but also the opportunity of discovering how their kinfolk were faring. Something spiritual was united, in a very concrete way, with this experiencing of the seasons.

And people in ancient times were much concerned with that which is connected with the earthly element, to the degree that the earthly is influenced by the stars. All this, however, has been outgrown by modern man. When we observe St. John's Day—the time when we could accompany the earth-soul soaring upward to unite itself with the stars—the antipodes celebrate Christmas. Thus, in that part of the world, the earth-soul retires into the earth.

You must consider that human beings during ancient, spiritualized times knew so little of the antipodes that the earth was thought of as a disk. Therefore it was impossible to have any relation to the antipodes.

By learning to think of the earth as a rounded body, one became independent of the course of the year. As long as one lived in a restricted region, the course of the seasons was an absolute fact. Today, when one travels across the globe without hindrance and, entering different localities, minimizes the incidents of the seasons, one is unable to experience their course. One also lacks the former intensive relation to the Festivals. You will realize how much less concrete and much more abstract our Festivals have become. People know by tradition that Christmas is the time for exchanging presents—and, besides, children enjoy their few days' vacation. At Easter, one or the other ritual may be witnessed. But in what way do present-day people concretely experience the spiritual world by means of the seasons? Today we are unable to understand the connection between our Festivals of the year and the course of the seasons.

Not only the human being has, in regard to his own person, become an Ego-being, a free being, but also the earth has emancipated herself from the universe. In modern times, the earth stands no longer in so close a relation to the universe as was formerly the case, at least as far as mankind's evolution is concerned. Hence man has become increasingly obliged to seek in his inner being what he cannot find outside.

As men became more and more intellectual, they acquired a natural science concerned with all that is outside of man. What I have in mind is not physics or chemistry which, in a purely external sense, are concerned only with what lies outside of man. I am speaking of biology. This science occupies itself in an intensive way with the lower, and also the higher animals, right up to the very highest species. And we have attained to a marvelous, admirable science in regard to the animal form, so that we are able today to have conceptions of how one animal form has developed out of another. Out of this grew the Darwin-Haeckel conception that the human form has developed out of the animal form. Yet this theory teaches us extraordinarily little about our own nature. It only marks the end of a zoological line. The human being does not attain a knowledge of himself as man, but only as the highest animal. This is a great scientific accomplishment, but it must be interpreted in the right way. People must learn to concede that science can only teach us what man is not.

As soon as it has become general knowledge that science must concern itself not with what man is, but with what man is not, then science will become enlightened. Then we shall be able to study all the forms living in the animal kingdom, as well as those in the plant kingdom.

Then we shall be able to say: “There outside, we have all the animal shapes. These we had to leave behind in the outer world; for, if they were still within us, we could never have become men. Natural science tells us of the things that we had to conquer within ourselves. We evolved by discarding, more and more, the natural forms, by ejecting them and retaining that which is not nature, but which pertains to spirit and soul.”

Man must come to the point where he can address science in the following way: “You are great, for you have taught me what man is not. Hence I must look for man's being in a sphere totally different from external, physical science. I can become a true scientist only by recognizing that man is not a product of nature, topping the line of animals, but that the animals are formations cast off and left behind by man. Only thus can I attain a correct relation to science.” In order to speak such words, man will be compelled to recognize things, now not through external observation, but out of his inner nature. And at the moment when man is able to say to himself: “Science, in the modern sense, does not inform us about man, but it only informs us concerning what man is not”—at this moment it will be recognized how much the world has need of spiritual science. For there is nothing else that gives us the possibility of recognizing man as Man. Without spiritual science, we can come to know only the external sheath of man as the final product of the animal kingdom.

Just by standing correctly on natural-scientific ground, we may fully appreciate natural science as something lying outside of man. To attain a knowledge of man—also with regard to his physical attributes—we must pursue a different path.

Anthroposophy has to strive for this spiritual observation. I shall demonstrate this fact by a few concrete examples.

Because we are influenced by the materialistic spirit of the age, there is a tendency in our schools to educate children by pointing to their bodily nature. Nowadays people make experiments involving the memory, even the faculties of willing and thinking. I do not object to such things, which may be quite interesting, inasmuch as science is concerned. It is, nevertheless, terrible to apply such experiments in a pedagogical way. If we can approach the child only by means of external experiments, this proves how completely estranged we have become from man's real being. Anyone inwardly connected with the child does not need external experiments. I wish, however, to emphasize once more that I am not opposed to experimental psychology. Yet we must acquire the faculty to enter man's being by the inward means of spirit and soul.

For instance, we are told: “A child's memory, his power of remembering, may be exerted too much or too little in his ninth or tenth year.” The clamor against over-exerting the memory can lead to the result of exerting it too little. We must always try to find the middle course. For instance, we may make too great demands on a nine or ten-year-old's memory. The real consequences will not appear before the person in question has reached the age of thirty or forty, or perhaps still later. Then this person may develop rheumatism or diabetes. By overexerting a child's memory at the wrong time—let us say between the ninth and tenth year—we cause during this youthful stage an exaggerated depositing of faulty metabolic products. These connections, lasting during a man's entire earth-life, go generally unnoticed.

On the other hand, by exercising the memory too little—that is, by letting a child's memory remain idle—we bring forth a tendency to all kinds of inflammations appearing in later years.

What is important to know is the following: that the bodily states of a certain life-period are the consequences of the soul and spirit states of another.

Or let us mention something else. We make experiments as to how quickly eight, nine, or ten-year old children in the grammar school tire during a reading lesson. We can work our graphs which show that the pupils tire after a certain length of time when doing arithmetic, and again after a certain length of time when doing gymnastics. Then the lessons are arranged according to these charts.

Of course, these charts are very interesting for purely objective science, to which I pay all due respect. I have no quarrel with such methods; but, with regard to education, they are of no use whatsoever. For between the change of teeth and puberty—that is, just at the grammar school age—we can educate and teach in the right way only by not over-exerting either the head or the limbs, but by stressing the use of the respiratory and circulatory system, the rhythmical system. Above all, we should inject into gymnastic exercises rhythm and time-beat: an element of art should be introduced.

Hence the art of eurythmy is so well adapted to educational purposes. Here the artistic element enters into the child's movements. Similarly, we should relieve the child's head by keeping him away from too much thinking; but teach him instead in a pictorial, imaginative way, present things to the child pictorially. For then he is not made to exert either his nervous-sensuous or his motor system, but mostly his rhythmic system. And this system does not become tired.

You only need to consider that our hearts must beat all night long, even when we are tired and want to rest. We must ceaselessly breathe between our birth and death. It is only the motor and sensuous-nervous systems that tire. The rhythmic system never tires. Therefore the child's schooling, at a time when he must take into his soul things of the greatest importance, should be organized in such a way that those of the child's faculties are called forth which never tire. If we calculate, however, that some subject exhausts the child in a stated period, and then employ charts of this kind, the educational methods are worked out in a wrong way, and not in a correct way. We must realize one thing: What experimental psychology makes clear is essentially the non-human. The human must be inwardly recognized.

In this way, medicine too will be penetrated by thoughts pertaining to spirit and soul. In ancient times, medicine was dominated by such thoughts, and the activities of healing and educating were designated by the same word. When the human being entered the world, he was considered of being in need of healing. Education was tantamount to healing. This will again be possible once the knowledge given by spirit and soul will have advanced to a point where the deeper connections of these things can be discerned. As I said before: Too little exertion of the memory causes subsequent inflammations; too great exertion causes deposits of metabolic products.

By looking at the effect of the action of spirit and soul on the physical, the spiritual element can be found in every single illness. And, conversely, we learn to recognize the cosmos; to recognize the spiritual state of matter within the cosmos. Then therapy may be added to pathology. And here we are filled with the thought that since the Mystery of Golgotha we are obliged to appeal to the soul's inner essence. We can no longer draw the spirit-soul element out of our external surroundings. By considering, in the lecture-halls of anatomy, merely the physical-sensible, we shall call forth a cry such as was uttered during a recent medical Congress. Impelled by the misery of the age, a medical scientist called out: “Give us corpses! Then we shall be able to advance in medicine. Give us corpses!”—Certainly, this cry is perfectly valid today; and, again, I do not fight against this demand for corpses. All this, however, can develop in the right way only if, on the other hand, the cry is uttered: “Give us the possibility of looking into spirit and soul, so that we may recognize how they continually build up the body, and continually destroy it.”

All this is connected with the right comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha. For the Christ wanted us to comprehend again how to heal out of our inner being. Because of this, He sent the Healing Spirit. What He wanted to implant into mankind will bring us physical knowledge, but a physical knowledge permeated by the spirit.

Thus we comprehend the Christ correctly by grasping, in the right way, this word of the Gospel: “Whoever utters incessantly the cry: Lord, Lord! or Christ, Christ! should not, therefore, be considered a true Christian.” Anthroposophy is often reproached for speaking less of the Christ than does external religion. Then I often say to those who blame Anthroposophy: “Is there not an ancient Commandment recognized also by Christians, but forgotten in this eternal mentioning of the Christ: `Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain?' This is one of the ten Commandments.”

Whoever speaks ceaselessly of the Christ; whoever has the Christ's name constantly on his lips, sins against the sacredness of His name. Anthroposophy wants to be Christian in all it does and is. Therefore it cannot be reproached for speaking too little of the Christ. The consciousness that the Christ is living permeates everything brought forth by Anthroposophy. And thus it does not want to have Lord, Lord! incessantly on its lips. The less it speaks of the name “Christ,” the more truly does it desire to be Christian.